Sir,—In 1938 a book was published entitled Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen—for or against Christ?, under the name of Leo McCabe.
Sometime before that another book by the same author was published that dealt with Henry VIII and the English Reformation. The theme of the 1938 book was that Irish separatism from the time of Tone onwards was part of a Judeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy to destroy Christianity, particularly Catholicism. There was nothing new in that; in the previous century a Monsignor Dillon wrote a book in which he claimed that Fenianism was part of a world-wide Masonic plot directed by Lord Palmerston with the principal aims of overthrowing the Habsburg Empire and the Papal States. While much in vogue in Catholic circles before the last war, the conspiracy theory was by no means a monopoly of the Catholic right-wing, there were Protestant versions of it going back to the time of Titus Oates that placed the Catholic Church as the source of all evil; it is at present the stock-in-trade of Northern Paisleyites. While people like McCabe and Dillon used the conspiracy theory to attack modern Irish nationalism, yet it had its devotees in the nationalist camp as well; they would simply reverse the formula and place the British Empire in the anti-Catholic Masonic camp.
It has been claimed that the name ‘Leo McCabe’ was a pseudonym used by a Maynooth clerical student at that time. Can anyone tell me who was the real Leo McCabe and furnish details of his subsequent career?—
Yours etc.,
R. FARRELLY
Ballybrack
Co. Dublin