Change Of Religion

In 1956, at the age of 28, I took a decision that would cause much agitation and reaction in my family and among my friends. I changed my religion from Protestant to Catholic. I did it to escape from the pressures that were mounting against me.

I was accepted as a student on the HDipEd course in National University, situated in Earlsfort Terrace. Father O’Cathain wrote a letter to my former tutor, R B McDowell, asking for a reference but he contacted me eventually to say he had received no reply. Then my mother told me in private that my uncle had intercepted the letter so that Dr McDowell didn’t receive it. This horrified me so I wrote to Dr McDowell and handed the letter in to his rooms in person. He was shocked, too, to know that a letter of his had been intercepted and that the sister university should see Trinity in such a bad light. My uncle did his best to stop my changing my religion. He asked Archbishop Simms to visit me and try to influence me but George Otto told me it was my decision and whatever I decided he would always be my friend and be there for me which, indeed, he was.

Mr Power, my headmaster, came to see me and he said he understood but why wouldn’t I just take myself off to England and get away from it all. He remained my friend, too, as did the Tyrrells and Hazel and her parents. Ted, my brother, said it made no difference to him, although he’d have preferred to see me become a Muslim! He described himself as an Agnostic.

I enjoyed my year in National University; for the first time in my life I was pushed to my limits and had to work hard to achieve a good result. I made new friends and went to teach in a girls’ junior school in Miltown, run by the Irish Sisters of Charity. It was a much larger school than any Anglican school in the South of Ireland and I learned much during my time there. A new school was opened nearer Dundrum and I was moved to it.

After we had sat our final exams a group of about 20 of us went on a pilgrimage to Lough Derg. We had to fast from midnight the previous night and we travelled north by train and caught a connection by bus to where the boat would carry us across to the island. Before stepping ashore we all removed our shoes and a group of men sat by the wall mocking us and passing insulting remarks about our feet! That was not part of the official purgatory, but walking around barefoot on rough stony ground and going without food and sleep for the next 24 hours was. All we could have was brown bog water and dry toast. The hardest thing for me was staying awake for two days. All through the night we sat in the chapel listening to the Monsignor preach and shout at anyone nodding off and at their companions telling them to nudge the person sitting by them who was falling asleep! We survived but at one stage all along our row we had a fit of the giggles when one of the lads let his Rosary beads fall and they broke and flew across the floor. The monsignor wouldn’t have hesitated to order the lot of us off the island on the next boat had he noticed!

Life moved on and I enrolled on a course in Ethics run by the Jesuits and enjoyed the academic challenge as an antidote to the level I was teaching at. Then I started at the Berlitz School learning Spanish and that gave me a social as well as an academic interest. In the autumn of 1958 I met Mike at a teachers’ dance in Clerys ballroom and he asked me to meet him and go to the pictures one night and that led to our becoming engaged in January 1959. We placed a notice in the Irish Times. One person who read it was Maureen, who had been my friend in training college. She wrote and asked if we had set a date for our wedding as she wanted her wedding to a friend of Jim’s to be on the same day to compensate for my change of religion. We had settled on a date in June but later changed it to October. Hers went ahead in June. I met her many years later when our families had grown up and she wanted to know all about what had happened in 1956.

Mike was a clerical officer with CIE, the Irish Transport Company, and he was studying part-time for a B Comm in Trinity. Later, he switched to full-time for the honours BA in Economics.

Preparations for our wedding went ahead. A dressmaker made my dress and my hairdresser offered me a free hairdo and make-up on the morning of my wedding. She and her husband had returned to Dublin from London and had set up a wedding cake business and she gave me a two-tier cake as an extra gift. Iris, a colleague of mine in Milltown, was my bridesmaid and her mother sang a solo at the wedding.

I was to be married from the Tyrrells’ home but none of my family helped and said they wouldn’t attend the wedding. My father handed me a £5 note and said he didn’t want to give it to me but he had given Ted, Helen and Muriel money so reluctantly felt he had to give me a token gift. I gave it to my mother and told her I wanted nothing from him.

Actually, as the hairdresser was working on my make-up, a taxi turned up with my father and mother and Henry in it and it was already 11 o’clock, the time the wedding service was due to start! I had quickly to get in touch with the hotel to ask them to lay three extra places for the wedding reception. I arrived late at the church but from then on all went well. Tony, a neighbour on Gilford Drive, gave me away and Mike’s brother, Pat, was best man. It was the wettest day on record in Dublin but I didn’t notice. Father Gwynn married us and he told me afterwards that my father had tackled him after the wedding but he was well able to deal with that.

Mike and I were going on the night ferry and we had a cabin on the train to London where Helen and Jas were looking forward to our arrival during breakfast on the Sunday morning of 18th October, 1959. The weather in London was sunny and beautiful and there I would meet my Aunt May Hartford for the first time. She was really happy to see us. Helen and Jas were really good to us, too, and couldn’t spend enough time with us. On the Tuesday we met Aunt May in a Lyons Corner House for tea and we had bought a copy of the Irish Times that day to see the photo and write-up of our wedding.