Mixed marriage, ‘a grave injury to our church’: An account of the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea Boycott

Abstract

The family was central to the religious formation and indeed the survival of southern Irish Protestantism in the mid-twentieth century. The largest Protestant denomination in the Republic of Ireland, the Church of Ireland (comprising approximately 5% of the national population in 1950) was challenged by demographic trends of late and low rates of marriage, emigration and the ever-prevalent threat of mixed marriage. Against this backdrop the church emphasised the essentiality of the socialisation of children into the church community. It cautioned against the dangers of inter-church marriage where the enforcement by the Catholic church of the 1908 Ne Temere decree obliged the Protestant partner in a mixed marriage to consent in writing to the upbringing of any children of the union as Catholics. The actions of one woman in the small village of Fethard-on-Sea in county Wexford in 1957 in challenging this dictate led to a sectarian and divisive boycott of Protestant business in the locality. Eileen Cloney, a member of the Church of Ireland, chose to leave her home with her two daughters, against the wishes of her husband Seán, rather than allow her eldest daughter attend the local Catholic school in the village. Her ‘abduction’ of her children was condemned by local and national Catholic clergy culminating in the call for a boycott of Protestant businesses and farms by the local Catholic Curate, Fr. Stafford on 12 May 1957. In this article, original oral history research as well as previously unseen documentary sources will be used in an examination of this divisive boycott and its local and national repercussions. The article will explore contemporary discourse on marriage as well as highlighting the significance of the family in church and state discourse.