So wrote A.P. Graves, son of a Church of Ireland Bishop of Limerick and father of Robert Graves, poet and novelist, author of “Goodbye To All That”, the brilliant memoir of his youth, including his schooling in Charterhouse Public School and nearly four years service as an Infantry Officer in France, experiences which I would not envy.
We owe much of our knowledge of history to priests, such as the Venerable Bede, whose “History of the English Church and People” was the first history of that nation. Bede
was taught by St Cuthbert, a pupil of St Aidan, and the Irish come out well from his account. Another priest, Seathrun O Ceitinn (1570-1644) wrote “Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn” (Foundation of Knowledge On Ireland) to refute the propaganda of the 12th Century Giraldus Cambrensis and his disciples up to his own times under Tudors and Stuarts.
Between 1632 and 1636, the Franciscan Friar Micheal O Cleirigh with three main collaborators compiled annals stretching from the time of Noah’s Ak to 1616 AD.These
Annals Of The Four Masters were dedicated “Do chum Gloire De agus Onora na hEireann.” Before some pedant or history anorak, (MT –anybody?) points out that neither O
Cleirigh nor his collaborators were priests, I think it impossible to give a precis of commentary on Ireland without mentioning them.
There have in these days of more scientific history telling been some very honourable historians among the clergy and I’m sure the name Tomas O Fiaich will come to many
minds.
Outside a Dublin Church there’s a memorial to the Four Masters and it carries their dedication which translates as “To the Glory of God and the Honour of Ireland” and it was
erected at the instigation and expense of William Martin Murphy (1844-1919) one of the most energetic, controversial and execrated Masters in Ireland.Owner of tramways
in Dublin and Leeds, press magnate, with businesses on three continents, Murphy was a straight businessman. But as leader of the Dublin Employers he locked out thousands of workers for their membership of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and starved their families for months. Father Thomas Morrisey SJ wrote recording and extolling
Murphy’s career. It appears Murphy was a pious man who prayed for his opponent James Connolly during the lockout. A later Trade Unionist might have listed Murphy’s prayers
among the four most useless things in the world, for the NUM’s Mick McGahey named the three most useless as “Tits on a Bull, Balls on a Pope and a Vote of Thanks for the Workers.”
Anyhow Murphy’s Irish Independent in 1913 was happy with the police cracking workers’ heads, and unhappy in 1916 when some Insurgent leaders had been shot by the British, and the wounded James Connolly had not yet been finished off. Father Morissey sneeringly referred to Connolly as a “Martyr”. The inverted commas were Morrissey’s. I understand that the word martyr means “witness” and I’ve never known any scholar to sneer at the description “Tolpuudle Martyrs” for the English Trade Unionists transported to Australia in 1833.
Recently, another Jesuit, Father Seamus Murphy S.J., a philosopher, has laid into the reputation of Patrick Pearse and the 1916 Insurgents. Sheltering in a supposedly
rekigious column “Rite and Reason” in the rabidly anti-Christian Irish Times ,he has come out with the sort of balderdash which was once the monopoly of that paper. He
compares Pearse to Daniel O’Connell to the former’s disadvantage. I have a high regard for O’Connell’s memory. But O’Connell’s great cloak has long been the first refuge of scoundrels.Murphy’s sneering attitude to Pearse reminds me of the attitude of a classmate of mine which earned him the description “Scitomnia” by one of our Holy Ghost teacher from Daniel O’Connell’s native place, Reginald (“Rocky”) Walsh. Rocky pronounced”Scit” as “Shit” as I believe Cicero and Caesar (when not speaking Greek).did. But Father Murphy informed us that O’Connell, who famously shot John D’esterre dead in a duel in 1815 “never shot anybody.” How’s that for False Witness?
It’s now time to salute another Father Murphy, Brian P.Murphy, OSB of Glenstal Abbey, a Historian scourge of false witnesses.His “Origin of British Propaganda in Ireland, 1920”
reveals a well of history defiled, from which Kevin Myers and others have raised buckets of falsehoods and poured them over the media. I’ll come back to this subject another time.
Go raibh maith agat Donal, there’s another Saggart, whose parish I was recently in, Father Murphy from old Kilcormack, others who bore his name were not so ‘great’!