Martin Mansergh criticises secular readings of Proclamation

The most quoted phrase in the Proclamation, "cherishing all of the children of the nation equally", should not be interpreted as referring to a modern-day secular agenda, historian and former minister Dr Martin Mansergh has said.

The phrase was commonly interpreted as cherishing both Catholic and Protestant traditions equally rather than a literal interpretation of it as referring to children only.

It was a “pledge of non-discrimination to the religious minority, not an early harbinger of Educate Together”, Dr Mansergh said.

There were attempts to suggest the phrase meant to promote secularism and that the presence of religion in the classroom, for instance, was a betrayal of the Republic. Such an interpretation was wrong as it attempted to suggest Irish republicanism was modelled on French republicanism, he said.

Original meaning

In his new book,

1916: The Church and the Rising,

published by the

Irish Catholic

newspaper, he writes: “If people wish to change, extend or even overturn the original meaning and resonance of historical phrases, they should acknowledge that that is what they are doing, and not seek to cover a contemporary secular agenda by spuriously invoking the authority of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation.”

Dr Mansergh says Irish republicanism was not the same as French republicanism which had an anti-clerical and secular bent and led to laicité, the separation of church and state in France.

As evidence, Dr Mansergh cites the Proclamation which states: “We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God.”

Religious beliefs

Dr Mansergh also suggests that the drive for independence was a drive to ensure that Irish society reflected “for the first time in centuries the religious beliefs and values of the people”. He concedes there were “mixed judgments on the subsequent experience”.

In the book’s preface, Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin says Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral rarely featured in any of the commentary on the Rising, though it was the “centre of humanitarian and spiritual concern during the dramatic days of Easter Week 1916”.

He expresses a desire that the centenary celebrations will “find a space to remember the priests of 1916”.

UCC historian Gabriel Doherty, who is on the State's commemoration advisory committee, said the church in 1916 was "simply the most important institution in the country at that time".

He said much that had been written about the Rising and the church had been “strikingly under-researched, with the received wisdom on the subject all too frequently inaccurate and, in recent years, wilfully so on many points”.