FISHER, Revd ADRIAN

Reference code:

IE UCDAD P164

1 box

Biographical history

Adrian Fisher had served as a British Army chaplain in Cyprus and elsewhere before being instituted in the Fethard Union of parishes, which included St Mogue’s, Fethard-on-Sea, on 9 May 1957. Within days members of the Roman Catholic population of the village had begun a boycott of the Protestant-owned businesses in the town after a local Protestant woman, Sheila Cloney, married to a Catholic man, had left the village and taken her two daughters away rather than allow them be educated in the Roman Catholic school.

The Fethard-on-Sea boycott, as it became known, attracted national and international attention throughout the summer of 1957 and focused criticism on the injustice of the Ne temere papal decree of 1908 requiring the children of inter-church marriages involving Catholics to be brought up as Catholics.

A local committee established a relief fund to aid victims of the boycott and subscriptions were received from as far away as the Middle East and South Africa. While the boycott was showing signs of fatigue by the autumn, it’s effects on inter-church relations had a much longer life. Mrs Cloney returned to live in the village at Easter 1958. Adrian Fisher remained as rector of the village until January 1962 when he left for a second term as an army chaplain. The final curtain on the Fethard boycott was not drawn until 1998 when the Catholic bishop of the diocese made a public apology and asked for the forgiveness of the local Church of Ireland population for the events of 1957.

Scope and content

Correspondence concerning the boycott, mainly letters of sympathy enclosing contributions to the Fethard-on-Sea Relief Fund. Records of the Relief Committee. Newscuttings and notes compiled by Revd Adrian Fisher.

Access:

Available by appointment to holders of a UCDAD reader’s ticket