Tales From The Vestry II
On ongoing series of screencaps from my current work placement transcribing Church of Ireland records from the last 250 years.
This is from the minutes of a Church of Ireland meeting in Fethard, Co. Tipperary from September, 1920.
General Kellett proposed and Capt. Barton seconded “that we the members of the Select Vestry, Church of Ireland, of the parish of Fethard Co. Tipperary desire to place on record that we condemn in the strongest possible manner and repudiate the action of our co-religionists in the North of Ireland in cruelly driving from their homes & employment their Roman Catholic fellow-workers and countrymen, and that we hereby testify our appreciation of the kindly relationship that has always existed and now exists between the different religious denominations in our neighborhood.” passed unanimously.
Remember that this was during a time in Irish history when Protestants were being burned out of their houses simply for existing (as symbols of oppression). If any cynical readers feel this was more an act of self-preservation, I can assure you all that the number of armed Republican nationalists scouring Church of Ireland minutes for signs of capitulation was zero.
You won’t hear about any of this in our single-narrative history books, but I can only assume Fethard wasn’t the only church to do something like this.
