A local church’s history is neighbourhood history

As I have sometimes mentioned, I grew up in Sandymount, a serene seaside suburb of Dublin 4, where Catholic and Protestant neighbours were generally on good terms, even though they kept separate spheres in education and recreation.

Our immediate neighbours were Methodist and Presbyterian, whose services of worship were Bible-based and austere. But we also heard about an unusual Church of Ireland church at St John’s Road, near the Sydney Parade railway stop, which was considered more controversial.

This was (and is) an Anglican church in the ‘high’ Anglo-Catholic tradition, which was much nearer in practice to Catholicism. Vicars were addressed as ‘Father’, the crucifix was central, religious service was called Mass, and there was a Confessional.

History

My brother followed with interest the stories of protests against St John’s, carried out by more fundamental Protestants, who objected to the “ritualistic” and “Romish” tendency of the only High Anglican church in the Republic of Ireland.

St John’s is now over 175 years old, but now in the calmer waters of today’s ecumenism. Alyson Gavin Lysaght and Shabnam Vasisht have written a history of this church, complete with pictures, which is in some ways a local history of Dublin 4 itself.

St John’s maintained its own traditions throughout the 20th century, attracting some distinguished attendees”

There are a lot of place-names in the neighbourhood called ‘Herbert’ and ‘Pembroke’ because D4 is based on the estate of the Earls of Pembroke (originally Welsh), whose family name was Herbert. And it was in 1850 that Sidney Herbert, of that ilk, founded St John’s.

Sidney had been at Oriel College in Oxford where there was a great High Church revival – associated with Edward Pusey and, of course, John Henry Newman – and he embraced the Anglo-Catholic ethos.

But when the Church of Ireland became disestablished in 1871 – distancing it from the Church of England – it became more hostile to High Anglicanism.

And there was always some apprehension that High Anglicans might go over to Rome, as some did – Sidney Herbert’s own wife eventually chose to do so.

Yet St John’s maintained its own traditions throughout the 20th century, attracting some distinguished attendees, including Percy French (who played the organ), the painters Evie Hone and Letitia Hamilton, the poet John Betjemann, who was British press attaché in Dublin from 1941 to 1943, and Rita Childers, President Erskine Childers’ wife.

Today

There was, as well, an order of Anglican nuns in a convent adjacent to the church – launched in 1912, and finally closing down in 1966. They also ran an orphanage at one point. (Viewers of the TV drama Call the Midwife are familiar with Anglican sisters of yore.)

In the 1980s, St John’s underwent a restoration, and Taoiseach Charlie Haughey paid tribute to its historic role in this part of Dublin, its classic architecture, “Norman stone facings, rich sculptured mouldings and splendid high altar”. Sandymount local, actor Noel Purcell performed songs for an evening’s celebration.

It’s a great idea to do a history of any well-known church – it becomes a history of the locality. Alyson Gavin Lysaght and Shabnam Vasisht have called their Sandymount story No Church is an Island, and it’s available from www.sandymount.dublin.anglican.org.

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One of the most influential publications in my lifetime was Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, which came out in 1968. Everyone seemed to believe its alarming message that overpopulation was such a catastrophic problem that, by the mid-1980s, a billion people were expected to starve, when food scarcity became universal.

The opposite happened: the green revolution has hugely reduced the death toll from starvation, even where populations increased. Ehrlich’s gloomy predictions proved utterly wrong – though people went on believing his erroneous warnings.

The original problem was that his forecasting was modelled on animal behaviour. Ehrlich, who trained as a zoologist, noted that if a group of rabbits in a field increased their numbers to a point of unsustainability, then disease, starvation and disaster would follow.

But human beings are different from rabbits: humans seek to solve problems and find solutions. More people means more brains to address a problem like food scarcity – just as it happened. Ehrlich thought India would starve: India flourished and is today hugely productive.

“The proper study of mankind is man,” wrote the Catholic poet Alexander Pope in the 18th century. Not rabbits.

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Jimmy Lai is a heroic figure – a Chinese Catholic convert, 78, held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong’s Stanley prison, serving a 20-year sentence for publishing “seditious” material. His newspaper, the successful HK newspaper Apple Daily, upheld democracy and freedom of speech.

Mr Lai, who became a Catholic in 1997, is treated harshly by the Chinese authorities, often denied the sacraments. He also has diabetes and a heart condition.

He reads the books he is permitted, by Augustine, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Merton and he draws. For Easter, he produced an extraordinary crucifixion image. He told his daughter “God’s grace is shining upon me.”