One could easily be nostalgic for the 1932 Congress. It was such a unifying event. The country had just witnessed its first peaceful change of government since independence. As the Eucharistic procession moved from Phoenix Park to O’Connell Bridge, Eamonn de Valera, the head of government, supported the canopy on one side, William Cosgrave, the outgoing Taoiseach, on the other. The differences that had led to the Civil War were not forgotten, but we had successfully put them behind us as we gathered in adoration of our common Lord and Saviour. Roughly a quarter of the country’s population attended the final public Mass of the Congress. As he welcomed the Papal Legate De Valera spoke as ‘the Catholic leader of a Catholic country’. Joseph Connolly, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, enthused: ‘All Ireland, from Murlough Bay to the Cobh of Cork, was united in the greatest manifestation of joy and devotion that has ever been known in the country.’
That was the flavour of those sunny June days in Dublin: joy and devotion. The country was ablaze. Chesterton described it: ‘Instead of the main stream of colour flowing down the streets of commerce and overflowing into the crooked and neglected slums, it was exactly the other way; it was the slums that were the springs. These were the furnaces of colour; these were the fountains of light.’ Alice Curtayne spoke of the ‘miraculous unanimity of a people behind the Congress Committee... The Congress in Dublin was like a drama in which everyone was an actor, down to the smallest child in the darkest back alley of the city.’
Thanks especially to the work of Archbishop Byrne of Dublin, the public ceremonies were harmonious and smooth. It could have been different. As part of his planning, Byrne went to Rome and let it be known that the Irish bishops would not welcome as Legate a certain Mgr Pisani (‘He is inquisitive, poking his nose into matters which are no business of his.’) The planning of the welcome party for the Papal Legate at Dun Laoghaire pier entailed even more delicate negotiations. Cardinal McRory and President De Valera were both taking it for granted that they would be the welcomer, although Archbishop Byrne was the host of the Congress. The impasse was solved by an intervention from Rome for the Cardinal, and a second gangway by which the Archbishop could slip on board and greet the Legate who then went on to meet the President and his Cabinet on the quayside.
The country was no Celtic Tiger. It was enduring fierce hardships in the course of an economic war with Britain. A supplementary budget had just raised the price of petrol by fourpence a gallon, and income tax by sixpence in the pound. The wages of teachers and Gardai had been cut. In the previous year a joint pastoral letter of the bishops had denounced extreme republicanism, and warned against the dangers of communism. There were deep divisions surviving from the bitter years of the Civil War. We were indeed a nation once again, and it did not feel secure or comfortable.
But for that glorious week in June 1932, we showed a splendid face to the world, and tasted a happiness that my parents’ generation spoke of for years afterwards. At a garden party in Blackrock College for the Papal Legate, the crowd responded to his blessing with spontaneous music, and soon the thousands of them were singing with one voice ‘Faith of our Fathers’.
The final Mass in the Phoenix Park was the defining memory of the Congress. The Fifteen Acres turned into a vast church with a congregation of a million gathered round a magnificent domed High Altar: a green church, with splashes of colour from the gorgeous vestments of the cardinals and prelates, and the sparkle of sunlight on the soldiers’ swords held high at the Consecration with incredible discipline and style; a devout church, hushed in prayer, and captivated by John McCormack’s rendering of Panis Angelicus, and by the voice of Pope Pius XI relayed from Rome.
It can all seem remote and 1932-ish. In this new century some aspects may seem strange to us: that at an International Congress the Cardinals were all from Europe or USA: none from Africa, Asia, Australasia or South America. Still more puzzling: that at the final Mass of the Eucharistic Congress, there was no distribution of Holy Communion – the logistics of bringing it to such a crowd were too daunting; and the focus was more on the presence of the adorable Christ in the Host in the Monstrance, rather than on the Eucharist as our daily bread, the meal that makes us one with one another and with Jesus.
When De Valera spoke of himself as the elected Catholic leader of a Catholic country, we were too close to the years of anti-Catholic discrimination to feel how these words could jar on our Protestant fellow-Christians; and the multi-cultural scene of today was hardly imaginable in 1932. The ecumenical movement was far away in the future. It is bad history to use today’s contexts for judging past events.
The 1932 Congress was an extraordinary achievement, both in the meticulous planning and diplomacy that prepared it, and the spontaneous joy of the whole country in supporting it. We were a poverty-stricken people with a deep spirituality and a recent history of sharp divisions. This event united and expressed us in a way we had never experienced before. We could never repeat it, and should not try. Whatever we do in June 2012 should be a throw forward, not a throwback to those heady days of eighty years ago.