Northern Ireland Reconciliation Bill Highlights Complicated Role of Catholic Church During the Troubles

As the blatantly sectarian cartoon on the cover image of my book, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles 1968-98, demonstrates, there were those in the British press who perpetuated the idea that republicanism and Catholicism were willing bedfellows. But the church knew that excommunicating IRA members could isolate sections of the Catholic community who felt the republican paramilitaries provided protection from perceived corrupt police and British Army forces.

Those who conflated the conflict with religion viewed the lack of excommunication of republican paramilitaries as the church’s compliance and support for violence. This reluctance to tackle the excommunication issue led to missed opportunities for unity.

Hopes for interfaith cooperation were dashed by other issues, too: chiefly the Church’s insistence on segregated education for Catholics, and the 1970 Vatican apostolic letter Matrimonia Mixta which emphasises that children born of “mixed” Catholic and Protestant marriages should be raised Catholic.

IRA paramilitary funerals were another dilemma for the Catholic Church. Irish priests who ministered and conducted these ceremonies were regularly accused of condoning, if not actively supporting, violence. Differing Catholic and Protestant church practices and theologies around death, funerals, and the afterlife exacerbated inter-community tensions.

For Catholics, the dead would be judged when they met their maker and not by those on earth. Therefore it was difficult for the Irish Catholic Church to deny IRA members a funeral and requiem mass. In the late 1980s, Bishop Edward Daly of Derry attempted to ban the bodies of republican paramilitaries being present at their requiem mass but quickly had to reverse his decision when republican mourners brought the coffins to the cathedral and were granted entry.

A carrot and stick approach emerged among the Catholic clergy. Some priests acted as mediators between the Provisional IRA and the British government, resulting in the 1974-75 ceasefire. Priests were supposed to embody neutrality and had historically adjudicated between different Irish groups.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, priests like Father Alec Reid and Father Gerry Reynolds provided rooms in the Clonard Monastery for Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and the SDLP’s John Hume to meet privately. At the same time, priests like Father Denis Faul publicly denounced the IRA’s violence. However, revelations of clerical child abuse in the 1990s shattered the moral authority of the Catholic Church and drastically reduced institutional church involvement in the peace process.

Reconciling or Deepening Divisions?
Depending on the final shape of the Reconciliation and Information Recovery bill, will the Catholic Church back the oral history projects? Will it support researchers writing thematic reports? Will it be inspired to open its own archives? Or will it boycott the bill in solidarity with victims’ groups?

Archbishop Eamon Martin, the Roman Catholic primate of all Ireland, along with the queen, took part in a service of reflection and hope in Armagh in 2021 alongside Protestant church leaders to mark the centenary of partition and the creation of Northern Ireland. But the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, declined the invitation, saying he was “not in a position to attend”.

While this may indicate a willingness for the Catholic Church to be a part of the legacy process, Archbishop Martin and another Church of Ireland archbishop, John McDowell, jointly warned the bill would “deepen divisions” in the north.

Should the bill go forward in its current form, Church leadership will either have to back the British government or push against it, a doubtless tricky position for an institution declining in influence.

Margaret Scull is Adjunct Professor of History, Syracuse University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.