Tag Archives: James Cardinal Gibbons

ACIS presentation & leaning into the summer

I will attend and present a paper at the American Conference for Irish Studies, June 2-5. Unfortunately, the conference is switched to virtual from in-person at Derry city, Northern Ireland, as originally scheduled. I am taking some time away from the blog to finalize my presentation about the Irish diaspora witnesses at the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland hearings, 1920-21. I will post a limited amount of new content this summer as I work on several projects. As the weather warms and COVID restrictions continue ease, it’s a good time to get outside and away from the screens that have become too ubiquitous in our lives. Below, some of my work from the first part of the year. MH

A Journey In Ireland, 1921, Revisited

Wilfrid Ewart

Novelist and journalist Wilfrid Ewart traveled through Ireland from mid-April to early May 1921. His dispatches for London newspapers were later collected and revised in the book, A Journey in Ireland, 1921. This series revisits aspects of his journey at its 100th anniversary, though the book was not published until a year later.

American Committee for Relief in Ireland

I’ve written three posts about the American Committee for Relief in Ireland and intend to add a few more before the end of the year.

Cardinal Gibbons Centenary

Cardinal Gibbons

I gave a virtual presentation in March about Cardinal James Gibbons for the Irish Railroad Workers Museum, Baltimore. He was born in the Maryland city in 1834, lived in Ireland with his family during the Great Famine, then returned to America. Cardinal Gibbons became involved in the cause of Irish freedom and humanitarian relief as the leading churchman in the United States. He died March 24, 1921, age 86.

My story for the Catholic Review (Baltimore):

Cardinal Gibbons, who died 100 years ago, was committed to Ireland

St. Patrick’s Day, 1921: ‘A Summons to Service’

The American Committee for Relief in Ireland (ACRI) timed the official launch of its $10 million fundraising campaign to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, 1921. The committee bought newspaper advertising and released a 16-page booklet titled, A Summons to Service from the Women and Children of Ireland. It opened:

Day after day you read with fainting heart the desolation that is gripping Ireland. You know that what you read is but half the story. The destruction of creameries and factories, the firing of homes, the laying waste of cities, these are the tragic symbols of a greater and unrecorded horror that is taking its toll from among the innocent who have not part in political or religious conflicts.  …

This is not an “appeal.” It is rather a summons to Americans to join wholeheartedly in an enterprise of mercy. Never has such a summons failed. In full confidence that your response will be as prompt and generous as the need is urgent, we come to you on behalf of those who are looking to America for life itself.

Some ACRI advertising did use the word “appeal,” as seen here from the March 13, 1921, edition of The Times Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia:

The Summons to Service booklet featured 11 black and white photos of war-related devastation in Ireland, including Athlone, Balbriggan, Mallow, and Templemore. It highlighted testimony from several of the 38 witnesses at the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland (ACCI) hearings in Washington, D.C., from November 1920 to January 1921. The ACCI report, released in late March 1921, accused the British government of a “campaign for the destruction of the means of existence of the Irish people … [that resulted] in wide-spread and acute suffering among women and children.”[1]“The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, Interim Report“, (1921) See “Conclusions”, #4, p. 13.

Counter narrative

There were counter narratives about conditions in Ireland. Liverpool-born journalist Cyril Herbert Bretherton, The Irish Times‘ correspondent to the Philadelphia Public Ledger and its affiliated U.S. papers, charged that ACRI supporters “continue to send to America lurid tales of Irish distress.” Moreover, he charged that the funds “will go to the support of families of fighting Sinn Feiners interned or in jail or to rebuild houses burned by the Crown forces because their owners participated actively or passively in attacks on them.[2]”Britain May Order U.S. Commission To Leave Ireland”, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 2, 1921.

Bretherton disputed reports from the ACRI investigative team in Ireland that 200,000 civilians were “in dire need” and insisted that “there are not in all Ireland 500 people in that condition.” Likewise, he said property damage in Ireland, estimated at $300 million by the ACRI team, “does not amount to one-tenth that sum.”[3]Ibid. See also the editorial: “News From Ireland”, The Indianapolis News, March 7, 1921, quoting Bretherton.

Clemens France, leader of the ACRI delegation in Ireland since mid-February, quickly cabled New York headquarters with a statement released to U.S. newspapers. France charged that Bretherton “has deliberately ignored facts which any unbiased journalist can obtain and which are known to crown authorities.” France also said that Bretherton’s four-part series in the Times “obviously sought to persuade our unit that no relief need exists in Ireland, and since he failed in this absurd attempt he is apparently attempting to influence opinion in America.”[4]”Says Bretherton Misstated Facts”, The Boston Globe, March 10, 1921.

As these disputes unspooled in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, the ACRI and its network of state committees began collecting cash and other pledges for Ireland. The Summons to Service booklet encouraged $1 to $15 donations, with checks payable to the Emigrants’ Industrial Savings Bank in New York, founded during the Great Famine by the Irish Emigrant Society.

Supportive statements

Cardinal Gibbons

Public statements by several prominent figures bolstered the ACRI effort, including James Cardinal Gibbons, the most senior Catholic prelate in the United States. He was more sensitive to suffering in Ireland than most Americans. Born in Baltimore to Irish immigrants, his family moved back to Mayo before the famine, which he witnessed during his teen years, before returning to America.

In a statement issued two weeks before his death, Gibbons said:

I earnestly beg all kind hearted and generous Americans to contribute to the fund for the relief of the many thousands now suffering want in Ireland. … The whole Catholic church of America is most deeply indebted to the Irish people. It is not too much to expect that in every parish of our land effective means be taken to collect funds for the relief of the suffering in Ireland.

President Harding

President Warren G. Harding, inaugurated at the beginning of March 1921, also issued a statement: “The people of America never will be deaf to the call for relief in behalf of suffering humanity” in Ireland.[5]Reports, American Committee for Relief in Ireland, and Irish White Cross, American Committee for Relief in Ireland, New York, 1922. Gibbon’s statement, March 8, 1921, p. 19, and Harding’s … Continue reading

Now, a year after the U.S. launch of a bond drive to support the separatist Dáil Éireann government in Dublin,  another fundraising campaign for Ireland was fully engaged in America.

***

This is the second of several articles about the ACRI. Find the previous story, “American investigators visit Ireland”, in my American Reporting of Irish Independence centenary series. NEXT: “Distress in Ireland.” The ACRI investigative team returns home from Ireland and releases its report. I’ll post this installment in mid-April.

This advert in the March 17, 1921, edition of the New York Tribune appeared in at least three other New York papers on the same day.

References

References
↑1 “The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, Interim Report“, (1921) See “Conclusions”, #4, p. 13.
↑2 ”Britain May Order U.S. Commission To Leave Ireland”, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 2, 1921.
↑3 Ibid. See also the editorial: “News From Ireland”, The Indianapolis News, March 7, 1921, quoting Bretherton.
↑4 ”Says Bretherton Misstated Facts”, The Boston Globe, March 10, 1921.
↑5 Reports, American Committee for Relief in Ireland, and Irish White Cross, American Committee for Relief in Ireland, New York, 1922. Gibbon’s statement, March 8, 1921, p. 19, and Harding’s statement, March 26, 1921, p. 6.

JFK’s next to last resting place

There was plenty of attention last year about the 50th anniversaries of John F. Kennedy’s 1963 trip to Ireland and assassination in Dallas. Today I was abruptly reminded of the later event.

My wife (@AngieHolan) and I attended the Saturday vigil Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. I was walking up the center aisle to receive Holy Communion when I noticed the marble plaque on the floor just before the sanctuary:

2014-02-01 18.27.05 (2)

 

“…People come to the cathedral from across the country and around the world, with many wanting to stand at that very spot,” Catholic News Service reported last year. I hope to visit the JFK gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery in the near future.

Also worth noting at the Cathedral in terms of Irish America is the lunette mural above the main entrance. It’s titled “Saintly and Eminent Personages of the Americas.”

Click here for key to figures on church website.

Click here for key to figures from the church website.

Among the figures depicted on the mural are The Most Reverend John Carroll, the first bishop and archbishop in the United States and the founder of nearby Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Catholic university; and James Cardinal Gibbons, the first cardinal of Baltimore.

Carroll was from a prominent Irish-Catholic family with roots in counties Laois, Offaly and Tipperary, according to this story in Irish America. Gibbons parents were from Tourmackeady in County Mayo.

As chairman of the American Commission on Relief in Ireland, Gibbons helped lead efforts to aid Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. In this March 2, 1921, letter published in Catholic newspapers, he wrote:

I need not urge upon the Americans of Irish descent their special duty to their own flesh and blood; they have given generously to all other suffering people, they will not forget their own. … The whole Catholic church of America is most deeply indebted to the Irish people. It is not too much to expect that in every parish of our land effective means be taken to collect funds for the relief of the suffering in Ireland.

Gibbons died a few weeks later on March 24, 1921, before the end of the war and year of civil war that followed.