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The Mass in Ireland Today’s trials in light of past persecutions
by LIAM GIBSON
On hillsides and in stony pastures, in wooded glens and ruined shacks – the Mass Rocks that dot the landscape of rural Ireland are the beads on the unbroken chain that Irish Catholics clung to through the grinding years of often bloody persecution. Many overgrown, neglected, anonymous, and unknown, others venerated and preserved, these monuments are an outward symbol of the indelible mark that centuries of persecution have left on the identity of the church in Ireland.1 With recent legislation by the Dublin government making religious services in public virtually impossible, many have invoked the image of the Penal Days when the Mass was legally suppressed. While Catholics in Ireland today face none of the physical dangers endured by their ancestors, the witness to the faith of those who suffered is still relevant. It was the Mass for which they died and it was the Mass that sustained them. This is a story of heroic fealty and of a people who risked the loss of everything rather than be separated from the sacrifice of the Mass. ECCLESIA INTER HIBERNOS Long before Henry Tudor (1509-1547) broke with Rome, there were two distinct churches in Ireland. One native and Gaelic-speaking – the ecclesia inter Hibernos – and the other an off-shoot of the church in England, controlled by the English crown.2 Efforts to end irregular habits and customs which had taken hold in the native church (such as the hereditary appointment of bishops and the use of a wooden table for Mass rather than a stone altar) had already begun before the arrival of Norman lords but the Anglo-Irish church soon became the primary vehicle to implement the reforms Rome required. Ironically, however, when England became Protestant, it was the insular character of the Gaelic-speaking church that meant that most Catholics, both native and Norman, remained loyal to the pope.
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The antipathy which the Anglo-Irish hierarchy had always shown to the native church soon gave way to enmity and persecution. Bishops loyal to
Henry were installed in vacant sees while those who refused to acknowledge that his supremacy extended to spiritual matters were deposed and exiled. Monasteries, religious houses, church lands and other property were seized by the crown. The Annals of the Four Masters, compiled between 1632 and 1636 by Franciscan friars in Donegal and Leitrim, records the widespread devastation which followed the Protestant revolt:
“A heresy and a new error sprang up in England, through pride, vain-glory, avarice, and lust, and through many strange sciences, so that the men of England went into opposition to the Pope and to Rome. They at the same time adopted various opinions, and among others the old law of Moses, in imitation of the Jewish people; and they styled the king the Chief Head of the Church of God in his own kingdom. New laws and statutes were enacted by the king and Council Parliament according to their own will. They destroyed the orders to whom worldly possessions were allowed, namely, the Monks, Canons, Nuns, Brethren of the Cross, and the four poor orders, ie the orders of the Minors, Preachers, Carmelites, and Augustinians; and the lordships and livings of all these were taken up for the King. They broke down the monasteries, and sold their roofs and bells, so that from Aran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea there was not one monastery that was not broken and shattered, with the exception of a few in Ireland, of which the English took notice or heed.”3
Many abbots and superiors were martyred and Catholics, who had lost access to their buildings, had no option but to find suitable locations to assist the liturgy and receive the sacraments out of sight of the King’s agents. It was probably during this period from 1533 until the death of Henry’s son Edward VI (1547-1553) that Mass Rocks first made their appearance.
The joy that greeted the succession of Mary Tudor (1553-1558) and the restoration of papal authority in Ireland proved to be short-lived. Under Elizabeth (1558-1603), the Dublin Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity to enforce compliance with the Book of Common Prayer. The liturgy had been translated into English in 1550 but now altars were replaced with tables and the vestments of the clergy were simplified. While the new rite “omitted all mention of any true sacrifice” it “retained expressions capable of referring to the Real Presence”.4 At the same time, a new calendar was introduced eliminating fasts and drastically reducing the number of feast days. Failure to attend Protestant worship was met with a fine. Adherence to the Catholic faith became synonymous with treason and the martyrdom of priests and bishops resumed.
In 1567, Myler Magrath, Bishop of Down and Connor, apostatised and in 1571 he was installed as the Protestant Archbishop of Cashel. He died in 1621, having reconciled with the church. Fr Dennis Murphy SJ notes of Magrath:
“It is not generally known that he renounced the faith only after enduring much suffering, such as the cutting of his ears, the slitting of his nose, in London, where he had been seized when on his way from Spain to Ireland.”5
In 1603, the ancient links between Scotland and Ireland led many Catholics to expect that the reign of James Stuart (1603-1625) would bring official toleration of their faith. Catholics in Munster reclaimed the churches in Waterford, Cashel, Cork and Limerick as well as Wexford and Kilkenny. The response of the crown came swiftly with Charles
Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, James Stuart’s Deputy in Ireland, threatening the Catholics with violence. Mountjoy’s secretary, Fynes Moryson, was later to write of him:
“If they did not desist from the public breach of his Majesty’s laws in the celebrations of the Mass, he would think them fit to be prosecuted with the avenging sword of his Majesty’s forces.”6
Soon soldiers roamed the country in pursuit of priests. Any they captured were hanged on the spot. When a group of nobles and gentry petitioned Mountjoy to suspend the banishment and execution of priests until they could have a trial, he threatened them with a similar treatment. In Dublin, he ordered 16 of the city’s Aldermen to hear divine service in Christ Church, now an Anglican cathedral. When they failed to attend nine were fined £100, the rest £50 and all were imprisoned in Dublin Castle. Other leading Catholics were exposed to the same penalties while the lower classes were fined twelve pence each time they missed Protestant services. It was clear that no Catholic would be permitted to hold property or a position of prominence. In 1607, the position of the Ulster chieftains, Hugh O’Neill, Rory O’Donnell and their allies was becoming increasingly untenable. One of their concerns, as O’Donnell explained, was the growing pressure to abandon the Catholic faith:
“The Lord Deputy told me in [the] presence of many noblemen and gentlemen that I must resolve to go to church, or else should be forced to go thereto. Which threatening speech wrought that impression on my heart, that for this only respect of not going to church I resolved rather to abandon lands and living, yea, all the kingdoms of the earth, with the loss of life than be forced utterly against my conscience and the utter ruin of my soul to any such practices.”7
The loss of civil and military leadership which followed the departure of the Ulster chieftains was to have major consequences. With no one capable of protecting them, the Catholics of Ulster were driven off their lands which were given to English and Scottish Protestants.
King James, as an infant was taken from his mother Mary Stuart, and raised as a Protestant. Now, he sought to do the same to the children of noble families by ordering them to be sent to London to be educated in the English religion. In 1622, he established the Court of Wards which allowed the crown to take control of any estate if the heir was a child, leaving the widow and her other children dependent on her dowry. The court would then appoint a guardian, who had a right to sell the estate and even arrange a marriage for his ward. This was done supposedly for the “increase of the revenue and the good education of the King’s wards in religion and learning”. This was, however, unlawful. It was only 11 years later that the Irish Parliament granted legal authority to the exercise of this power to James’ son King Charles (1625-1649).8
Under Charles’ government, the legal penalties which Catholics faced were not always strictly enforced. However, the promises he made, in exchange for extortionate sums paid to the crown,9 were repeatedly broken. Eventually, the patience of Catholics in Ulster also broke and they rose up to recover their confiscated lands and redress of their grievances. When, on the eve of the English Civil War, the Puritan Parliament in London decreed the absolute suppression of the Catholic religion in Ireland both the native Irish and Old English factions joined the rebellion. Eventually, a treaty with King Charles was reached but with his execution in January 1649, the plight of Irish Catholics radically worsened. Later that year Oliver Cromwell (1653-1658) set out on a Puritan crusade to conquer Ireland for the Commonwealth. While negotiating the surrender of New Ross in County Wexford, Cromwell made his intentions clear stating: “…if by liberty of conscience you mean the liberty to practice the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and let you know that where the Parliament of England has power, that will not be allowed…”.10 Having defeated the Catholic and Royalist alliance, he set about implementing this policy. Naturally, the priesthood was the first target of Cromwell’s war on the faith in Ireland. The Jesuit mission to Ireland reports:
“…[O]n January 6th, 1653, there issued against the Catholics an edict of Cromwell, commanding all priests, under pain of death, to leave Ireland within twenty days. The same penalty, together with the forfeiture of all their property, was denounced against all laymen who should dare to harbour or protect any ecclesiastic in any way or for any pretext whatsoever… The clergy suffered many and grievous persecutions under former English Governors, but before this time they were never reduced to the lowest extreme of misery…”11
A bounty of £5 was paid for information leading to the capture of any priest who remained. It was made a capital offence to shelter them and “… anyone meeting a priest accidentally was subject to have his ears cut off and to be flogged naked through the streets if he did not inform on him.”12 The case of Daniel Connery illustrates the predicament the laity now faced. Connery, who was convicted of harbouring a priest was condemned to death.13 While his sentence was commuted to perpetual banishment, his property was confiscated. His three daughters were transported to the West Indies to be sold as slaves and his wife died destitute.14 On 26 September 1653, Parliament ordered all Catholics to be transported to the province of Connaught, the poorest and least arable counties in the west of the island. Under pain of death, they had to leave their lands no later than 1 May the following year to make way for English settlers.15 The percentage of land held by Catholics decreased from almost 70 per cent in 1641 to about 10 per cent by the end of the 1650s.16 Roughly one-third of the Catholic population lost their lives through fighting, famine and disease.17 By 1659 an estimated 50,000 men, women and children had been shipped as slaves to the West Indies and Virginia.18 Most of those who remained, in the words of Robert Kee, “were sentenced in their own country to a life of social ignominy and handicap”.19 With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the position of Irish Catholics improved but hopes that Charles II (1660-1685) would fulfil the terms of the treaty of 1649 proved false and anti-Cath-
THE RUINS OF MUCKROSS ABBEY (IRISH: MAINISTIR LOCHA LÉIN AND MAINISTIR MHUCROIS) Founded in 1448, Muckross Abbey was built as a Franciscan Friary. The Abbey was attacked and reconstructed many times until it was finally assaulted in 1654 by Cromwell’s forces. It was subsequently burned down and today only ruins remain.
olic legislation remained in place. Then in 1678, surrious claims of a “Popish Plot” to overthrow the king led to Peter Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, being thrown into prison where he died two years later. And on 1 July 1681, Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh, who had been taken to London, was hanged, drawn and quartered, the last Catholic martyr to die in England. In 1688, a plot to overthrow Charles’ Catholic brother, James II (1685-1688), was successful. On 12 March the following year, James landed in Ireland to raise an army to fight William of Orange (16891702) who had seized the throne. It was only at this point that the English crown finally took steps to ease the suffering of the Catholics in Ireland. This reprieve was, however, short-lived. When defeat sent James and his troops into exile, the civilian population was left with no defence against the vindictive cruelty of the new regime.20
“...THE OPPRESSION, IMPOVERISHMENT AND DEGRADATION OF A PEOPLE”21 Beginning in 1695, a series of Penal Laws were enacted to make life as a Catholic unendurable. “Papists” could not bear arms or own a horse of a value greater than £5. They could not buy land valued at more than £5 or take a lease for more than 31 years. Those who owned land were compelled to divide it on their death equally among their sons, making farmland less profitable and more easily acquired by non-Catholics. If one son became a Protestant, he would inherit the whole estate. If he converted before his parents died, he would become the legal owner reducing his parents to the status of tenants for life.
No Catholic could educate his children in the faith or send them abroad for education – “no person of the Popish religion shall publicly or in public houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning in any private house within this realm”.22 The only education that did not expose Catholic children to Protestant proselytism was the illicit “hedge schools” which began to spread across the country.23, 24 If caught, however, Catholic schoolmasters would be subject to the same penalties as priests.
No Catholic could act as a guardian of a Catholic child. A Catholic tradesman could employ no
OLIVER PLUNKETT (IRISH: OILIBHÉAR PLUINCÉID) 1 November 1625 – 1 July 1681. Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland who was the last victim of the Popish Plot. He was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, thus becoming the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years.
more than two apprentices in his workshop. No Catholic could vote, hold public office or practice law.
With their churches destroyed or commandeered, Masses were offered in private homes, moving from house to house within a locality. No bell or outward sign was to be fixed to any place of Catholic worship. All magistrates were required “to demolish all crosses, pictures, and inscriptions that are anywhere set up and are occasions of any popish superstitions”.25 The aim of these restrictions was to force as many Catholics as possible to abandon the faith. Some commentators argue that the Penal Laws were the result of Protestant insecurity,26 the greed of the Protestant Parliament in Dublin for Catholic land and wealth27 or the political need to weaken those still loyal to James and his heirs.28 Each of these reasons may be partially true. However, when we consider the Oath of Abjuration which apostate Catholics were required to swear, it becomes clear that the principal motivation was hatred of the Mass:
“I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I do believe that in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at or
after the consecration thereof, by any person whatsoever; and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous.”29
The target of the harshest laws was, of course, the bishops and the clergy. Over 400 Jesuits, monks and friars were exiled in 1698. Those who remained could only say Mass if they registered with local officials, provided two sureties, each in the sum of £50, and were forbidden to leave the county in which they were registered. In 1704 the government of Queen Anne (1702-1714) passed legislation for the:
“...banishing all regulars out of the kingdom and to prevent Popish priests coming into the same.”30
It stated:
“No popish parish priest shall have any popish curate or assistant, and every popish priest that shall neglect to register himself shall depart out of this kingdom before the 20th July, 1704, on pain of being prosecuted as a popish regular clergyman. And all such popish priests that shall neglect to register themselves and remain in this kingdom after July 20th, shall be esteemed popish regular clergymen and prosecuted as such.”31
As Henry Jefferies explains:
“Registration offered a degree of toleration to priests in the parish for which they were specifically registered but to none other. It was to provide a baseline for the gradual elimination of the institutional Catholic Church in Ireland. With no bishops permitted under the terms of the
Banishment Act, no priests allowed into Ireland from overseas, and no priest allowed to minister except for those registered in 1704, the Irish
Catholic priesthood would die out over time and not be replaced. A comprehensive register of priests was drawn up, and a renewed drive was made against Catholic bishops. In 1706 the only
Catholic bishops in Ireland were the incapacitated archbishop of Cashel and the imprisoned bishop of Dromore. The future prospects for the Catholic Church in Ireland seemed bleak indeed.”32
Unregistered priests were subject to imprisonment and transportation. If they dared to return they were to be hanged, drawn and quartered. From 1709, registration also required taking the oath abjuring the authority of the pope. In 1710, with a bounty of £100 for the capture of any Catholic bishop, Hugh McMahon, entered Ireland in secret and made his way to the diocese of Clogher in southwest Ulster.32 From there Bishop McMahon drafted a Relatio status describing for Rome the conditions in his diocese:34
“…from that time the open practice of religion either ceased entirely or was considerably curtailed according as the persecution varied in intensity. …priests have celebrated Mass with their faces veiled, lest they should be recognised by those present…”35
Priests like their parishioners were impoverished. They said Mass in soiled and tattered vestments and most of the sacred vessels in the diocese were made of tin. And with the closure of the Mass houses, the priests and the faithful were forced to return to the Mass Rocks. Information on where and when the liturgy was to be offered in a particular area would be spread discreetly. The Bishop noted:
“Over the countryside, people might be seen signalling to each other on their fingers the hour that Mass was to begin in order that people might be able to kneel down and follow mentally the Mass being celebrated at a distance.”36
In 1719, the Privy Council in Dublin recorded:
“The [Irish] Commons proposed the marking of every priest who shall be convicted of being an unregistered priest…remaining in this Kingdom after 1st May 1720 with a large ‘P’ with a red hot iron on the cheek. The council generally disliked that punishment, and have altered it into that of castration which they are persuaded will be a most effectual remedy.”37
This measure was too much even for the London government which prevented its passage into law.
Taken together the Penal Laws were so extreme and potentially damaging to Britain’s diplomatic relations with the Catholic powers of Europe38 that enforcing them uniformly and consistently proved difficult. Because of this, some historians have sought to minimise the level of persecution.39,40 It is not, however, unusual for a penal code to be enforced selectively since they are generally applied only when those in authority deem it necessary.41
By the mid-1740s, a degree of toleration had begun to appear and the provisions of the laws were gradually repealed under George III (17601820) in 1778 and 1782. Then, with the help of Edmund Burke, permission for a seminary in Maynooth was grudgingly granted in 1795. Fearful of revolution spreading from France, the government was eventually persuaded to make concessions to the church. Finally, on 13 April 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Act received royal assent.42 When enforcement of the Penal Laws was at its height, only 33 priests took the Oath of Abjuration and only 5500 Catholics officially converted to the Established Church. These came largely from the gentry and were probably motivated by the hope of protecting their estates from subdivision or the desire to have their younger sons enter the legal profession. The centuries of persecution had not succeeded in ending the practice of the faith but by the time they were repealed, a substantial portion of the Catholic population had been reduced to a state of unremitting poverty. Writing to a friend in England in 1764, a Protestant gentleman living near Dublin described the conditions of the lower farming class as “little better than a state of slavery”.43 By 1776, Catholics, who made up three-quarters of the population, owned just five per cent of the land.44 A French traveller in Ireland in the 1790s recorded his shock at the degradation and nakedness of the Irish poor living in huts that did not seem made for humans.45 The heroism of those who remained faithful to the Church under such harrowing conditions can only be attributed to an extraordinary grace. On 27 September 1992 Pope John Paul II beatified a representative group of those killed between 1537 and 1714.46 This is a very small number of the countless Irish martyrs whose deaths have gone largely unrecorded and whose names are known only to God.
• Patrick O'Hely, Franciscan Bishop of Mayo, 31
August 1579 • Conn O'Rourke, Franciscan priest, 31 August 1579 • Wexford Martyrs, 5 July 1581: Matthew Lambert, Robert Myler, Edward Cheevers, Patrick
Cavanagh, John O'Lahy, and one other unknown individual • Margaret Ball, 1584, Dublin • Dermot O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, 20
June 1584 • Maurice MacKenraghty, Chaplain to the Earl of Desmond, 1585 • Dominic Collins, Jesuit lay brother from Youghal, County Cork, 31 October 1602 • Conor O'Devany, Franciscan Bishop of Down & Connor, 11 February 1612 • Patrick O'Loughran, priest from County Tyrone, 11 February 1612 • Francis Taylor, former Mayor of Dublin, 1621 • Peter O’Higgins OP, Prior of Naas, 23 March 1642 • Terence O’Brien OP, Bishop of Emly, 31 October 1651 • John Kearney, Franciscan Prior of Cashel, 1653 • William Tirry, Augustinian priest from Cork, 12 May 1654 In a culture increasingly hostile to the church, Ireland’s martyrs still stand as a sign of contradiction – “an eloquent and magnificent sign which we are called to contemplate and to imitate.”47 There are several lessons to be learnt by considering the history of the church in Ireland. These are just a few of them:
• loss of leadership leaves the laity more vulnerable to coercion and an assault on their rights; • Catholics who will not renounce the faith will be hounded out of public life; • the right of parents to educate their children will be denied, they may even be threatened with having their children taken from them;
ILLUSTRATION OF A PRIEST CELEBRATING MASS IN SECRET DURING THE PENAL ERA IN IRELAND
• the powers of this world will break their promises; • only with the grace of God can we remain faithful.
TODAY’S TRIALS IN LIGHT OF PAST PERSECUTIONS Unfortunately, the honour conferred on the church in Ireland by the beatification of these 16 martyrs was eclipsed by other events that year. In May 1992, the faithful were shocked by the sudden resignation of the Bishop of Galway, Eamon Casey, after a man came forward claiming to be his son.48 Yet, within a matter of months, this scandal paled in comparison to an unfolding litany of child abuse convictions that brought disgrace upon the universal church and the vilification of the Catholic priesthood.
And in November, through a perverse reading of the Irish Constitution, the Republic’s Supreme Court ruled that a 1983 pro-life amendment,49 which was intended to protect children from abortion, actually authorised it when a woman threatened suicide.50 The equivocation of the bishops on how the faithful ought to vote in the subsequent referendum became a recurring theme in the years ahead.
The impact of these events has in many respects conditioned the bishops’ largely passive response to the rapid de-Christianisation of Ireland over the past 30 years. In his prologue to the recent republication of Our Martyrs, Dr Michael Kinsella, Director of Aid to the Church in Need, Ireland writes:
“…though the Penal Laws on which Our Martyrs focuses have since been repealed, it does not mean Ireland is now free from its own form of ‘soft persecution’, a pernicious phenomenon common across the West. For, in a great and tragic irony, when Ireland finally became free to worship God in peace and love, it chose to reject Him through violence and degeneracy; where once our churches were full with praise
and worship, now we abandon them amid pride and invective; where once our ancestors attended Mass rocks at risk of death, now we risk eternal death in pursuit of sin; where once martyrs died defending the Faith, now we live to destroy it. This form of persecution is doubly malevolent because these evil forces have cynically convinced Irish people to become their own persecutors. We now endure a political and corporate class who seek the total and final extinction of Christianity – and thereby Christians – through the toxic influence of Communism and its ideological lackeys of progressivism and secularism.”51
One result of this toxic ideology has been to make the Irish reject the faith of their ancestors. In 2015, the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to legalise homosexual “marriage” by popular vote. In 2018, abortion was legalised in the same way. The consequences of such a repudiation are described for us in the letter to the Hebrews:
“Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau; who for one mess, sold his first birthright. For know ye that afterwards, when he desired to inherit the benediction, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, although with tears he had sought it.” (Hebrews 12:16-17) In 2021, the church in Ireland saw one of the most rigorous lockdowns in Europe with the longest ban on the public reception of the sacraments. Opponents of the restrictions introduced by the Dublin government argued that they violated the
religious rights and freedom of worship guaranteed by Article 44 of the Irish Constitution.52 The police were used to enforce statutes that many claimed were unlawful. Between 26 December 2020 and 10 May 2021, church services were banned and priests threatened with punitive fines for the public celebration of the Mass or administering the sacraments. Even after services recommenced, access to churches was arbitrarily limited to 50 people regardless of the size of the building. This means that, for the vast majority of people, the ban on public Masses effectively remained in place.
While these restrictions seem unnecessarily vindictive, we cannot pretend that today’s hardships compare with the physical dangers faced by Catholics in previous centuries and yet they have done what the Penal Laws failed to do. An objective observer would be forced to conclude that the reason the restrictions continued for so long was due to the indifference of the laity and the prevarication of the hierarchy. With a minimum of protest, the bishops have applied and (in some instances) exceeded government recommendations. And, by accepting the unjust and potentially unlawful closure of churches, the bishops have effectively agreed that the public practice of the faith, the first precept of the Catholic Church, is not essential.53 One reason God may have permitted this situation to arise is to bring about a deeper appreciation of what we have taken for granted. Losing access to the Mass for a time may be both a chastisement and a warning. The many sacrifices of the martyrs, no doubt won countless graces for their descendants but if the Irish people fail to value that legacy, what we have been given could be taken from us (cf Luke 19:26-27).
In the ancient Latin rite of the Mass, every action is filled with meaning. Several interpretations have been attached to the migration of the missal. After the reading of the epistle on the south side of the altar, the missal is removed to the north side where the gospel is proclaimed. One interpretation of this action is that it symbolises the Jews’ rejection of Christ. The gospel is taken away from the people in the south, the Jews, and brought to the people of the north, the gentiles (cf Acts 13:46-48). Just before the end of the Mass, however, the action is reversed and the missal is taken from the north and brought back to the south. This signifies two things, the apostasy of the gentiles (cf 1Tim 4:1-3) and the conversion of the Jews (cf Romans 11:25-26).54 The apostasy the church is currently experiencing is certainly on a scale never before seen. And yet, even in Ireland, there are signs of renewal. Like most of the Western world, there has been a noticeable increase in interest in the ancient rite of the Mass. Only three months before the emergence of the coronavirus crisis, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest expanded its apostolate in Ireland to Belfast. The Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, formerly a Presbyterian church, opened in December 2019. Ironically, while Catholics north of the border have not been as severely constrained as their counterparts in the Republic, the restrictions on the mainstream church may have served to increase the number of Catholics learning about the Mass of their ancestors. In April 2021, the Institute announced that its female apostolate, the Sister Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest, a semi-cloistered community, will soon take over the former Convent of Mercy in Ardee, Co Louth. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the Society of Saint Pius X and other traditionalist apostolates in both Britain and Ireland have experienced a similar increase in Mass attendance. The witness offered by every Catholic martyr is inextricably linked to the Mass because “the offering of their lives is the greatest manifestation of the living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which constitutes true spiritual worship (cf. Rom 12:1)”.55 It was the Mass for which the Irish people suffered and it was the Mass which sustained them through that suffering. And it is the Mass that promises to evangelise Ireland once again.
Endnotes:
1. See Hilary Joyce Bishop, “Memory and Legend: Recollections of Penal Times in Irish Folklore”, (2018) Folklore, 129:1, pp. 18-38. 2. See Maurice Sheehy, When the Normans Came to Ireland, Mercier, (1998). 3. The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters [Annála Ríoghachta Éireann], John O'Donovan (ed), vol. 5, (1848-51), pp. 1446-7. 4. Catholic Online — Book of Common Prayer. 5. Dennis Murphy SJ, Our Martyrs: Record of the Catholics killed for their faith under the Penal Laws 1635-1691 Fallon, (1896) reprinted Michael Kinsella and Damien Richardson (eds), Aid to the Church in Need (2021), p. 134, f. 451. 6. Moryson’s Rebellion, p. 293, cited by Murphy, p. 10. 7. Murphy, p. 13. 8. Ibid., p.18-20. 9. Murphy cites: “Six subsidies of £50,000 each, payable in four years…”, Ibid., p. 23.
10. Michael McNally, Ireland 1649-52 Cromwell’s Protestant Crusade, Osprey (2009), p. 65. 11. Ex. Report of the Irish Mission, SJ in 1654. Spic Ossor, i. 40 cited by Murphy, p. 26. 12. Murphy, p. 28. 13. Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica, Sive Planctus Universalis totius Cleri et Populi Regni
Hiberniæ. I vol. 12 mo; Innsbruck, 1659. By FM Morison, OSF. In the library of Trinity College, Dublin, cited by Murphy, p. 28. 14. For an account of the ordeals suffered by Irish slaves in the sugar plantations of Barbados see Sean O’Callaghan, To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of
Ireland, Brandon, (2000). 15. Ibid., p. 45. 16. Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People, Random House, (2012), p. 13. 17. Robert Kee, The Green Flag vol 1: The Most Distressful Country, Quartet, (1976), p. 16. 18. O’Callaghan, p. 9. 19. Kee, p. 16. 20. Under Article I of the Treaty of Limerick, which ended the Williamite War, Catholics were guaranteed “such privileges in the exercise of their religion […] as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II.” Negotiators also secured safe passage for James’ troops out of the country. Once they had departed, however, the Treaty was broken and the Penal Laws enacted. 21. “It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.” — Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe MP on the subject of the Roman Catholics of Ireland...” in The Works of Edmund Burke, vol III, Little & Brown, (1839) p. 530. 22. Act,“to restrain foreign education”, 7 Will. III. c.4, XIV, cited by Murphy, p. 39. 23. Kee, pp. 19-20. 24. As late as 1804, Bishop James Murphy of Clogher reported to Rome that ninety per cent of the laity of his diocese were illiterate “owing to their great poverty”.
Catholic Directory, Veritas, (2007), p. 95. 25. Act 2 Anne c.6, An Act to prevent the further growth of Popery XXVII, cited by Murphy, p. 46. 26. Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster, Blackstaff, (2007), p. 168. 27. S J Connolly, Religion, law and power: the making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760, Oxford, (1992), p. 263-313; cited by Charles Ivar McGrath, “Securing the Protestant Interest: The Origins and Purpose of the Penal Laws of 1695” [1996] Irish
Historical Studies, 30, 117, pp. 25-46. 28. Fr Murphy addresses this argument stating: “We may willingly allow that rulers so keen-sighted as Elizabeth, Cromwell and William III were quite alive to the political advantages which they might secure by forcing the Irish into the English Church. But this being allowed, the character of the persecution by which the Irish Catholics were tried, remains the same. It was still a religious persecution.” Murphy, p. xi. 29. An Act 2 Anne c.6, An Act to prevent the further growth of Popery XV, cited by Murphy, p. 45. 30. Murphy, p. 47. 31. An Act for Registering the Popish Clergy, 2 Anne c.7, III, cited by Murphy, p. 47. 32. Henry Jefferies, “Penal Days in Clogher” [2009] History Ireland, 3, 17. 33. There were four brothers from the McMahon family Heber, Hugh, Bernard and Ross who held the see of Clogher. The last three would go on to become Primates of Armagh. 34. The Catholic Directory states: “There is no better description of the operation of the Penal Laws than the account of the Diocese of Clogher sent to Rome in 1714.” p. 94. 35. Cited by Jefferies. 36. Bardon, p. 169. 37. Ibid., pp. 168-9. 38. Murphy cites Plowden’s attribution of the partial toleration to the efforts of Lord Taaffe, the Austrian Ambassador to England who was an intimate friend of George II (1727 – 1760). Plowmen, History of Ireland, iv. 61. Murphy, p. 61, f. 242. 39. See Marianne Elliot, Catholics of Ulster, Penguin, (2000). 40. James Kelly, “The Historiography of the Penal Laws” in John Bergin, Eoin Magennis, Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, and Patrick Walsh, (eds) New Perspectives on the Penal Laws, Dublin: Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, (2011), pp. 27–54. 41. Aaron Graham, “Slave codes and penal laws in eighteenth-century Jamaica and Ireland: a comparative and historiographical survey” [2018] Jamaican Historical
Review. 42. Kee points out that steps were immediately taken to limit the number of Catholics eligible to vote when the franchise qualification was raised from 40 shillings to £10 freehold. p. 186. 43. Ibid. p. 22. 44. Bardon, p. 168. 45. Kee, p. 22. 46. Catholic Online, 17 Irish Martyrs. 47. John Paul II, Ecclesia In Europa, 13, 28 June 2003. The pope’s remarks referred to the European martyrs of the Twentieth Century but are equally true of the Irish Martyrs. 48. Michael O’Regan, ‘Obituary: Eamonn Casey’ The Irish Times, 13 March 2017. 49. Bunreacht na Éireann, Article 40.3.3° The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right. — Eighth Amendment, 7 October 1983. 50. Attorney General v X, IESC 1; 1 IR 1 51. Murphy, pp. vi-vii. 52. Bunreacht na Éireann, Article 44.1: The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion. 1°. Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen […] 5°. Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes. 53. The first precept (“You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and rest from servile labour”) requires the faithful to sanctify the day commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord as well as the principal liturgical feasts honouring the mysteries of the Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints; in the first place, by participating in the Eucharistic celebration, in which the Christian community is gathered, and by resting from those works and activities which could impede such a sanctification of these days. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2042. 54. “The Epistle, the carrying across of the missal, the Gospel and the Creed, are to remind us that the Gospel was first preached to the Jews, and being rejected by them, was proclaimed to the Gentiles, many of whom believed and were baptised.” Francis Spirago, The Catechism Explained, Benzinger, (1899) p. 540. 55. Ecclesia In Europa, 13.
