during the Civil War ruled armed resistance to the new, legally elected government to be immoral, thus virtually excommunicating the whole Republican side. Some went further, including the bishop of Cork, who instructed his clergy to refuse Republicans the sacraments. Thisrankled bitterly with Seán’s and Frank’s comrades who, when defeated, on the run, and at risk of being shot out of hand if caught with guns, must frequently have felt in acute need of absolution lest, by dying in a state of mortal sin, they go to a worse hell than the one they were in, which was after all what the bishops had ordered their flock to believe. Knowing this, a number of Cork priests, some of whom may have had Republican sympathies, disobeyed their bishop whose ukase, as Seán later wrote, ‘was considered by all Republicans an abuse of clerical power. It was never to be forgotten or forgiven.’
He himself did not forgive it, and when my brother and I were small, one of Seán’s best-kept secrets was that, if he was a Catholic at all, he was no longer a full-time one. As there was nothing unusual about members of a household going to different churches, and there were three within walking distance of our house, it would be years before I guessed that on Sunday mornings he and Binchy were likely to be walking out Dún Laoghaire Pier when the rest of us supposed them to be at Mass: a shift designed to avoid giving scandal to Binchy’s housekeeper, his and our neighbours and my brother and me. A similar ambivalence must have driven generations of Irishmen to take similar measures, some of whom believed in but no longer practised their religion, while others disbelieved but shrank from breaking with their community. Despite endless conversations on the topic, I don’t know to this day to which category Seán belonged and I suspect that neither did he.
He was tough when it came to criticising the actual Church and State, but all toughness melted before the memory of his and Eileen’s love affair with Gaelic culture and their first encounter with it by the shores of Lake Gougane Barra. So on wartime holidays we went back regularly to remember their youth, as old friends foregathered and danced and sang to old tunes, and Father Traynor, who planned his summer visits to coincide withtheirs, said Mass in Gaelic in the small lake-island church which Seán attended, presumably more from friendship than fervour.
Years later I learned that anti-clericalism had been infinitely harsher elsewhere than it ever was in Ireland. The French Revolution, after all, had seen priests guillotined; Mexico, to this day, forbids any but Franciscans to wear clerical dress in public, and I met a man in Italy whose parents had given him the name Ateo, meaning ‘Atheist’. An Irish equivalent – ‘Atheist Murphy’, say, or ‘Atheist Ó Faoláin’ – is imaginable only as a bar-room joke. This is partly because anti-clericals often remained friendly with ordinary priests who, in relaxed moments, were apt to confide that they suffered more from overbearing bishops than the laity ever did. And indeed it was when Seán went into print with jokes about how Bishop Browne of Galway bullied his clergy that Browne launched a libel action. Such was my mother’s innocence and my own (I am going back now to when I was eight), that we were slow to see the danger of this, for I clearly remember us being cheerily hailed, when out walking, by young priests who asked us to relay their congratulations to Seán on his having stood up to the bully. We agreed light-heartedly. Soon, though, it grew clear that, given Browne’s resources and the bias of English libel laws in favour of plaintiffs, Seán could not fight him in court. Neither did his publishers intend doing so. On the contrary, in a letter to
The Irish Press,
they disowned and apologised for his book. And I, as a child moved by impotent fury, became an anticlerical of the extreme sort which Italians call
He himself did not forgive it, and when my brother and I were small, one of Seán’s best-kept secrets was that, if he was a Catholic at all, he was no longer a full-time one. As there was nothing unusual about members of a household going to different churches, and there were three within walking distance of our house, it would be years before I guessed that on Sunday mornings he and Binchy were likely to be walking out Dún Laoghaire Pier when the rest of us supposed them to be at Mass: a shift designed to avoid giving scandal to Binchy’s housekeeper, his and our neighbours and my brother and me. A similar ambivalence must have driven generations of Irishmen to take similar measures, some of whom believed in but no longer practised their religion, while others disbelieved but shrank from breaking with their community. Despite endless conversations on the topic, I don’t know to this day to which category Seán belonged and I suspect that neither did he.
He was tough when it came to criticising the actual Church and State, but all toughness melted before the memory of his and Eileen’s love affair with Gaelic culture and their first encounter with it by the shores of Lake Gougane Barra. So on wartime holidays we went back regularly to remember their youth, as old friends foregathered and danced and sang to old tunes, and Father Traynor, who planned his summer visits to coincide withtheirs, said Mass in Gaelic in the small lake-island church which Seán attended, presumably more from friendship than fervour.
Years later I learned that anti-clericalism had been infinitely harsher elsewhere than it ever was in Ireland. The French Revolution, after all, had seen priests guillotined; Mexico, to this day, forbids any but Franciscans to wear clerical dress in public, and I met a man in Italy whose parents had given him the name Ateo, meaning ‘Atheist’. An Irish equivalent – ‘Atheist Murphy’, say, or ‘Atheist Ó Faoláin’ – is imaginable only as a bar-room joke. This is partly because anti-clericals often remained friendly with ordinary priests who, in relaxed moments, were apt to confide that they suffered more from overbearing bishops than the laity ever did. And indeed it was when Seán went into print with jokes about how Bishop Browne of Galway bullied his clergy that Browne launched a libel action. Such was my mother’s innocence and my own (I am going back now to when I was eight), that we were slow to see the danger of this, for I clearly remember us being cheerily hailed, when out walking, by young priests who asked us to relay their congratulations to Seán on his having stood up to the bully. We agreed light-heartedly. Soon, though, it grew clear that, given Browne’s resources and the bias of English libel laws in favour of plaintiffs, Seán could not fight him in court. Neither did his publishers intend doing so. On the contrary, in a letter to
The Irish Press,
they disowned and apologised for his book. And I, as a child moved by impotent fury, became an anticlerical of the extreme sort which Italians call
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