C of I behaviour during Famine gave no cause for apology, says priest

A Catholic priest and historian has said his researches indicate that the Church of Ireland Primate, Dr Robin Eames, "had nothing to apologise for" concerning his church's behaviour during the Famine.

Father Liam Swords, whose book on the Famine, In Their Own Words, was published recently, said: "Irish Protestants tended to accept the belief that their ancestors behaved badly during the Famine, as was illustrated recently by Archbishop Eames's apology on behalf of the Church of Ireland."

"But even a cursory perusal of contemporary documents reveals that the Church of Ireland had nothing to apologise for. All over Ireland Protestant ministers worked heroically to alleviate the distress of countless victims," he said.

Father Swords was speaking at the weekend at St Mary's Church of Ireland in Cong, Co Mayo.

In the middle of February, 1847, Father Hugh Conway visited a street in Ballina, Co Mayo. It was snowing. He wrote later: "Suffice it to say that I, though now familiar with misery in its most appalling features, cannot forget the scenes which I witnessed that day."

But forget it he did, Father Swords said, as did all the generation which witnessed the awful horrors of the Famine. "They never spoke about it again to their children or grandchildren." Such "amnesia" was nature's way of helping people to cope with great tragedy and the guilt many experienced at being survivors, he said. The Great Famine was further complicated by what he termed "archival amnesia". It meant that the huge mountain of documentation spawned by the Famine "lay largely forgotten and uncatalogued for 150 years". Father Swords had uncovered much of this documentation in researching an earlier book on his native diocese of Achonry. This documentation inspired In Their Own Words, an account of the Famine as it was experienced in the north-west by those who lived through it.

Ignorance of this contemporary documentation had left a lacuna, later filled by myths "which simplistically exonerated the Irish and blamed England for the tragedy", he said, with Irish Protestants blaming themselves by association.

He noted that local relief committees were made up mainly of Catholic priests and Church of Ireland clergy, with a local landlord/magistrate in the chair. Their primary role was to raise funds locally for relief, which would be matched by government grants, all of which they would then distribute.

Similarly, Church of Ireland clergy played a leading role in petitioning the government for money to fund public works schemes, which by February 1847 employed almost 50,000 people on the roads of Mayo, nearly 6,000 of them women and 4,000 of them boys. They also played a primary role in distributing money, food and clothing supplied by the Quakers.

The Famine also provided one of the earliest manifestations of ecumenism in Ireland, Father Swords said. He repeated what Julia McDermot from Boyle, Co Roscommon, had written to her brother in England. "One good has been derived from the Famine, which is most remarkable in this Orange town, the Catholics and Protestants are so united," she wrote.

Father Swords said there was little evidence of "souperism", or the offering of food to Catholics if they became Protestant. In his researches of the area covered by the book, he found no evidence that proselytism was widespread: "In the vast majority of cases, priests and ministers co-operated effectively and amicably, without any ulterior motives, to alleviate the distress of their parishioners."

Isolated instances of proselytism did occur, but "these were the acts of over-zealous individuals and should in no way be attributed to the Church of Ireland as an institution," he said.

He encountered only one such instance in his researches. It involved two women who ran a Bible school near Boyle. They were reprimanded by the Quakers, from whom they were seemingly seeking approval, who told them they could not countenance "anything of a party or sectarian character, and we consider the present time particularly unsuitable for any attempt at proselytising".

Father Swords said he had uncovered evidence of poor Protestants who were the victims of the Famine and of discrimination against Protestants by Catholics in the area at the time.