Madam, - Your edition of May 5th carried a report on Bishop McKeown's address at the graves of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising. It gives no pleasure to a member of his church to criticise him in any way but many of us were appalled at what he is reported as having said, that the leaders of the Rising had their own motives as no one worked from pure idealism alone. Yet there was a deeply Christian ethos prevalent throughout "The Movement".
Maud Gonne, Terence McSwiney and Tomás McCurtain were members of the Third Order of St Francis. The Rosary was frequently prayed - in Kilmainham Jail, in the College of Surgeons and even by the Anti-Treaty prisoners when news was brought to them of Michael Collins's death. Count Plunkett (a Papal Count) said the Pope sent his blessing to Ireland. Giovanna Battista Montini (who was to become Pope Paul VI) expressed deep admiration for Terence McSwiney. The count's son, whose favourite readings included St Thomas More, St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila, left us a well-loved poem on Christ. From Michael Malin's deeply Catholic family came vocations to the religious life. Pearse was described by the man who sentenced him as "one of the finest men I have ever met". Connolly's wife spoke of his "beautiful life".
What were the individual agendas to which Bishop McKeown is reported to have referred? If it was Connolly's socialism/patriotism that was explained by the Lock-Out Strike and the starvation that followed it. Clarke and MacDiarmada were also too well aware of the abject squalor of Dublin. In fact Plunkett, from a home where fine linen and cut glass were everyday amenities, empathized with the ideals of Connolly as much as with the idealism of Pearse.
If socialism was one of the agendas to which Bishop McKeown was reputed to have referred it would be well to recall that when the Westminster Parliament introduced free meals for Britain's poverty-stricken, hungry school-goers, despite appeals by the Irish MPs the Parliament refused point blank to feed the hungry Irish children. It was left to individual clergy like the marvellous Canon Kavanagh of St Audeon's to give a hot meal to his young, starving parishioners.
Those who have reservations about the Rebellion sometimes mourn the loss of life but the anti-conscription campaign of the Irish Volunteers saved thousands of Irish men from the trenches. As it was 50,000 Irish lives were lost in the first World War, far, far more than in the War of Independence.
Revisionists are not normally asked to speak at ceremonies in memory of those whose patriotic intentions they question. All of them, including Bishop McKeown, are of course perfectly entitled to their interpretations of the Proclaimers of Easter Week, but might it be respectfully suggested that if they have reservations about the motives of the executed leaders, it would be preferable to decline an invitation to speak at their honoured graves rather than go and damn them with faint praise.
In an address to the Desmond Greaves Summer School Dr Brian Murphy, a Cistercian monk born in England, had this to say:
"Historians have been reluctant to write anything that might sustain the Republican National view of Irish history."
No depth of scholarship can stifle the heart of a nation and that heart lies with those buried in Arbour Hill. - Yours, etc,
ANNE CLARE, Dublin 9.