‘George’ a commentor on my previous post writes:
"It sounds rather like Flann O'Brien's account, collected in Further Cuttings from the Cruiskeen Lawn of a controversy between a Father Felim O Briain and a Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington. Like most of O'Brien's work, it is most amusing. It is unfortunately too long for me to type into your comment box. But the first of the subpropositions mentioned begins"1. A person born in Ireland who is a Catholic and who possibly harbours nationalistic sentiments is a low mean stupid dog; he is superstitious and priest-ridden, is forbidden to read any worthwhile books, particularly the Bible; he gratefully lies down under all the most outrageous tyrannies, and even keeps inventing new tyrannies; he is a fool and a helot ...."O'Brien said that he would invite neither O Briain nor Sheehy-Skeffington to dinner, since "I am afraid to my life of being bored."
Who was this Father O’Brian. He used the Irish form of his name and he was the Professor of Philosophy in University College Galway - An tAthair Felim O’Briain O.F.M. Phd, D.D. B Cl. He is down as such in the college calender of 1941. He died in 1956. Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was a Senator and a liberal free-thinker humanist when that was neither profitable or popular as Myles would say. Diarmad Ferriter the historian refers to ‘Skeff’ being expelled from the Labour party because of a row in 1943 with a priest over the nature of Socialism . This he takes in his book (The Transformation of Ireland) to be an index of the pusillanimity of the socialists of the time. Not mentioning the name of the priest which he must have known displays the the mean-spiritedness of the modern liberal. You know, just a generic priest -écrasez l'infâme.
Skeff and Fr. O’Brian could have agreed on this much anyway. The ‘priest’ is quoted in a magazine of the time - ‘The Galway Reader’ by a Senator Burke who ran a co-operative farm in Galway.
“There is a genuine grievance among the abnormally large class of miserably underpaid workers in Eire ; before an employer should spend his profits on luxuries for himself, he should ensure that his workers can satisfy their normal needs ; bread for all, before cake for anyone, is an axiom that has many centuries of Christian tradition behind it. “In a country such as Eire, where the national income is meagre, social justice imposes special standards of sacrifice and austerity on the upper income groups. This standard of austerity is absent in this country.”
Ferriter and Fintan O’Toole are the twin interpretive pillars of the Irish Times. Either of them is a European level bore, quite predictable on the woes of Erin a la Banville. The trifecta of them all on the same day and issue might break the algorithm which governs the three great waves which break on the coast of Ireland. Only the Tuatha de Danann could save us then.
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