Maria Duce (Latin for With Mary as our Leader) was a small Catholic Integrist group active in Ireland, founded in 1942 by Fr Denis Fahey. [1] [2]
Like its founder, Maria Duce was avowedly anti-communist. Through their front organisation, 'Catholic Cinema and Theatre Patrons Association' (CCTPA), they picketed a visit by film star Danny Kaye and campaigned against visits by actor Gregory Peck and writer/director Orson Welles, all of whom they accused of being communists. [3] [4] Also, like its founder, the group espoused antisemitic views. [5] [6]
The group's principal aim was to embed Catholic doctrine in the legal structure of the Irish state, including recognition of the Catholic Church as the established church of Ireland, as it had been in Spain until 1931. [7] This latter step had been contemplated during the drafting of Éamon de Valera's 1937 Constitution of Ireland, but it was ultimately rejected in recognition of the obstacle posed by Ireland's relatively large Protestant minority and due to aspirations for Irish unity and the detrimental effects such a clause would have on the unionist population in Northern Ireland. [7] [8] It did emphasise the "special position" of the church, with no specific legal entitlements. [9]
Though Maria Duce's membership probably did not much exceed one hundred, [7] its monthly journal Fiat enjoyed a fairly wide circulation in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[ citation needed ] The movement was not encouraged by the Irish bishops, who viewed its extremism with suspicion and desired not to become associated with Fr. Fahey's writings and statements. It was ordered to change its name by the Church authorities in 1955, a year after Fahey's death, by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid (a former pupil of Fahey's and a fellow member of the Holy Ghost Fathers), in order to make it clear that it did not have official Church approval. [7] [10] As Fírinne [Irish for "truth"] it remained in existence until the early 1970s, publishing FIAT and organising pilgrimages to Fr. Fahey's grave in the belief that he would one day be canonised as a saint.[ citation needed ]
John Ryan, the long time editor of The Irish Catholic Newspaper, was secretary of Maria Duce for a time. [11] The IRA member Sean South (killed in the 1950s border campaign) founded a local branch of Maria Duce in Limerick. [12]
Conradh na Gaeilge is a social and cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language in Ireland and worldwide. The organisation was founded in 1893 with Douglas Hyde as its first president, when it emerged as the successor of several 19th century groups such as the Gaelic Union. The organisation was a spearhead of the Gaelic revival and of Gaeilgeoir activism.
The Church of Ireland is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second-largest Christian church on the island after the Roman Catholic Church. Like other Anglican churches, it has retained elements of pre-Reformation practice, notably its episcopal polity, while rejecting the primacy of the pope.
The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1972 is an amendment to the Constitution of Ireland which deleted two subsections that recognised the special position of the Catholic Church and that recognised other named religious denominations. It was approved by referendum on 7 December 1972 and signed into law on 5 January 1973.
Events from the year 1945 in Ireland.
Edward J. Cahill, S.J. was an Irish Jesuit priest and academic, born in Ballyvocogue, Cappagh, County Limerick. He was educated in Theology at Maynooth, and ordained a priest in 1897. He served on the staff of Mungret College and in the years before the Easter Rising he was known for facilitating Irish Volunteers in their training in Mungret. In 1924, he joined the staff of the Jesuit Milltown Park Institute in Dublin as Professor of Church History, Lecturer in Sociology, and later, Spiritual Father.
The history of the Jews in Ireland extends for more than a millennium. The Jewish community in Ireland has always been small in numbers in modern history, not exceeding 5,500 since at least 1891.
John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare PC (Ire) was Attorney-General for Ireland from 1783 to 1789 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1789 to 1802.
Rockwell College, founded in 1864, is a voluntary day and boarding Catholic secondary school near Cashel, County Tipperary in Ireland.
The Grand Lodge of Ireland is the second most senior Grand Lodge of Freemasons in the world, and the oldest in continuous existence. Since no specific record of its foundation exists, 1725 is the year celebrated in Grand Lodge anniversaries, as the oldest reference to Grand Lodge of Ireland comes from the Dublin Weekly Journal of 26 June 1725. This describes a meeting of the Grand Lodge to install the new Grand Master, The 1st Earl of Rosse, on 24 June. The Grand Lodge has regular Masonic jurisdiction over 13 Provincial Grand Lodges covering all the Freemasons of the island of Ireland, and another 11 provinces worldwide.
Seán South was a member of an IRA military column led by Seán Garland on a raid against a Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, on New Year's Day 1957. South, along with Fergal O'Hanlon from County Monaghan, died of wounds sustained during the raid. South has subsequently been commemorated as a martyr by Republicans.
The British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO) was a small group based in London, Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. Its leader was Brendan Clifford. The group produced a number of pamphlets and regular publications, including The Irish Communist and Workers Weekly in Belfast. Τhe group currently expresses itself through Athol Books with its premier publication being the Irish Political Review. The group also continues to publish Church & State, Irish Foreign Affairs, Labour Affairs and Problems.
In Ireland, the penal laws were a series of legal disabilities imposed in the seventeenth, and early eighteenth, centuries on the kingdom's Roman Catholic majority and, to a lesser degree, on Protestant "Dissenters". Enacted by the Irish Parliament, they secured the Protestant Ascendancy by further concentrating property and public office in the hands of those who, as communicants of the established Church of Ireland, subscribed to the Oath of Supremacy. The Oath acknowledged the British monarch as the "supreme governor" of matters both spiritual and temporal, and abjured "all foreign jurisdictions [and] powers"—by implication both the Pope in Rome and the Stuart "Pretender" in the court of the King of France.
Irish Catholic Martyrs were 24 Irish men and women who have been beatified or canonized for both a life of heroic virtue and for dying for their Catholic faith between the reign of King Henry VIII and Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp. was an Irish Catholic priest. Fahey promoted the Catholic social teaching of Christ the King, and was involved in Irish politics through his organisation Maria Duce. Fahey believed that "the world must conform to Our Divine Lord, not He to it", defending the theological concept of the Mystical Body of Christ. This often saw Fahey in conflict with systems which he viewed as promoting "naturalism" against Catholic order – particularly communism, freemasonry and rabbinic Judaism. His writings were deeply anti-Semitic, Fahey stating that "we must combat Jewish efforts to permeate the world with naturalism. In that sense, as there is only one divine plan for order in the world, every sane thinker must be an anti-Semite".
Father Nicholas Sheehy (1728–1766) was an 18th-century Irish Roman Catholic priest who was executed on the charge of being an accessory to murder. Father Sheehy was a prominent and vocal opponent of the Penal Laws, which subjected the whole Catholic Church in Ireland to religious persecution, and as a vocal activist for Catholic Emancipation. His conviction was widely regarded as a judicial murder and was cited long afterwards as Irish jargon for a miscarriage of justice. Fr. Nicholas Sheehy is currently regarded as one of the Irish Catholic Martyrs.
Protestantism is a Christian minority on the island of Ireland. In the 2011 census of Northern Ireland, 48% (883,768) described themselves as Protestant, which was a decline of approximately 5% from the 2001 census. In the 2011 census of the Republic of Ireland, 4.27% of the population described themselves as Protestant. In the Republic, Protestantism was the second largest religious grouping until the 2002 census in which they were exceeded by those who chose "No Religion". Some forms of Protestantism existed in Ireland in the early 16th century before the English Reformation, but demographically speaking these were very insignificant and the real influx of Protestantism began only with the spread of the English Reformation to Ireland. The Church of Ireland was established by King Henry VIII of England, who had himself proclaimed as King of Ireland.
The War of Anti-Christ with the Church and Christian Civilization is a book written in 1885 by an Irishman, Msgr George F. Dillon, DD. It was republished in a slightly edited form by Fr Denis Fahey in 1950 as Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power Behind Communism. The central theme of the book alleges that atheistic Illuminism, through the infrastructure of Grand Orient freemasonry, driven by the ideology of the philosophes laid the foundations for a large scale, ongoing war against Christendom in general and the Catholic Church in particular. The document claims that it had been manifested primarily through manipulating the outbreak of various radical liberal republican revolutions, particularly those focused on atheism or religious indifferentism in their anti-Catholicism. The book details revolutionary activity in France, Italy, Germany and Ireland.
An Ríoghacht was a conservative Catholic group in Ireland, founded in 1926 by Fr Edward Cahill, Professor of Church History and Lecturer in Sociology at the Milltown Park Institute, Dublin.
Protestantism in the Republic of Ireland refers to Protestantism in the Republic of Ireland and its predecessor, the Irish Free State. Protestants who are born in the Republic of Ireland are Irish Citizens. Protestants who are born in Northern Ireland are British and / or Irish depending on their political identity and whether they choose to exercise their right to claim Irish citizenship on the same basis as anywhere else on the island of Ireland. In 2006, Protestants made up 4.2% of the Republic of Ireland's population versus 10% in 1911. Their population experienced a long period of decline over the 19th and 20th centuries, but slight growth in the 21st century.
Michael Sayers was an Irish poet, playwright, writer and journalist whose books co-authored with Albert E. Kahn made him a target of US blacklisting during the McCarthyism era of the 1950s. He wrote scripts for TV in the 1950s, and as a screenwriter in the 1960s for movies including James Bond film Casino Royale.
The most notable exception was Fr Denis Fahey who founded an extreme right-wing social movement known as Maria Duce ('under Mary's leadership') in the mid-1940s. Maria Duce contained only a small cadres of members (though it was able to attract large crowds to its public meetings) and its appeal was mainly limited to the discontented lower middle classes.
Maria Duce was probably the most integralist movement in Ireland in that period. At this stage a definition of what is meant by integralism. Whereas Christian Fundamentalism is defined as "the belief that everything in the Bible is completely true" (Collins Dictionary), integralism is the belief that faith can only be lived out in an integral way, which means that the Church is expected to teach its precepts integrally and does not depart from them under any circumstance, and the faithful have to respect those precepts fully. À la carte Catholicism, in other words, is not an option.
The founder of Maria Duce taught that communism was an international conspiracy organised by Jews and Freemasons, and in March 1950 the secretary of Maria Duce called for Ireland, as "a Catholic state", to "suppress non-Catholic sects as inimical to the common good". He added that "such intolerance is the privilege of truth".
It spoke to the Times's ethic of state unbiased towards any one religious viewpoint as evidenced by the vigorous debate, also early in 1950, on what became known as 'The Liberal Ethic', in which it and its correspondents took on such well-known champions of Roman Catholic hegemony as J.P. Ryan, secretary of Maria Duce, and Westmeath County Council (O'Brien, 2008: 133–6).