I

The introduction of the vernacular into the liturgy meant that Catholics could now pray along with the priest in the language of their daily lives. For McQuaid and his fellow bishops this meant accommodating not only the English-speaking faithful, but also the minority who conducted their affairs through Irish. To have ignored Irish speakers, or Gaeilgeoirí, would have been unthinkable. The reason for this was political. While recognising the place of English in the newly independent state, both the 1922 and 1937 constitutions accorded a special status to Irish as the ‘National language’ and the ‘first official language’ respectively.Footnote ¹² The state enforced the use of Irish in schools and made proficiency in the language a condition of employment in the civil service.Footnote ¹³ These measures reflected the determination of successive governments to revive Irish ‘as a general medium of communication’ across society.Footnote ¹⁴ Yet, several decades after independence, the lack of progress in achieving this goal was a cause of great concern to policymakers and supporters of the language.Footnote ¹⁵

In a critique of the state’s Irish language policy published in 1956, R. A. Breatnach, professor of Irish Language and Literature at University College Cork, concluded that ‘to pretend that the restoration of Irish so far is anything but a disappointing failure is to mock ourselves’.Footnote ¹⁶ Four years later, the perilous position of Irish was such as to impel former minister for finance, Ernest Blythe, to issue a warning of ‘national extinction’ should the language be lost.Footnote ¹⁷ These and other commentaries reflected a grim reality for all who longed to see the native language restored. Despite the investment of considerable resources in the teaching of Irish in the state’s schools, most people continued to use English in their day-to-day lives. This was true even in the theoretically Irish-speaking regions known collectively as the Gaeltacht. According to the 1961 census, only 48 per cent of the Gaeltacht’s population professed an ability to speak Irish, leaving Irish speakers as a minority in their own heartland. However, as the Central Statistics Office (C.S.O.) warned, these figures did not reveal how many of these Irish-speaking inhabitants of the Gaeltacht actually used the language in their everyday lives.Footnote ¹⁸ In the rest of the country the level of Irish usage – as opposed to ability to speak the language – also remained largely unknown. It was not possible to quantify this until the 2002 census when a question on frequency of speaking Irish was added. This revealed that the proportion of adults outside the Gaeltacht who spoke the language daily was about 2 per cent.Footnote ¹⁹ The same census reported the percentage of the Republic’s population able to speak Irish at 42 per cent, a considerable increase over the 1961 figure of 27 per cent.Footnote ²⁰ This suggests that, if anything, daily speakers of Irish in 1961 may have constituted an even tinier share of the non-Gaeltacht population.Footnote ²¹

In July 1958, the Fianna Fáil government established a commission to advise it ‘as to the steps that should now be taken… to hasten progress towards [the restoration of the Irish language]’. Five years later, in July 1963, the commission submitted its final report. Among its recommendations was: ‘That, in those cities and towns which have a substantial number of Irish speakers, one of the Sunday Masses should cater specially for them … by the inclusion of prayers, notices and sermons in Irish’.Footnote ²² The importance of such a measure was underlined soon afterwards by Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, a government-sponsored umbrella body for groups such as Gael Linn and Conradh na Gaeilge. In its annual report for 1964, the Comhdháil stated that ‘The future of the Irish language depends to a great extent on the practical arrangements made by individual bishops for its use in the Liturgy.’Footnote ²³ This claim was a tacit acknowledgement that, while the general population may not have embraced Irish, their devotion to the Catholic church was almost universal.

In 1961, a year before the Second Vatican Council opened, almost 95 per cent of the Republic’s citizens declared themselves to be Catholic.Footnote ²⁴ The true strength of the Catholic church in Ireland, however, was not measured in census returns but in religious practice. ‘Our churches are filled to overflowing …’ noted one contemporary observer.Footnote ²⁵ Another described the scene outside a typical church after Sunday mass ‘with police on special traffic duty, special mass-buses arriving and departing, and perhaps two hundred cars parked or moving slowly through the crowded streets’.Footnote ²⁶ Contemporary estimates put the Sunday mass attendance rate at between 95 and 100 per cent.Footnote ²⁷ Moreover, thousands of Catholics went beyond the minimum requirement of Sunday attendance by going to weekday masses also.Footnote ²⁸ According to a monthly Christian journal, Herder Correspondence, ‘The Irish church was flourishing’.Footnote ²⁹ Small wonder then that supporters of the Irish language revival saw the introduction of the vernacular into the mass as a potential lifeline for their cause.

In terms of penetration and religious practice, the state of Catholicism in Dublin was very similar to the national picture outlined above.Footnote ³⁰ By 1965, it was estimated that over 725,000 Catholics lived within the boundaries of the archdiocese.Footnote ³¹ Even before the Council ended, McQuaid was receiving representations from Gaeilgeoirí, living in his diocese.Footnote ³² They wanted an adequate provision of Irish-language Masses once the vernacular was introduced into the liturgy. Latin had been perfectly acceptable to the Gaeilgeoirí, but many could not tolerate praying in the language of the country which had ruled Ireland before independence.Footnote ³³ One put it bluntly in a letter to the archdiocese, ‘It is a violation of conscience to me to attend an English Mass…’.Footnote ³⁴ Another correspondent wrote, ‘The thought of having to listen to English right through the Mass is just crushing. Would it be possible’, the writer continued, ‘to have even one Mass – with Irish – said in every church on at least Sundays?’Footnote ³⁵ The secretary of Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge wrote to McQuaid claiming that ‘a good number of people in nearly every parish, would like to have Mass available in Irish for them every Sunday…’.Footnote ³⁶ However, the campaign was not simply for the benefit of the relatively few Catholics who disliked speaking English. If the Gaeilgeoirí could persuade the archbishop to grant their request for one weekly mass in Irish in each parish, then thousands of Dubliners would be exposed to their native language in a public setting, perhaps for the first time since their schooldays. A letter dated 10 October 1963 outlined this broader objective.Footnote ³⁷ The archbishop’s correspondent urged him to seize this ‘marvellous opportunity for you and your priests to promote Gaelic. Why not, when the time arrives, have these prayers said in Gaelic. By so doing you will indeed help the language revival a great deal.’

Although petitioned by a variety of groups and individuals, McQuaid engaged closely with one organisation in particular as he considered his options for Irish in the liturgy. This was Na Teaghlaigh Gaelacha (‘The Gaelic Families’), set up by Dublin parents to lobby for education through Irish for their children.Footnote ³⁸ The group’s chairman was Tarlach Ó hUid, an English-born convert to Catholicism who was now assistant editor of Inniu, an Irish-language newspaper.Footnote ³⁹At the group’s invitation, McQuaid sent one of his secretaries, Father Leon Ó Cuinnleáin, to a meeting of Na Teaghlaigh Gaelacha held in January 1965 to discuss the use of Irish in the mass. Afterwards, Ó Cuinnleáin reported of the attendees that ‘they would be very pleased if a Mass in Irish could be provided in 6 or 8 centres around the suburbs each Sunday’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The group’s requirements were modest and McQuaid responded positively. Indeed he went further by offering a monthly Irish mass ‘in all public churches of the diocese.’ He outlined his thinking in a letter which Ó Cuinnleáin read, in Irish translation, at the next meeting of Na Teaghlaigh Gaelacha. McQuaid was concerned at the inconvenience that might be caused if families had to travel long distances to the nearest Irish mass. He also wanted to keep such families in their own parishes, and not have them treated as if they were ‘part of an ethnic group, like the Poles in London or Paris’. In conclusion, he wished his proposal to be seen ‘as a beginning’.Footnote ⁴¹ In his next report Ó Cuinnleáin informed McQuaid that the group had welcomed the new arrangements as ‘more than they had asked for, and more than they could have hoped for’.Footnote ⁴²

At the end of January 1965, McQuaid communicated to Ó Cuinnleáin his desire that Ó hUid publicise the new arrangements for Irish masses ‘in the daily press, not in his newspaper’. In particular, McQuaid wished it to be known that members of Na Teaghlaigh Gaelacha were satisfied with the provisions being made, and that these were the result of contacts ‘for some weeks’ between the group and the archbishop.Footnote ⁴³ Ó hUid complied and several days later, the Irish Times reported his statement welcoming McQuaid’s decision as ‘a great step forward’.Footnote ⁴⁴Inniu also carried a tribute to McQuaid, which Ó Cuinnleáin translated for the archbishop.Footnote ⁴⁵ Having hitherto dealt with Na Teaghlaigh Gaelacha through his secretary, McQuaid sent a personal letter to Ó hUid to tell him that, because his association had been ‘so helpful to me in the Irish vernacular’, he was enhancing the agreed provision of Irish masses. Henceforth, adjoining parishes would co-ordinate their Sunday schedules to make it easier for families to attend an Irish mass near them.Footnote ⁴⁶ McQuaid continued to court Na Teaghlaigh Gaelacha as the liturgical reforms proceeded. For instance, he gave them advance notice, ‘in confidence’, of his next major initiative. From 13 March 1966, weekly Irish masses would be provided in most Dublin parishes.Footnote ⁴⁷

The relationship forged with Ó hUid’s association facilitated the positive coverage that McQuaid received in Inniu for his support of Irish-language speakers. The paper urged its readers to pray both ‘for [the archbishop’s] intentions and that other dioceses might follow his good example’.Footnote ⁴⁸ McQuaid’s press officer, Osmond Dowling, ensured that this tribute reached a wider audience by briefing the national press on the Inniu article.Footnote ⁴⁹ Other Irish-language groups and individuals recorded their gratitude to the archbishop. A priest wrote from Kerry: ‘You have put the whole Gaelic movement under a compliment to you, and have made Dublin the capital of Irish Ireland.’ This prompted an uncharacteristically emotional response from McQuaid: ‘What a generous tribute from an old Gael of the Kingdom to a man of the Dublin Pale! Very grateful.’Footnote ⁵⁰ He was commended in the Senate for ‘the rapidity with which [he] gave effect to the authority to introduce the Vernacular Mass in his Diocese.’ Fianna Fáil Senator, Thomas Mullins, continued his remarks: ‘There is no reason now, in the city of Dublin, why an Irish speaker who wants to comply with his religious duties cannot hear Mass in Irish on every Sunday of the year’.Footnote ⁵¹ Conradh na Gaeilge passed a resolution praising McQuaid and urging the other bishops to follow his lead.Footnote ⁵² McQuaid was pleased with the response. In a note to the Dublin Liturgical Commission he wrote: ‘The provision of Irish has been very well received and has eliminated the pressure that would certainly have been built up.’Footnote ⁵³ However, his judgement proved to be overly optimistic as it became clear that not everyone welcomed his initiative on behalf of Irish speakers. In some quarters he was seen to have gone too far, in others not far enough. Ó hUid and his newspaper soon showed themselves to be loyal allies when the archbishop began to receive public criticism over his handling of the Irish-language masses.

Following a description of McQuaid as ‘Ardeaspag an Bhéarla’ (English archbishop) in the Sinn Féin periodical, The United Irishman, Inniu published a letter defending the archbishop and, in an accompanying editorial, advised his critics that ‘instead of harping on shortcomings in the arrangements, they should rejoice at the near miraculous step up given the language’. McQuaid’s satisfaction when he read Ó Cuinnleáin’s translation of these pieces is conveyed by his note in the file, ‘No other Bishop has, in fact, given so much.’Footnote ⁵⁴ Ó hUid was also quick to defend the archbishop against criticism from those who believed that too much was being conceded to the Irish-language lobby. A Catholic magazine, the Irish Redemptorist Record, in a thinly-veiled reference to McQuaid, described the provision of an Irish-language liturgy as ‘endanger[ing]... [the] religious sense of our children … and … imped[ing] … their Christian formation … in order that extremist minority language revival pressure groups should be placated’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Lengthy extracts from the Irish Redemptorist Record editorial were published in the Irish Times, precipitating a rebuttal from Ó hUid. This was given equal prominence in the same paper a few days later. Ó hUid commended McQuaid as having ‘given the lead in this matter of the Irish vernacular in the Mass’ and concluded by asserting that ‘only a fool would make such accusations against Dr. McQuaid’ [i.e. that he had been intimidated by minority extremist groups].Footnote ⁵⁶ Notwithstanding the interventions of Inniu and Ó hUid, McQuaid continued to be assailed by Gaeilgeoirí and English-speakers alike. Both sets of critics were dissatisfied with his initiative, but for very different reasons.

In 1964, when the Dublin Liturgical Commission first voted on McQuaid’s plan, they accepted his proposal for the mass in Irish but rejected a motion that an Irish-language homily be made compulsory.Footnote ⁵⁷ Therefore, whether or not English intruded on the mandated Irish masses depended on the good will and language skills of the local priest. Unless he was fluent, translating the sermon and the parish notices every week would be a time-consuming task for a busy pastor. So, some followed the letter of the archbishop’s directive as far as the formal prayers were concerned, but delivered their homilies in English. This infuriated the more ardent Gaeilgeoirí. One wrote to McQuaid, ‘I wish to inform you of my upset when the notices were read and the sermon given in English-only at the Irish Mass in Raheny. I walked out of the Mass as it is against my conscience to attend such a Mass. When I go to an Irish Mass I expect the whole of the Mass to be in Irish.’Footnote ⁵⁸ In what seemed to be a concerted campaign, other individuals staged walkouts at Irish masses in Dublin as soon as the priest switched to English.Footnote ⁵⁹ Another Gaeilgeoir patrolled the city’s churches on Sundays, checking that the official Irish masses were not – as he would see it – sullied by any use of English. In a six-page letter to McQuaid, he complained about the lack of enthusiasm displayed by some priests. He mentioned one who, during the mass, ‘said in English that he had no option but to read the Gospel in Irish – “It is the law at the moment: I am sorry but I have no option”’.Footnote ⁶⁰

II

In general, Dublin’s mass-goers seemed to welcome the introduction in March 1965 of the English vernacular. One priest from a suburban parish reported a ‘remarkable’ level of participation by the congregation in the new spoken texts.Footnote ⁶¹ Other priests recorded their satisfaction with the positive reaction to the changes evident among their parishioners.Footnote ⁶² The Irish Times expressed doubt that ‘Ireland will see the establishment of a society such as that which has been established in England to keep Latin in the Mass’.Footnote ⁶³ This was a reference to the deep attachment to the traditional liturgy felt by many English Catholics. In April 1965, some of them formed the Latin Mass Society in pursuit of their campaign to have one mass in Latin in each church every Sunday.Footnote ⁶⁴ The strength of English support for the old rite is also evident in the many letters on the subject in the archive of the archdiocese of Westminster. The files reveal that, during 1964 alone, twenty-one individuals wrote to Archbishop (later Cardinal) John Heenan opposing the changes, especially the replacement of Latin by the vernacular.Footnote ⁶⁵ A sample of subsequent correspondence suggests that a steady stream of similarly-themed letters continued to arrive on the cardinal’s desk throughout the period of liturgical reform. In contrast, during the eight years leading up to the introduction of the fully-vernacular mass in Dublin and Ireland in 1971, McQuaid’s records indicate that a total of only eight individuals wrote to him in support of the traditional liturgy.Footnote ⁶⁶ This disparity is given further emphasis by the fact that, compared with Heenan’s domain, the Dublin archdiocese had nearly a quarter-of-a-million more Catholics living within its boundaries.Footnote ⁶⁷

If the gradual elimination of Latin appeared to arouse little opposition in Dublin, vocal support for the liturgical changes, including the vernacular, was greater – if not dramatically so. ‘The dialogue Mass was a God-send’, one Dublin church-goer wrote to McQuaid, ‘Now people know what the priest is talking about’.Footnote ⁶⁸ However, the simultaneous introduction of Irish-language masses seemed to undermine the church’s objective of making the liturgy more accessible. Those who complained about this expected to pray in the English they used in every other aspect of their lives. Instead they were being forced to endure a mass that was as incomprehensible as the old Latin rite it replaced.

One irate parishioner wrote to McQuaid: ‘As I see it, you have no mandate from the Vatican Council, or from the people, to celebrate Mass, except in Latin, or the Vernacular, and Gaelic is not the vernacular in any part of Ireland outside the Gaeltacht.’ This correspondent concluded with a challenge to his archbishop: ‘There is not one Irish person in your diocese who cannot speak English. How many cannot speak Gaelic?’Footnote ⁶⁹ McQuaid’s standard response was to remind his correspondents that they were free to attend one of the many other English masses available in their local churches. However, for reasons of habit or personal circumstances the alternatives did not suit everyone. For instance, the most convenient time for one mother to take her small children to church happened to coincide with the 9.00 a.m. Irish mass. She wrote to McQuaid, asking his permission to attend mass in a nearby private chapel instead.Footnote ⁷⁰ Several correspondents highlighted McQuaid’s past association with de Valera as the motive for his decision to facilitate Dublin’s Irish-speakers.Footnote ⁷¹ One wrote of attending an Irish mass following which ‘All I met were against it and many told me it was President de Valera that forced you to oppose Pope John “that everyone in the Church should follow it step by step”.’ Although it was unusual for McQuaid to respond to such personal criticism, in this instance he added an annotation to the letter for his secretary to type and send to the writer. It read: ‘[His Grace] deeply regrets your most inaccurate suggestion that Mr de V[alera] forced him to do anything in the S[acred] liturgy.’Footnote ⁷² Clearly, despite his careful positioning of the Irish-language masses as a purely pastoral initiative, McQuaid could not escape suspicions of political influence.

What really galled many church-goers was the fact that a huge effort was being made to facilitate very few people. One parishioner complained that ‘at every Gaelic Mass… I have attended only a very small proportion make the responses’.Footnote ⁷³ Another described the scene in her church where three men stood at the front shouting the Irish responses while the rest of the assembly remained mute.Footnote ⁷⁴ Yet another wrote,

This picture of only a handful of Gaeilgeoirí participating in the Irish masses was borne out by an editorial in Inniu which deplored the failure of many Irish speakers to support McQuaid’s initiative. ‘If one tenth of those who wear the Fáinne attended an Irish Mass on Sundays’, admonished the writer, ‘the situation would approach the satisfactory.’Footnote ⁷⁶

Of course, parish priests were in an excellent position to advise McQuaid on the success or otherwise of the Irish masses. However, there is no evidence in the archive that he ever took soundings on the matter from his clergy. Absent such a request for feedback, no priest unhappy with the provision of Irish masses was likely to express his views in public. The case of Father Liam Walsh, a member of the Diocesan Liturgical Commission, illustrates McQuaid’s attitude to open dissent among his clergy. In April 1969, news reached the press that the archbishop had removed Father Walsh from his teaching posts at two church-run colleges. The reported reason for the sacking was Walsh’s disagreement with some of the recent liturgical directives issued by McQuaid, including a ban on the use of guitars during mass.Footnote ⁷⁷ What seems to have particularly annoyed the archbishop was the suspicion that Walsh had voiced his opinions to the press.Footnote ⁷⁸ McQuaid took a dim view of public disloyalty from clergy in his diocese.Footnote ⁷⁹

Even before the Walsh case, diocesan priests would have been well aware of their archbishop’s intolerance of dissent.Footnote ⁸⁰ Consequently, the few members of the clergy prepared to question the introduction of an Irish liturgy did so carefully. One parish priest wrote to McQuaid seeking an exemption from the new regulation: ‘For myself, observance would be impossible, for my curates it would at least be very difficult. For the great majority of my parishioners it would exclude active participation, as intended by the Council in the Mass at which Irish would be used.’Footnote ⁸¹ The archbishop’s reply made it clear that he was ‘not willing to give any dispensation in regard to the present ruling on the Irish vernacular’.Footnote ⁸² While not many priests were prepared to criticise the Irish masses openly, a few provided the archbishop with insights into the practical difficulties associated with their administration. Sometimes, for instance, only one priest in a parish was sufficiently fluent in Irish to celebrate the weekly mass in that language. If he became ill or was on vacation, there was little alternative but to allow at least some English into the scheduled Irish mass. This in turn led to the archdiocese receiving the sorts of complaints from Gaeilgeoirí described above.Footnote ⁸³

More robust priestly commentary was rare. Perhaps the most serious example of clerical opposition to the Irish masses was brought to McQuaid’s attention by Father Ó Cuinnleáin. A priest in a north Dublin suburb had published an article critical of the Irish-language masses in the parish newsletter: ‘Christ’s work is being thwarted in West Finglas by the use of Irish in the Church of the Incarnation’. The author urged parishioners opposed to the Irish masses to take their complaints to the archbishop, because the local clergy ‘can do nothing’.Footnote ⁸⁴ In a letter of complaint to the archdiocese about the matter, Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge pointed out that the article represented a flouting of the archbishop’s authority and might be interpreted by ‘ignorant people’ as constituting official policy.Footnote ⁸⁵ In his report to McQuaid, Father Ó Cuinnleáin tried to dissuade the archbishop from taking harsh action against the offending cleric. Accordingly, he devoted three of his four paragraphs to a proposal for dealing with the priest that would involve neither ‘a private rebuke’ nor a ‘public retraction [which] would be humiliating’. Instead Ó Cuinnleáin suggested that Osmond Dowling be asked to submit a letter outlining the archbishop’s policy on Irish language masses for publication in the next edition of the newsletter. McQuaid’s succinct annotation demonstrated his lack of concern: ‘I have referred item to [the Parish Priest] Father Daly.’Footnote ⁸⁶ McQuaid’s apparent indifference in this case of priestly insubordination was in line with his surprisingly relaxed attitude to reported breaches of the ruling on Irish masses. Whenever he received an objection regarding the use of English in an Irish mass, he referred it to the relevant parish priest and the matter was then closed.Footnote ⁸⁷ So, while McQuaid would not formally permit any deviation from his directives on the Irish mass, the evidence shows that he took no direct action against any priest who failed to follow them, or who even opposed them publicly. This was very different to the treatment meted out to Fr Walsh.

III

As has been demonstrated, McQuaid’s hopes for an uncontroversial roll-out of the Irish liturgy were frustrated almost from the beginning. Opposition came from three sources. A small number of Gaeilgeoirí complained loudly whenever English was spoken at the designated masses, sometimes leading to public disputes with their more tolerant associates. Some priests were unhappy with the diocesan arrangements for Irish mass-goers, whether for reasons of their own lack of fluency in the native language, or because they believed that the aims of the Vatican Council were being impeded. Mostly they kept quiet and tried as best they could to implement the archbishop’s directive. The most common source of disquiet and disenchantment, however, were the ordinary Dublin Catholics who had looked forward to a revised liturgy in which they could participate fully. Instead they sometimes found themselves at a mass where one obscure language had been replaced by another. Unfortunately for the archbishop, all of this was taking place at a time when the Irish language question was becoming increasingly politicised.Footnote ⁸⁸

During the 1961 general election campaign, the Fine Gael party pledged to abolish the compulsory teaching of Irish to children.Footnote ⁸⁹ Despite its failure to unseat Fianna Fáil from government, on this point at any rate Fine Gael seemed to be in tune with public sentiment. An opinion poll conducted in 1964 found that almost three-quarters of Irish adults favoured voluntary rather than compulsory teaching of Irish in secondary schools.Footnote ⁹⁰ These currents of political and public opinion crystallised in September 1965 with the formation of the Language Freedom Movement (L.F.M.), whose aim was ‘to promote a realistic attitude towards Irish and to remove compulsion and discrimination from the language policy’.Footnote ⁹¹ During the next twelve months, zealous Gaeilgeoirí engaged in open conflict with these opponents of the compulsory teaching of Irish in schools. At an L.F.M. meeting held in June 1966 at a Dublin hotel, the dispute between the two sides became violent after a group of Gaeilgeoirí heckled the speakers.Footnote ⁹² Perhaps inevitably, the issue of Irish masses was dragged into this increasingly bitter row, with one Gaeilgeoir accusing L.F.M. members of disrupting Irish-language masses through ‘their planned raucous replying in English [to the liturgical prayers intoned by the priest]’.Footnote ⁹³

That Irish language activists should mount such a ferocious defence of the language is unsurprising, especially given that the furore coincided with the national remembrances of the 1916 Rising fifty years earlier. The golden jubilee brought the language question into sharp focus. As Mary Daly has suggested, ‘… the revival of the Irish language was commonly seen as the most urgent piece of unfinished business that was necessary to honour the spirit of 1916’.Footnote ⁹⁴ In his message to the people to mark the anniversary, President Éamon de Valera urged a new generation of Irish men and women to follow the ideals of the 1916 rebels and ‘see to it that our language lives’.Footnote ⁹⁵ A group of Gaeilgeoirí went beyond rhetoric in their efforts to highlight the plight of Irish by staging a hunger strike in Dublin.Footnote ⁹⁶ In such a climate, it is small wonder that McQuaid was perceived by many Gaeilgeoirí as their champion, inevitably linking him with the wider goal of language revival. Indeed, Breandán Ó Cearbhaill, chairman of Comharchumann Cualann, praised McQuaid for ‘the greatest fillip which the language got in recent years… the saying of Mass in Irish in each parish church in the Dublin Diocese every Sunday’. He went on to thank the archbishop ‘for this contribution to the restoration of the language into the lives of the people’.Footnote ⁹⁷ While McQuaid may have hated the political controversy that came to surround the introduction of the Irish liturgy in his archdiocese, he felt a certain pride in his newfound status among Irish language enthusiasts. Yet, Dublin would not have been regarded as an obvious first choice for the introduction of a major initiative to promote the language.

As the 1961 census figures reveal, the capital had the second lowest proportion of Irish speakers in the Republic. In the west of Ireland, where the ability to speak Irish was more common, the local bishops were less accommodating than McQuaid. For instance, in the diocese of Elphin an Irish mass was available only monthly in the larger parishes. In neighbouring Achonry, a public mass in Irish was said in all churches on St Patrick’s Day only. Otherwise Irish masses were to be said in boarding schools and convents, ‘if the nuns want it’.Footnote ⁹⁸ Both of these dioceses occupied much of Connacht where, according to the 1961 census, the proportion of Irish speakers averaged 37.6 per cent, almost twice the rate reported for Dublin.Footnote ⁹⁹ This raises the question of McQuaid’s motive in surpassing the arrangements made by his fellow bishops on behalf of their respective Irish-speaking flocks.

McQuaid’s willingness to concede so much to the Gaeilgeoirí does not seem to have been due to any particular devotion on his part to the Irish language. It is true that, as headmaster of Blackrock College in the 1930s, he acknowledged that ‘it would seem to be only a matter of years until Irish has become the chief vernacular of our everyday life’. However, McQuaid was also somewhat resentful that the resources required to bring this about were detrimental to the teaching of other subjects close to his heart. ‘Owing to the intensive study of the restored vernacular, Irish, and to the pressure of essential subjects, for the moment, modern languages [English, French and German] have somewhat lost ground.’Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In private he was much less circumspect. In July 1945 the British ambassador, Sir John Maffey, reported on a conversation he had with the by-then Archbishop McQuaid in which the two men discussed aspects of the relationship between Ireland and Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War. According to Maffey, the archbishop was highly critical of a key plank of government policy:

As well as highlighting a difficult period in the relationship between McQuaid and de Valera, this insight also demonstrates that the archbishop’s opposition to the compulsory teaching of Irish in the nation’s schools anticipated by twenty years the objections raised by the L.F.M. Given this lack of ardour for his native language, it is no surprise that McQuaid delegated the task of corresponding ‘as Gaeilge’ to his fluent secretary, Father Leon Ó Cuinnleáin.

McQuaid’s own stated reasons for facilitating Irish-speaking Catholics were straightforward enough. Because of his belief in the integrity of the parish as the traditional unit of the post-Tridentine church, he would not allow Gaeilgeoirí to be ‘ghettoised’ as a sub-culture within the wider Catholic community. He was also anxious not to give extreme nationalist elements any reason to use liturgical language as a political weapon. As archbishop of Dublin he was designated primate of Ireland and, therefore, used to adopting a leadership role within the Irish hierarchy. For instance, during the early stages of the Vatican Council McQuaid acted as spokesman for the Irish bishops when Cardinal D’Alton, archbishop of Armagh, was taken ill.Footnote ¹⁰² On the face of it, these factors go a long way towards explaining why McQuaid took the lead in the provision of Irish masses following the Second Vatican Council. However, his initiative in this area was not matched by similar innovations in other aspects of the liturgical reform. In fact, as the case of Fr Liam Walsh demonstrates, he was criticised for refusing or delaying implementation of a range of measures deemed by some members of his flock to be consistent with the aims of the Council for the enhancement of Catholic worship. These included females reading from the altar, the playing of guitars, and priests facing the congregation, all of which he resisted.Footnote ¹⁰³ One national newspaper castigated McQuaid for his restrictions on these and other changes, characterising them as ‘an insurmountable obstacle in the way of liturgical experiment’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Yet, in the sole area of Irish language masses, McQuaid was hailed, in some quarters at least, for setting an example to his fellow bishops. To understand this anomaly, it is necessary to look more closely at McQuaid’s attitude to the Vatican Council and, in particular, to its pronouncements on ecumenism and the liturgy.

IV

According to Deirdre McMahon, the archbishop of Dublin found the Second Vatican Council and its impact on the church to be ‘uncongenial’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ This is most evident in his distaste for the new emphasis on ecumenism and the drive by some senior churchmen to heal the rift caused by the Reformation.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In a letter to a fellow delegate sent during the Council, McQuaid expressed his alarm at a proposal in the draft Decree on Ecumenism for ‘common worship’ between Catholics and the ‘separated brethren’.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The relevant passage was, in McQuaid’s words, ‘a grave worry to me. It is altogether repugnant to me.’Footnote ¹⁰⁸ His horror at moves to foster reconciliation between the Catholic church and other Christian denominations is clear from his characterisation of the Reformation as a ‘tragic revolt [which] succeeded in breaking the unity of the Church…’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Throughout his last years in office McQuaid, in his public utterances on inter-faith relations, invariably employed the rhetoric of the Tridentine church to which he was devoted.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Protestants, on the other hand, welcomed Sacrosanctum Concilium as a belated acceptance by the Roman Catholic church of a key aspect of the Reformation. As a prominent Church of Ireland clergyman put it: ‘The new liturgy decree, with its advocacy of Bible services, the use of the vernacular and the sharing by the people in vocal prayers, was doing many of the things in the 20th century that the Reformers initiated in the 16th century.’Footnote ¹¹¹ The adoption of the vernacular liturgy by the Roman Catholic church made common Christian worship possible.Footnote ¹¹² While such a prospect delighted some it was, for the archbishop of Dublin, ‘suspect of heresy’.Footnote ¹¹³

McQuaid was especially concerned about the role of the International Committee on English in the Liturgy (I.C.E.L.), the body set up in October 1965 to produce a common English translation of the Latin text of the mass.Footnote ¹¹⁴ I.C.E.L. operated on behalf of ten English-speaking countries, including Ireland, whose hierarchies funded it in proportion to the size of their Catholic populations.Footnote ¹¹⁵ As the largest of these countries, the U.S.A. contributed over three-quarters of I.C.E.L.’s budget in the first year.Footnote ¹¹⁶ This financial clout made it difficult for the other members to resist the preferred translations of the American church. Moreover, according to the second article of its founding constitution, I.C.E.L. was mandated to undertake its revisions ‘bearing in mind the ecumenical aspects’. Its first report spelt out what this meant in plain language: ‘In every case of common concern with other Christian Churches, especially for the Ordinary chants of the Mass… the Committee will make every effort to obtain ecumenical consultation and collaboration’.Footnote ¹¹⁷

From the moment it was first mooted after the promulgation of the Constitution, McQuaid had serious reservations about an international enterprise of this kind. As he wrote to the recently-appointed Archbishop Conway of Armagh: ‘I find it hard to see, as was suggested, why Ireland, England, and Scotland should have to follow the American version of the English vernacular or even the American pattern. We speak a different language and live in very different circumstances.’Footnote ¹¹⁸ A few years later, he described a draft translation of the canon of the mass, sent to him by Conway, as ‘a pedestrian composition’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ A more detailed and withering critique of the I.C.E.L. translations is to be found in a ten-page document in McQuaid’s own hand, written in August 1969.Footnote ¹²⁰ This appears to relate to the draft English text of the new Roman Missal (Missale Romanum) which Paul VI had authorised several months earlier.Footnote ¹²¹ His attitude to the proposed text can be gleaned from his use of terms such as ‘eviscerated’, ‘impoverished’, and ‘weak’ to describe the standard of the translations. For McQuaid, the result was ‘so barren, and even untrue, as to resemble a Calvinist document’. Such strong criticism reflected his profound disquiet, not just at the American-influenced idioms, but at the extent to which the language of the mass had been altered to suit Protestant sensibilities. Five years earlier, in his pastoral letter on Sacrosanctum Concilium, McQuaid insisted that the proposed liturgical reform was not born out of a ‘desire for change’, but for ‘the good of the souls who are [the Catholic church’s] present members…’. He underlined the exclusivist interpretation of the reform by asserting that only those with ‘the gift of the true Faith … can share in the true worship ordained by Jesus Christ’.Footnote ¹²² In other words, the mass was a Roman Catholic ritual and non-Catholics could not take part in it.

From such a perspective, it is easy to understand why McQuaid might prefer Irish translations over which he, as a senior member of the hierarchy, could exert much greater influence.Footnote ¹²³ By instituting a weekly mass in the native tongue throughout his diocese, it could be argued that he was presenting his flock with a liturgical text that was not compromised by foreign influence. Nevertheless, an even greater counterbalance to an American-led vernacular was available through the traditional liturgical language, which McQuaid extolled as ‘the sonorous Latin’.Footnote ¹²⁴

Latin engaged him in a way that Gaelic did not. As a student at Blackrock College, McQuaid achieved first place in Ireland, with a mark of 98 per cent, in the Latin paper of the Junior Grade examination.Footnote ¹²⁵ In October 1962, during his maiden speech at the Council, McQuaid spoke in favour of retaining Latin in the mass.Footnote ¹²⁶ Towards the end of his career as archbishop, he told Father Aidan Lehane, president of Rockwell College, that he continued to say the Latin mass in private. ‘Isn’t it much nicer?’, he remarked to Lehane.Footnote ¹²⁷ However, as detailed above, there was practically no visible support for Latin among his flock, and this constrained McQuaid in what he could do to keep the traditional language alive as the pace of liturgical reform accelerated after the Council. Nonetheless there was another avenue he could take that was not dependent on a recognised pastoral need.

In April 1967, McQuaid wrote to the chairman of the Diocesan Liturgical Commission, Monsignor Patrick Boylan, urging him ‘to consider our having one Mass in Latin in every parish church on a Sunday where there are more than three Masses’.Footnote ¹²⁸ Significantly, this was the same arrangement as that made for the Irish masses a year earlier. McQuaid might have expected a sympathetic response from Boylan, who later expressed his aversion to ‘the introduction of “gimmicks” into the public worship of the Church’.Footnote ¹²⁹ However, Boylan was not supportive. ‘I do not remember any petition to have a Latin Mass provided on Sundays & Holydays’, he replied. ‘One hears occasionally a grumble against vernacular Masses’, he continued, ‘but nothing like a serious request for a Latin Mass’.Footnote ¹³⁰ There was, on the other hand, a clause in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy which stated that ‘steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them’.Footnote ¹³¹ It was this that prompted McQuaid’s letter, as he made clear in the annotation he added to Boylan’s reply: ‘It is not a question of a petition, but of a prescription of Holy See that parochi have their people understand and sing the Latin Mass.’Footnote ¹³² Ultimately, however, asserting the Latin provisions of the Constitution was a hopeless strategy. Without evidence of any substantial lay support, and given the relentless advance of the vernacular, it seems that McQuaid’s intervention had no effect.

Nevertheless, as late as 1970 – when the new all-vernacular liturgy was introduced into the Dublin archdiocese – McQuaid was hopeful that the Latin mass could still be retained. In a brief handwritten memo McQuaid noted that ‘The regulation, before the new Ordo Missae, was one Latin Mass at least each week. Pending the publication of the Latin Missal and Lectionary the regulation is merely in abeyance.’Footnote ¹³³ He was referring to his directive of February 1966 which stipulated that ‘there shall be in every parish and public church at least one public Mass in Latin on a week-day in each week’.Footnote ¹³⁴ However, by June 1971 McQuaid finally accepted that this regulation was not merely ‘in abeyance’. The Latin mass would not be returning – even on weekdays. In a handwritten draft of his introduction to the new English missal, composed during one of his frequent sojourns in Rockwell College, the archbishop faithfully reiterated the Vatican’s publicly-stated rationale for the transformation of the mass: ‘If the Church has permitted the translation of its official Latin text into the vernacular, it is only that the faithful may share more intelligently in the worship of the Holy Sacrifice.’Footnote ¹³⁵ If in the end he yielded on the form of the mass, McQuaid did not temper his opposition to ecumenism. In his final public statement on church unity before stepping down as archbishop, McQuaid reminded Protestants once again of their separation from ‘the One True Church… [which] is alone the Catholic Church’. As long as that separation continued, Protestants could never participate in what he continued to refer to as ‘the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’.Footnote ¹³⁶

Had McQuaid succeeded in his bid to preserve the traditional liturgical language, almost every parish in the diocese would have had to offer one Sunday mass in Irish and another in Latin. As a result, Dublin’s English-speaking Catholic population would have faced an even greater obstacle in attending mass in their preferred vernacular. Yet, from McQuaid’s perspective, such an arrangement was fully in line with the terms of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The Irish mass catered for those few who could not in conscience pray in English, and who might otherwise be lost to the church. The proposed Latin mass would have honoured the Council fathers’ pledge to preserve the traditional language. Having already established a precedent for a ‘deviation’ from the normative vernacular mass, the archbishop may have hoped that another would be accepted, at least by his own Liturgical Commission. For McQuaid, preserving the Latin rite as a second ‘minority alternative’ to the ordinary English liturgy would have ensured that at least one weekly act of worship in most parishes remained exclusively Roman Catholic. This raises the question as to whether that was the overarching objective of his drive to cater so generously for Dublin’s Irish-speaking Catholics. The answer, however, remains elusive.

It may never prove possible to know why McQuaid should have surpassed the provision of Irish masses made in other dioceses with much higher proportions of native speakers. Throughout his career he never displayed any particular enthusiasm for the Irish language. Indeed, he was uncharacteristically lenient towards open clerical opposition to his decrees on the Irish-language liturgy, which may indicate that his priorities lay elsewhere. In particular, he was deeply worried about the potential for inter-denominational worship implicit in the reformed mass. He was also committed to the preservation of Latin in an exclusively Roman Catholic liturgy. At the same time, he publicly supported ‘every decree of the Vatican Council’. McQuaid’s attempts to reconcile these conflicting positions led to a remoulding of the liturgy in his archdiocese that plunged him into religious and political controversy. On the other hand, they also precipitated a heartfelt outpouring of praise from Gaeilgeoirí for a churchman whom many of them saw as their champion during a turbulent time for the Irish language.Footnote ¹³⁷