Starting to do a little tidying up following recent merrymaking, I was, as usual,diverted on finding
an old writing.
 
I drafted it as a letter to the IRISH POST in 1984 but I’m not sure if I sent it. As yesterday, 2nd January I was reading a piece reflecting on that precise year in a paper purporting to be trustworthy, I thought I might relaunch my four-score-year old remarks like a barque on  today’s  more stormy waters:-
 
“DEFENDING PETER KELLNER, Political Editor of THE NEW STATESMAN, from my criticism
 Mr J O’Donnell (Sept 29) quotes him -‘ A Catholic Ireland cannot be united and a united Ireland
 cannot be Catholic.’
 
Whatever the merits of the slogan, it does not arise from a consideration of Irish law and custom.
 
If Ireland were united tomorrow under the present Constitution, the Catholic practice of rural
communities in West Cork**no more invalidates the case for Irish re-unification than Lutheran
practice in American Mid-Western communities argues for the dissolution of the United States.
 
As people of Mr Kellner’s presumed political sophistication are convinced otherwise and literate
people may be persuaded by his writing, I must support my assertions.
 
A devout Moslem in England and a devout Catholic in the Irish Republic might find living by their
beliefs risky.
 
 In each case the law of the land is more restrictive than their religion as regards marriage.
 
The Koran permits a man to have four wives at a time, the Law of England, but one.
 
The Catholic Church can, and frequently does, rule that  marriages valid in Irish law are null and
void.
 
 It  frees the contractors to find new marriage partners. 
 
To take advantage  of that freedom in Ireland is to risk imprisonment for bigamy, and it puts the officiating priest at similar risk for aiding and abetting a crime.
 
Irish laws on marriage were not made in Rome nor drafted in Maynooth  despite all the propaganda to the contrary.
 
I too was in Ireland when Peter Kellner was there, but during three weeks through sixteen counties,
staying in Dublin, Spiddal, Westport,Sligo and Belfast, missed the traditional atmosphere of West Cork whose people he believes an obstacle to Irish unity.
 
I do know West Cork though, having stayed in Bantry when my uncle was Catholic curate there in
the 1950s. I well remember one Catholic Holy Day (June 29) hearing of a sub-postmistress, distressed because she could not attend Mass. Had she arranged for a neighbour to stand in for her for the half hour or so required, had word of this got to officialdom she would have been sacked.
 
The reason? In the 95% Catholic state, only St Patrick’s Day and Christmas Day are Public Holidays.
 
These past five years I have holidayed in France and have virtually circuited that secular Republic.
Mass-going there is a minority custom and anti-clericalism is widespread and virulent. I’ve been
there on August 15th, which the Catholic Church there, as in Ireland, designates a Holy Day. Unlike in
Ireland, in France it is a Public Holiday.
 
Name a day when Irish Catholics are required to attend Mass, and you name a Public Holiday in France, West Germany and Holland amongst other European states.
 
Ireland needs Peter Kellner’s advice on how to run her affairs as much as France does.
 
It’s a measure of the success of British brainwashing that Irishmen like Mr O’Donnell should give it
such weight.
 
It’s a pity that Mr Kellner didn’t earn an invitation into a typical Catholic rural kitchen where he might have have seen represented the Sacred Heart, the Virgin Mary, Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert
Emmet.
 
Anyone who has never seen these traditional  icons nor witnessed the veneration in which they were held knows little of the the Irish people, Catholic, Protestant or Dissenter, nor can they have anything
worth a damn to say about them.
 
Donal Kennedy
October 1984
 
*A West Cork Poet, Sean O’Coileain (1754-1817) wrote “Macnamh an Duine Dhoilliosaigh” (“Ponderings off a Melancholic Person”)  beside an abbey laid waste by Cromwell.
 
** IN 1984 some locals in West Cork claimed they had seen a statue of the Blessed Virgin bleeding.
 
On holiday with my wife in 1989 we visited  the pub immediately beside  the desecrated Abbey. When my wife and  I had a drink in the pub, she went to the “ladies” room  which had a Durex dispenser.
 
So much for Peter Kellner’s Clairvoyance!