.The contribution by Malachi O’Doherty “One of Ireland’s Leading Political Commentators” (15 October) is interesting but unconvincing.
Patrick Pearse never publicly promoted a “Gaelic and Catholic Ireland.” Indeed, in his oration at Wolfe Tone’s grave he rated the Deist Tone above St Patrick, which at least bordered on blasphemy.
Pearse inherited his radicalism from his English father, a fervent admirer of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh.
Pearse’s essay on Education in Ireland under British Rule – “The Murder Machine” – apears to be inspired by “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens, another Englishman.
Pearse told how a father of one of his pupils complained to him that all his son wanted to do was play the penny whistle.
Pearse urged him to buy the boy one.
“Hard Times” was an attack by Dickens on joyless Benthamite Utilitarianism, involving the fanatical “Gradgrind” devotion to facts, facts, to the exclusion of fancy and imagination.
One of the teachers in “Hard Times” is called Mr M’Choakumchild.
It is inconceivable that Pearse’s essay “The Murder Machine” excoriating what passed for education in Ireland under British rule, was written by a man unacquainted with “Hard Times.” I’m surprised that none of Pearse’s many modern detractors have damned him for plagiarism.
The English Henry Newman(“the finest prose stylist” of the 19th Century, according to James Joyce) delivered his “Idea of a University” to students in Dublin. Newman championed Education for its own sake, and not merely for getting jobs.
Benthamism is still rife in “Educational” establishments in Ireland. But the Gradgrind fanaticism regarding Facts is missing from the History Faculties.
Mr O’Doherty’s remarks about Winston Churchill show that he hasn’t got that old scoundrel’s measure.
If Churchill had been religious it could be suggested he said more than his prayers, Churchill’s observations on the “dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone” may fall easy on the ears but those who have informed matter between their ears will recognise unintended ironies.
Less than fifty years before Churchill was born there were no Catholic steeples in the whole of of the United Kingdom nor were Catholic”Chapels” allowed belfries nor bells. Catholics could not sit in Parliament.
In Ireland and England Catholic Churches, Abbeys,Convents, and Chapels had been destroyed by the hundred. The pre “Reformation” buildings still standing had been expropriated by a religious body “established” by English Law, which trumped the Body established by the Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth
The relaxation of some restrictions on Catholics brought about in the 19th Century gave rise to the building of Churches which employed masons and monumental sculptors such as James Pearse, an immigrant Unitarian from Birmingham, the father of Patrick and his siblings
Perhaps anti-Communism is the First Refuge of a Scoundrel. Certainly Churchill was the foremost anti-Bolshevik in the English-speaking world world and he sent troops to Russia to strangle the Revolution at Birth.
Less than thirty years later, after the Soviets liberated Europe from Nazism, Churchill was hoping, in 1945 to join Britain with the defeated Nazis in a new onslaught on Russia.
Mr O’Doherty exults at the decline in Catholicism and dances prematurely at what he imagines are the death throes of the Irish Language.
A great Englishmen, Dr Johnson said he was always sorry when a language was lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
If the only good Tories are dead ones, (Dr) Johnson and Swift were the very best of them.
Yours faithfully
Donal Kennedy
London
14 October 2022
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