'Tempus Loquendi, Tempus Tacendi' the Politics and Motives of Archbishop William J. Walsh: 1916-1921

Archbishop William J. Walsh seems to exist largely in the background of Irish Historiography during the highly volatile and revolutionary period between 1916 and 1921. Historians studying Archbishop Walsh during this time frame have, thus far, primarily relied on Father Michael Curran’s witness statement to the Bureau of Military History. Father Curran was the Archbishop’s secretary from 1909 to 1919 and was, himself, an ardent Nationalist, and so his references, inferences, and conclusions regarding the Archbishop are tinged with a slightly radical nature. Thus far few historians seemed to have felt the need to truly analyze the Archbishop’s life during the revolutionary period as, according to Curran, his actions and opinions were no different than a fairly large contingent of Nationalist Ireland – he was a Nationalist Archbishop, and everything he did stemmed from that ‘fact’. But this research, while dependent on Father Curran’s statement, has checked it against Walsh’s own writings, along with related documents found in the Dublin Diocesan Archive, and has attempted to challenge the largely accepted view of the Archbishop as an ardent Nationalist in order to portray the Archbishop how he actually was, rather than how he was re-imagined as being.