Catholic Conscientious Objectors and their motives

Catholics who chose the difficult path of conscientious objection during the First World War found inspiration in the teaching of Jesus Christ, but their dilemma was complicated by the fact that their Church leaders did not speak with one voice.  Pope Benedict XV did not take sides and denounced the war in the name of humanity.  By contrast, the British bishops (like those of other warring nations) maintained that their own country was fighting a just war.  

“I am a Catholic, Socialist and an Irishman, and hold war to be organised slaughter” declared Patrick O’Daly in his application for exemption from military service in 1916.[1]

Like most COs, Catholics who objected to fighting often did so from a combination of motives, and since faith usually influences a person’s politics, both were often mentioned.

The Pearce Register of British Conscientious Objectors of the First World War[2] lists about 100 men who identified as RC or Catholic.  We can guess that there might be 100 more who did not specify their denomination, but as a proportion of the 20,000 COs that is small.  Why were there so few Catholic COs?

What were the particular incentives – and obstacles - influencing Catholics facing conscription?  What inspiration could they draw from their faith to encourage a conscientious objection?   Here are some of the arguments they used.

Following Christ means refusing to kill because life is sacred and human beings are one family
“In my youth I was taught, both by my parents and by pastors of the Roman Catholic Church, that human life is sacred…  I cannot conscientiously support any system which has the destruction of what I believe to be sacred for its object.”  (Cornelius Augustine O’Driscoll) [3]

“I absolutely refuse to take human life as I consider it inconsistent with the doctrine of Christ.  I firmly believe in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, and as God gave me my life I have no right to take it, still less indeed that of a fellow man.” (Alfred Evans)[4]

Killing is a serious sin
“To kill a fellow being is a sin for which there is no forgiveness… I have no quarrel with any man, and I bear no enmity to Germany or any other nation.”[5]  “I believe taking part in war to be contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ.  I would be filled with remorse for the rest of my life were I to take human life, and I feel I cannot be responsible for such a crime. Believing all men to be my brothers I would be doubly guilty.”  (Thomas Clancy)[6]

“I believe that after death a man is judged by his Creator and punished or rewarded for his sins or virtues.  Nothing will ever make me take any part in war or the cutting short of men’s lives.  Sending them unprepared and without a chance of repentance to their judgement.”  (John Joseph Grattan)[7]

Obey God not Caesar
Catholics believe that each person has a free will and a unique vocation given by God.  Some COs felt that military compulsion violated their primary allegiance.

“I absolutely refuse to take the military oath.  I consider it inconsistent with the doctrines of Christ and although I am willing to perform RAMC work… I cannot do so under the military oath.”  (Alfred Evans)[8]

“I shall be only too pleased to undertake Ambulance or other work in a civil capacity… I am genuinely anxious to serve my country.  I am not a conscientious objector to National Service but only to Military Service.”  (Stanley Morison) [9]

Francis Meynell, friend and colleague of Stanley Morison, argued at his tribunal: “I cannot surrender my conscience, my right of judgement, to anybody else’s keeping…” and continued, “as a Catholic I pay some heed to what the Pope says even on a political matter… that it is a war which is ‘dishonouring humanity’”.[10]

Leadership of the Pope
In 1916 Morison and Meynell founded the ‘Guild of the Pope’s Peace’ - a group of just seven members, including two priests.[11]

They published leaflets extensively quoting the Pope’s pleas to the warring nations to reach a peace through negotiation rather than victory: “The belligerents on either side should make concessions on some points”. (Allocution 9.12.1915)  It was the responsibility of patriotic Christians to respond, declared the Guild, hoping that many hundreds of Catholics would join.[12]

The Guild’s object was “to help now towards the making of the Pope’s peace” pressing for his proposed methods:  1) Truce 2) a declaration of conciliatory peace terms  3) an immediate conference.[13]   “Blessed are the peacemakers”, it reminded Catholics.  “Have you proved yourself a true friend of peace?  What then have you DONE to help the Pope’s efforts to end the war?”[14]

Obstacles
Unfortunately, the Guild was a David against Goliath.  Its literature admitted: “It is an indubitable fact that the vast majority of Catholics are entirely ignorant of the Pope’s real and clearly expressed attitude towards the War and Peace.”[15]

Catholic leaders in Britain aligned themselves with pro-war nationalism rather than the impartial internationalism of the Pope.  The Guild was publicly denounced and discredited for lacking episcopal approval.

Benedict’s Peace Note of 1917 was vilified in the British press as favouring Germany (and vice versa in Germany).  Though Catholic leaders and editors politely defended the Pope’s initiative, they made it clear that it was not binding doctrine: his version of peace was premature; they demanded total victory.   The Bishop of Salford, even while defending the Pope in The Universe newspaper, said his proposals were inadequate because the Central Powers could not be trusted.[16]

Shockingly perhaps, the leader of the RC Church, Cardinal Bourne, publicly rejected Benedict’s proposals. “The Pope has proposed that all the belligerents should come to a compromise.  No!  We demand the total triumph of right over wrong… There may be in our land some people who want peace at any price, but they have no following among us.  We English Catholics are fully behind our war leaders.”[17]

The majority of British Catholics were uncritical supporters of their country’s war. Tribunals took advantage of the fact that the COs were marginalised.   It was well known that the Catholic Church taught that citizens had a duty to take part in a “just war” (though in theory that should mean that some wars might be judged “unjust”).   Moral theologians rejected as heresy the argument that all wars were unjust,[18]which COs like Patrick O’Daly put forward:  “It is unlawful to take part in an unjust war and I repeat that my conscience tells me that all war is unjust.” [19]

The common belief was that Catholics could not be pacifists or COs.[20]  Thus John Grattan’s Hornsey tribunal had commented: “he is a Roman Catholic and the tenets of his Church do not recognise such an objection as of any validity”. [21]

Nevertheless, the Church did uphold that, even if erroneous or ill-informed, the individual conscience was supreme.   That was why Patrick O’Daly argued that at his Brentford tribunal the Military Representative’s “reference to a sermon by a bishop does not define the attitude of the Catholic Church.  No bishop makes a law of the Church. I have to answer for my own conscience by the law of the Church”.[22]   John Joseph Grattan was supported by a priest affirming that he was “opposed to participating in warfare…by the judgement of perhaps the most sacred Court a man can appeal to, viz that of the conscience!” [23]

Years later, H. Gordon Moore remembered: “At Dartmoor I was one of the twelve Catholic Objectors…”  There were Catholic ‘Absolutists’ and Catholics in the Non-Combatant Corps. Then, tellingly, he reports: “I cannot say I recollect a single priest who let it be known that he wholeheartedly supported our attitude”.[24]

Even priests who wrote testimonials for COs did not always help – as for example, in this letter to the Wood Green Tribunal about John O’Brien: “I have no doubt that his objection is sincere… Considering the number of Catholics serving with the Colours it should not be necessary for me to add that such objections are not held by him because he is a member of the Roman Catholic Church”. [25]

A Church seeking respectability
What lay behind such vehement assertions of patriotic loyalty?  The Catholic hierarchy had been formally re-established in England in 1850, but the centuries of suspicion about Catholic treachery and allegiance to foreign powers remained influential.  Anti-Catholic prejudice was ingrained.   The Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, for instance, had to apologise for his newspaper comment describing RCs as ‘the guests of the nation’ after critics reminded him about the number of RC war dead.[26]

The Catholic Church was striving to prove that its adherents were loyal citizens.  Church leaders wanted to establish new churches, schools, and gain recognition and political influence.  Much was made of the 600 plus[27] army chaplains who won respect for their courage at the Front as they resolutely remained beside their men.  Even a tiny group such as the Guild of the Pope’s Peace had to be officially repudiated because it might damage this image of Catholic patriotism.

Though the Church broadly opposed conscription, once the Military Service Act came into force Cardinal Bourne negotiated with the government to win exemption for priests, monks and brothers in religious orders, and seminarians in the final stages of training.  This concession won Church silence on conscription for everyone else.  For example, a pastoral letter by the Bishop of Northampton for Lent 1916 on ‘The Priest and Military Service’ contained no advice at all for laymen facing conscription.[28]

Patriotic loyalty and Ireland
Many RCs living in Britain were Irish or of Irish descent.  Some had strong political objections to the fact that Ireland was still under British rule and this underpinned their conscientious objection.  Some fled to Ireland to evade the authorities.

The Easter Rising of 1916 was a catalyst for altering opinion.  Immediate comment in the RC press echoed the general view that the Sinn Fein ‘rebels’ were treacherously serving the interests of Germany - until the brutal executions and mishandling of the situation by the British government galvanised Catholic opposition.   

So in Patrick Daly’s tribunal statement of July 1916 he argued: “It is no reason that because a number of Irishmen have taken part in this war that every Irishman should do so.”  But the Brentford tribunal concluded: “He evaded the question when asked if he would fight for Ireland if Ireland were attacked.”   Paul Leo Gillan, who died in prison, was one of the Catholic conscientious objectors who described themselves as ‘Sinn Feiners’.[29]

Britain’s treatment of Ireland undermined its argument that the war was being fought to protect small nations like Belgium.  When, in desperation, the British government attempted to extend conscription to Ireland in 1918 the Irish bishops defiantly sanctioned popular resistance to conscription by all morally lawful means.  The English bishops supported their colleagues for once, and warned the government that imposing conscription without first settling the Home Rule issue risked serious violence in Ireland.[30]

Catholics in wartime Britain were divided and embarrassed by Ireland, by the Pope’s impartial appeals for peace, and by the conscientious objectors.  To be a conscientious objector in the First World War meant being a dissident.  Catholic COs had to be doubly dissident: at odds with their country and with the nationalist fervour of their Church leaders despite the consistent peace teaching of the Pope.

Valerie Flessati, Pax Christi