Greg Daly
Greg Daly learns about a new exhibition devoted to the Church and the Easter Rising
It may seem unlikely, but ‘Ministry, Advocacy & Compassion: The Catholic Church and 1916’, a marvellous exhibition in Dublin’s pro-cathedral, owes its existence to the national broadcaster’s execrable Rebellion mini-series.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Marian Finucane Show in January Archbishop Diarmuid Martin expressed concerns that the religious faith of the 1916 rebels was “being clinically wiped out into a very secular understanding of what the Rising was about”.
The portrayal of his predecessor Archbishop William Walsh in Rebellion had been the final straw, according to diocesan archivist Noelle Dowling. “The Rebellion programme was then on RTÉ and that irked him, because it had this person dressed in full pontificals speaking to this monsignor basically saying that the only thing the Church was interested in was their property, and not to be worried about people, and that was the furthest thing from the truth,” she says, continying. “Even though the bishop wasn’t named, he was very obviously meant to be William Walsh, who was at home, sitting in his bedroom, head to toe in bandages.”
Documents
Shortly afterwards Noelle and Dr Brian Kirby, the archivist for the Irish Capuchins, equipped with a range of documents from the time of the Rising, met with representatives from government departments, subsequently arranging a conference in Clonliffe with members of the Association for Church Archives and a few others with a view to planning an exhibition on the Church and the Rising.
“At the end of it, I said to people, ‘if you’re interested in becoming involved in the exhibition, talk to me,’ and I think by Monday everybody had got back and said ‘we’re really interested’ – there was one person sitting on the fence but they eventually gave in,” she says.
“That’s how it evolved,” she continues, “people sent in lists of what they had and what they’d be willing to share; obviously with stuff going on display the most prominent stuff is from ourselves and the Capuchins, and everything else we either scanned for the touchscreen or used the information to create the information on the panels.”
The exhibition, running since September 24 and scheduled to continue until the end of the year, is not lacking in content: 20 freestanding panels line the walls of St Kevin’s Chapel, each one with a distinct theme and loaded with images and reproductions of documents; an audio panel allows visitors to listen to contemporary accounts of the Rising; a touchpad contains a host of scanned documents; and five cases hold documents and artefacts for visitors to examine.
We’ve four display cases, two with documents from the diocese which consist of everything and anything from diaries and notebooks to letters and photographs,” explains Noelle, continuing, “and the more interesting things in the glass case would be the chalice with ciborium from Kilmainham which was used during 1916, and a Mass kit that would have been at the time, though it belonged to somebody else.”
As one would expect, the contribution of Dublin’s Capuchin friars to the exhibition is impressive. “We’ve donated some original documents – they mostly relate to Fr Columbus Murphy and his diary,” Brian Kirby explains, pointing out that of the two known copies of the friar’s day-by-day account of the Rising, the one on display is probably the original typescript.
Contrasting Fr Columbus’s account with those written by by Fr Aloysius Travers in 1942 and by Fr Augustine Hayden in 1949, Brian says, “Columbus’s diary here is the most detailed one: it’s the one written closest to the events, in July, about six weeks after the end of the Rising. Judging by the print and make-up of it this is probably the original one. Subsequently someone bound it and placed pictures from contemporary pictorial albums of the 1916 Rising into it. About six or seven were printed just after the Rising which gave images of the destruction of Dublin.”
Detailed
Brian describes the 42-page manuscript as “quite detailed”, and says the Capuchins have been happy to see the earliest of Capuchin Rising narratives finally become available to the public this year, courtesy of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. It’s a fitting capstone to a year that has seen the Capuchins celebrating 400 years in Ireland, and the online publication of the archives of the Capuchin Annual, which was originally published between 1930 and 1977.
Accompanying the journals of Fr Columbus and Fr Aloysius, he adds, are memoriam cards from some of the Rising’s executed leaders, declarations of the conversions of Lily Connolly and Muriel MacDonagh, a notebook in which Fr Columbus recorded receipt and return of personal effects and money given him for safekeeping by the rebels of the Four Courts ahead of their surrender, and a letter to Fr Columbus giving him permission to visit Pearse in Arbour Hill.
Emotive
Visitors to the exhibition can listen to Capuchin Fr Bryan Shortall read Fr Columbus’ account of this meeting, he points out, with Noelle observing that “it’s the archbishop’s favourite thing, and is so emotive”.
“The important thing is that this is the first time the original documents have been on display,” Brian stresses, “for the actual physical documents, this is the first time.”
One thing that stands out about the exhibition is the range of material that is available, whether physically or through the stands, touchscreen, or audio exhibition. “Whereas with the Capuchins the history is very well known – it’s there and present,” Brian says, “for the Jesuits and others you have to dig down deeper into other records – community records, parish records – to find the actual stories, but there are stories there.”
The centenary has caused orders, parishes, and individuals to explore their own past, Noelle says, saying that she and Brian are still getting letters offering them material. “One of the best things about the commemoration is that everybody has got to tell their piece of the story,” she says, “you only heard about the leaders up till now, but I think it’s everybody’s Rising.”
Describing the emergence of hitherto unknown material as the best thing about the centenary year, Noelle says that “lots of bits and pieces started emerging, and I think each order probably could have done something themselves as well on a minor scale if they had wanted to”. As an example, she says that like Brian, she had never before known of the Loreto Annals – records kept by the Loreto Sisters at St Stephen’s Green and Rathfarnham.
“Because Loreto Stephen’s Green is overlooking the Green, it was the perfect view,” she says of the school’s location near the Volunteers at the College of Surgeons and the British in the Shelbourne Hotel.
She praises the detail of sisters’ notes, remarking, “it’s really interesting to see, because you suddenly realise that people were starving, they were trying to continue running a school as normal”.
“It was the same with Rathfarnham,” she continues. “Two of their workmen disappeared on, I think, the first day of the Rising, and they were never seen or heard of again by the sisters. One of the sisters stayed up all night on the night they heard of the surrender, and had food and everything ready in case any of the volunteers were making a break for the mountains and they could offer them sanctuary and at least something to eat on the way.”
Extracts from the annals can be accessed on the exhibition touchscreen, as well as listened to through the audio section, along with a letter from Sr Augustine Hayes, then a young Sister of Mercy from Cork who had joined the convent in Kilrush, Co. Clare, but was at the Eccles Street convent at the time of the Rising.
Accessible on the touchscreen too are photographs from the Religious Sisters of Charity who ran two of the city’s key hospitals during the Rising. “We weren’t able to use all the information from the Religious Sisters of Charity – we homed in mainly on St Vincent’s hospital and Temple Street hospital,” says Noelle, continuing, “All the hospitals had opened up to everybody, but they had no staff, so the nuns were having to become the anaesthetists and everything to keep things going. Some of the stories are gruesome and we didn’t put them in the exhibition.”
While Noelle says, “some of the annals for other communities are sparse”, she singles out as “beautiful” the annals of the Presentation Sisters at George’s Hill, north of the Four Courts. “They came under serious fire, and thought the convent was going to burn to the ground,” she says.
All of the Dublin documents relating to 1916 have now been digitised, Noelle says, explaining that while they’re not available online, they are accessible through the exhibition touchscreen. “You can put so few on display, but at least with these you can see the full range,” she says, continuing, “If there’s a letter over there and you can only see one page, you can come over here and see the rest of it.”
Noelle points out that “the language in the letters is the language of the time, which would be viewed in a very different way nowadays if they were put out without being contextualised”, and the 20 stands that encircle the exhibition go a long way toward giving context to the various displayed documents.
With each stand devoted to different themes, they cover material as different as how the Rising was experienced at Haddington Road parish, the Capuchins, the surrender, Roger Casement, and the imprisonment of the rebels in Frongoch, where the camp’s chaplain Fr Laurence Stafford finally wrote on December 23, 1916 that he was “the last Irishman left in Frongoch,” after months of campaigning to have the captured rebels allowed home. “They’re good stories, just telling it as it was in a different time,” says Noelle.
One especially interesting stand is devoted to the so-called ‘Red Book’, formally La recente insurrezione in Irlanda, assembled at the Irish College in Rome in order to explain to the Holy See that the Rising had not been an anti-clerical or socialist rebellion.
“There was a lot of talk of this, since we discovered a copy in the archive, and nobody really knew much about it, so we thought we would just dip in to it and give an overview of what this was about,” says Noelle, adding that in emphasising the distinctness of the Irish Church from the English one, “it had a huge effect on how the Irish Church was treated by the Holy See”.
By the following year, she adds, calls from Limerick’s Bishop Edward of Dwyer for an end to what we now know as World War One seemed in harmony with those of the Pope, and irreconcilable with those English bishops who still supported the war.
Looking back on the experience of the commemorative year, Noelle says, “I think it’s been a fantastic year for archives, because they’ve been able to showcase what they have.”
It’s extraordinary busy year for Church archivists, she adds: “There’s been an increased number of people using the archives – people with different views and attitudes, and less of the hangups that were there.”
The exhibition in particular has been a uniquely collaborative project for Irish Church archivists, Noelle says, noting that “the other wonderful thing is that this was a great joint project with everybody, getting people to work together on something of this scale”, adding that the archivists have also been working more closely with historians than before. “An exhibition like this can really start the ball rolling, and all it takes is someone to home in on one document,” she says.
“It’s not just documents,” she continues, “it’s the truth, the evidence of what was going on. From a Church point of view, because of the times we live in and how the Church is viewed so differently now through 21st-Century eyes, I think it’s easy to forget the role they had. But if you look back, these men and women were out there in the middle of chaos, doing what had to be done without anybody telling them or cajoling them; this is what they were about.”
Students
This can have an evangelical effect too, she adds, describing a recent visit from students from Minnesota who were excited to discover the archives had a wealth of material that enabled them to tackle a research project.
“It’s very good even to take things a step further – these may be people with no contact with the Church, who may not be Catholic, and it’s a very good evangelisation tool as well,” she says, continuing, “You’re using archives in a very different sort of way.”
Brian points out that one curious effect of the year has been that it’s opened the eyes of religious orders and communities to their own pasts. “It helps enlighten the religious too,” he says. “The Capuchins now have a greater insight into their own history, so it’s important not just for the public, but for themselves. They’re learning too.”
Noelle adds that there was a “great reaction” among the Loreto Sisters when their two archivists read their 1916 annals to the communities, “because people didn’t know”.
More broadly, Brian says, exhibitions such as the current one, and the increased availability of archive material is changing public perceptions. “People have a perception of the Rising as condemned by the Church,” he says, “but this tells a completely different story and it’s very important to tell a complete and truthful story – in an objective way.”
