Calling this a “myth” is far too generous. It’s a brazen falsehood—one that survives solely by burying inconvenient facts and fabricating a caricature of the past. Its champions have spent decades cherry-picking, distorting, and outright inventing evidence to sustain the illusion that post-independence Ireland was some Vatican-controlled backwater.
Take the 1937 Constitution, one of the most misrepresented documents in Irish history. We’re constantly told—by journalists who can’t be bothered to read it—that it decrees a woman’s place is in the home. It says no such thing. The infamous Article 41.2 merely acknowledges the value of women’s domestic work; it mandates nothing, prohibits nothing, and has never been enforceable. Yet this passage has become a linchpin in the myth that Ireland was a misogynistic clerical dictatorship.
In reality, the newly independent Irish Free State granted rights to women that their British counterparts would have to wait years to receive. In 1922, an Irish Times female correspondent proudly wrote that Irish women were “streets ahead” of English women in both political engagement and civil liberties:
“[I]f only all Englishwomen would take a keener interest in politics, in the deeper and more intelligent way that my own countrywomen do, then their country would be in a sure way to a safer and wiser government.” — Irish Times, 17 November 1922
The 1937 Constitution is routinely trotted out as Exhibit A in the case for Ireland’s supposed clerical stranglehold. But scratch the surface, and the claim collapses. Far from being a “Catholic constitution,” it is, in fact, a remarkably secular document—so secular, in fact, that it left many Catholic clerics fuming. Far from celebrating it, they spent years afterwards lobbying for a constitution that would better reflect Catholic doctrine.
Yes, the Catholic Church was consulted during the drafting process—but so were the Anglicans, Methodists, and Jews. Protestant leaders, in particular, had considerable sway, especially in shaping the final text of Article 44, which deals with religion. But these inconvenient facts don’t suit the mythmakers. So, they’re quietly erased, along with anything else that would expose the anti-Catholic narrative for what it is: a propaganda project in search of a villain.
Article 44 of the 1937 Constitution guaranteed religious freedom in terms most European nations of the time would never have dared. It explicitly affirmed the right of children to opt out of religious instruction. It recognised all denominations and allowed any religious or non-religious group—including atheists—to establish schools, with the state covering teachers’ salaries. Try finding that level of pluralism in any other European constitution of the era.
Yet to keep the myth alive—that Ireland was a Vatican puppet-state—its promoters must portray every practicing Catholic politician as a frothing zealot. This caricature has been lazily applied to nearly every Taoiseach of the period. But the historical record tells a different story—one that flatly contradicts the cartoon.
Consider Taoiseach John A. Costello’s visit to Rome in September 1955. He and his wife were granted a private audience with Pope Pius XII. Costello received a gold medal commemorating the Dogma of the Assumption; Ida Costello was gifted a papal-blessed rosary. The Pope offered “fervent wishes to the Irish President and Government” and imparted a blessing to “our beloved people of Ireland.”
But it’s what happened next that demolishes the myth. Costello met Monsignor Domenico Tardini, the Vatican’s Pro-Secretary of State for Extraordinary Affairs. Tardini remarked—pointedly—that the Irish Government treated non-Catholics “very favourably,” especially compared to the persecution Catholics faced in the North. Costello replied that this fair treatment was based on principle and motivated by hopes for Irish unity. Tardini admitted that this tolerance was “a source of some anxiety” to the Vatican. According to the official minutes, Costello made no further response—clearly unwilling to bend to Rome’s disapproval.[1]
So much for the slavish theocrat.
The Vatican’s discomfort didn’t stop there. It was also uneasy about the state’s support for Trinity College Dublin—an institution it viewed as deeply anti-Catholic. Trinity, after all, had reserved seats in the Dáil for its graduates until 1937, and in the Seanad ever since. Yet despite these concerns, Trinity remained a state-subsidised university—a further sign that Ireland’s government served the republic, not the Roman Curia.
Excommunicated
De Valera was excommunicated from the Catholic Church along with all anti-treaty Republicans. Dan Breen a revolutionary leader, anti-treaty in the civil war and later a Fianna Fáil TD said:
‘The civil war was bad, but it saved us this much — it saved us from government of Maynooth. The people were split on the issue of the treaty, but the hierarchy went out and attacked the Republic, threw bell, book and candle at it in nearly every pulpit in the country. And they drove one half of the people against them with the result that they never regained the power they once had.’ [2]
So much for the theocracy. The real myth is that modern critics are interested in the truth. They’re not. They’re interested in flogging a narrative—no matter how much history they have to trample to keep it alive. Prof Diarmaid Ferriter is notorious in this respect.
Ferriter et al have falsely demonised the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. Casting him as a super villain. McQuaid was a diligent and hard-working lobbyist. He like all other vested interests had a right to lobby the government. However, in reality he seldom got to government to act in accordance with his directions. Nonetheless his large library of lobbying documents has left fertile ground for conspiracy theories to be nurtured and grown.
In reality, the Irish government was interfering in Church affairs, and the appointment of John Charles McQuaid as Archbishop of Dublin was carefully engineered by Éamonn de Valera’s government. While the canonical process unfolded, de Valera pursued a diplomatic strategy, with a government memorandum outlining the ideal candidate as one with broad interests, political acumen, administrative skill, cultural refinement, and—most crucially—sympathy with government policy, all of which aligned perfectly with McQuaid. Though the Vatican bristled at political interference in episcopal appointments—as seen in its tensions with Franco’s Spain—the Irish government trod carefully and succeeded in securing McQuaid’s appointment, believing that close Church-State cooperation was essential for advancing social policy.
The Government was keen to avoid dealing with a recalcitrant hardliner, because it viewed such cooperation as a matter of national importance. To ensure this, the Government believed that regular meetings between the Taoiseach and the Archbishop of Dublin were crucial.
de Valera’s also helped secure the promotion of Maynooth Professor. Michael Brown Known as Cross Michael, to Galway in 1937, and the Derry priest, Neil Farren to Raphoe as early as 1939.
The state interfered in the running of the catholic church in Ireland and rebuffed efforts by the bishops to implement catholic policy.
While the constitution was being drafted McQuaid was given the task to go through the draft for comments on rights. De Valera left the religious clauses blank but later revealed them to McQuaid who became enraged, and the Vatican were also unhappy.
Fr Denis Fahey—McQuaid’s former religion teacher—along with Fr Edward Cahill and other Jesuits, had submitted recommendations during the drafting process. When their proposals were not adopted, Fahey and Cahill were so incensed that they spent the next decade or two campaigning for what they believed would be a truly Catholic constitution. Their efforts reflected a deep frustration with what they saw as the state’s failure to fully align with Catholic social teaching.
de Valera’s religious clauses were 1. the catholic church had a special position. Next clause recognises the Church of Ireland, the Methodists, the Jewish faiths etc.
The constitution contains a religious preamble but it not part of the constitution.
After decades of sneering and clowning over the 1937 Constitution, the Irish government finally put its contempt to the test—through two referenda aimed at deleting the “woman in the home” clause and redefining the family. Both were resoundingly rejected by the Irish people.
The government had orchestrated a slick misinformation campaign, shamelessly weaponising RTÉ and other media outlets to browbeat the electorate into submission. The result? A spectacular political backfire that led directly to the resignation of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
Leo took the fall—but the machinery of deceit grinds on. The Irish government continues to feed its citizens a steady diet of distortion and state-sanctioned revisionism.
For a deeper look into just how far we’ve fallen as a nation, see Embarrassment – The Primer. It’s not just a book—it’s a diagnosis.
Taoiseach Sean Lemas once said ‘I think there was a political advantage in having an anti-clerical tinge.
The only time in my life that I ever got an enormous vote, the highest bold ever recorded to any candidate in a general election was when I was having a full scale row with the Bishop of Galway and this was dominating the political scene and I found this on other occasions too —that having a good row with a Bishop is quite a political asset and you do not suffer politically for it because there is an anti-clericalism in the Irish people.’
Lemas again
‘I do not remember having any difficulty, sense of strain our problems in dealing with the church. My personal relationship with all the principal archbishops and the cardinalis is always good.
Whenever I wanted advice about anything there was never the slightest suggestion that they felt it was their duty to impose any point of view upon us. I could have been lucky, nothing emerged in my time that would have raised a conflict. I can only testify on my own personal experience in that regard.’
Lemass’s remarks—and those of his contemporaries—expose the mythmakers for what they are: peddlers of fiction. The claim that Irish politicians cowered before bishops is pure fantasy. In truth, they had no problem clashing with clerics in public, especially when it served their electoral interests.
The real scandal isn’t some imaginary theocracy—it’s the modern Irish historian, hell-bent on distorting the record to flatter their own prejudices. What we’re witnessing isn’t honest inquiry, but a sneering campaign of cultural self-loathing masquerading as scholarship.
These historians aren’t uncovering the past—they’re burying it under ideological rubble, all to make the Irish people look backward, blind, and beneath contempt.
Bear that in mind when the next academic tells you we lived under Vatican rule— ask whether it’s based on evidence—or on someone’s unresolved teenage rebellion. The library is full—but the minds are empty
EJ
[1] David McCullagh, John A. Costello The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello (2010).
[2] Joe Ambrose and Joseph G. Ambrose, The Dan Breen Story (1981).
Church’s excommunication of anti-Treaty combatants in Civil War left ‘bad taste’, says Archbishop
