‘My father made the walls resound
He wore his collar the wrong way round.’
The lines above characterise the complicated relationship that the poet Louis MacNeice had with his father. Rev. John MacNeice was born on Omey island, Co. Galway in 1866, yet due to sectarian tensions (which was largely down to a personal dispute between his own, belligerent father and the local parish priest, the latter supported by his parishioners) he spent most of his life in Co. Antrim, first Belfast and ‘thence to Smokey Carrick’ where he was installed as Rector of St. Nicholas’ Church, the building of which still bears a grotesque of his likeness on a window nearest the main entrance.
Despite the comical second line above, Louis MacNeice admired his father greatly: he was in awe of the sermons he gave in a voice that was ‘soft and rich’ that would turn the words ‘heron’ and ‘orange’ into a single syllable. In ‘Letters from Iceland,’ jointly written with WH Auden, MacNeice admired how his father ‘kept his pulpit out of reach of party colours.’ Likewise, MacNeice was always keen to be non-sectarian and even-minded in his own writing: putting the boot into everyone, in equal measure.
For a number of reasons, the Rev. MacNeice has been thought of as a supporter of Home Rule and a nationalist, for the reasons he organised local clergy in opposition to the Ulster Convenant, refused to allow the Union Flag to fly over Edward Carson’s grave in St. Anne’s Cathedral, and spoke of Home Rule as inevitable. Yet as his son reminds us in Autumn Journal ‘if you are going to read the testament of cynics | you must read between the lines.’
His reason for not signing the Ulster Covenant was primarily theological rather than political: it was his belief that there was only one ‘covenant’ at it covered a jurisdiction just a wee bit beyond the boundaries of Ulster. As a cleric presiding over Edward Carson’s funeral mass at St. Anne’s Cathedral, he indeed refused to allow the flag to fly over Carson’s tomb, yet this was a simple matter of protocol. JF MacNeice argued that soldiers who died in battle and were entombed within church walls did not have flags over their graves, thus there was no precedent for giving the honour to a civilian such as Carson. He wrote of Home Rule as an inevitability, but as he explained in his reasoning, this was simply due to the fact he was able to count: the repeated extension of the franchise through many Acts of Parliament in the latter half of the 19th century produced an overwhelming majority for the Irish Parliamentary Party. It is possible that we could refer to MacNeice as a ‘republican’ in the traditional, European context, as he did speak favourably of ‘government by the people’ as the ultimate good; he often referred to Edmund Burke in his speeches and writing. Yet, when speaking to Orangemen or to English soldiers, he could also speak in kind terms of the British empire, again harking back to Burke who saw British imperialism as a vehicle for the preservation of Christian values. However, it would be safer to say he was a well-read man in a very difficult set of circumstances, carefully speaking to all sides.
‘I call Ireland our beloved country. No man is more to be pitied than the man who has no country, or the man who is not sure what his country is.’ It would be naïve to call him a Home Ruler, or a nationalist. He was simply an Irishman, who lived his whole life in Ireland and lived his whole life for communities around the island of Ireland.
One particular sermon titled ‘Christ’s Way for His Disciples in Ireland’ given in Carrickfergus on 11th July 1920, became particularly (and rather farcically) relevant when the US vice president JD Vance recently got into a Twitter row with former Conservative Secretary of State Rory Stewart. ‘There is a Christian concept that you love, your family, and you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritise the rest of the world,’ said Vance in an interview, prompting Stewart to reply that this was a ‘bizarre take’ on John 15:12 (‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’). A number of tweets followed back-and-forth in which Vance accused Stewart of having ‘an IQ of 110’ but thinking he ‘has an IQ of 130,’ which he surely thought was very funny. The culmination was when Pope Francis himself responded on the matter in a letter to the US bishops in which he wrote ‘Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other people and groups… the true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “good Samaritan”.’
John MacNeice would have agreed entirely with the Pontiff. In 1920, writing at a time of escalating tension and conflict the like of which JD Vance could not imagine, MacNeice reiterated the words of Christ, where he said ‘Put away anger,’ and that where once the command was to ‘love your neighbour and hate your enemy,’ governed by the basic principle of ‘an eye for an eye,’ Christ instead instructed his followers to ‘love your enemy.’ The full timeline of his life was marred by conflict, from his family’s exile from Omey island when he was a teenager to his life as a cleric in Belfast. Yet, in his mind, John MacNeice was always an advocate of Christian non-violence and social cohesion, ultimately advocating the separation of Church and State from the less talked about perspective.
The talk on Tuesday in St. Anne’s Cathedral will include readings of a number of poems by Louis MacNeice, one of Ireland’s most underrated writers, that will illustrate his father’s life and thinking.
Fionnbharr Rodgers will give a talk titled ‘John MacNeice and the Lundy Leash’ in the Chapel of Unity, St. Anne’s Cathedral, 25th March at 2pm as part of the Imagine! Belfast festival. Tickets available at: https://imaginebelfast.com/event/john-macneice-and-the-lundy-leash/
Fionnbharr Rodgers has written articles, poems, and a short story for History Ireland, Northern Slant, Slugger O’Toole; A New Ulster, Blackbird, Blackbox Manifold; and Stoneboat Literary Journal.
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
