Peter Costello
Irish Jesuit Chaplains in the First World War
ed. by Damien Burke
(Messenger Publications, €14.99/£11.99)
This autumn marks the bicentenary of the re-establishment of the Jesuit order in Ireland at Clongowes Wood College, Dublin. Since that date the Jesuits have been involved in every important aspect of Irish life and culture.
One aspect of this is dealt with in this book, which deals with the order’s chaplains who served with armies in the Great War, as it was once called, and still ought to be, for it was an event that changed the west forever.There were 32 Jesuits in uniform, and 11 are profiled here in essays by a range of distinguished Jesuit historians and writers. It has to be remembered that Australia was at that date a part of the Irish province, so the experiences of priests from there is also dealt with.
Of the 11, perhaps the most famous was Fr Willie Doyle, who quickly became the subject of a popular book and is still admired for his holiness – a man in whom some see a possible future saint. Others are less well known, but their experiences give a vivid impression of the actual experience of war. It has to be remembered that the Catholic chaplains did not serve behind the lines, but carried the last rites to the dead and dying in the front line itself. It was this that made them so popular with the ordinary ranks.
That experience of war in its fully industrialised form, in which total war was waged on both the military and the civilians, was a preclude to worse things in the Second World Wwar (which some would see as in effect a continuation of the Great War, arising as it did from unresolved issues of national pride and hatred).
Also published recently is Father Browne’s First World War, edited by E. E. O’Donnell (Messenger Publications, €19.99/£16.99), which was reviewed in these pages by Mary Kenny.
