A chairde —
I’ve decided to
change the newsletter to a quarterly format.
I did this unilaterally and without consulting Co-coordinator
Shirley. Frankly, I’ve got so much other
writing to do that it’s become hard not to give the newsletter short
shrift. I’m hoping it will be easier to
slide into this every three months, rather than panic every thirty days or so.
Besides, my a/c is
out, and I think the heat is making me sick.
We aristocratic Celtic types — the true Master Race — can’t take the
heat. That’s probably why you find so
many Irish men who can’t fry an egg.
They’re staying out of the kitchen like intelligent beings.
Added to that is the
global situation, for which the oppressed peoples of the world rely on me
personally to come up with a way out.
Being a card-carrying genius is hard work. Being a messiah (especially as humble an one
as I) is even harder.
Seriously, watching
the almost daily antics of the head of the world’s most powerful central bank,
the Federal Reserve System, who can’t define a central bank (or money) to save
his life or the economy, and who insists on pouring massive quantities of
gasoline in the form of a debt-backed reserve currency on to the fire of a stock
market bubble with no private sector hard assets behind it, is a trifle . . .
disheartening.
This isn’t rocket
surgery. You can float all the
government debt you want, but your private sector had better be able to produce
enough to tax to make good on it when it falls due, and your reserve currency
had damned well better be asset-backed, or you’re just begging for a financial
meltdown that combines the worst features of the German and Austro-Hungarian
inflation of the early 1920s and the Crash of 1929. And Bernanke ain’t no Hjalmar Schacht. (BTW — did I ever tell you I know Schacht’s
grandson? Strooth. He knows less about money and credit than
Bernanke . . . but then, he’s not in charge of the Federal Reserve.)
Anyway, having
justified changing the timing of the newsletter and vented my spleen against
everyone who disagrees with me, let’s get on to the first number of the quarterly newsletter.
Beannachtai!
Michael
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Contents
Announcements
Organization,
Publication and Membership Information
Letters
News and Reports
Articles
Food
Reviews
The Fourth Page
Announcements
As a newsletter, we rely on you to tell us what’s going
on. If you have an announcement for an
upcoming event, please let us know. Just
keep in mind that we try to publish on the 17th of every month, so get
your announcements in at least a few days before that. Otherwise, consider sending it in as a report
or a news item for the subsequent month.
• The Usual Nagging Announcement. We still have a number of subscribers who are
probably wondering why they’re not getting the newsletter. It’s because they haven’t verified their
subscriptions by clicking on the link in the e-mail Google sent to their
specified e-mail address. If you
subscribed but have not received the newsletter (which means you’re visiting
the blog and are reading this there), it’s an easy matter to correct. Enter your e-mail address again, and Google
will send you another verification e-mail.
• For some reason I did not receive my e-copy of the June
newsletter. Since I didn’t receive any
complaints, I’m assuming that whatever problem it was only affected me. If that is not the case, let me know, and
I’ll see what can be done to fix the problem.
Of course, if the problem is recurring and affecting everyone, you’re
not reading this, in which case send me an e-mail about that. . . .
Organization, Publication and
Membership Information
What We Are
Litir Scéala an tSIG
Gaelach is the newsletter of the Irish Special Interest Group of American
Mensa, Ltd. More information about the
SIG and this newsletter may be accessed by clicking
on this link.
Resources
We are preparing to put together a list of
resources and organizations that might be useful to our members. Due to the global scope of our readership, we
are trying to limit the list to organizations that extend beyond a purely local
constituency. This is a matter of simple
logistics, due to the immense number of organizations out there. If you’re looking for a local group to get
involved with — and we encourage that — do an internet search. You may be both amazed and pleased at what
you will find. We expect to list
resources as we rebuild our membership, but right now . . . oh, you know the
rest.
Who We Are
No new members this month, etc. (That’s ET cetera, NOT
“eck” the way so many people want to pronounce it.) We have an increasing number of visitors and
casual readers, — no, really — but that’s not going to get the SIG reactivated
officially, however gratifying it may be personally. We’re thinking of having a “feeler” sent in
to the Bulletin. When we get around to it, of course. . . .
Anyway, here’s this month’s membership report:
5 Members of
Mensa
2 Other
1 Institutional
Member
26 Newsletter
Subscribers
34 Total
Circulation, although four of them have not “validated” their subscription
(This does not include forwarded newsletters or visitors to the website who
have not signed up for the newsletter — over 1,000 to date.)
Letters
In the June newsletter I mentioned that we (meaning the
Center for Economic and Social Justice, CESJ) had sent out a response to one of
those Disgraces to the Proud Name of Englishman, and noted that we hadn’t
received any response. Of course, that
response only went out half an hour before I published the newsletter, so his
head didn’t have time to swell up and explode.
The anticipated brain-pop came and went, however, just a
little behind schedule. Then the e-mails
started flying. I published only the
first and most coherent one on my blog — and it wasn’t all that coherent. One of my associates said the string of
invective reminded her of John Cleese as Basil Fawlty screaming insults at any-
and everybody, only not making quite as much sense.
I won’t give any samples here. I suppose they’re funny in a rather sad and
twisted way. The poor fellow not only
insulted us, he alienated the people who were supporting him in his anti-CESJ
crusade. Although he is pretty much a
stooge for Islamic extremists, getting air time from the Iranian media and
holding a professorship at some university or other where he allegedly lectures
on binary economics (which he doesn’t understand), most of his time seems to be
spent attacking the U.S. and Israel instead of explaining Say’s Law of Markets
and the real bills doctrine — dull stuff, when you could be screaming about how
the U.S. is fascist unless it does exactly as you say and institutes government
control of industry and private life.
News and Reports
Members of the Irish SIG don’t usually belong only to the
SIG, but to other groups with an Irish orientation as well. This is all to the good — the more society
becomes more social, the better
chance we have of influencing our institutions in a positive way and carrying
out “acts of social justice” aimed at improving the common good for
everybody. We want to encourage your
community participation and then report on local events in which SIG members
took part.
• We got a little feedback from the professor of commercial
law in Argentina. She has turned over
our papers to the head of the university economics department for comment. If he approves, it goes to the Rector. If this goes well, we’re thinking of
approaching her about getting some of our books translated into Spanish. Dr. Harold G. Moulton’s 1935 monograph, The Formation of Capital, would be a
good start . . . although (of course) not as good as mine on The Restoration of Property or In Defense of Human Dignity. Moulton’s book showed how it is possible,
even preferable to finance economic growth by monetizing the present value of
future increases in production, instead of inflating the currency and
increasing government debt. It takes a
lot of power out of the hands of government, though, so it’s a rather hard
sell.
• I had to start a revision of some parts of the book I’ve
been working on for the last couple of months.
Fortunately, it’s in the nature of a few critical additions, and will
save a lot of work later. This is
critical, because once it’s finished, it will (I hope) point in the direction
of a true economic recovery, which can turn both the U.S. and Irish economies
around.
• We’ve also been working on republishing some of Fulton
Sheen’s books that have lapsed into the public domain. The foreword to the first one is almost
finished. We figure the reason the
copyrights were not renewed on these particular books was because they fell due
about the time that Sheen was really, really
big for his media appearances and spiritual writings, and nobody paid any
attention to his work in politics and economics. If we’re extreme lucky, we might even be able
to publish our edition of the first one by the end of July. If.
You know how that goes.
Articles
Feature Article: Henry
George, the Irish Connection, Part II
After the New York mayoral election of 1886 (which George
lost, although coming in ahead of Roosevelt), as Franz Mueller related, “the
newly elevated Archbishop of New York, Michael A. Corrigan, supposedly at the
urging of Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester, N.Y., formally denounced
Georgism with the result that Father McGlynn publicly and scornfully
contradicted him.” (Mueller, loc. cit.)
As Franz Mueller continued,
While
McGlynn was, no doubt, truculent and recalcitrant, the archbishop’s pastoral
did contain passages which seemed to confirm the time-worn Marxian accusation
that the Church, instead of demanding social justice of the “capitalists,”
counseled the employers to treat their workers charitably, and urged workers to
await patiently “the rewards of eternal happiness.” [Aaron I. Abell, American Catholicism and Social Action: A
Search for Social Justice 1865-1950 (Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover, 1960), p.
62.] There are indications that Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Ireland, Bishop
John J. Keane and others, though they could hardly defend McGlynn’s
belligerence, much less the socialist implications of his teachings, were
nevertheless unhappy about the manner in which the matter was handled in New
York. There was no doubt that George had
a large following among the working people and Archbishop Gibbons feared that
Father McGlynn’s suspension and excommunication would be looked upon by the
masses as an ecclesiastical repudiation of the laboring class. The archbishop of Baltimore, as quasi-primate
of the Church of the United States, thus resolved to take the opportunity of
his forthcoming visit to Rome to receive the red hat to try to convince the
Holy Office that it would be unwise publicly to condemn Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, just as it would
be unjust and dangerous to denounce the Knights [of Labor].
Through
an indiscretion, Gibbons’ memorial in behalf of the Knights, which had been
drafted with the assistance of Archbishop Ireland, was published soon after it
had been presented to the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda,
Cardinal Simeoni. [Cf. Henry Browne, The
Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University, 1949), pp. 238 f., 365-378.
In a footnote to the text of his Memorial,
published in volume I of his A Retrospect
of Fifty Years (Baltimore: Murphy, 1916), p. 190, Cardinal Gibbons
acknowledges “the valuable aid of the venerable Archbishop Ireland, of St.
Paul, and of the Rt. Rev. Bishop Keane, who were then in Rome.”] The intended
secrecy had allowed Cardinal Gibbons to express himself most clearly and
candidly, the unintended disclosure proved the Catholic Church of America to be
genuinely concerned about the welfare of the proletariat. Gibbons’ mission was a full success not only
because the Holy See lifted the penalties that had been imposed upon the
Canadian Knights and later ruled that the order could be tolerated, but also
and particularly because his memorial had obviously been effective in its
attempt to demonstrate that the Church’s place must be on the side of labor or
she would lose all influence with the masses of the workers. Both Cardinal Gibbons and Cardinal Manning of
Westminster, who wholeheartedly supported Gibbons, made it plain, of course,
that the need for the Church to interest herself resolutely in the grievances
of the working classes, was not merely dictated by fear of their defection, but
was primarily a matter of upholding social justice and of defending the dignity
and rights of labor. (Henry E. Manning, The
Dignity and Rights of Labor (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1934); Ibid., 65-66.)
McGlynn was excommunicated in 1887 for refusing to go to
Rome to answer charges resulting from his efforts to advance George’s socialist
program after several warnings to desist.
He was reinstated in 1892 after an equivocal recantation through a third
party. McGlynn then managed to obtain a
private audience with Leo XIII in 1893.
McGlynn is said later to have claimed that during the
audience the pope agreed to an understanding of the right to private property
in land as effectively abolished by the “single tax” that completely repudiated
everything in Rerum Novarum as well
as millennia of natural law theory.
There is, however, no support for this other than McGlynn’s word . . .
and it may not even be that of McGlynn.
The source seems to be a chapter about McGlynn in a book, ABC of Taxation, that Charles Bowdoin
Fillebrown, a follower of George, published in 1916 after both Leo XIII and
McGlynn were dead and could not contradict his claims.
Whatever the truth of the matter, McGlynn continued to speak
at georgist meetings, and to promote the “single tax” as if he had never been
censured or excommunicated. In
consequence, georgist legend today takes full advantage of the suspicion that
many Americans (even Catholics) have of the Vatican.
Leo XIII is portrayed alternately as conniving and
duplicitous, and then as a dupe of the Jesuits.
The pope is accused at one and the same time of being mentally slow and
a “wily European” bent on confusing and deceiving honest Americans — whom he
then betrayed by allegedly condemning everything American in Testem Benevolentia Nostræ. (Mason
Gaffney, Henry George, Dr. Edward
McGlynn, & Pope Leo XIII: A Paper Delivered to the International Conference
on Henry George, November 1, 1997, at Cooper Union, New York. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation,
2000.)
Food
Irish Sushi Mold
No, this is not the potato blight spreading to smoked
salmon. It’s called, “It’s too frickin’
hot to cook, so I’m not testing any recipes when I don’t have air
conditioning.” It’s also the first part
of a two-part recipe, but I am giving the hardest part first so you won’t be
intimidated by being presented with two completely different operations. This is how to make the equipment you need to
make “Irish Sushi,” which is really Hawaiian, but more Japanese.
A little background, first.
You all know what sushi is. It’s
slivers of stuff rolled in rice and wrapped in a sheet of seaweed. That’s the first two Irish features. The Irish eat stuff, and they eat seaweed. As far as I know, rice is largely reserved
for pudding, so that’s kind of a half-Irish thing.
Anyway, “Spam Musubi” is a big thing in Hawaii. Many people call it “Spam Sushi.” That’s wrong, but people will know what
you’re talking about. A “musubi” is a
rice ball stuffed with something, while sushi is either a roll of rice stuffed
with something, or a little rectangle of rice topped with something. Spam Musubi is a larger rectangle of rice
stuffed with a slice of Spam, so it may be that neither musubi nor sushi is the
right term, so people use both incorrectly.
I’ve been told you can get Spam Musubi everywhere in Hawaii,
from gas stations to gourmet restaurants.
When students go away to the mainland to college, they have to take
their rice makers and their musubi molds.
And therein lies the tale.
Rice makers are no problem.
You can get a good serviceable rice maker at K-Mart for less than $25
for the family size, or the personal size for around $15. You really don’t need a rice maker with all
the bells and whistles, like my associate’s wife got to replace the one they
had for 50 years that cost $10. I think
she spent $400 on the thing . . . and both she and her daughter say they can’t
make the rice come out right — how come it works for me? (Because I don’t follow the instructions; I
just make the rice.)
You can even forego the rice maker if you make the rice the
Japanese way on the stove. Put the water
and the rice in the pot cold on the stove, cover, then turn it on high, bring to a boil, and immediately turn down to
a low setting for 10-15 minutes, then turn off the heat and let it steam for
about 15-20 minutes. The rice will be
sticky, which is what you want. Use
medium grain rice, not long grain. I
keep both on hand for different purposes.
DO NOT waste your money on Arborio rice. That’s the medium grain rice that “everyone”
insists you must use for risotto or
paella. The special sushi rice is also a
waste of money if you’re making musubi.
No, pretty much any good medium grain rice will do the trick. Those from California or Texas are at least
as good as most of what the Japanese use, and cost a heck of a lot less.
The musubi mold is a problem. You can buy plastic ones on the internet for
around $8 plus shipping, or wooden ones starting at $12 plus. I couldn’t find one at the local Korean
supermarket, so I went to Home Depot and bought 36 inches or so of 1 x 2 maple (which is really ¾ x 1½). It cost me a little over $2. I think I got a break on the price because
the piece was a butt end of something, and it was otherwise scrap.
That’s the first requirement. Use maple, not pine or oak. Maple is a tight-grained wood that used to be
used a lot for food bowls and troughs for dough. Now it’s used for kitchen counters. It’s the tree from which maple syrup comes
(different variety, usually), so you shouldn’t have to worry about things like
allergies or toxins the way you might with, say, walnut. If you’ve got a tree nut allergy, of course,
you probably shouldn’t be working with hardwoods, anyway.
Using a miter box to make certain the cuts were as straight
as I could get them, I cut six pieces off the 1x2 maple. This took a little over 17½ inches, so I
should have enough for another mold if I want one. I cut (2) 4¼, (2) 2¼, (1) 3½, and (1) ¾. The ¾ piece can be fudged, since that’s the
handle for the press. You can go a tad
over these lengths for everything else, because the 3½ has to slide in and out
of the box you’ll make easily. I cut a
trifle short, so had to do a bit of sanding.
Make a rectangle of the other pieces measuring 3x5. Make certain the pieces fit together without
gaps. Fasten with clamps to make certain
that there are no gaps. Then take off
the clamps, and fasten the butt joints with polyurethane glue, then clamp it up
again, make certain everything is aligned right, and leave it overnight. In the meantime, glue the handle to the
middle of the 3½ piece, and clamp. The
next day take off the clamps and sand everything. Clean it off, and you’re ready to go . . .
assuming that the press piece fits inside the frame easily, but without gaps.
Reviews
The Tuloriad
John Ringo and Tom Kratman
Baen Books, 2009
The late Ralph McInerny, Grace
professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (Go Irish!) and author
of the “Father Dowling” mysteries, once commented about “Catholic” fiction that
it was so good, it was bad. He meant
that the characters who were the heroes or heroines were so saccharine saintly
that you were in danger of getting artificial diabetes from reading the damned
things.
Sadly, realistic treatments of
“religious” characters or, worse, religion itself in fiction are few and far
between. Given that human society is
divided rather naturally into domestic society (the Family), civil society (the
State) and religious society (the Church or Temple), that’s not a good thing. It pretty much ignores or misrepresents a
third of the human experience. It’s a
little analogous to all the contemporary “mainstream” fiction that completely
ignores the fact that we’re living in an advanced technical age in which our
social and financial institutions are straining at the seams to keep up and
adapt, and in many cases failing utterly.
Admittedly, it’s tough to write
about religion objectively in any event, and even tougher to do it well. Robert Hugh Benson, I think, did it, although
today’s readers limit themselves to his science fiction and historical novels,
completely ignoring his remarkable, yet somewhat dated, mainstream fiction; An Average Man (1913) is far from
average and should be regarded as at least a minor classic.
J. F. Powers did an equally superb
job, so good, in fact, that I have a hard time rereading the short story
collection, Prince of Darkness (1947). I’ve been reading fiction to escape from “real life” for a few hours,
and Powers’s writing doesn’t give you any way out — unless you believe the
pseudo-intellectual analyses of his work that manage to turn an extraordinary
Irish-American “Catholic” writer into a Church-basher.
This is why John Ringo and Tom
Kratman’s military science fiction novel The
Tuloriad (2009) was such a welcome surprise. My fiction book-buying has been somewhat
curtailed over the past couple of years.
Mostly this is due to (in my opinion) the critical need for my research
into monetary theory and the purchase and reading of books nobody ever heard
of, but it also has been affected by the closing of the Borders Books within
walking distance.
Every once in a while, however, I
can’t take it any more, and, however much I enjoy reading about the Sacketts
blasting their way out of another impossible situation, I need something
new. Fortunately there’s a branch
library within walking distance, and, even more fortunately they have a decent
selection of military science fiction. I
don’t consider myself particularly warlike or brave (except in my usual fantasies),
but the military sci-fi sub-genre does seem to be where the new ideas and good
writing are coming from in science fiction.
Even given the freedom of science
fiction, however, Ringo and Kratman, I think, took a big risk with The Tuloriad. Possibly not as big as it would have been
with a publisher other than Baen, which tends toward what most people would
regard as the “conservative” side of things (i.e., the right wing of liberalism), but a serious risk,
nonetheless.
In a world in which “religious
bigot” is redundant, the novel treats religion as if it were something real and
an integral part of people’s lives, and has an actual effect on their behavior,
for good or ill. It does an excellent
job of making religion a genuine plot element without being mere
window-dressing or an attack on presumed religious bigotry of any and all
believers. Without promoting belief or
unbelief, The Tuloriad has characters
who are serious believers, and who clearly try to live in accordance with what
they believe.
What I found particularly
refreshing was the fact that no one religion or sect was being “pushed” at the
expense of another. I’ve had to wade
through far too many excruciatingly and painfully bad “Catholic” novels that,
while most of them make an effort at fairness and objectivity, still manage to
denigrate other systems as well as the faith of the believers and their
intelligence.
Part of that is due to the fact
that far too many believers base everything — and I mean everything — on faith. They
forget the critical role of reason, as Pope Francis reminded us last week in
his first encyclical, “On Faith.” Pope Pius XII did the same thing somewhat
more forcefully more than half a century ago in Humani Generis, which dolts who have never read the encyclical (in
the sense Mortimer Adler meant in How to
Read a Book) insist is the “anti-evolution encyclical.” (I’ll say “bologna shingles,” because the
other BS term — not “Bible Studies” — doesn’t seem appropriate when discussing
religion.)
Does this mean that The Tuloriad is a great book? No.
It’s a good book, by which I
mean well-written and entertaining. It
does the job for which it was intended.
Assuming you like the military science fiction sub genre, you will
neither feel you threw your money away, nor like throwing the book from you
with great force.
I’ve put a lot of emphasis on
Ringo and Kratman’s achievement in integrating religion so well into the story
that you might get the impression that it’s a religious book. No — it’s a realistic book that presents a plausible scenario given the basic
assumptions of the plot and a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. It did not outrage or offend my reason.
The story of The Tuloriad takes place after the devastation of the Earth by the
Posleen invasion, from which Earth emerged more or less victorious. Don’t worry about that. While reading the other books relating the
invasion and the inevitable apocalyptic battles that raged across the globe and
beyond fill in a lot of backstory, it isn’t absolutely essential to enjoying The Tuloriad as a stand-alone piece. There’s enough detail supplied without being
heavy-handed to let you know enough about the Posleen and the other aliens to
know what’s going on.
Earth is, as we might expect, in
ruins. Nevertheless, while a great deal
of attention is necessarily focused on rebuilding civilization (for which a
Capital Homestead Act would, obviously, be essential, but that’s another
story), religious authorities, especially at the Vatican, are concerned about
the souls of the Posleen — the big question being, of course, whether such
creatures even have them.
So, is the reader “treated” to
page after page of sermonizing and theological philosophizing? No, (if you’ll pardon the expression) thank
God. Recall the “Catholic” books that
are so good they’re bad? I’ve spared you
the ones that are so bad they’re horrifying.
Nathan C. Kouns’s 400-page sermon on Christian socialism, Arius the Libyan, anyone? This is a military science fiction novel, and
it lives up to its billing. There is
plenty of action, and enough introspection without being too much.
The Vatican sends out a mission to
find the Posleen home world, which gives us a squad of Swiss Guard who, if you
judge from the library edition cover (don’t), are crazy, wild-eyed fanatics
bearing little resemblance to the actual characters in the novel. There’s also a Posleen ship escaping with a
remnant of the gazillions that invaded Earth.
Anything more would probably constitute giving spoilers, so you’ll want
to read the book just to see how these elements tie in to a plausible tale
that’s good on the essential level of being a good story.
The Irish tie-in? Father Daniel Dwyer, S.J., is an
Irish-American Catholic priest with the near-stereotypical drinking problem. I said “near,” so don’t expect any
stage-Irish garbage, good or bad. He . .
. deals with it, without it taking
over the story. You get interested
enough in the story and the character that you wish he’d deal with it a little
more effectively, but at least you’re not swamped with either the drunken Irish
or the drinking priest schtick — a good trick when you have both in a single
character.
Now for the parts I didn’t
particularly care for — none of which should affect your enjoyment of the
story, but I believe in truth in advertising.
There are, for example, a number of points of theology I disagree
with. Big deal. It’s a science fiction novel, not a treatise
on religion. I’m not sure artificial
intelligences can have souls, for one thing, even if they’ve been given a human
body. Fortunately, it’s not an issue I
have to deal with in the real world, nor do I actually care all that much about
it.
More important is the
writing. It’s high level, with the
exception that Kratman still needs some work integrating sentiment into a
dramatic scene. He’s come a ways since
his first novel, but it’s not quite there yet.
It doesn’t detract from the story, but it is a slight jog in the
flow. If I was at least as good a writer
as he is, I could tell him how to fix it, but I’m not, so I can’t. I can’t do or teach. Just criticize.
Don’t get me wrong. Sentiment is very important, and must not be
denigrated. It can, however, be hard to
do well without making the characters into wimps, especially in a hard-nosed
genre like military sci-fi or westerns.
Louis L’Amour excelled at this, although it was so well integrated that
shallow critics assumed that his characters were two-dimensional because he
didn’t have pages of introspective crap littering the landscape.
That’s about it. I realize that this is just a touch longer
than a review is supposed to be, with a lot more in it. If so, that’s because The Tuloriad, while a good military science fiction story, also has
a thing or two in it to make you think.
If you don’t care for military science fiction, or if your ideas about
religion in fiction (or, worse, religious fiction) are already fixed, you
probably would not like this book. For
the rest of us, though, it is well worth the money, not to mention the time and
brain space which is far more valuable.
The Fourth Page
The Geraldines of
Ireland, XIII: Reformation, Irish Style
Even after the defeat
of the Scots, the French and the
Irish at Pinkie, all was not lost. In Ireland, the O'Donnells set the
North ablaze, while Desmond XIII and the O'Conors laid waste to the Pale. James
FitzJohn FitzGerald, the thirteenth Earl of Desmond, was first cousin once
removed of James FitzMaurice FitzGerald, the twelfth earl, known as "The
Court Page" as the result of being kept under the thumb of Henry VIII in
the English court in his early years. However, events in France again
undermined the effort. Francis I died, and Henry II became king. Henry II
desired the hand of Mary for his own son, the Dauphin, and called off the desperately
needed French aid, which, in all likelihood, would have ensured victory.
Ireland's cause became, once again, something to be used in the chess game of
continental politics.
The Earl of Kildare had been
recalled by Mary Tudor and permitted to take up residence in Ireland. However,
he was "tainted" by being a Catholic during the reign of Elizabeth,
and thus not able to secure his independence on his own. Realizing the
uselessness of attempting to gain European aid, and at the insistence of his
aunt, the Lady Eleanor, the Earl of Kildare made his submission to Elizabeth I
in 1554, and had his title "legitimized" and part of his lands
restored. After being joined by his younger brother Edward, he was, for the
rest of his life, the center of useless and ineffectual intrigue, as the
various continental centers of power sought to use him in their various
stratagems to weaken England, but never to aid Ireland.
It is interesting to speculate on
what would have been the outcome of a marriage between Mary Queen of Scots and
the Earl of Kildare. Through her father, Mary had the succession right to the
English crown directly after the Tudors, and Kildare was a collateral
descendent of Henry VII—a stronger claim than that held by the first Tudor
monarch on the throne of England through the Lancasters, if the legitimacy of
the Tudor claim is recognized. Oddly enough, the Geraldines, through their
great Matriarch, the Welsh princess Nesta, are all descendants of a Tudor, her
father, Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth.
It would not, therefore, have been
outside of the realm of possibility to have established a Geraldine dynasty
ruling over all of Great Britain, with, however, the power center in Dublin,
York or Edinburgh instead of London. The English have always made much better
servants than masters (and, like all servile people, have a tendency to become
tyrants once they attain power). The British Empire, with a more Christian
nature, might still exist today had it taken on a more Celtic character
supplied by a Scots-Irish ruling house.
With a Catholic king or queen in
the offing—and one with the Irish wealth and military power (both Norman and
native) and continental alliances to back him up—the Burleighs, Walsinghams,
Cromwells and other Protestantizers in England might have toned down their
activities, or even "stayed" Catholic after their
"re-conversion" under Mary Tudor. It was, after all, solely to
maintain their ill-gotten wealth and positions of power against the possibility
of surrendering them to the Church from which they had been stolen (by whom it
had been held in trust as "the patrimony of the poor") that
Elizabeth's "advisors" effectively forced her to betray her
thrice-given oath to maintain the Catholic faith. A powerful Catholic
heir-apparent beyond the reach of the Protestant clique would probably have
checked their greed and mania for power out of fear of future retribution.
Elizabeth couldn't live forever, and, as the deformed product of an incestuous
union (Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII's own daughter by an adulterous affair with
her mother), was probably physically incapable of bearing children—the main
reason behind her laggard efforts to get married and produce heirs for the
Tudor dynasty.
Many people forget that England
was still largely Catholic through much of Elizabeth's reign, being kept down
only by the power of the new nobility created by Henry VIII out of the looting
of Church lands and wealth, as well as their own poverty. This was the thesis
of William Cobbett, a Protestant historian, who viewed the Reformation as the
greatest disaster ever suffered by England. Characterized by H.E. Francis
Cardinal Gasquet in his Introduction to Cobbett's book as a "rising of
the rich against the poor," the Reformation concentrated ownership of
productive property in the hands of a few people and created an entirely new
class in England, the pauper. Be sure to read Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland
(1827), still in print. Strangely enough (or perhaps not so strange, considering
that Cobbett has been held in disrepute as a radical, subversive polemicist,
and his work has a definite pro-Catholic slant), most of the new books out on
the Protestant Reformation in England take Cobbett's point of view, and even go
further with it—but without acknowledging their debt to him. He has been
accused of historical inaccuracies, but has never been caught in error on
anything significant.
A Catholic monarch at this time
would have been a blessing to all of Ireland and Great Britain. By the time
James II came to the throne, however, Catholic England had shrunk to between 8
to 12 per cent. of the population, or
as low as 1 per cent. according to
certain Protestant historians. This is an unrealistic figure, when the effect
of the Penal Laws is taken into account, as well as the general level of
Catholic activity—why pass such sweeping and punitive laws to keep a small
proportion of the population (and that the poorest and most powerless) in
check? Ireland no longer had the possibility of raising sufficient military
forces without effective leadership, which Seumas
Buí ("Yellow James," as the Irish referred to him) could not
provide. Also, the power of the new nobility had grown even stronger, and continental
assistance was even more ephemeral. All in all, the various plots surrounding
Gerald FitzGerald and Mary Stuart were probably the last genuine hope of
holding back the trend toward totalitarianism and concentrated economic power.
With the submission of the
eleventh earl, the influence of the Kildares on the history of Ireland
effectively ceases. The southern branch of the family, the Desmonds, was to
continue to be a thorn in the side of Elizabeth I until near the end of her
reign. It would be more proper and correct, however, to speak of Elizabeth's
advisors, as she was virtually a puppet, regardless of what one hears about the
"Triumphs of Gloriana."
The next successor to Desmond, XII, appears to have been
fairly ineffectual, at least from the Irish point of view. From the English
point of view, he probably fulfilled his role admirably. Desmond XII, James
FitzMaurice FitzGerald, assumed the title in 1529 upon the death of his
Grandfather, Thomas "Maol" (Desmond XI). James was known as "The
Court Page," from the fact that virtually his entire career was spend at
court under the thumb of Henry VIII. Mercifully short, Desmond XI's
"rule" came to an end with his death in 1540. As he died without
issue, the title was assumed by his first cousin once removed, James FitzJohn
FitzGerald, the son of the seventh Earl's fourth son, Sir John of Desmond, who
died in 1536. It was he, Desmond XIII,
who was the father of the "Rebel Earl."
