God and the Gun: The Church and Irish Terrorism by Martin Dillon

Author:Martin Dillon [Dillon, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781136680533
Google: rd3gAwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22640207
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1997-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

A HOLY CAUSE FOR HOLY MEN?

Only those who live in Ireland know the real significance of being born into one of the two traditions and the conditioning that automatically takes place. Des O’Hagan found himself in a typical Irish Catholic family that shaped him for conflict. His maternal grandfather had been first secretary of the Dockers’ Union in Belfast and a friend and associate of James Connolly, the socialist leader and prominent leader of the Rising, executed by the British in Dublin in 1916. Though not a republican, Connolly was, in the minds of Belfast republicans, one of theirs. Des O’Hagan remembers his mother talking about Connolly and how his brand of socialism had found fertile ground within her Irish nationalism.

Her politics were not uncommon in West Belfast and she saw Eamon de Valera as the man representing the continuity of the republican tradition, but she told her son that de Valera betrayed the cause of freedom by signing the treaty with the British that led to partition.

Like many of her contemporaries, she was a devout Catholic though her attitude to the Catholic Church was unusual in nationalist areas of Belfast: she believed that the Church existed to preach the word of God and should not interfere in politics.

O’Hagan remembered that during the Spanish Civil War she castigated the clergy and the Church hierarchy for supporting General Franco and publicly blessing Irishmen who fought for him. She told her son that to be a true republican he had also to be a socialist. Like many Irish Catholic mothers of the first half of this century, she was the forceful dynamic in the family. Her husband, Peter, was a nationalist and a leading member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which many regarded as the Catholic equivalent of the Orange Order. The Hibernians traced their origins to a Catholic insurrection of 1641, though the title was acquired in the 1930s. Associated with the defence of the Catholic faith, it was organised in divisions and promoted Irish nationalism. It held its parades on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven, and its members paraded with banners and sashes, again like the Orange Order. But Peter O’Hagan and his wife were opposed to the sectarian divisions that characterised life in Northern Ireland, and especially in West Belfast where the two communities had fought from the middle of the nineteenth century.

When the time came for Des O’Hagan to start primary school, his mother told him that she had chosen St ComgalTs in Divis Street, which had once been an integrated school known as ‘The Model’. It was located near the Catholic/Protestant divide but had been burned down in sectarian riots in the 1920s and was taken under the control of the Catholic Church. It stood in the shadow of the twin towers of St Peter’s, the Catholic church that dominated the West Belfast skyline. O’Hagan remembered his father having bitter arguments with local priests about the decision to rename the school and make it one-denominational.

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