Irish Nationalism, Easter Rising (1916) and Catholic Church

Easter Rising is a seminal event in the Irish history. Following a brief summary of the uprising against British during the First World War from history.com:

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a group of Irish nationalists proclaimed the establishment of the Irish Republic and, along with some 1,600 followers, staged a rebellion against the British government in Ireland. The rebels seized prominent buildings in Dublin and clashed with British troops. Within a week, the insurrection had been suppressed and more than 2,000 people were dead or injured. The leaders of the rebellion soon were executed. Initially, there was little support from the Irish people for the Easter Rising; however, public opinion later shifted and the executed leaders were hailed as martyrs. In 1921, a treaty was signed that in 1922 established the Irish Free State, which eventually became the modern-day Republic of Ireland.

On the eve of the hundredth anniversary of Easter Rising, a prominent Irish theologian, intellectual, and academician argued that religion/Catholicism was used by the leaders of the uprising against British colonial rule. Father Seamus Murphy, who is the associate professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, accused the leaders of the rising, including Patrick Pearse, of instrumentally using Catholicism, its symbols and its teachings:

Pearse, familiar with but not overpious about, his Catholicism, uses the Old Testament and scapegoat themes, but NOT with Christian meaning...However, since all this superficially resembles some Catholic mass themes, he is able to channel the Catholic energy that is out there among ordinary Irish Catholics in the direction of a violent bloody undemocratic and intolerant nationalism. It’s very clever.

Catholic leaders at the time of the uprising in 1916 were also not supportive of this uprising because of its recklessness, futility, violence, and being carried by members of a secret society, Irish Republican Brotherhood. Though sympathetic to the sentiments of the men and women that took part in the uprising, the Catholic hierarchy, including the Pope, repudiated the act and helped the British re-establish law and order. However, later on, Catholic hierarchy softened its stance towards the rebels as they were afraid of losing the confidence of laity.

Source: http://riveredge.bccls.org/children.shtml

Well, this should not surprise anybody who has an understanding of religious nationalism, which always uses religion as a tool for nationalism. Very few religious nationalist leaders are religiously observant. The established church always have a complicated relationship with religious-nationalist leadership as they are not pious and are usually ready to bend religious edicts/principles, if it helps their cause. However, it is important to remember that church leadership is itself not immune from using religion to preserve or enhance its power.

Eamonn McCann, writing in The Irish Times, presents the view that the Catholic religious leadership was also trying to increase their power and used the Irish nationalist sentiment to their advantage in early 20th century. McCann, who is a political activist, atheist and socialist, has written extensively on religion in Ireland, including Dear God The price of religion in Ireland. He contests the view that Catholic hierarchy condemned the uprising:

It is said that “the bishops condemned the Rising”. This is at best an exaggeration, repeated today in efforts to project the Rising as a secular event. In fact, there were 31 Catholic bishops in Ireland in 1916, of whom only seven explicitly condemned the rebels. Most of the rest kept cannily quiet, before placing themselves soon at the head of the national movement which was to arise from the Dublin rubble.

He argues that the Catholic hierarchy soon owned the Easter Rising as well as the broader nationalist movement and managed to defeat the radical/Marxist/secular element in the nationalist movement that has led the uprising in 1916. Not surprisingly, Ireland emerged as a 'ultra-conservative confessional State' six years later:

The enthusiastic support of the (Catholic) hierarchy was vital for the success of the crucial 1918 anti-conscription campaign. “The Irish people have a right to resist [conscription] by every means consonant with the law of God” declared the bishops in a “manifesto” read at all Masses. This can be seen as the definitive moment when the endorsement of the church passed from the Home Rule Party to Sinn Féin. The bishops were nothing if not adept in detecting what way the wind was blowing...The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 partitioning the island handed the bishops a State in which their ideological mastery was already established. Hence some of the horrors inflicted on the most vulnerable of the population in the half century which followed. There were no protest marches against church rule. They wouldn’t have been allowed.

So, Murphy is right to be indignant of what Pearce did, the usage of to use Catholic themes for his mundane nationalist objectives. However, as McCann explains, Pearce and other nationalists could not have used Catholic themes, if the Catholic Church hierarchy was not supporting them. 

Putin, wars, and Russian Orthodox Church

Mark Woods, the contributing editor of Christian Today, calls Russian Orthodox Church a tool in the hand of President Putin. In his article, How the Russian Orthodox Church is backing Vladimir Putin's new world order, focuses on growing Russian religious nationalism.

Thousands of miles away (in Russia), however, there's an ideological synergy between Church and State which is just as unhealthy. Under its leader Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has backed the aggressive expansionism of President Vladimir Putin, which has seen him extend Russian power into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Kirill described Putin at a religious leaders' meeting in 2012 as "a miracle of God". It supported a government crackdown on "gay propaganda" in 2013. The ROC has made billions from trading concessions granted to it  by the government. It is increasingly asserting its position as the largest of the 14 self-governing Orthodox Churches and is using its political muscle in support of Putin's aims. It's no friend to evangelicals, especially in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, seeing them as puppets of the West.

Wood is particularly critical of the role played by the current head of ROC, Patriarch Kirill. He mentions that Kirill has been accussed of being a KGB agent and his usage of ROC's special previliges in the 1990s to earns billions for the Church and himself. Kirill, however, denies any personal benefits from the past financial dealings.

Wood quotes Ukrainian academics, mainly from Ukrainian Catholic University, to details the closeness of the ROC and Russian state or the subordination of the  ROC to Putin agenda. The choice of experts is problematic and raises doubts about Wood's thesis.

Wood quotes Mykhailo Cherenkov, a Ukrainian Baptist and a Professor in Philosophy at Ukrainian Catholic University, as arguing that fall of communism left an ideological vacuum, which has been filled with Orthodoxy. t was the "new ideological binding agent" that Russia needed to survive:

It was Orthodoxy that served as the main ferment in the formation of a new Russian identity from the beginning of Putin's presidency. If, in Soviet times, the mark of the majority was political atheism, then now it is political Orthodoxy.

Being partiotic and Orthodox became synonyms and wars of the Russian state became holy wars. Cherenkov argued:

The goal of the 'Holy War' is not seizure of territory, or change of power, or defeat of opponents, but the victory of faith over all lack of faith and false teaching, of the only right picture of the world over all wrong ones, of truth over all untruths. If Rus is Holy, then her faith and truth are the only Orthodox ones.

Wood then quotes a more extreme view by Joshua Searle, a lecturer at Spurgeon's College and Visiting Professor at Ukrainian Catholic University. Searle contends that the ROC is not real Christian Church:

It needs to be made clear that the ROC hierarchy is essentially a political construct. The church structure is based not on gospel values of freedom, truth and enlightenment, but on fear, authoritarianism and the promotion of nationalism under the guise of religious zeal. This kind of fake patriotic religion deifies the State and gives divine sanction to a nation's imperialism.
The ROC can even invoke the name of "God" as an idol who has bestowed a special blessing and favour on Russia, which then allegedly gives 'Holy Russia' the right to invade and conquer neighbouring territories and subdue their peoples. Such a sham Christianity, which is a denial of Christ and the gospel, will always refuse to accept any higher power and will ruthlessly destroy any forms of genuine Christian faith that go beyond cultural or national identity.

George Soroka does not agrees with Wood as he sees not only harmony but also tension in the ROC-state relations in Russia. He has written a very insightful article on ROC's relations with the Russian state in Foreign Affairs. In his article, Putin's Patriarch: Does the Kremlin Control the Church?, Soroka explains that the ROC and the state in Russia do not have a dominant-submissive relationship. The widely-held perception that the Church is the handmaiden of the Russian state is not true. President Putin and Patriarch Kirill support each other most of the time and Putin is usually the more assertive partner but there are differences. 

Source: Foreign Affairs

The Church has prospered since the break-up of Soviet Union and more so under Putin as Soroka illustrates:

Meanwhile, the church has benefited from the close ties between its leadership and the government. In 2011, then President Dmitri Medvedev granted the patriarch a residence in the Kremlin. In late 2010, Russian legislators passed a long-awaited bill allowing the return of Church property seized by the Soviet Union, codifying and expediting a process that had been proceeding piecemeal since the 1990s. The Russian Orthodox Church and affiliated organizations have also been the country’s biggest recipients of presidential grants in recent years, receiving more than 256 million rubles in funding between 2013 and 2015.

And Putin has used the ROC despite the separation of church and state in the 1993 Constitution. Putin has used the Church's symbolic power to not only defeat his enemies both inside and outside Russia (Chechens, liberals, democrats, terrorists, etc.) but also to unify the new Russian state under a defensive, inward-looking nationalism.

Soroka concludes the article contending that the Kremlin and the ROC still have many differences so the real partnership is not between them but between the civil religion “Orthodoxy without Christ” and Putin’s rhetoric and defensive nationalism.

Symphonia, or harmonious, mutually respectful coexistence, represents the ideal of Church-State relations in Orthodox thought. Unfortunately, it has seldom been achieved, and post-communist Russia is no exception. Russia today is still in the process of exiting the ideological vacuum that resulted from the Soviet Union’s collapse. What is emerging in its stead remains inchoate, a selective culling of the past that mixes Orthodox imagery with Soviet triumphalism, interspersed with an increasingly inward-looking nationalism.
Yet this is not ultimately a coherent narrative; it will eventually crumble under the weight of its own historical contradictions. Putin’s conundrum is that he wants the Russian Orthodox Church to help legitimate the restored Russian state while eliding the abject persecution the church suffered under the Soviet regime, just like he wants to emphasize the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany in WWII without coming to terms with the horrific crimes of Stalin.

Where does this leave the church? It is not as an institution subordinate to the Kremlin, but neither does it stand on equal footing with the regime in Putin’s Russia. Moreover, despite recent internal efforts to quell dissent, the church still embodies diverse opinions and viewpoints. As a result, the real synergies are not between the church and the Kremlin but between a burgeoning civil religion that Chapnin terms “Orthodoxy without Christ” and Putin’s muscular brand of statist rhetoric. In a society where over 70 percent of citizens identify as Orthodox even though the percentage of active churchgoers is in the single digits, the cultural resonance of the church is as obvious as its doctrinal relevance is moot, making it ripe for political exploitation. In contemporary Russia, it is not the Orthodox Church but the jingoistic Orthodox atheist that is the regime’s greatest ally.