A Century of Studies

A Century of Studies

Full text of article by Bryan Fanning, Winter 2011, vol.100, no.400

Arguably, the most important intellectual journal in post-independence Ireland has been the Jesuit-run Studies, which is now one century and 400 issues old. This is not to say that at every given moment it was the best. Studies influenced and contributed significantly to many of the intellectual debates that featured in The Bell, The Crane Bag, Christus Rex and Administration. Unlike Christus Rex, Studies was not restricted by doctrinal censorship. It lacked the narrow editorial identity of other more focused journals. This elasticity contributed to its longevity but also to its being sometimes underrated alongside more short-lived ones.

Until the 1980s, Studies reflected the mainstream of Irish social and economic thought and attracted leading lights in Irish academia and politics as contributors. But, in recent decades, Studies can legitimately claim outsider status; the decline of Catholic power and the expansion of various media moved the centre of Establishment debates elsewhere. In these decades Catholic ideas have found expression as dissidence, where once they represented the Irish status quo. Scepticism about neo-liberalism and commitment to social justice set Studies apart from the rightward shift of the Irish political mainstream. In an Ireland stifled by damaging complacencies, its new place outside the mainstream has been both honourable and interesting.

Timothy Corcoran SJ, the first editor, was close to Eamon de Valera and a mentor to the future Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. In the post-1912 period he was unofficial leader of the Sinn Féin caucus at the university.[1] In this he was at odds with the main thrust of political opinion within Studies, as exemplified by his fellow professors (and former students at Clongowes) Tom Kettle and Arthur Clery. As Professor of Political Economy and as an essayist, Kettle exemplified the distinctive fusion of Catholic and liberal ideas which influenced much that Studies published about economics for half a century.

Post-independence Irish Catholicism is now often depicted as monolithically repressive. Yet a strong distaste for any of the authoritarian political experiments of the twentieth century - extreme nationalism at home, fascism and communism abroad – characterised the early decades of Studies. A large number of articles examined the rise of state socialism. Most were inevitably critical; many were genuinely informative about Marxist ideas; some were clearly awed by the Soviet experiment. From the outset Studies was very much preoccupied with economics; its behind-the -scenes founder Thomas Finlay S.J. went on to become UCD Professor of Political Economy. In 1932 Finlay’s protégé and successor at UCD, George O’Brien, invited John Maynard Keynes to give the first memorial Finlay lecture. This was published the following year in Studies. The lecture had been attended by de Valera and his cabinet, as well as by W.T. Cosgrave and former members of his government. Keynes, when later recalling his visit to Dublin, described Cosgrave as very much the nineteenth century liberal.[2]

In 1953 Studies gave a platform to Patrick Lynch to argue for Keynesian planning and offer reassurances about growing state activism. Studies published a number of seminal articles advocating an economic developmental role for the state. Lynch argued for realistic debate stripped of ideological polemic about the necessity for some state activism. Many critics of state interventionism sheltered behind ‘the lingering shadows of economic liberalism to deny positive economic functions to a government’. Their views were, he argued, based on an incorrect reading of classical economics and on a convenient disregard of economic history. Economic arguments were one thing – these depended on time and place; ideology was another. Lynch quoted Keynes: ‘Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist’. Indeed much of what he had to say was greatly indebted to Keynes. Economic liberalism had been bankrupt since the Great Depression. Lynch emphasised the impracticality of laissez-faire ideology (‘the only untried utopia’ because it had never naturally occurred in the world). In a 1963 article Lynch described his preferred approach as ‘non doctrinal state activity’.[3]

The IRA's 1956 border campaign prompted some soul searching about the notion of a united Ireland, a hitherto taken-for-granted aspiration of constitutional nationalists writing in Studies. Articles by Donal Barrington and Conor Cruise O’Brien argued that prevalent nationalist thinking was impoverished. It blamed partition on British rule and claimed that what Britain had done it must undo. Partition, Barrington argued, was not forced on Ireland by Britain but necessitated by the conflicting demands of the two parties of Irishmen. It was Ireland’s crime against itself rather than England’s crime against Ireland. Barrington was fiercely critical of how de Valera, John A. Costello and, particularly, Sean MacBride had sought to lever international opinion in favour of Southern claims. This, Barrington implied, restated the old demand that the British should impose Irish unity. The scale of Southern misunderstanding of the North was huge. Southern efforts (the ‘ill-fated Mansion House Committee’) sought to fund the campaigns of anti-partition candidates. This met with a backlash in the 1949 general election. It gave the Unionist Party its biggest victory to-date and ‘wiped out’ the Northern Ireland Labour Party. For the first time the latter then came out against partition. Meanwhile, no effort had been made to engage with Unionists.

In the same 1957 issue, O’Brien’s ‘A Sample of Loyalties’ analysed ‘the ideas and feelings contained in a batch of essays written towards the end of 1953 by a class of 26 boys, aged 13 to 14 years of age attending a large Protestant secondary school in the Six Counties.’ The set topic of the essay was ‘Ireland’. The value of the exercise for O’Brien was ‘an unguarded candour and clarity’ unlikely from ‘older or more intellectual members of that community’. Twenty of the essays expressed various degrees of positive feeling towards Ireland as homeland. Many were attached to some sense of Irishness. As put by one boy who professed to like the poetry of Yeats, ‘I am sort of a way attracted to its music its famousness and its green fields. We should be proud of if.’ Another wrote: ‘Ireland is a good country in spite of their overcrowded towns and their slums and the Roman Catholic inhabitants’. Nine of the 26 boys stated a preference for unification. Just one of the boys came out unequivocally against it. Only four went into any specifics about what they meant by reunification. One concluded it would be good if Northern Ireland and ‘Eire’ were brought together under the Queen’s rule. The second maintained that reunification should be under the British flag. The third suggested that Ireland should be a separate nation with a king. For the fourth, it required forgetting the seventeenth century. [4]

These responses were far removed from Nationalist understandings of what was meant by the unification of Ireland. A degree of religious sectarianism was identifiable but O’Brien cautioned reading too much into some of the misconceptions the boys demonstrated about Catholicism. A similar exercise conducted amongst Southern Catholic schoolboys would produce similar howlers. That said, O’Brien left the teacher to whom he owed his article anonymous lest, ‘in the grim words of one of his essayists’, he be ‘silently disposed of ’.

The next major debate on nationalism occurred in the 1966 issue that marked the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Jesuit Francis Shaw’s article on the Rising was refused publication in 1966; the then-editor Roland Burke Savage SJ considered it too controversial for what was meant to be a commemoration. When it was finally published in 1972, the accompanying editorial by Peter Troydyn SJ described it as a ‘tract for the present troubled time.’[5] Weighing in with more than 17,000 words – several times the length of usual contributions to Studies - Shaw savaged the account of Irish history mobilised by Pearse and attacked subsequent ‘myths’ that had grown up around the actual events of 1916.[6]

But perhaps the most trenchant critique of nationalism published in Studies in its 1966 ‘commemoration’ came from Garrett FitzGerald. He admired the courage of the men who died but insisted that they hardly warranted admiration as thinkers:

This almost mediaeval respect for the letter of what had been written or spoken between 1913 and 1916 by the leaders of the Rising is misconceived. Even if these men had been political or social thinkers of world standing, their thoughts on the Ireland they knew could not have stood up to such prolonged and unthinking veneration, but they did not regard themselves – nor were they in fact great thinkers.[7]

They had, Fitzgerald argued, few clear-cut ideas of political or social philosophy. There had been, for instance, deep differences between Pearse and Connolly over the 1913 strike. But neither went into the GPO with a coherent intellectual, political or social programme; political freedom was an end in itself. To treat then the Proclamation of 1916 as a great source of political or social doctrines was to misunderstand what it meant to those who wrote it. Granted, it contained noble ideals, the wish to secure political freedom expressed in an enduring language, but no clear ideas. It was a mistake for Irish people half a century later to ask themselves what they, the men of 1916, might do or say on any issue: ‘Their views on modern Ireland would be no more valuable than many of their colleagues still alive, and probably less valuable than many of our contemporaries’. Fitzgerald's argument was that Ireland could not be administered on a day-to-day basis by the dead.

The Northern conflict came to preoccupy Studies to a considerable extent. Debate and analysis in the journal emphasised that the need to foster ecumenism and pluralism in the North required reform down South. In a 1978 piece John Brady SJ argued that citizens of the Republic must emphasise that they did not wish to govern Northern Ireland against the wishes of the majority. In many respects Brady updated Barrington’s argument for unification by consent. He maintained that there was a need to modify those aspects of law and public administration that seemed to give the State a markedly Catholic character. These included issues such as divorce and contraception. A carefully framed divorce law would, he argued, be for the common good. The Irish prohibition on the sale of contraceptives in the wake of the 1973 McGee ruling was described as ‘bizarre.’ Brady argued that to abstain completely from all efforts to influence the decisions of mixed marriages - the abandonment of Ne Temere - would be ‘an appropriate gesture’. Inter-denominational schooling was needed in the North. Children could be taken to separate classes for religious education but there was a case for pilot work on the ecumenical teaching of religion using the same textbooks for Protestant and Catholics which would explain divergences in understanding and the existence of a common Christian heritage.

From the 1960s, Studies was at the vanguard of progressive social debate. The new mood found expression within the editorials and articles of Roland Burke-Savage. In the forward-looking ‘Ireland: 1963-1973’, he called for a new openness to the disparate intellectual traditions that had shaped Irish society:

The best of the Protestant Anglo-Irish tradition has much to offer us in its concern for civic responsibilities, for virtues of truthfulness and hard work, and for its concern for the appreciation and cultivation of arts and letters. Our national ideal would be a poor one without these qualities. Thinking in Ireland has been much influenced by English Welfare liberals and socialists. Again many of their ideas must find a place in our national ideal, ideas which often find a firmer foundation and a stronger motive-power in the authentic Christian tradition than in the premises from which their formulators derived them.[8]

Even socialist ideas, Burke-Savage implied, could be claimed for Christian social justice; he referred to the socialist traditions of Methodism and Non-Conformism (which were subsequently much emphasised in the United Kingdom by New Labour). The early 1970s witnessed an alliance between post-Vatican II clerical advocates of social justice and left anti-poverty activists. This found influential expression in the 1971 Kilkenny Conference of the Council of Social Welfare. The new radical Catholic mood was exemplified by Sr Stanislaus Kennedy’s One Million Poor?-The Challenge of Irish Inequality. [9] In Studies, Frank Sammon SJ published several articles depicting poverty as a structural problem, one resulting from inequality of power and resources, as a problem that could not be solved just by economic growth.[10]

The Winter 1982 editorial had proclaimed a ‘radical shift’ in future editorial policy. ‘We aim’ it began, ‘to be non-academic in future, reacting more to the problems of the day, while maintaining the traditional interest of Studies in general Irish culture’. However such a shift had been building for a number of years. The editorial view from the late seventies onwards was that Studies had misplaced its raison d’étre. [11] The new emphasis was to be upon the perceived dislocations resulting from social injustices, secularisation and loss of political legitimacy. These were understood as somehow intertwined with the problem of declining Catholic influence in the Republic but also with conflicts in the North. The focus on poverty and inequality was then, to some extent, about reacquiring moral capital. But the new radical emphasis on social justice was also heartfelt. Galvanised by third world liberation theology, Gerry O’Hanlon SJ criticised the preoccupation of Northern clergy with doctrinal orthodoxy at the expense of secular welfare. He argued that social justice was a burning issue for Northern Catholics whilst the sermons of their clergy tended to focus on matters of personal piety.[12] Down South, relevance was equated with radical commitment to addressing social inequalities. A 1985 editorial by Brian Lennon SJ urged the Church to position itself to the left of the political mainstream. Now market forces rather than the state were the enemies of social cohesion. In another editorial the same year, Lennon professed regret that Irish socialism had been stillborn. Yet another 1985 article concluded that the current Irish labour movement had ‘produced the most opportunistically conservative Labour Party anywhere in the known world.’ [13]

A 1985 editorial described the reality of Dublin working class parishes where less than 10 percent attended Sunday Mass regularly. A 1985 review article by Tom Inglis defined secularisation as ‘the decline of traditional religious practices that produce a shared meaning and consciousness amongst members of society’. [14] In the same issue Michael Paul Gallagher SJ argued that, ‘under the open conditions of Irish modernity’, faith could no longer be imposed. The decline of traditional authority meant that it could not be accepted passively. Faith had become, like many other things, a matter of individual choice.[15]

In this context, Studies promoted anti-authoritarian solidarity rather than a return to obedience. Themed issues such as spring 1983’s Upstairs Downstairs emphasised the need to challenge social inequality. Autumn 1983’s ‘Private’ Property emphasised ‘the ever widening gap between the managerial class and the Irish worker.’ Spring 1984’s issue A Solution to Homelessness outlined the history of vagrancy laws and their current use against homeless people who had been denied social housing. In a number of articles Studies captured the mixture of anger and despair that to some extent characterised the 1980s.

The 1990s saw some important debate on the future of Catholicism and the emergence of a neo-conservative critique of social liberalism. Yet, Studies remained to the left of the political mainstream when it came to the pursuit of social inclusion for marginal groups. In keeping with its long-standing pluralist ethos, it published in 2004 an article on the political influence of Protestant theological ideas on Unionist politics. The very first issue of Studies in 1912 had contained an article on Islam.

In the last decade some new fields of debate stand out alongside the many other articles that continued to be published on various aforementioned themes. There has been a recurring focus on the crisis of accountability in Irish life. Many articles have addressed topics such as the institutional abuse of children and other vulnerable persons in Irish society. In June 1994, Father Brendan Smyth was convicted on seventeen counts of sexual abuse of children over a period of thirty years. Smyth, according to Harry Ferguson, perpetrated appalling acts of violence against children and deserved to be demonised. Yet Ferguson was preoccupied with the vilification of celibate clerics. His underlying argument was that masculinity and male sexuality needed to be better understood and openly discussed in order to separate out the causes of sexual abuse from the moral panic that surrounded it.[16] An accompanying article in the same 1995 issue argued that some Church leaders, in their arrogance and hubris, had chosen to deny the seriousness of what was taking place and did not take steps to stop the behaviour of paedophile clerics. [17] There was, Noel Barber SJ argued in his editorial, too much concern about the ‘good name’ of the Church and too little concern for victims.[18] The Winter 2005 issue contained several articles criticising responses by the institutional Church to the scandal of abuse. In a 2010 essay on clerical child abuse, Seamus Murphy SJ bluntly started with ‘three simple facts’. A large number of priests sexually assaulted children during the last forty years. Their superiors made no serious effort to punish or prevent them. If it were not for media exposé, it would still be going on.[19]

The twenty-first century saw the emergence of immigration as a social and political issue in the Republic of Ireland. My own involvement with the journal (as a member of the editorial board) came about when a suggestion I made to the then-editor Fergus O’Donoghue SJ to publish a special issue on the topic was warmly received. Since then Studies has published articles on human trafficking, the treatment of asylum seekers, the participation of immigrants in politics, critiques of multiculturalism and analyses of immigration policy. It has similarly addressed a range of other contemporary social issues.

Studies cannot compete with the mainstream media in all its glittering twenty-first century forms although it now has a state-of-the-art website. Yet, for decades it has functioned as a kind of metablog on Irish affairs where, instead of throwaway comments, the long essay form has prevailed. Many of these have been dull and worthy. Far fewer have been trivial. The best have been very good and some have been very important. On dusty library stacks or readily accessible in digital form, these are revealed as a century-long river of arguments and reflections on the changes, crises, culture, politics, passions and poetry of Irish society.

Professor Bryan Fanning is editor of An Irish Century: Studies 1912-2012. His previous books include The Quest for Modern Ireland: The Battle of Ideas 1912-86 and New Guests of the Irish Nation. He is the Head of the School of Applied Social Science at University College Dublin.

Notes