FROM THE ARCHIVES:A June 1931 public meeting in Dún Laoghaire – still Kingstown to The Irish Times – decided to erect a statue of Christ the King to greet passengers arriving at the country's main entry point, prompting this editorial. The statue, by Paris-based Andrew O'Connor, was not what the church promoters had in mind and was not erected until 1978 at Haigh Terrace.
ROMAN CATHOLIC Kingstown has decided to erect a statue of Christ the King at the gateway of Ireland. Christians of all creeds will treat this enterprise with respect.
At the meeting which launched it, the Rector of Glenageary said that if the statue were beautiful, dignified and raised “for the purpose of inspiration”, members of the Church of Ireland would welcome it. There is, however, a more serious consideration than the site, cost or artistry of the proposed statue – a consideration so serious that it demands a national searching of heart.
At the meeting, the Chairman of the Borough Council said the statue would be “a perpetual reminder to their visitors that they entered a country whose people were proud to acknowledge their adherence to the teachings of the Son of God.” In other words, this statue will claim for the Irish Free State a special eminence among the Christian peoples. As they approach her shores, visitors will receive . . . notice that they are entering a land which is Christian not only in faith, but in practice.
It is a fine declaration, but are we prepared to live up to it? The Christ of the Andes is a pledge of enduring peace between two countries [Argentina and Chile]. Will the Christ of Kingstown be a pledge, or will it be merely an aspiration; and, if it is to be only an aspiration, may it not come to be an object rather of penitence than of pride? Indeed, may it not come to be, like the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, an irony and a reproach?
If Christ should come to Dublin tomorrow in search of proofs that her citizens were proud to obey His teachings, could they confront Him with an easy mind? His Sermon on the Mount tells us clearly what He would think – what He thinks – about the slums of Dublin. In His life on Earth, Christ had an infinite pity for poor and sick persons and for little children. To-day nearly eighty thousand such persons are crowded into Dublin’s single-room tenements. Daily and nightly they company with such scenes of vice and squalor as make decent living and decent thinking virtually impossible. For the men and women of the slums the only refuge from filthy rooms or cellars is the betting-shop and the public-house; and the children must seek their play amid the moral and physical perils of the streets.
The handicap which these conditions put upon the slum children is insuperable; they are doomed to dreary and stunted lives. For one reason, therefore, we hail the projected statue at Kingstown. It implies a speedy reform of Dublin’s slums; for surely the Free State never will allow a statue of Christ the King to be a pointer to such iniquity.
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