More On The Angelus
The
Angelus Agenda
A Letter And A Reply
Letter From Robin Bury
Dear Editor
I refer to Angela Clifford's comments on my 2 letters to RTE, together with RTE's response, in your edition No.70. 1 had sent this correspondence to you on the basis that I wanted you to let me know what policy, if any, Church and State, A Pluralist Review of Irish Culture, has towards RTE's broadcasting the Angelus Bell, the religious symbol of only one church. I had not intended that the correspondence should be published in your bulletin, however, and think that you might have sought my permission before going public. Be that as it may, now the debate has opened out, I wish to reply and to make a number of comments.
Ms Clifford writes, "Even though the tone of the Reform Movement correspondence is apparently pluralist, implicit in it is a programme to remove all religion from the public life of the nation". I prefer "state" to "nation". However, this is a complete misrepresentation of Reform's position. We were founded to promote pluralism in the Irish Republic. In almost all our correspondence, we emphasise that we want RTE to be inclusive and to broadcast bells from churches of various religions. My first letter to RTE (which I sent you) stated:
"We suggest a possible solution is for RTE to broadcast the chimes of bells at noon each weekday from our Cathedrals, both Catholic and Protestant."
In a more recent letter to the Irish Independent, I wrote,
"I advocate inclusion, not abolition, of the Angelus. It is more than time that Protestants, and others such as humanists and Muslims, were included in RTE's pause for prayer, or contemplation, if nothing else to reflect the changed nature of modern Irish society."
However, I have to quality this by saying that an alternative advocated by some members of Reform is that RTE drops the Angelus Bell completely and instead continues its balanced policy of broadcasting religious programmes. This view is also shared by some TDs, including Fiona O'Malley.
It is disingenuous to argue the Angelus Bell is all encompassing and acceptable to other religions. As far as people outside the Catholic Church are concerned (and I include lapsed Catholics), the almost divine, central position that Mary is accorded by the Roman Catholic Church is not one they accept, nor do they accept the Rosary, which is the central part of the Angelus.
Bruce Arnold pointed out in his article in the Irish Independent on 28th September that it is "a religious 'act' to broadcast the Angelus and it cannot be compared to broadcasting a religious service, such as the Morning Service on BBC radio 4. Anyway, why involve the BBC? The new article 3 in our constitution that is the important and binding legal entity as far as RTE is concerned.
It is revealing to point out the origins of the broadcasting of the Angelus Bell. Wesley Boyd wrote in his article in the Irish Times on 13th March 2002, "… the Angelus identifies RTE exclusively with a single church, albeit the predominant one in this country". Yes, it has been dumbed down over the years, but it was broadcast first to celebrate an era of Catholic triumphalism. As Wesley Boyd explained, "It was first introduced to radio on the Feast of Assumption, August 15th, in the Holy Year of 1950 and was adapted tamely by the new television channel when it came on air on New Year's Eve in 1961." Boyd believes it is sectarian and explains it was introduced at the request of Dr Charles McQuaid in 1949 when the bell of the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin was then broadcast. To-day a recording is used to allow some flexibility.
Wesley Boyd adds that, "It can be little comfort to RTE that the rigidly controlled broadcasting services of totalitarian states, particularly in the Islamic world, also felt obliged to minister to the faithful". It is worth remembering that the Angelus was broadcast in Spain under the dictatorship of General Franco.
I attach a letter from Mr Jaime Hyland to the Irish Independent that sums up much of what we have been saying and you may wish to publish some of this.
The
question of the dramatic fall in numbers of the Protestant community in this
state since 1922 have been the subject of recent works by Peter Hart and Marcus
Tanner who conclude that there were two distinct periods of decline in numbers
since 1920. There was an exodus between 1911 and 1926 when numbers fell by 104,000,
or 34% and between 1926-1996 there was a period of attrition with a further
decline of about 80,000.
During the first period, the sharp fall was mainly caused by ethnic cleansing
by the IRA (see extracts below) and not caused by the factors that Angela Clifford
mentions, though they were of some significance. In the paper A
Silent Minority? Protestants as Established and Outsiders in the Republic
by Stephen Mennell, it is estimated that the British garrison which left post
1921 "… is unlikely to have been more than
12,000-15,000.. including the families of those who were married… "
Peter Hart in his essay The
Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland says, "…
departing soldiers, sailors, policemen and their families (assuming all of the
latter did leave) do account for about one quarter of the emigrants, a significant
contributing factor although ultimately a minor one (my
emphasis). Indeed this transfer accounts for a much greater proportion
of the Catholic population loss recorded in this period". He explains
that many of the British soldiers who were married, had Catholic women as their
brides and the children were in turn Catholics.
Although proportionately more Protestants may have fallen in the First World War than Catholics, the total number is unlikely to have exceeded 5,000-6,000. So some 84,000 Protestants emigrated and most were "lower middle class, working class, small farmers, and farm labourers", according to Stephen Mennell. Peter Hart explains why in his essay, "Unionism in Modern Ireland", MacMillan Press Ltd, 1996.
He writes that there was "a catastrophic loss (between 1911 and 1926) unique to the southern minority and unprecedented… It is also unique in modern British history, being the only example of the mass displacement of a native group within the British Isles since the seventeenth century". It was caused by murder and intimidation by the IRA. "It was one of the best kept secrets of Irish 20th century history—the expulsion of a large section of the Protestant population of the 26 counties in the years following Partition."
He also writes that those Protestants who fell in the war "mattered little in demographic terms. At most the war induced a slight, temporary, decrease in overall numbers in 1915 and 1916, apparently soon compensated for by the stoppage of emigration."
Here is an extract from Marcus Tanner's Ireland's Holy Wars (published by Yale University Press, 2001) on the fate of the Protestants since 1919:
"By the end of the decade (1920-30) it was clear that the Protestant population in the 26 counties had collapsed. During the fighting from 1921 to 1923 the Protestants knew their numbers were falling but did not know by how much. The Bishop of Killalee had warned in the summer of 1921 that the Church of Ireland population of his diocese had slumped to 5,876- down by 2/3 from its Victorian heyday and a decline that the Bishop described as "almost staggering". But his report was an isolated one. The first Free State census, published in 1926, came as a shock. The C of I population in the 26 counties had dropped by 34% since 1911 from 249,535 to 164,215—a massive fall. By contrast, the Catholics had contracted only fractionally.. Not surprisingly, the biggest fall was in Munster, where the Protestant community was sliced in half. In Connaught and Leinster the decline was in the range of 33-34%.
“By 1936, long after peace had returned to Ireland, the Protestant community had shrunk again, to 145,134. In 1861, the 26 southern counties had contained 372,702 C of I Protestants. By 1936, that figure had plummeted by a stunning 61%. Almost 2/3 of the Protestants had gone… Practically the whole of the Protestant working class - perhaps 10,000 - fled from Dublin in the early 1920s. In parts of Munster (west and east Cork and Clare) entire local communities had been driven out. A large percentage of lower middle classes...had left Ireland, an emigration of youth, money and mercantile know-how that contributed to the listless, fly-blown character of so many Irish towns in the 1920s and 1930s.
“Their story went largely unreported. It lacked the drama of the Greeks' tumultuous exodus from Smyrna ahead of Atatürk’s army in 1922. Most Irish Protestants left the country to safeguard their savings, their chances of employment and their children's future, rather than lives. The numbers involved were not huge and they were easily dispersed throughout Britain's vast empire. They were drawn from an inarticulate section of society, used to taking orders, with no tradition of public protest. Only a few fled to the new Protestant north.
“The change was much more marked in the countryside. In Munster and Connaught the destruction of the big houses (some 200) and the flight of landed families ended the Protestant presence in many areas. Often, the landlord took the local congregation with him, many of whom were Scots or English.
“For Presbyterianism… it was the end of the road for many congregations. Their numbers fell from 66,172 in 1961 to 32,429 in 1926… The Treaty Collins signed with the British in 1921 brought no respite. The report on 1923 was the gloomiest yet…in more than one congregation members have received threatening notices and have been compelled to abandon their homes… A very large number of Protestants was compelled to leave the country, in some cases, nothing being left to them but their lives and the smoking ruins of their homes."
“…Ireland's new rulers were devoted children of the Catholic Church. Presbyterians now found themselves operating in a society that was self-consciously Catholic, nationalist and Gaelic.
“Despair deepened throughout the 1930s. On the eve of the second world war, the Christian Irishman, the paper of the Home Mission, wrote: "Protestants enjoy toleration at the moment but that is very largely because they no longer possess anything, either power or property, which others want. It is the toleration we all accord to the dead".
The period 1926-1996 was a time when Protestant numbers fell further, partly caused by emigration (though not much Protestant emigration occurred after 1946) but largely through the strict enforcement of the ne temere decree. Records are not available, but the ex Archbishop of Dublin, Walton Empey, has often said that hardly a Protestant family was unaffected. Professor Brendan Walsh of UCD in Religion and Demographic Behaviour in Ireland, May 1970, ESRI, estimated that in 1961, 30% of other denomination grooms and 20% of other denomination brides married that year in mixed religion marriages. Their children, normally all of them, would have been brought up as Roman Catholics. At one stage, Protestants actually stopped reproducing themselves.
I hope this is helpful and perhaps you would like to publish an edited version. I regret it is long, but I thought I needed to go into some detail to explain matters fully.
Yours
sincerely
Robin Bury Chairman
October 21, 2002
Dear Sir,
I refer to my letter yesterday and would like to add the following extract from Marcus Tanner's book Ireland's Holy Wars which is telling, especially the meeting between Collins and Gregg:
"Some 230 Munster Protestants attending the May (1922) Synod of the Church of Ireland in Dublin urged Archbishop Gregg to solicit a meeting with the new government. Gregg and the bishop of Cashel obliged. After calling on Collins and his deputy, William Cosgrave, the bishops simply asked them whether the Provisional government wanted any Protestants to remain in the south-west (the Free State). Collins wanted to protect his new allies among the ex-Unionists but was in no position to guarantee their safety. Munster was in the eye of the storm and the scene of the most vicious sectarian attacks. But it was not the only danger spot as far as Protestants were concerned. In June the Church of Ireland Gazette recorded the destruction over the previous two months of virtually the entire Protestant community in Nenagh…Mullingar…as well as Athenry, Loughrea and Ballinasloe in Galway by Republican terrorist gangs. Protestants first received anonymous letters ordering them to leave by a certain date. If they ignored the letters, the threat was followed up with bullets through the windows.
“The situation was so bad that in October that the Bishops of Cashel and Ossory publicly appealed to Protestants not to emigrate. But it was too late for many. As one clergyman pointed out, the parishes of Munster and Connaught were mostly deserted."
With
best wishes, Yours sincerely
Robin Bury
October 22, 2002
Time to ring the changes on the Angelus bell so we are more inclusive of all beliefs, by Bruce Arnold,
Irish Independent, 21st September 2002 (extract).
“RTE'S broadcasting of the Angelus … is a religious ‘act’ by RTE to broadcast the Angelus. It is not a religious service but a religious declaration, quite evidently directed into the airwaves and onto our television screens for the purpose of identifying the station and the listeners or viewers as to their "faith".
“It has little to do with the ‘truth’ about the faith of the station. As Mary Kenny said, in a recent article about the Angelus, one would be more likely to encounter "a sticky form of Marxism" in the corridors of Montrose than Catholic triumphalism. But by broadcasting it, RTE conceals reality behind a numb and relentless act of sectarianism.nd to whom the Angelus is an exclusive "act", not applicable to them.
“…I use the word "act" for the Angelus because it is not worship in the sense in which services broadcast under the remit of public service belong. It is more central and far more implacable than that. And it is deliberately persuasive of a particular creed, making that creed central, and thereby pushing into second, third or other places, the other creeds.”
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