Edmund Rice and the First Christian Brothers (review)

In Luck & the Irish (New York, 2008) R. F. Foster asks the question: “Why did the Reformation not succeed in Ireland?” (p. 66). His answer: “It did, but it took four hundred and fifty years.” Humor is often revealing. The publisher’s blurb for Dáire Keogh’s book reads: “In 1944,W. T. Cosgrove described the Christian Brothers as ‘Ireland’s gift to civilization.’ More recently, a former government minister called them ‘a shower of savage bastards.’” The task Keogh sets himself is to explore how “they saw themselves” during their formative years.

This is the second book on this topic from the author; the first was Edmund Rice: 1762–1844 (Dublin, 1996). Keogh’s first work on Rice was occasioned by the beatification of his subject in the same year. In it, however, Keogh admits that writing any biography on Rice is seriously problematic given the lack of primary sources, and thus he admits that his earlier work consists of a “mere glimpse” of Rice (p. 101). It must be admitted from the outset that this second study, although much longer than the first book’s 126 pages, continues to suffer for the same reason, despite the author’s insistence that he is not writing a biography but rather an “interpret[ation of] the early Brothers in their historical context” by seeing them as emblematic “of the emergence of the Church from the penal age” (p. 16). As such, the work succeeds in its objective.

The Christian Brothers and the bishops promoted and rode the rising tide of early-modern Irish nationalism that was largely due to the organizational genius of Daniel O’Connell, although ironically, it succeeded because of the radicalism spawned by the French Revolution that invented modern European nationalism. Thus, like their bishops, the first Christian Brothers built upon this phenomenon, which is so well reflected in their motto: “Catholic and Celtic, to God and Ireland True.”

As late as 1800, the Catholic Church in Ireland had very little real influence over the lives of most Irish Catholics; in fact, very few attended church. However, by linking the new nationalism with education and Catholicism, both the Christian Brothers and the bishops sought to promote and strengthen the influence of the Church over the lives of the Irish people. The bishops did so through their effective control, with their Protestant counterparts, of the newly formed and government-funded National Board of Education that turned over the education of its young to their respective churches. As such, the bishops were able to initiate a publicly funded Catholic school system that would become the backbone of their growing influence over Irish Catholic society, an influence that, until recently, succeeded.

Yet, unwilling to place their schools under direct episcopal control, even if it meant forgoing state funding, the Christian Brothers, under Rice’s leadership, left the National Board of Education and established their own separate Catholic educational system. As such, the brothers helped to found two Catholic school systems, one controlled by the bishops that was free and catered to the needs of the Irish masses, and one run by the brothers that was dedicated to those who could pay—namely, the growing Catholic middle class. Thus, the brothers helped to shape a growing and influential Catholic lay leadership who, in turn, greatly strengthened the brothers’ role in Irish national life.

Keogh has given us a clearer understanding of how this all happened as well as an explanation of why the public’s view of both the Christian Brothers and the Catholic Church in Ireland have so radically changed over the past thirty years. The isolation from Europe and the world, so much a part of an island nation, is no more. The scandals that eventually rocked the Catholic Church and the Christian Brothers in Ireland were always present, but exposure did not happen immediately due...