Published by the Jesuits in Ireland since 1912, Studies examines Irish social, political, cultural and economic issues in the light of Christian values. It also explores issues in literature, history, philosophy and religion, with an emphasis on the Irish dimension.
Studies WINTER 2023-2024
Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review
Studies
An Irish Quarterly Review WINTER 2023-2024 NO. 448
Winter 2023-2024 Peter McVerry SJ A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary Suzanne Mulligan Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections Brendan Leahy Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education Jacob Martin SJ The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn Barry Whelan Une Mission Spéciale: Leopold Kerney’s Diplomatic Activities on Behalf of the Irish Republic in France, 1919–23 Joseph Dunne Closing In on Closeness: The Key to Learning for Life? Thomas J. Morrissey SJ The First Jesuit Missions to Ireland.
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Cover Winter 2023.indd 1
An Irish Quarterly Review
Volume 112 Number 448
Studies 1912
Justice in the Here and Now 23/11/2023 15:26
Editor Dermot Roantree 37 Leeson Place, Dublin D02 E5V0, Ireland Tel: 01-676 7491 Fax: 01-676 7493 General Enquiries: studies@messenger.ie Editor: editor@studiesirishreview.ie Web: www.studiesirishreview.ie Editorial Board John Looby SJ (Chair); Stephen Collins; Kevin Hargaden; Peadar Kirby; Gerry O’Hanlon SJ; Dermot Roantree (Editor); Cecilia West; Tony White. Published by Messenger Publications
© Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 2023. All Rights Reserved
Design by Brendan McCarthy Advertising space is available in Studies. For further information and rates, please email details to: studies@messenger.ie
Unsolicited articles of approximately 3,500 words are considered for publication. These should be sent as an attachment by email to editor@studiesirishreview.ie in Word or Rich Text Format.
IE ISSN 0039-3495
Studies 1912
An Irish Quarterly Review
SUBSCRIPTIONS
To subscribe to Studies, please go online at: www.studiesirishreview.ie
Patrons Alan Bradley
John and Patricia Monaghan
Peter Byrne & Co.
John B. Morgan
Brennan Insurances
Margaret V. O’Connell
Clongowes Wood College and Community Teresa Cooney
Vincent O’Doherty James O’Driscoll Carmel and William O’Grady
Anne Dunne
James F. O’Higgins
Michael and Cecily Farrell Michael Gill
Conleth Pendred Liz and Dick Reeves
Peter and Kate McGonigal
Cover image: Shutterstock.com
Contents
Justice in the Here and Now Editorial5 423
Articles A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary
Peter McVerry SJ
431
Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections
Suzanne Mulligan
439
Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education
Brendan Leahy
452
The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn
Jacob Martin SJ
462
Une Mission Spéciale: Leopold Kerney’s Diplomatic Activities on Behalf of the Irish Republic in France, 1919–23
Barry Whelan
474
***
Review Articles Closing In on Closeness: The Key to Learning for Life? Fiachra Long, Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning: The Challenge of Proximity
Joseph Dunne
485
The First Jesuit Missions to Ireland Mary Ann Lyons & Brian Mac Cuarta SJ (eds.), The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760 Thomas J. Morrissey SJ
493
Book Reviews Kevin Cahill & Niamh Dennehy (eds.), Perspectives on the Teaching of English in Post-Primary Education
Gary Granville
504
Conor Mulvagh & Emer Purcell (eds.), Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword
Eamon Maher
508
Bryan Fanning, Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Kevin Hargaden
513
Michael Longley, The Slain Birds
Tom Mullins
516
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
Brendan MacPartlin SJ
521
Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
Peadar Kirby
524
Studies – Index 2023
531
Editor Dermot Roantree 37 Leeson Place, Dublin D02 E5V0, Ireland Tel: 01-676 7491 Fax: 01-676 7493 General Enquiries: studies@messenger.ie Editor: editor@studiesirishreview.ie Web: www.studiesirishreview.ie Editorial Board John Looby SJ (Chair); Stephen Collins; Kevin Hargaden; Peadar Kirby; Gerry O’Hanlon SJ; Dermot Roantree (Editor); Cecilia West; Tony White. Published by Messenger Publications
© Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 2023. All Rights Reserved
Design by Brendan McCarthy Advertising space is available in Studies. For further information and rates, please email details to: studies@messenger.ie
Unsolicited articles of approximately 3,500 words are considered for publication. These should be sent as an attachment by email to editor@studiesirishreview.ie in Word or Rich Text Format.
IE ISSN 0039-3495
Studies 1912
An Irish Quarterly Review
SUBSCRIPTIONS
To subscribe to Studies, please go online at: www.studiesirishreview.ie
Patrons Alan Bradley
John and Patricia Monaghan
Peter Byrne & Co.
John B. Morgan
Brennan Insurances
Margaret V. O’Connell
Clongowes Wood College and Community Teresa Cooney
Vincent O’Doherty James O’Driscoll Carmel and William O’Grady
Anne Dunne
James F. O’Higgins
Michael and Cecily Farrell Michael Gill
Conleth Pendred Liz and Dick Reeves
Peter and Kate McGonigal
Cover image: Shutterstock.com
Contents
Justice in the Here and Now Editorial5 423
Articles A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary
Peter McVerry SJ
431
Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections
Suzanne Mulligan
439
Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education
Brendan Leahy
452
The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn
Jacob Martin SJ
462
Une Mission Spéciale: Leopold Kerney’s Diplomatic Activities on Behalf of the Irish Republic in France, 1919–23
Barry Whelan
474
***
Review Articles Closing In on Closeness: The Key to Learning for Life? Fiachra Long, Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning: The Challenge of Proximity
Joseph Dunne
485
The First Jesuit Missions to Ireland Mary Ann Lyons & Brian Mac Cuarta SJ (eds.), The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760 Thomas J. Morrissey SJ
493
Book Reviews Kevin Cahill & Niamh Dennehy (eds.), Perspectives on the Teaching of English in Post-Primary Education
Gary Granville
504
Conor Mulvagh & Emer Purcell (eds.), Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword
Eamon Maher
508
Bryan Fanning, Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Kevin Hargaden
513
Michael Longley, The Slain Birds
Tom Mullins
516
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
Brendan MacPartlin SJ
521
Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
Peadar Kirby
524
Studies – Index 2023
531
Editorial When William F. Buckley Jr galvanised the new conservative movement in 1950s and 60s’ America, especially around the influential magazine National Review and the Young Americans for Freedom organization, he popularised the most unlikely of political slogans. You can still find it on lapel badges and bumper stickers: ‘Don’t let them immanentize the eschaton’. The ‘them’ here were Marxists, communists, utopian liberals and socialists – all those who acted out of a belief that final perfection, the eschaton, could be brought about immanently, that is in human history rather than exclusively in the hereafter. Those, in other words, who sought to create heaven here on earth. Turning such an esoteric and cryptic phrase into a conservative call to arms showed the smarter-than-thou attitude that marked the movement in those years – understandable, perhaps, as conservatives were at pains then to show that they were drawing on just as intellectual a tradition of enquiry as the liberals who disparaged them. Buckley derived his catchphrase from Eric Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics, a dense but influential critique of modernity. Voegelin’s argument went as follows. The Christianisation of the Roman Empire, owing especially to the influence of St Augustine, entailed articulating society into two distinct orders, the spiritual and the temporal, and rejecting all world views that looked for finality or fulfilment, the eschaton, within history. That was a perfection only to be found in the supernatural realm. Christianity thus was responsible for the ‘de-divinization of the temporal sphere of power’, and to that extent the creation of the secular. Yet Voegelin detected recurrent instances, especially in modernity, of ‘redivinisation’, of seeking once again the final perfection of human existence within history itself – Enlightenment humanism, Hegel’s dialectic, Comte’s positivism, Marx’s historical materialism, and even National Socialist millennialism. These in his view were reversions to a gnostic vision of certainty, clarity, and redemption. They were what you get when humankind comes to see itself as God. What it leads to is the loss of individual freedom and, eventually, totalitarianism. Voegelin certainly belongs to the cohort of illustrious influences on American conservatism, but his thought was more weighty and nuanced than
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his politicised devotees would leave you thinking. The sense which Buckley, for example, gave to the slogan he adapted from Voegelin tended to be trite. He used it mostly to express libertarian individualism, anti-communism, and a call for small government, free-market economics, and the end of social relief and reform programmes like those introduced in Roosevelt’s New Deal. In his eyes these offended against the values of individual liberty, tradition, gradual reform, and the preservation of established institutions – conservative values which he had imbibed from such sources as Russell Kirk’s exposition of Edmund Burke’s writings in The Conservative Mind (1953). What seems clear is that this new conservative movement prepared the way for an alignment of faith and ideology in influential sectors of US Catholicism. A strikingly large number of the leading editors, writers and activists in the movement were either ‘born Catholics’ or converts, and in their view their conservatism followed naturally and necessarily from their Catholicism. Even the non-Catholics among them thought along the same lines. They shared what one of them, the Jewish sociologist Will Herberg, called ‘high reverence for the Papacy and the Church as a great conservative force and a mighty bulwark against the totalitarian subversion of Western freedom and culture’.1 No surprise then that many US Catholics at the time came to see this brand of Cold War conservatism as applied Catholicism plain and simple. The signs of this alignment are still apparent in the US Church – arguably more apparent than ever. Many of the most prominent critics of Pope Francis are senior ecclesiastics, academics, and media leaders in the United States, and they receive at least quiet support from a considerable number of other bishops and lay Catholics. When he was asked recently about this overt criticism of his leadership in the US, the Pope noted the presence of ‘a very strong reactionary attitude’ there, and averred that it caused them to lose ‘the true tradition’ and to replace faith with ideology.2 Is this fair? Well, the application of the term ‘ideology’ is notoriously culture-variant and contextsensitive, but there are good grounds for thinking the Pope’s judgement holds more than a little truth. How his conservative critics – not just in the US, of course – understand such terms as tradition, continuity, freedom, and reform often betrays a Burkean perspective rather than a meaningful engagement with the longer and more complex Catholic theological tradition. And those further to the right, especially the traditionalists who have been most vocal in their opposition to Francis, tend to hold to notions of authority, sovereignty, 424
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governance, social hierarchy, and the role of religion in society that owe much to the Catholic Counter-Enlightenment tradition of Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, Juan Donoso Cortés, and their successors. There is a great deal of historically embedded ideology – mostly unacknowledged, and maybe unrecognised – in all of this. The trouble, of course, is not that there are Burkean conservatives in the Church, nor indeed that there are theological conservatives in the Church. The trouble is that there are many people – left as well as right – who bring ideological presuppositions to bear on their understanding of Catholic faith and insist that their view of things is Catholicism plain and simple. It may be impossible for any Catholic to extirpate completely the traces of ideological thinking from their understanding, but the effort must be made. Ideology, as Pope Francis has insisted repeatedly, only functions as a set of ideas. It cannot be ‘incarnated’, as doctrine must be. It cannot be rooted in the life of a people, in their experience, their reflection, and their attentiveness to the concrete reality of Christian life – all brought into dialogue with the revelation of the Word in scripture and the theological culture of the Church. For the Pope’s conservative critics, of course, it is he who is the ideologue, and nowhere do they see it more than in his commitment to social justice. By giving unprecedented attention to climate change, migration, the death penalty, economic inequality, and other aspects of social justice he has shown himself, they think, to be a leftist, a Peronist, a Marxist, a Leninist – certainly a secularist whose only concern is with the bettering of life on earth. Many conservative Catholic media outlets have accused him of horizontal worldliness, of preaching the Kingdom of God on earth – precisely of seeking to immanentize the eschaton. One of these outlets savaged his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, on fraternity and social friendship, under the headline ‘Glory to man in the highest’.3 And for Archbishop Viganò, that encyclical was merely an ‘ideological manifesto’ that envisions an earthly paradise. So where do they think the Pope goes wrong? Bishop Athanasius Schneider, one of Francis’s severest and most visible critics, thinks that progressive Catholics like the Pope ignore the reality that ‘social justice is not the first task of the Church’. ‘There were a lot of social problems, injustices, in the time of Jesus and the apostles,’ Bishop Schneider said, ‘but it was not the first concern of the mission of the Church. The first concern was to guide the souls to heaven.’ But it is precisely separating things out in this way that Francis opposes, and the magisterium of recent decades is with him on that. Vatican II affirms
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that ‘a sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man’,4 and it asserts unequivocally that that dignity is predicated on the scriptural doctrine that every person ‘was created to the image of God’.5 And the Church since the Council has become increasingly sensitive to the consequences of this intimacy between God and God’s creation. There is no love of God without love of neighbour. The human person – the real, concrete person – is at the centre of the Gospel, at the centre of faith. ‘For the Church,’ Pope St John Paul II wrote in his first encyclical, ‘all roads lead to man’.6 The human, he adds, in their concrete being, ‘is the primary and fundamental way for the Church, the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption’. And fifteen years later he returned to the theme in Evangelium Vitae: ‘The Gospel of God’s love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel.’7 It was this same post-conciliar insight that led the Jesuits at General Congregation 32 (1974–5), at the instigation of their 25th Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, to commit to ‘a faith that does justice’. Justice specifies faith; it doesn’t follow after it. ‘The mission of the Society of Jesus today,’ one of the Congregation’s decrees read, ‘is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement. For reconciliation with God demands the reconciliation of people with one another’. Faith, then, is a lived reality; to believe and to act on the belief are the one thing. As Johann Baptist Metz put it, ‘The Christian idea of God is in itself a practical idea. God simply cannot be thought without this idea irritating and disrupting the immediate interests of the one who is trying to think it’. In this sense, then, Christian praxis does not follow Christian theory or knowledge; rather it belongs ‘to the fundamental way theology itself operates’.8 Or, as Pope Francis likes to say, ‘reality is superior to ideas’. It is not ideology that has brought the Church to this realisation. It comes from reading reflectively into scripture and into the tradition of its reception in the Church. Contrary to what Bishop Schneider implies, both Old and New Testament are replete with affirmations that there can be no love of God without love of neighbour. You cannot tilt your head upwards and set your eyes on heaven – perhaps like the pharisee in Christ’s parable – while below you, out of sight, a neighbour lies wounded and in pain. Isaiah cries out in his vision: 426
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What do I care about your unceasing sacrifices? says the Lord ... When you stretch out your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you. Even if you pray endlessly, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with blood ... Cease to do evil and learn to do good. Pursue justice and rescue the oppressed; listen to the plea of the orphan and defend the widow. God’s word in the prophets, as well as the gospel message of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, insists that other than by pursuing justice there is no road to God. Nor even knowledge of God. ‘Did not your father have enough to eat and drink?’, the Lord asks in the Book of Jeremiah; ‘But because he did what was right and just, all went well with him. Because he dispensed justice to the poor and needy things continued to go well for him. Is this not what it means to know me?’ It is ideology, not religious insight or theology, that judges that seeking justice in this world is not central to a life of Christian faith. This idea has roots, perhaps, in the Aristotelean prioritising of theoria over praxis, which contributed to the privileging of the vita contemplativa over the vita activa in Christianity for so long, and arguably it owes much to classical liberalism and to post-Enlightenment traditionalism, but it does not have support in scripture or in the teachings of the Church in our time. And by limiting Christian hope to the individualistic expectation of a righting of wrongs in the next life, it eviscerates a significant portion of the Gospel message. In God Matters, Herbert McCabe, the brilliant Dominican Thomist and unrepentant leftist, offered a different take on the effect of what Voegelin called Christianity’s ‘de-divinization of the temporal sphere of power’ in the Roman Empire. The Christian God, he wrote, is the liberator fundamentally because he is not a god, because there are no gods, or at least no gods to be worshiped. This leaves history in human hands under the judgement of God. Human misery can no longer be attributed to the gods and accepted with resignation or evaded with sacrifices. The long slow process can begin of identifying the human roots of oppression and exploitation, just as the way now lies open for the scientific understanding and control of the forces of nature.9 It is not a question of seeking the eschaton in the here and now. Rather, it is about embracing an eschatologically oriented pursuit of this-worldly justice.
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*** Pursuing justice in this world as a response to the mandate of Christ is the theme of this issue’s opening essay, by Peter McVerry SJ. In ‘A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary’, he expounds eloquently, perhaps even provocatively, on the theme of justice in the Gospels. The prayer in the Our Father, he notes, is for the Kingdom of God to come ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’. What are we to make of this prayer for God’s Kingdom on earth? For Fr McVerry, it is a prayer for the realisation of God’s vision for humanity, for the coming of a ‘kingdom of non-violence, equality, caring and sharing, reaching out to the unwanted’, a kingdom where power is the power to serve, not to oppress. Jesus challenged the social and political order. His siding with the poor and his insistence of the dignity of every person was ‘a profoundly political act’; but, Fr McVerry clarifies, the kingdom he wishes to establish is ‘in this world, but not of this world’. He concludes with a warning: ‘Unless the Churches rediscover the centrality of social justice to their mission, they will continue to become more and more irrelevant and fade away’. In ‘Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections’, Suzanne Mulligan casts a theological light on the growing phenomenon of social exclusion through homelessness. She frames the problem in terms of some of the principles which underpin Catholic social teaching, namely human dignity, integral human development, and accompaniment. For one to have dignity they must have, as the Fathers of Vatican II wrote, ‘all that is necessary for living a genuinely human life’, but homelessness deprives people of these things and leaves them vulnerable and exposed. They are hardly capable of well-rounded integral development – spiritual, cultural, relational, and emotional – and they lose the opportunity to exercise ‘contributive justice’, that is to make a positive social contribution that brings them into a community and allows them to flourish there. Mulligan warns about the danger of focusing solely on the provision of shelter to the homeless, ‘to the neglect of the spiritual healing that is also needed’. In ‘Looking Out onto the World: Global Compact on Education’, Bishop Brendan Leahy describes an initiative of Pope Francis to promote an idea that is present in the vision of the Second Vatican Council, namely that schools and colleges are not merely institutions but communities. This theme from the Council was taken up in later papal documents, especially with Pope Paul 428
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VI highlighting that education ‘of the whole person and of every person’ is needed if true progress and development are to be promoted. Bishop Leahy notes the calls from many quarters to recognise a crisis in education, which increasingly neglects the humanities and tends to produce, in the words of Martha Nussbaum, ‘generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements’. In launching the Global Compact, Pope Francis identifies commitments or principles that can be adopted, including placing the human person at the centre of education, listening to the voices of children, and encouraging girls and young women to participate fully in educational programmes. *** In ‘The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn’, Jacob Martin SJ examines two films by Bob Quinn in the 1980s and 90s, Budawanny and The Bishop’s Story, with regard to their treatment of the problems of clerical authority and the power imbalance in the priest/lay relationship. He pays particular attention to the matter of celibacy and the meaning of the physical gestures of the priest protagonists of the movies, especially as they progress towards sexual intimacy. In a follow-up to his essay on Irish diplomat Leopold Kerney in the Spring 2022 issue of Studies, Barry Whelan tells the fascinating story of Kerney’s determined efforts to forge trade connections with France in the early years of the Free State, mostly as a means of reducing the ability of the British to set the Irish trade agenda. Given Ireland’s dependency on Britain as a trading partner, the country was forced to remain ‘a pastoral country’, supplying Britain with ‘vast supplies of cattle, sheep and dairy produce’. Ireland could not grow into a modern economy while the relationship stayed that way. In the first of two review articles in this issue, Joseph Dunne takes a lengthy look at Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning: The Challenge of Proximity by Fiachra Long. Long’s book is about the practice of education and, as Dunne notes, is primarily targeted at the Cartesian conception of the disembodied ego. Through a set of discussions of phenomenologists and other modern thinkers, Long reflects on the role and meaning of proximity in education – presence, closeness, wide-awakeness, attentiveness. Dunne commends the book as a substantial contribution to the philosophy of
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education, and he proposes a number of avenues that could be explored further. In the second review article Jesuit historian Thomas Morrissey SJ examines The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760, a set of essays on Irish Jesuits from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, edited by Mary Ann Lyons and Brian Mac Cuarta SJ. The essays in the collection are not intended to present a comprehensive history of early Jesuit activity in Ireland. Rather, each of them focuses on a specific aspect of the missions. One essay examines the correspondence of three Jesuits involved in the second mission, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when the Catholic Church still held out hope for her conversion and the Irish people were confused about their religious allegiance. Other essays consider the role of women in Jesuit ministry in the seventeenth century, popular Jesuit preachers in that same era, and the Jesuits and music in early modern Ireland.
Notes 1 Quoted in Patrick Allitt, ‘American Catholics and the New Conservatism of the 1950s’, in U.S. Catholic Historian, 7, 1 (Winter 1988), p. 21. 2 ‘The Water Has Been Agitated’, Francis in conversation with Jesuits in Portugal in La Civiltà Cattolica, 28 August 2023 <https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/the-water-has-been-agitated/> 3 Jules Gomes, ‘Fratelli Tutti: Glory to Man in the Highest’, Church Militant, 12 October 2020 <https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/fratelli-tutti-verbosity-in-excelcis> 4 Dignitatis Humanae (Vatican: The Holy See, 1965), n. 1. 5 Gaudium et Spes (Vatican: The Holy See, 1965), n. 12. 6 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (Vatican: The Holy See, 1979), n. 14. 7 John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (Vatican: The Holy See, 1995), n. 2. 8 Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. J. Matthew Ashley (New York: Herder & Herder, 2007), p. 62. 9 Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London, New York: Continuum, 2012; originally 1987), p. 43.
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A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary Peter McVerry SJ Jesus had a mission statement, long before mission statements became popular. We pray, in the Our Father, that Jesus’ mission may be accomplished: ‘Thy Kingdom come ... on earth, as it is in Heaven’. Jesus talked about a kingdom here on earth, over which God could happily preside. Jesus came to live among the people whom God had called out of slavery in Egypt to be God’s own people. And what did Jesus find? Many of God’s people were living in poverty, struggling to survive from day to day, praying in their need, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’, while a small number were living in ostentatious wealth, oblivious to the poverty around them. Others were marginalised by society, such as the infirm, the blind, the lame and the deaf, while others were completely rejected, such as tax collectors and prostitutes. And this was done in the name of religion! The poor were considered no friends of God, as they did not keep the Law in all its details (because they did not have the money or education to study the details of the Law), the infirm were considered to be punished by God for some sins they must have committed, and the tax collectors and prostitutes were considered to be rejected by God because of their life style. Challenging the social and political order Jesus spent most of his public life amongst the poor; he healed the sick, and he scandalised the religious leaders by eating with tax collectors and prostitutes. But it was not just Jesus’ choice of company that annoyed and alienated the religious authorities. The challenge that he posed by associating with the poor, the infirm and sinners lay in the simple but deeply profound act of looking at a human being whom society considered of little value and recognising that person’s extraordinary dignity as a child of God. Why did this apparently simple act of compassion bring out the anger and hostility of the religious authorities? Why did they find it so threatening? Because Jesus’ recognition of the dignity of each person had radical economic, social and political consequences for the society in which he was living, which
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threatened the existing order of things and those who benefitted from it – just as it has today. The religious authorities believed that excluding the poor, the sinner and the tax collector was the right and moral thing to do. It was what God was asking of them. Those who, through their failure to obey the Law, had made themselves enemies of God, had to be rejected and set apart from the People of God. Conventional religious belief held that holiness consisted in separation from all that is unholy, impure. If the People of God failed to exclude these sinners, the People of God would become, like them, unholy and impure. The wrath of God would be visited on the whole People of God, and the unique relationship that the Covenant created between the Chosen People and God would be at risk. Jesus was revealing a God whose passion was not the observance of laws, but a God whose passion was compassion. The Gospels describe a clash between two very different understandings of God. Jesus’ understanding of God is clear: the suffering, exclusion and rejection of the children of God is God’s primary concern. Our prayer, our worship, our fasting are of little value if we do not stand by those of God’s children who suffer on the margins of our societies. Jesus was considered to be preaching a false God and leading the people astray by his failure to insist on the observance of the Law, indeed even breaking the Law on some occasions (e.g. Mark 3:1–6) and criticising the Pharisees who insisted on a rigid adherence to the Law. He was dangerous. You didn’t have to be a prophet to foresee that Jesus’ fellowship with those whom his society wished to exclude would lead to his death. The same conflict exists within the Catholic Church today. Pope Francis, in reaching out to migrants, prisoners, homeless people, is revealing a God whose passion is compassion and is being heavily criticised by many, including some bishops and cardinals, who believe that his failure to judge and condemn those who break the laws of the Church is a betrayal of God’s will for the Church. He, too, is accused of leading the faithful astray. We are sometimes told that religion and politics should be kept apart. But Jesus’ association with the poor and rejected, and his insistence on the dignity of every person as a child of God, was not just a religious act, it was also a profoundly political act. And Jesus knew it. And the religious leaders knew it. It led to a confrontation between them. And Jesus lost. The crucifixion was another political act, the inevitable consequence of that political act of eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus was put to death by good people, acting 432
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for good reasons, because they realised that what he was saying and doing was revolutionary. Everywhere Jesus went, he was followed by large crowds. Five thousand people, not counting women and children, listened to him all day long, even forgetting that they were hungry (Luke 9:10–17). Every town he went into, the whole town, we are told, turned out to hear him (Mark 2:2). The poor man who was paralysed and wanted Jesus to cure him couldn’t get near Jesus because of the crowds (Luke 5:17–26). ‘Large crowds followed him, coming from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judaea and Transjordan’ (Matthew 4:25), the gospel writers tell us. Who were these people that followed Jesus to hear what he had to say? There is no record of Jesus ever going into the cities to preach, which is where most of the wealthy lived. Jesus preached in the towns, villages and countryside of Galilee, which is where the poor, ordinary people lived, people who struggled to feed their families and to pay their taxes – the nobodies of his society. After all he stated very clearly at the beginning of his ministry that he had come ‘to bring the Good News to the poor’. The rich and the powerful – the somebodies of his society – among whom were to be found the Pharisees, the scribes, the lawyers and the priests – also came to listen to what Jesus had to say. But their response was to ‘go away and plot how to get rid of him’ (Matthew 12:14). Clearly, what Jesus was saying was not irrelevant to the poor, sick, and outcast people who came to listen to him in their thousands; they were enthused by what he was saying and could listen to him all day. Clearly, also, what Jesus was saying was not irrelevant to the rich and powerful, because they were infuriated by what he was saying and quickly had quite enough of him. The kingdom of Herod and the Kingdom of God Jesus preached the Kingdom of God. If you ask most Christians, what do we mean by the Kingdom of God, they would probably say that the Kingdom of God is another term for heaven, a place to which we are journeying while here on earth. Perhaps that is because the term ‘kingdom’ is alien to most of us; we don’t know what it is like to live in a kingdom. But the people to whom Jesus was talking lived in a kingdom, the kingdom of Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas. Kingdoms were real, earthly places for them. And these kingdoms were brutal places. Herod the Great ruled with utter ruthlessness. He was the sort of person who had no problem slaughtering all the male children in his kingdom under the age of two, one of whom, he
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had been told, would become king of Israel and was therefore a threat to his rule. Child protection policies were not a priority in Herod’s kingdom! When Jesus was three or four years old, the Romans put down a rebellion against Herod and his sons in Sepphoris, only about five miles from Nazareth, where Jesus was living, and crucified two thousand of the Jewish rebels. Life had little value in Herod’s kingdom. Jesus came to a people who were cruelly oppressed by its ruler. And the kingdom of Herod was a place of obscene inequality, where a tiny minority lived lives of ostentatious wealth, while the majority of people lived at a subsistence level. So when Jesus talked about the coming of the Kingdom of God, people would have understood that he was talking about a kingdom, here and now, which was going to be different to the kingdom in which they were living, a kingdom over which God, not Herod, would rule. During his ministry, Jesus talked incessantly about the Kingdom of God, often speaking in parables. He told stories about this new Kingdom of God that was coming. He talked about the rich man ‘who feasted sumptuously every day and was dressed in the finest linen’ (Luke 16:19–31) and who couldn’t even be bothered to gather up the crumbs that fell from his table to give them to the poor man at his gate. The people Jesus was talking to knew exactly what, and whom, he was talking about. If they went to the cities to look for work, or to Jerusalem for one of the festivals, they saw those people sitting at the gates of the mansions, hoping for some alms. And when Jesus went on to say that, Lazarus, the poor man, would be welcomed into the Kingdom of God, you can imagine them looking at one another and nodding their heads in approval. Their own religious leaders were telling them that there would be no place for someone like Lazarus in God’s kingdom, and here was Jesus telling them about a God, a God of compassion, who would open the gates of the Kingdom of God to them. When Jesus declared that in the Kingdom of God that was coming: ‘The first shall be last and the last shall be first’, they thought of the rich and respectable who considered themselves better than the poor and the infirm, and they were overjoyed. No wonder they could listen to him all day. This was indeed good news to the poor. And when Jesus talked about the rich landowner, who had a massive harvest and said to himself, ‘What I am to do? I know, I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones’(Luke 12:13–21) without any consideration for those around him who were hungry, the people Jesus was talking to knew exactly where these guys lived. And when Jesus said that God is going to 434
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require his soul tonight, that, in the Kingdom of God he would not be able to enjoy his accumulated wealth while surrounded by people who were hungry, you can imagine them smiling with approval. This was indeed a God they would want to believe in. And when Jesus talked about the labourers (Matthew 20:1–16), who waited in the market square all day, hoping to get a few hours work, they knew exactly what Jesus was talking about: some of them, no doubt, had ‘been there, done that’. And when Jesus said that even those who were given work at the eleventh hour also received the same wage, one denarius – enough to feed their family for the day – they were astounded; they never heard of a rich vineyard owner who actually cared whether his workers had enough food to feed their families or not! And when Jesus tells them that God is like this rich vineyard owner, they are filled with wonder; the Kingdom that is coming will be ruled by a God, who cares about them and will ensure that their families will be fed. They want to hear more about this Kingdom. These were not made-up stories; Jesus was telling it as it was. And he was telling them that, in the Kingdom of God that was coming, things were going to be very different. The good news of the Kingdom But Jesus didn’t just tell people about the God of compassion. When Jesus healed the blind and the lame and the lepers, who were told by their own religious leaders that they were cursed, in the very act of being healed they experienced the God of compassion that Jesus talked about. No wonder those who were cured went off and told everyone what Jesus had done, even when Jesus had instructed them to tell no one (Mark 1:44–45). How could you not go and tell everyone about this God of compassion and love? And when Jesus ate with sinners (Matthew 9:9–13), who were told by their own religious leaders that they were forsaken, they experienced, in their table fellowship with Jesus, the unconditional forgiveness of the God of compassion. And when Jesus reached out, in friendship, to the unwanted and marginalised, who were told by their own religious leaders that God had rejected them, they experienced God’s acceptance of them. This was not just Good News; this was extraordinary news, beyond all their expectations. This is what they had not even dared to hope for, and now it was becoming a reality for them. Jesus is telling those who came to listen about a kingdom where those on the margins of society will be welcomed, respected, and valued instead of
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being rejected and unwanted; where people will reach out to the poor, and share what they have, so that their needs will be met, instead of being ignored and despised by those who had the resources to meet their needs. In this new Kingdom, people will live by totally different values to the values of the society around them. The God who liberated the people from their suffering and oppression in Pharaoh’s kingdom has now come to liberate the people from the suffering and oppression imposed on them by their own religious and political leaders. Jesus’ simple, God-like act of reaching out and caring for the poor and the unwanted reflects God’s vision for humanity. Since every human being is a child of God, God’s family is the whole human race. Jesus dreamt that we, the human race, could all live together as the family of God. In a family of four children, the parents don’t give three of the children a steak for their dinner and give the fourth child bread and jam. No, whatever food is available is shared between all. Yet in God’s family, one billion people go to bed hungry every night. Every one of those billion people is God’s beloved child. No parent wants to see their child go hungry, and God does not want to see God’s children go hungry. And in a family of four children, the parents don’t give three of the children a nice warm bed for the night and tell the fourth child to sleep outside in the back garden. Yet in God’s family, in almost every city in the world, people are sleeping on the street. Every one of these people living on the streets is God’s beloved child. No parent wants to see their child living on the street, and God does not want to see God’s children living on the street. Our commitment to the risen Jesus compels us to struggle to make the Kingdom of God, as described by Jesus, a reality in our world today. To understand the Gospels, perhaps you have to be angry. Jesus was angry at the poverty and marginalisation of ordinary people. Jesus was angry at the suffering of the people he met as he walked the roads of Galilee, a suffering which the religious leaders did nothing to relieve. Jesus was angry when he cast the sellers out of the Temple courtyard (Matthew 21:12–13). Jesus was angry when he called the Pharisees, ‘hyprocrites, who lay heavy burdens on peoples’ shoulders’ (Matthew 23:4) – burdens of guilt imposed by the God of the Law – but will not lift a finger to help them carry them. Jesus was angry when he called the Pharisees ‘imposters, who take advantage of widows and rob them of their homes’ (Matthew 23:15). Jesus was angry when he called the Teachers of the Law ‘whitewashed tombs, which look fine on the outside, but are full of dead men’s bones and rotten stuff on the 436
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inside’ (Matthew 23:27). Love and anger are two sides of the same coin: you cannot love someone who is suffering unnecessarily without being angry at their suffering. We Christians should be the angriest of people. This world, with its poverty, wars, hunger, refugees, homelessness, is not the way God wants it to be. We should be angry enough, like Jesus, to want to change it. A kingdom in the world but not of it Jesus was handed over to Pilate by the religious leaders who declared, ‘He is no friend of Caesars.’ Jesus replied, ‘Mine is not a kingdom of this world’ (John 18:33–36). This saying of Jesus is often understood to mean that Jesus’ kingdom is to be found in the next world, not in this. Hence what is happening in this world is of little importance. But the Kingdom that Jesus was inaugurating was not just a spiritual or other-worldly kingdom. Like a monastery of enclosed monks, it was in this world but not of this world. The values by which those in the Kingdom of God were to live were utterly different from the values by which those in other kingdoms lived. They were kingdoms where greed, inequality, and abuse of power were the norm, kingdoms which came into existence through violence and were maintained by violence. The Kingdom of God was, by contrast, a kingdom of nonviolence, equality, caring and sharing, reaching out to the unwanted, where power was the power to serve, not to oppress. The early Christians understood that their community was to live by the message of Jesus and so be a witness to the world, revealing the way God wished people to live. They understood that their community was to be one in which everyone’s needs would be met through their caring and sharing, and where no-one would be unwanted, marginalised or treated as secondclass citizens. They were persecuted, arrested, imprisoned and sometimes executed because the religious and political leaders understood that their way of life posed a threat to the existing order. They were seen as disloyal, a potential threat. Those Christians made it clear that they were obeying Jesus, not Herod or anyone else. Living the message of Jesus turned many whose security and comfort zones were challenged against them, just as it did for Jesus. Our demands for the re-ordering of society will turn many who benefit from the existing order against us. The Churches today in Ireland, as in other parts of the world, are in crisis. In Jesus’ time, thousands came to listen to his message; today, thousands are leaving the Churches, saying that their message is irrelevant. Religion
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is one big yawn for many people as long as Church involvement concerns itself primarily with Church involvement. Unless the Churches re-discover the centrality of social justice to their mission, they will continue to become more and more irrelevant and fade away. Peter McVerry SJ is a social activist known for his work with the homeless and the marginalized in Ireland. He is founder of the Peter McVerry Trust, a charity committed to tackling the problems caused by homelessness and social disadvantage.
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Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections Suzanne Mulligan Between January and May 2022, I was lucky enough to find myself on research leave at Boston College in the United States. I had a wonderful four months there, enjoying the hospitality and wisdom of my colleagues in the Theology Department. During my time in America, I was invited to spend a week at another very well-known Catholic university. It too proved to be a very fruitful visit; the generosity of the staff and the welcome I received was amazing. But in truth, I felt a little uncomfortable with the opulence that I saw around me. I met with one professor who works closely with the homeless community in the locality. She divided her time between her academic responsibilities at the university and running a homeless shelter. On the Wednesday evening she took me to the shelter and located in the upper room of the building was a small, simple chapel. That evening, along with about twenty homeless folks, we celebrated the Eucharist. We sat on fold-down chairs; there were no stained-glass windows or magnificently ornate ceilings; the priest had to get changed in the downstairs laundry; we had no choir. But that was the first time all week that I felt at peace. The contrasting environments in which I found myself were not lost on me; the wealth and grandeur of this prestigious Catholic university almost towered over the homeless shelter in which we prayed. And so it is in Ireland and indeed the world over. Vast amounts of wealth, often controlled by the relatively few, existing alongside ever-growing inequality and hardship. To put this in context, the United Nations Refugee Agency tells us that ‘at least 82.4 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes. Among them are nearly 26.4 million refugees, around half of whom are under the age of 18.’1 Moreover the UN estimates that almost 150 million people in the world are without a home today. But a further 1.6 billion people (more than twenty per cent of the world’s population) are lacking adequate housing. In Ireland approximately 12,441 people are currently homeless (figures are for May 2023). Of these 3,699 are children and 5,205 are under the age of twenty-four. This represents a twenty-one per cent increase compared to May
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2022.2 Incidentally, these figures do not include people who are in hospital, people who are ‘couch surfing’, or people living in Direct Provision centres or domestic violence shelters. I have been asked to discuss some of the theological aspects of this crisis and to consider the ethical and religious foundations that animate the work of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. I do not speak as an expert in economics or constitutional law. Nor do I speak as a politician or as a town planner. But I hope that what I say may help identify key ideas that will guide your work in this field. My starting point is the Catholic moral tradition and more particularly still Catholic social teaching. The Church’s social doctrine is as broad as it is rich, so I will focus on the following three themes or ideas that are at the heart of it. They are: human dignity, integral human development, and the accompaniment of homeless persons as an essential part of Church ministry. Human dignity: some general remarks What do we mean by ‘human dignity’? Within the Christian tradition, the notion of human dignity is rooted in the belief that all human beings are made in God’s image, therefore possessing an innate dignity that is not dependent on race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religious affiliation, or economic status. Christian anthropology, with its deeply Trinitarian underpinnings, reminds us that human beings are profoundly relational; we are called to relationship, ultimately with God but also with each other, and we flourish when in right relationship. But we are unique, and we should enjoy enough space within our relational lives to allow what is distinctive within us to blossom. John Hume once said that difference is of the essence of humanity. He was referring to the fact that no two people are the same, and so difference and uniqueness are integral to our humanity. Understood in this way, we can say that difference is to be celebrated and not feared. And we know too that our affective relations are crucial to human well-being. The experiences of love, loss, grief, and vulnerability all belong to the human condition. These experiences give content to the idea of human dignity just as human rights discourse has for some time now. A significant moment in both the life of the Church and the Social Doctrine itself occurred during the pontificate of John XXIII and later at the Second Vatican Council, where we saw the full embrace of human rights 440
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in magisterial teaching. Pacem in Terris, Gaudium et Spes, and Dignitatis Humanae were arguably three of the most significant documents of that era. If we add Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio to the list (dealing with the conditions that allow for ‘integral human development’), we find a corpus of teaching that outlines the Christian understanding of human dignity, corresponding rights, and the socio-economic context in which humans might flourish. At Vatican II, the Council Fathers famously described the common good as ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily’.3 But, importantly, they go on to say: There is a growing awareness of the sublime dignity of the human person, who stands above all things and whose rights and duties are universal and inviolable. [S]he ought, therefore, to have ready access to all that is necessary for living a genuinely human life: for example, food, clothing, housing, the right to freely choose [her] state of life and set up a family, the right to education, work, … to proper knowledge … and rightful freedom even in matters of religion.4 This is a very positive statement. The Council Fathers are not describing the minimal conditions for human survival. They are concerned instead with human flourishing and authentic living. They are concerned with imagining the circumstances in which people can live their best lives and realise excellence. And this tells us that social, economic, and political structures ought to facilitate human flourishing, to protect human dignity, and are at the service of the common good. Housing is crucial in this vision, for without it other rights and opportunities cannot be realised. Significantly the Council Fathers also named the ways that human dignity is violated: included here are sub-human living conditions, arbitrary detention, deportation, slavery, prostitution, poor working conditions, the use of the human person as a tool for making profit and nothing else. Later Pope John Paul II argued in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis that commitment to the poor and the eradication of structural sins are key to protecting human dignity. And in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict names inequality as a threat to human dignity. More recently still, Pope Francis identifies the characteristics of what he calls a ‘politics of indignity’ in Fratelli Tutti, which includes the commodification of the human person, a throw-away culture that
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now extends to human beings, a culture of consumerism and consumption that places the value of people solely on their economic contribution to society. As an alternative to this way of thinking, Pope Francis asks us to develop a culture of encounter and foster proximity to the sufferer. What we find, therefore, in the social teaching of the Church is a robust defense of human dignity that includes analysis of the ways in which this dignity is violated or threatened in our world. And because of its precarious nature, Anna Rowlands believes that dignity is entrusted. She explains that we are called to help others realize their dignity, including holding it in trust at times for those less able to defend their own dignity. We do this, she explains, through the practice of care. One might think of the way we care for those suffering from dementia, for example, or the care that accompanies our burial rituals and care for the dead.5 Moreover, Rowlands argues that human dignity can be understood as an active social principle. It is not some sort of static idea; rather, it pushes us out into the world to defend and indeed articulate its meaning. Rowlands says: ‘For dignity to be an active social principle requires individuals, groups and institutions who are willing to embody and espouse dignity as a structural practice and value. It needs to become both the ritual habit of a particular community and part of its conscious memory.’6 A final point to note in this section is the way in which human dignity and vulnerability are connected. James Keenan SJ has written extensively on this subject, and he explains that vulnerability is part of our nature. ‘It is the condition for the possibility of our responding, of our being ethical. It precedes our decision, even what we once called the fundamental option’, he writes.7 On the other hand, if vulnerability is seen as a form of weakness, and something to be avoided, then one thinks of invulnerability as one’s goal. But as Keenan says, ‘When we recognize that the word vulnerable does not mean being or having being wounded, but rather means being able to be wounded, then it means being exposed to the other, in this sense vulnerability is the human condition that allows me to encounter, receive, or respond to the other, it allows us to be aware of others and their dignity, to take risks in meeting and recognizing others.’8 It is in this space of mutual recognition, and the risk that comes with recognition and relationship, where we begin to see how vulnerability is integral to our being human.9 It could be argued too that by acknowledging 442
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our common vulnerability we achieve greater recognition amidst so much difference in society. This could potentially lead to a ‘softening’ of social attitudes towards the more marginalized, since we see the common vulnerability that we all share. Could an ‘ethic of vulnerability’, therefore, improve the moral fabric of our time? Many scholars believe it could. Bryan Massingale, for example, has explored the connection between solidarity and vulnerability. For Massingale, encounter with and experience of the vulnerable other is crucial to our developing positive ways forward; it is a way to challenge the culture of indifference that he says is the result of racism and consumerism. Might we say the same about the homeless crisis and the stereotypes and prejudice that are often directed towards the unhoused? If we are to dismantle preconceived ideas about homelessness then surely solidarity, arising from a deeper awareness of our shared vulnerability and precarity, could act as a catalyst for change. Altering social attitudes takes time of course and the immediate business of attending to suffering in our communities remains an urgent task. And so, human dignity as ‘entrusted’ and human dignity as ‘social principle’ demands that we do more to tackle the injustice of homelessness. Strengthened by our awareness of our shared vulnerability and precarity, we are accompanied by our unhoused sisters and brothers as we do God’s work in this world. Integral human development Another concept that became foundational to Catholic social teaching from the 1960s on is what we call integral human development. The concept provides a framework that allows us to critique the conditions, attitudes, and values that either support human dignity or that threaten it. In Populorum Progressio, for example, Pope Paul VI stated that people are ‘continually striving to exercise greater personal responsibility … And yet, at the same time, a large number of them live amid conditions which frustrate these legitimate desires.’10 He continues: ‘the development we speak of here cannot be limited to economic growth alone. To be authentic, it must be wellrounded; it must foster the development of each [person] and of the whole [person].’11 If we take this seriously, then it is clear that integral human development must include the spiritual, cultural, relational, emotional dimensions of human existence. It suggests that the opportunity to contribute – sometimes now called ‘contributive justice’ – is critically important also, whether that be
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through the economic, cultural or social participation of the person. The US bishops, in their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, understood this point well, saying: ‘social justice implies that persons have an obligation to be active and productive participants in the life of society and that society has a duty to enable them to participate in this way’.12 They condemned the unjust social structures that perpetuate inequality, deepen disadvantage, and inhibit certain groups from contributing to society because of their race, ethnicity, or economic status. These sinful structures diminish a person’s ability to contribute to society, potentially undermining civic virtue and eroding any shared sense of solidarity and the common good. Thus contributive justice is a feature of integral human development because it reminds us that we each have an obligation to contribute to society but, importantly, it tells us that that we must also be afforded the opportunity to contribute to society. Consequently contributive justice requires the establishment of just social structures that can encourage people to make positive social contributions without discriminating on the basis of gender, race, economic background, and so on.13 And it suggests that social contribution is a good in se; namely, that it is important for people to express their moral agency and to enjoy the freedom to participate in society. This is why Catholic social teaching emphasizes so strongly the principle of participation, both as a means to an end and as an end in itself. Homeless makes the realisation of these goals impossible for many. As the Irish Bishops explain in a recent pastoral letter, housing is fundamental to our wellbeing, our safety and our happiness. And as such, it plays a pivotal part in human flourishing. The Bishops argue that the right to adequate housing is essential, if we are to realise several other rights, such as the right to privacy, freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, personal security, health, education, and the right to a decent and safe environment.14 Being able to avail oneself of these opportunities, being able to access services like education and healthcare, becomes threatened by the insecurity and unpredictability of homelessness. And homelessness denies people the opportunity to become integrated into a community, to ‘put down roots’, and to contribute socially to the life of a place. We know that a major threat to the provision of good housing is unjust inequality.15 Pope Francis warns against the dangers of inequality, most notably in Evangelii Gaudium and Fratelli Tutti. He condemns economies of exclusion and explains that although some economic policies have enhanced 444
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growth generally, they have not promoted integral human development in a consistent or inclusive way. As a result, ‘new forms of poverty are emerging’, he tells us. And crucially Pope Francis reminds us that ‘Poverty must always be understood and gauged in the context of the actual opportunities available in each concrete historical period.’16 Widening inequality in Ireland is denying people the possibility of ever having a home and is driving more people towards homelessness every day. Pope Francis is concerned that we have become blinded to the inequalities around us; he is mindful of the ways in which sinful structures and cultural privilege deadens our moral sensibilities, often to the point where we do not even see the suffering around us. In Evangelii Gaudium he states: ‘changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual’.17 Moreover the Holy Father tells us that the most devastating effect of inequality is exclusion. Inclusion, on the other hand, implies full participation in society, access to opportunities, the freedom to contribute to the social experiment, and the ability to forge a sense of identity and belonging. Social inclusion takes us beyond mere subsistence; it is about being full and equal members of society, recognized and valued not for what we do but for who we are. Inclusion means we are able to contribute to the task of creating a social life together and moral agency over our lives.18 And yet we know that in Ireland many people are forced to the fringes; we see all too vividly today how people are denied basic rights such as the right to housing because of flawed economic policies. But inequality is not inevitable. Unjust social inequality is a consequence of bad economic and bad social policies. It is the consequence of skewed social priorities. Inequality can be rectified if we decide to do things differently. This an enormous challenge, for as Pope Francis explains, ‘a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them … The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.’19 And so, Francis turns to a virtue-based approach in response to these difficulties, calling for greater solidarity, compassion, and mercy as we face the challenges of living in right
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relationship with each other. The Irish bishops too call for a new attitude in their pastoral letter on housing. They insist that we must move away from thinking of housing simply as a commodity, as an end in itself, and recognise instead that housing is a means to a greater human end. They say that safe, affordable and appropriate housing is a human right and not a commodity, and that the provision of housing cannot be left solely to market forces: ‘The making of enormous profits through speculation in land, in housing developments and in maintaining high rents is particularly damaging to society … We must all work to change this toxic situation; the housing ‘market’ must serve the people and society rather than further advance the financial interests of a minority.’20 In a similar way, William T. Cavanaugh rejects the notion that the free market, left to its own devices, will somehow miraculously rectify the imbalances in the housing sector: ‘There are those who are opposed in principle to any government provision of goods that the market should provide, but such voices do not get much credence from those who advocate for the homeless, nor should they. The idea that the market will provide if left alone is one of the most pernicious forms of magical thinking that afflicts the contemporary world, and one that is refuted by the thousands sleeping rough on the streets.’21 It is argued here that our economic structures and policies need to be radically re-assessed in light of a worsening housing crisis. As Pope John Paul II put it, the economy should serve the human person – the person is not at the service of the economy. And so, although structural approaches to the housing crisis are needed, we must also be willing to shift our mindset. We must think of housing in a new way, and crucially we must learn from those who are unhoused. We must work to change the perceptions and stereotypes associated with homelessness so as not to think of the homeless person as a threat, or as deserving of their lot in life, but be willing to be transformed by their experiences through encounter and accompaniment. And we need to re-think housing, seeing it as a critical part of integral human development. For without access to decent housing, the many interrelated dimensions of integral development cannot be realised. Integral human development and spiritual accompaniment This leads us to another aspect of integral human development, one less 446
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focused on economic policies and more concerned with the spiritual needs of the person. Homeless ministries play a crucial role in realizing integral human development, a role that sometimes goes unnoticed. That is, the ways in which homelessness ministries work towards making the human spirit whole again. If integral human development is concerned with the totality of the person, then the spiritual, religious, emotional and psychological dimensions of our lives need as much attention as the material. We know that the damaging effects of homelessness are many. Responding to the needs of our homeless sisters and brothers must include tending to the spiritual and emotional harm of broken relationships and disrupted promise. And so, making spirits whole again is an essential part of the Christian mandate to love our neighbour. As Pope Benedict reminded us in Caritas in Veritate, integral development ‘requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without him development is either denied or entrusted exclusively to man [sic] who falls into the trap of thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanizing form of development’.22 The transcendent nature of the human person, our relationship with God and our journeying towards him, suggests that human development has as its goal attending to the wholeness of the person.23 It must include establishing just and peaceful environments in which individuals and communities can thrive, environments in which religious belief can be enjoyed without fear of violence, where opportunities are shared, and where the conditions needed for all of us to lived dignified lives exist. It seems obvious to say that of a home is fundamental here, for without it so many other rights and opportunities are simply not attainable. Homelessness, of course, denies people structural security as well as a sense of belonging. But homeless also violates the dignity of the person and erodes feelings of self-worth. It can have profoundly negative spiritual and psychological effects on people. Writing about homeless ministries in the greater Boston area, M. T. Dávila says: … the soul work of homeless ministries – attending to the spiritual needs of the unhoused and the housing insecure – must be part of integral human development … Efforts to address the material needs of the unhoused, of providing adequate shelter, the sense of permanency and routine that are key to feeling safe and thriving as persons and communities, must go hand in hand with attending
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to the deep spiritual wounds, both personal and systemic, that accompany the precarious life of homelessness and housing insecurity.24 Feelings of guilt and shame often shadow the lives of the unhoused. For Dávila, homeless ministries play a crucial role in restoring a sense of worth to people. She speaks of the ways outdoor or street ministries help to bring healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation to the lives of homeless persons. Homeless street programmes, rooted in an ethos of accompaniment, confirm ‘God’s unconditional … love with broken and wounded souls’. She continues: ‘The soul work of homeless ministries is a key element to bringing wholeness where a combination of life circumstances, choices, and systemic forces has wrought economic and social uncertainty and … spiritual harm, resulting in shame and lack of self-worth.’25 Dávila argues that the challenge of integral human development must be to confront the systemic causes of homelessness. This also requires identifying damaging rhetoric that labels the homeless and dislocated as a threat, as disposable, as a drain on society, and people to be discarded.26 Thus, we can identify a two-fold challenge: first, to tackle the systemic structural injustices that fuel homelessness, and second to tend to the deep human wounds inflicted by this crisis. ‘Removing or reducing the precariousness that imposes insecurity, fear, and physical vulnerabilities on the unhoused must be an ongoing goal of those who work in homeless ministries. But I would argue that working towards spiritual integrity, while intimately related to being stably housed, must be its own goal, and certainly a work of the Church as it strives for integral human development’, Dávila concludes.27 That said, one must be cognisant of the dangers of separating these different aspects of integral development – the material and the spiritual. On the one hand, we risk over-spiritualising homeless ministries, and on the other hand, we risk focusing on the provision of shelter to the neglect of the spiritual healing that is also needed. Homelessness ministries cannot do everything, but the concept of integral human development helps us to at least be mindful of the importance of holistic, connected strategies as we strive to accompany our neighbour.28 For Dávila, ‘providing spiritual accompaniment and being with the unhoused the soul work of homeless ministries serves integral human development by countering deep-seated narratives of shame and replacing them with a renewed sense of sacred worth to all members of the community’.29 448
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Others too have identified the role that accompaniment plays in homeless ministry. Drawing from Pope Francis’ idea of a ‘revolution of tenderness’, Mary Scullion and Christopher Williams tell us that such a revolution is ‘rooted in relationships and community that, through the power of grace, foster mutual transformation’.30 Homelessness has become part of the geographical and moral landscape of our time, and it can evoke fear or insecurity within us since it exposes the precariousness of human existence. But through accompaniment we come to know the men and women who experience homelessness, and we see the distorted ways our society values people. As Scullion and Williams put it: ‘Poverty makes us confront the stark truth that suffering is a universal and inescapable part of being human and that we cannot be fully human until we embrace the truth of suffering. But mysteriously, in seeing this truth of human vulnerability, we are also empowered to see more clearly the authentic worth of each person.’31 Accompaniment, and the powerful human encounters at the heart of it, can be both personally and socially transformative. They explain: By accompanying those who have suffered through homelessness … we discover the grace that empowers us to live more authentically, with mercy and compassion. We experience the power of mutual transformation – and we plant the seeds for a broader social transformation, a revolution of tenderness, a political agenda that is grounded in the Beloved Community that fosters economic, political, and societal structures rooted in the dignity of each person. In doing so, we accompany each other on the journey home.32 Conclusion: the ‘disruption’ of the Gospel In Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis calls us to be ‘the Church which goes forth’. This inevitably will be uncomfortable for many of us. We like predictability, enjoy our routines, and rarely appreciate being shaken out of our comfort zones. And yet this is the message of the Gospel, the inconvenient and troubling call to discipleship. Drawing from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Pope Francis explains, ‘The parable shows how a community can be rebuilt by men and women who identify with the vulnerability of others, who reject the creation of a society of exclusion, and act instead as neighbours, lifting up and rehabilitating the fallen for the sake of the common good’.33
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In a similar way, Laura Stivers speaks of the need for ‘an ethic of disruption’ to tackle the homeless crisis. She is thinking of the need to ‘disrupt’ the structures that perpetuate homelessness, but she calls also for an honest examination of the attitudes, values, and biases within us that help maintain an oppressive status quo.34 This ‘ethic of disruption’ is what Pope Francis is demanding too. The creation of a more just, inclusive society will require a radical re-shaping of how we do things; it will demand that we re-imagine our lives and relationships and that we embrace encounter rather than fear. Disruption is at the heart of the Gospel; the counter-cultural example of Jesus offers us strength as we attempt to halt the injustices that perpetuate homelessness. But, of course, let us not be naïve. Disruption can be risky, so too can hospitality. Nevertheless, the legitimate claims of safety should not become an excuse to force people to the fringes or excuse our failure to respond to those who need care. An ‘ethic of disruption’ forces us to tell a more profound story, one of encounter, mercy, and accompaniment. Thinking of housing merely as a commodity fails to capture the significance of housing. Catholic social teaching provides resources that help us examine and respond to the homelessness crisis in a more meaningful way. Church teaching, in its rejection of unlimited capitalism, reminds us that economic growth is not an end in itself but ought to be at the service of the person. Social doctrine offers a vision, a framework if you like, from which to critique social values. It forces us to go beyond narratives of ‘supply and demand’ and to stop tinkering around the edges of an ever-worsening housing crisis. It demands that we begin always with the human person, in all her frailty and fragility, recognizing the vulnerability that we each share and the reasonable hopes that we wish to realize. It is a story that begins and ends in that upper room, each of us equal, unique, and in need of God’s redemptive love. Dr Suzanne Mulligan lectures in Moral Theology at St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. She is a member of the Planning Committee of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church (CTEWC) and is editor of the Irish Theological Quarterly.
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Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections Notes 1 UNHCR, ‘Figures at a glance’ < https://www.unhcr.org/en-ie/figures-at-a-glance.html 2 Peter McVerry Trust, ‘Facts and Figures: Information on Homelessness in Ireland’ < https:// pmvtrust.ie/news/facts-and-figures/ > 3 Gaudium et Spes (Vatican: The Holy See, 1965), n. 26. 4 Gaudium et Spes, n. 26. 5 Anna Rowlands, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (London: T&T Clark, 2021), p. 55. 6 Rowlands, Politics of Communion, pp. 56–57. 7 James F. Keenan SJ, ‘Linking Human Dignity, Vulnerability and Virtue Ethics’, Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 6 (2020), p. 60. 8 Keenan, ‘Linking Human Dignity’, p. 59. 9 Keenan, ‘Linking Human Dignity’, p. 61. 10 Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, (Vatican: The Holy See, 1967), n. 6. 11 Pope Paul VI,Populorum Progressio, n. 14. 12 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All (1986), n. 71. 13 See Cristian Timmermann, ‘Contributive Justice: An Exploration of a Wider Provision of Meaningful Work’, Social Justice Research, 31 (2018), 85–111. 14 Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, A Room at the Inn? (Dublin: Veritas, 2018), p. 17. 15 I intentionally use the phrase ‘unjust inequality’ here, since not all forms of inequality are unjust (for example, the taxation system). 16 Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti (Vatican: The Holy See, 2020), n. 21. Emphasis added. 17 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Vatican: The Holy See, 2013), n. 189. 18 See Kate Ward, ‘Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality: Pope Francis’ Virtue Response to Inequality’, Religions, 8, 71 (2017). 19 Evangelii Gaudium, n. 54. 20 Irish Bishops, A Room at the Inn?, p. 19. 21 William T. Cavanagh, ‘Strategies from Below: Subsidiarity and Homelessness’, in Street Homelessness and Catholic Theological Ethics, ed. by James F. Keenan SJ and Mark McGreevy (New York: Orbis, 2019), p. 148. 22 Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Vatican; The Holy See, 2009), n. 11. 23 Maria Teresa Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole: Homeless Ministries as a Tool for Integral Development’, in Manuel Mejido Costoya (ed.), Land of Stark Contrasts: Faith-Based Responses to Homelessness in the United States (New York: Fordham University Press, 2021), 301. 24 Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole’, p. 298. 25 Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole’, p. 298–299. 26 Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole’, p. 299. 27 Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole’, p. 299. 28 Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole’, p. 302. 29 Dávila, ‘Making Spirits Whole’, p. 312. 30 Mary Scullion RSM, Christopher Williams, ‘Accompanying Each Other on the Journey Home’, in Street Homelessness and Catholic Theological Ethics, James F. Keenan SJ, Mark McGreevy (eds.), (New York: Orbis Books, 2019), p. 3. 31 Scullion, Williams, ‘Accompanying Each Other’, p. 6. 32 Scullion, Williams, ‘Accompanying Each Other’, p. 10. 33 Francis, Fratelli Tutti, n. 65. 34 Cited in Erin Bringham, Church as Field Hospital: Towards an Ecclesiology of Sanctuary, (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2022), p. 171.
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Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education Brendan Leahy The Global Compact on Education is one of the many inspiring initiatives launched by Pope Francis. Put simply, it’s an invitation on his part for any two or more – individuals, families, schools, institutions, organisations, or nations – to commit themselves to work for a more open and inclusive education, in order to respond to the challenges of a world in rapid transformation and increasing divisions. The Compact is not a particular educational activity or programme but rather a networking of people who, respecting diversity, reach out to listen attentively to one another in order to dialogue constructively on education in its broadest sense and in its significance for the future of our world, our planet, our relationships. The word ‘compact’ recalls the biblical notion of ‘covenant’ between God and humankind that in Jesus opens to a universal project of peace (cf. Ephesians 2:14–15). Already in the first pages of the Bible, the stories of creation indicate that fraternal stewardship of our world is written into our DNA as something that is a key to what it is to be human. We have a common origin, we belong to one another, and our future is to be shared with everyone. Education is ultimately about drawing all of that awareness out in us. Fraternity and interconnectedness, themes in much of Pope Francis’ thought and expressed especially in his encyclicals, Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel), Laudato Si’ (Care of the Environment) and Fratelli Tutti (Social Friendship and Fraternity in Politics and Social relations), are the watermarks running through this proposal of a Global Compact. It is based on a conviction that the changes needed in our world that has so many divisions and tensions involve an educational process aimed at developing a new universal solidarity and a more welcoming society. It’s a big vision that wants to involve families and schools, parishes and sports organisations, youth groups and recreation centres. It wants to impact on civil society with its intellectual and scientific, artistic and cultural, political and business expressions, and all aimed at supporting younger generations. 452
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Drawing on the African proverb that says it takes a whole village to educate a child, Pope Francis proposes all of us need to commit ourselves to forming an ‘educational village’ that provides for good education directed to forming ‘mature individuals capable of overcoming division and antagonism, and to restore the fabric of relationships for the sake of a more fraternal humanity’.1 Basic texts to do with the Global Compact include the Pope’s launch of the project (12 September 2019), a video-message that re-launched the project in October 2020, an Instrumentum Laboris (working document) and a Vademecum (Guidelines) published in 2021. All these sources are available online. Where did the Global Compact come from? The idea of a Global Compact emerged in 2019 when a group of religious leaders visiting the Congregation for Catholic Education expressed a desire that Pope Francis would launch an initiative on a world level to do with education. The Pope immediately took up this suggestion. But he did so knowing that his proposal of a Global Compact did not simply drop form the sky. It has been emerging for some time. First, it’s important to recognise the shift that came about in the Second Vatican Council in its view of Catholic education. The Council’s declaration on Education, Gravissimum Educationis marked an important transition from seeing schools and colleges merely as institutions to viewing them as communities. The conciliar vision recognised that education must respond, yes, to the needs of the individual, but it must also open to and promote the social project a fraternity that fosters the common good, true unity and peace on earth.2 This paradigm shift reflected the ecclesiology (vision of Church) of communion and the anthropology (vision of what it is to be human) of unity in diversity outlined at the Second Vatican Council. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has continually developed and deepened its own notion of education and its proposal to others about education. In his 1967 encyclical on the development of peoples, Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI highlighted education ‘of the whole person and of every person’ is needed if we want to promote true progress and development in the world. For his part, Pope Benedict spoke of an ‘educational emergency’ that challenges humanity today. In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, he wrote, ‘Today humanity appears much more interactive than in the past: this shared sense
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of being close to one another must be transformed into true communion. The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side’ (n. 53). The 2013 document published by the Congregation for Catholic Education entitled, Educating to Intercultural Dialogue in Catholic Schools Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love proposed a vision of education in terms of encounter and dialogue between cultures, overcoming prejudices and seeing the value of those we often consider ‘other’. It stressed the need to understand education in terms of communion. The Global Compact is bringing that conciliar vision and its subsequent developments to a new level of interaction among many stakeholders. And it is certainly also rhyming with wider socio-cultural developments. In its analysis of the challenges facing education today, the 2015 UNESCO document entitled, Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? recognised that in the world today characterized by new levels of complexity and contradiction, ‘We must think big again and re-vision education in a changing world.’ Already in 1996 the UNESCO Delors Report, Learning: The Treasure Within, recommended the need in education to move beyond simply numeracy and literacy skills to a more integrated approach. Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development speaks of the need to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’. Contemporary commentators have highlighted a crisis facing education. In the opening lines from Martha Nussbaum’s book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, we read: ‘We are in the midst of a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance. No, I do not mean the global economic crisis … I mean a crisis that goes largely unnoticed, like a cancer; a crisis that is likely to be, in the long run, far more damaging to the future of democratic self-government: a world-wide crisis in education.’3 Her plea is for the place of liberal arts and humanities in university colleges. Perhaps her words sound a little dramatic. But then again, the late British educationalist Sir Ken Robinson claimed we are living through an ‘education crisis’ that is as serious or even more so than the climate crisis. It calls for a reset of education.4 These comments express a concern that when education is viewed primarily in terms of economic and functional outcomes, there is a risk that 454
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we end up producing, as Nussbaum puts it, ‘generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements’.5 This is becoming ever more important as we head into the world of Artificial Intelligence. For his part, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman speaks of the massive individualisation going on in our world with a resultant disintegration of citizenship. What we are ending up with are fragile communities shifting from one objective to another, looking for security. Many today recognise that, yes, thanks to technology, the world has become a ‘global village’ with huge inter-connectivity and technological know-how creating many new forms of inter-dependence. And yet, as Pope Benedict already said in Caritas in Veritate, ‘As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbours but does not make us brothers and sisters’.6 We need to respond to the crisis of community, belonging and identity. Enter Pope Francis. Having himself been a teacher of literature and science, but also a bishop and now as the Successor of Peter, Pope Francis is deeply interested in the theme of education. In many ways, he is a great, original and creative educator. In the early 1960s, he taught literature to senior cycle students forming them to critical thought, creative writing, theatre and music. As bishop he gave significant inputs on education in Buenos Aires. Speaking early on in his pontificate to superior generals of religious orders he said, the educator ‘must ask him/herself how to proclaim Jesus Christ in a world that is changing … The educative task is a key, key, key mission!’.7 During the course of his pontificate, he has pleaded for a new universal solidarity and a more welcoming society, urging us to put our talents at the service of this cause. He remarks that we are living not just in an era of change but rather in a change of era. In his first encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, he underlined the need to ‘go forth’ in encounter and dialogue, initiating transformative processes to enable future generations to build a future of hope and peace. In Laudato Si’, the encyclical on the care of the planet, he underlined interconnectivity. Everything is connected. Everything is related.8 In this encyclical he reminds us that ‘education will be inadequate and ineffectual unless we strive to promote a new way of thinking about human beings, life, society and our relationship with nature’.9 He also says that ‘the human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot
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adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation’.10 He proposes the need for an integral ecological education. He says, ‘there can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself. There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology’.11 In 2019, he signed the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together on universal fraternity with the Muslim world. And in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, he proposed fraternity and social friendship as keys to the future wellbeing of humanity. Pope Francis believes in change. During the 2016 World Youth Meeting in Krakow in his interaction with the young people, he asked them several times: ‘Can we change things?’ And they shouted ‘Yes!’. Education is key to change. Education, for Pope Francis, cannot be reduced simply to questions around the ‘what’ and ‘how’ in terms of tools, techniques, technologies and bureaucratic procedures, but above all on the ‘why?’ The human person has to be at the centre and the goal/end of education and the future of our plant as our common home. There’s clearly a profound link between the encyclical letter Laudato Si’ and the Global Compact. ‘It is a matter of courageously acknowledging that the environmental and relational crisis we are experiencing can be tackled by devoting our attention to educating those who tomorrow will be called to guard our common home’.12 Seven commitments In launching the Global Compact on Education, Pope Francis identifies a number of commitments that can be undertaken. These are general points. A Vademecum published later by the Congregation for Catholic Education has made suggestions to educators on how to bring these forward, including some reflections on the thematic areas for research at the tertiary sector of education.13 A first commitment or principle is to consider the human persons the centre of every educational programme. In the face of the spread of the throwaway culture, it is essential that we foster recognition of the distinctiveness of each person and their capacity for relationship with others. This commitment underlines the basic question: how do we define the human person? We need to recognise the human person in all his/her dimensions with inalienable rights. This focus on human persons requires a culture of care with special 456
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attention to the most fragile, offering an integral formation that values all the dimensions of the human person, including the spiritual one. The second commitment has to do with listening to the voices of children and young people in order to build together a future of justice, peace and a dignified life for every person. The starting point in education is ‘listening’, welcoming questions, seeing needs, wounds and poverty, discovering talents as well recognising dreams and ideals. In order to e-ducate, that is, to bring/lead out, to bring to light, to prepare the good soil to welcome the seed of knowledge, we need then to transmit and share values building together supportive communities, the formative ‘village’. The Vademecum provides a striking phrase: ‘It is not the pupils who have to adapt to the school, but the school that has to adapt to the pupils’. Participation of students’ representatives in the advisory and decision-making bodies of their institution/organisation is underlined in the Vademecum. A focus here too is students with special educational needs. And condemnation of all forms of disrespect and exploitation of minors. The third commitment is to encourage the full participation of girls and young women in education. In various countries around the world young girls and women are marginalised in education and in the society. Educators are to be to the fore in condemning all forms of discrimination and violence against women. This can itself be a theme in educational programmes. To see in the family as the first and essential place of education is the fourth commitment. The family is the source of relationships for the human person, the first school of social values that build up society. The values proposed in this principle would be recognising the priority of the family in the education of children, participation of the representatives of parents in decision-making bodies and the promotion of family-friendly policies, especially for the most socio-economically disadvantaged families. This means fostering greater links between schools and families, and indeed encouraging the training of parents in the significance of education in parenting. The fifth commitment has to do with educating and being educated about the need for acceptance, and in particular, openness to the most vulnerable and marginalized. Here the topics for action would include the promotion of a culture of inclusion, attentiveness to the social and existential peripheries and the healing of deep wounds in people. The themes of intercultural and interreligious relations are included within this commitment. The Vademecum mentions the need to ‘launch international cooperation programmes aimed at
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building a more fraternal and welcoming world’. In Ireland we can think of Trocaire’s resources and programmes. A sixth commitment is that of being committed to finding and fostering new ways of understanding the economy and politics, growth and progress. These areas are to be understood as being at the service of the human person and the entire human family, within the context of an integral ecology. Here the focus is on promotion of education in terms of becoming protagonists of the common good, being committed to sustainable development and a ‘social covenant’ in our lifestyle choices and values. The suggestions for educators provided in the Vademecum include revising curricula and courses of studies so as to encourage greater study of and research into the areas of economics, politics, growth and progress. The seventh and final commitment is to safeguard and cultivate our common home, protecting it from the exploitation of its resources, and to adopt a more sober lifestyle marked by the use of renewable energy sources and respect for the natural and human environment, in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity and a circular economy. This commitment is clearly linked to Pope Francis’ encyclical on the care of our common home, Laudato Si’. Faced with a crisis that has so many dimensions to it, there’s a need to develop a new universal solidarity and more welcoming society. More sober and environmentally friendly lifestyles are needed. Ideas that emerge here – saving and promoting green spaces in our educational centres; environmentally friendly activities; refining the ability to appreciate beauty in the face of the wonder of creation; conversion to renewable energies in our schools etc. As well indicating these commitments, Pope Francis proposes universities play an important role in the building of a ‘global educational village’ by carrying out research and collaborating together in five thematic areas: dignity and human rights; fraternity and cooperation; technology and integral ecology; peace and citizenship; cultures and religions. A specific university is heading up research in each of these areas with a view to collaboration and sharing of results and insights. Conclusion The Global Compact project is a big vision proposed in the first place to the Catholic educational network that serves 62.2 million students at the preschool, primary, and secondary levels. Likewise it invites the 1,358 458
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Catholic universities and higher education institutions around the world to lift up their eyes to a new context in understanding the ‘why’ of education. This big vision needs, of course, to be grounded in every day educational practice and experience. Yet the vision is important because, as the prophet put it, ‘where there is no vision, the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18). It is an invitation to enlarge the space of the educational tent, going out to interact with many in resetting the educational project. In Ireland, we can be grateful that since ‘free education’ in 1967 so many have benefitted from higher levels of education. It has been a busy time of expansion. We can be grateful for all that has been achieved, and all that is going on, day by day, in schools and colleges across Ireland. But perhaps now something new is also needed in terms of depth.14 There is a need for intergenerational policies. The theme of reconciliation and outreach in building community relations has its own important resonances in Ireland, not least because of the years of conflict in Northern Ireland. Ireland today is search for find new ways of relating to and expressing our relationship to the transcendent. The Global Compact project comes at this time as a prompt to take a qualitative leap in our thinking about education as forming citizens ready for a new era.15 It should be noted that there are many publications from the Irish Bishops’ Conference that reflect a view of education in terms of communion, participation and co-operation. By way of example, the following documents can be mentioned: Catholic Primary Schools in a Changing Ireland: Sharing Good Practice on the Inclusion of all Pupils (2015), Looking to the Future (2014 ), Vision 08: A Vision for Catholic Education in Ireland (2008), Share the Good News (2011). Share the Good News is the National Directory for Catechesis in Ireland and is based on a vision of partnership between home, school and parish. In terms of national strategy, we can mention a document such as the ESD to 2030: Second National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development in which we read that ‘ESD [Education for Sustainable Development] is grounded in principles of social justice, equity and a respect for human rights and seeks to foster engaged and active citizens, of all ages, motivated to take action towards a sustainable future. By learning from one another and working individually and collectively, key global challenges of the twenty-first century such as climate change, poverty, inequality, sustainable consumption, health and wellbeing, can be addressed.’
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The Global Compact proposal provides us with parameters for reflecting on education today in Ireland in the light of current developments and challenges. Those involved in Catholic education will find vision a plenty in its proposal. And this is indeed important. The renowned educator, Sir Richard Livingstone, writing in the midst of the last World War, commented: The history of humankind might be described by a cynic as a series of splendid expeditions towards the wrong goal or towards no goal at all, led by people who have all the gifts of leadership except a sense of direction and every endowment for achieving their ends except a knowledge of ends worth achieving.16 As he says, that’s the view of a cynic. Education through a Catholic lens, now widened with the Global Compact, can be presented as a wonderful adventure of opening windows of wonder, exploring deeply the mystery of life, drilling intellectually into all realms of human thought, listening patiently to others of diverse views, cultures and traditions, while treading softly on the dreams that inspire our imagination, and all the while crafting together a new era for future generations that will inherit from us pathways of peace, reconciliation and fraternity. Hannah Arendt provides a final word, one quoted at the end of the Vademecum: Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.17 Dr Brendan Leahy is Bishop of Limerick and former Professor of Systematic Theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. Notes 1 Pope Francis, ‘Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the Launch of the Global Compact on Education’, 12 September 2019 <https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pontmessages/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190912_messaggio-patto-educativo.html> 2 See Michael James et al., Education’s Highest Aim: Teaching and Learning through a Spirituality
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15
16 17
of Communion (New York: New City, 2010). For a history of Christian Education, see John. L. Elias, A History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Perspectives (Florida: Krieger, 2002). See also an introduction to a range of figures from the Catholic tradition in John Sullivan, Lights for the Path (Dublin: Veritas, 2022). See Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracies Need the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), pp. 1–2. Ken Robinson,‘The other climate crisis: digital culture, demography and education’, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy 128 (2008), 49–58. Nussbaum, Not for Profit, pp. 1–2. Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Vatican: The Holy See, 2009), n. 19. Antonio Spadaro, ‘“Wake up the World!” A Conversation with Pope Francis about the Religious Life’, La Civiltà Cattolica, (2014/I), 3–17, original in Italian. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (Vatican: The Holy See, 2015), ns 70, 92, 117, 120, 138, 142. Laudato Si’, n. 215 Laudato Si’, n. 48 Laudato Si’, n. 118 XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Instrumentum Laboris (Vatican: The Holy See, 2023), p. 216. Pope Francis, ‘Video Message of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Occasion of the Meeting Organised by the Congregation for Catholic Education: “Global Compact on Education. Together to Look Beyond”’ (Vatican: The Holy See, 2020) < http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ messages/pont-messages/2020/documents/papa-francesco_20201015_videomessaggio-globalcompact.html [accessed 27 April 2021] > See Thomas J. Norris, Getting Real about Education (Dublin: Columba Press, 2006). For recent reflection on Catholic Education in Ireland see Sean Whittle (ed.), Irish and British Reflections on Catholic Education: Foundations, Identity, Leadership Issues and Religious Education in Catholic Schools (Singapore: Springer, 2021) and Gareth Byrne and Sean Whittle (eds.), Catholic Education: A Lifelong Journey (Dublin: Veritas, 2021). Richard Livingstone, Education for a World Adrift (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943), p. 42. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), p. 196.
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The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn Jacob Martin SJ In the wake of myriad revelations of clerical abuse and its cover-up by Church authorities in the last two decades, the question of mandatory priestly celibacy has been largely relegated to discourses surrounding child sexual abuse that are frequently informed by the misguided perception that clerical sexual continence leads to paedophilia.1 However before the clerical abuse crisis came to the fore in the late 1990s, and at least since the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the necessity and practicality of compulsory chastity for Catholic clergy has been a contested issue within the ecclesial and public spheres in Ireland. The question of clerical celibacy came to the fore in the Irish cinematic realm in the 1980s with the release of Bob Quinn’s film Budawanny (1987), which the director then followed up a few years later with another interrogation into clerical chastity, The Bishop’s Story (1994). Quinn produced these films at a moment when revelations of sexual indiscretions by celibate clergy ceased to be mere whispers and began to make the headlines in Ireland and the West.2 Both Budawanny and The Bishop’s Story inquire into the efficacy of mandatory sexual continence for clergy, as well as examining the discourses surrounding the ecclesial authority that affirms and enforces it. In both films, the late Donal McCann portrays the primary clerical figure, as both priest and bishop; and in both characterisations he illustrates the problem of an embodied cinematic subjectivity grounded in sexual intimacy and its implications for both his authority within the community he serves and his relationship with the woman with whom he has a physical relationship. Through a close reading of both of Quinn’s clerical films, the ‘double bind’ for the cinematic Irish priest can be seen. First through the priest’s ‘incarnate’ characterisation, which manifests in his sexual relationship with Marian (Margaret Fegan), and the consequent sacerdotal/lay power imbalance
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it discloses, which necessitates his silencing, and by extension, his erasure of the female. The second part of the ‘double bind’ emerges in the contingency of the priest’s authority within the rural island community, beholden, as it is, on his maintenance of his sexual continence. What both these films demonstrate is the problem of clerical authority inscribed in Catholic ecclesiology and the means by which it makes priestly celibacy necessary within the context of the hierarchical institution. Though both of Quinn’s films were made over three decades ago, the problem of the inherent imbalance fundamental to the sacerdotal/lay relationship and its unilateral manifestation in the realm of carnal intimacy still speaks to discourses surrounding priestly celibacy and the role of women in the contemporary Church. Richard Kearney and the incarnate/excarnate In his book, Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense (2021), Richard Kearney writes of Western societies’ progressive departure from tactile and sentient modes of interaction, which he refers to as the ‘incarnate’, in favour of a disembodied relational paradigm, or the ‘excarnate’. Kearney defines the ‘incarnate’ as a tactile interpersonal communality, that was, until recently, fundamental within all cultures, and which has, through the rapid ascent of technology and globalisation, been subsumed by the ‘excarnate’, that is a disembodied, isolated societal situation.3 Kearney’s notion of the incarnate/excarnate is an excellent analogous model for analysing the cinematic cleric. Depictions of the priest or clergy in Irish film are usually utilised as one-dimensional signifiers for the institutional Church. These clerical depictions, which I refer to as ‘excarnate’, have no psychological or moral complexity but rather are utilised by the filmmaker to serve the film’s narrative agenda. The rare instance of the ‘incarnate’ clerical characterization manifests cinematically as a morally complex subject whose ‘embodiedness’ is affixed to the holistic capacity of his subjectivity. With that said, the ‘incarnate’ quality of this characterization is contingent on his relationality with the other characters in the film. Mandatory clerical celibacy post-Vatican II During the same period that Quinn’s films were produced, the contestation of mandatory celibacy was also the subject of two Irish language novels, Súil le Breith (1983) and Cíocras (1991), written by diocesan priest Pádraig
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Standún. Indeed, the Súil le Breith provides the source material for both Quinn’s clerical films. Standún would reveal in his 2004 Irish language memoir, Eaglais na gCatacόmai – published in English in 2017 as Catacomb Church: Portrait of the Artist as an Ageing Priest – to living with a woman and helping to raise her daughter for twenty-five years during his ministry.4 Standún’s admission, the public disclosure of Bishop Eamon Casey and Father Michael Cleary’s siring of children in the 1990s, along with public statements against sexual continence by other Irish priests and religious, suggest a much larger clerical faction living ‘outside’ the Catholic Church’s stricture’s on celibacy than would have been suspected.5 Indeed in sociologist John A. Weafer’s study of Irish diocesan priests ordained between the years 1960 to 2010, he found that those ordained just before Vatican II and in the two decades after were more inclined to oppose priestly celibacy than those ordained in the 1990s and 2000s. Weafer’s finding speaks both to the liberalizing influence of the Council, as well as to its seeming lack of sustainability.6 By the time Vatican II was nearing its end, priestly celibacy was a contentious issue, so much so, that it was withheld from discussion during the Council by Pope Paul VI.7 With that said, the liberalizing spirit that came out of the Council only served to increase the overt opposition to compulsory sexual continence; Cardinal Cahal Daly, Archbishop of Armagh, notes in his memoir that, while he was at a meeting of European bishops in the late 1960s, Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens called for the abolition of mandatory clerical celibacy.8 Conversely, during the same period, Paul VI promulgated the encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (‘Of Priestly Celibacy’), reaffirming the Church’s opposition to any change to the status quo, stating, ‘the present law of celibacy should today continue to be linked to the ecclesiastical ministry’.9 What is clear is that discourse around priestly celibacy in the postVatican II Irish Church was significantly more contested than what was being presented by the mainstream media. The Casey and Cleary revelations proved to be emblematic, not just in terms of the problem of clerical celibacy, but also the Church’s attempts to control public discourse surrounding sex and sexuality and by extension attempting to silence opposing voices. Budawanny and The Bishop’s Story Bob Quinn was part of what is frequently referred to as the ‘first wave’ of Irish cinema, which consisted of a collection of independently produced films 464
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in the late 1970s and into the 1980s that utilised experimental techniques as a means of interrogating prominent discourses in contemporary Irish society. Quinn, Cathal Black, Joe Comerford, Pat Murphy and Thaddeus O’Sullivan were the key figures of this seminal moment in Irish filmmaking, and their output remains among the most inventive and provocative within the relatively young national cinematic canon. Quinn began his career at RTÉ in the 1960s before resigning in frustration over the increasingly ‘commercialised’ nature of the content he was asked to produce. He relocated to Connemara in the West of Ireland, where he established his own production company, Cinegael, in 1973.10 Deconstructing the mythology of the West of Ireland would become fundamental to Quinn’s work. Gaelic culture and the Irish language, conjoined as they are to the romantic mythology of the West of Ireland, feature largely in Quinn’s corpus. Indeed his first two significant cinematic projects, the ‘featurette’ Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (Lament for Art O’Leary) (1975) and the full-length feature Poitín (1979) both take place in the Gaeltacht of Connemara, with their dialogue spoken in the vernacular. Though released some seven years apart, Budawanny and The Bishop’s Story are ostensibly the same film, as both share a significant amount of footage.11 Both films’ narratives are structured within the framework of a ‘story within a story’, with their respective ‘framing stories’ distinguishing them from one another. Budawanny and The Bishop’s Story’s embedded narratives or ‘stories within the stories’ use the same content rendered in the style of a silent film: shot in black and white, without diegetic sound, and using intertitles. The embedded narrative is about an unnamed parish priest (McCann), ministering to an unnamed fictional island community off the West Coast of Ireland. The priest falls in love with Marian, a young woman from his past, who comes to the island in search of him. On the ferry on the way to the island Marian jumps off into the sea, in an apparent suicide attempt. She is rescued and brought to the presbytery to recover while the priest looks after her. The priest then hires her as his housekeeper, and soon after they begin a sexual relationship which they attempt to keep hidden from the community. The sacristan (Tomás O’Flaithearta) overhears Marian telling the priest that she is pregnant with his child. The priest then, goes before his congregation admitting what has happened and informing them that he intends to live with mother and child as a family on the island, while still maintaining his pastoral
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role. The local bishop (Peadar Lamb) summons the priest to come to the mainland for a meeting and reprimands him for his announcement. While the priest is away, the community ostracises Marian, refusing to acknowledge her. When the priest returns to the island on the ferry he encounters Marian at the dock about to return to the mainland. As he attempts to say speak to her, a villager runs up and pulls him away, leaving Marian alone at the quay. It is then revealed that the sacristan committed suicide after which the priest returns to the presbytery to find that Marian has left for good leaving a brief note in explanation. As stated earlier, it is in the handful of scenes which make up each film’s ‘frame story’ where they differ. In Budawanny these ‘framing’ scenes are set entirely in the bishop’s office on the mainland. The scenes featuring the bishop, unlike the scenes in the rest of the text, are shot in colour and use diegetic sound. The bishop’s scenes are primarily of him alone, articulating, in his head via voice-over, his concern about the priest’s admission of fathering the child, as well as his personal views on faith and the people of the diocese that he oversees. These interior monologues disclose the bishop’s atheism as well as his disdain for the ‘simple faith’ of those under his care. The bishop admits that he is not so much bothered by what the priest has done in and of itself, but rather that he chose to reveal his violation of his promise of celibacy publicly. The bishop’s anger about the public disclosure of priestly indiscretion, as opposed to the indiscretion itself, is consistent with the historical Church’s position on scandal. The ‘sin’ of scandal, that is, the attitude or behaviour by one individual that leads another to sin, was born out of ‘manualism’, the predominant mode of moral theology up until Vatican II. As moral theologian Justin Anderson says of the Catholic Church’s preoccupation with scandal, ‘we are in possession of a theology of scandal that seems to indicate gross injustices can be silenced for “the good of the Church”’.12 Thus the hierarchy’s concern over avoiding ‘scandal’ amongst the People of God overrode all other concerns, foreshadowing the revelations of both clerical abuse and the hierarchy’s attempts to conceal it in the next two decades. In The Bishop’s Story, McCann’s priest has been ‘promoted’ to bishop and the film’s framing narrative features the prelate voluntarily placing himself in a rehabilitation centre for unspecified reasons. At the luxurious treatment facility, he has an extended conversation with a priest (Ray McBride) who has been placed in the facility, ostensibly for a problem with alcohol, though it is 466
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subsequently disclosed that he is a paedophile. In his early scenes, McCann’s bishop’s remarks echo the cynicism of Peadar Lamb’s bishop from the earlier film, when he notes to the young priest, while shooting snooker, ‘a “simple faith” is a luxury. The poor can afford it. A bishop certainly can’t.’ As the film shifts to the embedded narrative from Budawanny, the same initial footage of Marian on the ferry heading to the island is shown. However this instance also includes a voice-over from McCann that discloses his history with the young woman. McCann’s bishop says that he originally met Marian in London one summer while working with ‘down-and-outs’. He goes on to say that Marian was volunteering at the same institution but ‘she had problems, too. It was supposed to be therapy for her.’ The history of his relationship with Marian was not disclosed in Budawanny and the revelation that they had some level of intimacy while working in London, which is implied in b-roll footage of the two visiting tourist attractions in the city, is also not featured in the earlier film. This undisclosed background information along with the suggestion that Marian suffered from an unspecified mental illness adds a problematic layer to the embedded narrative. The excarnate/incarnate characterisation of the cinematic cleric The priest character as depicted by McCann in the embedded narrative, demonstrates the problem inherent in attempting to depict a clerical subject in defiance of his promise of sexual continence. The priest’s embodied characterisation manifests primarily by means of tactile exchange with Marian. Richard Kearney contends that touching is fundamentally an act of vulnerability and when ‘the most basic act of exposure to others occurs’.13 He holds that touch is the most humane of all senses, ‘for it alone involves a “doublesensation” of touching and being touched, even in the most inhospitable of circumstances’.14 With that said, what must be questioned within the narrative discourse of both of Quinn’s clerical films is the meaning behind the priest’s physical exchanges with Marian. Kearney, using the handshake as an example of carnal exchange, points out that there is a ‘hermeneutic responsibility to discern between handshakes – those that express hospitality and those that mask hostility […] and what is true of the handshake is true of other carnal gestures of hospitable portent’.15 In an early scene in the film, after Marian has been taken to the presbytery to recover after her suicide attempt by jumping off the ferry, the priest is shown seated at her bedside. The camera then cuts to a shot of the priest’s
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hand resting upon Marian’s arm, whereupon he gently turns it over to reveal the fresh scars of intravenous drug use. The visual disclosure is given more significance by McCann’s voiceover, where he speaks of meeting Marian in London and her work with him there as ‘therapy’ for her ‘problems’, which evidently include addiction. The scene as a standalone speaks to a ‘doublesensation’ as both the priest and Marian are touched and touching one another. His physical touch, placing his hand on her arm and literally bringing her wounds into the light, would seem to be a moment of healing (Fig. 1.1). However, this scene, which occurs before their sexual relationship has commenced, is problematic due to the unseen narrative that has preceded it, which illustrates an inherent power imbalance in their relationship. The priest’s touching of the scarred arm of the unconscious recovering addict is not so much a moment of ‘doublesensation’, but rather, what Kearney refers to as a ‘one-way sensation of violence’.16 Marian is not a ‘stranger’ to the priest, they have a history and more significantly he is aware of her vulnerabilities. Flashback scenes of their time in London later in the film show the priest placing his hand on her neck, suggesting a history of physical intimacy preceding their time on the island. Along with her drug problem, Marian is shown in her first moments onscreen exhibiting troubling behaviour, as she is shown throwing herself off the ferry and into the water, in what appears to be a suicide attempt. After Marian’s convalescence in the presbytery ends, the priest offers her a position as his live-in housekeeper. They seal the arrangement with a handshake, that embodied exchange, which, along with the kiss, Kearney contends are ‘paramount symbols of peace and hospitality’.17 However, they can also be easily subverted, as he says, ‘handshakes are easily perverted or abused as ceremonial clichés, malevolent contracts, devious strategies or power plays of privilege. Who has the right to shake hands with whom? To what purpose and with what motives – open, hidden, or ulterior?’18 I would argue that Marian and the priest’s handshake, a gesture that not only symbolises peace and hospitality but also ‘chaste concord’, is in ‘bad faith’, as they are both aware that their employer/employee relationship is contrived and will quickly turn/re-turn to a relationship of sexual intimacy. The inevitable ‘love making’ scene is both cliched and troubling, set as it is within the context of a night-time thunderstorm straight out of a gothic novel. Marian is frightened by the storm and runs to the priest lying in 468
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bed and into his arms. The screen fades to black as his embrace tightens around her. Once more, Marian – in keeping with the traditional genre convention of the gothic novel – is portrayed as a feminine victim in need of protection. Yet, this sequence, in light of the previous information revealed about the character, does not serve its intended ‘romantic’ aim but rather further underlines Marian’s status as a vulnerable adult. In the scene, she is frightened by a storm outside and runs to a man for protection. That she is depicted as incapable of self-care makes the ensuing – off-camera – sexual encounter and the priest’s role in it border on the predatory. The ensuing ‘morning after’ scene consists of Marian sheepishly drinking a cup of tea at the breakfast table, with the priest entering and tossing his hands in the air, as the intertitles read, ‘So much for celibacy’. Marian laughs, followed by a close-up of the priest covering his face with his hands, followed by a reverse over-the-shoulder shot of her looking at him affectionately. The flippancy of the priest’s attitude toward the event in relation to both his own vocational promises, but also to the wellbeing of a vulnerable adult, speaks to both the power the clergy in Ireland presumed to possess and the heedlessness it engendered. In the scene which follows, the priest and Marian are shown on the beach with a local girl (Susan O’Flaherty) with special needs and her dogs. The priest gestures towards one of the canines with a chain hanging from his neck, as the intertitles read: ‘Sometimes my collar feels like that … ’. There is another intertitle soon after which reads: ‘But there is the odd consolation’, as the camera then cuts to a shot of his hand reaching into her coat pocket and taking her hand (Fig. 1.2). Once again there is a lack of reciprocity in the physical interaction between the two, as the priest’s placement of his hand in Marian’s pocket has an invasive and presumptuous quality to it. The predatory nature of the priest’s ‘touching’ of Marion is magnified both in his comment about his vocation as well as the placement of the girl with special needs within the scene. Marian and the girl serve as an ersatz wife and child for the priest – indeed a local youth drinking beer nearby with the sacristan observes of the trio: ‘That’s a quare Holy Family.’ There is also the matter of Marian and the girl mirroring one another in their vulnerability – the young girl will subsequently go missing at a later point in the film, having the villagers up in an all-night vigil searching and praying for her, from which the priest is noticeably absent.
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The priest’s preoccupation with his own vocational ‘problem’ and his indifference to the needs of the vulnerable woman beside him – an addict who has sought him out on a remote island while attempting suicide in the process – give a sinister quality to his hand placement. It is through the character of Marian and his physical intimacy with her that the priest becomes incarnate, fully human. Thus through Marian the priestly characterisation becomes embodied; she is a solution to his problem of celibacy. Conversely he is a problem for her wellbeing, as he demonstrates no concern for the multiple power imbalances at play in their relationship: sacerdotal/lay, employer/ employee, vulnerable adult/caretaker. Bob Quinn and the celibate priest In spite of his repeated utilisation of melodramatic narrative tropes, I would argue that director Quinn is aware of the problems inherent in Marian and the priest’s relationship and its consequent referral to the societal insolubility of the un-celibate Catholic priest. As Martin McLoone says of Quinn: ‘His films offer no final resolutions, indeed pretend to no definitive statements, but in their scepticism, irony and self-deflating humour, they offer important instances of the kind of conditional negotiations with tradition and modernity which is characteristic of the best indigenous films.’19 Quinn demonstrates the impossibility of mutuality between Marian and the priest, in part by his muting of diegetic sound in the films. As Kearney notes, ‘sound and touch are ontogenetically primary, their synergy providing a base camp of bodily sensibility and security throughout our lives […] touch and sound have always been so crucial to bonding and caring’.20 The withholding of sound from the priest and Marian’s scenes together – filled as they are with tactile exchanges – speaks to the imbalance of power and the lack of reciprocity inherent in their relationship. Neither character can be ‘heard’, nor does the priest appear to have any interest in ‘hearing’ what Marian has to say, as he is preoccupied with his own need for physical intimacy. The film’s conclusion also gestures to its awareness of the problematic nature of Marian and the priest’s relationship. When the priest is shown returning to the presbytery after finding the sacristan dead, he sees the note Marian left, which is scribbled on the back of an envelope and reads: ‘It’s my life too.’ Marian’s note can be read as her acknowledgement of the normative similitude of island society with that of the mainland and thus the impossibility of the priest and her living openly with a child there, where 470
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they would always be regarded as a ‘quare holy family’. I would also suggest that the paucity of words used by Marian in both the intertitles and her note to the priest, coupled with the entire ‘story within a story’ being without diegetic sound, allows for a reading of the film as intentionally muting the ‘voice’ of women, even within the perspective of the soundless cinematic world which she inhabits. The note’s message conveys her awareness of her diminished voice and visibility, which, along with its brevity and its placement on the back of a used envelope, serve to affirm. Thus Quinn juxtaposes the paucity of language used by Marian with the verboseness of the bishop within the framing narrative. The seemingly interminable, patriarchal voice of the bishop is held over and against the silence of the woman. Indeed, both Peadar Lamb and Donal McCann’s bishop figures’ loquaciousness define their characterisations. Their depictions serve to underline Kearney’s point that the ‘optocentric’ perspective holds a privileged position in the Western tradition of Christianity. Kearney holds that from the Classical era onward there has been established a ‘dichotomy between the “intellectual” sense of vision and the “animal” sense of touch’.21 Thus, despite the fact that Christianity is founded on the Incarnation, that is ‘word becoming flesh’, it has frequently been at the mercy of a platonic dualism that continually attempts to erase or at least diminish the body. This dichotomy manifests in both Quinn’s films in the ordered, confined interiors of the institutional spaces where the bishops find themselves situated. Both prelates are incredibly loquacious within the context of their narratives, yet the entirety of their discourses revolve around abstractions, with both monologizing about their disbelief. Indeed, in the realm of both films, the vocational teleology of the bishops, the representative of ecclesial authority, manifests as the ‘flesh becoming word’ or the excarnate turn. Conclusion Ultimately the clerical representations in Budawanny and The Bishop’s Story serve as figurative demonstrations of the mind/body divide that is fundamental to the primary theological model inscribed within pre-Vatican II Irish Catholicism. The depiction of the priest in both films as an embodied subject buttressed by sexual carnality is problematised in order to illustrate the inherent limitations of a patriarchal homosocial structure with a ministry that demands reciprocity, empathy and compassion. The imbalance of power
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between the priest and Marian does not allow for a relationship of reciprocity of ‘doublesensation’ but instead manifests as a one-sided exercise in coercion. Both films do not so much attempt to provide answers to the question of mandatory clerical celibacy but rather disclose the problematic discourses affixed to the celibate cleric who transgresses. Quinn’s films both show, in their depiction of the unchaste cleric, the ‘incarnate’ quality that manifests in the sexually active priest, as well as the power imbalance intrinsic to such a relationship, as well as the damaging consequences for women. Donal McCann’s depiction of the priest in Budawanny, who in turn becomes bishop in The Bishop’s Story, discloses the corelation between embodied clerical subject and the displacement of his authority that occurs in the modern Irish cinematic space. McCann’s priest’s relationship with Marian illustrates the insoluble conundrum that is fundamental to the Catholic Church’s engagement with the modern Western woman. The priest’s authority is always contingent, and his place within the community always set apart. McCann’s priest is an outsider on the island, and his position as moral authority within the community rests on his capacity to fulfil the traditional role of chaste cleric. When he fractures the boundaries of the sacerdotal/lay relationship, he loses power and the community is destroyed which is symbolised in the cinematic narrative with the sacristan’s suicide. In both films the characterisation of the bishop as ‘flesh made word’ provides an ‘excarnate’ template for the characterisation of bishops in Irish film that is still the standard today. The bishop, as ‘flesh made word’, is incompatible with the very ‘faith’ he is to protect. Quinn’s depictions of the bishop as an isolated, optocentric authority lacking in compassion and preoccupied with preventing scandal proves to be just as resonant a depiction to contemporary audiences, if not more so, than it was over two decades ago. Bob Quinn’s clerical films were ostensibly an interrogation of the question of mandatory clerical celibacy that had come to the fore in ecclesial and public discourses in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Within the historical context in which the films are located, the concern was primarily rooted in pragmatic questions about an un-chaste clergy. Quinn’s films reevaluated in the wake of over twenty years of revelation about clerical sexual abuse, as well as attempts by members of the hierarchy to conceal it, add another layer to the textual analysis of Quinn’s films. Societal awareness of the dangers of power imbalances in the spheres of employment, Church 472
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and community, brought about in part by the abuse scandal, allow for the identification of problematic relational dynamics in a much more nuanced way. What Quinn’s films demonstrate to a contemporary audience that they were not able to at the time of their initial release is the inherent problems the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church imposes on its clergy in terms of cultivating relationships of reciprocity, particularly with women. Jacob Martin SJ is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He received his PhD in Film Studies from Trinity College Dublin in 2023. Notes 1 Psychologist Thomas G. Plante points out that research does not support the view that celibacy causes pedophilia and argues that the vast majority of child sexual abusers are not celibate. ‘Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Roman Catholic Church: Dispelling Eleven Myths and Separating Facts from Fiction’, Spirituality in Clinical Practice 7, 4 (December 2020), p. 224. 2 Martin McLoone, Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 2000), p. 131. 3 Richard Kearney, Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense (New York: Columbia University Press: 2021), p. 2. 4 Pádraig Standún, Catacomb Church (Saarbrucken, Germany: Blessed Hope Publishing, 2017), pp. 102–3. 5 Michael Finlan, ‘Asking the Question on Compulsory Celibacy’, Irish Times, 9 May 1992. 6 John A. Weafer, Thirty-Three Good Men: Celibacy, Obedience and Identity (Dublin: Columba, 2014), p. 12. 7 John O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2008), p. 6. 8 Cahal B. Daly, Steps on My Pilgrim Journey: Memories and Reflections (Dublin: Veritas, 1998), p. 132. 9 Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (Vatican: The Holy See, 1967), n. 14 <https://www.vatican.va/ content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_24061967_sacerdotalis.html> 10 Lance Pettitt, Screening Ireland: Film and Television Representation (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 97. 11 Budawanny is an Irish term that translates into English as ‘the monk’s penis’, which serves both as a scatological reference to the subject matter of the film, as well as the name given to a prominent boulder on Clare Island off the coast of County Mayo, where the film was shot. 12 Justin Anderson, ‘When Must One Permit Scandals to Arise? A Comparison of Two Traditions’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 86, 3 (August 2021), p. 256. 13 Richard Kearney, ‘Double Hospitality: Between Word and Touch’, Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion 1, 1 (2019), p. 79. 14 Kearney, ‘Double Hospitality’, p. 80. 15 Kearney, ‘Double Hospitality’, p. 85. 16 Kearney, ‘Double Hospitality’, p. 85. 17 Kearney, ‘Double Hospitality’, p. 80. 18 Kearney, ‘Double Hospitality’, p. 84. 19 McLoone, Irish Film, p. 134. 20 Kearney, Touch, pp. 28–29. 21 Kearney, Touch, p. 36.
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Une Mission Spéciale: Leopold Kerney’s Diplomatic Activities on Behalf of the Irish Republic in France, 1919–23 Barry Whelan On 21 January 1919 two significant events happened in Ireland that reverberated across the world: the War of Independence began and Irish deputies convened a meeting of Dáil Éireann (Irish parliament) to declare independence from the British Empire. Despite emerging exhausted from the Great War, Britain was in no mood to acquiesce in any diminution of its imperial power and would use all means necessary to defeat this independence effort. With both sides destined for a collision, most Irish nationalists understood that the lessons of 1916 could not be repeated, and instead a comprehensive, multifaceted approach from military resistance, fundraising, clerical support, political mobilisation, propaganda and publicity activities at home and abroad would be needed to unshackle Britain’s hold over Ireland. However, writing in 1921 to Ernest Blythe, the Minister for Trade and Commerce, a maverick diplomat named Leopold Kerney argued that the key determinant of success was economics and that attaining economic freedom from Britain would demonstrate to the world that Ireland was autonomous: ‘both the Irish and the English of today thoroughly realise that Ireland cannot retake her place as one of the trading nations of the world while England retains any control over her. That is the great secret of English fear and hatred of Ireland today – the knowledge that our commercial success and political freedom will be inseparable.’1 A change of outlook Leopold Kerney was unique in many other ways. He came from the very world he later despised. Born in 1881 in the prosperous coastal suburb of Sandymount, reared in the Protestant faith, taught to play English sports and educated in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Kerney was typical of the Anglo-Irish community in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century, a world completely removed from his revolutionary compatriots who in the
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main came from working- or middle-class backgrounds and who espoused a Gaelic, Catholic, nationalist identity.2 What changed Kerney’s outlook was economics. His reading of John Mitchel’s writings that attributed the Irish Famine to British maladministration and a chance realisation one day whilst fishing at Poolbeg Lighthouse, when he saw that all the ships sailing up the River Liffey were British and not Irish, forged his belief that only economic independence could secure Ireland’s prosperity, that the country needed its own merchant fleet and that direct trade with continental Europe had to be established to replace British dominance over all maritime commerce. Rejecting a career in the British civil administration, he emigrated in 1901 and spent a decade travelling across Europe before settling in Paris in 1912, where he worked as a cashier and chief accountant. His recruitment to the cause came in 1919, when he introduced himself to Seán T. O’Kelly, one of the Irish delegates sent by the Dáil to secure Irish admission to the Paris Peace Conference. O’Kelly was impressed by Kerney’s knowledge of economics, his fluency in French and republicanism. He asked Kerney to put his theories to the test: ‘I had long entertained the idea of developing direct trade between France and Ireland, and I decided on this occasion to make an experiment in that direction.’3 Armed with suitcases full of French goods, he succeeded quickly in selling them in Dublin and noticed that most buyers found the French products superior to English products. For Kerney the trip confirmed his belief in direct, liberal trade: ‘I succeeded in booking orders from business firms and in thereby proving to my own satisfaction that certain classes of French goods could compete successfully with English ones in Ireland; on various occasions I earned £5 as the result of half an hour’s congenial work, and I easily covered the expenses of my holiday’.4 Whilst in Dublin Kerney met senior figures in the struggle – Michael Collins, Desmond FitzGerald, Ernest Blythe, Art Ó Briain and Robert Brennan – before he was introduced to Arthur Griffith, Acting President of the Dáil.5 Kerney recalled Griffith’s support for promoting Irish trade as a means of asserting independence: ‘I was convinced of the soundness of Arthur Griffith’s policy of direct trade between Ireland and other countries and of the desirability of eliminating the control exercised by English intermediaries over all trade between Ireland and countries other than England.’6 Historian Gerard Keown in his examination of Irish foreign policy in these years identified Griffith as an instrumental figure in defining the roles overseas diplomats were to undertake: ‘Griffith envisaged an Irish consular service
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supplying commercial intelligence and support for Irish business and the establishment of a mercantile marine that would enable Ireland to emulate the commercial success of Norway.’7 It was Griffith who formally handed Kerney his credentials as trade representative, soon to be titled Irish Consul, on behalf of the Dáil: ‘Arthur Griffith produced from one of his pockets £50, representing the first quarter’s payment in advance, in £1 notes, the dirty appearance of which struck me very much; he also handed me my credentials as Trade Representative to France from the elected Government of the Irish Republic.’8 On his return to the continent, Kerney lost no time in travelling across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain, for which he claimed no expenses and built up a network of clients, businessmen and investors who were willing to deal directly with Irish companies rather than through the intermediaries of Britain. He also visited overseas industries to learn their processes and to develop personal contacts that Ireland could use when it built up indigenous industries of its own. Forging connections with Europe During the War of Independence Kerney commissioned a French expert to travel to Arklow to inquire into establishing a sugar beet factory there. The report was not favourable: ‘In the district visited I noticed, for instance, that a peasant who had 50 acres of land had 40 acres of pasturage and only 10 acres tilled.’9 Moreover he found the acreage too small and running costs far too high. Despite this the expert reported that he saw great potential in other areas of the country and, if designated areas were kept free of pasturage for ‘intensive industrial agriculture’ to be undertaken, there was no obstacle to any Irish sugar beet factory producing on average 200 tons per day and an annual supply of 16–20,000 tons in a radius of 12 miles from the plant.10 The expert also argued that the land would be reinvigorated through ploughing and tilling of the soil, the pulp could be used as fodder and the manufacturing process would provide ample employment for rural districts. The report concluded by emphasising the establishment of any sugar beet plant beside a railway line with a special siding to the factory and with access to water. He also supplied Kerney with the names of French companies who could assist in constructing these factories and supplying the necessary machinery for Ireland to establish this new industry after the war. In another report, following a trip to Switzerland, the Irish Consul saw the potential for mass production of peat back home and to learn from the 476
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continent the most efficient means of harvesting and drying peat: ‘A “Buhler” machine will produce at the rate of 30 tons of dried peat per day, working 30 hands from 10 to 11 hours. The peat-cutting season usually starts about 1 May and includes from 80 to 90 working days, thus allowing a production per machine of from 2,000 to 2,600 tons per season.’11 Kerney took note of how the Swiss stored their cuttings in light sheds and how they transported it from there to the railway line: ‘I have seen an extremely simple and efficient loading device for the purpose in operation. In places where the railway is at a distance from the bog, motor or horse lorries are used.’12 Despite efforts by the Swiss to use artificial methods of drying, he learned that sun-drying over 4–5 weeks was the most effective method. He also visited gas factories and inquired how they used peat as a replacement for coal: ‘I am informed by the managers of two gas works which I visited that their furnaces and retorts were designed for coal, but that, given suitable conditions, and plant designed for the purpose, peat might quite conceivably be advantageously substituted for coal […] It appears that special plant for gas distillation from peat has been designed and is at present in operation in Germany.’13 For the Irish Consul, it was clear that given Ireland’s natural resources and sizeable supply of peat, it was propitious to utilise continental experts to help build up nascent industries back home for economic development and employment: ‘From the technical point of view it would probably be essential to import practical experts in the first instance, as well as machinery, but that is a question which should present little difficulty. Peat exploiters here, with all the necessary experience, are already anxious to co-operate with home interests to form a company for the purpose of exploiting peat in Ireland.’14 Kerney also continued his efforts in France to foster direct trade. He felt that this bilateral relationship would instil in the French psyche the notion of Ireland being a separate entity, which was a difficult task given AngloFrench solidarity following the Great War. A common French attitude was to view Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire. He felt direct trade was the best way to offset this perception, because as equal trading partners they would view each other as distinct national entities. This project took time to come to fruition and by the time it did, civil war had broken out in Ireland. Nevertheless Kerney saw the enterprise through and stayed out of the political strife over the Treaty: ‘I was in the happy position that my work was still confined to trade activities and was unaffected by the serious differences which had arisen in the political field at home.’15 A 500,000 franc
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loan was floated for a shipping company to launch direct services between Brest and Cork. After months of negotiations, Kerney had also secured the backing of Cork Chamber of Commerce and Shipping and the Cork Industrial Development Authority for the venture. The French investors purchased a boat, the SS Banba, which carried passengers and goods on a weekly service from Brest, the closest continental port at the time, to Cork and Dublin, with passengers and goods from both countries being carried. Kerney gave interviews to journalists from various newspapers and was honoured with a banquet by the Cork Chamber.16 The Banba project was a watershed moment. For the first time, the foundations of large-scale direct trade between Ireland and France had been achieved. It marked a significant break in Ireland’s historic link as a colony because it challenged Britain’s monopoly and total control over all maritime traffic around the Irish seas. Psychologically it also demonstrated that Ireland could manage its own external trade affairs, symbolically shown by the tricolor on the ship’s mast. For Kerney personally, standing on the ship’s deck on that maiden voyage, this proud moment fulfilled a lifetime’s dream and a key principle of his republican philosophy – economic freedom for Ireland and a reorientation of its economy towards the continent. He had achieved all this largely on his own with no resources or staff support. As he recorded a few years later: ‘A mercantile marine is better than a navy, any day.’17 Trade as a component of Irish foreign policy Throughout the War of Independence, the Dáil had encouraged a boycott of British goods, something Kerney performed with gusto in France and which he relished carrying out: ‘nothing gave me greater pleasure than to translate and circulate as widely as possible the successive Boycott Orders which reached me from Mr Blythe, Minister for Commerce’.18 However, the Irish Consul took matters further and worked to directly undermine vital assets for the British economy. Through discussions with French importers, the Consul discovered that Ireland possessed a rare resource – Carrageen moss. The western seaboard held the largest stocks of this seaweed in the world, it was premium quality, and it was a vital product used for everything from iodine, fertilizer, chemical manure, cosmetics and smokeless briquettes. In one stroke, if fair prices could be secured with another competitor like France, it would deprive Britain of a key resource: ‘it would however be necessary to get to work quietly as there is no doubt that English interests 478
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would make every possible effort to stop any such development, which would have for result to deprive England of her present world monopoly in Iodine’.19 One French investor, Paul Gloess, had a seaweed factory in Brest, Finistère, and was prepared to invest in establishing an Irish factory in the west to process the seaweed before its transport back to Brest on the Banba. For the Irish Consul this was a unique opportunity to build up ‘an industry which should enrich the Country’.20 Kerney liaised with the Dublin Industrial Development Association (DIDA) to find companies interested in this new industry. The DIDA was very receptive to the project: ‘As this business would particularly help the people of the poorer districts, it is one in which I am exceptionally interested as I know you are, too, and I shall be happy to do anything possible to assist in bringing you into touch with those likely to have expert knowledge of the subject.’21 Another lesson Kerney took from this project was the realisation that French investors were more amenable to making long-term investments to promote bilateral trade than Irish investors. He informed Blythe that French banks should be encouraged to establish themselves in Ireland: ‘A decision of this kind would meet with the unanimous approval of all the business men in the country, and the success of a French bank in Ireland would be extraordinary.’22 He also advocated for the establishment of a Central Statistics Office: ‘It is of the very utmost importance that Ireland should have an efficient Statistical Department, and that the fruits of its labours should be promptly placed at the disposal of the public.’23 This was not implemented until 1949. The more companies that decided to trade directly with Ireland rather than through the intermediary of London, the more Ireland’s political separateness was asserted. Trade was now an important component of foreign policy, a point historian Agnès Maillot identified with Arthur Griffith: ‘Griffith was convinced that political autonomy would have little weight if it was not supported by economic independence.’24 Ireland’s largest industry was agriculture and in the post-war years there was great opportunity for Irish farmers and producers to sell their produce on the continent owing to the territorial devastation and enormous decline in animal numbers caused by the Great War. In one of the few areas of post-war international economic collaboration, France set up the International Agricultural Confederation (IAC), made up of twelve countries and designed to encourage interstate trade and cooperation. On 12 July 1921 the IAC held its annual meeting in Paris, which was attended by the Irish Farmers’ Union. The Irish delegation
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marketed their produce to French, Italian, Belgian, Dutch and Eastern European delegates. The Irish delegation to the IAC Kerney led the Irish delegation at the conference and used these international events not just to foster trade but also to psychologically assert the real presence of an independent Irish delegation to his European counterparts. The conference proved a major success for trade and publicity purposes and Kerney drafted a proposal to hold the next annual meeting in Dublin to coincide with the RDS Horse Show.25 This was a shrewd idea as the war had drastically reduced draught horse numbers on the continent. The Irish horse breed was of excellent stock and other related equestrian goods, such as oats, could also be showcased to potential buyers. The French had approached Kerney about the possibility of allowing Britain to join the IAC the following year. Still conscious that Ireland was at war with France’s former wartime ally and never one to miss a chance to undermine Britain, Kerney said that such a move would require a reciprocal invitation to Germany, which the French naturally rejected. Within the Irish mission in Paris the two most prominent individuals were Seán T. O’Kelly and George Gavan Duffy, who had initially come to the French capital to garner public support for Irish independence and to gain admission to the Paris Peace Conference. In 1920 O’Kelly was suddenly struck down with illness and Duffy took over as head of the diplomatic mission. As far as the Minister for Finance – Michael Collins – and the Minister for Trade and Commerce – Ernest Blythe – were concerned, Kerney was answerable to Duffy for all his activities. This situation changed after Kerney’s position was made full time and permanent that year. He requested that his consular work be treated separately to the main mission, that his accounts be distinct and that he be accorded a different premises to operate from. Blythe was displeased with the Irish Consul’s recommendations and wrote to Duffy that he was prepared to ‘wash my hands of him (Kerney)’.26 However, Duffy defended his colleague to the government, writing that he was on ‘excellent terms’ with Kerney who was doing a stellar job and besides, Duffy had too much already to do without the added responsibility of monitoring the consular official.27 On 13 July Collins apologised for causing any friction in the Paris mission, advanced £700 for the lease of a flat, 4 Rue de la Terrasse, as Kerney’s home and office, and he agreed to 480
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separate the work of the Consul and the delegation from now on. Collins also agreed with Kerney’s suggestion that his consular account be independently audited every financial year. The diplomatic mission was expanded further when Michael MacWhite, a former soldier in the French Foreign Legion, and Joseph Walshe joined the staff. Kerney worked well with MacWhite, and they co-founded an Irish– French society and liaised on propaganda work. Unfortunately Kerney did not get on well with Walshe, who was a devout Catholic and dismissive of trade as a component of foreign policy, as historian Dermot Keogh noted: ‘He was inclined to interpret his role rather narrowly looking askance at such “plebeian” areas as trade and commerce, which had to be “tolerated.”’28 Despite these differences, which can be attributed in part to the stresses of the time and to the rather small organisation of the Paris mission, the delegation collectively was united in its cause for Irish independence. Kerney’s own standing amongst his colleagues can be measured by the fact that he was also responsible for arranging the most important event in the mission’s calendar – the St Patrick’s Day celebration for the Irish diaspora in Paris and sympathisers of the cause.29 In 1920 Kerney’s wife Raymonde had made an Irish flag with the colours green, white, and gold. When she unveiled it to her husband and to Seán T. O’Kelly both men departed for a private chat to discuss whether Raymonde had got the colours correct: ‘at that early stage in our struggle, I think there was some uncertainty as to whether the third colour should be gold or orange.’30 Not wanting to offend her, he informed his wife it was perfect and he used that same flag on every mission he served in until his retirement in 1946. The Consul’s trade work continued unabated. Often his successes came in small steps but each one advanced Ireland’s cause in a country that still did not recognise the Irish diplomatic mission or the Irish Republic. Kerney managed to persuade the French commercial directory ‘Bottin’ to cite Ireland under a separate heading. He used his contacts within the French civil service to pass on contact details of leading firms and manufacturers to him. More and more the presence of Ireland became better known to the French public and to state authorities, who previously only heard about Ireland mainly through British news agencies. Kerney was given a prominent position as a distinguished guest – Consul General of the Irish Republic – by the Mayor of Lyons – Edouard Herriot – at the inauguration of the Lyons Fair and after the banquet he gave interviews to newspapers promoting Ireland. Before long he
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was able to link Irish and French firms together to foster closer trading links: ‘Many French firms availed themselves of the opportunity thus presented to them. My work attracted the attention of the French authorities, and I received notable assistance from the Office National du Commerce Exterieur. I received many visits from Irish exporters and importers. I remember having Irish toilet soap put on sale in Paris, and, at the same time, French household soap imported into Ireland. I helped to establish a trade in rabbit skins with France. I met with some success in having “jambon de York” retailed to the public as “Irish ham.”’31 Kerney’s work undermined France was the most important continental outpost during the revolutionary years 1919–23, and the collegial and pioneering efforts Ireland’s nascent diplomatic service undertook there to secure Irish independence by mobilising international opinion was significant. Kerney’s role in that effort was unique in that whilst he worked alongside his colleagues on propaganda, cultural and political matters, it was trade that became for him the keystone to demonstrate that an Irish Republic could stand on its own two feet. The tragedy for him and for his colleagues was that their success in these endeavours would be undermined by the Irish Civil War, which turned friends into enemies and made the political instability of the country unattractive to foreign investors for many years to come. Kerney would go on to serve as the anti-Treaty diplomatic and consular representative in France, an action which earned him opprobrium. Joseph Walshe labelled him a ‘common thief’.32 Desmond FitzGerald, Minister for External Affairs, stood in the Dáil and described Kerney’s actions as ‘treachery’.33 However Kerney would maintain the confidence of republicans, and was reinstated into the diplomatic service in 1932 by Éamon de Valera. He would serve in France, Spain, and on a special post-war mission to South America. His economic philosophy never changed: It is to England’s advantage that Ireland should be a pastoral country. England is thus assured of vast supplies of cattle, sheep and dairy produce. England buys these exports at a price which is less than she pays elsewhere. The population of Ireland is reduced to a minimum, for, no matter how big Irish families may be, they cannot find employment in a pastoral Ireland. A broad policy of economic reconstruction is a vital necessity, and it should not be beyond the wit of Irishmen – free 482
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from British interference – to devise a policy which might be applied over a period of 10, 20, 30 years or more, whereby a transition to a more rational economic system might be accomplished.34 Dr Barry Whelan lectures on modern Irish and European history at Dublin City University. Notes 1 Leopold Kerney Papers (LKP), Report entitled ‘The Industrial Oppression of Ireland’, Leopold Kerney to Ernest Blythe, 8 January 1921. 2 Barry Whelan, Ireland’s Revolutionary Diplomat: A Biography of Leopold Kerney (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), p. 16. 3 LKP, ‘The First Irish Consul in Paris, 31 July 1925’, memorandum, 1. 4 LKP, ‘The First Irish Consul’, memorandum, 1. 5 Michael Collins (Minister for Finance), Desmond FitzGerald (Substitute Director of Propaganda), Ernest Blythe (Director of Trade and Commerce), Art Ó Briain (Dáil Éireann Envoy in Britain), Robert Brennan (Sinn Féin Director of Elections). 6 Dublin, Military Archives (MA), Bureau of Military History (BMH), Witness Statement (WS) 825, 1. 7 Gerard Keown, First of the Small Nations: The Beginnings of Irish Foreign Policy in the Interwar Years, 1919–1932 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 15. 8 MA, BMH, WS 825, 3. 9 LKP, Report entitled ‘Views of French Expert on Irish Sugar Industry’, Leopold Kerney summary of 1921 report to Sinn Féin Weekly Editor, 26 August 1924, 1. 10 LKP, ‘Views of French Expert’, 1. 11 LKP, ‘Report on the Peat Industry in Switzerland 23.8.20’, 2–3. 12 LKP, ‘Report on the Peat Industry’, 4. 13 LKP, ‘Report on the Peat Industry’, 5. 14 LKP, ‘Report on the Peat Industry’, 6. 15 MA, BMH, WS 825, 7. 16 Irish Independent, 3 October 1922. 17 LKP, Report entitled ‘Export Possibilities in Butchery Horses’, Leopold Kerney to the Sinn Féin Weekly Editor, 29 July 1924. 18 MA, BMH, WS 825, 5. 19 LKP, Letter from Leopold Kerney to Miss Somers of the Dublin Industrial Development Association, 17 January 1923. 20 LKP, Letter from Leopold Kerney to Miss Somers, 26 April 1923. 21 LKP, Letter from Miss Somers to Leopold Kerney, 5 February 1923. 22 LKP, undated report entitled ‘The Importance of Ireland’s Foreign Trade’ by Leopold Kerney to Ernest Blythe. 23 LKP, Report entitled ‘Reflections on Ireland’s Economic Position’, Leopold Kerney to Sinn Féin Weekly Editor, 27 January 1924. 24 Agnès Maillot, New Sinn Féin: Irish Republicanism in the Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 8. 25 Irish Times, 19 August 1921. 26 Dublin, University College Dublin Archives (UCDA), George Gavan Duffy Papers, P152/124, Ernest Blythe to George Gavan Duffy, 2 July 1920. 27 UCDA, Duffy Papers, P152/126, George Gavan Duffy to Michael Collins, 3 July 1920. 28 Dermot Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics 1919–39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 127. 29 MA, BMH, WS 825, 7. 30 MA, BMH, WS 825, 7.
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Review Articles
Closing In on Closeness: The Key to Learning for Life? Fiachra Long, Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning: The Challenge of Proximity (London and New York: Routledge, 2023), xiv– 186 pages. ‘The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.’ The book under review might be read as a response to this indictment by A. N. Whitehead of the sterility of much that goes on in schools: its author is attempting to retrieve what first-handedness might be in a learning context. This latter phrase seems a good enough synonym for ‘proximity’ in the book’s subtitle: Fiachra Long wants to describe a kind of learning that is near or close – close to the heft of things in the world, close to the pith of learners’ own experience, close to the leanings of their minds and hearts. It may seem paradoxical that, in this task of evoking a kind of immediacy, Long takes a mediating route: to develop conceptual resources for the task, he enlists the aid of a diverse cast of seven philosophers, whose thought he unfolds in successive essay-chapters. Belying ‘phenomenology’ in the book’s title, only three of these (Edmund Hussserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty) belong in that movement, while three others have their homes elsewhere (Michel Foucault in structuralism and post-structuralism, Donald Winnicott in psychoanalysis, and Axel Honneth in Critical Theory); and the ancient thinker with whom he begins is Plato, whereas Aristotle’s working method in ethical and political enquiry might seem to qualify him as the ur-phenomenologist.
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Vindicating life-experience If all this seems to make Long’s project an unlikely one, his book will richly reward philosophically attuned readers, who will admire his skill in elucidating the work of some formidably difficult thinkers. At the same time – and this is a rare feat – it will draw in and engross readers, especially teachers, who are already burdened by a disappointed though perhaps largely inarticulate awareness of how carelessly students’ potential for learning is sold short by the well-worn routines of many classrooms. Most satisfyingly, the book is not one more relentless critique of alienation, reification, fetishism etc. that, however theoretically sophisticated, can leave a reader on razed earth, feeling more powerless than enlightened. Long does indeed engage in deconstructive critique, his main target being the Cartesian conception, now deeply embedded in modern Western cultures, of a detached ego, aloof from the world, from its own body, and from all the attachments and entanglements of relationship and of language. But this criticism serves only to banish illusions of mastery inherent in a technocratic culture that assumes such a self-sufficient and self-transparent ego. And this banishment opens the way to Long’s main endeavour in the book: to disclose what is all too easily covered over and unacknowledged in – and indeed suppressed by – our established ways of formulating policy for and conducting research on the practice of education. These ways tend to assume that, being impoverished, life-experience has to be ‘enhanced’ or ‘optimised’ by the deliverances of expert knowledge, purchased through distance, detachment, control, replicability, and submission to the norms of scientific research (in which we suppose ourselves to be well supported by clear concepts, precise analysis, rigorous argumentation, and fail-safe modes of verification or proof). Long is not appealing to philosophy as a similar kind of expertise to be mobilised for the added value it can bring to ordinary experience. Rather his book is an attempt to unpack – or rather to allow-to-appear, as suggested by the Greek root of ‘phenomenology’ – what is always already implicit in experience. Such disclosure involves a kind of digging (‘archaeology’ is a favoured metaphor of Foucault) in which one tries to find and, without intrusive disturbance, read rightly what is layered in the underground of our lives. Eugene Gendlin, a phenomenologist not mentioned by Long, has written: ‘We think more than we can say; we feel more than we can think; we live more than we can feel; and there is much else besides…’. It is this ‘more’ in our thinking, feeling, and living, and this ‘much else besides’, that 486
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Long seeks to unearth and vindicate. And here there is a further element of paradox: Long reaches for what often eludes language, but this reaching is itself a linguistic performance; it transpires in the medium of words. If this paradox does not enforce silence on him, it does require a kind of writing that is supple and evocative – a challenge to which he is well equal. Beyond the impressive scholarship that informs it, his book is an exercise in sustained thoughtfulness; even while leading the reader through the alpine heights of Husserl’s thought or through the oracular density of Heidegger’s discourse, he is a lucid guide, with a humane and genial voice. Without dumbing down, he has a disarmingly light touch – in one place he explicates Heidegger by reference to Spiderman and ‘my pet Tiger Romeo’, and elsewhere he offers sensitively observed and nicely turned vignettes – there are especially delightful ones on an infant’s comportment with its mother in a doctor’s waiting room and a young child’s with its father on a bus – and even a phenomenological riff on a ‘pint’ (‘consider the humble glass of beer…’ (p. 147))! ‘Proximity’ is of course a metaphor (with a more literal base in Lev Vygotsky’s well-known concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’), though this fact hardly tells against Long’s huge reliance on it throughout the book. As Iris Murdoch has aptly observed, ‘metaphors are not merely peripheral decorations or even useful models, they are fundamental forms of our awareness of our condition’. Still, the metaphor of proximity is greatly extended and stretched in both carrying the many varied meanings that Long intends for it and in serving as a kind of interpretative key to all the strikingly diverse thinkers whom he has assembled. I will advert briefly to its more important meanings and conclude with a few questions. An extended metaphor First, ‘proximity’ means wide-awakeness, aliveness to the here and now, attentiveness to what addresses you in the moment, without the overlay of projection and phantasy, or surrender to tired convention and cliché. Here ‘proximate’ picks out and valorises a certain quality of experience and, as contrasted with ‘distant’ or ‘remote’, is regularly interchangeable with the positively indexed terms in such other contrasts as living/dead, fresh/stale, deep/shallow, soft/rigid, engaged/indifferent, vivid/dull, raw/’cooked’, and flowing/fixed. Next, thinking and ideas are close ‘if the child feels welcomed into the precincts of the problem’ (p. 57), and if puzzlement and confusion
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are allowed rather than prematurely dispelled. Alluding to Socrates’s ability to find the right pressure points in arousing such puzzlement in his interlocutors, while holding them in a kind of dialogical clinch, Long refers to close teaching, close questioning and close conversation. In quite a different sense, closeness is linked with Heidegger’s notion of ‘ready-to-handedness’, the ease and fittingness with which familiar things in our environment afford us a kind of pre-reflective competence (as a chair accommodates our sitting, a stairs our climbing, a cup our drinking, or a mobile phone a multiplicity of daily functionings) – never a cold competence but a ‘mooded’ one, already imbued with care or concern. This taken-forgranted attunement between humans and their world – so that it is a lived world or Lebensweld – is further elaborated in a chapter on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on its deeply embodied character. And another aspect of humanbeing-in-the-world emphasised by Heidegger is also brought under the rubric of ‘proximity’: our inescapable exposure to risk, an exposure that we all too easily try to distance ourselves from, but only at the cost of inauthenticity and boredom. Next, in a chapter on Winnicott, proximity brings us back to the closeness of the infant–mother bond: Long interprets this bond (with a ‘good enough’ maternal figure) as establishing in the infant a kind of trans-individual subsoil of personality that endows them with a sense of omnipotence; and rather than seeing this sense as betraying a kind of primary narcissism that must be outgrown (if also mourned) in the movement towards maturity, as Freud and many psychoanalysts do, Long understands it as an entirely positive enablement that has to remain somehow on tap in all subsequent encounters in which learning is at stake. In a final chapter on Honneth, then, proximity is linked with the wider web of relationships in which a person finds their being, so that they depend on recognition by multifarious others for any reliably stable standing in the world (as Long makes this point with characteristic expressiveness: ‘If we are lucky, we are loved into life; if not, we flounder about, suffering from a pain we cannot describe’ (p. 172). We touch here on a crucial, recurring feature of the whole argument throughout the book: the intention to subvert any settled sense I might have of being or possessing a sovereign self or executive ego as thinker of my thoughts, chooser of my actions, planner of my projects, or author of my life-script. Against any such sense, and with several of his chosen thinkers, he often stresses the role of what is ‘pre’ in my experience – the ‘pre488
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reflective’, ‘pre-predicative’, ‘prescientific’, ‘pre-thetic’ (Husserl) – what is not constructed by me, though it is always operative in my habitual ways of going on. This feature comes out most forcefully perhaps in the chapter on Foucault: while I may imagine that my words are proximate to me because they are mine, in fact language pre-exists as collective anonymous structures that pre-form me and all other speakers. While unable to do justice to it here, I hope that I have said enough to show that this book is a very significant contribution to contemporary philosophy of education. It has a distinctive integrity that will make it compelling reading both for those interested in its array of key thinkers and, more valuably, for those with some feel for the pervasive and deeply important issue about educative teaching that is its central concern. Its argument is richly variegated, ambitiously synthetic, erudite, and persuasive; indeed it is all the more persuasive because it remains congruously close to closeness, elucidating this central conception as it were from within. How, then, might a reviewer reach for some critical response? Perhaps by looking out for potential casualties of the author’s very success in making his case! Might the argument’s momentum be sustained only at the cost of some elements that need fuller acknowledgement and integration? There are indeed occasional passages in the book where these elements are briefly adverted to, even while running athwart its overall thrust. And so what is involved here may be a difference of emphasis rather than a matter of substantive philosophical disagreement. Still, it seems worthwhile to raise a few questions. Some friendly questions First is a question about the semantics of the book’s deployment of its central metaphor or trope. Might the relationship between proximity and distance be thought through in less binary terms, so that the former is less unequivocally endorsed at the latter’s expense? This possibility seems to be raised when mention is made at one point of ‘a play on distance/closeness that proves to be a constant motif throughout life’ (p. 144). A potentially fruitful line of questioning opened up by this remark is hardly pursued, however. With due allowance for variations in context, is distancing not reconcilable with and even necessary – and sometimes indeed preferable – to closeness? To get closer to Cork, I have to get further from Dublin. Post COVID, teleworking may suit certain jobs very well – while greater remoteness from the company office creates greater (though not always welcome!) closeness to the family home. In some situations what’s needed is precisely a safe distance and not Studies • volume 112 • number 448
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too many close calls. Similarly, in perception, we cannot of course see well what is too far away; but, by the same token, bring a page too close up against your eyes and otherwise legible text becomes a blur (touch of course is very different from sight and, being altogether nullified by distance, chimes fully with Long’s thesis: if it be the touch-stone sense, then closeness is all!). Is a proper kind of distancing not essential also to many important kinds of knowledge? Historical judgement, for example, has to take account of the experiences of protagonists in, and the reports of eye-witnesses to, important events; but a more complete understanding of these events emerges when all such first-hand evidence is sifted through, complemented, and tested from the perspectives of later historians. Or again, in the reading of texts, ‘temporal distance’ may be seen as enabling interpretation – so that there is truth in the apparently counter-intuitive claim (in a tradition of hermeneutics from Schleiermacher to Gadamer) that a later interpreter can understand a text better than its original author. Or in a quite different context, Paulo Freire claims that those suffering oppression are all too close to their lifeexperience; hence an education that will serve them well must indeed represent this experience back to them accurately but only in a context (what Freire calls ‘the theoretical context of dialogue’) in which they have gained the kind of distance from it that enables critical reflection on, insight into, and thereby some measure of liberation from, it. On this point, is Freire very distant from some of Long’s own allies – from Socrates on the pedagogical need to alienate people from their untethered ideas or indeed from Husserl’s founding conception of the phenomenological ‘reduction’ (the crucial movement ‘back to the things themselves’) as a suspension of the ‘natural attitude’ (in which our consciousness is encrusted with lazy prejudices and out-worn expectations)? A more substantial question concerns the book’s sustained assault on the idea of a sovereign self. Does this assault run too close to undermining not only an illusory sovereignty but a necessary and ungainsayable selfhood? A more or less consistent self – however contingent and precarious it may be, not only because of unfavourable conditions or particular misfortunes in any individual life-course but because of the human condition itself – is surely presupposed by genuinely educative work, if not as its starting point then at least as its goal. This point seems to be recognised in the book’s casting of Plato’s Socrates as the hero of its opening chapter. We read there that a student subjected to the discipline of Socratic pedagogy ‘discovers that the 490
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truth lies much closer to himself than he had thought before’ (p. 9). This claim is illustrated by reference to the youthful Lysis in Plato’s dialogue of that name. Under the pressure of Socrates’ questioning, Lysis is led to ask: ‘Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I now know? … When addressed I now must answer for a self I hardly recognise. Often our pupils are never addressed. Who me? What do I think of the evaporation of the liquid … the poem, the historical event?’ (p. xiii). These words evoke a truly humanistic education, for which each individual pupil, each ‘I’, counts immeasurably. While one cannot doubt Fiachra Long’s deep commitment to such an education, my question is whether his book does enough to furnish a viable conception of the self of the learner who must be at its centre.1 How is the ‘I’, so eloquently evinced in his early reference to Socrates, to be reconciled with various elaborations of proximity in subsequent chapters? Or, to put the matter more provocatively, might phenomenology be read as a kind of trojan horse in the book for structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives in which the ‘death of the subject’ is not to be mourned? A final, related question may be pressed. It is not only education but ethics – and ethics as fundamental to education – that requires a self that can be held accountable by others, as it holds both others and itself to account. Such accountability is possible only in relation to what, beyond the preferences of all individual selves, is right or good. Wherein does this good reside? A reader might conclude that it resides in proximity itself: if a person embraces and lives out all the various aspects of proximity outlined in the book then ipso facto they will live a good life. Phenomenology, one might say, comes equipped with its own ethics. But – and again, tellingly, in the opening chapter on Plato – Long goes beyond such a view and the kind of naturalism or vitalism that it may entail: ‘It is neither cognitive nor emotional proximity that is in question but the learner’s proximity to the “good” that reveals the learner’s limitations to himself’ (p. 12); ‘the challenge to be good’, he affirms, ‘must remain the central purpose in anyone’s education’ (p. 18). Although this emphasis on the good recedes in the rest of the book, it finds a brief expression later when Long distances himself from the nihilism, as he sees it, of Heidegger’s identification of authenticity with resolute beingtowards-death. ‘[R]ather than end up with a dark view of life … ’, he writes, ‘a certain kind of vision is required, a vision of the good’ (p. 79). Perhaps it is too much to expect from a book that already does so much, and does it so very well, that it should also amplify these tantalising remarks and make a
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vision of the good – and of how we may be drawn closer to it – more integral to its overall argument. A surely welcome sequel, then, would be further work from the author, engaging more fully with the interrelated issues so interestingly implicit in Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning and raised so brusquely here. Dr Joseph Dunne is Cregan Professor of Philosophy and Education, Emeritus, at Dublin City University. His What’s the Good of Education? A Philosophy of Persons in Practices is due from Bloomsbury Academic in mid-2024. Notes 1 The notion of narrative offers one way of conceptualising some continuity and coherence in the unfolding of an individual self – and has been ably put to this purpose by several thinkers who concur with Long’s strictures on sovereignty, such as Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. And a quite different recourse to narrative relates to a conceptual contrast that aligns nicely with Long’s own: in her epic book Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford, 2010), Eleonore Stump characterises our ‘second-person’ knowledge of those close to us as ‘Franciscan’, understanding it to reside in immediate, direct perception of the other, a perception best rendered in narratives or stories and communicable only with much loss in ‘third person’ descriptions or explanatory accounts, which she dubs ‘Dominican’. Here she is reworking Bertrand Russell’s distinction between ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ and ‘knowledge by description’, a canonical distinction in Anglophone ‘analytical’ philosophy that offers a paler, thinner version of what Long illuminates with the help of his ‘continental’ sources.
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The First Jesuit Missions to Ireland Mary Ann Lyons & Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2022), 269 pages. On opening this book, the reader discovers that it is a collection of eleven essays that owe their origin to letters by Irish Jesuits, written mainly in Latin, from 1566 to shortly before the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. Moreover, those letters had been translated and published in book form in recent years. This requires some explanation. Mise en scène In 2010 the Irish Jesuit province, wishing to mark the bicentenary of the restoration of the Society (1814), embarked on an ambitious archival and publication project, namely to calendar and publish correspondence between the Society’s superiors general and Jesuit superiors in Ireland, and to produce the full texts of the annual letters in English. The first of the resultant publications appeared in 2017 – The Jesuit Irish mission; a calendar of correspondence, 1566–1752 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 654 pages), edited by Vera Moynes. This publication revealed to scholars the richness of the Society’s correspondence regarding Irish Jesuits and their activities in Ireland and on the continent. The second publication appeared two years later – Irish Jesuit annual letters, 1604–1674 (Irish Manuscripts Commission). It lent further impetus to scholarly examination of the Jesuit ministry in seventeenth-century Ireland. Its editor, Vera Moynes, on this occasion also, provides ‘excellent critical commentary on the context, purpose, compilation, form and usefulness for historiography of these letters, in what is essential reading for all historians intending to use them’. Their ‘usefulness for historiography’ is manifested in the present Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1550–1760. The co-authors, Lyons & Mac Cuarta, in their informative introduction to the book, explain that there were three Jesuit missions to Ireland. The first in 1542, shortly after the establishment of the order, was poorly informed on the Irish scene and lasted only a few months. The second mission began in 1560 with the arrival of David Wolfe, an Irish Jesuit, as papal envoy to Ireland. A Limerick man, he made his home city his base. He was assisted by an English Jesuit, William Good, and an Irish Jesuit scholastic (a Jesuit Studies • volume 112 • number 448
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still in formation), Edmond Daniel. The mission achieved considerable success in terms of Wolfe’s appointment of bishops, but, as the relevant essay indicates, struggled with political opposition, apparent public indifference, and eventually was forced to close in 1580. The third mission, which began in 1596, continued until the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. The first of the Irish Jesuit annual letters appeared in 1604, during the third mission. The wealth of material contained in the Calendar of Correspondence and the Annual Letters is reflected in the range of titles given to the eleven essays or chapters in the present work: ‘The correspondence of William Good SJ and the Jesuit mission in Elizabethan Ireland, 1564–1570’; ‘The Jesuit urban mission in Ireland, c. 1598–1650’; ‘The Latin style of the Irish Literae Annuae Societatis Jesu’; ‘Popular preaching and the Jesuit mission in seventeenth-century Ireland’; ‘Women and Jesuit ministry in Ireland, c. 1600–c. 1670’; ‘The Jesuits and music in early modern Ireland’; ‘Irish Jesuits and the evolution of religious controversy: an episode from the 1630s’; ‘Jesuit conversions in Wentworth’s Ireland, the Slingsby family, County Cork, in the 1630s’; ‘Jesuit involvement in exorcism in 17th century Ireland’; ‘ ‘The best teachers in the world’; Jesuit schooling in Ireland, 1660–90’; and finally, ‘Une maison de refuge: the Irish Jesuit college in Poitiers, 1674–1762’. Of the documents calendared for Ireland, the vast bulk of them have been described as ‘the upper level of that day-to-day ex officio correspondence which the Jesuit superior general, Ignatius Loyola, and his followers, stipulated to be written and sent to Rome by each provincial or mission superior, but also by senior members such as local superiors and consultors’. In Ireland, ‘this steady stream of documents to and fro occurred in the secrecy enforced by an anti-Catholic English government whose actions were at their most severe following an edict of 1605, after the Ulster revolt of 1641, and during the Cromwellian wars (1649–1653). This correspondence also faced the general perils of long-distance communications that depended on middlemen and merchants in the absence of a trustworthy postal system.’ It is important to the historian to examine the purpose of the letters in the mind of Ignatius Loyola. As the Society expanded and his followers, often in small groups, were scattered across the world, he envisaged a system of communication that would unite men far from home with the main body of the Society and would be a source of edification for them. To the Irish scene, the Jesuits brought the teachings of the Council of Trent and concentrated on catechising and the sacraments (especially confession). In their written 494
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accounts they spoke of devotional practices, cures obtained by prayers to Francis Xavier and Ignatius or by the use of emblems relating to them, and remarkable reconciliations achieved in marriages and in disputes between families. The pious presentation of such material may leave the historian questioning the credibility of the account. At the same time, however, Ignatius was adamant that the written accounts were to be ‘truthful’. Having examined hundreds of letters and documents, Vera Moynes was of the opinion that ‘if used with discretion, they cast a bright (if refracted) light on the works of the missions, on adversaries (be they Catholic or Protestant), and on the interactions with the faithful’. Finally, despite the many references to Jesuits in Irish State Papers and elsewhere, the number of men deployed on the Irish mission was quite small compared to the older religious orders, and even then the numbers reflected historical events. They grew from two in 1598 to sixty-seven in 1644, after the Cromwellian Wars they fell to eighteen (1654) and to a nadir of six in 1690. They gradually increased to 27 by 1755, and to 17 at the time of the Suppression (1773). The essays: broader themes With respect to The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760, its collection of eleven essays do not present a comprehensive history of Jesuit activity and influence in early modern Ireland, rather, each contribution focuses on a specific aspect of the Jesuit mission and identifies scope for further research. Alexander DeWitt and Thomas McCoog, in ‘The Correspondence of William Good, SJ, and the Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan Ireland. 1560– c.1570’, examine the challenges encountered by the three Jesuits involved in the order’s second mission, namely David Wolfe, Edmund Daniel, and William Good. It was ‘a transition period in Irish religious history’, when Elizabeth I’s ecclesiastical supremacy was still a novelty, the Catholic Church continued to hold out hope for her conversion, and the Irish public were confused about their religious allegiance. A particular aspect of their study is an in-depth analysis of five letters by the Englishman William Good regarding his first two years in Ireland (1565–6). De Witt and McCoog view Good’s five letters as making a unique contribution to the overall picture of the second Jesuit mission. They examine the letters and contextualise them in the light of current scholarship on Tudor Ireland. The letters are replete
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with details of Good’s travels, the activities of the schools they established in Limerick, Kilmallock and Clonmel, various pastoral ministries undertaken by them, and the internal difficulties – psychological, physical, spiritual – that often occurred among the three men. Good did not speak Irish, and this plus the fact that he was English created problems for him in relating to adults and to children in the classroom. He found it hard to accept the seeming lukewarmness of the Limerick population towards their religion – professing to be Catholic while still attending the services prescribed by the government. He found them less than cooperative. In the school, where various ages were all together in one room, he was faced with tumult and was unable to exert control. So much was discouraging that he tried to persuade Wolfe to end the mission and return to Rome. Wolfe refused to do so. The authorities terminated the school in Limerick and endeavoured to arrest Wolfe. The three Jesuits moved to Killmallock, County Limerick, then to Clonmel, County Tipperary, ran schools in each place, which they were soon obliged to leave before returning to Limerick. Their work there ended with the arrest and imprisonment of Wolfe in 1567. A positive and consoling feature in their relations with the Limerick population was the support they received from women. One person stood out, Helena Stackpool, a widow, who was prepared to provide shelter and spiritual support to the three Jesuits. A strong, pious woman, she was regarded as ‘the spiritual daughter’ of David Wolfe by whose precepts and counsels she lived. She established an uncloistered female apostolate known as the mena bochta (Irish. Mna bochta). Wolfe drew up a rule of life for them. They dressed in black and wore black veils in the style of ‘religieuses’ whom he had seen on the continent. On Wolfe’s instruction, Helena and her companions engaged in charitable works, which included working with the poor and seeking the reform of local women who were leading immoral lives. Helena nursed back to health Fr Good when he fell seriously ill shortly after his arrival in 1564 and was in a coma for a number of days. At this juncture, it is appropriate to move forward to the essay by Mary Ann Lyons on ‘Women and Jesuit Ministry in Ireland, 1600–1670’. It deals with the third Jesuit mission and with a population more concerned about their religion. Lyons observes that during the years 1600–1670, the Jesuits annual letters show that both women and men ‘attended sermons and catechism lessons, received the sacraments, were members of sodalities, venerated relics, and provided lodgings for priests in their homes’. She notes, 496
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however, that the Society of Jesus ‘held a particular appeal for a significant cohort of women in Ireland, who took advantage of their relative immunity from persecution, and their autonomy within domestic contexts, to lend support to the order, particularly as it struggled to establish residences in the early 1600s and again in the post-Cromwellian era. For their part, the Jesuits actively cultivated female engagement through their routine ministry, their support for female religious communities, sodalities, and vulnerable women, and their collaboration with female benefactors in the establishment of residences … ’ Lyons added that while women such as Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Countess of Kildare, who acted as ‘abetters and harbourers’ of Jesuit priests, ‘may be regarded as complicit in the anomalous evolution of Counter-Reformation Catholicism in Ireland, they were essential to its adoption and survival’. Elizabeth Fitzgerald (nee Nugent) was remarkable in her support and in her endowments. After her husband’s death in 1612, she remained at Maynooth Castle. Her cousin, Robert Nugent, superior of the Jesuit mission, and some fellow Jesuits made their centre in Maynooth. Crowds of up to 800 people came to them on certain feast days for mass, sermons and confessions. In Dublin in the 1620s she built a number of houses, which included Kildare Hall and a novitiate for the Jesuits. The Annual Report, 1629, reported that the Hall had a large hall and 26 rooms, 12 for the novices. There was a furnished residence for 24 people and a large chapel, complete with vessels and vestments. In addition Nugent and his companions had the use of her Kilkea Castle in County Kildare. After she died in October 1645, Nugent wrote to the Society’s vicar-general Carlo Sangrio that she was ‘truly the mother of our Society in this realm’. Responding to Nugent in April 1646, the Jesuit superior general, Vincenzo Carafa, expressed his deep regret to the Irish Jesuits and to ‘all good Irish people’ on Elizabeth’s death, and reported that he had ‘prescribed 3 masses and rosaries to be said by all members of the Society for the death of a foundress of a novitiate’. The second essay in the book, introducing the different context of the third Jesuit mission, is by Colm Lennon, who in ‘The Jesuit Mission in Urban Ireland, c 1598–1650’ draws on the Annual Letters, the Calendar of the Irish Mission, the commentary of Moynes, and his own extensive research over many years. In the third mission, especially after the death of Queen Elizabeth, there is a marked difference in the popular attitude towards religion compared to what William Good experienced. In 1604, Chief Justice Saxey wrote that ‘the Jesuits, priests and seminaries [seminarists] swarm as Studies • volume 112 • number 448
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locusts throughout the whole kingdom, and are harboured and maintained by the noblemen and chief gentry of the country, but especially by the cities and walled towns within the realm’. Of the up to 200 Jesuits who returned to Ireland from the continent during the period, some 72% of them originated from cities or larger towns. About 16% had their origin in gentry families in the urban hinterland, while just over 10% were of Gaelic background. Most Jesuits returning from abroad moved into the towns as places offering best shelter, and best means of escape under persecution, and also as offering welcome. Some made their base in the houses of their parents or close relatives. Domestic mass centres in Dublin, Drogheda, Kilkenny and Limerick, for example, were discreetly situated, but became known to the authorities and were grudgingly tolerated until at certain times of political friction, when Anglican control was asserted. Jesuits were regularly targeted for arrest during religious services, and at such times, as Lennon observes, ‘the wider networks of interrelated city patriciates and county gentry offered routes of flight into the countryside’. Jesuits were officially banned by proclamation in 1605. Already the previous year, at Cashel, County Tipperary, the Jesuit Fathers Walter Wales and Barnaby Kearney escaped an assassination attempt by donning ‘Irish clothes’ and fleeing with the help of ‘some gentlemen of the country’. The author further notes that the dress of the Irish Jesuits, given the constraints at the time, was different from what the Council of Trent recommended. Living among the laity their dress was that of the laity. Masses were held in houses, or in the open air at times, but practically always depended on the organisation and arrangements of local families. The Jesuits adapted themselves to the local scene. Their pastoral activity was distinguished by strong catechesis and the reverential presentation of the mass and the sacraments. In the family setting, too, Catholic marriages could be contracted, confessions heard, and baptisms take place, as well as the churching of women who had recently given birth, and funeral services, provided they were accompanied by appropriate catechesis. Those catechised were encouraged to bring the teaching to other laity, and also to assist the poor and sick in the community. At times, alms-houses and hospitals were built as a result of the influence of individual missioners. The Jesuits’ letters also report on their active involvement in arbitrating familial and other disputes, many involving property, and regularising marital anomalies. In the early years of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits moved about in twos and depended on the shelter of family and friends. By the ends of the 498
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1630s, however, ‘the principal cities as well as larger towns such as Clonmel, Cashel and Wexford had permanent Jesuit residences for communal living. Some had schools attached, and all had flourishing branches of the Sodality of Our Lady.’ The piety of the Jesuits, moulded on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, was passed on to the laity, especially in the Sodality, through ‘the cultivation of lay interior spirituality’. Associated outlets, established by some citizens close to the Society, were noted in the annual letters. These included hospitals and alms houses, as mentioned earlier. The varied features and developments outlined by Colm Lennon are but a part of his larger treatment of the Jesuit urban mission. It is not possible to treat further in the present context, beyond noting his comment that despite the relatively small number of Jesuits, not amounting to more than a few dozen at any time down to 1641, ‘they were highly influential in fashioning social, cultural and religious solidarity with their urban brothers and sisters as they faced the political military imbroglio that engulfed Ireland in the 1640s’. The reports in the Annual Letters inevitably contain repeated material and repeated references to certain individuals. Many articles as a result contain overlaps. This occurs too in ‘Popular Preaching and the Jesuit mission’ by Bernadette Cunningham. Preaching was an important part of the Jesuit mission, but it frequently had to be carried out without drawing unusual attention from the Established Church and the authorities. At times of more relaxed vigilance, and particularly in more rural areas, some preachers performed to great effect, sometime preaching at fairs and other large social gatherings. Striking examples of such public preaching were provided by Barnaby Kearney, mentioned earlier. He was a gifted preacher. He enriched his well-structured argument with visual imagery, anecdotes, proverbs, and humour. He frequently spoke to large crowds, some of whom followed him from location to location. He had studied preaching and preachers on the continent. He subsequently published at least two books of sermons there. He and other Jesuit preachers used Sacred Scripture and the Church Fathers as the basis of their preaching, but their imaginative presentation of the gospel scenes stirred the emotions of large audiences so that they were moved to tears and heartfelt groans. Such was customary for our men, the mission superior, Christopher Holywood (1559–1626), observed in one of his annual letters. In the countryside, the missioners preached to their audiences in open fields, and in such venues there could be singing and music. In such areas the preacher did not usually get to know their congregations but
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they would have built up close relations with certain merchant families and gentry, who provided accommodation and other helps and formed a Catholic elite, who sponsored the local venues for local Catholic worship. As Cunningham points out, the Jesuit preachers were moved by the ‘desire to save souls’, which included persuading people to repent of sinful ways, confess their sins and avail of the sacraments. Some of the audiences had little or no knowledge of religion or prayers and so the preacher had to focus on teaching basic prayers and devotions. Sometimes they focused on teaching the children who, in turn, taught their parents. Visual aids were used – beads, holy pictures, holy water, and some relics of holy men like Francis Xavier, whose life story was frequently preached. Prayers for the dead were appreciated and popular. The preachers travelled in twos in the early seventeenth century, and because overall they were few in number, they were concentrated mainly in the eastern and southern counties, in largely Old English areas. Not everyone could be an effective preacher. Cunningham estimated that of the 56 Jesuits in Ireland in 1637, just 25 were active as preachers. Apart from the oratorical skill and acting ability required, there was travel and a great demand on physical energy. Hours of concentration hearing confessions were often followed by hours settling disputes and counselling married couples. And when opportunities for a break arrived, it too could be a problem. In 1605, when Barnaby Kearney had evaded arrest, he retired to Cashel for a rest – ‘if it be a rest to preach twice every Sunday, to settle disputes every day, and to promote peace and charity among those at variance’. It is also clear from the Jesuit letters, that they saw it as part of their work to improve the orthodoxy of priests who had not had a seminary education. As mentioned previously, the ability of travelling preachers to carry on their work fluctuated in line with the prevailing political atmosphere. Under the Cromwellian regime effective preaching was shut down, only to resume again when the regime had come to an end in the 1660s. In certain places, as the Jesuit letters indicate, they found themselves facing the same pedagogic challenges as earlier in the century: people were ignorant of the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the immortality of souls, so that the preachers’ mission was as necessary as ever. Something similar happened in1673 when another proclamation for the banishment of Catholic bishops and regular priests, and the closure of religious houses and schools, meant that Jesuits were inactive throughout 1674. Staying alive and out of prison so as to continue 500
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their mission was an abiding concern. Trusting in God and persevering in their mission were necessary ingredients in a preacher’s life in early modern Ireland. More specialised focus The subjects of the other articles in the book tend to be more precise, more focussed. Jason Harris on the ‘Latin style of the Irish Annual Letters … ’ emphasises that the Latin style was a significant matter in the early modern era. His close examination of the annual letters written by the mission superior, Christopher Holywood, from 1599–1626, reveals that Holywood adheres to the plain style recommended in the Jesuit correspondence manual, Formula scribendi, whereas Holywood’s published treatises more frequently draw attention to ‘the author’s deft command of idiom, a fine textual fabric that demands admiration for its intricate weaving’. In his essay on ‘The Jesuits and music in early modern Ireland’, Raymond Gillespie challenges the widely held assumption that music played little part in the Irish Catholic Church during the early modern period. He argues that music was too important a vehicle for praising the divine and intensifying the bonds of community to be ignored by Jesuits on the Irish mission. He underlines evidence that the musical legacy of Jesuits in Ireland in the seventeenth century is much richer than might have been suspected, and the soundscape of that world much more important and complex than has hitherto been considered. Recent scholarship’s emphasis on the institutional homogeneity and unity of the Society of Jesus is challenged by Brian Jackson in his essay on ‘Irish Jesuits and the evolution of religious controversy’. He contends that in spite of the Society’s best efforts, its rapid expansion caused that unity to be tested on many occasions by local considerations, and the views of individual Jesuits at grassroots level. Jackson shows how Irish and English Jesuits could appear to be pulling in different directions at local level while working towards overreaching common goals, thereby reflecting the interaction between local considerations and institutional strategy. The Jesuit ministry in Ireland and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave particular attention to members of the political elite who offered the possibility of conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. Brian Mac Cuarta draws attention to the Slingsbys, an English family, whose members first appeared in Ireland towards the end of the sixteenth century. In
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later times members of the family became Catholic and converted a number of Protestants to Catholicism. Francis Slingsby, heir to the family, became a Catholic in 1833 and subsequently a candidate for the Society. He was friendly with Fr John Gerard and other English Jesuits. ‘The number of converts he instigated while a candidate for the Society marked an important contribution to Jesuit ministry among Protestants in Ireland during the 1630s.’ Mac Cuarta indicates ‘that in fostering and sustaining denominational change, the Slingsbys were effectively supported by a Jesuit network that spanned England, Rome and Ireland’. Alma O’Donnell draws extensively on the Irish Jesuit annual letters for her essay on ‘Jesuit involvement in exorcisms in seventeenth-century Ireland’. She points out that thirty-eight cases of exorcism were described out of twenty-five annual letters, an indication that exorcism was an enduring part of the pastoral role of the Jesuits. Among her surprising findings is that the annual letters record more males than females afflicted by demonic attacks. O’Donnell situates her findings within the context of demonic possession, witchcraft, and witch persecution in contemporary England, Europe and the New World. Although accusations of witchcraft were not frequent in Ireland compared to England, references to exorcisms in the annual letters were many but partly as a sign of successful cures of the afflicted persons. O’Donnell concludes the essay: ‘Demoniacs were freed and were able to worship again; sinners and witches confessed, repented, and lived free from heresy, even some Protestants converted to the Catholic faith. With each case the work of the mission was realised’. ‘Jesuit schooling in Ireland, 1660–1690’ is the essay by Martin Foerster. From the sixteenth century there are records of Irish students doing well, even becoming professors and chancellors in universities on the continent. Very little has been written about their prior education that made later success possible. In the years he has chosen, Foerster traces a network of schools, most of them run by Jesuits. The growth and value of these schools were recognised by Protestant parents, but they lasted just a few years before the Established Church and the government closed them down. Often the Jesuits were able to move on and open again somewhere else. Frequently in these schools the burden of the teaching was carried by just one or two men. Despite problems and pressures, Foerster declares that ‘the schools managed to provide an education comparable to that on the continent and enabled a number of students to proceed to the Irish colleges in Spain, the 502
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Low Countries, Portugal and Rome’, and one might add, France. The author of the final essay, Liam Chambers, notices how the Jesuit superior of the mission from 1669 to 1674, Stephen Rice, hailed a subsidy from Louis XIV that made possible the Irish Jesuit college in Poitiers. It was later substantially supported by Catherine of Braganza, Portuguese wife of Charles II of England. At a difficult time for the mission in Ireland, Rice termed the college ‘une maison de refuge’. It was a refuge for men coming from Ireland, but it was also for various Irish Jesuits in colleges throughout France. In Poitiers, they had an Irish college run by Irishmen. It remained a continued base for Irish Jesuits from 1674 to 1762, despite financial difficulties. Chambers, in his extensive observations, noted that it ‘helped to ensure the survival of the mission after the military defeat of the Irish Catholic forces in 1691 and the suppression of Catholic Ireland under a hostile Protestant parliament’. It also provided opportunities for those returning to Ireland. One of the better known Jesuits of the time, John Austin, stayed at the college for three years in the late 1740s before returning to Dublin, where he participated in the Catholic revival underway in the mid-eighteenth century. The college took in students shortly after its opening. This aspect was never large, yet like other Irish colleges on the continent after 1691 it played ‘a key role in the survival and revival of Irish Catholicism’. By the end of the book, it is evident to the reader that the publication of the Calendar and the Annual Letters have enriched our understanding of the Society’s mission in Ireland. Co-editor and author, Brian Mac Cuarta, made it clear in the introduction that the contributors to the present collection of essays agree that ‘there is scope for further extensive investigation into the Jesuit mission in early modern Ireland’. The co-authors, Lyons and Mac Cuarta, in their respective essays, also extend proposals for future exploration. In conclusion, the present writer offers this review-article as an intimation of the wealth of material in the book’s various essays and in the hope that other readers will share his enjoyment in reading the full text. Thomas J. Morrissey SJ is a historian and author of more than fifteen books, many of which concern the history of the Society of Jesus in Ireland.
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Book Reviews Kevin Cahill & Niamh Denney (eds.), Perspectives on the Teaching of English in Post-Primary Education (Cork: Cork University Press, 2023). ‘Teachers teach more than you know’ – that was the slogan a teachers’ union adopted to generate support among the public during an industrial dispute some decades ago. It was a clever slogan. It worked at a number of levels. Its primary aim was to counter the myth that teachers had a soft life – short working days, long holidays and so on. It tried to flag the unseen hours of preparation, reflection, correction and administration that are the professional occupation of all teachers. But it also worked in a number of other subtle and subliminal ways: e.g. the knowledge you have gathered is only a fraction of what the teacher has taught; or, the art of teaching is far more nuanced, sophisticated and demanding than your simplistic image of classroom management, course delivery and examination results; and perhaps most profoundly, much of what you have become as a person has, unbeknownst to you, been shaped by the teachers you have encountered. The publication of this book on the teaching of English in Irish postprimary schools provides a deeper insight for the wider public into what it means to be a teacher in Ireland today, in a social and cultural environment unrecognisable to previous generations. In a foreword to the volume, Dr Tom Mullins, a mentor to many of the contributors, notes that such a book would not have been feasible in the past. However, the current culture and climate of teacher education and professional development have fostered a changed practice and a culture of action research, of which this book provides exemplary models. The editors aim to integrate theory and practice, ‘to bring the world of the classroom inside the door of research in the field, while also bringing research inside the door of the classroom’ (pp. 5–6). This relationship of theory to practice has long been a problematic one in education. Research has often been seen by sceptics as irrelevant to the ‘real world’ of the classroom, while the ‘tips and tricks’ short-cuts to examination success have been decried by educators. This book attempts to bridge this divide as contributors provide a theoretical context and practical models to illustrate some complex and imaginative ideas. 504
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Across the sixteen chapters of the book, many specific aspects of the teaching of English are considered and discussed. There are however some generic themes that emerge from this diversity, three of which are highlighted here. Firstly, the professional role of the teacher is unpacked and explored. A concept that has dominated teacher education in recent years is that of the ‘reflective practitioner’. This is so frequently used as to become an empty cliché but, in this volume, while the term itself is not prominent, its meaning is consistently made real. Being a teacher today means constantly reflecting on and reviewing one’s experience, learning from mistakes, improving practices, and adopting new approaches. This book provides scaffolding for the teacher of English to develop as a reflective practitioner. Indeed, it is significant that continuing professional development (CPD) is now seen as an integral part of the teacher’s life. A few decades ago, this was unthinkable. The contributors themselves exemplify the profile of the contemporary teacher, bringing experience from the school classroom, the CPD workshop and the college tutorial to the range of chapters. A second feature of this book is its treatment of literacy – or more accurately, literacies. Various chapters explicitly or implicitly deal with adolescent literacy, critical literacy, visual literacy, digital literacy and many other such forms. Literacy, in this context, is much more than the functional threshold associated with the old ‘3 Rs’ teaching of the basics: this book provides a transdisciplinary perspective on what ‘literacy’ means in contemporary society. In other words, the discipline of ‘English’ is no longer restricted to traditional literary texts: not only are texts now drawn from a variety of written, aural, visual or other sources but other disciplines such as music, film, and digital media are also addressed. For example, two very insightful chapters on film studies (by Conor Murphy) and on poetry (by Carmel Hinchion) each overlap with the discipline of visual art. This transdisciplinary or cross-curricular approach is a very significant development. In particular, it points to the importance of enhanced curricular treatment of the arts and creativity in general, and the need to view the curriculum in its entirety as more than an aggregation of individual subjects. Thirdly the dominance of assessment and examinations has been the bane of most curriculum reform movements in Ireland over the past half-century. In an excellent overview, Hal O’Neill provides a critical treatment of the evolution of the English curriculum in Ireland: while generally positive about
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the progress achieved in recent decades, he makes some important criticisms of the repeated failures to broaden the modes and techniques of assessment. Indeed some of the chapters in this book still seem to be too deferential to the perceived demands of the junior and senior cycle examinations. But there is, thankfully, evidence of some release from the tyranny of the external examination. The new Framework for Junior Cycle, controversial as it was in its introduction and unfulfilled as it remains in its enactment, still constitutes perhaps the most significant breakthrough since the introduction of the ‘new’ primary curriculum in 1971. In outlining a professional role for the teacher of English in the twentyfirst century, this book reiterates a core principle of curriculum development: teachers should be empowered to make judgements about what and how to teach in their own schools rather than being mandated to ‘deliver’ a prescribed diet of content. The importance of the teacher is heightened in a student-centred curriculum, as the essays in this book testify. If the process of education is ultimately aimed at enabling students to find their individual voices, then the nuanced expertise of the teacher as facilitator is vital. English as a subject in our schools has a richness and variety that can enable many different approaches to enable students find their own voices and responses. This book provides rich examples of such approaches. Curriculum theory often runs counter to the conventional wisdom of the public. Universal education has meant that everyone not only has a view on what schooling should be about but also a deeply ingrained and passive conceptualisation of what schooling should look like. It is a truism now to say that a time-traveller from 150 years ago would recognise the contemporary school as inherently the same as their own, both in structure and content. There have of course been changes. It is good to see many of the contributors making reference to the English and Communications course of the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) programme, as well as to the Transition Year: too often public discourse on the curriculum is reduced to the established Leaving Certificate programme and its examinations. It is gratifying also to note the contributors’ awareness of the increased diversity of students in our schools – diverse in aptitudes, abilities, ethnicities, identities and cultures. Many chapters in the book refer to the innovative COVID experience of teaching online and both the challenges and the opportunities that experience presented to teachers. Yet, there are worrying signs now of a retrenchment and reversion to pre-COVID norms. 506
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Significant reform of curriculum and assessment remains a slow and painful process. For instance, several references are made to the recurring controversies that have arisen in recent decades about the role of Shakespeare on the English programme. For all the talk of change and relevance, the notion that there might be some adjustment to the status of the bard on the curriculum has been repeatedly resisted by influential figures and by ministers (similar to a more recent controversy in relation to the perceived status of history). There remains a political reluctance to allow any discretion to schools and teachers regarding what, how and when to teach aspects of the curriculum to the diverse range of young people in their classrooms. Thankfully we are coming to realise that teaching is itself a creative and artistic practice. Like any artist in a studio, rehearsal, workshop or performance, good teachers make judgements, introduce adjustments and adopt different approaches depending on the material they are working with. In teaching terms, this material is the curriculum, and we should look on the curriculum as a recipe rather than a blueprint. As with any recipe, we should have the freedom to adapt and modify to our immediate needs. Indeed, that process of making judgements in practice (reflection in action) is the hallmark of any professional. This book provides an exciting picture of how the teaching profession is evolving in Ireland today. It is relevant, therefore, not just for the teaching of English but for the possibilities it opens up for wider curriculum and assessment reform into the future. Gary Granville is former Professor and Head of the School of Education at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
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Conor Mulvagh & Emer Purcell (eds.), Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword (Cork: Cork University Press, 2022), 400 pages. In the introduction to this most welcome collection, the editors open with the following sentence: ‘The story of the Irish revolution cannot be told without Eoin MacNeill.’ Not many commentators would disagree with this evaluation. After all, MacNeill, as Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, was famously responsible for countermanding the planned 1916 rebellion because of what he viewed as the absence of a viable military plan that would have had some hope of success. In part, this decision was taken because he had not been kept in the loop about the proposed rebellion by Pearse and the other leaders. MacNeill’s legacy, however, is not confined to his political or revolutionary record: he was also a renowned scholar whose portrait now hangs in the boardroom of UCD’s School of History, a concrete reminder of the significant work he did, in the words of his biographer and son-inlaw, Michael Tierney, as ‘a pioneer historian’ as well as someone who ‘made history’. His career as a politician, academic, administrator, negotiator meant that he was involved in nearly all the key moments during the tumultuous early years that led to establishment of an independent Irish state. His role with the Boundary Commission left many people dissatisfied, especially Irish nationalists in the Six Counties, who felt they had been left at the mercy of a hostile Protestant majority loyal to the British crown. MacNeill was also a family man who must have been well aware of the toll that his many different responsibilities exerted on this key aspect of his life. Taking all these things into consideration, MacNeill was a controversial figure whose name will elicit strong reactions of support or criticism depending on a person’s background or political leanings. Diarmaid Ferriter describes MacNeill’s political legacy as that ‘of an insider on the outside’, which is as good a description as you will find. The sixteen essays in the collection are divided into four sections entitled: Scholar; Language and Culture; Revolutionary; and History, Memory, Legacy. In addition, there is a foreword by Maurice Manning, Chancellor of the National University of Ireland and reputed historian, along with an essay by MacNeill’s grandson, Michael McDowell, who has carried the torch of his forebear in the political arena and as a highly accomplished barrister. McDowell notes that his grandfather co-founded the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) with Douglas Hyde, and ‘started to develop a theory of Irish 508
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identity that was a blend of his political, linguistic and religious outlooks’. He cites an article by Professor F. X. Martin, ‘Eoin MacNeill and the 1916 Rising’, from Irish Historical Studies, which takes issue with the ‘national myth’ surrounding MacNeill, which portrayed him as an indecisive academic whose inability to see the potential of what Pearse and the other 1916 leaders were planning contributed appreciably to the military ineffectiveness of the rebellion. McDowell quotes from a memorandum prepared by MacNeill in which he stated that he was not in principle opposed to military action, but felt that the timing was not right: ‘If the destruction of our nationality was in sight’, he wrote, ‘and we came to the conclusion that at best the vital principle of nationality was to be saved by laying down our lives, then we should make that sacrifice without hesitation.’ But he did not see that as being the case in 1916. It was to be the ill-advised decision of the British forces to execute the leaders of the Rising that created the conditions for Irish independence and not necessarily the rebellion itself, which, as we now know, was not embraced by many people at a time when thousands of Irish soldiers were losing their lives fighting for the Allies in the First World War. The essays on MacNeill the scholar deal with some of his main areas of specialism. For example, Niamh Wycherley’s contribution on MacNeill’s interpretation of the emergence of a ‘Celtic’ Church in early medieval Ireland shows an awareness of the degree of resistance that existed in relation to Roman dictates and prescriptions: ‘The enduring power of the Church lay in its ability to adopt to local politics and cultures.’ This may well explain the way the Church often looked the other way when pagan devotional practices continued to thrive, knowing that to outlaw such practices would only result in a stand-off with the faithful. Wycherley finds that many of MacNeill’s theories have been shown to be correct, such as his belief that the Irish Church ‘was anything but monolithic, and that there was great variation in practice’. Elva Johnston quotes Francis John Byrne, a successor to MacNeill as Chair of Early Irish History in UCD, who summed up the legacy of his predecessor in the following manner: To MacNeill belongs the credit of having dragged Celtic Ireland practically single-handed from the antiquarian mists into the light of history … He would never claim to have said the last word on a topic: it was his glory that he had so often said the first. A common feature of these essays is a concentration on MacNeill’s reliance on intuition, this, in spite of his being a historian in the empiricist
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tradition. Johnston notes that one should be wary of viewing MacNeill’s training as guaranteeing academic objectivity: ‘In fact, he did not believe that such disinterest was possible: for him, history flourished through the nutrients of engaged empathy in a soil of academic rigour.’ Michael Kennedy lauds MacNeill’s wisdom in convincing W. T. Cosgrave to set up the Irish Manuscripts Commission (IMC) in 1928, in spite of the precarious financial condition of the state coffers at that time. The IMC was Ireland’s primary publisher of historical source material. Even though shortages of paper, chemicals and type during the Second World War inevitably hampered its output, the IMC became what Kennedy describes as ‘an essential building block in the development of history as a profession in Ireland’. MacNeill’s pioneering work in the Irish language and culture movement is probably the area where there is a most agreement as to his positive contribution. It is appropriate that there is a contribution as Gaeilge (by Regina Uí Chollatáin) that assesses his role as a visionary writer and journalist of the Revival movement. In his pronouncements on the establishment of a university in Dublin, he adopted a conciliatory tone when it came to denominational education, arguing that universities should just recognise the denominational divisions of the people who are part of it. Although a great advocate of the Irish language, he assumed quite a moderate stance in maintaining what Ruairí Cullen describes as ‘a balancing act between the pursuit of compulsory Irish, or “essential Irish” as he and many like-minded proponents termed it, and strong links with the [Catholic] hierarchy’. In a pamphlet he wrote on Irish in the National University of Ireland, MacNeill stated his case thus: ‘Higher education without Irish may be English or cosmopolitan, or what you please. It certainly is not Irish.’ Compulsory Irish at matriculation level ensured that the language would continue to play an essential role in schools preparing their students for third level education. MacNeill was adroit also in his dealings with the Church, realising that for many of his compatriots it was Catholicism, and not the Irish language, that was the corner stone of nationality. Michael Laffan points out MacNeill’s tendency to be trusting of his collaborators and a dislike of open disunity. Pearse was convinced that the countermanding order by MacNeill had been one of the main reasons why the rebellion in 1916 did not succeed. Although he and the other leaders had lied to MacNeill and kept him in the dark as to their plans, Pearse still had difficulty accepting that a man they occasionally treated with open disdain 510
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should dare to act against their interests. Laffan points out how Tom Clarke, in his cell awaiting execution, told his wife that MacNeill ‘must never again be allowed back into the national life of the country’, which reveals a similar resentment. In a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion of MacNeill’s involvement in the Boundary Commission, Ted Hallett reveals the degree to which he struggled with his role, stating that it was ‘the most disagreeable duty I had ever undertaken’ and that it was a relief for him to remove himself from the political stage and get back to the academe, which was his main passion. Hallett notes that historians in general viewed him as the wrong man for a job like this, which required a keen legal and political skillset that he did not possess. The other members of the Executive Council seemed to assume that MacNeill was onside with the positions they adopted, whereas at times it was merely a question of his needing time to consider exactly what they were proposing. For anyone wishing to get a better appreciation of the machinations that went on with the Commission, Hallett’s chapter is compulsory reading. The description of MacNeill’s domestic life by Conor Mulvagh reveals a man who was totally committed to his wife and children and who experienced great pain when his son, Brian, who, unlike his two older brothers, fought on the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, was killed by the Free State troops in 1922. Then there was the pain engendered by the negative view of his work on the Boundary Commission that MacNeill had to contend with, the realisation that his legacy would not be a glowing one. Indeed, after his death, MacNeill’s children were very unhappy at what they felt was the misrepresentation of their father’s contribution to the establishment and consolidation of the Irish Free State. The witnessing of the death and last moments of fellow Cabinet Minister Kevin O’Higgins’ life following an attack by Republican activists was a stark reminder of just what a precarious position he had placed himself by pursuing a political path: nevertheless, he persevered in carrying out what he viewed as his duty. Diarmaid Ferriter believes, like Michael Laffan, that MacNeill had ‘too many displaced trusts: a belief in patience to generate a reunification of Irish opinion or misplaced hopes that enduring friendships would trump divisive political or military strategies’. In Ferriter’s estimation, MacNeill was ‘a lost leader on the wrong side of history’. It was unfair to MacNeill that the Irish government did not see fit to appoint a full-time commissioner to the Boundary Commission and required their representative to combine
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his busy role as Minister for Education with the complex negotiations that were happening in relation to the future emergence of Northern Ireland. For Ferriter, this tendency by his colleagues to use MacNeill for their own purposes was what came to define his career and his historical legacy, rather than the diligence and grace with which he carried out his duties. The Pen and the Sword is a book that provides a comprehensive evaluation of Eoin MacNeill in all his various guises. It does not seek to rehabilitate his reputation or to extol his virtues – that said, the majority of the essays do seem to be favourably disposed to him – but rather to update the record and to show how difficult it was in the heady, emotive atmosphere of 1920s’ and 30s’ Ireland to see what was likely to unfold as a result of decisions taken at that time. Being a patriot for one person is akin to being a traitor in the estimation of others. There was no real middle ground in the Ireland in which MacNeill operated, no silver bullet to get you over humps and hollows: you just had to make the best judgment call you could in the circumstances in which you operated. MacNeill undoubtedly had Ireland’s best interests at heart in everything he did, but that will not prevent his detractors from citing what they view as his inadequacies. It is ever thus with certain historical figures. Dr Eamon Maher is Director of the National Centre for FrancoIrish Studies in Technological University Dublin.
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Bryan Fanning, Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide (Bingley: Emerald, 2023). ix + 222 pages. In Public Morality and the Culture Wars, Bryan Fanning argues that ‘public morality finds expression in laws focused on shaping or nudging the conduct of individual members of society’ (p. 1). He posits that our cultural space is primarily occupied by three diffuse, overlapping – yet distinct – groups which contest this discourse. The first group are those who derive their political positions from Christian belief, the second grounds their positions in liberal individualism, and the third advocates for positions arising from their post-Enlightenment commitments (p. 3). The goal of the book is to examine the ‘conflicts between different systems of belief that influence efforts to impose or shore up particular social values through public policy or passing laws’ (p. 5). The argument of the book takes the form of an informal genealogy, tracing the sources of these different movements in intellectual history before exploring how they contest specific issues. Thus, chapter 2 considers ‘Theologies of Public Morality’, which considers the sources that Fanning identifies beneath the conservative political position. Chapter 3 considers the emergence of ‘The Sovereign Self’, which in origin ‘can be traced back to early Christianity, to Augustine, and before him to St Paul’ (p. 29), and today is shaped as much by the plot of The Matrix (1999) (p. 49) or the performative and fabricative account of self advanced by Judith Butler (p. 47). Chapter 4 offers an account of the rise of liberalism, which lingers with John Locke and John Stuart Mill before moving to the role of the US Supreme Court in shaping anglophone understandings of the philosophy in the twentieth century. Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 consider different fronts in the ‘culture wars’. The fifth chapter looks at how religious movements sought to shape public morality by instituting prohibition of the sale of alcohol and the censorship of film. The sixth chapter considers that the liberal project must cultivate a ‘civil religion’ to take the place of religious consensus. Chapters seven and eight look at the debates around abortion and gender identity. The final chapter seeks to look to the future. If we grant the metaphor of ‘culture war’, then Fanning does not envision an armistice anytime soon. His final conclusion is that ‘such conflicts are inevitable and need to be regulated’. A key element must be the defence ‘of pluralism and to equip future generations of citizens
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to deal with a diversity of viewpoints’ (pp. 203–204). One of the great strengths of this book is how Fanning acknowledges the continuing relevance of theological beliefs for the shape of our public square. Such hospitality has become so rare in Irish academic writing that you could even describe it as brave. Predictably, as a theologian reading this text, there were places where I felt more needed to be said. After John Stuart Mill, Augustine is the most commonly discussed individual, but we find lots of summaries without citation about what the Bishop of Hippo stood for. And this is the issue for the broader argument. God is in the small things and the devil is in the details. Arguments that proceed with generalisations about how Protestants engage with public policy or how Catholic citizens are enacting the teachings of Thomas Aquinas cannot be load-bearing because so much is lost when the specificity of the belief is reduced to a summary. More could be said, but I recognise that if I was to unpack this critique I would be doing little more than complaining that a book by a Professor of Migration and Social Policy was not a book written by a Professor of Church History. Fanning’s book is valuable exactly because he tries to wrestle with the historical echoes and contemporary re-articulations of these theologically dense matters from where he stands. Figures like Marilynne Robinson show how theology is a fertile field in which visitors can tend to ideas. Where Fanning has gone, other scholars should follow. Fanning’s ‘triple divide’ seeks to expand the traditional framing of political contestation. It is no longer the case that the liberal, informed by the Enlightenment, is pitched against the conservative, informed by religious tradition. The two-dimensions have become three with the rise of politicallyorganised progressive, expressive individualism. The maths are much more complicated, the permutations much more diverse, the details that shape the discourse ever more nuanced. No wonder different sides find themselves pitched into battles they cannot fully conceptualise. As Fanning presents it, this is a geometric disruption of the civic square which has been settled in its Left/Right spectrum for centuries. Fanning presents the three stances as overlapping, never perfectly distinct, each evolving in response to the other. But he does seem to trace a starker line connecting the religious–conservative bloc to the emerging progressive, expressive individualist position: ‘In many respects, efforts to enforce acceptance of transgender identities echo those of previous religiouslyderived projects to put in place laws that would shore up particular moral 514
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values’ (p. 172). He grants the tension around the intrinsic limits of liberalism. And he is clear that ‘some of the conflicts about public morality examined’ throughout the book ‘are ones between liberals and progressive rather than between conservatives and liberals’ (p. 73). But that logically follows from the fact that were a dividing line pressed upon the opponents, liberalism is going to conclude that both the other parties are fundamentally illiberal (p. 189). This matters because it suggests Fanning under-describes the way in which real existing liberalism is in practice as binary a proposition as the other stances. Liberals often claim they are differentiated from opponents because they avoid prescribing certain beliefs by legally proscribing certain behaviours. But this appearance is achieved because liberalism so often bypasses metaphysical accounts of truth by recourse to a proceduralist account of justice. Within liberal societies and institutions, we typically find that discussion of ‘the good’ is replaced by ‘best practice’. And while from one perspective, the progressive, expressive individualists seem to have an affinity with the strategies of the religious conservatives, implicit in Fanning’s own account is the recognition that they also deploy the tactics of liberals. The removal of gender critical feminists from their roles in universities ‘was not imposed in accordance with the law’ but through policy documents (p. 177). The marginalisation of people like Kathleen Stock has as much in common with the liberal tactics deployed by American pro-choice lobby-groups in the 1970s and 80s as progressive hate speech proposals formally replicate blasphemy laws. Fanning’s book achieves something very important. It is an accessible, broad, and convincing account of how we arrived at our present state of societal polarisation. It closes off the well-travelled paths that just decry anything new as ‘woke’ or that denounces anything we disagree with as ‘farright’. It traces how much of the common-sense we inhabit is made up of ideas once thought revolutionary. It embodies for the reader the value that comes from generously listening to those with whom we disagree. It deserves a wide readership. Kevin Hargaden is Director and Social Theologian at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, Dublin.
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Michael Longley, The Slain Birds (London: Jonathan Cape, 2022), 96 pages. The title of this collection comes from the last line of Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘Over Sir John’s Hill’: ‘for the sake of the slain birds sailing’. (This line is used also as the epigraph of the collection.) Evidently the poem had a specific significance for Michael Longley and that becomes apparent after an initial reading. ‘Over Sir John’s Hill’ meditates on mortality and uses the imagery of avian predators to convey a sense of the power and inevitability of death. Longley echoes that approach here. The presence of predators and prey permeates the collection: kestrels, peregrines, merlins and ravens going about their unswerving business of killing brings a focus onto the poet’s own mortality. However this sombre subject is counterbalanced by Longley’s characteristic exuberance, his exhilaration in the various loves and passions that have filled his life with meaning. His love of his wife, family, friends, landscapes, and nature is captured and celebrated: flashes of humour appear throughout to further lighten the mood. (As Longley reminds us himself in the face of the tragic, a focus on the normal is the recipe for survival. Referring to Primo Levi’s writing on the concentration camps he comments, ‘In that kind of nightmare, what kept people sane was thinking of the ordinary things back home’.) The collection has a musical structure. A series of themes is announced, and these return at intervals in variations throughout; this creates a complex pattern of feelings and moods that leaves the reader energised by the poet’s whole-hearted vision captured in his discreetly masterful craft. This is Michael Longley’s thirteenth book of verse, and it shows his typical deftness in managing a variety of poetic forms These range from haiku-like comments to longer meditative reflections of various lengths and stanza-forms with tightly controlled sound and image patterns. The influence of American poets who relied on formal structures such as Emily Dickinson and Richard Wilbur is visible in the complex rhetorical assonances that are central to Longley’s style. Longley states and exemplifies his poetic credo in this short poem in this book (p. 46), Every syllable – Shh! – has to go on 516
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Reverberating As though your mouth Were a Tibetan Singing bowl. – ‘Poem’ He sees the poet as a craftsman, making poems assiduously through attention to sense, sound, image and rhythm. There is a restraint and spareness in the verse which creates the distinctive Longley music, a delicacy of tone and a lightness in touch matched with fine cadences which are both memorable and unique. At this stage the Longley voice is unmistakeable in the world of poetry. The poem ‘Merlin’ dramatically announces the theme of mortality; the poet and his wife are sitting in their beloved Mayo landscape: Is that a peregrine or kestrel Quartering the townland? We sit above Corragaun And the dwindling lake and look Towards Templedoomore And the lost burial mound. Are we waiting to die, my love? What’s happening behind us? Have our snowy heads been seen By the merlin we cannot see? – ‘Merlin’ (p. 5) Here the repeated questions create uncertainty. This is reinforced by the doubt about the identity of the hunting predators and the time of their arrival: these along with references to other signs of endings, create a sense of expectancy and unease. Other poems which face up to the reality of aging with powerful imagery matched with emotional equanimity occur towards the end of the book: poems such as ‘Shell’ (p. 66), which wonders are the ravens considering them as prey again, and the poem ‘Wreck’ (p. 67), which ends with a question: ‘At spring tide where will my soul be going?’ In contrast Longley’s instinctive celebratory vision emerges in many other poems insisting on the joy and the creative in human life. These characteristically focus on aspects of nature, on his children and in this book particularly on his grandchildren. His continual use of their personal
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names and the detailed sensitive portrayals of the birds, animals, insects and flowers achieve a lyrical warmth and intimacy. Thus in the following poem he delights not alone in his grand-daughter, Amelia but also in her discovery and retrieval in art of the beauty of the birds he has cherished throughout his own life (p. 47). This drawing of a goldfinch Is signed by you, Amelia, Nature note and emblem, Red face, yellow wing-bars Its kenspeckles, beak open For the thistle-bird’s song: At seven you capture all The finches I’ll ever know. – ‘Goldfinch’ (p. 48) Other poems of celebration relate to his love for his wife of many years. He remembers their youthful lovemaking and connects their mutual desire to the natural energies present in the landscape of Carrrigskeewaun. And now, in my old age, I remember That we made love in the Thallabaun dunes Not too far away from the badger’s sett, And then swam naked at Allaran Point Stepping over otter prints, preserving Signs of life, sea-foam between our toes. – ‘Foam’ (p. 22) Similar to Yeats, Kavanagh and Heaney, Longley glories in the names of the places in his landscape. Heaney, in an essay, ‘The Sense of Place’, points out that whereas Yeats and Kavanagh use the traditions and legends associated with places to inform their work, Longley does something quite different. He informs his placenames with his own personal mythology: I twine our souls with names from this landscape As the neap tide uncovers Carricknashinnagh Close to where we swim; the way to Tonakeera Where we walk as to the islands; Barnabaun And Kinnakillew– -nearly off the map – Drifts of melody – and Trawleckachoolia Where we shall dander until the day we die. – ‘Names’ (p. 17) 518
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The place-names become a litany of celebration, ‘drifts of melody’, as the poem says, in which the sounds of the names create a landscape of personal recollection and resonance. The book focuses on subjects and contexts which also are abiding threads in the tapestry of Longley’s works. Firstly, his love for the classical world of ancient Greece. So ‘Penelope’s Birds’ (p. 35), ‘Telemachus’ (p. 39) and ‘Cassandra’ (p. 40) reveal his involvement in that world. Characteristically Longley demythologises these figures and gives them new energy, setting them in arresting personal or social contexts. So in ‘Tapestry’ (p. 34) he can capture Penelope’s feisty defence in such lines as: She kept them at bay, those ithyphallic suitors Their marriage proposals, sexual advances. Similarly his continual awareness and empathy with the suffering of the victims of war and violence reappears in memorable poems These latter are trumpet blasts that demand and arrest the attention with their unswerving presentation of the horrors endured; for example recalling the massacre of Babi-yar: Bullets are saved for slaughtering grown-ups And are not wasted on little children Who suffocate underneath their families And drown in their parents’ blood and urine. – ‘Ravine’ (p. 12) The irony here captures the relentless economics of war in a nightmare scene where the harsh music of the words and the pragmatic tone resonate in the imagination long after the poem has been read. Throughout his work Longley has revisited the plight of his father who had fought in the First World War and suffered ever afterwards from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder. Here he returns in a number of poems to this agonised world. One of the most moving of these is a rendering of a letter which a soldier in the First World War, sent to his mother shortly before he was killed. Its unorthodox spellings and grammar intensify the urgency of the terror and grief that the man is feeling: Mother wee were tramping over the dead i think there is onely about 4 hundred left out of about 13 hundered Mother if god spers me to get home safe i wil have something uful to tell you if hell
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is any wores i would not like to go to it Mother – ‘Dear Mother’ (p. 10) Seamus Heaney summarised Michael Longley’s achievement when he described him as ‘A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders’. In his choice of words Heaney captured a key aspect of Longley’s role as a poet a sense of restraint and elegance while meditating on and ordering his intense engagement with the world. This sense of discipline and responsibility to his role as a poet and to his craft is central in this new book as it has been to all of the other volumes. Michael Longley was an integral member of the group of poets that emerged during the Ulster Renaissance in poetry in the 1960s. He, along with Heaney, Mahon, Montague and others marked a flowering of poetic endeavour that was remarkable for its range, intensity, longevity and social relevance. Sadly he is the only surviving member of that group; in this publication, Slain Birds, he continues to bear witness to the vibrancy of that movement, as well as to manifest in his unique voice his distinctive contribution to Anglo-Irish poetry. Dr Tom Mullins was a Senior Lecturer in English in Education in The Department of Education, UCC. He was involved for many years in the development of the national syllabus in English at second level.
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Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, Volumes I & II (London: Perspectiva Press, 2021). The Matter with Things is about the nature of reality, about how we are equipped by our brains to understand reality, and about the approaches that are available to us to gain that understanding. The author, Iain McGilchrist, attempts to give a deeper and more whole account of truth than that which has dominated the West for at least three hundred and fifty years. Anchored in neuroscience and psychiatric practice, he sees the approach of the right side of the brain to truth as having more to offer than the left-sided approach that has dominated in recent centuries and is adept at analyzing clear and distinct ideas and applying them logically to manipulate the world for its own purposes. McGilchrist originally explored the two-hemispheric structure of the brain and the world it creates in his 2009 work, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He argued that the two sides of the brain have their roles in making our society but that one side should be master and the other servant, and that in recent centuries the balance has been wrong. It was well received, and he goes on to explore the issue further in The Matter with Things. It is a unified argument, referencing a vast amount of studies over 1,500 pages of really good writing, and it is presented in three parts. In the first part, he talks on the basis of psychiatric practice and neuroscience about the brain’s correlative patterns for activities like attention, perception, judgement, intelligence, and creativity which he calls the means to truth. The second part is an epistemology of how we come to know and how our knowing connects with reality. He looks at the paths to truth, namely science, reason, intuition, and imagination and argues that in each of these approaches, the right hemisphere of the brain plays a more important and more veridical role than the left. The third part is a metaphysics where he discusses the nature of the reality that we find. He elaborates on the nature of time; movement and flow; space and matter; life, value, purpose, and the sacred. He finds that the left brain appreciates only its own contribution and denies the value of the right brain contribution. I read the book because it seemed to fulfill an agenda of a school of
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thought based on Bernard Lonergan’s study of human understanding, Insight, that saw the need for an interdisciplinary approach to cognitive science. Lonergan, interestingly, does not appear in the 200 pages of bibliography. A basic theme I can grapple with from philosophy and science is McGilchrist’s rejection of two broad approaches to knowing reality – naive idealism and naive realism. Naive idealism I take to refer to a Platonic stream of European philosophy that purports to know reality through the enlightenment of ideas: I know a unicorn because I can conceptualise it. Naive realism is the position of those who think they know things are real because they can see them and touch them as things out there. Science of the Victorian era appears to have embedded these assumptions, and McGilchrist notes that the biological sciences still do. They fit with left brain activity that seeks to analyse by breaking things into their parts and understanding more clearly the dynamics of smaller and smaller constituents of the whole. Physics reached a wall in the 1920s when the question of whether an electron was a particle or a wave could not be decided. Then it appeared that an electron could neither be seen nor located exactly. So what then was its reality? A clue as to how to think about this lies in Archimedes’ eureka moment when he understood the relationship between volume, weight and displacement. He knew then what density was and could verify it in the law of flotation without bringing the bath and the bathwater into the equation. Similarly we don’t have to have an imaginative picture to know an electron. It is not known by imagining, even though an imaginative model might help on the way. It is known when we grasp a relationship among terms, in this case the relationship between the terms of Schrodinger’s wave equation. This understanding then is verified by returning to the data and grasping the sufficiency of the evidence for its verification. The non-material act of understanding grasps the relationships in material data. This was the point at which physics had to move beyond looking at things to know if they are real, to grasping their reality by understanding and verification. It is a more critical realism than the simple Victorian materialism. McGilchrist appears to move in this direction but stops with endorsing metaphor as the approach to reality. The title of the book, The Matter with Things, suggests a problem with the left brain’s tendency toward naive realism. The left brain abstracts from concrete experience, re-presenting what was experienced in the form of clear and distinct ideas, analysing, identifying differences and similarities, reasoning along logical lines, calculating and using the ideas to shape the 522
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world. Its success at this is found in the rationalisation, bureaucratisation, and enlightenment of Western society, but it is blind to the greater access to truth of the right brain. The right brain attends to concrete presentations and reaches a deeper understanding through its intuitive perception of unityidentity-wholes. Its approach is more whole, contextual, and metaphorical and reaches what is known in poetry, music, and religion. Both hemispheres have their role to play but recognition of the greater comprehension by the right brain is needed to regenerate civilization by giving due attention to experience, intuition, imagination, creativity, understanding, value, and the sacred. McGilchrist’s treatment of these, especially his attention to experience, and to the derivation of values, greatly enrich the more attenuated accounts of knowing found in philosophy. He opens up rich vistas on experience, sensation, and the origin of value that are way beyond what can be dealt with here and provide directions for future studies. The Matter with Things has the potential to liberate the current state of Western society as dominated by post-modern culture and technocratic systems of control. The place of artificial intelligence can be understood in this perspective while it also shows the greater potential of right brain attention to the sacred, the concrete, imagination, and metaphor and the need to re-balancing our approach to truth. If he is not read for the challenging synthesis he makes of what we know about cognitional science he could at least be read for his unending outpouring of quotable quotes. Brendan MacPartlin SJ has lectured for many years in social ethics and is the Social Justice Delegate of the Irish Jesuit Province.
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Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), 695 pages. The renowned historian Peter Frankopan begins this long and detailed book by saying that he wants ‘to assess why we seem to have arrived at the edge of a precipice where the future of our species – as well as those of a significant part of the animal and plant worlds – is at risk (p. 6). There is much in the book that will surprise many readers I expect but perhaps the most surprising of all is what the subtitle tells us, namely that, as the author puts it, ‘by and large, the weather, climate and environmental factors have rarely been seen as a backdrop to human history, let alone as an important lens through which to view the past’ (p. 9). Frankopan sets himself the mammoth task of retelling the story of our planet, especially of our species, reinserting climate as ‘an underlying, crucial and much overlooked theme in global history’ and setting out ‘the story of human interaction with the natural world over millennia’ looking at how ‘our species exploited, moulded and bent the environment to its will, both for good and for ill’ (p. 21). It is a measure of the author’s ambition that he doesn’t settle for broad brushstrokes in telling this story but offers, in astonishing detail at times, a truly global account of how we have always depended on nature and climate for the functioning of our societies. Another major surprise to this reviewer is to find that ‘the dangers of environmental degradation, overconsumption of resources and unsustainable population load were not lost on people living thousands of years ago’ (p. 130) and that ‘conservation, ecological stewardship and concern for the natural environment has deep roots’ (p. 194). This is the story that Frankopan tells in twenty-four chronological chapters, from the dawn of time down to 2022. He traces climatic shifts in remarkable detail and follows the ‘cascades of adjustments in vegetation, fauna, humans and pathogens’ (p. 77) over the millennia. For example, he tells us that around 6,200 BC ‘a large-scale shock event took place that prompted a new series of challenges and changes’ due to an ice dam over Hudson Bay collapsing which resulted in cooling of 1–3°C over large parts of the northern hemisphere that lasted 160 years (p. 73). In around 6,150 BC the dislodging of a 190-km sediment shelf off Norway created a giant tsunami that swept south through the North Sea inflicting devastation (p. 75). But Frankopan dates the start of the anthropocentric transformation of earth to 3,500 BC with local and regional trade, the consolidation of social interaction and the centralisation of political authority with the rise of cities 524
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(p. 83). And, as throughout the book, he traces these trends globally, across the Fertile Crescent, through Iran and Pakistan, across the Mediterranean to south-east Europe and through East and South Asia, North Africa and South America, offering detailed and fascinating evidence as he goes along. In this way, it is a truly global history devoid of the Eurocentrism that has dominated views of the world for centuries, and not just in the West. The author is here introducing the mix of elements that form a central part of his story since the development of trading links, of social interaction particularly in cities, and centralised political authority are central to his story of how humans have remoulded the natural environment over the ages. Already in the early years of our era he found that ‘the success and stability of the state were closely linked to the irrigation of fields that enabled a rise in agricultural yields and supported larger populations’ (p. 5). This becomes a key theme as the story advances. He tells the story of the costs of success very well, a story that is absolutely central to the grave crisis in which we now find ourselves. Thus, for example, around 2,500 BC he is able to trace the rise of elites in Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, and how the increasing competence of central authorities resulted in efficiency gains through trading networks, tools and technologies, and access to raw materials resulting in improvements in irrigation and agriculture and the opening up of new lands (as well as building spectacular monuments). However, this led to greater competition for the best lands, increased consumption by elites and therefore put greater pressure on ecological resources. And he reminds his readers that these agrarian economies were particularly dependent on rainfall and water availability so that, the bigger the state or city, the greater the vulnerability to shifting weather patterns. Of all the rich themes in this book, it is this one which perhaps holds the most pertinent and disturbing lessons for our times. For as Frankopan emphasises when writing about India two millennia ago, they were aware that ‘good governance led to optimal outcomes’, underpinned by ‘the virtue of social, economic and environmental sustainability’. Aware of this, they believed that, in reference to wildlife, forests, forest produce and water, ‘those who damaged or overexploited these resources should be punished with death’ (p. 157). As we know in our own times, however, what more often happens is that growth or expansion comes at a great cost to nature and to many in society. A key lesson for Frankopan is that instead of being too big to fail, failure happened because states grew too large and overextended:
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‘Large states could prove surprisingly brittle … and could break down under relatively modest pressures and imbalances with cascading consequences’ (p. 202). As he sums it up: ‘Complexity produces diminishing returns’ (p. 131). These weaknesses offered opportunities for people better able to adapt and he points out that nomadic people with their societies shaped at a local level were much more adaptable and had a common purpose lacking in the bureaucratic elites subject to the interests of powerful aristocrats. The author writes about this process of breakdown in a number of cases and his treatment of the collapse of the western Roman Empire is particularly fascinating. He traces the growing pressures on feeding an expanding population, with resulting deforestation, reduced land yields, even lead pollution (which quadruped in the first two centuries of the Roman Empire due to the exploitation of mines in northern Spain and Germany): ‘Most important of all was that as the state began to implode, … supply and trade networks broke down entirely; when grain stopped reaching the army, regional economies went into freefall, urban centres contracted and the empire’s defences weakened’ (p. 202). Descent resulted not from chaos but from the splintering of the state and the disappearance of central authority forcing a return to local forms of authority and of provisioning. There is much here to inform current debates on degrowth and localisation. The key lesson therefore is not primarily that a changing climate or environmental pressures themselves lead to breakdown but rather that they can act as triggers for patterns of decline to set in. Frankopan’s summary of the medieval warm period (900–1250) can be applied more widely, especially to our own situation today: ‘Reliable food and water supplies were central at all times, but especially during periods of demographic expansion. Societies had to contend with finite nature resources; when those became exhausted or came under stress because of over-exploitation, because of shifts in rainfall patterns or because of conflict, disease or failure of infrastructure such as river defences, disaster soon followed. That provides some food for thought for the present and future – as well as the past’ (p. 287). The food for thought points not just to curbing the triggers (reducing emissions or protecting biodiversity would be today’s key examples) but also to looking at how to build social and economic resilience as the author himself implies: ‘Crucial, then, was the balance between environmental pressure on the one hand and social and economic fragility on the other’ (p. 255). The ways in which social and economic decisions over recent decades have undermined 526
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resilience and created greater fragility (through weakening the state and creating the conditions for obscene levels of social inequality to emerge) warrant far greater attention therefore as responses to climate change and biodiversity loss. Before looking at recent developments, two issues are worthy of closer attention. The first relates to the interesting examples Frankopan gives where climate could be seen to have played an important role in historical events. I pick three examples: looking at what he calls the ‘extraordinary political instability across Europe, Africa and much of Asia’ at the beginning of the seventh century of our era, Frankopan wonders how much the success of Islam was due to the environmental conditions (including plague) that kept the Turks at bay and allowed Muhammad and his followers to fill the vacuum created by the weakness of the Roman and Persian empires. Another climatic event keeping the Turks at bay, according to Frankopan, was that the Sultan’s troops were poised for an assault on Vienna in 1529 but ‘torrential rainfall led to Ottoman heavy cannon becoming stuck in the mud’. Had his forces moved two months earlier, Vienna might have fallen and the history of Europe would have been very different. A third examples relates to the cold, hard winter of 1787–88 in France with a late and wet spring which resulted in grain prices increasing by 50%. Already by the summer of 1788 unrest was building and small-scale uprisings breaking out; bad storms that summer exacerbated things to the point that one in five people in Paris were dependent on charitable relief. The consequences, as Frankopan points out, were not only the French Revolution itself but its impacts on Europe, Egypt, India and the US, creating conditions for Britain’s industrial take-off. He concludes: ‘Such were the unforeseen consequences of major shifts in politics, ideas and climatic change’ (p. 447). The other issue that emerges strongly throughout the book is disease. As well as allowing greater exchanges of goods (including foodstuffs), trading networks throughout history were also vectors of disease. Referring to the nineteenth century, Frankopan writes: ‘Epidemic and pandemic disease were part of the price to pay as human interactions and activities spread pathogens from one continent to another. Ports like Bombay, Cape Town, Singapore, Hong Kong and Calcutta were crucial not only for the loading and unloading of goods but as transmission points in an interconnected global disease network (p. 503–4). Furthermore, the author explicitly links disease to climate when he writes: ‘Changes in climate patterns could trigger more frequent outbreaks
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of vector-borne disease following abnormally high levels of rainfall. Indeed, three of the most lethal pandemics of the last two millennia – the Justinianic plague of the sixth century, the Black Death of the 1340s and the plague of the seventeenth century – were heavily influenced by climate variation’ (p. 208). And he even links the spread of disease to creating the conditions that helped different religions to spread such as the expansion of Christianity into Central Asia being linked to contemporary accounts of the spread of the plague. His chapter on Disease and the Formation of a New World (c. 1250–c. 1450) is particularly fascinating in showing how the Black Death of the 1340s had a severe impact on parts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa as well as on Europe, and in tracing its longer term consequences, including a ‘nuptial frenzy’ (p. 313). As the story progresses, so does the intensity of the impact of our species. Chapters 14 and 15 on the conquest of the Americas and on slavery give the fuller picture that emerges when climate and the environment are brought into focus. Thus the conquest of the Americas becomes the ‘Expansion of Ecological Horizons’ as the pursuit of profit ‘reshaped political power, transformed ecologies and ultimately changed the climate itself’ (p. 338) resulting in a full-scale global ecological revolution: ‘Public imagination and conceptualisation of the natural world were reshaped in such dramatic ways as to distort how we think about history as the Old World expropriated and refashioned the New World in its image’ (p. 340) rolling back the commodity frontiers in what he calls an ‘ecological imperialism’ (p. 346). This focus also allows an appreciation of indigenous coping strategies such as those of the Iroquois and Algonquin peoples of eastern America shifting diet and recalibrating authority systems in the face of this, captured in oral histories which recall climatic and environmental crises and tell the stories of ‘resilience and triumph over adversity’ (p. 350). Chapter 15 ‘On the Exploitation of Nature and People (1650–1750)’ tells the story of slavery including the steep environmental price that was paid, often overlooked in mainstream accounts: ‘Overwork of the land damaged soils, caused a decline in fertility and resulted in erosion’ (p. 377). While ecosystems have always been transformed and reshaped by nonhuman forces, Frankopan makes clear that it is the evolution of our species that has been the single most important development. As he brings the story closer to our times, so does the impact on the environment intensify, ‘motivated by the chase for a fast buck’ (p. 475). This is ‘the age of turbulence’ 528
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(1870–1920) leading to widespread ecocide often carried out by colonial powers certain that they knew better than local peoples: ‘The conviction that transformations of the natural environment were certain to bring about positive long-term change proved to be spectacularly ill-placed – throwing ideas about cultural and ethnic supremacy into sharp relief’ (p. 485). As we reach the twentieth century, the costs of the immense human suffering of the century since 1914 are ‘matched by those inflicted on the natural world’ (p. 511): ‘ … the growth and spread of industry brought about rises in levels of manufacturing, production, exchange and consumption over the last hundred years – and also in emissions of carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases and aerosols that have formed a central part of anthropogenic climate change’ (p. 519). Chapter 22 on reshaping the global environment traces the hubris of the belief, as Mao put it, that ‘man must conquer nature’ (p. 567). By the 1970s doubts were emerging as awareness of global heating and environmental damage began to spread. But yet the assault on nature continued with the period since the collapse of the USSR moulding a new world ‘that arguably rivalled the European arrival in the Americas in the 1490s’ since it unleashed ‘by far the most intensive period of commercial exchange and integration – or globalisation – in history, in terms of scale and intensity as well as of speed’ (p. 606). In his concluding chapters, Frankopan makes it very clear that the story he has been telling is now nearing its endgame as we are now ‘On the Edge of Ecological Limits’ (Chapter 24). The pace of growth since 1990 ‘has proved mind-boggling’ (p. 609) while changes in the natural environment are happening ‘on an unprecedented scale and at astonishing speed’ (p. 613). What is new is that the crisis today is global in a way it has never been before, so that ‘the world of today and tomorrow looks terrifying’ presenting ‘extraordinary challenges for human life’ (p. 630–1) with ‘anticipated economic shocks enough to turn blood to ice’ (p. 636). This is an extraordinary book and it is difficult to exaggerate its immense importance. While one could quibble with some of the judgements here and there, and experts may take issue with the patchy evidence on which some conclusions are based, these are minor issues compared to the astonishing marshalling of detailed evidence from all parts of the world that tells a very clear and deeply disturbing story. As the author puts it, ‘we are taking extraordinary risks with our futures’ (p. 658). But it also shows how nothing is inevitable and the story clearly outlines that the path to address these risks
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lies in enlightened governance, new ideas and appropriate technologies to help restore nature and reduce emissions and, above all, greater levels of collaboration among all of us opening our eyes to what faces us. We didn’t need this book to tell us, but what it does do is give a much greater historical depth to confirm that this is the only way forward. And it adds a note of caution as in the author’s sobering final comments on the conclusions of a UK government report which argues that it will be nature rather than human action that ultimately brings emissions towards zero. Frankopan adds: ‘It will do so through catastrophic depopulations, whether through hunger, disease or conflict. With fewer of us around to burn fuel, cut down forests and tear minerals from the earth’s crust, the human footprint may become drastically reduced – and we will move closer to the sustainable, lush paradise of our fantasised past. Perhaps we will find our way back there through peaceful means; an historian would not bet on it’ (p. 658). Dr Peadar Kirby is Professor Emeritus of International Politics and Public Policy, University of Limerick.
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Index 2023 Vol. 112 – Nos 445–448 Studies – An Irish Quarterly Review
Articles John Bruton Partition: Are There Two Nations on the Island of Ireland, and Could They Be Fused into One?.................................................. 418 Brian Feeney The Protocol for Ireland/Northern Ireland: A Long and Winding Road................................................................ 225 Jane Fountain The Algorithmic State? Challenges to Democracy in an Era of Digitalisation.................................................................... 92 Johnny Gogan Regenerating the State: The Key to Ireland’s Response to Climate Change................................................................ 86 James Harpur Imagining Kells: A Poetic Meditation on the Book of Kells.............. 293 Finola Kennedy Newman’s Idea of a University.......................................................... 154 William Kingston Rebalancing Distorted Science Policy............................................... 212 Peadar Kirby Living Lightly on our Planet: Challenges for Ireland.......................... 43
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Brendan Leahy Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education..... 452 Fiachra Long Gnostic Undercurrents in our Avatar Culture..................................... 371 Orla Lynskey Regulating for the Future: The Law’s Enforcement Deficit............... 104 Alexandra MacLennan Cardinal Owen McCann, Angola and Mozambique: Greater Ireland Meets Greater Portugal............................................. 383 Jacob Martin SJ The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn........... 462 Bríd McGuinness Seamus Heaney and Education: Student and Teacher........................ 345 Peter McVerry SJ A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary.............. 431 Suzanne Mulligan Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections................................... 439 Mary P. Murphy The Future of Welfare is Ecosocial: Making it Happen............................................................................... 202 Seamus Murphy SJ Confronting the Past for the Sake of the Future................................. 362 Katherine O’Donnell The Gentleman in Newman’s Idea of a University: A Genderless Model for Irish Catholics............................................. 169
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Declan O’Keeffe Frances Biggs and the Windows of Gonzaga College, Dublin.......... 325 Timothy Quinlan A Pilgrim Church: Responding in Uncertain Times........................... 192 Dermot Roantree Newman’s Idea of Development: A Note........................................... 180 Philipp W. Rosemann Introduction: Thinking about Ireland’s Future, Then and Now.............. 9 Paul Shrimpton Newman’s Idea of a Tutor and its Implementation at the Catholic University....................................................................... 160 Amanda Slevin Climate, Communities, and Capitalism: Critically Imagining and Co-Creating Pathways for a Sustainable Ireland........................... 61 Alan Titley Irish, ‘Celtic’, and the Future............................................................... 29 John Turpin The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts: 200 Years of Social and Artistic Change............................................ 311 Barry Whelan Une Mission Spéciale: Leopold Kerney’s Diplomatic Activities on Behalf of the Irish Republic in France, 1919–23.......... 474 Anthony White The Dáil General Election of August 1923........................................ 354
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Review Articles Mark Bell The Enduring Relevance of Catholic Social Teaching Anna Rowlands, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times; Anthony Annett, Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy............................................................................ 394 Joseph Dunne Closing In on Closeness: The Key to Learning for Life? Fiachra Long, Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning: The Challenge of Proximity................................................................ 485 Declan Kelly Hauerwas on Barth and Apocalypticism Stanley Hauerwas, Fully Alive: The Apocalyptic Humanism of Karl Barth...................................................................................... 247 Peadar Kirby How to address the Climate Crisis Greta Thunberg (ed.), The Climate Book; Gregory Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism.................. 236 Martina Madden Three Books on the Housing Crisis in Ireland and Europe Rory Hearne, Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It; Lorcan Sirr (ed.), Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets; Christoph U. Schmid (ed.), Ways Out of the European Housing Crisis......................................... 120 Thomas J. Morrissey SJ The First Jesuit Missions to Ireland Mary Ann Lyons & Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760................................... 493
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Book Reviews Keith Adams Finola Kennedy, Local Matters — Parish, Local Government and Community in Ireland............................................. 266 Gary Granville Kevin Cahill & Niamh Dennehy (eds.), Perspectives on the Teaching of English in Post-Primary Education.......................... 504 Kevin Hargaden Eóin Flannery, Form, Affect and Debt in Post-Celtic Tiger Irish Fiction: Ireland in Crisis........................................................... 127 Kevin Hargaden Bryan Fanning, Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide................................................................................ 513 Peadar Kirby Samuel K. Fisher & Brian Ó Conchubhair, Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern................................................................... 407 Peadar Kirby Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.......... 524 Charles Lysaght Aidan Enright, Charles Owen O’Conor, The O’Conor Don: Liberal Catholicism and Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Ireland................................................................ 274 Eamon Maher Mary Kenny, The Way We Were.......................................................... 259 Eamon Maher Conor Mulvagh & Emer Purcell (eds.), Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword............................................. 508 Studies • volume 112 • number 448
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Brendan MacPartlin SJ Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World................................. 521 Patrick Mitchel Declan Kelly, The Defeat of Satan..................................................... 403 Tom Mullins Michael Longley, The Slain Birds...................................................... 516 Ciara Murphy David Robbins, Diarmuid Torney, Pat Brereton (eds.), Ireland and the Climate Crisis........................................................... 130 John O’Hagan Ciarán Casey, The Irish Department of Finance 1959–99................. 134
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Index 2023 Vol. 112 – Nos 445–448 Studies – An Irish Quarterly Review
Articles John Bruton Partition: Are There Two Nations on the Island of Ireland, and Could They Be Fused into One?.................................................. 418 Brian Feeney The Protocol for Ireland/Northern Ireland: A Long and Winding Road................................................................ 225 Jane Fountain The Algorithmic State? Challenges to Democracy in an Era of Digitalisation.................................................................... 92 Johnny Gogan Regenerating the State: The Key to Ireland’s Response to Climate Change................................................................ 86 James Harpur Imagining Kells: A Poetic Meditation on the Book of Kells.............. 293 Finola Kennedy Newman’s Idea of a University.......................................................... 154 William Kingston Rebalancing Distorted Science Policy............................................... 212 Peadar Kirby Living Lightly on our Planet: Challenges for Ireland.......................... 43
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531
Brendan Leahy Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education..... 452 Fiachra Long Gnostic Undercurrents in our Avatar Culture..................................... 371 Orla Lynskey Regulating for the Future: The Law’s Enforcement Deficit............... 104 Alexandra MacLennan Cardinal Owen McCann, Angola and Mozambique: Greater Ireland Meets Greater Portugal............................................. 383 Jacob Martin SJ The Problem of Celibacy in the Clerical Films of Bob Quinn........... 462 Bríd McGuinness Seamus Heaney and Education: Student and Teacher........................ 345 Peter McVerry SJ A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary.............. 431 Suzanne Mulligan Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections................................... 439 Mary P. Murphy The Future of Welfare is Ecosocial: Making it Happen............................................................................... 202 Seamus Murphy SJ Confronting the Past for the Sake of the Future................................. 362 Katherine O’Donnell The Gentleman in Newman’s Idea of a University: A Genderless Model for Irish Catholics............................................. 169
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Declan O’Keeffe Frances Biggs and the Windows of Gonzaga College, Dublin.......... 325 Timothy Quinlan A Pilgrim Church: Responding in Uncertain Times........................... 192 Dermot Roantree Newman’s Idea of Development: A Note........................................... 180 Philipp W. Rosemann Introduction: Thinking about Ireland’s Future, Then and Now.............. 9 Paul Shrimpton Newman’s Idea of a Tutor and its Implementation at the Catholic University....................................................................... 160 Amanda Slevin Climate, Communities, and Capitalism: Critically Imagining and Co-Creating Pathways for a Sustainable Ireland........................... 61 Alan Titley Irish, ‘Celtic’, and the Future............................................................... 29 John Turpin The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts: 200 Years of Social and Artistic Change............................................ 311 Barry Whelan Une Mission Spéciale: Leopold Kerney’s Diplomatic Activities on Behalf of the Irish Republic in France, 1919–23.......... 474 Anthony White The Dáil General Election of August 1923........................................ 354
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Review Articles Mark Bell The Enduring Relevance of Catholic Social Teaching Anna Rowlands, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times; Anthony Annett, Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy............................................................................ 394 Joseph Dunne Closing In on Closeness: The Key to Learning for Life? Fiachra Long, Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning: The Challenge of Proximity................................................................ 485 Declan Kelly Hauerwas on Barth and Apocalypticism Stanley Hauerwas, Fully Alive: The Apocalyptic Humanism of Karl Barth...................................................................................... 247 Peadar Kirby How to address the Climate Crisis Greta Thunberg (ed.), The Climate Book; Gregory Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism.................. 236 Martina Madden Three Books on the Housing Crisis in Ireland and Europe Rory Hearne, Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It; Lorcan Sirr (ed.), Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets; Christoph U. Schmid (ed.), Ways Out of the European Housing Crisis......................................... 120 Thomas J. Morrissey SJ The First Jesuit Missions to Ireland Mary Ann Lyons & Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760................................... 493
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Book Reviews Keith Adams Finola Kennedy, Local Matters — Parish, Local Government and Community in Ireland............................................. 266 Gary Granville Kevin Cahill & Niamh Dennehy (eds.), Perspectives on the Teaching of English in Post-Primary Education.......................... 504 Kevin Hargaden Eóin Flannery, Form, Affect and Debt in Post-Celtic Tiger Irish Fiction: Ireland in Crisis........................................................... 127 Kevin Hargaden Bryan Fanning, Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide................................................................................ 513 Peadar Kirby Samuel K. Fisher & Brian Ó Conchubhair, Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern................................................................... 407 Peadar Kirby Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.......... 524 Charles Lysaght Aidan Enright, Charles Owen O’Conor, The O’Conor Don: Liberal Catholicism and Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Ireland................................................................ 274 Eamon Maher Mary Kenny, The Way We Were.......................................................... 259 Eamon Maher Conor Mulvagh & Emer Purcell (eds.), Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword............................................. 508 Studies • volume 112 • number 448
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Brendan MacPartlin SJ Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World................................. 521 Patrick Mitchel Declan Kelly, The Defeat of Satan..................................................... 403 Tom Mullins Michael Longley, The Slain Birds...................................................... 516 Ciara Murphy David Robbins, Diarmuid Torney, Pat Brereton (eds.), Ireland and the Climate Crisis........................................................... 130 John O’Hagan Ciarán Casey, The Irish Department of Finance 1959–99................. 134
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Studies 1912
An Irish Quarterly Review
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An Irish Quarterly Review
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