Always Faithful: The New York Carmelites, the Irish People and Their Freedom Movement (review)

In this slender volume, Father Alfred Isacsson, O.Carm., seeks to demonstrate that several of his confreres played a critical part in the Irish revolutionary movement from the 1916 Easter Rising through the Civil War of 1922–1923. Isacsson focuses particularly on Peter Magennis, an Irish-born Carmelite who served intermittently at Our Lady of the Scapular, the Carmelites' parish on the East Side of Manhattan. In 1918 Magennis was elected president of the Friends of Irish Freedom and the following year he went to Rome to take up the position of Prior General of his community. A thoroughgoing revolutionary, Magennis backed Patrick Pearse's Easter Rebellion and the Irish Republican Army's subsequent war against the British. When Eamon de Valera took up arms against Michael Collins and the Free State forces, he sided with de Valera and referred to the Free State leaders as "contemptible" (p. 80).

Numerous other Carmelite friars shared Magennis' militant republican sympathies. Our Lady of the Scapular parish served as a refuge and at times a hiding place for de Valera and his associates, Harry Boland and Liam Mellows. Isacsson argues convincingly that the New York friars were also involved in gun-running and money-laundering for the Irish rebels.

While Isacsson does not focus as much on the Irish Carmelites, it is clear that many of them were just as radical as the New Yorkers. When the Irish bishops excommunicated de Valera and the other opponents of the Free State in October, 1922, the Carmelites and some other religious order priests paid little heed and continued to administer the sacraments to anti-Free State soldiers. When Harry Boland was killed by Free State troops, chancery officials would not permit him to be buried at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral. Consequently, funeral services were held at the Carmelite church, with Magennis presiding.

This work has some definite shortcomings. Isacsson's writing is uneven; his citations are sometimes sketchy, and the book is marred by a number of typographical errors. Furthermore, Isacsson is an uncritical supporter of the Carmelites and the de Valera faction in general. He does not seem troubled at all that priests would be using their priory to store weapons and cash for the rebels or that they would openly flout the bishops' directives. These difficulties notwithstanding, this book should not be ignored by Irish and Irish-American scholars. Isacsson is an authority on this subject. He has carefully mined archives in New York, Dublin, and Rome to tell the Carmelites' story. His work will help draw attention to the important role that Magennis and other Carmelites played in Irish and Irish-American affairs during these tumultuous years.