Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty
RECENTLY I have been reading a fascinating book on the cultural history of Ireland during the Second World War, ‘That Neutral Island’ by Clair Wills. She argues that our decision to remain neutral in the war was understandable, given the weak state of our defence forces and the recent history of conflict between Britain and Ireland. The Second World War broke out less than 20 years after our civil war. If the then Taoiseach, Mr Eamon De Valera, had decided to involve Ireland in the war on the side of the Allies it would have exacerbated tensions smouldering under the surface of Irish society. The result might have been the destabilisation of the infant state.
She also argues that the decision had negative consequences. It cut Ireland off from broader intellectual influences. Patrick Kavanagh put it well when he said that during the Second World War Ireland ‘froze for want of Europe’. Our non-involvement in the battle to defend democracy also caused a kind of moral detachment from the horror of Nazism. This detachment expressed itself in the reluctance of some Irish commentators to accept the truth of the Holocaust. It was also evident in Mr De Valera’s decision to convey his sympathies to the German ambassador, Herr Hempel, on the death of Hitler and in the unwillingness of the Irish Free State to allow persecuted Jewish refugees to come to Ireland.
Another consequence of Ireland’s decision to remain neutral was our non involvement in significant international developments after 1945. Even though Mr de Valera was an admirable and prophetic President of the League of Nations in the 1930s, Ireland was not invited to join its successor, the United Nations, until the mid 50s. It also explains why we did not participate in the greatest achievement of European politics since the war – the foundation and development of the European Union – until 1973. The former Irish European Commissioner, Mr Peter Sutherland, distilled the essence of this achievement when he called the integration of Europe ‘a remarkably good thing’.
“Not merely have we had peace, we have had reconciliation. Not merely have we had democracy, we have seen the consistent defeat and marginalisation of extremism in every country in the union,” he said.
Since 1973 we have been one of the most enthusiastic, imaginative and effective members of the European Union. The concept has had popular support in Ireland from the referendum on our entry, in 1972, to today. I remember the referendum. I was in Inter Cert at the time and beginning to take an interest in current affairs. Elections and referendums in Ireland are often gladiatorial contests, exciting tribal passions, akin to a county final between neighbouring parishes. As a gladiatorial contest the 1972 referendum proved boring as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were both united at the ballot box, for the first time since the civil war, in their support of our entry into what was then called the EEC.
Overall our involvement in the European Union has been positive for our society, though, for example, our failure to protect our fishing rights in negotiations has been culpable. It has helped build our economic and social infrastructure. Our engagement with Europe has helped us to modernise our society, to become more inclusive, educationally aware and psychologically confident. Since the seventies there has been an upsurge of creativity in the arts, literature and music in Ireland, undermining the arguments of those who said it would diminish our sense of identity. As the philosopher Richard Kearney asserted some years ago: ‘through Europe, Ireland is achieving a new modern identity, a means of escape from its old backwardness, its parochialism and over-dependence on Britain’.
In March the European Conference of Catholic Bishops organised a seminar in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the European Union. Leading European politicians attended including the Prime Minister of Italy, Romano Prodi and President McAleese. The conference’s aim was to discuss the values which have shaped the European Union. Pope Benedict summed it up well when he said that ‘a common home’ cannot be built without considering the identity of the people in Europe. He went on: “It is a question of a historical, cultural and moral identity before being a geographic, economic or political one; an identity comprised of a set of universal values that Christianity helped forge, thus giving Christianity not only a historical but a foundational role vis-a-vis Europe.”
Peter Sutherland, in a recent lecture in London, amplified this point. Christian democracy both inspired the foundation of the European Union and influenced its socially inclusive policies and programmes:
“I believe that what was perceived by these visionary men in the early days was both a potential to reject the tribalism of the past and to build a new Europe on the foundations of shared values. They were all Christian Democrats and shared a common view of the world. What Europeans share and have reflected in the construction of the EU is a belief in the rights and obligations of the individual. This belief in the Rights of Man had its genesis in Europe long before the Enlightenment or the French Revolution. They are, above all, the product of Christian thinking from the earliest times. The fact that many of its achievements have been claimed to be the product of a secularised, indeed often anti-religious world, cannot obscure the reality that Christianity has been at the foundations of these achievements.”
