A FEW weeks ago, when some TDs allegedly felt
threatened by excommunication over abortion, Rev Eoin De Bhaldraithe, of
the Cistercian Abbey at Moone, wrote a lucid letter to the Irish
Times, explaining why those who voted for abortion – as distinct from
those who directly carried one out – were not liable for
excommunication.My scepticism about some of those sounding off – I believe these sounds would subside swiftly if their pensions were put in danger by a Coalition collapse – in no way detracts from Eoin De Bhaldraithe's admirable desire to reassure anybody with a crisis of conscience.
But I also admire him as the author of The Apparition at Knock – the Ecumenical Dimension, a short book, but more intensely rich in insights than many a pretentious academic tome, which has three strands.
First, it's a fair-minded account of the "Second Reformation" (1800-1850) – the Protestant evangelical drive to convert Irish Catholics, which was followed by a sometimes violent Catholic counter-reformation.
Both crusades affected Knock, and fed into the apparition saga. Second, it's a profound theological meditation on the spiritual meaning of the images associated with the apparition. Finally, it's a visionary appeal for Knock to become the engine of an ecumenical effort to end the conflict between Catholic Protestant and Dissenter on the island.
Eoin De Bhaldraithe's succinct review of the Second Reformation, as it affected Knock, breaks new ground. This global, Protestant evangelical crusade gave us the "Bible wars" and indeed the "Bible belt". It was so popular with the common people that Pope Leo XII condemned the translation of the Bible into local languages, and urged bishops to turn people away from what he called these "pernicious pastures".
Unlike some sour clerics I met in the past, De Bhaldraithe is generous to these evangelical missioners. He corrects the Catholic-nationalist folklore that conversions were simply "souperism", the result of starvation: "Catholics today tend to believe it coincided with the Great Famine, and that soup was offered as an incentive to conversion. Yet the truth is that thousands had already become Protestants before the Famine, especially in Connemara."
All
of which I find riveting for two reasons. First, my own position on the
Knock apparition is one of inherited scepticism. My Roscommon mother
told me that my maternal grandfather, Owen Beirne, a small farmer and
strong Christian, who daily read the devotions of Thomas A Kempis,
believed the apparition had been mechanically produced by a magic
lantern, worked by a practical joker in the RIC.
But the source of his scepticism always intrigued me.
For
example, my mother added that my grandfather was also fond of reading
the Bible, a practice not common among Catholics early in the last
century.
At the same time he had a casual attitude to
some Catholic devotional practices, being sceptical of scapulars and the
like. All of which raised questions in my mind as I found out more
about the missioners in the west of Ireland.
Clearly my grandfather considered himself a good
Christian. But in recent years I have wondered whether his scepticism
about Knock together with his passion for the Bible, was perhaps
connected with the evangelical crusade. Could he have come into contact
with local "lapsed Protestants", people whose parents had dallied a
while with Protestant missioners?
My second reason
is the result of a fascination with the Second Reformation and the
Irish language. This led to a controversial play called Souper Sullivan
about mass conversions of Roman Catholics at Tooremore, west Cork,
during the Famine, which was staged at the Abbey Theatre in 1985. The events on Mizen Head echoed those in other parts of Ireland and caused me to come to three general conclusions.
First,
I believe Pope Leo's antipathy to translating the Bible into the
language of the common people was particularly popular among strong
farmers in 19th-Century Ireland.
They would not have been happy to see
their common labourers, the spalpeens, taught to interpret the Bible for
themselves, in Irish or English, in case it gave them notions above
their station in life. And most bishops and priests, being the sons of
farmers, would have shared their antipathy.
Second, I
believe that it was not manipulated poor peasants, but educated Roman
Catholics, particularly national school teachers, who were most likely
to engage with missioners. This interest had less to do with religion
and more to do with the Irish Bible, or intellectual stimulation or with
challenging the coercive control of the local Catholic clergy. National
school teachers in my day would have agreed with me on the last point.
Finally,
I believe that since, as Eoin De Bhaldraithe says, "thousands"
converted in Connemara, isn't it likely that many more flirted with
Luther than later Catholic folklore cared to admit?
Furthermore,
I think it likely that even when conversions did not last, contacts
with Protestant missioners left cultural marks that could be found in
families for generations, and formed a kind of "sublimated
protestantism".
In sum, the Second Reformation was about a lot more than taking soup.
One
of the most intriguing stories Eoin De Bhaldraithe tells is that of the
assistant principal of Knock national school, Master Waldron, who
engaged deeply with evangelicals and paid a high price. (As Waldron is
De Bhaldraithe in Irish he may well be an ancestor of Eoin's – the
author does not say).
Unlike the Fine Gael
TDs, Master Waldron was personally threatened with excommunication,
forced to repent to keep his job, and was generally given the works.
A
contemporary's account says he was compelled to make a public
repentance and came "bare-headed and bare-footed into the church and
asked forgiveness for his offence against the Church. So he was once
more restored to the friendship of the priest and the people."
But who
knows what he felt privately?
At any rate, we must be
grateful the Waldron clan continues Master Waldron's habit of
independent intellectual and spiritual introspection. Because Eoin De
Bhaldraithe believes that the modern message of Knock is essentially
ecumenical, and "urges us to review our relations with our nearest
neighbour. The Church of Ireland is the closest to us theologically and
yet, like a family feud, our enmity towards them often seems greatest."
He
goes on to speculate that this Christian reconciliation could be the
foundation of a new political harmony on the island. And while he does
not spell it out, this union of hearts does not seem too distant from
Wolfe Tone's noble vision of a union of Protestants, Catholics and
Dissenters.
Eoin De Bhaldraithe concludes: "These are
political dreams, but the co-existence and harmony of Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland is the great challenge of the future." Amen to
that.