Easter
Week 1916
Easter is the principal feast day of the
Christian religion, and, like the Jewish feast of Passover –
which immediately preceded the first Easter, it is rooted in an
actual event. Like Passover, it represents a passage from
darkness to light, from death to life. The Crucifixion of our
Lord and his subsequent Resurrection are events both of physical
and of spiritual significance. Just as the Old Testament
foretold the coming of the Messiah, so there was, for centuries,
a messianic tradition in Irish literature, looking forward to
the re-birth of the Irish nation in a bright new day of
Freedom. Perhaps the best example of this is found in the
prophetic play, “The Singer”, by Pádraic Pearse, in which the
sacrifice of but fifteen men redeems the nation. Analogous to
the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, even more so than the
Christ-like sacrifice of Robert Emmet, the 1916 Easter Rising
provided the blood sacrifice, which resulted in the resurrection
of the national consciousness of Gaelic Ireland and set the
country on the road to freedom. Just as the work of Christ on
earth remains unfinished, so too does the bright dream of the
men and women of 1916 remain unfulfilled. England’s first
overseas colony remains her last, both in fact and, sadly, among
too many, in spirit as well.
On Easter Monday, 1916 - like those
who stood and fought in defense of American Liberty on Lexington
Green and at Concord Bridge on the 19th of April in
1775 - brave Irish men and women took up arms to rid Ireland of
its cruel invader, England. In so doing they set in motion
events, which would inspire the unraveling of England’s vast
empire, on which the sun never set throughout the nineteenth
century and into the twentieth. The Irish War for
Independence which followed gave hope and courage to other
victims around the world to also rise up; it set in motion a
ground swell of armed resistance and/or of civil disobedience in
countries around the world including Asia, India, Africa, the
Middle East, South America and the Caribbean. The beginning of
the end of that particular evil empire had its commencement on
that fateful Easter Monday morning in 1916.
Those who went out on that Easter Monday in
1916, the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, the Irish
National Foresters, the Hibernian Rifles and the ladies of
Cumann na mBan, without regard to their own personal safety,
went into the gap of danger, made the sacrifice, set the
example.
For the
poet William Butler Yeats, Easter 1916
transformed Ireland from a place where “motley was worn,” ...
“all changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is
born.”
Just as the way to properly respect the
sacrifice on Calvary is not merely to read about the historical
Jesus, but to live a Christian life, as both preached and
exemplified by Christ, himself, in order that we might be saved;
so too is the proper way to honor those who rose up during
Easter week 1916 to relive their example, each according to his
or her unique talents and abilities (with the example of the
Constitutional Liberties of the United States), in order that we
might be found faithful to the Fenian Faith which
motivated them.
The supporters of the connection with
England have worked well in secret, and in the open. In classic
imperial form they seek to divide and rule, cultivating
differences in fear of Theobald Wolfe Tone’s aim of replacing
divisive labels with the separate, common title of Irishman.
Bribes, offices and so-called honors are part of their stock in
trade. Yet, just as in every generation there have been those
foolish enough to accept these counterfeit compromises, so too
is there a continuity of Irish resistance to alien domination
stretching back to the resistance to the Vikings, which, under
Brian Boru, finally broke their power in Ireland at Clontarf,
and which has always regarded English pretension to sovereignty
over any part of Ireland as fundamentally illegitimate, as the
“fruit of the poison tree.”
As Pearse said regarding those who
collaborate with English rule, theirs may be... a safer gospel,
but it is not the Gospel of Tone. At the grave of Jeremiah
O’Donovan Rossa in 1915, Pearse also insisted that we must stand
together “in brotherly union for the achievement of the
freedom of Ireland. And we know only one definition of
freedom: it is Tone’s definition, it is Mitchel’s definition, it
is Rossa’s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that
the dead generations of Ireland served by giving it any other
name and definition than their name and their definition.”
Like O’Donovan Rossa, Pearse and those who
rose up with him in 1916, held it a Christian thing, “to hate
evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression and hating them to
strive to overthrow them.”
When Sinn Féin, as separatist,
abstentionist Republican party contested the general
election of 14th December 1918, promising to NOT
represent their constituents or their country in the mighty
Westminster Parliament in London, but rather to set up,
without foreign let or hindrance, a republican assembly
which would form an Irish government for Ireland. Sinn
Féin won over 79% of the popular vote in all Ireland,
and 73 of 105 seats, in what can only be described as a
plebiscite for independence. The delegates who assembled in
the Mansion House in Dublin formed the First Dáil Éireann
and, issued the Irish Declaration of Independence on 21st
January 1919 (legally the equivalent of the American Declaration
of Independence by the Second Continental Congress, promulgated
on the 4th of July 1776). Brian O’Higgins, himself
among the elected Teachta Dála Éireann, points
out, in his Wolfe Tone Annual, that Easter Monday, 1916
is regarded as the significant date as a consequence of
the pre-existing Army Council of the Irish Republican Army –
Óglaigh na hÉireann (the IRA), the army of the
government of Ireland virtually established, insisting upon the
First Dáil Éireann recognizing and swearing allegiance to the
Irish Republic proclaimed in arms in 1916, as a condition
for the IRA coming under the authority of the government formed
by the First Dáil Éireann.
The task confronting Ireland’s exiled
children in America is to continue to keep faith with the
aspirations of the men and women of 1916, and to accurately
represent these aspirations to a candid world. It is a
formidable task fraught with challenges and obstacles but with
God’s help we shall prevail. Cumann na Saoirse Náisiúnta
approaches this task independently, as Americans, and
with no foreign principal, but loyal to the principles of
Liberty, which motivated the Easter Rising in 1916. We are
confident in the knowledge that what we represent is what the
martyrs of 1916, and the martyrs who came before and after,
fought and died for. Like Douglas Hyde, Nollaig Ó Gadhra and
Mary Holt Moore, we find the example for Ireland’s cultural
future in the Gaelic League. Like Joe Clark, Daithí Ó Conaill
and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, we find the example for Ireland’s
economic and political future in Ireland’s Gaelic past,
including the application of the principle of subsidiarity –
recognizing the uniqueness of four historic Provinces, while
rejecting the gerrymander imposed by Westminster in the
Government of Ireland Act, 1920. We recognize the Éire
Nua Plan as providing the best hope of restoring the
ancient prosperity of Ireland, while cherishing all children of
the nation equally, in a truly free and reunited all-Ireland
federal Republic, free from outside interference, and free from
the inside corruption and profiteering which are the results of
the connection with England.
Just as Holy Week should be a week of
prayer and of holy reflection for all Christians resulting in a
renewal of our Baptismal vows, so too should Easter Week be a
period of reflection on the promise of the bright dream of
Easter Week 1916, and of rededication to advancing the Cause of
Irish Freedom.
In conclusion let us reflect once more on
the following excerpt from the Proclamation of 1916:
“We place the cause of the Irish
Republic under the protection of the Most High God Whose
blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who
serves that cause will dishonor it by cowardice, inhumanity, or
rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its
valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to
sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of
the august destiny to which it is called.”
Mac Dara, do scrí
