Abstract
This work edited by Alana Harris is the last in the chronological sequel of the history of Catholicism—James E. Kelly and John McCafferty (eds), The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Vol. I: Endings and New Beginnings, 1530–1640; Vol. II: Uncertainty and Change, 1641–1745, edited by John Morrill and Liam Temple; Vol. III: Relief, Revolution, and Revival, 1746–1829, edited by Liam Chambers; Vol. IV: Building Identity: 1830–1913, edited by Carmen M. Mangion and Susan O’Brien—from the post-Reformation to the 21st century. Volume 5 explores the role of the Catholic laity from the First World War. This significant period ushered in a new era, especially in Irish Catholicism and its foreign missions in Africa and Asia, as many religious congregations utilised in-house magazines to publicise their work, foster connections between the mission field and their supporters at home, encourage recruitment, and raise funds. The Irish public’s donations, subscriptions, and support for fundraising endeavours were crucial for the financial sustainability and expansion of the missions. Harris argues that the crux of the book is on the laity, the quintessence of the Catholic Church.
This volume’s initial three chapters analyse the Catholic experience in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Stephen Bullivant’s chapter on England captures the lived experience of Catholics among indigenous and migrant communities, a discourse often neglected in the historiography. The subsequent thirteen chapters explore the richness of various aspects of British and Irish Catholicism through diverse lenses, including missionary endeavours, empire and colonialism, education, colonial conquest, Church–state relations, soldiering, ecumenism, devotion, liturgy, literature, music, sexual abuse and scandals. This diverse exploration is a significant contribution that will undoubtedly enrich and broaden the understanding of the history of British and Irish Catholicism and its impact.
Stephen G. Parker’s “Catholic Education in Britain and Ireland” analyses the trajectory of Catholic education, its policies and challenges, and the interplay between Church and State. This chapter is significant as the changes in policy, with the imposition of conditions attached, greatly helped Irish missionaries navigate and manoeuvre education ordinances in British West African colonies, since Irish missionaries operated in colonial spaces. This type of system was familiar to Irish missionaries, as the educational framework established by the British government in Ireland was very similar. In his contribution on Catholics and soldiering, Michael Snape unearths the “catholicizing effect of the war on British religious culture” and the ironical exigencies and intricacies of the aloofness of Catholics in British national life.
Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Catholic Church faced tremendous challenges from modernity. Andrew Pierce’s chapter “Modernity and Anti-Modernism, 1850–1910” analyses Cardinal Newman and the Jesuits. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries significantly transformed the Catholic Church and the wider world. Ireland, known for its long-established “special relationship” with the church and papacy, has undergone notable changes. By the end of the 1960s, it was clear that the golden era of the Irish missions was over. The public’s appetite for winning the world for Christ had diminished. Widespread adulation and unquestioning approval of Irish missionary endeavours had vanished. The Irish Catholic Directory, Catholic newspapers, and missionary magazines were no longer overflowing with advertisements about the successes of Irish missionary activities or seeking priests and sisters for the mission field. Highly dependent on mass public support, the once-thriving congregations struggled to sustain their missions. Access to the pockets of the Irish laity became increasingly difficult, and a missionary vocation no longer held the same level of attraction. As opportunities for vocations and funding diminished, so did the fierce missionary competition of earlier decades.
The dramatic shift in public attitudes can be attributed to several factors, chief among which was the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Irish Catholic culture. The teachings of the Council had contributed significantly to a change in attitude towards Catholic missionary endeavour. As the “ecumenical approach” replaced the “defensive nature of Tridentine Catholicism,” the path to salvation and eternal life was no longer confined to Catholic conversion. The theological basis of the missions diminished. Vocations in the post-Conciliar era lost their appeal and declined. The liberalisation of Irish Catholic culture impacted missionary endeavour, improved economic prospects and the introduction of free second-level education in 1967. Vatican II and its radical changes dealt a devastating blow to missionary congregations, which never recovered. In “The Travails of Contemporary Irish Catholicism from John Paul II to Pope Francis,” the final chapter in the volume, Daithi Ó Corráin discusses the two papal visits to Ireland, declining church attendance and vocations. Today, several “reverse missionaries”—foreign priests and women religious, especially from the Global South—are on evangelical work in parishes and dioceses scattered all over Ireland. Mary E. Daly and Marcus Pound examine the complex and uncomfortable clerical abuses and their negative impact on the church, the laity, and the institutional and ecclesiastical structures.
My chief criticisms of this volume are five-fold. First, there seems to be a lack of indigenous sources in chapters discussing the spread of the Catholic Church overseas or on foreign missions. For example, Fiona Bateman’s chapter lacks a single Nigerian source despite making several references to Nigeria, the Irish missionaries’ most crucial mission in Africa at the height of its activity, due to its massive investment and Nigeria’s pride of place as the most populous Black country. References are made to Irish missionary magazines, but Catholic print media published on the mission field remains a significantly unexplored area of the histories of Catholic missionary endeavours. Between 1912 and 1925, there were eight Catholic publications in Colonial West Africa, namely, Catholic Magazine at Keta, Gold Coast; The Reconnaissance Africaine of Dahomey; Mia Holo of Togoland; the Catholic Voice of the Gold Coast; The Leader (1956–1970), Mmiri Nnso (1944–1951), and the Jarida Katolika (1939–1947), and the Nigerian Catholic Herald (NCH). Examining these magazines would provide a more balanced assessment of the resources and promotion of the foreign missions. A look at the NCH, which was edited, owned by the Society of African Missions (SMA) and published fortnightly in Lagos, Nigeria, from 1924 until it ceased publication in 1952 due to financial constraints, would have enriched Bateman’s chapter. The readership of the NCH transcended Nigeria as it was circulated in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Gabon—all stomping grounds for the Irish missions. The SMA utilised the NCH to promote, fundraise, and recruit for the Nigerian mission field. A section called “The Golden Book” acknowledged donations from individuals within and outside Nigeria towards specific projects, such as building cathedrals, schools, and health facilities. The SMA deliberately acknowledged Nigerians’ monetary and material contributions in the NCH and omitted these contributions in the African Missionary consumed in Ireland. The NCH showcases nuanced narratives around the cultural context of the time and issues such as race; Catholic identity; Irishness; Nigerianness; indigenous clergy; agency; propaganda; triumphalism; racism, pecksniffianism; defensive spirituality; anti-colonial struggle; social power; intellectual insecurity; Nigerian reception of Catholicism; colonialism; identity, and modernity, bringing together the British colonial government, Nigerians, and the Irish in an intricate web of struggle during the twentieth century.
Second, there is the degree to which the contributions of Nigerians, international actors, and the British colonial administration to the material progress of Irish missionary endeavour have been neglected in the historiography. The reason for this is clear. There has been an overreliance on Irish sources at the detriment of records in the Nigerian National Archives in Ibadan, Enugu, Kaduna, and Calabar. Moreover, scholars have tended to ignore some of the records held at the mission houses in Nigeria, locally published texts, and oral sources. The crucial enabling role played by the British colonial government’s grant-in-aid scheme and how the Irish missions constantly adapted to new ordinances, or the whims of the colonial and then independent Nigerian government, is not captured in Bateman’s chapter. The finance provided by the colonial government boosted the successes recorded by the missions in education, healthcare and welfare provision. However, this funding was not acknowledged in missionary circles for obvious reasons. The missionaries’ relationship with the British colonial administration was co-operative whenever it benefited them, especially regarding financial contributions. The missionaries discredited the colonial government’s ordinances and financial support in letters sent to Ireland and articles in missionary magazines published in Ireland. This duplicity is rooted in a sense of anti-colonial struggle.
Third, I do not believe this volume effectively captures the essence of moving away from institutional, hierarchical, and ecclesiastical portrayals. A significant area in which the effects of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) were felt was the people’s attitudes towards lay apostolate and Catholic lay sodalities. Vatican II softened the missionaries’ stance against indigenous associations and societies. Christian dogmas and doctrines did not undermine the culture of the people. Despite the acceptance of some Western values and practices, Catholic adherents’ social values and attitudes towards marriage, reincarnation, ritual, traditional authority, child-rearing, land, and other traditional practices remained intact. The voices of the laity are absent in this volume.
Fourth, the foreign missions facilitated close encounters with people worldwide, connecting different regions through correspondence, travel, and institutions. Since the missions could not provide enough missionaries for the extensive fields in Africa, Asia, and South America, several priests and nuns from various nationalities were recruited. These foreign missionaries hailed from the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Britain, and Switzerland. Additionally, the missions received help from lay Irish, Swiss, American, British, Canadian, and German doctors and nurses in medical facilities, teachers in educational institutions, and engineers for construction projects, including cathedrals and bridges built in riverine areas known as “Irish Bridges.” Some of these laypersons were non-Catholics. The role of laypeople in the mission field has not been thoroughly examined. The contributions of both lay and religious individuals within the British and Irish Catholic communities overseas have significantly impacted isolation, disease, and mortality in the mission field.
Fifth, although this, and earlier volumes paid significant attention to lay women and their role in sustaining and nurturing the Catholic community and its networks at home and abroad, there seems to be a silence on childhood, missioners junior, sports, recreation, leadership programmes, civics, and youth culture. Forming Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in Catholic schools and churches was an avenue for civics and instilling the Catholic ethos into boys and girls who went camping with priests and nuns. For example, Irish sisters lobbied the British colonial government for funds, organised various fundraisers to raise money and supplies for the Second World War, trained cadets and guiders, and formed the Nigerian Girl Guides Association (NGGA) in 1949. The sisters organised companies of cadets in Catholic girls’ schools and Women’s Teacher Training Centres, using guiding activities to promote sanitation, modern methods of childcare, promoting Western sports and competitions to Nigerian girls of all classes and religions, and distributing the Guiding magazine, Look Wide. Examining all these is essential for three reasons. First, they reveal how foreign mission fields became breeding grounds for Irish and British imports and ideas. Second, they show how Catholic children contributed to Catholicism and globalisation. Third, they depict youth and children of different races engaging in similar activities.
Further, Christian missionaries are credited with introducing sports such as football, cricket, handball, volleyball, badminton, hockey, basketball, athletics, and netball. Catholic mission schools excelled in sporting competitions like the Empire Day Shield Competition, underscoring the importance of sports in the Irish missionary endeavour in British colonies. Sporting success helped popularise Catholic schools across the country. Additionally, humanitarian efforts, particularly the medical work of the Catholic missions, along with the prestige and development that a Catholic presence brought to communities, contributed to the popularity of Catholic schools. I think an Oxford history volume on the metropole to the periphery would do justice to some of these issues. While that may be true, the previous paragraphs are merely suggestions. Ultimately, one of the great strengths of this volume is its extensive thematic coverage, which not only opens new areas of crucial context for research on British and Irish Catholic experiences but also provides valuable information and materials for church historians, theologians, researchers, scholars, social historians, and public commentators.