Denis Fahey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Father Denis Fahey (1883-January 21, 1954) was an Irish Catholic priest who wrote controversial books alleging various conspiracies against the Catholic Church, including a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy.
Contents |
[edit] Early life and studies
Born in County Tipperary he was educated at Rockwell College and at 17 entered the Holy Ghost Congregation to train to become one of the Holy Ghost Fathers. He was sent by the order to Orly in 1900 as a novice, not long after the government of René Waldeck-Rousseau had begun an anti-clerical drive in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair. Although illness prevented him from completing his time in France the episode was to influence his later ideas on relations between Church and State.
After a spell working at St. Mary's College, Dublin, Fahey returned to studies at the Royal University of Ireland in 1904, achieving a first class honours degree, later studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome before finally being ordained a priest in 1910. Returning to Ireland he was appointed Senior Scholasticate of the Irish Province of the Holy Ghost Fathers at Kimmage in 1912.
[edit] Early writings
Fahey began to turn his attention to writing in the early 1920s, submitting articles for a number of Catholic journals including the prestigious Irish Ecclesiastical Record, most of which were philosophical in nature. It was only in his books, most notably The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism (1943) and The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society (1945), that Fahey began to turn his attention to more political matters.
[edit] Conspiracy theories
At the heart of much of Fahey's work was the existence of a divine programme for order which he understood to have been proclaimed by Jesus but rejected by the Jews. History was to be understood as the 'account for the acceptance or rejection of Our Lord's programme for order' (Fahey, The Mystical Body pp. 150-1). He argued that the medieval guild system had come closest to reaching the programme and that since then society had gone into decay as it moved away from the ideal. For Fahey the three main events in this process of decay had been the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution and the October Revolution, the latter being initiated by Satan.
Fahey felt that the contemporary Catholic Church faced its greatest challenge from the forces of naturalism, be they invisible (Satan and other demons) or visible (Jews and Freemasons). Tapping into contemporary campaigns by parties such as Cumann na nGaedhael, Fahey wrote a series of articles for the Catholic Bulletin attacking Freemasonry in particular and secret societies in general, referring frequently to the work of Edward Cahill. At various times Fahey would also reference such writers as Nesta Webster, A. N. Field, and Léon de Poncins in his attacks on Jewish rejection of the divine programme, leading to him being labelled an anti-Semite and a fascist. In all, he felt that there was a Judeo-Freemason conspiracy against the Catholic way and in particular returned to the well-worn theory of the influence of Jews in communism. As a result Fahey was strongly opposed to the Irish Republican Army which he claimed was a communist organisation. His theories were questioned by Hilaire Belloc, who felt that much of them were too fanciful to be proven.
[edit] Monetary reform
In his 1944 book Money, Manipulation and Social Order Fr. Fahey attempted to turn his ideas towards the subject of economic reform. In this book he attacked gold standard economies which he felt were debt-driven. Drawing on the ideas of Frederick Soddy, with whom he was in regular correspondence, Fahey wanted banks to be forced to balance all loans with holding of currency. Although he was not directly linked to such contemporary movements as Social Credit or Guild socialism, Fahey certainly shared elements of their economic ideas.
[edit] Maria Duce
Fahey had been closely involved with Edward Cahill's An Ríoghacht study group, although following Cahill's 1941 death this group became more mainstream and less concerned with conspiracy theories. As a result Fahey began to organise his own group, Maria Duce, the following year to continue this work. With a membership drawn from various facets of society and with a programme largely the same as Fahey's, Maria Duce came to prominence in 1949 by launching a campaign to change Article 44 of the Constitution of Ireland. This article gave the Catholic Church a special position although also recognized various Protestant creeds as well as Judaism. Fahey argued that this was insufficient and that the Constitution should recognize the Catholic Church as being divinely ordained and separate from 'man-made' religions. The campaign succeeded in securing the passing of a resolution of support by Westmeath county council in 1950, although beyond this the aim of constitutional amendment was not achieved.
Although initially left to its own devices, Bishop John Charles McQuaid came to become less sympathetic to Maria Duce was the 1950s continued and he condemned the group for their heavy-handed reaction to requests for an interview from Paul Blanshard (whom Bishop McQuaid felt should have been treated courteously despite disagreeing strongly with him). McQuaid went as far as to write to Fahey stating that he disagreed with him using the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a 1954 letter. Fahey died before any response could be made and the group was disbanded the following year. Fahey left behind a large written body of work that he did not protect by copyright, instead leaving it in the public domain [1].
[edit] See also
- Catholicism and Freemasonry
- Catholic social teaching
- Christianity and anti-Semitism
- Third Position
- Charles Coughlin
