The Island of Saints and Scholars - Part II of a history of Catholic Ireland
St. Patrick's Park, Dublin, Ireland. (istock.com/Daniele Di Novi)
In the previous edition we looked at the rise of the Catholic faith in Ireland from the arrival of St. Patrick in the fifth century to the persecutions of the 18th century. Comparing pre-Christian Ireland with the unwavering fidelity of the 18th-century Irish Catholics, one might observe that the Irish appeared to be a people of extremes — extremes, we might say, born of immense passion, with no half-hearted measures. The pagan people who were a “warlike and unfriendly people,” who smeared the blood of their defeated enemies on their faces became a people entirely faithful to Christ, willing to shed their blood for His sake. Regrettably, things would take a turn towards the opposite extreme once again in the 20th century, but, for now, let us look a little closer at how the influence of Catholicism continued through penal times.
We must remember that the Penal Code of the 18th century imposed a complete prohibition on Catholic education (this included a ban on parents sending their children abroad for education). Other acts of Parliament designed to eliminate Catholicism included a ban on Catholics holding public office or purchasing property, as well as severely restricted rights of inheritance with the incentive to defect to Protestantism. Catholics, therefore, were educated secretly in what became known as “Hedge Schools” — although some secret schooling took place in barns, the expression “hedge school” was not merely metaphorical but a reality. However, as well as receiving a clandestine Catholic education, children were taught Irish and English grammar, mathematics, and sometimes Greek and Latin. In this we see the resilience and determination of the Irish Catholics to remain faithful to the true faith while ensuring a solid education for their children. We also see that, even in persecution, the lamp of learning was kept dimly alight in the Island of Saints and Scholars.
As one might expect, the ban on Catholic education posed difficulties for the training of priests. Seminaries could not exist legally in Ireland, so alternative solutions had to be found. The principal solution — although perilous as the seaports were filled with spies of the government — was to educate young men on the continent. As Archbishop Healy of Tuam (1903-1918) remarked, the Irish colleges abroad were “the salvation of the faith in Ireland” throughout the Penal Laws. Numerous Irish Colleges existed throughout Europe (some up until very recently), such as at Paris, Lisbon, Salamanca, Antwerp, Douai, and Rome. One curiosity which existed during this time (pre-1795) was that, due to insufficient supports for students, it became common practice not to send men to study theology abroad until after they had been ordained priests — that way, the young priests could help to support themselves by exercising their priestly ministry. As the same Archbishop Healy proudly noted, the high resolve of these young men “in evil days, to devote their lives to the work of God in Ireland, in spite of danger and persecution, is like a light from heaven gleaming over a dark and dreary waste of waters.”
Anti-Catholic laws abated
Ireland, needless to say, has a very long and complicated history, and while it became even more complicated in some ways during the late-18th and 19th centuries, it was also a period which saw a relaxation of (and eventually an end to) anti-Catholic laws. We cannot focus on the intricacies of the country’s history here since to do so would require several volumes, but we can look at just a few of the ways in which the Irish remained faithful to Our Lord and the Church.
Without a doubt, one of the most monumental moments of this period was the establishment of a seminary in Ireland in 1795. Across the continent, Irish colleges were under pressure due to such events as the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 and the aftermath of the French Revolution. In Ireland there were a number of “grudging relief measures” which relaxed the laws prohibiting Catholic education. There was already talk of “Catholic Emancipation” towards the end of the 18th century (although it was not granted until 1829), and following the French Revolution it probably seemed more sensible to the British government to allow priests to be formed at home as opposed to a country where revolution and revolutionary ideas were in the air, ready to be brought back to Ireland with young, idealistic priests. Having sought the patronage of a Protestant Member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, who had been a friend to the Catholics, the Trustees accepted the offer of Mr Stoyte’s House in Maynooth as a site for a new seminary in July 1795. In the autumn of 1795, fifty students were admitted for the priesthood to Maynooth College, presided over by thirteen staff members. For the next century and a half its growth was unstoppable — in the academic year 1962-1963 there were 546 seminarians, and Maynooth College was only one of several seminaries eventually established on the island of Ireland.
Apart from the thousands of priests ordained for ministry in Ireland, many would go abroad, mainly to dioceses in Britain and the USA. Notably, however, is that the missionary zeal of many of Ireland’s great early-Christian saints was rekindled in Maynooth College. In the early 20th century, the Maynooth Mission to China (canonically erected in 1918 as the Society of St. Columban) was founded from Maynooth. Later on, in 1920, there was an appeal to seminarians to volunteer on a mission to Africa. The fact that there were so many priests in Ireland by this time (a young priest would have to wait three to five years for an appointment in his native diocese) meant that there was a willingness to volunteer for this mission. From this group of missionaries, a new missionary society was canonically erected on 17th March 1932, the Society of St. Patrick for Foreign Missions.
Beyond the walls of Maynooth College, the Catholic Church was likewise growing and strengthening its position. Several great religious orders were founded to educate Irish Catholics and others were founded to run hospitals. The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded in 1775 by Venerable Nano Nagle, sought to educate young Catholics. From small and humble beginnings as the “relief measures” for Catholics were being introduced, the Presentation Sisters flourished throughout the 19th century. By the mid-19th century there were Presentation convents as far away as India. Inspired by Nano Nagle’s example, Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice founded two religious orders for men whose primary charism was the education of boys, namely the Congregation of Presentation Brothers and the Congregation of Christian Brothers (both having the same origins in 1802). As with the Presentation Sisters, these two orders sent missionaries to the ends of the earth. In 1831 Venerable Catherine McAuley founded the Sisters of Mercy, chiefly associated with education, although they also staffed hospitals. All of these orders experienced continuous growth until the mid-20th century.
As was the case throughout the history of Christian Ireland, tens of thousands of Irish men and women devoted their lives to Christ in the religious life. It is interesting to note as an aside that the repeal of the Penal Laws did not prevent some people looking down upon Irish Catholics and Catholicism with scorn. The English author, William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), in his Irish Sketchbook of 1842, recounted a visit to an Ursuline convent in Cork wherein he depicted the sisters as gullible simpletons, who cowered from the realities of the world, not serving God as well as they might “with a husband at [their] side, and a child on [their] knee.” What a grave misunderstanding of the heroism of these people who served the Lord in the religious life! Elsewhere in the same book, we may note that Thackeray never misses an opportunity to mock the faithful and the clergy. For example, while he seemed to have some respect for Fr. Theobold Matthew, the founder of the temperance movement, he seemed to think the temperance movement had made the people of Ireland gloomy. He also recounted his revulsion and horror at seeing the faithful making a penitential climb of Croagh Patrick, the mountain on which St. Patrick spent forty days and nights in prayer and fasting. “Fancy,” says Thackeray of the pilgrimage, “thousands of these bent upon their work, and priests standing by to encourage them! — for shame, for shame.” Nor did the merriment after the pilgrims’ descent impress Thackeray: “…the whole sight was as dismal and half-savage a one as I have seen.” Still, despite Thackeray’s harsh remarks, he proves our point: the Irish held fast to their Catholic faith in season and out of season, in times of persecution and in times of peace. Clearly, Thackeray would have been even more horrified at the faith of the Irish had he been able to re-visit Ireland fifty or a hundred years later.
Steeped in Catholicism
We cannot idealise Catholic Ireland as if it were some utopia: Ireland would remain in turmoil as it sought independence in the 20th century, and we cannot deny the crimes of some clergy and religious which have come to light in our own time. However, we see in the early 20th century a people completely steeped in Catholicism. We can look to the Capuchin Fr. Augustine’s book Ireland’s Loyalty to Mary for a few examples of this. Fr. Augustine gives an account of the spiritual dimension of the 1916 Easter Rising, one of the most pivotal moments in Ireland’s fight for independence. On the Saturday preceding the rising — that is to say Holy Saturday — almost every chapel in Dublin was crowded with men and boys for confession; similar scenes were witnessed the following day with thousands of men and boys receiving Holy Communion. Fr. Augustine quotes a friend of his thus:
There was hardly a man in the Volunteer ranks who did not prepare for death on Easter Saturday (sic), and there were many who felt as they knelt at the altar rails on Easter Sunday, that they were renouncing the world and all that the world held for them and making themselves worthy to appear before the judgement seat of God.
Even on the brink of battle, the Catholic spirit was evident, with accounts of the men and boys saying the Angelus before proceeding to their posts, or a mother pinning a badge of the Little Flower on her son as a plea for protection. There is another account of the Rosary being prayed in Jacob’s Biscuit Factory which had been occupied by the Irish Volunteers on the first day of the Rising:
As darkness settled, a group of Volunteers entered the bakery with candles which they set around the room in empty biscuit boxes… The whole garrison, with the exception of those on sentry duty, gathered inside the circle and knelt. Someone started the Rosary. As those in the bakery responded to the prayer, the men on the stairs took it up, the sound passing slowly from room to room until the whole building vibrated to the rise and fall of the mumbled voices.
Lest anyone imagine that the faith of these men was merely something superficial or something to calm them or pass the time while they were in battle, we may look to one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising and one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Joseph Mary Plunkett. Plunkett wrote one of the best-known Irish poems of the 20th century, I See His Blood upon the Rose. The poem, mystical in character, shows how simple and natural his faith in the Lord was, to the point that Plunkett saw the Christ in everything. It is worth reciting in full:
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice - and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
This was the Catholic faith which permeated the lives of ordinary Irish Catholics into the 20th century. What we have seen of the writings and experiences of the heroes of Irish independence shows how normal it was to be a devout Catholic, but also how Irish Catholics treasured and drew strength from their Catholic faith as they had done in times past. This fidelity was surely one of the reasons why Pope Pius XI would later choose Ireland as the setting for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, which coincided with the 1500th anniversary of the arrival of St. Patrick. We will resume the third and final part of this article at the 1932 Eucharistic Congress before looking at how the faith fared in Ireland during the 20th century.
Read Part 1: "What happened to Catholic Ireland?"
Read Part 3: "Fading fidelity"
By Father Gerard Quirke, FSSP, a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter who serves as associate pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Fort Worth. The fraternity is a clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right , that is, a community of priests who do not take religious vows, but who work together for a common mission in the Catholic Church, under the authority of the Holy See. The fraternity was canonically erected by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988. Ordained on June 3, 2018, Fr. Quirke was born and raised in Galway on the west coast of Ireland.