William J. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, 1841-1921: No Uncertain Voice.

Thompson, David M.

By Thomas J. Morrissey, SJ. Dublin: Four Courts, 2000. xii + 404 pp. $65.00 cloth.

This is the first biography of Archbishop Walsh to be written for over seventy years. It is therefore able to take advantage of the developments in scholarship and access to new archival sources; in particular it offers a more detached assessment of Walsh's role in Irish politics in the critical decade after 1911. Between 1786 and 1921 there were only five Archbishops of Dublin, and four of them averaged thirty-two years in office; so inevitably their political role looms large.

Walsh was the only son of a Dublin watchmaker and jeweller. He shone at school and went to the Catholic University of Ireland and thence to Maynooth, where he excelled in theology and canon law. At the age of twenty-seven he was appointed Professor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology, becoming Vice-President in 1878 and President two years later. In 1885 he was appointed Archbishop of Dublin to the dismay of the British government because he had already begun to take an active part in agitation over the land question. Walsh's first years as Archbishop coincided with the first Home Rule Bill and the split in the Irish Party over Parnell's divorce. In the later 1890s he acquired a similar reputation to Manning in England for his ability to mediate successfully in social and political disputes. He was always active in the Irish University question, though not always in agreement with his episcopal colleagues. From 1912, despite increasing ill health, he did not hesitate to identify himself with the republican cause, especially after the Rising of 1916, even though he condemned unnecessary violence. He died in 1921 just before the civil war, and his coffin was draped with the Irish tricolour.

This is definitely a political biography; as such it probably reflects Walsh's primary concerns. Although most readers will probably find the concentration on the University question disproportionate, at least it gives a clear picture of the issues. There is a careful account of Monsignor Persico's visit as papal envoy to Ireland in the second half of 1887, which led to the Pope's condemnation of the Plan of Campaign in 1888. Had this issue not almost immediately been overtaken by the Parnell crisis, it might have offered the opportunity for a considered analysis of papal policy towards Ireland. Certainly it set the scene for papal lack of enthusiasm for Irish nationalism, the significance of which tends to be underestimated when the position of the Church is assessed. In relation to the land question and home rule, and particularly to the crisis over Parnell's leadership of the Irish party, Morrissey rescues the role of the bishops in general, and Walsh in particular, from some of the misrepresentations of the past. Furthermore the description of Walsh s role in social and labor questions is an important reminder of the opportunities open to a churchman in Dublin. Nevertheless there is no account of the wider developments in Irish Catholic social thinking in this period, nor of any interaction between that and Walsh.

The reader will look in vain for any picture of the state of the Church in the archdiocese of Dublin, or for the effect of events in the wider Church. There is no reference to the First Vatican Council, though Walsh did win a prize for an essay on papal infallibility in the later 1860s. Modernism does not appear in the index. These omissions may be an accurate reflection of where Walsh's concerns did (or did not) lie; but there was more going on in the Irish Church in this period than politics. Walsh was apparently not a good preacher (though he was a regular letter writer), and he usually only preached at confirmations, which he carried out assiduously. His own career meant that he never had parochial experience, and it was said that it was more difficult to secure an interview with Walsh than with the Pope. Almost inevitably therefore the impression comes through of a detached, somewhat aloof man. He was not particularly popular in Rome and never a serious contender for a Cardinal's hat, unlike his predecessor and patron, Cullen; after Manning's death, he lacked sympathetic support among English Catholic bishops, with the exception of Amigo at Southwark. He was at odds with Vaughan and Bourne because of his support for Irish nationalism.

One might have expected a more detailed analysis of Anglo-Irish relations within the Roman Catholic Church; it is not clear whether its absence means that there is nothing to tell or that this issue was not considered important. Nevertheless his colleagues regarded Walsh as the most able bishop in the Irish hierarchy and respected him for his administrative and analytical skills. This biography must be read by anyone who wants to understand late-nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism.

David M. Thompson
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge