Seán Lemass tapes: ‘I think there is a political advantage in having a certain anti-clerical tinge’

Seán Lemass may have lived during a time when the Catholic Church was dominant in Irish society, but, nevertheless, he always believed there was a strong sense of anti-clericalism in the Irish people.

In the Lemass tapes, the former taoiseach recounted a major row he had with the bishop of Galway, Dr Michael Browne, who was never slow in delivering instructions to the political classes.

It followed on foot of the publication of a 1944 report led by Browne into the now rather arcane concept of vocationalism, which generated a great deal of interest in Ireland during the period.

First articulated by Pope Pius XI in his 1931 papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, vocationalism presented a road map for how Catholics could order their society and avoid the extremes of fascism and communism.

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Eight years after the papal encyclical, Éamon De Valera commissioned his own inquiry into vocationalism in the months before the start of the second World War.

However, the 1944 report from the combative bishop of Galway, which was critical of the government and the civil service, arrived as a bombshell in government departments.

It warned of the State’s “despotic control of production and labour”. Lemass took this criticism personally, as his own department had taken draconian emergency measures during the war to control the economy.

Fiercely denouncing the report publicly as a “slovenly document”, Lemass said the work was “querulous, nagging and propagandist” – extraordinary language for a politician at the time.

Exchanged insults

Browne responded indignantly and the two exchanged insults in a series of letters in the Irish Press. However, Lemass believed his stand against the bishop was very popular throughout the country.

“I think there is a political advantage in having a certain anti-clerical tinge,” Lemass remembered. “The only time in my life that I ever got an enormous vote, the highest vote ever accorded to any candidate in a general election was when I was having a full-scale row with the bishop of Galway and this was dominating the political scene and I found this on other occasions too – that having a good row with the bishop is quite a political asset and you do not suffer politically for it because there is an anti-clericalism in the Irish people.”

Lemass may be referring to the 1944 general election in which he got almost a third of the vote in the Dublin South constituency.

Lemass said in his time as a politician, “I never had any difficulty at all either with Dr [John Charles] McQuaid or the cardinal [John D’Alton].

Lemass put McQuaid in charge of a commission on youth unemployment. It recommended the school leaving age be increased. When Lemass pointed out that would mean building new schools and employing new teachers, McQuaid withdrew the report.

Lemass does not mention the spat between McQuaid, Lemass and de Valera. McQuaid refused, as chair of the committee, to take submissions from Protestant organisations and offered to resign if he had to. De Valera called his bluff and refused to back down.

Lemass said of his relationship with the clergy: “I do not remember having any difficulty, sense of strain or problems in dealing with the church. My personal relationship with all the principal archbishops and the cardinal was always very good.

“Whenever I wanted advice about anything there was never the slightest suggestion that they felt it was their duty to impose any point of view upon us. I could have been lucky, nothing emerged in my time that would have raised a conflict. I can only testify on my personal experience in that regard.”

Lemass had little time for Noel Browne, the minister at the centre of the infamous Mother and Baby Scheme which was stymied by the Catholic bishops.