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The
Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968-1998
Margaret
M. Scull
Oxford:
University Press, 2019 Hardcover.
xii+236 p. ISBN 978-0198843214. £65
Reviewed
by Stephen Hopkins University
of Leicester
This volume is an
important contribution to the scholarship of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern
Ireland; it is painstakingly researched and engagingly written. It is a
surprise that the role of the institutional Catholic Church in the conflict has
not received greater academic analysis, but this book makes up for the dearth
of previous study. As Margaret Scull acknowledges, it was difficult for earlier
scholars to utilise archival material held by the Church itself, but the author
has been tenacious in gaining access to some of these archives (both in Ireland
and in England), as well as supplementing these sources with autobiographical
accounts, oral history and a careful reading of the Catholic press. The result
is a judicious, well-argued study that is fascinating in particular regarding
the influence of a number of prominent individual figures from the hierarchy.
Scull is insistent that monocausal explanations of the conflict in the
literature need to be challenged; she is surely correct that religion should
not be ‘written out’ of a more nuanced and subtle approach to the complexities
surrounding the origins of the conflict. The review of the existing literature
testifies to the strange neglect of the Catholic Church’s position during the
conflict, notwithstanding the work of Marianne Elliott, John Brewer, and
particularly Claire Mitchell’s Religion, Identity, and Politics in Northern
Ireland : Boundaries of Belonging and Belief (Aldershot, 2006). The emphasis upon the
critical influence of key individual personalities is repeatedly stressed, and
the study is particularly interesting with regard to some of these members of
the hierarchy, who set the tone for the laity in terms of their attitudes to
the violent conflict. An important contextual point is made in the
introduction: the deference of the lay population to the Church hierarchy was
still very strong at the outset of the Troubles in the late 1960s, but by the
time of the Good Friday / Belfast Agreement in 1998, the reputation of the
Church throughout Ireland (and worldwide) was in severe crisis. The book
reveals that the relationships between the hierarchy and the clergy were not
always straightforward, and Scull is sensitive to the class and geographical
divisions which existed within the Church community. One significant thread
which runs through the book is the contrasting political styles of two
Archbishops of Armagh, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich (in post from 1977 until his
death in 1990) and his successor as the leader of Ireland’s Catholics, Cardinal
Cahal Daly (1990-1996). In particular, these men symbolised a diversity of
tone, and occasionally substance, when they came to express their attitudes
towards the use of political violence during the Troubles, especially when that
violence was organised from within the broad Catholic nationalist or republican
community. Scull concedes that it remains easier to ascertain the views and
influence of the Church hierarchy, whose papers often record their
interventions from the pulpit or in the media, than it is to gauge the views of
‘ordinary’ lay Catholics. At the commencement
of street protest and counter-protest in the late 1960s, the Church’s hierarchy
‘responded tentatively’ [40], uncertain of how unfolding events would develop.
In May 1970, the four main churches in Northern Ireland (the Church of Ireland,
Presbyterian, Methodist and Catholic) issued a joint statement, in which they
‘came together to label the conflict political not sectarian’ [37]. The
Archbishop of Armagh since 1963, Cardinal William Conway, was anxious that
Catholic canon law on mixed marriage and the confessional education of children
could be perceived as exacerbating sectarian conflict. The Church, initially at least, was primarily
concerned to protect its influence, and the hierarchy was unwilling to do more
than urge restraint ‘on all sides’. The Stormont government’s introduction of
internment without trial in August 1971, whilst a reaction to the growing
destructive capacity of republican paramilitary groups, was, in practice, directed
almost exclusively against working-class Catholics, many of whom were not
active republican paramilitaries. This changed the equation facing the church
at all levels. A number of activist
priests came to prominence at this early stage, in particular Mgr Raymond
Murray, Fr Denis Faul and Fr Brian Brady; they campaigned publicly against
internment and continued over the coming decades, in a series of widely
disseminated pamphlets, to highlight communal grievances with the policies of
the British state and its security forces. This activism posed some difficult
dilemmas for the hierarchy. Scull recognises the pressure Conway and other
Bishops felt in relation to the growing presence of the IRA (particularly the
Provisionals): they needed to ‘tread carefully as condemning the perceived
protectors of the community could push Catholics further into the IRA’s
clutches’ [45]. However, whilst many in the clergy viewed the policy of
internment as ‘evil and immoral’ [45], the hierarchy had counter-vailing
pressures to take into consideration: the Church needed to protect its position
vis-à-vis the government authorities
in London and Belfast. A statement in November 1971 by the six Northern Bishops
was highly critical of ‘interrogation in depth’ but did not judge internment per
se as immoral. A fine line continued
to be trod at this stage of the Troubles, but the ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings of
mainly teenage Catholic men by the British Army’s Parachute Regiment in Derry
in January 1972 produced a visceral reaction from priests who were ‘on the
ground’, and this arguably shifted the prevailing discourse of the hierarchy,
at least to some degree and for some time. The book reproduces one of the most
recognisable photographs of the entire conflict: Fulvio Grimaldi’s shot of the
priest Fr Edward Daly escorting the fatally injured Jackie Duddy, whilst waving
a blood-soaked white handkerchief [49]. Daly’s emotional interview in the immediate
aftermath of the shootings, which left 13 unarmed Catholics dead, in which he
insisted there had been ‘no provocation whatsoever’, altered the position of
the Church in a critical fashion. As Scull puts it, Daly’s words were ‘a true
condemnation of the British government which the international community had
not previously heard from the clergy or hierarchy’ [50]. At a press conference
the following day, Daly and six other priests who had been in attendance at the
march accused the British Army of being guilty of ‘wilful murder’. Although
Cardinal Conway did not go so far, or so unequivocally, he effectively endorsed
the version of events presented by Daly and the other priests. The letters to
Conway studied by Scull (held at the Cardinal Ó Fiaich Memorial Library and
Archive) demonstrate important differences between the sentiments of Irish and
English Catholics, and also provide some early evidence of the ‘weakening of
the rigid hierarchical structures of the Irish Catholic Church’ [52]. Of course, although
there were a number of what might be termed ‘activist’ members of the clergy,
many priests tried to insulate their parishes (and themselves) from direct
engagement in the issues raised during the Troubles. It is difficult to judge
to what extent the views of Faul, Murray and their ilk were shared by others in
the clergy. As for the hierarchy, Scull makes a strong argument that once the
‘well known nationalist sympathizer’ from the republican stronghold of
Crossmaglen [87] Ó Fiaich became Archbishop, there was a significant shift in
the prevailing tone of the interventions. This became very clear during the
hunger strikes by republican inmates of Long Kesh/HMP Maze in 1980 and 1981. Ó
Fiaich visited the jail in 1978 (where the ‘blanketmen’ were locked in a
struggle with prison authorities after refusing to wear prison uniforms or
undertake work). After meeting the British Secretary of State, Roy Mason, the
Archbishop, dismayed at what he saw as a ‘dismissive attitude’, released a
statement in which he complained bitterly at the conditions being endured by
the protesting inmates; he compared them to people ‘living in sewer pipes in
the slums of Calcutta’ [92]. The Archbishop appeared to align himself with the
activist campaign of Frs Faul and Murray, and not only was his intervention
criticised by the media and by many Protestants, but the Archbishop of
Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, also expressed his consternation. As Scull
argues, ‘Ó Fiaich’s outspokenness would cause friction between himself and more
conservative members of the Church establishment throughout the remainder of
his tenure’ [92]. A crucial outcome of the Archbishop’s statement was the huge
boost for the international profile of the republican prison campaign. The Archbishop
continued to work both within the Church (briefing the Pope on the situation), as
well as with the prisoners and with government to seek a means to end the
stand-off. In the end, the Provisionals brought the protest to a climax with
the hunger strike of autumn 1980. Ó Fiaich worked to persuade the republican
movement to end the strike in December (thereby averting the death of Sean
McKenna) but proved unable to prevent the resumption of the tactic in March
1981, under the leadership of Bobby Sands. Although the Archbishop continued to
work behind the scenes and met with British Prime Minister Thatcher at the end
of June, nonetheless the Catholic Church was convulsed by the deaths of Sands
and nine other republican prisoners. Despite the intervention of a Papal envoy,
Fr John Magee, and the determined efforts of Fr Faul to persuade the hunger
strikers’ families of the ‘needless waste of life’ [102] that would ensue from
following their fast, the prisoners remained implacable. To the fury of both
the prisoners and some in the Irish clergy (such as Faul and Murray), Cardinal
Hume had publicly argued that hunger striking to death was a form of suicide,
and theologically this carried the implication that it was sinful; therefore,
in this view the deceased should not receive Catholic burials on consecrated
ground. Faul and Ó Fiaich found themselves under attack from both the
republican movement, for their perceived willingness to pressurise the families
to bring their sons off the strike, and from the British government (and some
of their co-religionists, particularly in England) for not condemning
unequivocally the hunger strike tactic. Ultimately, this was an extremely
difficult time for the Irish Catholic Church and wider community and led to
fraught relationships at all levels. Scull’s carefully researched and
well-judged chapter presents us with new light on this most controversial
episode, which set the tone for both disunity within the Church, as well as
greater antagonism between republicans and the hierarchy through the next
decade. Despite Ó Fiaich’s
efforts to maintain unity amongst Irish Catholics, Scull argues that the
appointment of Cahal Daly as Bishop of Down and Connor in 1982 brought a very
different sensibility to the Northern hierarchy. She contrasts the ‘emphatic
rejection’ of militant republicanism espoused by Daly with the much greater
sympathy displayed by the Archbishop. Scull’s own sympathies appear to be with
the ‘quiet reasoning’ of Cardinal Ó Fiaich, as opposed to the ‘passionate
condemnations’ of Cahal Daly [123], and this represents a critical fault-line
for an overall judgment regarding the role of the Church in the later peace
process during the 1990s. When Ó Fiaich died in 1990, Daly replaced him as
Archbishop, thereby ‘dramatically altering the Church’s involvement in the
conflict’ [155]. Throughout the book, Scull identifies the roles played by a
number of individual Catholics, from both the hierarchy and the clergy, during
the Troubles; she includes very useful biographical sketches of many of these
men (and some women religious) as an appendix. This approach, which includes
the campaigning role of radical priests such as Fr Joe McVeigh and Fr Des
Wilson, as well as Sr Sarah Clarke in England, illustrates the breadth of views
enshrined within the institution. In some ways, the narrative arc here is one
of increasing fragmentation and the gradual, but pronounced, fraying of the
Church’s authority as a hierarchical organisation [161]; perhaps unexpectedly,
the institution became more capacious and less monotone as the conflict wore
on. In her final
substantive chapter on the peace process, Scull is clear about the critical
role played by mediators behind the scenes in bringing the republican movement
into dialogue with other nationalists and the British government; she
underlines the sterling work of Fr Alec Reid and Fr Gerry Reynolds in
particular. By implication, at least, the hierarchy or institutional Church under
Cahal Daly are viewed, in the words of Brian Feeney, as having ‘nothing to do
with the peace process, however much they claim they might have’ [160]. As Scull
argues, ‘there was a spectrum of clerical responses to the Provisionals’ armed
struggle during the early 1990s. It is difficult to characterize this period as
having one “Church style” ’. She continues that Fr Faul ‘publicly
denounced SF [Sinn Féin] throughout the early 1990s, proving that not every priest
was in favour of dialogue’ [172]. Yet, this judgment seems not to sufficiently
appreciate the necessity of a balanced approach; dialogue was required not only
between republicans and ‘constitutional nationalists’ (in the shape of the
Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Irish government), but also with
different shades of Protestant and Unionist opinion, if the peace negotiations
were to have any hope of success. In this regard, the strong anti-IRA position
adopted by Archbishop Daly and Faul might be understood as providing some reassurance
that the Catholic Church was unwilling to offer political concessions to the
Provisional movement, simply as the necessary price for securing an end to
republican violence. To be fair, Scull
does recognise this dimension elsewhere in the chapter: ‘Daly’s long history of
condemning the Provisionals and SF helped convince other church leaders [from
Protestant denominations] of his true commitment to non-sectarian policy and
peace’ [166]. As Scull acknowledges later, both ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ were
required in the complex process of bringing republicans in from the cold [180].
This particular reviewer would add that the republicans’ exile from the
political process had been largely self-imposed, through the movement’s fatal
attraction to the ‘military instrument’. We might value the ‘carrot’ in the
form of Reid’s or Edward Daly’s willingness to engage with Gerry Adams even
while the IRA continued to kill, but equally we should not undervalue the
‘stick’, in the shape of Cardinal Daly’s ‘blunt message to the IRA’ from April
1994, that it must ‘stop killing or stop talking peace’ [180]. Until the
Church’s archives for the period are accessible, it is difficult to know the
extent to which this balanced approach was the result of what Scull refers to
as a ‘coordinated effort’, or whether the individuals concerned were ‘ploughing
their own furrows’. This book provides a
wealth of insight and will be of great use to future scholars in the field.
Margaret Scull has made a very significant contribution to the literature of
the Northern Irish conflict; it is to be hoped that the book will be widely
read and made available in paperback.
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