By Diarmaid Ferriter
Although over two and a half thousand Catholic churches were built in Ireland between the late eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth century, Dublin remained without a Catholic cathedral, as it does to this day.
This situation may now be rectified, if long-mooted plans as part of what the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin calls ‘a new approach to pastoral planning … based on a synodal process of engagement with parish communities’ proceed, including the proposal that St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, becomes a cathedral. A ‘project group’ established to explore this option is due to report soon. The archdiocese has suggested that St Andrew’s ‘is well placed to engage with the vibrant residential, commercial and cultural heart of the city’, while the pro-cathedral, St Mary’s in Marlborough Street, would be ‘raised to the dignity of a basilica’, an artful euphemism for demotion. According to the archdiocese, ‘St Mary’s is located in an area undergoing renewal and development’, while ‘on the south side of the Liffey, recent and planned commercial and residential development have created a whole new dimension of city life’.
The idea of awarding the cathedral prize to St Andrew’s has raised the hackles of some Dublin city councillors, who see it as involving a diminution of the status of the north inner city. Last year, Dublin City Council’s Central Area Committee passed a motion opposing the possible ‘downgrading’ of the pro-cathedral, and complaints were made about lack of consultation with locals about what is, according to Councillor Nial Ring, ‘part of the heart of the city’.
For historical, religious, cultural and architectural reasons, the pro-cathedral is a significant building. As art historian Michael McCarthy has observed, ‘it is a most surprising building in the grandeur of its severe and assertive portico of six baseless fluted Doric columns, supporting a full architrave, pediment and statuary … a hybrid of the Greek temple with the Roman basilica’. Its erection was a major priority of the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Daniel Troy, who served from 1786 to 1823. The Marlborough Street site was purchased in 1803 at a cost of £5,100. Based on a design sent from Paris by an unknown architect—simply marked with the letter ‘P’—building work on the church began in 1815, with the foundation stone laid by Troy that year. It was opened in 1825, but the portico was not completed until 1841. Initially, the official description of St Mary’s was ‘the Roman Catholic Metropolitan chapel’; it became known as the pro-cathedral in the 1880s, such a title signifying the temporary or provisional nature of the cathedral, pending the building of a new one when funds became available. In the early years, as noted by architectural historian Brendan Grimes, the vaults, not yet ready for interments, were leased to the Revenue Commissioners for the storage of spirits. The building fund needed to be bolstered and priests trained in the logistics of fund-raising. In the generation of funds for church-building in the nineteenth century there was an expectation that, while wealthy benefactors would be generous, it was incumbent on the faithful poor to do their bit as well. This was no easy path; in 1821 the building committee was perplexed that ‘a national feeling’ relating to its completion had ‘not been found in the public’ to raise the necessary funds. Appeals were made to Protestants, who were reminded of the historic tithes paid for the upkeep of their church. A dinner held in November 1825 after the dedication ceremonies saw Catholic Archbishop Daniel Murray pay tribute to the generosity of Protestants. At the same time, Richard Lalor Sheil, lawyer, leading light in the Catholic Association and future MP, declared that ‘at last an edifice worthy of the loftiness of our creed stands in the centre of the metropolis. Our religion has at last lifted up its proud and majestic head.’
Funding worries persisted, however. Brendan Grimes highlights a report of a meeting of parishioners in the pro-cathedral in 1843 to review the state of the building fund: ‘persons of the wealthier classes would contribute each, from one pound to five pounds … and those of the less wealthy class of householders each, from one shilling to one pound … encroaching no further than each could contribute—and yet, receiving from all’. Some working on the project gave their services for free or donated part of their fees; contractors had difficulty getting paid, William Hughes of Talbot Street complaining in 1844 of being ‘distressed by want of cash’.
Fr John Hamilton, the curate in St Mary’s in 1824 and who served as its administrator from 1831 to 1853, raised much of the £45,000 needed to build the pro-cathedral; according to religious biographer and archivist Mary Purcell, Hamilton had managed to ‘clear the entire debt by 1844’. Daniel O’Connell was present in the pro-cathedral at a special thanksgiving Mass to mark the granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and in 1841 attended in full ceremonial robes as the first Catholic lord mayor of Dublin; following his death, he lay in state there in July 1847. Over the course of the nineteenth century, according to Dermod McCarthy’s history of the pro-cathedral, it established itself as ‘the centre of life in Catholic Dublin’ and its walls were adorned with the work of leading sculptors, including John Hogan, in the form of ‘elaborate memorials to benefactors of the diocese’. A silver-gilt chalice was presented to the pro-cathedral in 1856 in honour of St Laurence O’Toole, patron of the archdiocese of Dublin, by a descendant of his family. It was also host to public meetings addressing pressing contemporary concerns, including a protest at the Italian invasion of the Papal States in 1860, while significant funds were raised in the late 1880s for further embellishment.
The pro-cathedral is also home to the Palestrina Choir, established in 1903; John McCormack, who achieved worldwide fame as a tenor, sang with the choir there. It was also photographed by Robert French for William Lawrence’s well-known collection of early twentieth-century Dublin images. The pro-cathedral hosted the funeral of Michael Collins in August 1922 and, indeed, that of his nemesis, Eamon de Valera, 53 years later, while it was centre stage in 1932 for the opening of the international Eucharistic Congress. The state funeral of veteran republican Kathleen Clarke, the first woman to become Dublin’s lord mayor, was also held there in 1972.
It is surprising that the building of a Catholic cathedral did not transpire after the creation of the new Free State in 1922. In January 1923 the Free State’s cabinet planned to hand over the site of the General Post Office to the archbishop of Dublin for the construction of a new cathedral, but legal complications prevented that. Archbishop Edward Byrne declared in 1930 that the pro-cathedral was ‘inadequate as a cathedral for Catholic Dublin and is still not worthy of the Catholicism of the Irish nation’. He then, with the assistance of the devout head of government, W.T. Cosgrave, bought Merrion Square from the Pembroke Estate for £10,000 as the site for a cathedral.
By the time the site came formally into his possession in 1938, the ailing Byrne was in no position to progress his ambition. His successor, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, appointed in 1940, regarded Merrion Square as the best site, but it seems that Dublin Corporation preferred a cathedral built nearer the Liffey. McQuaid told Taoiseach Eamon de Valera that abandoning the Merrion Square site was ‘gravely to be deplored’, but this issue was caught up in concerns about the control and nature of land development in the vicinity of government buildings and Merrion Square. McQuaid, according to his biographer John Cooney, thought that de Valera was ‘elusive and shadowy’ about the matter.
As a manifestation of the Greek revival, before the fashion for Gothic set in, the pro-cathedral, according to Michael McCarthy, ‘gave Dublin a monument unique in the architecture of neo-Classicism and one to be prized and preserved in the interests of European cultural history … it gave a lead also to the church buildings of Dublin erected in the years immediately following Catholic Emancipation’, including St Francis Xavier’s in Gardiner Street and St Andrew’s in Westland Row. Given the lead it gave and the extent to which it became knitted into the fabric of the Catholic life of north inner-city Dublin, the choice of a church on the other side of the Liffey for a new cathedral could be regarded as leaning against the weight of history and compounding a sense of neglect of the Marlborough Street area. Is the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin really suggesting that the pro-cathedral is not relevant to the ‘new dimension of city life’?
Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History in University College Dublin.