School of History, UCC

Therese O'Connell, School of History, UCC

Thursday 13 October 2022, 16.00 (4 PM)

The paper will be delivered via MS Teams. Please, contact Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, School of History, UCC, for a Teams link: j.aandewiel@ucc.ie

Paper Bishop Daniel Cohalan does not assume an uncomplicated place in the pantheon of Irish nationalism. On the evening of Saturday, 11 December 1920, Irish Volunteers ambushed an Auxiliary patrol at Dillon’s Cross in Cork, resulting in the death of Cadet S. K. Chapman. By 10pm, the centre of Cork city was alight, as British Crown forces embarked on a campaign of arson, looting and lawless aggression, in retaliation for Chapman’s death during the Dillon’s Cross ambush earlier that evening. The Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan, reacted swiftly. In his Sunday homily, delivered the following morning in the North Cathedral as Cork city centre still smouldered below, he not only condemned the violence of the previous night, but conferred a decree of excommunication on all those who chose to perpetuate violence thereafter through the practices of ‘ambushes, kidnapping and murder.’

Cohalan was the only Irish Catholic bishop to confer such a decree during the War of Independence, and this singular initiative has informed a common perception of him as being, at the very least, unsympathetic, if not unequivocally hostile to Irish republicanism. This paper examines Cohalan’s rationale in pronouncing this excommunication decree, focusing especially on the centrality of Volunteer ambushes and the just war principle of proportionality to his thinking at this time. Therese O’ Connell is a PhD candidate at the School of History, University College Cork, Ireland. She received her MA in History and International Relations at UCC, where she is an academic tutor and occasional lecturer with the School of History. Her Ph.D. research focuses on the life and career of Daniel Cohalan, who served as Bishop of Cork from 1916-1952. His long life and episcopacy were often fraught with controversy, and this was especially true when considering his perspectives on issues such as Irish republican hunger strikes and revolutionary violence throughout the Irish revolutionary period. Yet, no comprehensive biographical analysis exists of this compelling and powerful public figure. To that end, Therese’s thesis explores not only Bishop Cohalan’s pre-episcopal and episcopal career up to the end of the Irish Civil War, but also the personality which fuelled that professional trajectory.