2025 Theses Bachelor's

The Faith of a Nation: The Catholic Church, Irish Nationalism, and Family Welfare During the Dublin Lockout and Beyond, 1913-1918

Boisture Jr., Michael

This thesis aims to better understand the developing relationship between the Catholic Church in Ireland and Irish nationalism and investigate the extent to which the Church and many of its clergy were preoccupied with nationalism in the early twentieth century. With Ireland on the verge of attaining self-government through Home Rule, during the 1913 Dublin Lockout, the Catholic Church formulated its vision for maintaining the physical and spiritual well-being of Irish Catholics in a soon-to-be-independent Irish state. From the outset of the Lockout, Dublin's Catholic clergy largely opposed the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) and accused the union and its leader, James Larkin, of being socialist and therefore not truly Irish Catholic. This perception was furthered by the fact that the onset of the labor troubles posed a financial threat to the Catholic Church's anti-proselytizing activities in Dublin, especially given that the ITGWU sought to supplant the Church's already-established role as a charity and soup kitchen for the city's impoverished Irish Catholics. This rift between the Church and the ITGWU manifested in October 1913, when the English suffragette Dora Montefiore proposed a "Kiddies Scheme" to evacuate the children of Dublin's workers to sympathetic working-class homes in England. William Walsh, the Archbishop of Dublin, publicly and vehemently denounced this scheme on account of protecting the faith of Irish Catholic children, thus galvanizing Irish Catholic nationalist groups like the Ancient Order of Hibernians to denounce the ITGWU and the Kiddies Scheme. Though the Lockout ended in January 1914 with the workers' defeat, the implications were long-lasting. It represented a turning point with the Catholic Church's relationship to Irish nationalism, as clergy adopted nationalist rhetoric to claim responsibility for the provision welfare for poor Irish Catholics and imagine the idealized Irish Catholic family. This set a precedent for the remainder of the decade, with Catholic-backed humanitarian aid for Belgian refugees during World War I and the Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependants' Fund after the 1916 Easter Rising leveraging Irish nationalist rhetoric, Catholicism, and a special focus on children and the preservation of the family, to carve out a place for the Catholic Church in the future Irish Free State.

Keywords: 1913 Dublin Lockout, Catholic Church, Dublin, Ireland, Archbishop William Walsh, James Larkin, Dora Montefiore, Kiddies Scheme, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, socialism, syndicalism, labor, trade union, proselytism, World War I, Belgian Refugees, 1916 Easter Rising, Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependants' Fund, family welfare, Irish Catholic, Irish nationalism, charity, education, Home Rule, Irish Free State, England, Trades Union Congress, strike