Fr Flanagan and Irish institutions

Madam, - My recent article on Father Flanagan's views on the Irish penal system, as revealed in his visit here in the summer …

Madam, - My recent article on Father Flanagan's views on the Irish penal system, as revealed in his visit here in the summer of 1946 (Rite and Reason, September 6th), elicited a reply from Mary Raftery (Opinion, September 9th) in which she accuses me of a number of factual errors.

1. She writes that Father Flanagan had read Walter Mahon Smith's book I Did Penal Servitude before he arrived in Ireland and that consequently my claim that he read it after his arrival here and my argument that his reading of it caused a turning-point in his attitude towards the Irish penal system "simply doesn't hold water".

I have inspected Father Flanagan's papers in the Boys' Town archives in Omaha, Nebraska. On July 25th, 1946, Father Flanagan wrote to Mahon Smith thanking him for "your fine book" which "I received at the Gresham Hotel" and expressing how the narrative "tore the heart out" of him. In this letter, Father Flanagan states explicitly that he had no copy of this book and that he was awaiting its arrival from Ireland. In his speeches before he received this book, Father Flanagan had only high praise for Irish institutions and for those who staffed them; after he read the book the tone of his speeches was condemnatory. In the light of this, Ms Raftery might care to retract her alleged correction.

2. Ms Raftery claims that I am "further in error" in stating that Mahon Smith provided Father Flanagan with documentation concerning the savage flogging of a child by Christian Brothers at St Joseph's Industrial School, Glin, Co Limerick. It was, she writes, Martin Maguire, a local representative, who sent him the material. In fact, in my History Ireland article on this matter (available at www.historyireland.com), to which Ms Raftery refers, I state categorically that the material on Glin was "collected by Martin Maguire" and was passed on to Father Flanagan by James Shiel, who had facilitated the priest's visit to Ireland. However, Mahon-Smith was indisputably an additional source in this matter: in a series of letters to Father Flanagan in November 1946, he refers to his attempts to expose abuse at the school.

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3. Ms Raftery concludes her reply with a quotation from Father Flanagan in which he writes that "we have no Christian Brotherhood here at Boys' Town", stating that they left after five years once they realised that they could not "punish the children and kick them around". Immediately after this sentence, Ms Raftery inserts, in the same quotation, remarks made by Father Flanagan concerning the punishment of Nazis and fascists "for their sins against society".

Two points need to be made here. First, Ms Raftery fails to make it clear that it is not the Irish Christian Brothers who stand accused here, but rather an entirely different American order. Second, and more serious to a historian trained in the careful handling of evidence, Ms Raftery conflates two paragraphs far apart in Father Flanagan's text, as well as inverting the textual order of the paragraphs, thereby seamlessly associating "Christian Brotherhood" with Nazis and fascists. Such a practice is reprehensible in a historian, and I presume, in a journalist too.

Ms Raftery is fully entitled to disagree with my thesis. However, it is unacceptable to be accused of a series of errors by someone who has not inspected Father Flanagan's archive, and whose grasp of the rules of evidence appears to be altogether tenuous. - Yours, etc.,

DAIRE KEOGH,  History Department, St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.

Mary Raftery writes: Boys' Town USA informs me that Dr Keogh's examination of Father Flanagan's papers about his Irish visit is incomplete. He may not have seen Father Flanagan's own notes, which state: "Before my visit to Ireland, I had read the autobiography of a man who served penal servitude. The title of the book is I Did Penal Servitude."

I am happy that Dr Keogh implicitly accepts my point as to the source of the Glin material sent to Father Flanagan. Further, I neither stated nor implied in my column that the "Christian Brotherhood" referred to by Father Flanagan was the Irish Christian Brothers, although Father Flanagan's writings show that he also took a somewhat dim view of that congregation.

Finally, contrary to Dr Keogh's inference, my source has always been the Father Flanagan archive at Boys' Town Hall of History in Nebraska. In response to my requests, its archivists have kindly sent me a large volume of documentation over the past six years.