Jesuits for Connolly

Studies is a quarterly magazine published by the Irish Jesuits and has been on the go since 1912. (I contribute an occasional book review and have met the editor, Father Fergus O’Donoghue, S.J.) Each issue of the review deals with a particular topic and allows the writers to develop their arguments/book reviews with a little more space than they might get in a newspaper. The net result are usually some very thoughtful reflections on life. (But no pictures! Studies does not do pictures.) The current issue looks at, amongst other things, the Irish experience of cancer, the crisis in universities, Michael Collins’s religious faith and Thomas Davis, The Nation and the Irish Language.

Apart from that, O’Donoghue’s always pens a fine editorial on the issue of the day. They are little master-classes in succinct, critical and enlightening writing. Currently, he writes that interpreting the Irish past solely in economic terms is to misunderstand our ancestors’ faith and their fear of disease and death: “The inevitability of disease and death shaped the thinking of previous generations to an incalculable degree, but we tend to think that all illness can be cured in a society that is happier ignoring death, whilst encouraging self-indulgence.”

He also writes: “The decline in church attendance and in the prominence of clergy as nationally recognised figures is treated as proof of modernity, but little is said about the decline of the Left in Irish life. Some of us are old enough to remember the promise that “The Seventies will be Socialist”, but they were, in fact, one more step in the continued triumph of middle class values in the Republic, which was reinforced by a determination not to be affected by events in the North. An impressive statue of James Connolly does indeed face Liberty Hall in Dublin, but it is placed on one of the busiest street corners in the city, so thousands of people pass it every hour, but few have time to notice it; thus an outstanding and original figure in Irish history is honoured – and ignored.”

It is not often that one finds a priest standing up for Connolly and his critique of the triumph of middle-class mores in the Republic – with all that that entails culturally, religiously and intellectually – seems, to me, to be very accurate.

The current issue is on-line at www.studiesirishreview.ie It is well worth a read and I am sure that Fergus would welcome a subscription or two!