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111 Windle came to Cork with the ambition to create equal education for Catholics at third level.As a Catholic convert in Birmingham, he had personal experience of religious prejudice in his professional life. He had reached a certain height in the hierarchy of that university but felt he hit the glass ceiling for Catholics in British higher education.This was part of the reason for his leaving for a post where he thought that he could make a difference. Windle came to a country where Protestants were overrepresented in the upper echelons of business, the professions, the administration, the police and the army. There were subtle and not-sosubtle barriers preventing Catholic upward mobility in different sectors in the country.1 The British government had passed the Queen’s Colleges (Ireland) Act in 1845 which set up the Queen’s Colleges of Belfast, Cork and Galway to ‘afford a university education to members of all religious denominations’ in the country. However, that did not come to pass. Protestant ascendancy in Ireland was partially perpetuated and reinforced by the policy of the Irish Catholic bishops to stop members of their Church from going to the ‘Godless Colleges’, being – unlike Trinity College Dublin – not permitted to teach theology.The three colleges were incorporated on 30 December 1845 and opened in 1849. Queen’s College, Cork received its first students (115) on 7 November 1849. The Queen’s University of Ireland was established by royal charter on 3 September 1850 as the degree-awarding body. Dating from the Synod of Thurles in 1850, the bishops had, by a narrow majority, forbidden Catholics attending the new colleges. Their words at the time were that the colleges were: ‘. . . an evil of a formidable kind against which it is our imperative duty to warn you with all the energy of our zeal and all the weight of our authority. In pointing out the dangers of such a system we only repeat the instructions that have been CHAPTER 4 The Catholic Church and the Honan Bequest 112 Bertram Windle given to us by the Vicar of Jesus Christ . . . [who] has pronounced this system of education to be fraught with “grievous and intrinsic dangers” to faith and morals . . . The successor of Peter has pronounced his final judgement on the subject. All controversy is now at an end – the judge has spoken – the question is decided.’2 Pope Pius IX, in an official condemnation , said the three colleges of Belfast, Galway and Cork were ‘detrimental to religion’. The ‘Godless Colleges’ were perceived to be under the control of Dublin-Castle-appointed Protestant staff. Although necessity had forced many Catholics in Munster to ignore the rescript and register for courses at QCC, Windle found upon his arrival in Cork in 1904 that the official Church policy remained consistent with the pronouncement of the Synod of Thurles and the subsequent papal condemnation. The Bishop of Cork,Thomas Alphonsus O’Callaghan, was stand-offish with the new QCC president during those early years. Although obliged to be officially cool towards him and his institution, the bishop quickly recognised the new president to be an ally. But the Catholic Church, caught in the time warp of the Synod ofThurles, was compelled to place a barrier before any Catholic wishing to study at the college. In late summer 1908, Fr William Delany SJ, University College Dublin, sent a report to the Holy See pointing out the advantages for Catholics of the new legislation. The new scheme was ‘the best for Catholic interests’. It avoided a common university in which Catholics and Protestants would be joined together ‘and the Catholic students would be enticed to attend the lectures of the Trinity professors, many of whom are known to be agnostics’. In the new university, he added, the three constituent colleges were to be controlled by a body of thirty-five to thirty-six members, twenty-eight of whom were to be Catholic, including the archbishops of Dublin and Tuam, a Limerick priest, Fr Andrew Murphy, and himself. There were eight Protestants but nearly all were friendly to Catholic education.3 There was a similarly favourable arrangement for Catholics on the respective governing bodies of the three constituent colleges. As final agreement neared on the Irish university question, Windle’s diary entry on 6 June 1908 showed that he had won over the Bishop of Cork to the side of the college: ‘Long talk with Fr Roche who confirms the...

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