Courtney McGrailDear Editor, The extracts from Fr Columbus Murphy’s personal account of the 1916 Rising (‘Mercy amongst the mayhem’, IC 20/10/2016) were absolutely enthralling, and a fine counterpart to the similar piece drawn from his fellow Capuchin Fr Aloysius Travers’ somewhat later account that you published last year in your 1916 special.
At this point, as the article on the new exhibition on the Church and the Rising that accompanies the Fr Columbus piece (‘Correcting the record’) makes clear, there is an impressive amount of archive material about the Rising available in our dioceses and religious communities. It would be a great service to the Church, to the country, and to history if some of this material were to be collected into a single popular volume.
Would it not be possible to publish in one book the accounts of the three Capuchin fathers who wrote accounts of their experience of the Rising, along with the relevant portions of Msgr Michael Curran’s view from the archbishop’s house as related to the Bureau of Military History, the Loreto Annals and the annals of the Presentation Sisters at George’s Hill. Extracts, letters, or full accounts could even be included from others – offhand, I think one of the priests from Mount Argus wrote about ministering to the men and women at Marrowbone Lane, for example.
I realise we shouldn’t underestimate how difficult such an exercise would be, but it clearly would be far from impossible and could be very valuable in keeping the ball rolling and ensuring that the astonishing work done by Church archivists and others in this centenary year is kept in the public eye when our exhibitions are packed away.
If nothing else, it would help the gap between our Rising commemorations and the impending centenaries of the War of Independence and Civil War.
Yours etc.,
Louise Clarke,
Clonsilla, Dublin 15.