Bishops were right to condemn the anti-Treaty IRA in 1922

On October 10th, 1922, an Irish Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter denounced the IRA’s war against the elected government, and banned from the sacraments any Catholics who took up arms against the state. Lately this has been severely criticised.

There are two contexts for evaluating the bishops’ letter: the 1922 context and the present.

In the centenary commemorations, the 1922-1923 Civil War was commonly framed as a tragic and violent conflict between former comrades. It implies moral equivalence between the two sides: equally sincere, equally prone to atrocities. That is an anti-Treaty framework. It is elitist: it excludes the people. Their voice was loud in the June 1922 general election, where 80 per cent backed pro-Treaty parties. Half of the 80 per cent would not vote for any group, pro-Treaty or anti-Treaty, associated with the 1919-1922 violence. Had the straight-vote system still been in use, instead of the then new proportional representation system, anti-Treaty Sinn Féin might not have won a single seat.

In a democratic rule-of-law framework, refusal to accept the will of the people is politically intolerable and seriously immoral.

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The bishops did not condemn people for opposing the Treaty but for resisting the elected government by force. That was the basic and most serious moral wrong and political injustice of the Civil War. Government atrocities do not alter that fact. There was no moral equivalence between the government and the IRA.

A second level of moral wrongness: each side was morally responsible for the atrocities it committed. A third level: the IRA and its political backers carried moral responsibility for creating the situation in which harsh repressive legislation was necessary.

That situation was created when the IRA, defeated in straight battles, fell back on guerrilla warfare in late summer 1922. Chief of staff Liam Lynch knew – as Gerard Sheehan’s recent biography shows – that military victory was impossible, but rather than call a ceasefire, his policy aimed to break the Free State by destroying the country: the economy and banks, infrastructure and civil administration. In that, the IRA had much success. From October 1922, the harshness of statements by cabinet members such as Cosgrave, Mulcahy, Blythe, and O’Higgins reflected their desperation and fear that the state would collapse. That might now seem excessive. But it did not seem so then to observers in Ireland and abroad.

The bishops had no choice but to denounce a campaign involving the massacre of Protestants in Cork’s Bandon valley and at Altnaveigh, Co Armagh

Most new European democracies established after 1918 had collapsed by 1938. In Ireland’s agony of October 1922, the bishops acted with good authority: they spoke for the people.

They also had no choice but to denounce a campaign involving the massacre of Protestants in Cork’s Bandon valley and at Altnaveigh, Co Armagh. Talk about how hurtful it was to be excluded from the Eucharist is emotional blackmail to cloud the truth.

What of the contemporary 2023 context? Relevant here is the rise of numerous ultra-nationalist parties. Their opposition to immigrants and refugees, authoritarian instincts and hostility to liberal democracy warn that their commitment to democracy and the rule of law is uncertain.

Hungary and Poland reveal where it would begin: the erosion of the rule of law and the independence of the courts, leading to one-party rule under a democratic facade.

If larger European countries are taken in darker directions, there are people ready to do the same with Ireland. The church should, perhaps, prepare for that eventuality. The bishops’ 1922 statement set a standard for clerical courage.

It was said in 1922 that the bishops should stay out of politics. But social justice is integral to Christian faith, and Catholic social thought is about human dignity, the right to life, peace, the rule of law and political freedoms. The church must defend those things.

Recently, Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega closed the Jesuit university in Managua for doing just that, and exiled the Jesuits. In the 1980s the Irish bishops stated repeatedly that IRA members who murdered, maimed and terrorised were not in union with the church, regardless of whether they went to Mass.

The Jewish prophets raged against the sacrilege of those who murder and oppress continuing to offer sacrifice in the temple of the Lord. Ireland’s Catholic bishops could do no less in 1922, for a church indifferent to democracy and human life cannot celebrate the Eucharist. Let’s hope they won’t need to do it so again.

Fr Séamus Murphy is an Irish Jesuit, currently professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His book Confronting the Irish Revolution: The Perspective of the Good Friday Agreement will be published by Anthem Press in July 2024