"Heretical Plants of Irish Growth": Catholic Critics of Mathewite Temperance

In mid-November, 1843, Thomas Chisholm Anstey sat in his London law office, preparing a lengthy, anxious affidavit for the Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in Rome.¹ Anstey's concerns centered on the accomplishments of the charismatic Capuchin friar Father Theobald Mathew, whose astonishingly successful temperance crusade had recently swept across Ireland, converting millions of Irish men and women to the strict practice of total abstinence. In a series of some 350 emotional open-air meetings beginning in late 1839, Mathew had addressed massive crowds of tens of thousands of enthusiastic peasants and administered, for hours and days on end, the sign of the cross and a short pledge to abstain from alcohol for life to continuous "batches" of dozens or hundreds of kneeling postulants. After pledging, Mathew's disciples formed a vast network of vigorous local temperance societies, complete with meeting halls, reading rooms, burial societies, and bands. The scale of Mathew's success astonished observers on both sides of the Irish sea, including the zealous Anstey, while the ambitious Capuchin and his determined disciples, including journalists such as Charles Gavan Duffy (co-editor of the Nation) and John Francis Maguire (founder and editor of the Cork Examiner) drew comparisons to Saint Patrick's missionary activity and trumpeted the dawn of a new era in Irish history. As Mathew's secretary and chief propagandist, James McKenna, exulted in his unpublished history of the movement composed in 1843, "Mathew spoke—the fiend of intemperance, which so long rioted in her misery, was exorcised—the spell of her infamy was broken," and Ireland "like the uncaged eagle," now "soars on high in the moral firmament."²

Surveying this radical landscape and alarmed by what he termed "the very indiscreet and dangerous" delusions of the friar, Anstey took it upon himself to warn Roman authorities that the movement bespoke a church in crisis, one which threatened the spiritual future of Catholic Ireland.

Unless the Holy See shall promptly and speedily send a legate unto Ireland, armed with the necc. and accustomed powers in such cases, and authorized to supercede [sic] the Archbishops and Bishops themselves, or many of them, in their respective functions, the mischiefs and abuses now existing will become multiplied, and be made more grievous, the discontent of the people increased, and within less than twenty years by means of the teetotal movement or by any other means more suited to such an end, the old heresies of Wycliffe, Huss and Waldo firmly established on Irish soil, as plants of Irish growth.³

What should be made of Anstey's strident predictions and urgent recommendations, and his charge, elaborated throughout his lengthy diatribe against Father Mathew, that the Temperance movement represented a grave threat to the Irish Church as it existed in the years before the famine and the "devotional revolution" of the 1850's and beyond? What was the nature of that threat, and why was Anstey so anxious to see it met?

To begin with, it is important to note that Anstey's extended assault on the temperance crusade represented the third in a succession of Catholic-authored attacks on many of the underlying principles and practices of Mathew's campaign. These attacks, detailed below, began with the pastoral letter of the American Bishops in the spring of 1843, which had been followed by a series of critical articles in the Tablet, the journal of record for English Catholics. Anstey's statement deserves particular attention, however, on several grounds, including his prominence in the English Catholic community, his close connection to Ireland and to the temperance movement, and his intensely critical disposition.

No mere crank, Anstey, a successful Middle Temple barrister, legal scholar, and journalist, was an early specimen of the enthusiastic upper-class English Catholic converts produced by the writings of the Oxford Movement, although his own degree was from University College London.⁴ By...