Both London-based novelist Edna O’Brien, who died 27 July aged 93, and the Derry journalist and writer Nell McCafferty, who died 21 August aged 80, found themselves at loggerheads with the Church for different reasons.
With O’Brien it was for her novels, especially her ground-breaking debut The Country Girls, which explored the experiences, desires and struggles of two teenage girls who attend a strict Roman Catholic convent school in the Irish countryside. McCafferty wrote as an ardent feminist who was openly lesbian and clashed with the Church on abortion laws and many other issues around gender and sexuality.
Published in 1960, The Country Girls was described as a “smear on Irish womanhood” by the Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin, and was banned in Ireland, as were two of her other novels.
It was reported that a copy of The Country Girls was burned at St Joseph’s Church, Tuamgraney, County Clare – the church O’Brien attended as a young girl – on the orders of the parish priest of the day.
Though O’Brien said it happened in another Country Clare town, and at her own request, following her death the obsequies included a requiem Mass that was held in St Joseph’s Church, as O’Brien returned to the church where she received the sacraments as a young girl.
In an interview for Irish broadcaster RTÉ’s The Meaning of Life series 15 years ago, O’Brien told the late Gay Byrne that religion was very pervasive in the home she grew up in: “I was full of penance and religion.”
She discussed how the emphasis in Irish Catholicism at the time she grew up appeared to be on fear of God, rather than about love. “I saw some of the blatant hypocrisy of the Catholic Church”, she added, saying its power was “overwhelming”.
At the same time, she spoke about how while many Irish felt the Church had let them down, she didn’t personally feel let down by it. She praised Sister Reparata, a nun who nursed in Dublin’s Mater Hospital, and with whom O’Brien formed a friendship. “That nun has given her life to God,” she said.
O’Brien also told Byrne that she prayed regularly and had devotion to St Anthony. Prayers “must come from the heart”, she said, describing that when she prayed: “I become something of a child.”
Even though she explained that she wasn’t sure about the existence of God, she said that she felt that prayers could be answered. She also said she didn’t know what happened after death, but added that the famous atheist scientist Richard Dawkins didn’t know either.
O’Brien admired Buddhism but could never change religion as Catholicism was “so ingrained” in her. Asked if she believed in the divinity of Jesus, she said she was unsure but wanted to believe in it. She said she believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
She spoke about how if she met Jesus, she would request of him: “Bless me throughout eternity.” Throughout the interview, from the tone of her voice to her varied and heart-felt answers, it is hard not to conclude that deep down she had a genuine, if questioning, faith, which was reflected in her decision to have a Catholic funeral that was attended by Irish President Michael D Higgins, while Bishop Fintan Monahan of Killaloe was present at the altar during the service.
Father Donagh O’Meara, the parish priest of nearby Milltown Malbay, was quoted in various media outlets as during the funeral describing O’Brien as “a speaker of the truth”, who “held up a mirror for us in a very narrow time in Ireland”. He also noted that she chronicled “the hardships that women faced” in the Ireland of the time.
Nell McCafferty was originally from the Bogside, a working-class Catholic area of Derry. She made her career in journalism in Dublin, and was steeped in a background strongly associated with the civil rights movement for Northern Ireland’s beleaguered Catholics.
Her writings reflected a sense of injustice at what surrounded her as a young woman, as she sought to achieve equality for Irishwomen in an era when the country was very male-dominated.
A founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, one of McCafferty’s early claims to fame was her role in the so-called “Contraceptive Train” that travelled to Belfast to highlight the legal restrictions of the time on the sale of contraceptives in the Republic of Ireland.
For many years she was involved in a lesbian relationship with another journalist, the late Nuala O’Faolain, and, arguably, was not the same person after O’Faolain ended the relationship and became involved with a man.
Despite McCafferty’s clashes with the Catholic Church on the likes of abortion and sexual and gender issues, she remained coy about the precise nature of her religious beliefs and was at pains to express gratitude to various nuns, including the head nun at her school to whom she came out as a lesbian.
She chose to request at her death a requiem Mass at St Columba’s Church in Derry, celebrated by Father Stephen Ward. The attendance included Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown.
It was striking that while the eulogy was given by her friend and colleague Eamonn McCann, an avowed atheist, the Mass included traditional Catholic hymns in sharp contrast to the Rainbow flags seen outside the church building.
Edna O’Brien and Nell McCafferty were two very different female Irish writers, though it seems fair to say of both that the Catholic Faith never entirely left their lives, remaining an intrinsic part of who they were despite how much they may have disagreed with its hierarchy and various teachings.