Thomas A. Finlay S.J., 1848-1940: Educationalist, Editor, Social Reformer (review)

Thomas Morrissey's biography of the Reverend Thomas A. Finlay at long last addresses the need for a full-length biography of the man W. E. H. Lecky called "perhaps the most universally respected man in Ireland." The subject did not make this an easy task: Finlay appears to have destroyed all of his personal papers and letters before his death. Despite Finlay's lack of interest in posterity, however, Morrissey has managed to comb through Finlay's published work, public addresses, the scraps of correspondence preserved by others, and other contemporary reminiscences, to compose a crisp and admiring record of the life of a talented, accomplished man.

Owen Dudley Edwards wrote that Finlay was "pre-eminently the Renaissance man of the Irish Renaissance," and it is easy to see why. In addition to being a Roman Catholic priest and a much sought-after preacher and retreat master, Finlay was also a professor, in turn, of classics, philosophy, and finally economics at University College, Dublin; a leader of the Irish cooperative movement; the founder and editor of several journals, including the New Ireland Review and the Irish Homestead; a founding member of the National Literary Society along with Yeats, Maude Gonne, and John O'Leary; a committed nationalist; and above all a man whose store of conviviality and congeniality made him a welcome addition to nearly any social group. Capable, hardworking, and devoted to good causes too numerous to enumerate, he was a significant presence even within the whirlwind of the Irish Renaissance. George O'Brien wrote that "To write about him is like writing about a number of persons rather than a single man."

Finlay was also one of the few who straddled the divide between the two traditions in Ireland, particularly during that pivotal time at the turn of the century when it appeared that "Constructive Unionism" might, in fact, effect sufficient change in Ireland sufficient to neutralize the legitimate grievances of most Irish nationalists. Finlay was one of those who sought common ground between liberal Unionists and moderate nationalists. Finlay, who early on discovered his vocation to the priesthood, was peculiarly well equipped to do this as the son of a Scottish Presbyterian, raised as a Catholic in County Roscommon.

Nowhere were Finlay's talents used more effectively than in his nearly six decades of active support for the Irish cooperative movement. Finlay was a steadfast supporter of Horace Plunkett, and along with Russell, Plunkett, and R. A. Anderson, he traveled the country doing the exhausting ground work of organizing cooperative societies. He was an expert on the Raiffeisen credit system, which he had studied in Germany, the forerunner of the modern credit union movement that Russell, in particular, had success in organizing throughout the West of Ireland. R. A. Anderson, who served as Plunkett's right-hand man at the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, wrote of Finlay that "Of all our leaders, not even excepting Horace Plunkett . . . none was so thoroughly imbued with the true co-operative spirit."

The name of Father Finlay also surfaces continually in accounts of the Irish Renaissance. As the founder of the IrishMessenger, the Lyceum, the New Ireland Review, and the Irish Homestead (where he was also the editor, preceding George Russell), Finlay helped to shape the social and intellectual debates of the day—even if he tried, not always successfully, to avoid the political debates. Each journal was geared to a specific need. The Lyceum set out to promote "a higher Catholic literature," while its designated successor, the New Ireland Review, promised to provide "a treatment of all current questions of interest, theological, historical, scientific, economic and educational." Even D. P. Moran found a platform in these pages, where his 1900 "The battle of two civilizations" is most famously remembered. All of these journals contrasted sharply with pedestrian periodicals, largely English imports, that had been gaining...