A Clown in Holy Orders by Donal Kennedy

A clown in Holy Orders, celebrating Requiem Mass in Dublin for a soldier killed serving with the British Army in Afghanistan (or Iraq) said in his praise that the deceased always carried his Irish passport. Perhaps we should expect the Pope to canonise all adulterers who wear their wedding rings when on the job?

And we should expect Taliban and others to let the citizens of Ireland, bearing such passports, to pass ” freely and without hindrance” through their countries, and to “afford them all necessary assistance and protection” as requested by the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, even when they are carrying and using lethal weapons, and wearing the livery of British and other foreign powers?

Apart altogether from the moral confusion of the unfortunate deceased and the clerical clown, ordinary peaceful citizens, faithful to Ireland, are put at risk by such irresponsible nonsense.

When US Marine Colonel Oliver North was getting arms to Iran in an underhand deal under President Reagan, US agents carried Irish passports. An an assassination team in Dubai, apparently acting for Israel, used the same ruse de guerre. But Ireland is not at war and her citizens’ safety should not be put in jeopardy by such practical jokes.

Reporting from Paris for the Irish Times of October 7, Lara Marlowe, an American, tells us that 750 Irish people lived in France when the Second World War started.I’m not sure what she means, but from the context it seems she thinks it started in 1939, but her own country kept out of it until December 1941 when its Pacific Fleet was attacked at Pearl Harbour by the Japanese and Hitler declared war on behalf of the Third Reich. Until then the United States maintained embassies in Tokyo, Rome and Vichy.and Berlin.  It’s moot whether without Pearl Harbour or Hitler’s declaration, the United States would have become a belligerent at all.

The gist of her story was the unveiling of a plaque at the Irish College  in Paris to Irish people who engaged in French Resistance activities between 1940 and the Allied expulsion of the Germans from France in 1944. She quoted Professor of Military History, David Murphy of National University of Ireland –

   “These people made a moral choice, they could have waved their Free State passports, mirrored the Irish Government’s  stance and said, ‘ I’m not involved, I’m neutral’  “

The fact that voters in the Irish Free State in 1937 abolished that state and established a sovereign, independent democratic Irish State with a republican form of government seems to have escaped the notice of the professor, together with the fact that Government and Opposition parties and populace supported neutrality then and for decades since.

Citizens waving “Free State” passports were presumably stateless in 1940. I’d guess that Irish passport holders active in the French Resistance held on to their passports like the British soldier already mentioned, to shelter behind the neutrality of the Irish State, whose electorate expected them to render fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State. Or did they openly renounce their Irish citizenship, trash their passports, and replace them with passports issued by General de Gaulle’s shadow Government in London, an Irregular junta unrecognised by any power on earth? I understand that Marshal Petain’s administration had the backing or acquiescence of most French men and women, until long after D-Day in 1944.

On  first reading Professor Murphy’s remarks I nearly hit the roof. He appears to think himself a moral Colossus, and the Irish Government and Opposition and electorate  in 1940 as pygmies. I should be, but am not, surprised that he’s a graduate and professor of Ireland’s National University,God save the mark!  It did not surprise me to learn that he’s well favoured by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, where I imagine, he got his moral compass.

A droll Fellow indeed!