February 15, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN – The bishop of Ferns has apologized for a Catholic boycott of the Protestant community and its businesses in Wexford’s Fethard-on-Sea more than 40 years ago after a bitter row about the religion and education of children of a mixed-marriage couple.
The row led to the Protestant wife, Sheila Kelly, fleeing to Belfast, where she came under the influence of followers of Rev Ian Paisley and was taken to the Orkney Isles in Scotland.
Later, after returning home, she again left to live in Fishguard in Wales.
The row led to Protestant shops losing their Catholic customers, a Protestant music teacher losing 11 of her 12 pupils and a Catholic teacher resigning from a local Protestant school.
Her Catholic husband, Sean Cloney, has welcomed the apology and the expression of “deep sorrow” by Bishop Brendan Comiskey, who promised to do whatever he could to “make amends.”
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The bishop asked for forgiveness at an ecumenical service for the 1798 rebellion and he later embraced his counterpart Church of Ireland Bishop John Neill, who said he humbly accepted the apology.
The row, which began in April 1957, blighted relationships in the small community for years.
Protestant people marrying Catholic partners at that time had to sign a “ne temere” decree, giving an undertaking their children would be brought up in the Catholic church.
Cloney said it had been practically impossible for Catholic and Protestant people to marry in the area at the time, so they had gone to England in 1949 for the ceremony.
When the eldest daughter was 6 and old enough for school, the local Catholic priest visited Sheila Cloney and told her the child had to go a Catholic school.
“He left her with the words, ‘She is going to a Catholic school and there is nothing you can do about it,’ ” Cloney said.
“She was a person of spirit. She had her own ideas about that demand and some time later she left home with the two children and she ended up in Belfast, where she came under the influence of associates of the Rev Ian Paisley.
“The local clergy took the matter into their own hands and instituted a boycott.”
Cloney said he was reunited with his wife in the Orkneys and they returned nine months later. After a short period at home, he helped her move to Wales for a period because of the continuing pressure.
Cloney said the controversy had brought the couple closer together. “It was us against everyone else,” he said.
They educated their children themselves, not wanting to be seen to side with either church.
“Wherever we sent them would have been a victory for one church or the other,” Cloney said.
He said the row had traumatized local people and the effects lasted for years.