Vol 8 Ireland

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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REGINA Editor: Beverly De Soto Staff Writers: Ed Masters Tamara Isabell Michael Durnan Donne Sue Berry Teresa Limjoco Harry Stevens Sequoia Sierra Rosa Kasper Dan Flaherty Contributors: Liam O‘Dwyer Meghan Ferrara Bridget Green Fr. Jeffrey Keyes Karen Dietrich

Associate Editor Rosa Kasper Layout/Graphic Designer: Phil Roussin Photography: Teresa Limjoco Harry Stevens Michael Durnan Steve Mastrangelo Michael O'Brien Webmaster: Jim Bryant

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We seek the Good, the Beautiful and the True – in our Tradition and with our God-given Reason. We really do believe in one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. We are joyfully loyal to the Magisterium. We proudly celebrate our literary and artistic heritage and seek to live and teach the authentic Faith.

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From the Editor

Is the Faith Dead in the ancient ‘Land of Saints and Scholars’?

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e have great respect for the Irish and Ireland, their ancient ‘Land of Saints and Scholars.’ A warm– hearted, unpretentious people, the tenacity of the Irish is legendary. Against all odds, they brought the light of the Faith to Europe in the Dark Ages – and then spread over all the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But the Ireland of The Thin Man is no longer with us. The whitewashed cottages nestled in green hills are all but gone.

Modern Ireland is clean and efficient; despite the severe recession of recent years it is clear that the Celtic Tiger has prospered.

Sleek German luxury cars sweep down smooth highways.

Cottages that their forebears lived in are nowadays turned into garden sheds in the back yards of American-style Mc Mansions. Dublin is awash in young people intent on living the life of hip modern Europeans – a life that does not include their ancient Faith.

However, like the proverbial canary in the mineshaft, Ireland is a harbinger for the global Church. Though the little canary is not dead, she is sorely stricken. For underneath the veneer of prosperity and glitz, a thick cloak of spiritual darkness lies spread over Ireland today.

they think that Faith is. Denied catechism for over 50 years, most of the laity know next to nothing of the Faith.

Incredibly, the reaction of much of the Church’s aging hierarchy is to go deeper into denial. No one attends Mass?

They want to make the Mass more ‘relevant.’ No one believes in the Real Presence? They shunt the Eucharist aside. What is the problem? It’s Rome, of course.

Meanwhile, media reports and popular films full of halftruths infuriate people all over again--and they stay away in droves. No sacraments. No grace. No vocations. A kind of spiritual death lies like a cold pall over the Emerald Isle.

What will happen? Either the Faith will re-enter that culture or Ireland will lose it entirely.

Faith, however, is ultimately something in the heart, and the Faith runs deep in Ireland. Some of our writers have observed that the Faith is not dead, but in a state of suspended animation -- waiting for the next St Patrick to light another fire on the Hill of Slane.

Here at Regina Magazine, we believe that we are witnessing the first stirrings of yet another turning point in Ireland’s long history. Faithful Irish priests and lay people tell us that there are small cadres of young people ardent for the Faith, In the years since Vatican II, powerful prelates in the in Irish cities, universities and country towns. We have Irish Church have cruelly betrayed the trust of centuries visited parishes in the midst of a rebirth. We have spoken of Catholic civilization. Rape. Pillage. Institutionalized corruption on a scale which staggers the imagination. Mortal with ancient Orders, suddenly receiving young, orthodox vocations. sins of enormous gravity, committed by a clergy that has all but banned talk of ‘sin’ from their progressive pulpits.

For the truth is that the Faith that the real Saint Patrick – a Just how deep this betrayal of the Irish people runs can only fifth century Romanized Briton who was kidnapped by Irish slavers – brought to be understood against the background of what the Faith has Ireland is not dead. It historically meant to the Irish. The bond between the Irish lies hidden in the Real and their religious ran deep in the blood.

Presence, now a flame flickering in Ireland’s For it is true that Irish men would put on a priest’s cassock green heart -- as you and undergo torture in his place during the penal times. will see in ‘The Secret Irish priests and nuns died in scores attending to famine Catholic Insider Guide and typhus-stricken Irish families. Diaspora Irish the world to Ireland.’ over gathered in their parishes to keep the light of their civilization and their Faith alive, so far from Ireland’s green Beverly De Soto shores.

Editor, Regina Today, the Faith is dying in Ireland. Only the very elderly Magazine attend Mass. Ancient nuns clad in twinsets decline to Dublin, May 2014 identify themselves on hotel registers; they call themselves ‘Ms.’ Vocations are practically non-existent. Ordinary Irish people are hostile to the Faith of their forebears – or what Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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33rd annual chesterton conference

July 31st - August 2nd

University of Saint Mary of the Lake, Mundelein Seminary NANCY BROWN, author of the upcoming

biography of Frances Chesterton:

DALE AHLQUIST, president of the

American Chesterton Society:

The Democracy of the Dead

The Marriage of Gilbert & Frances Chesterton

ART LIVINGSTON, senior writer for Gilbert:

For God and Beer: The Flying Inn Revisited

SCOTT RICHERT, executive editor

for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture:

Returning to Reality:

Chesterton, Pieper, and Tradition DAVID DEAVEL, associate editor for Logos: A

Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture:

Chesterton as Theologian

JOSEPH PEARCE, prolific biographer:

Racing with the Devil

DAVID FAGERBERG, professor of theology

at Notre Dame University:

Chesterton is Everywhere

FR. ROBERT WILD, author of The Tumbler

of God:

Jousting with the Devil

FR. IAN BOYD, editor for The Chesterton

TOM MARTIN, professor of philosophy

at the Univ. of Nebraska-Kearney:

Chesterton and Aristotle

FR. JOHN UDRIS, spiritual director

at St. Mary’s Seminary, Oscott:

Chesterton & the Little Flower

JULIAN AHLQUIST, instructor at

Chesterton Academy:

The Alchemist of Common Sense

SEAN P. DAILEY, editor-in-chief for Gilbert:

Chesterton as a Model of Lay Spirituality

Review:

The 40th Anniversary of The Chesterton Review

register online at www.chesterton.org page 4

Libertyville, Illinois

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Most Rev. Thomas J.

Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield in Illinois

Join Us for Our Best Conference Ever www.reginamag.com

Table of Contents The Art of Ireland

Chesterton the Irishman Irish Linens and Woolens Beautiful Irish Lace Finding Grace - a Catholic Book Review Secret Catholic Insider’s Ireland Travel Tip

The Diaspora Irish A Meditation: The Irish & Their Religion The Irish Horror Escape from Ireland Going Home to Aran Sister Will See You Now - a Short Story An American Priest Visits Ireland

The Church Lough Derg - Ireland's Purgatory The Irish Abbey That Refused To Die Defending the Faith at the Highest Intellectual Levels Celtic Christianity - a Photo Essay ‘Ancient, Mysterious, Prayerful, Powerful’ The Truth about Ireland and the Faith The Devil Has Not Gone Away Knocking Knock

The Orders Silverstream Priory Renaissance in Limerick

The Saints Of Demons and Druids…The Real Saint Patrick Saint John Paul II in Ireland Ireland's Shining Priest Strength, Grit, and Faith Saint Ita

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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Chesterton the Irishman Dale Ahlquist Visits the Irish Dale Ahlquist, the intrepid head of the American Chesterton Society, visited Dublin to talk with the Chestertonians there about their favorite author. Here, Dale tells Regina Magazine’s Tamara Isabell about his trip, the Irish, and Chesterton.

So, what brought you to Ireland? Is there much interest in Chesterton there? ‘The G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland invited me. I gave talks in both Dublin and Limerick, but I did more listening than speaking.’

Thanks to your work, GK is becoming better known in Catholic circles, but he still is overlooked in our schools. Is it the same in Ireland? Do they study his works there? During Chesterton’s lifetime, every school child would have been familiar with his poems, such as The Battle of Lepanto and The White Horse, as well as his essays. University students would have read his philosophical works (Orthodoxy), his social commentary (What’s Wrong with the World), and his novels (The Man Who Was Thursday). But after his death, the reading of Chesterton faded slowly from the classroom.

“Most Irish consider G.K. Chesterton to be an Irishman and George Bernard Shaw to be an Englishman.”

The resurgence of interest in his writings has come mostly from outside academia. At the university level, students now are discovering Chesterton by themselves. Today, we are seeing graduate students doing their master’s or doctoral theses on Chesterton. The problem for most of them is finding professors who know anything about Chesterton.

I had tea with the former chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin, one of the greatest universities in the world. He knew Chesterton’s works, but admitted that Chesterton is not taught at Trinity. page 6

How did Chesterton feel about the Irish? Chesterton was a great champion of the Irish, and they knew it and loved him for it. The Irish poet Maurice Leahy said that most Irish consider G.K. Chesterton to be an Irishman and George Bernard Shaw to be an Englishman.

Chesterton always argued for Irish home rule, and admired the Irish for their wit, resilience, and love for faith and family. The people of Ireland honored Chesterton by donating the church bell for the bell tower in Chesterton’s church in Beaconsfield, England, as a memorial to him.

How did his fellow Englishmen respond to his Irish sentiments? I would say that most English intellectuals knew Chesterton was right, but they kept quiet about it. No one ever stepped forward to argue with him about his position on Ireland, as they would argue with him on economics or religion.

So many of GK’s writings have not only stood the test of time, but also have proven prophetic in many ways. Is this true of his writings about the Irish, as well? Chesterton says that the Irish national spirit is always living because it is always dying. That sounds timely. And although it is not specifically a prophecy about the Irish, Chesterton was talking about Ireland when he said that every political question is ultimately a religious question.

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“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.” Would Chesterton say the same thing today?In general yes, because Chesterton speaks in generalizations.

Chesterton verbal fireworks and astonishing insight, like this gem: “The most important sort of knowledge is to know which things are worth knowing,” (from a 1932 article in Sign a Catholic magazine).

‘There may be some sadness in their fighting these days and some shallow cackling in their contemporary music, but the Irish will not be satisfied with sad fighting and happy singing.’

We’ve made a lot of progress on this gigantic project. We’re hoping to work with a university to host a website to make this incomparable tool available.

And might we be calling him “Saint Chesterton” anytime soon? Chesterton’s Cause has not been opened officially. The investigator is Canon John Udris, the spiritual director at St. Mary’s Seminary in Oscott, England. He will be speaking at our Chesterton Conference this summer at St. Mary’s on the Lake, Mundelein, Illinois, just north of Chicago. We hope that the result Did you attend Mass while you were in Ireland? Your of Fr. Udris’ investigation will lead to Chesterton’s being declared impressions? a Servant of God. What is there of value to Americans today in GK’s “Irish Impressions”? The three main themes apply to Americans today: the natural virtue of patriotism, the importance of the family as the basic unit of society, and the danger of irreligion that makes men passive.

‘The churches that I visited in Ireland were ruins, destroyed by the English 500 years ago. In spite of their being piles of rock, they still are sacred places.’

While most of our readers are familiar with Chesterton, some of them may not have read any of his works. Could you recommend a good starting point for someone new to Chesterton? Well, I recommend that first timers start with the two introductory books that I wrote on Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense and Common Sense 101:Lessons from G.K. Chesterton.

In the meantime, we have prayer cards. Ask for his intercession.

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

I design my books to open the gate to the world of Chesterton, such as his all-important Orthodoxy, a mixture of madness, fairy tales, suicide, and yacht and chariot rides.

And for our readers seeking some lesser-known gem to discover? I recommend The Illustrated London News essays (which are part of the Collected Works published by Ignatius Press), and if you have access to a good library, the Daily News essays (published by Pickering and Chatto).

‘And then there is Gilbert magazine, published by the American Chesterton Society, with quotes like this gem from 1930: “When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.”’

I understand all Chesterton’s works will be more widely accessible soon? Getting all Chesterton’s writing into an easily searchable, digital format is a project we have been working on for years.

The first and biggest part of the project has been to collect all that he wrote: 100 books, 5,000 essays, hundreds of poems. In addition, we keep finding more, full of the Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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Beautiful Irish Linens & Woolens A Tradition Anchored in the Church

by Sequoia Sierra While Ireland’s rich history in linens and woolens has been somewhat forgotten, as with all things Irish the finest things can be traced to their origins in the Church.

Linen and wool production began in Irish monasteries in the Middle Ages. For centuries, the design and production of fine linens specifically centered around the Mass. One imagines that there must be many beautiful altar linens tucked away in Irish churches -- or even still in use. This is because these linens were made to last for ages, much like the Mass itself.

By the 1600s, Ireland had become a European hub for producing both fine linens and wool.

Linen is made from the beautiful flax flower which only blooms for one day. Depending on the mode of production, the elements can be manipulated to provide either finer or coarser linen. Northern Ireland was especially known for its fine linens.

Today, we see the remnants of this churchly tradition in Ireland’s continued production of fine linens for special occasions.

Ireland is known for its beautiful tablecloths and heirloom items in particular, such as traditional-style christening gowns still exported from Ireland at very reasonable prices.

Irish woolens While the number of mills has certainly decreased, there is still a strong tradition and artistry in both Irish linens and woolens.

And while wool production has since gone to other countries to a large degree, a few old family-owned and run Irish mills still remain which produce heirloom-quality fine woolens.

Monks and sheep were the essential ingredients of the origin of the Irish woolens industry. Ireland's cool and moist climate is perfect for raising sheep with thick coats. page 8

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Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

page 9 PHOTO COURTESY OF www.irishshop.com

Beautiful Irish Lace

How the Church Taught Lace-making to the Irish Irish Lace is famous the world over, but most people have no idea that this industry originated with the Irish Famine and the Catholic Church’s response to the plight of the suffering poor.

niques, methods imported from all over Europe.

They in turn taught these to Irish women and girls as a means of gainful employment for women whose men were all too often unemployed or underpaid he industry might never have flourished farm workers. had it not been for the Famine in the mid 19th Century. One way in which the Church An industry was born, and the unique layered, inresponded was to help training centers to tricate look of Irish lace was eventually developed, be set up by Catholic clergy and convents as a means distinguishing it from other European laces. of assistance to the suffering poor.

T

Irish laces evolved in distinct styles according to the The nuns in these convents were the repositories of region in which the lace was made, among them Irish knowledge of the ancient craft of lace-making techpage 10

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Crochet, Carrickmacross, Clones, and Kenmare. The various laces adorned tables and clothing alike, but were also commonly used for wedding dresses, veils, and baptismal garments. Sadly, the industry was a short-lived one, as the advent of the Industrial Revolution made machine-made lace cheaper and more readily available.

AD Today, there are still some works of Irish Lace to be found in antiques shops, and a few artisans in Ireland and throughout the world continue to practice the technique. While there is a machine-made version available, traditional Irish Lace is always made by hand.

Larisa Chilton, founder of the Irish Crochet Lab, shared some images of the beautiful traditional work she is doing for a client.

These lovely pieces will eventually be joined to make a wedding dress, a design which will take an estimated eight months to complete!

Anyone with basic crochet skills can learn the craft, but the available resources are primarily in the form of 19th Century books, written in a form of English that can make the patterns difficult to interpret.

Luckily for those interested, Larisa has made it her mission to keep the craft alive by teaching it on her website. Visit irishcrochetlab.com to find out more about her video tutorials.

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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the Catholic Book Corner

available for purchase at:

‘Finding Grace’ in 1970's America Finding Grace presents a penetrating retrospective on the radical changes of a turbulent eight-year span in America between 1972 and 1980. It tells the tale of a girl’s striving for sanctity as she comes of age during a time of revolutionary changes in the Church and in society. The story touches deeply on issues of family, faith, friendship, as well as on the value of chastity.

According to the biography Amazon provides, the author, Laura H. Pearl, grew up in Plattsburgh, New York, and earned a BA in English at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She married her high school sweetheart, and they are the parents of five sons.

Finding Grace received the Catholic Writers Guild Seal of Approval in 2012 and was a finalist for the CWG’s Catholic Arts & Letters Award (CALA).

by Dan Flaherty Finding Grace goes from being a nice Catholic story to I-can’tput-it-down territory.

Grace Kelly is the story’s protagonist. When the story begins, Grace is an awkward, book-loving thirteen-year-old, who must bear the burden of having the name of a beautiful film star, without having either her beauty or her charm.

The Kellys are a proud IrishAmerican Catholic family living in Plattsburgh, N.Y., between the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains of Vermont. Grace’s father sets the tone with his commitment to the faith—from carrying the rosary beads in his pocket, to casually suggesting to his daughter that she read St. Augustine.

Grace does so, and decides to try to become a saint. The book is the story of her high school and college years, as she discovers herself as a child of God, and finds God’s grace through her discoveries.

Amazon classifies Finding Grace as young-adult fiction, and places it in the category of “Women’s Inspirational Christian Fiction,” but the book also would appeal to adult readers, especially those who came of age during the 1970s and 1980s. It is a book mothers and their teenaged daughters could enjoy reading together. It isn’t recommended for children younger than 13 because of some sensitive subjects related to chastity.

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Such an odd title attracted me to the book.

That and its cover; a photo of a tower on a cliff above the ocean. “Ireland,” I thought, or some other place of similar contradiction and beauty.

So, I picked it up and began to read. In a dozen or so pages of introduction and the remaining few dozen pages of poetry and pictures I was so glad I had done right by myself.

Probably, no one should claim that poems are a treat. Well, not unless they are Nursery Rhymes or Nonsense and you are reading them aloud to a little child or having them read to you. So I’ll not say these are like that. But, oh, they satisfy the soul in many ways.

Truly Irish, they even had me laughing aloud once or twice in the middle of matters so serious as sin, death and forgiveness.

Thomas Lynch, the Poet, says: “We are all – every being in creation – hungry for the favor of our Creator. We all believe that God is on our side. And yet all of us know the pain of not belonging, the cruel isolation of the shunned and excommunicated. Still, if begrudgery is contagious, so is gratitude. And Argyle (the sin-eater of the title) concludes that to be forgiven we must forgive, everyone and everything…” All of us, he writes, are “…fellow pilgrims, at times ridiculous, at times sublime, but always beloved of God.” As I read the last lines of the last poem I turned back to the beginning to read the words I just quoted above, and sat thinking of the Suffering Servant who “gave his back to buffets and spitting,” and of Palm Sunday. Read the book and you will understand why. It is a perfect book for Holy Week. Or any week!

Lynch uses a word in this book that I had never heard before: “swithering,” a Scottish word, he says, which means to be of two minds, in two realities at one and the same time.

“Is it books you like?” It was the cousin of my wife, Sheila, may she rest in peace, who asked me. We were in an old ruin of a farmhouse on some land he had just come into, in a little glen not far from Newcastle West in County Limerick. “Here,” he said, “take this.” He held out a smallish book, a book of prayers and poems. “Five brothers owned the place, and the last one died here three years ago. I bought it from the estate. No one is left.” He explained that he would “knock the house” and keep the land for his cows, the barn for milking. I looked around through the empty rooms of the old house he didn’t need This is a special advertisement section of Regina Magazine paid for by:

a Book Review by Peter Gallaher and leafed through the pages of the book. A letter fell out and I picked it up. One of the brothers was writing to another, telling him about life in England, how he couldn’t wait to get back home and begging prayers for his safe return. Now they were all gone, and only the little book was there to tell the story – the little book, and the cows.

“There’s a Mass Rock above,” my cousin-in-law said. “We’ll go up, now.” I went with him up the path to the pasture where the Mass Rock was and said a prayer there for the brothers, that all of them were safely home. I left the book behind me when I left Ireland all those years ago. The brothers I carry with me still.

If holding well-made books is something you like to do, The Sin-Eater: A Breviary is a book to hold. A collection of two dozen, twenty-four line poems - a book of hours - it is superbly made, beautifully covered and artfully illustrated with black and white photos of Ireland. If reading good books is something you like to do, you will be well pleased with your purchase … and so will anyone to whom you give the book as a gift.

What you find inside is worth every step of the swithering journey.

Regina reader save an additional 14% with coupon code REGINA14 at checkout!

On the western fringes of the Emerald Isle, where the Irish language and traditional devotions survive to this day, the legends of Ireland’s ancient native saints from the Dark Ages endure.

Secret Catholic Insider’s Ireland Travel Tip ‘He Comes to Life With Every Dawn’

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aints Fursey, Fechin, Enda, Gormgail, and Dymphna can also be found, however, throughout Ireland in the magnificent stained glass windows of the famous Irish artist Harry Clarke (1889 – 1931).

Saint Fursey (died 650), one of the “Four Comely Saints”, was an Irish monk who did much to establish Christianity throughout Ireland, Scotland and particularly in East Anglia, England. He reportedly experienced angelic visions of the afterlife.

The “Four Comely Saints” (Irish: An Ceathrar Álainn) is a collective name for the Saints Fursey, Brendan of Birr, Conall, and Berchán of the early Irish Christian church. At their reputed burial place on Inishmore -- the largest Aran Island – stands a ruined fifteenth-century church dedicated to them.

In Ireland, one work of beautiful sacred art often inspires another. This ancient church inspired a well-known poem, Teampal an Cheathrair Álainn (‘The Church of the Comely Foursome’) by Máirtín Ó Direáin (1910 – 1988), one of Ireland’s most famous Gaelic poets. A reputed miraculous cure at the nearby holy well inspired John Millington Synge’s (1871 – 1909) play The Well of the Saints.

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by Karen Dietrich

Harry Clarke, the late 19th- early 20th Century artist who represented the richly spiritual world of these holy folk, was much influenced by his childhood holidays on the Aran Islands, where devotion to the traditional saints was strong in his day. A Dubliner by birth, he was a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement.

Stained glass was central to his career, his work being distinguished by the finesse of its drawing and his striking use of rich colors. Aran flora and fauna often adorn Clarke’s work.

Visiting Dublin? Here’s a Secret Catholic Insider’s Tip: Check out the windows of Bewley’s Café on Dublin’s Grafton Street for Clarke’s work. Prepare for this treat by picking up Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke by Lucy Costigan. This magnificent book contains the entire stained glass collection of Harry Clarke. Also, visit harryclarke.net to discover where to see Clarke’s work.

A friend, the Irish writer Lennox Robinson, once wrote: “Harry Clarke in the east end or transept of many a church in Ireland and elsewhere comes to life with every dawn and will have his daily resurrection.”

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Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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A Meditation:

by Bridget Green

In response, the Irish held even faster to their Faith. They taught their children in secret; they shared their faith through symbols and secret meetings.

They refused to let go.

The Irish & Their Religion

Irish Catholic Americans, who have never set foot in Ireland, share this feeling of ownership over their Catholicism. The immense celebration of St. Patrick’s Day each year is bigger in New York than it is in Dublin. Thousands upon thousands attend each year, packing St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the morning and 5th Avenue by lunchtime.

The Irish are known for their humor, their storytelling, their singing. As Chesterton famously wrote, “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, for all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad” (Ballad of the White Horse).

T

hey are also known for their Catholicism. Growing up Perhaps it was the tragedy of leaving in a family of 16 children in New Jersey, I can attest to their land which made the diaspora Irish cling to their Cathothis. We were often asked if we were ‘Irish Catholics.’ lic identity? When they first came to America, the Irish were derided for being different, for being poor, for being CathoSpeaking as an Irish Catholic (with some Scots, English and lic. Just as they had clung to their land at home, they clung German in the mix as well, according to my genealogicallyto their Faith in Amerinclined father), I can ica. In times of hardconfidently assert that ship, they turned to the the Irish like things Church. In times of joy their own way. And if and celebration, they that way happens to be turned to the Church. contrary to others -- for example, the English -Just as they had clung that’s fine by them. to their land at home, Their ability to cling, to hold on, to never let go to what is theirs is, by far, their most prominent trait. It’s a fact: we Irish don’t let go of things once we take them as our own.

Take, for instance, the land itself. The British have tried taking it more than once. It hasn’t gone well for them. The famous joke is that the conquest of Ireland was begun in 1066 and has never been completed.

The English knew that depriving the Irish of their land and their language would not suffice; without depriving the Irish of their Church, they would never defeat them.

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the Irish clung to their Faith in America. In times of hardship, they turned to the Church.

In times of joy and celebration, they turned to the Church.

When the “locals” (read: slightly senior Protestant immigrants) mocked them for their ‘popery,’ they packed the churches even more.

They formed tight-knit communities in their neighborhoods, centered on the local parish, which was almost always led by an Irish priest. It’s clear that the Irish in America kept their Catholic identity partly because everyone from the English to the Americans had tried to take it away from them. www.reginamag.com

But why do the Irish cleave to their Catholic heritage today? It’s fascinating that the Irish in both Ireland and America still cling to this Catholic identity, although many no longer participate in the life of the Church.

For the Irish – and for all the faithful, everywhere – it is clear that the lack of rigorous religious education over the last four decades has taken its toll. Left to their own devices in a secular education system and a media-driven world, Irish Catholics now are often among the most passionate supporters of birth control, abortion and feminism. More recently, the sex abuse scandals have driven a sharp wedge between the Irish and their ancient religion.

And yet the Irish hold fast to the idea of being Catholic.

They refuse to let go, even if they are Catholic in name only. To them, it is not “simply” their religion. It is, instead, a part of being Irish. It is St. Patrick and St. Brigid, soda bread and shamrocks, roast and Rosaries, and everything else that is so closely associated with being Irish Catholic.

In a rootless America adrift among many pieties, perhaps it is the only form of authentic identity left to them?

The Irish are a stubborn, contrary people and it is exactly this that has helped them to keep at least their culturallyCatholic identity. I wonder, perhaps if it will be this national trait which will be the very thing that introduces a resurgence of the Church in Ireland.

God willing, perhaps even a return to the days when the Irish were as Catholic as Ireland’s hills are green?

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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The Irish Horror

They Starved to Death on Ireland's Green Hills Once upon a time in Ireland, one million people starved to death. On the land. Under By the 1840s, when the bridges. On the sides of rural roads. In barns.

Famine struck, 95% of

Ireland’s land was in British

It’s been seven generations since the Great Famine, but the Irish and their diaspora hands, mostly owned by cousins around the world have never forgotten. absentee British landlords Will never forget. Can never forget.

employing Irish Protestant overseers.

It was a time when the Faith of the Irish sustained them. When not even food offered How the Catholics Lived during a time of hunger would induce an Irishman to renounce his Faith.

Catholics were laborers,

by Harry Stevens working small farms rented from the British, usually of several acres. They were ‘tenantsOur story begins two generations before the Famine, when at-will,’ never secure in their homes, vulnerable to eviction at an Irish political uprising against the occupying British was any time. brutally put down in 1798. Still smarting from their defeat in America, the British Empire deployed about 100,000 troops Whole families lived in single room mud huts. Some kept to Ireland; by 1800, they had assumed utter control. livestock; sometimes the livestock was sold to help pay the rent. Many lived in poverty, barely sustaining a living on

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these farms. Not surprisingly, homeless beggars abounded worse by splitting up families, as men, women, and children even before the Famine struck. were separated and forced to live apart. The Irish family, the strength of the community, began to crumble.

Plenty of food for those who could pay Government workhouses were, in effect, penal institutions.

The Irish starved in the midst of plenty. During the Famine The Irish gave up everything they had upon entering, and were times, Irish farms produced record crops such as oats and forced to wear penal-like clothing. They endured long work barley, but these were earmarked for export and making alcohol hours, short family visitation hours, enforced silence, meager -- all profits to be made by British landowners. Irish cash crops wages, minimal food. did not fail during the famine years. There was plenty of food for those who could pay.

The Irish considered workhouses to be fever-ridden prisons for the innocent. The choice for the poor was stark – starve to How, then, did people starve? The potato was a staple of the diet death outside or of fever inside the squalid workhouses. of the Irish peasant, providing vitamin C plus the carbohydrates and protein needed for a day. A family of six would consume A Perfect Storm of Evil five tons of potatoes a year.

Ultimately, the Famine was a perfect storm of wind-borne A farmer could feed his family and his livestock with potatoes infestation and politics-borne evil. Some in the British from just an acre for one year, as an acre would yield 12 tons. government viewed the Irish plight as a visitation of Providence, arguing that British taxpayers were tired of supporting the Nothing to Fall Back On To Survive chronically poor Irish peasantry.

The potato famine struck in September 1845. At the time, many theories were advanced as to the cause: the fanciful imagined toxic vapors from underground volcanoes, the evangelical invoked divine punishment for the sins of the people, the environmentalists blamed static electricity from newly-arrived locomotives.

'Irish property must pay for Irish poverty' was the slogan for a new law which laid the responsibility for providing for tenants squarely on the shoulders of the great landowners in Ireland.

Before the law went into effect, however, the landowners had one last chance to evict unwanted tenants.

Especially in the West and the South of Ireland, tenant families The Famine's actual cause, we now know, was an airborne were ordered to destroy their own miserable huts, and then fungus, phytophthora infestans, a contagion carried on ships turned out into the rural roads to starve. from the Americas and spread through the wind in damp conditions throughout Ireland.

Other landlords and their overseers decided that it would be cheaper to put their former tenants on a ship bound for the Between 1815 and 1842, there were fourteen complete or partial Americas rather than to continue to feed a starving family. potato crop failures, but never in successive years. The Irish Indeed, some looked at this as an act of mercy. farmer and his family were always bordering on lean times; starvation always hovered like a specter during many of these The Coffin Ships years, with nothing to fall back on to survive.

With the hunger came disease, and typhoid fever which The Workhouses threatened anyone who came near. Emigration ships became known as ‘coffin ships,’ carrying the starving and diseaseThe British government did provide some relief; the 1838 Poor ridden Irish away.

Law Act began helping some poor by opening workhouses and soup kitchens. Initially single women and widows, the infirm Because NYC regulations were stricter and fares there more and elderly, and orphans were admitted to the workhouses. expensive, many of the coffin ships burdened with their forlorn human cargo made their way to Canada via the St Lawrence But workhouses did not solve problems; they only made things

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River. Of those that survived the passage, many died on Grosse A Special Kind of ‘Christian’ Cruelty Ile, a quarantine island about 30 miles from Quebec City while Incredibly, against this backdrop of misery and callousness, awaiting medical care.

Evangelical Protestant missions were set up around Ireland to Twenty heroic Catholic priests caught typhoid while ministering take advantage of the Catholics’ desperation. They offered food to the desperately ill there; six of them died. In 1847 alone, and clothing if Catholics would renounce their ancient Faith. almost 5500 Irish men, women and children were buried on Grosse Ile. Dr. M. Slattery, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly reported The Famine’s Honor Roll during the Famine that "614 Catholic houses have been thrown down and their inmates thrown out into the world, and an easy They were not alone. Back in Ireland, "In 1847 alone, at least prey to the Protestant seducers, who offered money, food, and thirty-six priests died in Ireland from Famine related disease, shelter in exchange for their religion; some 300 people have sixteen of them during the month of May." The evidence from died of starvation within one period of six months . . . hundreds County Kerry alone is staggering. The Kerry Examiner reported preferred to be evicted onto the roads rather than give up their the obituaries of Father Jeremiah Falvey, curate Patrick Tuohy, faith; many have died for their faith.”

Reverend Thomas Enright, and Reverend Michael Devine.

The Kerry Evening Post reported the death of Reverend Genesis of the Diaspora John Gallivan from fever. The Tralee Chronicle reported the death of Fr John O’Donoghue, and noted that "at the present The statistics are stark. Ireland was populated by about eight moment, in this diocese, there are no less than eight Roman million people in 1840. Massive emigration and starvation Catholic Clergymen on the bed of fever, contracted during their reduced this population by 25% in just six years. ministrations."

From a distance of 167 years, the Famine appears to have “All this great work by the Presentation nuns took its toll on been gross negligence bordering on genocide. Powerful their health. Worn out by sheer exhaustion, many caught fever Whig politicians such as Robert Peel, Charles Trevelyn, and some died. Amongst those who paid the supreme sacrifice Lord John Russell and Sir Charles Wood, as well as wealthy were: Sisters Angela Love, Mary Joseph O'Kane, Philomena Irish landholders such as Lords Clanrickard, Lansdowne, Moriarty, Ignatius Martin in Listowel; (and) Sister Catherine Mounteagle and Palmerston have gone down in Irish history as those who oversaw the death of a million plus – and the forced Vize, aged 27, Castle island.” emigration of nearly all the ancestors of today’s diaspora Irish.

A global relief effort was launched by the Vatican, with Catholics donating from every continent, including remote outposts such as missions in Madagascar. The archdiocese of Boston The 1840s and 1850s and beyond saw millions of Irish fleeing contributed a whopping US$150,000. A poor curate in a rural to England, Scotland, the Americas and Australia. Their parish in Scotland donated one pound. All of this relief money descendants, raised in Protestant education systems which was carefully accounted for, and honestly distributed through give scant notice to the Famine, are often ignorant of the true parishes and Orders. Some Anglican and Quaker organizations story of the genesis of the Diaspora and the experience of their also helped, donating money generously to help the desperate own family.

Irish.

The truth is that the Irish are a wonderful, courageous, tough Contemporary sources tell us that this money kept millions lot. Politically, they survived brutal years of British occupation.

In terms of religion, Irish Catholicism survived everything from starving. But it was not nearly enough. the British threw at them -- from the depredations of Oliver The Famine’s Wall of Shame Cromwell in 1649 to those of Peel and Trevelyn during the Famine.

The British Government spent £8.3 million to relieve the Great Famine. Putting this into context, this amounted to less than Everyone with Irish ancestry is part of this story, and everyone 0.5% of the gross national product of Great Britain for one year. has a story to tell.

Why such a tepid response? To understand this, one must see Great Britain as she saw herself in the mid-19th century. At the height of her Empire, Great Britain considered herself to be the most enlightened Christian nation in the world. Queen Victoria was on the throne, and her long rule oversaw great advances in science and technology.

London and Dublin were full of ‘scientific’ theorists, some with great influence in government circles. Hence, many saw the potato blight as a welcome opportunity to reform Irish agriculture. Some actually argued 'scientifically' that the blight would clear out 'surplus' population, creating a smaller, more prosperous class of farmer. page 20

(Editor’s Note: Harry Stevens’ Irish Catholic family left before the Famine. Regina Magazine writer/photographer Michael Durnan’s family survived the Famine and emigrated to Liverpool in the 1880s.

Regina Magazine’s webmaster Jim Bryant’s Irish family survived the Famine and emigrated to America in 1922.)

www.reginamag.com

Come to Rome for the third annual

Populus Sumorum Pontificum International Pilgrimage Oct. 23-26, 2014

with

Cardinal Raymond Burke Juventutem and the Monks of Norcia This year a special NY-Rome-NY tour, with Fr. Tim Davison (Pastor of SS. Peter & Paul in Tulsa, OK), has been organized from October 20-28, 2014, that will include full participation in the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage.

Pilgrims will also attend a papal audience and visit Assisi, Monte Casino and Norcia, the birthplace of Saint Benedict!

Traditional Latin Mass daily.

For more information call:

1-800-334-5425

syversentouring.com/rome or populussummorumpontificum.com Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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Escape from Ireland One Family’s Story

“

Far away– oh far away– We seek a world o’er the ocean spray! We seek a land across the sea, Where bread is plenty and men are free, The sails are set, the breezes swell– Ireland, our country, farewell! farewell!

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I

by Harry Stevens

reland in the early 1800s was a country under siege. Grim poverty and bitter conflict disfigured the lives of countless Irish Catholics; for them, life was a struggle -the ‘haves’ against ‘have-nots,’ Protestants against Catholics, English against Irish.

Who Was Patrick Hoy? Born in 1803, my Catholic Irish ancestor Patrick Hoy was a ‘have not.’ Hence, his almost total obscurity; literally nothing is known of his parents, or place of birth. Nevertheless, today we can piece together Patrick Hoy’s experience from what is known of Irish immigrants in the 1830s-1840s, plus family history facts drawn from a ship’s manifest and US Census records.

Patrick Hoy’s Ireland Ireland was an agricultural country of eight million, among the poorest of the poor nations. Life expectancy was short-- 40’s for both men and women. Many women died in childbirth. There was a high infant mortality rate. To be Irish was to know suffering and oppression.

An Irish nationalist uprising in 1798 was brutally put down by the English. Hangings were common. By 1800, Ireland became a part of England. Catholics were excluded from Parliament, with its long history of anti-Catholic hostility.

Protestants owned 95% of Irish land.

As the century wore on, there were only marginal improvements. Catholic Emancipation came in 1829 through the heroic efforts of lawyer Daniel O’Connell. Nevertheless, an 1835 British Poor survey showed a whopping 75% Irish laborers without work; many were beggars.

The Irish Horror Fleeing poverty in their occupied country, between 1815 and 1845 one million Irish left Ireland -- including my family, the Hoys. What truly beggars belief, however, is the horror that came next -- the Famine.

In six short years, one out of every eight Irish people starved to death.* Between 1845-1851, another million Irish left or were expelled from their native soil. The statistics are astounding.

By 1880, Ireland’s population had decreased 30% -- a loss unequaled in modern European history.

How Patrick Hoy Escaped Like the majority of his countrymen, Patrick Hoy was a laborer, toiling the soil and doing odd jobs. He worked for another, and paid rent out of meager wages. Patrick married Catharine, and raised a son, Patrick born in 1833. Very likely his family lived in a single room windowless mud-and-stone hut.

Somehow, by age 33 Patrick had saved enough to escape with his young family to the New World. In 1836, before

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the famine was ever imagined, they probably went by way of Dublin to Liverpool, England, one of the main ports to gain passage to America.

Their Journey The Hoy’s Atlantic passage would have cost between 3-5 pounds; an entire year’s wages to get to America, plus what it cost to get from Dublin to Liverpool.

In Liverpool, the Hoy family would have next had to pass a medical exam certifying that they were free of contagious disease. Then, within a day or so, they boarded the Dalmatia, at Liverpool’s Waterloo dock.

The Dalmatia, a sailing ship of 358 tons, with room for about 150, had George Winsor Jr as Master. As this was before the famine, the ship was probably well-built and equipped, and provided a safe journey.** The Hoys’ fellow passengers in steerage on the Dalmatia hailed from Wales, Germany, Scotland, England, and Ireland. They were prepared to work in America; occupations on the Dalmatia’s Manifest were listed as laborer, blacksmith, shoemaker, millwright, domestic, tailor, farmer, mason, printer, butcher, and baker.

The Dalmatia Arrives Their journey would have taken about 21-30 days, depending on wind and weather. The Manifest shows that two emigrants died en route and the Dalmatia docked in Manhattan on September 30, 1836.

to take advantage of the unsuspecting, tired, hungry, and unknowing. Hopefully Patrick knew in advance to avoid these charlatans, and headed for the closest Catholic parish, and safety.

Life in New York Once in America, the Hoy family would have settled in an Irish community in the New York area and found a Catholic parish, because that is what the Irish did in the New World -they stayed together in the cities.

The Catholic Church for Irish immigrants was the focal point for community; it would have been a place of comfort and safety. The priests brought the family the Sacraments and protected them from the New York politics and gangs.

The Hoys then had to run a gauntlet of hucksters and “runners” on the dock, some speaking Gaelic and trying

The Catholic Church for immigrants was the focal point for community; it would have been a place of comfort and safety. It would have been the nuns who taught the family English and helped Patrick find a job. The priests brought the family the Sacraments and protected them from the New York politics and gangs.

Where were the Irish New York parishes?

The first was Old St Peter’s near the lower Manhattan docks, built in the 1790s. Then old St Patricks’ Cathedral cornerstone was laid in June 1809, for the Bishop’s seat.

By the time the Hoys arrived there would have been two new parishes from the 1830s spate of church-building: St. John the Evangelist’s Church in 1830 and St. Mary’s on Grand Street in 1832. As the famine-stricken Irish came to New York in the next decade, they would have found succor in the new Church of St Brigid on East 8th Street, St Raymond’s in the Bronx, St. Andrews near the infamous Five Points slum, and St Columba on the West Side.

‘Coffin ship’ detail from Ireland’s National Famine Memorial, Croagh Padraic, County Mayo

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The Irish Priests

The Hoys Move On

Catholic priests first started emigrating to America in the 1830s; they were needed in America and there was a surfeit of clergy in Ireland.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Irish priests were the most common foreign-born priests in the U.S., with about 4,000 coming in the decades after 1840. By the mid-1800s, 59% of priests in the diocese of New York were Irish-born.

By then, Patrick and his growing family had moved out of New York City to Pittstown, New York, a farming village in upstate New York near Albany. By this time little Patrick was 17 and had six siblings. Then, tragedy struck, as Catharine died in Pittstown. (We don’t know the exact date or cause of her death, though it may have been from childbirth.)

They faced intensely antiIrish, anti-Catholic sentiment in America, largely from the native-born ‘Know Nothing’ movement determined to repel the “papists.” In 1844 there was violence and burning of Catholic churches in Philadelphia. In New York, Archbishop John Hughes, on hearing of the Philadelphia attacks, deployed armed Irishmen to protect his own churches.

Then he paid a visit to New York’s mayor and warned him that if just one Catholic Church was touched, the Irish would burn all of Manhattan to the ground.

By 1850, New York had more Irish-born citizens than Dublin.

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

The Hoys in the West By 1856, Patrick had joined the westward movement of Americans, restlessly seeking their fortunes away from the crowded East Coast cities. Perhaps losing his wife had been the final blow; at any rate, we next encounter Patrick marrying Elizabeth Doherty, also born in Ireland, in 1856, hundreds of miles away from Pittstown in Illinois.

In fact, Patrick and Elizabeth and family turn up in the 1860 US Census in the town of Palos, Cook County, Illinois. They were the proud owners of 350 farming acres.

Twenty-four years after Patrick the common laborer had scraped together his meager earnings in order to buy his little family passage out of an Ireland on the brink of disaster, they had found the American Dream.

It was from Patrick and Elizabeth that my great grandmother Alice Hoy was born, later when they moved to another farm in Waterloo, Iowa. And it was from this marriage and family that the Faith was handed down to my own mother. Deo Gratias.

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Going Hom

'A Way of Life Never Ex

by Dan Flaherty

'Go to the Aran Islands, and find a life that has never been expressed in literature' was the advice of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The Aran Islands lie just off the southwest coast of Ireland, in Galway Bay. With family roots there—I'm from the American Midwest though my grandfather was born on Inis Orr—I’ve had the good fortune to visit on four occasions and can say with certainty that Yeats was right.

There is no way to truly describe the spell of Aran.

Inis Orr makes you stop and listen. There are three islands, next to one other. The one I’ve visited is the smallest of the three, Inis Oirr (pronounced In-ish-ear). You can travel to Inis Oirr either by boat or by small plane.

The first thing that strikes you upon arriving is that, although you’re only a quick plane ride and a few miles from Galway, you feel as if you’ve separated from civilization itself. Inis Oirr slows you down and makes you stop and listen.

The people of Aran live close to the elements. “We lived close to nature,” said a longtime resident who grew up on Inis Oirr in the 1980s. “We were close to the elements. I felt close to the sea through swimming…other people feel close to the sea through fishing. For years it (fishing) has provided food for families and an extra income.”

The proximity to the sea and the reliance on fishing is an essential part of Inis Oirr’s heritage. Men used to take the currachs out, often as far as the nearby Cliffs of Mohr on the coast of the mainland, looking to find their food. A currach is a kind of Irish boat

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me to Aran

xpressed in Literature'

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with a wooden frame, over which animal skins or hides traditionally were stretched, though now canvas is more usual.

Life contained cold reality and intricate patterns. Although there’s a certain romance to this way of life, there also was a cold reality: A number of the fishermen drowned. Each family on the island had a distinctive pattern the women would knit or crochet into their men’s sweaters to enable them to identify the family to which a body belonged if he should wash ashore. Inis Oirr—and the rest of the Aran Islands— are famous for their hand knitted wool sweaters.

Other hardships abounded for the people of Inis Oirr.

Stones all over the island impede the farming necessary for survival. The islanders removed the stones from their fields and from them created walls upon walls that weave through Inis Oirr as though they’re part of a puzzle.

The Aran sweater patterns and the fences made of stone are two distinct elements of cultural beauty today. Both are products of hardship, of the residents of Inis Oirr making the best of the situation they were in.

Hardships were balanced by family closeness. Whatever hardships may have existed, page 28

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they often were made up for by closeness with family and with the community: With only 300 people on the island, 'community' includes everyone on Inis Oirr.

“Everyone watched out for another,” the longtime resident recalled. “It was very safe, zero crime rate.

It’s…culturally rich in the Irish language. We all grew up playing an instrument…and learning Irish dancing.”

Catholic elements are woven into the culture. The preservation of traditional Irish culture has become an important part of Inis Oirr’s life today. The island hosts summer programs where students on the mainland attend mandatory courses to learn Gaelic, and ensure Irish culture lives on.

The cultural elements of Catholicism remain woven into the culture, but Catholicism on Inis Oirr is in much the same condition as it is on the mainland, with a lack of practice of the Faith. After attending Mass there one Sunday, I came out of the church to see men lined up at one of the stone fences, smoking their cigars.

Surprisingly, the men do this as a sign of respect—the belief that they shouldn’t be in the pub while the Mass is being offered. The framework is there for a renewed era of the Catholic Church, if the right apostle is found to light the spark.

St. Caomham evangelized the islands. In the sixth century, that apostle was St. Caomhan, who first evangelized the islands. The church named after him is built of stone and sunk into the ground, but you can still see the skeletal form of the original structure.

The road to rebuilding Catholic faith and culture in the West is a long one, but there is one important area where Inis Oirr surely helps light the path: the complete lack of materialism in the island culture.

The Aran way of life requires you to slow down and appreciate beauty, the landscape is a living testament to the glory of creation, and the greatest values are placed on family and friendship, rather than wealth accumulation and prestige.

photos by: Touring around the Aran Islands by Joe Loong / CC BY-SA 2.0 Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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Sister Will See You Now A Short Story

by Beverly De Soto “Sister will see you now,” came the dreaded voice of the School Secretary.

I stood up and swallowed hard. Heart pounding. Sick stomach. Weak knees.

I was six years old, and I was in a lot of trouble.

The Secretary tried to make me feel better by smiling kindly at me, but I was beyond comfort. I set my face grimly for the door of the Principal’s office.

To my eyes, Sister Mary Ruth was immensely old. She was also the Most Important Person I had ever met.

Sister regarded me soberly from behind her large oaken desk. She wore a majestic Dominican habit, with huge bell-like sleeves. Her eyes were a watery blue through her wire-frame glasses as she leaned forward and folded her veined hands carefully.

“You were quite late to school this morning,” she stated flatly. “About an hour late.”

Sister nodded solemnly.

“You lost your rosaries…so what happened then?”

I nodded again, trying to control myself. But the hot tears started running down my face, unbidden. She pushed a box of Kleenex across her desk to me. I took one and blew my nose.

“Why were you late this morning?” she asked again, a little softer.

I shook my head, unable to speak. The tears were flowing freely now, sliding down my face in big rivulets.

I nodded, and swallowed again. I thought hard for some “Now, now,” she said, and stood up. She walked likely explanation for this. around her desk and put a bony hand on my shoulder.

She smelt of soap, and linen.

“Y-yes,” I began, nodding. “I’m really sorry, Sister.”

She nodded gravely.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

This was too much. I sobbed aloud, unable to restrain myself.

Actually, I did not want to tell her anything. The truth simply could not be told.

Sister opened the door and asked the Secretary to come in. They both stood over me, regarding me thoughtfully.

“Your mother called. She was upset,” she said carefully.

Her blue eyes were watching me closely.

“Honey,” the Secretary said, crouching down beside me. “Tell Sister what happened.”

My alarm heightened. At the mention of my mother, hot tears burned my eyes. What could I tell Sister that would get me off the hook?

I had lost my rosary beads. This was the third time, too. I was wearing them knotted around my belt loop, in imitation of the Sister, like the other girls in my first grade class. But I wasn’t very good at tying knots, and the beads must have slipped off on the bus ride home.

“I-I lost my rosary beads,” I confessed, finally. “It was r-really stupid of me.” page 30

At 7:30 the next morning, I couldn’t find them. This set www.reginamag.com

my mother off. I don’t remember much of what happened next, only that she was screaming at me, and beating me wildly on my head and shoulders with a wooden spoon. I ran madly from room to room, trying to escape her. Finally I crouched down hopelessly in a corner in a vain attempt to ward off her stinging blows. She broke the spoon on my back, and when she retreated to look for another weapon, I fled.

In a cold panic, I raced down the street to the bus stop, only to see the bus pulling away. Too frightened to go home, I decided to walk to school, a mile and a half away. To be sure, I was scared to walk all that way alone, but I was more scared to return home to my mother’s certain fury.

So that’s how I came to be so late to school. And that’s why I was sent to the Principal’s office. But I didn’t tell any of this to Sister Mary Ruth.

“Your mother was worried about you,” she ventured, handing me another Kleenex. I shook my head, deeply humiliated. None of what had happened could be explained to other people, especially important people like Sister.

of such Sisters who ran US Catholic institutions for a hundred years from the late 19th through the end of the 20th Century. She ran a school of almost 400 pupils, in those days when class sizes often ran over 40 students.

Sister was a tough old bird, everyone knew. Her Sisters and her lay teachers all respected her enormously – as did the Catholic parents who scraped and saved to send their offspring to the Dominicans.

My parents were the exceptions.

Married late in life, they were wellto-do. I was their only child. That my mother was abusive was something I could not articulate, not even to my father, who worked late most evenings. So I went to school, did my work, played with the other kids and tried to keep from angering her.

All these many years later, of course, I can imagine myself in Sister’s shoes. Old, tired, and faced with the huge administrative burden of running a school – and face to face with a child who showed clear signs of being abused.

In 1963, there were no child protection laws in effect. No “I-I’m really sorry, Sister,” I tried agreements to call the police if child apologizing abjectly, still crying. “I’m abuse was suspected. It would sorry for c-causing trouble.” almost certainly be the child’s word against their parent. Sister Mary Sister Mary Ruth and the Secretary Ruth had only her prestige and the traded glances and then turned influence she could wield over my back to me. I couldn’t read their parents and teachers. This is what faces. she did.

“Now, now,” Sister said again, with some finality. She handed me a glass of water. “Drink some of this.

Calm down. You can stay here until you feel better.”

After a few minutes, she looked up from her work and told me I could go back to class. I slipped out, grateful to be off the hook.

Sister Mary Ruth was an Irish Catholic nun – one of a vast legion Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

lovely crown made of flowers in the procession to the statue of the Blessed Virgin.

To my immense joy, Sister Mary Ruth made sure that I was one of the girls.

The next year, she would often come to call for me at the classroom door, and quietly ask me to read aloud for the students in the other classes.

The idea was to show the older kids how well a little kid could read. It had the side effect of boosting my confidence immensely.

In the third grade, Sister became my teacher, and I blossomed under her tutelage. She let me read ahead, and rewarded me for finishing assignments early by allowing me to read the ‘Lives of the Saints’ series, pretty yellow books with lovely pictures, perched on the windowsill.

Sister Mary Ruth also had an ingenious system for teaching arithmetic called ‘memorization.’

And if we misbehaved, she put her system to work in earnest. Minor infractions rated writing one’s times tables from the twos to the fives. Major violations of classroom conduct could land you in your seat at recess, writing the times tables all the way up to the tens.

It was simple brilliance. We all learned our times tables and many years later as a young mother, I used it to great effect with my own kids. (They learned to behave – and learned their times tables, all in one fell swoop.)

My mother received a call from Sister Mary Ruth that day. Though her verbal abuse continued, I cannot recall that she ever used an object to strike me again. Sister Mary Ruth must have made her point.

All these decades later, I remember my year in Sister Mary Ruth’s classroom as a time of great happiness and security. So when she finally retired at the end of that year, I was sorry to see her go.

A few weeks later, it was time to crown the May Queen. We first graders were all excited. The school had two ravishingly beautiful long dresses which two privileged girls would wear as they carried the

But like most kids, I was preoccupied with on my own concerns. I never thought of her much after that -- until thirty years later when I chanced across a book written about the history of her Order. page 31

Little did we suspect back in those days, but the book revealed how the Dominicans had sustained a body blow to their esprit du corps in the 1960s and 1970s.

Radical young nuns had imposed a system whereby hapless older sisters were deprived of their habits and communal prayer. They were forcibly ‘re-educated’ in the ‘Spirit of Vatican II.’ The results were disastrous. Those nuns young enough to choose another life fled the convents. Older nuns like Sister Mary Ruth retreated to the Mother House, which quickly became an old age home. Many of the radical nuns eventually left as well. (The few who remained apostatized in place, using Church property and prestige to promote their ‘new age’ agenda.)

In a few short years the work of generations of dedicated Catholics was carelessly, even vindictively, undone. By the 1970s the schools that had been built for the Dominicans from the donations and hard work of generations of Catholics were shuttered.

This was all so deeply affecting that I could not quite believe it. I rummaged hopelessly through the book, searching for some mention of Sister Mary Ruth.

Against all odds, I found it.

Mary Ruth had made headlines in 1923 when she was a young principal of a newly-built Catholic grade school in rural southern New Jersey.

Catholics were emphatically not welcome there. Violent threats were made against the school. And when the Ku Klux Klan came to set the school on fire, they were met by a 23 year old nun determinedly wielding a rifle.

It was my Sister Mary Ruth.

She held them off until the police arrived.

So this is a belated tribute to a tough, tender IrishAmerican nun.

Sister Mary Ruth, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. What you did gave me the idea that I was smart and special, an idea which has sustained me in both my career and my family life. Your kindness has paid multiple dividends.

I know that you are with the God you served with such courage, devotion and wisdom.

Sister Mary Ruth, pray for us all. We need your kind among us once again.

Indeed, the Dominicans remembered Sister Mary Ruth from a time many years before I knew her. In fact, Sister

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An American Priest Visits Ireland ‘My Irish ancestry played almost no part in my upbringing’

by Father Jeffrey Keyes my culture and heritage.

My Father passed away when I was only 21, and his funeral was only the third time I had met his Mother.

I later took a job in Illinois not far from her. In visiting her I got to know that part of the family better. I fell in love with her cooking and her baking, and she told me stories about the early days of the family.

My parents were hard-working people who operated their business out of our home until it became successful and they struggled to send us to Catholic school. We were told we were Scottish and Irish but there was not a whole lot of meaning attached to it.

More importantly, she gave me pictures. One picture of hers I had copied was a four-generation photo (left) taken in 1920 when my father was an Infant. It is a treasure.

My Great-great Grandfather is holding my infant father. On the left is my Grandfather and on the right my Great Grandfather.

She also gave me two portraits of John and Sarah Keyes, my Greatgreat Grandparents. John is listed in the US Census as a farmer in Champaign, IL and my Great Grandfather Thomas is listed as 18 years old. John — here pictured holding my father — was born in Scotland.

Around the time of my 50th birthday in 2002, I had plans to spend the summer in Rome as part of a Formation experience with my Religious Community (C.PP.S.) The program would be ending in early August just a few weeks before my birthday. My sister flew over and met me in Dublin. We had no information about any distant relatives, but we wanted to experience the country.

F

amily was an important part of life. Dad’s family was far away in Illinois and we had little contact with them. But Mom had two sisters and they all had lots of kids, so being among the cousins on holidays was a regular feature of life.

Mom’s Dad was born in Ireland, but he had died years before I was born, and so I only met Mom’s Mother and grandmother who were both born in this country. Mom was a Sullivan and her Mother was a Conway, two very Irish names. We never heard any stories of emigrating, as that had happened many generations before.

Mom was a strong Catholic and she had a particular devotion to the Blessed Mother. Dad became a Catholic as an adult. What we got was the Catholic Faith. It probably had a strong sense of the Irish Culture, but it was not explicit in multi-cultural California.

As an adult I wanted to get more information about

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I asked a bartender in Cork how I would find any Sullivans. He told me to go down to the town center and just yell, “Hey, Sully!” He said half the town would respond. We later found out that the bartender’s name was John Joseph Sullivan, the same name as my maternal grandfather.

We did some research on the Keyes name while we were there. We were surprised to learn it had to do with dockworkers who worked along the Quays.

(Pronounced “Keys”) We had assumed that much of the Irish emigration to America was the result of the Famine. We were stunned to learn that there had been no actual famine.

One –potatoes — crop had failed, yes, but shiploads of wheat and livestock were shipped over to England daily during that time. It was a time of great wealth and prosperity.

The 1847 failure of the potato crop was used as a means to get the peasantry off the land. People were forced from their homes and could never return because their homes were leveled — sometimes by the military, and sometimes they were forced to destroy their own homes. It was not ‘famine’ as much as it was ethnic cleansing.

We had been taught very little about the Penal Days, when it was against the law to celebrate Mass in Ireland. I made a pilgrimage to a hidden Mass Rock near Carndonagh. This is where Mass was celebrated secretly in the wilderness.

We visited the ‘Church of Ireland’ in Dublin — the Irish version of Anglicanism. Today’s Anglican Cathedrals in Dublin were taken from the Catholics as part of the Reformation, which made Catholicism illegal in Ireland. One of these Protestant Cathedrals had the tomb of St. Lawrence O’Toole. But the Anglican Cathedrals were museums for tourists.

They might have small places set apart for prayer, but prayer was not the focus of these places.

I wanted to visit Knock. I knew nothing about it, but wondered what the Blessed Mother’s message was to the Irish People. I was completely shocked. The Knock even had everything to do with the Precious Blood Charism of my community. It was the Lamb slain, yet standing and reigning.

My sister and I visited Croagh Padraic, St Patrick’s mountain, where the Saint was said to have retreated to pray for forty days before embarking on his mission as Bishop of Ireland. The experience of the Faith was interesting. In many places we found the Faith very much active and alive. The Catholic Procathedral in Dublin had Daily Adoration.

The Faith was part of the Irish culture, certainly. It was used in advertising: “Vanity is only a very little sin.”

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LOUGH DERG Ireland’s ‘Purgatory’

S

by Tamara Isabell

It is a pilgrimage renowned for its austerity — fasting, walking barefoot, sleep deprivation, intense self-examination and prayer. Some may wonder what it is that draws pilgrims by the thousands year after year; especially today, when Catholics have little experience of penance.

ince the early Middle Ages, Lough Derg, or “Saint Patrick’s Purgatory” has exerted a mysterious influence on Catholic pilgrims.

Legends recount how Saint Patrick himself discovered the cave on the island, said to be the entrance to Hell. We owe the best accounts to Tractatus, a text written by a Cistercian monk in the 12th Century which details Christ’s revelation of the cave to Saint Patrick.

Apparently Saint Patrick was having some trouble converting the stubborn Irish, and so Christ revealed the cave to him as a proof of the torments of Hell and an inducement to be purged of sins. Early pilgrims would enter the cave and remain there overnight, steeped in prayer and self-examination.

Visionary tales emerged over the years, and by far the most popular was that of the Knight Owein as recounted in Tractatus.

Upon entering the cave the knight underwent a series of ten torments at the hands of horrifying demons, eventually crossing a terrifying bridge passing over hell itself, which deposited him into a beautiful paradise. After retracing his steps back to the cave entrance — this time without the demon-torture – Owein learned to his astonishment that only 24 hours had passed in the real world.

Pilgrims today no longer enter the cave itself. The entrance to the cave was closed in 1780 by the Franciscans and was later covered up altogether. Instead, a basilica dedicated to Saint Patrick was built in the 1920’s. Today, Saint Patrick’s Basilica has become as the embodiment of the celebrated cave. It is the place where pilgrims make their vigil, remaining within throughout the night in imitation of the pilgrimage pattern of olden times.

Three-day retreats begin at the end of May and begin with a ferry ride to Station Island. Pilgrims remove their shoes upon arrival and remain barefoot for the entire three days.

A 24 hour vigil is kept the first night in the basilica, with pilgrims praying or talking together through the night.

There are nine “Stations” that may be prayed at various sites on the island. One very simple daily meal is offered,

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consisting of “plain toast, wheaten bread, oatcakes & black tea/coffee.” There is a one day pilgrimage available for those physically unable to endure the rigors of the three day fast.

It does not require one to go barefoot.

Considering such privations, it is astounding to find that some 15,000 people visit Lough Derg each year, with 80% of them returning pilgrims! Pilgrims share their stories on the Lough Derg website, and the consistent thread to be found in their tales is that they experience some mysterious pull that brings them back year after year.

Pilgrim Paddy shares his story from 2013: “First time I did it I said never, never again. 56 times later here I am with a wonderful group from Cork.”

Father Owen McEneaney, the new Prior of Lough Derg, worked summers on the island in the 1990’s and recalls “the healing and joy that so many pilgrims experienced. For some it was through the Sacrament of Reconciliation – for others still it was just as a result of spending time in this very unique, sacred, holy place.”

Father McEneaney ponders whether pilgrims might indeed be “healed by the place itself.” One can’t help wonder whether the island actually has a special power, reading the joyful accounts of the pilgrims.

If you are considering making the pilgrimage yourself, visit the Lough Derg website. Peruse the pilgrim stories and consider whether you are physically and spiritually ready to commit to the deprivations.

When asked what he might recommend to those trying to decide whether the pilgrimage is right for them, Father McEneaney warmly answers, “Lough Derg is a sacred place – made holy by centuries of pilgrim prayers – a sanctuary where people can continue “to come as they are to a quiet place and rest a while” – a place where people are not judged – a place of care and understanding and compassion – a place where one can encounter the grace of God – meet the Christ who desires them more than they ever fully appreciate.’

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF LOUGH DERG

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T

he history of the Catholic Church has taught us that real renewal movements start small and they come from the ground up. The latest example comes to us from St. Louis, where Veils By Lily, an enterprise producing traditional Catholic veils is inspiring a deeper love for the Holy Eucharist and a strengthening of family life.

Veils by Lily

Mantilla-Style Chapel Veils

Lily Beck Wilson is a cradle Catholic who had a “reversion” experience five years ago. “I was lukewarm…” she admitted.

“I received the Eucharist as if it were something trivial.” During her reversion, Lily studied Catholic doctrine on Christ’s Real Presence. “My husband is Protestant, and I had to think about what I believed and why”, she recalled. “I was blown away by John Chapter 6—how literal and forceful Jesus was.”

The truth of the Real Presence was overwhelming to Lily—“the God of the universe wants to be personally united to us—to me.” Lily added that in a world where all of us long to be loved, it is in the Holy Eucharist that Jesus Christ Himself wants to give us all that love and more.

Lily wanted to acknowledge Our Lord’s love—“to shout it from the rooftops”, as she put it. The veil became her way of metaphorically doing just that. It wasn’t easy—there were few, if any, at her parish who wore the veil, and wearing one had the disadvantage of bringing unwanted attention. When Lily saw a beautiful veil and thought “I could wear that”, the inspiration for her business took hold.

What if the veil could be made truly beautiful—a garment whose physical beauty would be a small reflection of the Divine Beauty

that it seeks to honor and proclaim? Maybe more women would feel as Lily did and think “I could wear that.” She put up a website and started to sell her own homemade veils.

The business came in quickly, but there were challenges, including one pretty big hurdle before she ever went public-Lily didn’t know how to sew. But she taught herself to use a sewing machine and the orders came in fast enough that it replaced her part-time job.

Giving up the part-time job led to another fruit of her venture: more time near her husband and what was then three children.

When she worked part-time she was starting work as her husband was coming home. “Family life was non-existent” she said. Now they could eat dinner as a family and rest on Sunday.

Those good fruits extended to the families of others. Business increased to the point where Lily hired a seamstress and a shipping assistant, who each work part-time, along with several freelancers who cut veils. “It’s flexible work with flexible schedules, and we ask everyone not to work on Sunday,” Lily told Regina. “If I need something on Tuesday, it can wait until Wednesday if it means taking Sunday off. Family comes first.”

Lily’s family-first policy is a demonstration of a truly Catholic business, one that is Catholic at its soul, not just its exterior, and something that can be emulated whether one sells veils or widgets.

Lily’s husband is now in the RCIA program and preparing to enter the Church at Easter Vigil. The couple has had two additional children since the starting of the business, it was those births that showed her the need to hire help. When she needed office space to store the lace, she found it in the same building as Liguori Publications. The office has been blessed by a priest from The Institute of Christ The King. The building has a chapel, with the Blessed Sacrament. It seems quite appropriate for a venture encouraging Catholic women to take their faith in the Real Presence and shout it from the rooftops.

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Lily with Seamstress Diane and Baby Rose

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This is a special paid advertisement section of Regina Magazine

Village of Saint Patrick's Well ‘Ballintubber’ — As with all things Irish, there is a mystery captured in the name.

Uninterr

The Irish Ab

by Teresa Limjoco, MD

S

t. Patrick is said to have established the church at Ballintubber and baptized Christian converts at St. Patrick’s Well; a stone here bears the impression of his knee. The Abbey is the starting point of St. Patrick’s ancient pilgrimage route called Tóchar Phádraig (“St. Patrick’s Causeway”).

How a Prince in Exile Vowed to Build the Abbey Ballintubber Abbey has the distinction of being the only Abbey founded by an Irish king where Mass has been said without interruption since the early 13th century when it was built by Cathal Crovderg O’Connor, king of Connaught.

And therein lies an Irish tale: before Prince Cathal ascended to the throne, his father King Turloch was fleeing from his enraged Queen, Cathal’s stepmother. Cathal obtained shelter and work from a local man named Sheridan, who treated him kindly. The young prince vowed to return the kindness shown him; he returned years later as King and asked Sheridan what favor he could do for him. The old man asked only that Cathal restore their deteriorating church; Cathal promised him a new church instead.

A couple of years passed and King Cathal asked Sheridan how his new church pleased him. He was shocked when he was chastised for not keeping his promise to build a new church. Cathal insisted that he had indeed ordered the building of a new church. On further inquiry, he learned that a church had indeed been built, but in Baile tobair Bhrighde, Roscommon, and not in Baile tobair Phadraig, Mayo.

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rupted Masses For 800 Years

bbey That Refused To Die

In the west of Ireland, nestled amidst County Mayo’s rolling green hills, sits ancient Balintubber Abbey. Its name comes from the Gaelic, ‘Baile an Tobair Phadraig’ or ‘village of St. Patrick’s Well.’

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King Cathal therefore vowed to build another church “seven times more magnificent� in Ballintubber, Mayo, and this is the Abbey that stands there today.

The path that begins in the Abbey graveyard ends twenty-two miles away at Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s famous conical Holy Mountain.

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The Abbey is Attacked by Protestant Forces The Abbey lived peacefully for 250 years until 1536, when a law that called for the dissolution of monasteries was passed in English-dominated Dublin. Theoretically, Balintubber’s Abbot was bound to follow the orders of King Henry VIII to close the Abbey, but it was not easy to enforce the law in such distant regions.

Amazingly, the monks continued to occupy the Abbey for another 65 years until the reign of James I of England and Ireland, who confiscated Abbey lands in 1603 — and dispersed the monks.

However, this was not to be the end of the Abbey’s story. Between 1603 and 1654, a mendicant order of Augustian Friars is believed to have taken over the Abbey. They only finally left after three days of burning and pillage committed in 1653 by the Puritan Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers.

The Cromwellian assault was devastating, destroying the monastic buildings, cloisters, dormitories, and quarters. The wooden roof was burned, but the internal stonevaulted roof of the chancel, the side chapels, and the sacristy remained.

Complete destruction was kept at bay, and incredibly, Mass continued to be said at the Abbey.

A Roofless Church Thus began the Abbey’s long years of secrecy and terror. For centuries, even through the Penal Years — when Catholicism was outlawed and priests were hunted – Mass continued to be celebrated at the devastated Abbey and attended by the loyal townsfolk.

This was often a very perilous thing to do. Paid informers were a constant danger.

The Saga of Seán na Sagart During Penal Times, Catholic priests had a price on their heads, and the Abbey became the scene of yet another Irish tragedy.

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A local notorious priest hunter, Seán Maloney (Seán na Sagart or ‘John of the Priest’) is supposed to have caught a number of priests, and to have enjoyed the protection of soldiers wherever he went. It seems Seán had his eye on the two priests at Ballintubber. He faked a deathbed scene at his sister’s house and told her he wanted to confess his sins. He thus tricked her into sending for the older priest.

As Fr. Kilger bent over Seán to hear his confession, he stabbed the priest with a concealed dagger. The next day, the younger priest, Fr. Burke, came to bless the grave for Fr. Kilger's body, disguised as a woman. Seán recognized him, and Fr. Burke fled. After a long chase, the priest finally stumbled and Seán pounced, stabbing him in the leg. However, Seán McCann, a peddler who had followed them, intervened. He removed the knife from Fr. Burke's leg and then killed Seán For 236 years, the local people were forced to hear Mass in the roofless Abbey with his own knife. church, completely open to the elements. A photograph from 1865 is witness to

this, showing people kneeling on the grassy ground. Though the Mass has ended, they continue kneeling as the priest gives instruction to the children.

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The following day, the soldiers who found Seán’s body buried him in the Ballintubber graveyard. However, the people removed his body from the grave and tossed it into the nearby lake. The priest, however, told them to recover the body from the lake and bury it once more in the graveyard.

This they did – but they buried Seán not facing the east where the sun rises, and where Christ will return in glory for all who lie in wait for Him.

In 2016, the Abbey will celebrate 800 years of its historic mission -literally, eight centuries of Holy Mass celebrated uninterruptedly in this place, come rack, rope, or ruin.

Restoration of the Abbey Restoration of the Abbey church was first begun in 1846, but the devastating Famine of 1847 forced a cessation of the work.

Four decades later, restoration was started again, and help was received even from people across the seas.

In 1997, the rebuilding was directed to the Chapter House and the Dormer area where retreats and Faith Formation activities are held for young people.

Ballintubber Abbey Today Today, Ballintubber Abbey continues to celebrate daily Masses.

It has also become a popular place for weddings; Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was married there in 2001.

The Abbey also offers retreat programs for adults and for postprimary school students, as well as Confirmation preparation.

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Defending the Faith at the Highest Intellectual Levels

Newman College Ireland

by Donna Sue Berry

There is a second Famine in Ireland today. Not a Famine which starves the body, but a spiritual Famine which threatens the foundations of a society whose Christian roots reach back into late Roman times.

Kathy Sinnott and Nick Healy have a dream which they are sharing in Ireland and amongst the Irish Diaspora numbered in the tens of millions around the world. Their dream is to build Newman College Ireland to respond to this challenge in today's Irish society and to defend the Faith at the highest intellectual levels.

Outline of a Dream

N

ewman College Ireland will be based on EX CORDE ECCLESIAE, the Apostolic Constitution promulgated in 1990 by Saint Pope John Paul II -- that no institution of higher learning is to call itself “Catholic” unless the norms of Ex Corde Ecclesiae are met.

This four year Catholic college will have Liberal Arts as its primary curriculum and will offer courses in theology, history, philosophy, literature, as well as math, economics and natural science. The campus at Newman College Ireland will be a residential one with faculty, staff, and students living, working and learning together.

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The faculty and staff are expected to provide a witness that Catholic moral teaching can be lived joyfully; and to accompany students on their journey to mature Catholic adulthood.

The course of studies will be rigorous, and intended to introduce students to the life of the mind.

The goal is for Newman College graduates to become leaders; to be salt and light in a society that is rapidly de-Christianizing and in which the Catholic Church is on the defensive.

At a Time of Bitter Sadness The idea for the Catholic college came at a time of bitter sadness for former Member of European Parliament, Kathy Sinnott. Her son, who had been attending a liberal arts college in America, drowned in a tragic accident in 2009.

“At his funeral I was thinking how happy in his faith my son was over the last couple of years and how some of his friends in Ireland didn't have the same opportunity, and I just thought people in Ireland should have this,” Mrs. Sinnott has said. She believes “the time is right” for such an institution. www.reginamag.com

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Former Member of European 45 Parliament, Kathy page Sinnott

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Nick Healy, President Emeritus, Ave Maria University (Florida) "Many Irish I have met think of Newman College Ireland as a breath of fresh air. The very idea of Catholic intellectual center is highly encouraging, especially after so many years of experiencing a decline in the practice of the faith."

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Working alongside her for the establishment and success of the college is American Nicholas J. Healy. He is the President Emeritus of Ave Maria University in Florida, and today is the President and CEO of Friends of Catholic Education in Ireland, a nonprofit entity intended to support Catholic higher education in Ireland that meets the requirements of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Q. President Healy, what was the genesis of this idea for you? How did you get involved? A. About two years ago I was contacted by Kathy Sinnott about helping to start a new Catholic university or college in Ireland. She had heard that I had some experience in the start-up of new Catholic institutions of higher learning, and that I had just retired as President of Ave Maria University. I agreed to give her general guidance.

Q. Did anything happen to kick this project into high gear? A. In October of 2012 my wife and I made a visit to Ireland. We decided to make it a pilgrimage in gratitude for our Irish ancestors handing on the faith to us. We traveled all over Ireland, meeting with priests, lay Catholics and the Apostolic Nuncio.

the group in Ireland accepted the general principles of what I believed were essential to success and also to begin the process of generating financial support.

Q. A private university is a novel idea in much of Europe. What sort of response are you getting from the Irish? A. A private, lay-initiated institution is really the only practical solution. To get government support would be very difficult and time-consuming, and government support inevitably brings a measure of control.

"Lay-initiated institutions are uncommon in Ireland (and in Europe in general) but of course not in America," said Nick Healy. "Indeed, most of the finest colleges and universities here are private. The response in Ireland is very encouraging."

The Church there has largely been on the defensive against a media that is extremely hostile, and a government that seems determined to minimize the role of the Church in Irish society.

Q. Are your supporters mainly Irish Americans?

How/where would you like to broaden your 'I came back from that trip convinced that a Catholic college base? A. From the outset I have believed that the main support for NCI would have to be provided by the Irish faithful to the Church was desperately needed, and that I diaspora. I formed Friends of Catholic Education in Ireland should do what I could to help bring it about.' as a non-profit 501(c)(3) entity to facilitate fundraising. Just Q. Wow, what did you do next? A. I dropped all other in the United States there are some 40 million Americans consulting work to focus on Ireland. I wrote up what I called who identify themselves as of Irish descent. I am convinced a "case statement" to outline the kind of institution that I that many of these are grateful for the faith that was thought would work. The purpose was to make sure that preserved and handed on through great sacrifices.

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'During the penal years -- which lasted over a century -- there were times when priests were hunted like wolves (they could be shot on sight) and the practice of the faith was harshly circumscribed. Yet the Irish people held on to the faith.'

Then there are the thousands of Irish priests, missionaries and religious educators who created the infrastructure of the Church in new lands, especially the US, Canada and Australia. This too should engender gratitude. Almost all our support has come from Americans, but in time we would hope to extend our efforts to the Irish diaspora in Canada, Australia and England; and eventually Ireland itself.

Q. Defending the Faith at the highest intellectual levels in the current climate in Ireland is an enormous challenge. How do you see a way forward? A. The intellectual climate in Ireland is indeed hostile to the Christian vision, and especially to the institutional Church. Yet Ireland still has a deeply Catholic culture.

'If the Catholic perspective on policy and cultural issues is well articulated it resonates powerfully. We have truth on our side, and many are becoming disgusted with the empty promises of secularism. Prosperity did not deliver what it promised, and Irish people are looking for deeper meaning in their lives. The time is ripe to proclaim the truths and beauty of the ancient Faith.'

Based in the United States, this organization has received approval from the IRS as a tax exempt 501(c) (3) and tax deductible contributions can be made to: Friends of Catholic Education in Ireland, Inc. 999 Vanderbilt Beach Rd Suite 200 Naples, FL 34108

Inquiries may be made to President Healy at nickhealy@comcast.net and newmancollegeireland@gmail.com

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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Monasterboice, Mellifont, Glendalough & Murrisk

On the Trail of Ireland’s Mysterious Early Christian Monks The Irish developed a Christian civilization quite separate from Europe or England, mainly through the stunning achievements of her monastic tradition. Ireland’s monks literally sailed from Eire to bring the light of the Faith and learning to Dark Ages Britain, Scotland and France.

In this wide-ranging photo essay, Regina Magazine’s Michael Durnan takes us on a fascinating tour of Ireland’s Early Christian monks and the ruins of their civilization.

O

ur journey begins at the very earliest recorded times of Ireland, when the Roman legions still dominated England over the Irish Sea. St. Patrick — once a slave forced to work in Irish fields — has returned as a Catholic bishop and brought the light of the Faith with him from continental Europe. He has made early converts, defying Druids and necromancers alike.

But those early Celtic Christian monks who seek to live the Christian life that Patrick taught must live apart in order to nurture the flame of the Faith. And that is why if we peer through the mists of Europe’s Dark Ages, we can discern the dim outlines of Monasterboice in County Louth, north of Dublin.

MONASTERBOICE

Today, this is still a lonely spot amidst green fields, with ravens circling overhead — the ancient, austere ruins of the Celtic monastery of Monasterboice, or Mainistir Bhuithe, founded in the late 5th C. by St. Buithe.

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Vikings sought out monasteries to rob and plunder because Catholic monks were generally unarmed and isolated, and their church plate — altar chalices, etc — were often valuable items.

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Records indicate that the interior of the Monasterboice tower went up in flames almost a thousand years ago in 1097 AD, destroying many valuable manuscripts and other treasures page 51

GLENDALOUGH

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Founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century at Glendalough (‘Gleaan Da Loch‘ in Gaelic) this remote valley was one of the most important early Celtic monastic sites which developed into a monastic city. www.reginamag.com

St. Kevin presided over the community of scholarship and learning at Glendalough and lived his life fasting, praying and teaching until his death in 618 AD. Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

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In 1457, Father Hu a church and friar

The Augustinian Fria They established a gre with food and shelter page 54

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ugh O’Malley got permission from Pope Callistus III to build ry at Murrisk, near the foot of Croagh Patrick.

ars regularly used this route to go up the mountain to pray. eat friendship with the people of the area and helped them r.

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MURRISK ABBEY

Murrisk Abbey was just over 100 years old in 1578 when it was leased to James Garvey, a brother of the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh. From that point on, very little is known. page 55

A group of Irish and French monks settled in this remote site in 1142 and began construction in the traditional Cistercian style.

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MELLIFONT They were amazingly successful. Within a couple decades, nine more Cistercian monasteries were established in Ireland. At its height, Mellifont was the mother house of 21 monasteries and as many as 400 monks called the Abbey their home.

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Q&A

‘ANCIENT, MYSTERIOUS, PRAYERFUL, POWERFUL’, LATIN MASS BRINGS NEW LIFE TO OLD DUBLIN PARISH

Father Gerard Deighan is the pastor of St. Kevin’s Parish in trendy Portobello, Dublin, where the Latin Mass Chaplaincy for the Dublin Archdiocese has been established since 2007. In this exclusive Regina Magazine interview, he conducts us through his beautiful church and discusses his thriving, young congregation.

How old is the Church? Can you tell us a little about the parish history?

How long has the Latin Mass been celebrated at St. Kevin’s?

The building of St Kevin’s began in 1869, and the church was opened for worship in 1872. The work of decorating the interior went on for many decades, and I suppose it is still going on today!

The traditional Latin Mass came to St Kevin’s -or should I say came back to St Kevin’s -- in the autumn of 2007, following on Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.

Why do you say that?

Our work nowadays, however, is about conserving the heritage of the past, and indeed restoring what has been damaged with time. We recently completed a very important project in the sanctuary area, which has brought that part of the church back to exactly how it looked almost 140 years ago.

Was this the first time in Dublin?

Ever since 1989 there had been a regular Sunday Mass in Dublin city, at various locations. When Summorum Pontificum came out, our Archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, decided to establish a chaplaincy dedicated to the traditional liturgy, with daily Mass, and full pastoral care of the faithful.

In time we would like to extend this work of restoration to the entire church. But funds are limited! page 58

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“I think young people are hungry for tradition. In a constantly-changing, what we might call ‘synthetic’ world, they are looking for what has stood the test of time, for what is ‘organic’.”

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"​When young people experience the older liturgy, they can instinctively sense that there is something special about it. It is ancient, mysterious, prayerful, powerful."

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Great! Why St Kevin’s?

St Kevin’s was considered to be a suitable church to base the chaplaincy in, since it was well located and had maintained most of its original interior, such as the pulpit, high altar, and altar rails. Also, the number of local parishioners had dwindled quite a bit, and it was felt that the chaplaincy would ensure the church building was better used into the future.

Have you seen much growth attributable to the TLM? Yes, there has been considerable growth. When the Latin Mass came to St Kevin’s there were about 200 at Sunday Mass; that number has now doubled to 400, though on some Sundays it can be more.

Are they regulars?

How are your local congregants reacting to this influx?

I am very happy that over the years more and more of the local parishioners are coming along.

At the outset there was a certain resentment of the “outsiders” coming into the parish; but now I think everyone sees that the Latin Mass has brought new life and energy to St Kevin’s, as well as ensuring its financial viability.

I am also very impressed by how committed those young people are to their faith, and knowledgeable about it. It is a great privilege to minister to them.

We have what I would call a “floating” congregation. As well as the people who come every Sunday, there are those who come every second Sunday, or once a month, and so on. Otherwise they attend their home parish.

Obviously it is not easy to have to travel a distance every week.

Would you say they are ‘typical’ Mass-goers for Ireland?

What stands out about the congregation at the Latin Mass is the age profile. Visitors are surprised at how many young people there are, especially young men, a group you will not find in great numbers in most parishes.

Are your Latin Mass-goers involved with the parish life?

Most of those who attend the Latin Mass are living at a distance, so it is not easy for them to get involved in parish life during the week.

At the same time, we now have several volunteers from the Latin Mass congregation who help right across the board in parish life: members of the finance committee, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the altar guild, church cleaning, and so forth.

You mentioned that the TLM is an area experiencing significant growth in the Irish Church. Why do you think that might be?

I think young people are hungry for tradition. In a constantly-changing, what we might call “synthetic” world, they are looking for what has stood the test of time, for what is “organic”.

Sounds like a bit of a generation gap!

Somehow or other, those who grew up with the traditional liturgy often didn’t appreciate it. They thought it was out-dated, and needed a make-over.

Unfortunately, that make-over involved discarding many beautiful elements.

What about the younger generation?

Anything else that’s ‘different’ about the EF Mass-goers?

When young people experience the older liturgy, they can instinctively sense that there is something special I am also very impressed by how committed those about it. It is ancient, mysterious, prayerful, powerful. young people are to their faith, and knowledgeable They may not understand in the normal sense all the about it. It is a great privilege to minister to them. words or gestures, but they understand at a deeper level. And then when they read up on things on the How would you characterize the internet they come to a fuller appreciation. demographics of the Latin Mass-goers?

I would like to emphasize how mixed the attendance is: young and old, male and female, lots of young families and children, all kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds. In a word, it’s a very normal Catholic congregation.

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

That’s quite an irony.

Strange as it may seem, it has been the internet, that most modern thing, which has introduced the youth to the traditional Mass! When I ask our young visitors how they found St Kevin’s, invariably the answer is: your website. page 63

The Truth About Ireland & the Faith

Conversations with Dubliners

by Michael Durnan

Fashionably-dressed Dubliners crowd the sidewalks -affluent, confident, brash, cosmopolitan, and full of the joy of life.

Materialism and consumerism corrodes Irish spiritual life David McWilliams, an Irish economist and writer tells us that “Ireland has arrived!” and I can only add that it has done so at breath-taking speed. The materialism and consumerism that has enveloped Ireland has, however, had an undeniably corrosive effect on its religious, spiritual and faith life.

The image of Ireland is one of rolling emerald green fields full of sheep and dairy cattle; whitewashed cottages and quaint pubs; charming villages; rustic farms; a wind-andrain-swept coast and a gentle pace of life. Ireland for some conjures up an image of country that resembles a kind of giant film set for John Ford’s movie, The Quiet Man. This includes a plummeting birth rate, which in the 1980s dropped from four to two children per mother. The number Most Irish people now are town dwellers Ireland's of children born outside of marriage rose from 5 percent in reality, however, is far removed from this charming, wistful the early 1980s to 25 percent by 1990, and 33 percent by image, because most Irish people now live in cities and 2006. In a country of only 4 million souls, this has serious towns. In the last twenty-five years, Ireland has undergone consequences. dramatic change and has completely re-invented itself. In the 15 years since my first visit to Ireland in 1990, it has Church influence has waned Fewer young people been amazing to see how much Dublin has changed. now attend Mass, and even if they do practise their faith, many pick and choose which of the Church’s teachings they New, smart restaurants, bars, shops, cafes are everywhere. will follow. The Church in Ireland has been battered and

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Ireland’s rising prosperity and its expanding middle class, along with other social changes such as artificial contraception has had serious consequences for the nation.

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bruised, and the morale of clergy and religious is low, with “Changing the Church’s image by working on the ground vocations declining rapidly from their historic high levels. (where she has always been strongest) and continuing the hard work of generations of clergy, religious and laity in areas that actually make a difference to the lives of ordinary people, especially the poor and the sick, this must be a priority. It’s what St. Francis might have called ‘preaching without words.’

"Recently a Catholic conference in Ireland, reported in the ‘Irish Catholic,’ heard much talk about the laity being needed to fill in for the falling numbers of clergy. I don’t see that we are yet ready to face the music on contraception and the betrayal of the clergy, religious and laity of tomorrow by the laity of yesterday and today. The Church hierarchy is going to have to face the contraception issue sooner or later. It is not just a matter of adherence to Church teaching but about the survival of the Church in Ireland and of the Nation itself. I can at least hope that that will happen, eventually.”

Then, in the midst of these profound changes, Ireland was rocked by horrific revelations of abuse of its young people by a minority of its Catholic clergy and religious. What made the situation worse was the conduct of some of the bishops, who were seen as trying to cover up the whole episode and their own role in it, and of silencing the victims.

A Catholic professional woman and mother in her 50s told Regina Magazine that, “we’ve had decades of mismanagement by bishops afraid to stick their heads up over the parapet.

Catholics in Ireland had been lulled into complacency about the Faith, confident that their children were being taught their catechism in the Catholic schools when in fact that hasn’t been the case. Most young Catholics today have no idea of what the Faith actually teaches.

Whilst the Church in Ireland is facing serious problems, there are signs of hope and renewal. Mc Williams also writes that there has been a revival of 'mystical, symbolic Catholicism.'

Over 25% of the population turned out to see the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux in 2006 --a phenomenon which no one had predicted. (Many of the Church's senior officials had been against the idea.) McWilliams suggests that "this single turn out suggested that something was being overlooked by the secular commentariat and it is a yearning to connect".

He also noted record attendance at The Galway Novena, pilgrimages to Lough Derg and Croagh Patrick -- all reversing the downward trend of the 90's. Clergy are also reporting increased attendances to ceremonies from throat blessing to Ash Wednesday after plummeting dramatically in the 1990's.

The Church in Ireland, as in the rest of Europe, has ancient, deep roots, so even if the vine above is pruned severely, the Church will not die out completely. As the Irish-American Catholic Archbishop of New York, Fulton Sheen, once observed -- it may be the end of Christendom, but it is not the end of Christianity.

An Irish media professional working in London talked about the 2010 Vatican visitation ordered by Pope Benedict XVI in the wake of the terrible revelations of the sexual abuse and cover-ups by Irish bishops. “Just recently the Archbishop of Dublin publicly repudiated the Vatican visitation, saying that What the Irish faithful will tell you (Editor's Note: they hadn’t been ‘helpful.’

Whilst Regina Magazine has spoken with many Irish people in both country towns and cities, few faithful Catholics were "This is part of an overall dishonest pattern of the Irish willing to talk about the state of the Faith on the record. This hierarchy of playing to the sensibilities of the anti-clerical is, frankly, because in an atmosphere of almost daily media Irish media and elites and shifting the blame to Rome – when and elite attacks on the Church, they fear ridicule and indeed it’s been the Irish hierarchy which has been in fact responsible reprisals.) for this horror.”

One veteran Irish priest who works with university students pointed out that that the vocations coming forward to the priesthood and religious life are orthodox young men and women from practicing families who remain loyal to Church teaching.

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And what of the future?

When asked about her experience of the Faith in Ireland, one 20-something woman told Regina Magazine: "The Irish Church is going through a long process of cleansing and renewal, and there is a long way to go yet. Many of

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"But the fascinating thing about the Irish is that you'll get someone who calls themselves an atheist coming to you and asking for prayers when their child is diagnosed with cancer. The Faith has a deep root in Ireland."

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the problems that we have now are slowly being eradicated; sacraments. The sacraments still frame the lives of many literally dying out. people, even if they are not very involved otherwise. While there are positive signs of the ground here, I also look to countries "Young Catholics are not responding to liberalism; only to the such as the U.S. for hope. The recovery of the Church there is undiluted Truth that will inspire them to take up their crosses well ahead of Ireland and is in many ways to be admired. The and follow Christ. This means that young people who are U.K. is also interesting to keep an eye on, as Catholics there involved with the Church really have faith in the teachings. are very much Catholic by choice."

"It is actually the difficulties in the Church right now that give cause for great hope. The men joining the priesthood are men of real conviction and faith, I think. Similarly with the laity, those without conviction are falling away from the Faith and this means the Church is becoming slowly but surely more authentic.

"Orthodoxy and a love for the traditional liturgy is really taking root in dioceses under good bishops in both countries and I really hope this is something we can look forward to seeing in Ireland again in the future."

The so-called “credit crunch” Having undergone such a dramatic boom and transformation in the last twenty years, "Irish society and the media are quite hostile to the Church the subsequent bust and the following austerity has led to now, and when people constantly have to defend their beliefs rising unemployment and young people once again emigrating they are forced to examine why they believe these things. in search of work and a better life.

Movements and groups are slowly forming, as Catholics need the support of one another."

Not everyone is living in an American-style Mc Mansion. Many Irish people are struggling. The "Foreign missionaries tell me that they are impressed by how opportunity is there for the Church to renew both much Irish people really still believe in the power of prayer. herself and the Irish people by providing spiritual Also, while it’s controversial now for a young person to really sustenance and practical assistance. agree with the teachings of the Church, few would bat an eyelid if you said you went to Mass each Sunday, it’s not that unusual For centuries, observers both friendly and hostile have still. pointed out that the Catholic Church is at its best when faced with challenges and even hostility. An Irish Church that has "Many in Ireland would have a poor opinion of the Church as suffered damage to her reputation now has the historic chance an institution (of what they term “the Vatican” in particular), to redeem herself by assisting in the healing of the Irish nation but Irish people are very comfortable with Catholicism on the once again. small scale. Many parents are still very happy to have their children in Catholic-run schools and for them to receive the "The Irish Church is going through a long process of cleansing

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and renewal, and there is a long way to go yet. Many of the problems that we have now are slowly being eradicated; literally dying out.

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“There is an old prophecy that the Faith in Ireland will nearly die out, but will re-ignite and turn the nation into a bonfire of Catholicism.”

The Devil Has Not Gone Away But the Faith Runs Deep in Ireland Father Tom Forde, OFM Cap, is a Chaplain at the Q.Could you provide some insight on University of Cork. In this deeply serious interview, what’s happening to the Faith in Ireland he unflinchingly discusses the agony of the Church in today?

Ireland today — and points to an unexpected light on A. The Faith runs deep. Human beings Ireland’s dark horizon. are naturally religious and the Irish are no Q. What do you think is the greatest myth about Ireland today?

different. 'Mary Kenny, an Irish Catholic journalist,' has a book where she argues that the faith and interests of the laity of one generation determines the faith and interests of the clergy of the next. When the people were pro-British we had generations of clergy who were also pro-British but when the people turned against the British the clergy did too. The exception, she believes, were the religious who were often counter-cultural. It’s an interesting argument.

A. That we are still the old Ireland, a country filled with green hills and sheep. The reality is that out of a total of about 6 million people in Ireland — 4.5 in the Republic and 1.5 in Northern Ireland– 1.5 million live in or near Dublin alone, with over 500,000 living in Belfast and another 250,000 in Cork. Therefore a sizable portion of the population is urbanized and that alone has an impact on Q. What have been the major trends contributing to religious practice. Most of the immigrants to Ireland have the lack of religious practice in Ireland today? come from ‘Catholic’ countries but that has not significantly impacted on the practice rates. The Poles especially tend to A. There is a connection between the decline in the practice stick together and intend to return to Poland. of the Faith in Ireland and the swing away from traditional values, between a scepticism about nationalism, an increasing page 70

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devotion to consumerism and above all the widespread embracing of contraception. On the latter point if one could chart the decline in Mass attendance and the increase in contraceptive availability/sales (especially after legalization in 1979) I think there would be a clear correlation.

Q. This is not unique to Ireland, of course.

A. Yes. The same rebellious spirit that swept the Church, especially in Europe and the States, swept Ireland too but it took a little longer to have its effect. Ireland looks much more to the States than to probably any other country largely due to the sheer numbers of emigrants who have gone there.

Q. Has this affected the Irish clergy?

A. The Irish Church is no different (than the people). America has long been the country of choice for religious and clergy to study since travel there became cheaper and easier. That swing away from Europe towards the U.S. has meant that the liberalism that has dominated the American Church has also dominated the Irish if in a more toned-down form. The clerical promoters of the morality of contraception seem to have received little resistance within the Irish Church in the 70’s or since.

Q. And what about today?

A. The bishops say the right things but do little it seems, to correct abuses until they are public scandals. One Irish priest Fr. Iggy O’Donovan, a religious, was deprived of faculties in the Archdiocese of Armagh after he had publically celebrated Mass with a Protestant minister as concelebrant and carried out invalid baptisms. He was granted faculties in another diocese (Limerick). That was last year!

rate – a minimum of 2.1) and although it has temporarily jumped up a little it is still below 2.1. It has been below the replacement rate since the late 80’s. Our nation like the rest of the West and much of the civilized world is in decline.

Q. Contraception is a technology that is used by nonCatholics as well, of course.

A. Yes, but for the Church this is a double blow. The people who contracept are largely Catholic and this places them in conflict with the Church’s official teaching and God’s plan.

Even if they are reassured by some clergy, in their hearts they know the two are irreconcilable. With a refusal to co-operate with God’s plan for human sexuality and fertility – a moral problem – there comes the spiritual problem that faith does not thrive under disobedience and this means an interior conflict. That interior conflict leads to either repentance or exterior rebellion – they walk away. It also means that not only will vocations not thrive in such an atmosphere but a contracepting people will not conceive enough babies to support their own future let alone the priesthood and the future of the Church.

The bishops say the right things but do little it seems to correct abuses until they are public scandals. There are also dark rumours of some of the filth that Pope Benedict spoke about. The devil has not gone away.

Q. Certainly contraception is not the only reason why the Irish have turned away from their Church?

A. Of course not. Neither can it be denied that the abuse of children by clergy and religious both in institutions and in private has done immense damage to the Faith in Ireland.

It has done immense damage to the victims and their families. It has been a body blow to faithful clergy, religious and laity. It has reassured some that it is right to walk away. It has erected walls across the path to the Faith for others.

It has handed the enemies of the Faith and the Church a weapon with which to scourge and torture.

There is not much confidence in the Irish bishops – they are not very inspiring. Apart from Child Protection (at which the Irish Church now excels) the dioceses of Ireland are not known for doing anything well.

Even the Eucharistic Congress in 2011 was like a throwback to the 80’s! Unfortunately Q. Yes, Catholics in many countries are despite Pope Francis’ warnings against familiar with this agony — and with careerism it still thrives. There are also dark rumours of the fury it generates. some of the filth that Pope Benedict spoke about. The devil has not gone away.

A. Today, it is not easy to be Catholic in public in

Ireland. But the Church and the Faith were in decline Q. To what do you attribute this? even before the scandals broke. Some suggest that A. I think that the Irish Church, like the Irish nation, is the abuse of children and vulnerable adults by clergy, largely in decline due to the embracing of contraception. religious and laity are signs that something had gone Contraception is the technology by which the net fertility rate has declined to as low as 1.8 (should be at the replacement Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

profoundly wrong in Ireland (as it obviously had in other countries e.g. Holland).

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[Abuse] has be laity. It has re has erected wa handed the en w

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een a body blow to faithful clergy, religious and eassured some that it is right to walk away. It alls across the path to the Faith for others. It has nemies of the Faith and the Church a weapon with which to scourge and torture.

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The rot was already there spreading beneath the veneer of Irish Catholicism.

Q. These are dark days indeed for the Faith in Ireland.

A. Nevertheless, there are signs of hope. There is an old prophecy that the Faith in Ireland will nearly die out but will re-ignite and turn the nation into a bonfire of Catholicism.

There are small groups of young people ardent for the Faith all over the country.

They are already like veterans so toughened by opposition that they take it for granted.

You have to have a thick skin

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There are small groups of young people ardent for the Faith all over the country. The Irish Church has a long dark road still ahead of her but she is not alone – she never was.

to be Catholic in many parts of Ireland. Eventually some of them will make it not only into the clergy but into the episcopacy and perhaps then we will see a change.

In the meantime there are clergy who are loyal to the Faith and who want to see it flourish.

They are quietly organizing and working to reinforce and to rebuild what they can.

The Irish Church has a long dark road still ahead of her but she is not alone – she never was.

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Knocking Knock

What the Apparitions Point To

by Beverly DeSoto On a rainy August night in 1879, a parish charwoman in the humble farming village of Knock, Ireland finished her duties and locked the church door behind her. Then she had a chat with a family that lived in the thatched-roof house next door.

At about eight o'clock, accompanied

by Bridget, the older teenaged daughter of the family, she left for home. As the two women walked past the Church of Saint John the Baptist's gabled stone wall, something caught their attention.

For there, on the back wall, a window had opened to another world.

The cleaning lady gasped and dropped to her knees. Bridget ran to fetch her family and neighbors. Within minutes, fifteen villagers gathered to peer through this apparent window in time and space which had, inexplicably, opened before their eyes. Their ages ranged from five years to seventy-five and included men, women, teenagers and children.

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For two hours the Knock people were transfixed as an apparition of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and Saint John the Evangelist glowed from the south gable end of the small parish church. Behind the saints stood an unadorned altar. On the altar was a cross and a lamb standing, with a sword piercing it. The lamb was facing West, surrounded by adoring angels.

The entire tableau glowed with a white light, and none of the figures moved or spoke.

The villagers prayed the Rosary together in the pouring rain. Bridget said she "went in immediately to kiss, as I thought, the feet of the Blessed Virgin; but I felt nothing in the embrace but the wall, and I wondered why I could not feel with my hands the figures which I had so plainly and so distinctly seen".

Later, the witnesses reported that the ground under the apparition remained completely dry. Afterwards, however the area became wet and the gable darkened as the figures faded from sight.

135 years later, I visited Knock.

Now, in complete fairness to the reader, I must disclose my prejudices.

First, although I am a practicing Catholic, I am not an apparitions-type person. Second, if I were an atheist and/or a cynic I would find in Knock in 2014 plenty of grist for my mill.

For the truth is that my first impression of Knock was horrible. Totally, utterly awful.

The Catholic Church at its worst For cynics, apparitions have always represented the Catholic Church at its opportunistic worst -- preying on the vulnerabilities of the weak and the gullible.

For them, Knock was a mass delusion suffered by a marginalized peasantry in a dark time in Ireland's history when rural evictions hovered like a specter over the lives of the common working people.

And to the casual, cynical observer, Knock is the living embodiment of Corporate Catholicism at its worst. The tiny village of the 1800s is no more. It has metastasized into a sort of Catholic Disneyworld, surrounded by an ocean of concrete parking lots designed to accommodate busloads of

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pilgrims intent on checking the Basilica and environs off some pious travel 'bucket list.'

Please don't get me started on the Basilica Cold, unfeeling, modernist -- Knock basilica looks like a Soviet-era architect's parody of a 'catholic'

church. Personally, I can't decide which aspect is more distressing. Is it the Big Tent dinner theater-in-the-round design -- a mammoth version of the worst of American post-Vatican II suburban churches?

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Or maybe it's the gruesome modern art on the walls?

Oh, wait -- how about the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament?

I actually have only felt this depressed in a sacred space once before in my life. That was looking at the dank floor of the Mamertine prison in Rome, where saints Peter and Paul were kept in chains.

But wait, there's MORE. Wandering through the empty basilica, we came upon some curious closet-like doors in the walls. What could these be, we wondered?

This one comes with two parts, folks. The first stunner is that these tiny warren-like spaces were in actuality designed to be confessionals.

The kicker, however, is that these erstwhile 'confessionals' are now used as trash receptacles.

(Again, the irony for a Church that no longer believes in 'sin' is beyond words.)

Moving right along We escaped the confines of the Basilica, crossed the vast parking lot and there, before us was -- what?

So, let's consider this. If you were trying to 'create a sacred space' with the wall where the villagers saw the apparition, and protect worshipers from the omnipresent County Mayo rain, what would you do?

Something tells me it wouldn't be this. (Is it just me, does that thing look like the segments of an enormous reptile growing out of the back of that sweet 19th century church?)

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Here's the real Knock

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Now here's the part that made me cry. If you turn your back on this Catholic Disneyworld and find your way through the door of the original parish church where the people of Knock in the 19th century heard Mass, you will suddenly, astonishingly, encounter the Faith.

This is where the visionary charwoman did her humble job.

This is where the most important events of the lives of those fifteen witnesses happened.

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The Real Presence is here, on the altar. You can feel it. This is where people leave their small offerings.

Here is where the locals stop in 'to make a visit.' Just as they always have.

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Just as if the monster that has grown out of the back of this church didn't exist.

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What Knock showed us Someone has said that the real meaning of the apparition at Knock was a kind of divine solidarity.

The Blessed Mother and her companions, according to this view, appeared to comfort these simple people at a time of growing fear. Their West of Ireland was a Famine-haunted land, never far from the edge of disaster.

The holy figures at Knock didn't need to speak. They stood in stillness -- silently witnessing to the Faith and accompanying these people during this perilous time.

But the Lamb on the altar-- slain but still standing, facing West -- also held a special message for the Irish people beyond the villagers of Knock.

For the Lamb is Christ, and He is slain but still standing. And the Lamb was facing West where, of course, millions of Irish people had sailed off into, most never to return again to Ireland's green shores.

The way home again What has happened to the Faith of the Irish people?

In a nutshell, it's been another perfect storm -- and another Famine.

The perfect storm of the late 20th century combined the worst sins of man's fallen nature: lust, greed and pride. The perverse lust of fallen clergy preying on a trusting laity, the greed unleashed by an economy fueled on a global bubble and the swollen pride of a Catholic hierarchy intent on winning the approval of a cynical elite that would like nothing better than the utter destruction of the Faith in Ireland.

Today's Irish Famine is a spiritual one. This is nowhere so apparent than its strange embodiment in the Disneyworld at Knock, in the overgrown, ugly buildings marooned in a sea of asphalt.

The sweetness of the place is palpable, and you begin to understand why Mary would appear here.

Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

But there is something Else here, too. Something that dwarfs the arrogant modernity of concrete hideousness outside.

Knock also quietly, sweetly shows Ireland -- and the Catholic world -- the way back home.

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It's right there, in the old church of St. John the Baptist. In the Real Presence in the Tabernacle, in the small parish church that the charwoman of Knock cleaned. Â And let that be a lesson to all of us.

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Silverstream Priory St Benedict's Sons in Ireland

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Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, 62, was born and raised in Connecticut. Today, he is the Prior of a newly-established Benedictine monastery in Stamullen, Ireland. The Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle has an amazing vocations problem: they have far too many young monks (plus interested young men) for their meager means. Here's their story: Q. Dom Kirby, tell us how Silverstream Priory began. The seed of Silverstream Priory was planted in my heart in 2004-2005.

Profoundly moved by Saint John Paul II's apostolic letter, 'Mane nobiscum Domine,' I resolved to live the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist and to preach that mystery every day during that year.

Q. Tell us how Our Lord called you to a this vocation within a vocation.

I understood then that Our Lord was calling me to a "vocation within a vocation": Not only to the pursuit of the traditional Benedictine life, but also to adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, in a spirit of reparation and intercession for the sanctification of priests.

An indult from the Holy See dispensed me from my obligations to the abbey of my profession, and freed me to renew my vows, under the Rule of St Benedict, into the hands of the Most Reverend Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa.

Another series of providential circumstances led our embryonic community from Tulsa to County Meath in Ireland, where we found a property and buildings.

Q. How did you find your priory in County Meath? We made a novena to St Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, and prayed to Blessed Columba Marmion.

Upon arriving at Silverstream, I discovered hanging above the sacristy vesting cabinet, a framed document in Latin attesting to the dedication of the little church and its altar to St Thérèse.

On October 19, 2011, I met with the Most Reverend Michael Smith, Bishop of Meath, and laid our project before him. He graciously welcomed us to the Diocese of Meath.

And so, with the fatherly blessing of Bishop Slattery, Dom Benedict Andersen and I set out for the Isle of Saints and Scholars to implant traditional Benedictine life at Silverstream, committed to the traditional forms of the sacred Liturgy, celebrated in Latin with Gregorian chant.

Q. What is the particular focus of your Benedictine community? Like all Benedictine monks, we open the sacred Scriptures daily, in lectio divina, to discover, shining through every page the adorable Face of Christ.

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This particular focus on the radiant Countenance of Jesus, both revealed and concealed in the Eucharist, is rooted in the expression coined by Blessed John Paul II in the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, wherein he enjoined the faithful to tarry before the "Eucharistic Face of Christ." After Scripture, we, like all Benedictines, refer to the Fathers of the Desert, and to the ancient monastic traditions of East and West.

Eventually, we will be able to adorn the church with iconography.

Finally, we foresee creating twelve monastic cells in the main building. I believe there are faithful Catholics, eager to see a monastic springtime in Ireland, who would be in a position to offer us substantial help.

Q. How many monks and others now live at the Q. Are you influenced by the example and writings of priority? Currently we are five: Two professed monks, Dom anyone apart from Saint Benedict?

Benedict Andersen, a native of Denver, Colorado, who came with me from Tulsa, and I. We take to heart the teachings of Catherine Mectilde de Bar (1614-1698) on adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament When Dom Benedict pronounced his vows last September, he in a spirit of reparation. Mother Mectilde is considered to was the first Benedictine monk to be professed in the Diocese be the "Teresa of Avila" of the Benedictine Order. Italian of Meath since the dissolution of the Abbey of Fore by the Abbot Celestino Maria Colombo OSB (1874-1935) believed commissioners of Henry VIII in 1539. passionately in the Mectildian charism, and hoped to see it flourish among monks of the Order. We also give a privileged We also have two novices: Brother Elijah (Oklahoma) and place to the writings of Blessed Columba Marmion, Ireland's Brother Finnian (County Meath). We have one postulant, André most illustrious Benedictine.

(South Africa), and about twenty-five other men in the early stages of inquiry.

Q. What is the Priory’s situation today?

Q. What qualities do you seek in your postulants? Our Promising young men with vocations are knocking at our door, monks must have zeal for the Sacred Liturgy and love of the but neither the door, nor the house, nor the land belongs to Word of God, particularly the Psalms, and the desire to adore us. I have to raise funds for the purchase of the Silverstream Our Lord in the Sacrament of His Love, and to make reparation Property. for coldness, irreverence, and indifference towards the Most We now are engaged in renovating the guesthouse. We also Holy Eucharist. have a beautiful hermitage (dedicated to the Holy Souls), which They must have reverence for the Fathers of the Church and we would like to "do up" for those who would desire a more the great monastic teachers of East and West. Above all else, a secluded retreat. candidate must have a certain passion to seek God, and a firm We have had to gut the interior of the priory church built in resolve never to despair of His mercy.

1952: It needs a new roof, heating, insulation, and furnishings.

Layfolk from the region occasionally come for Holy Mass on weekdays, but even more come for Sunday Vespers and Benediction.

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Profoundly moved by Saint John Paul II's apostolic letter, 'Mane nobiscum Domine,' I resolved to live the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist and to preach that mystery every day during that year.

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I help a man discern whether he is called to be a choir monk, or a converse monk (a lay brother). The conver labor, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and a limited participation in the choral Office. The prior can cal in preparation for Holy Orders.

The monastic priesthood, as we live it at Silverstream, does not involve pastoral ministry. It is a sacramenta his oblation to the Father; and this, in the context of a hidden life, marked by silence and in effective separa

Q. Would you describe a day in the life of a monk of Silverstream?
Our horarium does not diff traditional Benedictine monastery. We pray the entire Psalter, 150 Psalms, in a single week, respecting the i rise at 4:35 a.m. to be in choir for Matins at 5 a.m. Following Matins, there is ample time for lectio divina. A

After Prime, there is the daily chapter. We listen to the portion of the Holy Rule appointed for the day, and is the transmission of the living tradition by which men aspiring to the monastic life are stimulated to beco

Q. Would you describe the labora part of your day?
After chapter, we perform a variety of tasks, inclu direction to priests; running a bookstore; doing desktop publishing; gardening; and maintaining and renov

At 9:45 a.m., we sing Terce, the Hour traditionally associated with the descent of the Holy Ghost. Even tho the Graduale Romanum, nearly every day.

Sung Mass, in the Usus Antiquior, is a discovery for many Irish Catholics, especially young people, who ha what was for them a pearl of great price. page 90

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rse monk seeks God in a life marked by manual ll a perpetually professed choir monk to studies

al configuration to Christ, Priest and Victim, in ation from the world.

ffer essentially from the horarium of any other injunction of St. Benedict in the Holy Rule. We At 8 a.m., we return to choir for Lauds.

I give a brief commentary on it. The Holy Rule ome "all fire."

uding giving hospitality to visitors and spiritual vating the buildings.

ough we are few, we then sing the Mass, using

ave expressed joy after their first experience of

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Shortly after midday, we have the Office of Sext and go to the refectory for dinner. Following St Benedict's injunction, we have reading at both dinner and supper. After a siesta, we have the Office of None, then another work period, and Vespers at 5 p.m. Supper is a light collation, and Compline follows. With one last filial homage to the Mother of God, we enter the great silence until the following day after Prime.

The Host is disarmingly humble; so would we be. The Host is the living icon of the poverty of God made man; so we would become poor with Him. The Host is silent; so do we find ourselves cherishing silence over words.

The Host is the sacrament of the Divine Hiddenness; so too must we choose hiddenness over ostentation and obscurity over acclaim. The Host is obedient, remaining where it is placed, not moving of Itself or by Itself, but waiting to be moved; and that is, I think, the very pattern of how we ought to live so as to please God. “Live by that pattern,” says Saint Paul, “and make more of it than ever” (1 Thessalonians 4:1).

Q. Does your community have any special practices? As Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration, we keep every Thursday as weekly Corpus Christi, giving greater solemnity to the Mass and having solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and Adoration all day. On other days, a few hours in the afternoon, between None and Vespers, are dedicated to Adoration. The This is what we are trying to do at Silverstream: we want to time given to Adoration will increase as the community grows. live by the pattern we contemplate in the Sacred Host, and this for the glory of the Father and the salvation of souls.

Every day after Mass, one of us recites an Act of Reparation by which we seek to make up for the coldness, indifference, irreverence, and sacrileges that grieve the Heart of Our Lord in the Sacrament of Love.

Q. Are lay people from the region coming for Mass?

Layfolk from the region occasionally come for Holy Mass on weekdays, but even more come for Sunday Vespers and Benediction.

On Sundays, a number of Polish families come to the priory for Holy Mass; the adults remain after Holy Mass for a cup of coffee in the gatehouse while the children play together outside. Many people come to the priory seeking a blessing. I often bless people with a relic of Saint Thérèse or with one of the Irish Saint Dymphna.

Q. Do you have any program for Oblates, such as layfolk and diocesan clergy? Silverstream Priory does have oblates: including layfolk and diocesan clergy, who offer themselves to God in the spirit of the Rule of St Benedict.

We consider our oblates members of the extended monastic family.

We have about two dozen oblates living in North America and Europe, including a priest and several permanent deacons.

Geographical proximity to the monastery is not a requirement of the oblateship.

Q. What led you to become a monk and a priest? I was drawn to monastic life from a very tender age.

The seed sown in my heart, when I was a small boy, took root.

Today, it is beginning to bear fruit.

Q. What would you say to a young man who is interested in discerning a vocation to your priory? In a community still at its beginnings, the monastic journey does not always flow smoothly. For all of this, I can say “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us."

One last thing, a very important one: We are not just Benedictines; we are Eucharistic Benedictines, that is, men called not only to tarry in adoration and reparation before the Sacred Host, but also men called to become like the Sacred Host, to become what we contemplate, to imitate what He shows us of Himself, hidden beneath the sacramental veils.

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Dom Mark Kirby (front) blogs at 'Vultus Christi'.

Listen to an interview with him here.

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The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest

How the Light of the Gospel is Returning to Limerick

C

anon Wulfran Lebocq, Prior of Sacred Heart Church and choirmaster of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP), spoke with REGINA Magazine about the ongoing restoration of Sacred Heart, one of the most beautiful churches in Limerick, which was falling into ruins when the Institute bought it in 2012.

The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest is a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right whose goal is “the honor of God and the sanctification of priests in the service of the Church and souls.” Its specific aim is to spread the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ in all spheres of human life, under the patronage of the Immaculate Conception, to Whom the Institute is consecrated.

In 1990, Monsignor Gilles Wach and Canon Philippe Mora founded the Institute in Gabon, on the west coast of central Africa, where they still have missions. Today, the motherhouse page 94

by Donna Sue Berry photos courtesy Michael O'Brien & the Institute of Chirst the King Sovereign Priest

and international seminary of the Institute is located in Gricigliano, in the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy.

Limerick's Sacred Heart Church The Jesuit Order began building Sacred Heart Church in Limerick in 1865 and completed in 1868. Sacred Heart is the first church in Ireland to be dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and features exquisite mosaics and shrines, as well as a large choir loft and a superb organ installed

by Telford organ builders of Dublin in 1924. Although the bulk of his organ building was in Ireland, Telford was known and respected in England and abroad. He was a close personal friend of the famous French organ builder, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

The mechanism of the Telford organ was so well constructed that the Institute was able make the organ playable again, with minor repairs, thanks to the restoration work of Padraig O’Donovan, a young organ builder from Cork. www.reginamag.com

Q&A

a Regina exclusive

I understand the church was purchased in If Sacred Heart Church is physically in the heart of Limerick, even more so was it in the very heart of the good people of Limerick.

2012; how did that purchase come about?

The initial step to the process was prayer: We began praying, then To answer this question fully, I must recount to you our religious sisters began praying, and then even the members the details of this beautiful story written by the hand of our lay branch, the Society of the Sacred Heart, began praying. of Divine Providence.

We all confided our intention to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Many devout locals who had attended every-Friday devotions to the Sacred Heart were orphaned by the closure, but continued their devotions privately.

Q. In what condition did you find the complex at that time?

When the Jesuit Fathers sold the buildings, they sold everything in it: All the furniture and liturgical items, even the altar and tabernacle, the Stations of the Cross, and the pews. Most distressing was the removal of the statue of the Sacred Heart overlooking the main doors of the church. This feature of the church façade always had been illuminated at night, and cherished by the people of Limerick for many decades.

In 2006, a developer purchased the church, planning to turn the property into a swimming pool and spa. Thanks be to God this project failed because the financial difficulties in Ireland at the time caused the developer to declare bankruptcy.

The Institute of Christ the King has had the joy to serve Ireland since early 2006. At the request of certain faithful, I began coming, monthly, then bi-monthly, to offer the Extraordinary Form of the Mass on the Emerald Isle. The process of acquiring Sacred Heart Church began then when I first learned that the Jesuits were selling it. You can imagine what the sight of the closure of this magnificent church would do to a Catholic priest coming to Ireland for the first time.

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Several years passed, and the property fell more and more into decrepitude, under the assault of Ireland’s often-unforgiving climate. Divine Providence, though, is not without irony and had special plans for this once-venerated edifice. Thanks to many local benefactors and important loans from the United States as well as Germany, the Institute of Christ the King was able to purchase the property (a rare feat for our relatively new and small Institute).

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This allowed for the first Church in Ireland ever dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to be reopened for His greater glory and honor.

The church and the adjoining residence had been totally abandoned since 2006. The condition of the property was appalling. Once a building ceases to be heated, it immediately begins to fall into disrepair. Dampness penetrates every facet of the structure: First, the paint chips, and then the plaster falls.

For Sacred Heart Church, the heating system itself became non-functional after six years of neglect and disuse. The roof of the attached residence had major leaks, which affected two stories of the building, and the broken gutters to broken windows. A tree was growing in one of the confessionals.

Next, we repaired the major leaks of the roofs and the gutters, for stopping any further damage was crucial to our restoration plans.

As soon as we began offering Holy Mass in the Church, we obtained temporary pews for the faithful. We also had to procure everything else necessary for Divine Worship.

Before the original sacristy could be rendered even marginally suitable, it was necessary to use one of the rare dry rooms of the residence as a makeshift sacristy. Again, both the church and residence were without a functioning heating system, so during most of the first year we attempted to find a solution to this fundamental problem, but to no practical avail.

Finally, by the fall of 2013 the old radiators in the church were reconnected with a new temporary boiler, providing much welcomed warmth for the liturgies and visits to Sacred Heart this past winter. Now we have also completely restored the sacristy, fabricated a laundry room in the residence, replaced several copper gutters, and redone the pointing on the brick exterior.

Q. Are there any projects that are currently underway?

How has the renovation progressed? Our first step was to replace the statue of the Sacred Heart above the entrance. We then had the water turned on again and tried to clean up a bit. page 96

Currently, our project is to install two marble adoring angels on each side of the high altar as well as a beautiful marble pulpit, saved from another closed church. In the end, we are not here simply to fix windows and boilers, but to integrally restore this church to its former nobility, beginning with the liturgy and ending in contemplation of Our Lord.

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The building was without heat and the conditions rough. It would be more accurate to say we camped in the building for several months before it could be considered habitable. Even today, we still live with very basic bathrooms, the entire living quarters lack heat, and what we call a kitchen more nearly resembles a campsite, with a sink and propane gas stove.

Q. What is daily life like at the Priory?

Adoring angels soon to be installed from nearby closed church.

Q. Would you tell us about the response you have received from the local Irish community?

We work and pray, gently and without haste, transforming the residence and church. Personal sacrifices are necessary in reviving a dead building, and making the church truly suitable for Divine Worship.

Despite the ever-present cold and damp of the residence and church, we keep and maintain as much as possible the order of our After we had opened daily, we solemnly prayed the rosary before the daily community life. Our days are rooted in the Sacred Liturgy: Blessed Sacrament exposed for the month of October. The people Lauds, Meditation, Holy Mass, Studies, Sext, work in the church or were impressed by the reverence and beauty of the ceremonies, residence, Vespers, Adoration, and Devotions to the Sacred Heart on Friday. Likewise, we have Mass not only here in Limerick, but even if the condition of the church was dilapidated. also in Galway city every Sunday and occasionally masses elsewhere in Ireland – sometimes as far as Belfast.

Many visitors who step into the church for the first time after several years are moved to tears to see such a young and vibrant community totally dedicated to the service of souls and the Church. For some, it is like a passage to a bygone era from their youth. People often share stories and happy memories with us about their receiving the sacraments or attending Mass as students, singing in choir, or listening to the organ play. To witness some of this again is a true source of inspiration for them, and their subsequent charity has been a grand consolation and motivation for us.

Q. Have you taken residence at Sacred Heart?

In the winter of 2013, we decided to move permanently into the church residence, despite its condition. On January 29, 2013, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the community moved into the residence. As the first act in our new home, we sang the vespers of our patron and doctor of charity.

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Marble pulpit that will soon be installed at Sacred Heart Church page 97

The closure of the church was profoundly discouraging to the local community. It seemed to them that the light of the Gospel was being overcome by the darkness of the world. page 98

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Today, the church’s resurrection has become a source of great hope and renewal for the faith of the local community, so sorely tried by the increasing antagonism of the modern culture and materialism.

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Q. As vocations to the priesthood and religious life are flourishing among those orders that celebrate the traditional form of the Mass, has there been interest amongst the faithful who may be discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life? Have you received any pre-seminary candidates?

We have received possible vocations that have come to Limerick Q. As choirmaster for the Institute, what can you tell us in discernment. Two of these may go to the United States in about the Sacred Music program at the Irish apostolate?

September as part of the pre-formation program for our seminary.

The Institute is blessed with an Irish religious sister who has In spite of the many urgent and pressing restoration needs, one been with us for four years. She received the habit from Cardinal of the very first things we did last year was to restore the organ, considered by experts as one of the finest in Ireland.

Canizares, and now is preparing for her final vows.

Considering the much larger spectrum of Irish heritage, the picture is more interesting. The Institute has a number of canons, seminarians, oblates and sisters of Irish ancestry. Ireland, in former times a “model nation� sent out priests and missionaries across the world. Now, many members of the Institute have are thrilled to be able to give back to a country that has given the world so much.

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As the choirmaster for the Institute, I understand very personally the importance of music in the liturgy. For many years now I have had the joy to train our seminarians and priests in the subtle art of Gregorian chant. As much as possible, I have tried to bring this rich treasure to our liturgy here: We sing the Divine Office together, which is open to the public. This is definitely our most important and efficacious apostolate.

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A Gregorian Schola has been established to train anyone interested in the theory of chant, especially according the beautiful classic method of Solesmes, in which I was trained and that the Institute encourages as much as possible. We also have a choral ensemble, Cor Jesu Singers, who specialize in the polyphony of the Renaissance.

To support the restoration of Sacred Heart Church go to their website to make a donation or download the “Trifolium Romanum” their monthly newsletter. You can also follow the Institute in Ireland on Facebook and Twitter!

A highlight of this was our first Sacred Music Week held last year, each evening a concert of various forms of sacred music: chant, organ, sacred polyphony, and vocal solo music.

Thus the treasure as you say of the Church’s heritage is offered to all as a means of reaching God. All our work here is directed to this end: to bring souls to God by means of the Sacred Liturgy, in all its beauty, consolations, and encouragement to keep us moving towards our true home in heaven.

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Ireland - St. Patrick statue at Hill of Tara by cmfgu / Used with permission

Is it of my own doing that I have holy mercy on the people who once took me captive and made away with the servants and maids of my father’s house? I was freeborn according to the flesh. I am the son of a decurion. But I sold my noble rank I am neither ashamed nor sorry to say, for the good of others.

Thus I am a servant in Christ to a foreign nation for the unspeakable glory of life everlasting God.

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Of Demons and Druids, Slavers and Saints

THE REAL

Saint Patrick

by Beverly DeSoto

It’s a tale straight from the Dark Ages, of demons and Druids, slavers and Saints. But if Ireland has any claim to be the ‘Island of Saints & Scholars,’ it is undoubtedly due to the work of a late Roman Briton.

But who was the real St. Patrick, and how did he become the unlikely Apostle of Ireland? We actually have two documents from Patrick’s own hand, his ‘Confessio’ and his ‘Letter to Coroticus,’ from which we can glean his story.

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S

on of a Roman Officer, Patrick was born in the west of England in 385 to Calphurnius, a Roman cavalry officer in command of a squadron. His mother, Conchessa, was a close relative of St. Martin of Tours.

Interestingly, Patrick was raised with neither a strong Faith nor a serious education. (Patrick says in his Confessio, “I blush and fear exceedingly to reveal my lack of education.”)

At age 16, Patrick was captured by Irish slavers.

They brought him to Dalriada and set him to work as a shepherd; his master, Milchu, was a high priest of Druidism.

During his six years of bitter captivity, he prayed constantly. In a vision, he saw the children of pagan Ireland reaching out their hands to him. In a dream, a voice emboldened him to escape home to England.

St Saviour's Church, Dominick St, Dublin

coast of France. They wandered through the French countryside for 28 days. Finally, he was reunited with his family in England, where he announced his intention to study for the priesthood. He entered under the guidance of the intellectual St Germanus of Auxerre, determined to convert Ireland to Christianity.

In 431, Pope St. Celestine I consecrated Patrick Bishop of the Irish, and sent him to Ireland to spread the Gospel. He was initially met with hostile resistance, which he famously overcame by his defiant lighting of a dramatic Easter fire on the Hill of Slane.

A Fire That Would Blaze Forever In Ireland.

Celtic Cross, Glendalough Museum & Visitor's Centre.

Patrick Escapes Slavery Patrick stowed away on a ship and after three days of sailing, he and the crew were abandoned on the page 104

On 26 March, Easter Sunday, in 433 the High King and his Irish chieftains were to meet at Tara, and the decree went forth that from the preceding day the fires throughout the kingdom should be extinguished until the blaze was kindled at the royal castle there. A huge crowd had assembled there, as the Druids reported that their oracles had announced that the messenger of Christ had come to Erin.

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St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, at the opposite extremity of the valley from Tara. He was fresh from his forty days of fasting and prayer on the summit of Lough Padraic, an imposing mountain in the West. (Editor’s Note: Regina’s staff learned on our recent visit to Lough Padraic that archaeological excavations have revealed a hermit’s cave dated to these years on the Patrick explained mountaintop.)

the mystery of the Triune God using a shamrock, and finally convinced the Druids that they were worshiping idols. He died on March 17, 461 in Saul, Ireland.

It was Easter Eve, and Patrick kindled the Paschal fire on the summit of Slane. The druids at once reported this to the High King and predicted that “this fire, which has been lit in defiance of royal edict, will blaze forever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished.”

Repeated attempts to extinguish the blessed fire and to kill St Patrick came to naught, however. On Easter morning, St Patrick -- who was arrayed in full episcopal attire, with mitre and crozier --led a Christian procession to Tara.

The druids and magicians’ incantations created a cloud of ‘worse than Egyptian darkness’ over the hill and surrounding plain.

legend also reports that ‘by demoniac power the ArchDruid Lochru, like Simon Magus of old, was lifted up high in the air’ at this, but when Patrick knelt in prayer the druid was dashed to pieces upon a rock.

Laying the Foundations for Ireland’s Faith Patrick established his See at Armagh, and traveled Ireland preaching, writing and baptizing the pagan Irish.

He explained the mystery of the Triune God using a shamrock, and finally convinced the Druids that they were worshiping idols under a belief system that kept them enslaved. By accepting Christianity, he told them, they would be elevated to “the people of the Lord and the sons of God.” He is also credited with appointing Church officials, creating councils, founding monasteries and organizing Ireland into dioceses, in effect laying the foundations for Ireland’s incredible missionary Catholicism in the centuries to follow.

St. Patrick died on March 17, 461 in Saul, Ireland. He is said to have been buried in Ulster, County Down, Ireland. Though he was never formally canonized, St. Patrick is on the List of Saints, and venerated in the Orthodox Catholic Church, as well as the ‘Church of Ireland,’ which is in the Anglican Communion.

Patrick called on them to remove the cloud, and the High King agreed. When the Druids’ efforts were in vain, at Patrick’s prayer the sun sent forth its rays and ‘the brightest sunshine flooded the entire valley.’ The

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St. John Paul II in Ireland

How A Gang of Irish Lads Protected the Pope from the Dignitaries

by Liam O'Dwyer In late September 1979, nearly 3 million Irish poured out of their homes to see St. Pope John Paul II in Dublin, Drogheda, Galway, Limerick, and Knock. In the years since, I have talked with others who also saw the Saint during his Irish pilgrimage.

Every person has said they remembered his visit with abiding joy, as do I. Apart from these lovely memories, however, my most prized possession is the tiny scrap of the altar cloth I was able to tear off immediately his Mass was over. (To be sure, I took this little souvenir only after I had seen cardinals, priests, and dignitaries help themselves to their own altar-cloth-scrap mementos.) I am now in possession of a Saint’s relic, it seems.

How is it that I happened to be near the altar? Now, that’s a story worth telling.

Over a million people at Dublin’s Mass The population of the Republic at the time was only just over 3.3 million people, and of these, 1.2 million attended the Mass in Dublin at the 15 acres in the Phoenix Park. The gigantic white cross that stood over the altar that day still stands as a memorial.

A special pass gives me access to the Altar I was blessed to be able to make a small contribution to the success of the day by representing my parish as one of the papal Mass attendants whose job it was to ensure everyone had a valid ticket to the Mass and was in the corral allocated to his or her parish. I was fortunate to page 106

be one of the few who had a special pass, which gave me access to the main altar and its surroundings.

A mist hovers over Phoenix Park We arrived before dawn, and met with an eerie sight: a low morning mist hovering over the corrals that stretched across the 15acre expanse. I felt as though I were wandering through no-man’s land in a WW I battlefield. Looming through the mist were domed tents, which were set up at strategic points to cater to the needs of over a million people.

We had been well-briefed on our responsibilities.

When the crowds started to appear, the pilgrims were settled into their assigned locations.

Everyone appeared to be in a joyful, festive mood. Parish members in their various corrals engaged in a friendly competition as to who could sing an array of popular hymns and traditional Irish songs the loudest and the best.

Pope John Paul II’s plane enters Irish air space The excitement grew with the announcement that the Holy Father’s plane had now crossed into Irish air space. Before long, a huge roar went up from the crowd as “St. Patrick,” the Aer Lingus 747 carrying Pope John Paul II to Ireland did a slow fly-past over us on its way to Dublin Airport.

It must have been inspiring for the Pope to see such an enormous crowd gathered in one place for Mass in Ireland, known since ancient times as the ‘Land of the Saints and Scholars.’

A Saint offers Mass on Irish soil By this time, all the volunteers, myself included, had been fed and watered. I enjoyed the freedom my pass gave me to wander the passageways between the corrals and talk www.reginamag.com

to those who had made long journeys from all parts of Ireland to be there for this great historic event. We all understood and felt the history of the moment, and were proud that we would be able to tell future generations that we were there when a Saint said Mass for us on Irish soil.

The long and bitter suffering of the people and the Church in Ireland was forgotten for those few hours.

We saw the Pope’s visit as validation of our struggle to remain true to the Catholic Church over centuries of oppression and penal laws that sought to suppress our Faith forcibly.

shouted at me, “Get up there and help that man!” — that man being His Holiness the Pope. Without any further encouragement I ran up to where His Holiness was and linked arms with other volunteers.

We surrounded the Pope, protecting him from the admiring mob of dignitaries. Together, we were able to escort John Paul off the altar into his rooms. The next time I saw him, he was en route to his helicopter, on his way out of the Phoenix Park and onwards in his pilgrimage to Ireland.

How I became involved in a commotion At the end of John Paul’s Mass, I watched, thrilled, as the Holy Father passed close by me no less than three times. But the greatest moment had yet to come for me on that great day.

I had made my way back up to the altar when there was a sudden commotion nearby. I turned and was amazed to see Pope John Paul II himself, struggling to make his way through an admiring, enthusiastic group of cardinals, ambassadors, and various dignitaries.

Suddenly I felt a hard clout on my shoulder. Surprised, I wheeled around indignantly to see who it was that had delivered such an uncalled-for whack.

How we protected the Pope from the dignitaries There, standing behind me, was Dublin Archbishop Dermot Ryan. Before I could utter a single word he

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ABOVE: OFFICIAL PAPAL BASEBALL CAP worn by all the volunteers that day. BELOW: OFFICIAL POSTER of the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland

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train as a missionary priest. He earned his bachelor’s degree in theology, at the Urban College of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, and was ordained in December 1925. He then earned then doctorates in canon law, divinity, and philosophy, and remained to work as a diplomat for the Holy See. He was posted to Haiti, Santo Domingo, Egypt, and Czechosolvakia. In 1934, O’Flaherty was the first Irishman to be appointed a notary of the Holy Office.

O’Flaherty declines to take sides Hugh O’Flaherty was a fierce Irish nationalist, having formed his opinions when as a seminarian he witnessed atrocities by British Black and Tans, and saw four of his old friends killed. Remembering these dire events, he didn’t take sides when World War II began in 1939.

“I didn’t know which side to believe until they started rounding up the Jews in Rome. They treated them like beasts…It got worse and worse, and I knew then which side I had to believe,” O’Flaherty said.

O’Flaherty tours prison camps In the early years of World War II, O'Flaherty toured prisoner-of-war (POW) camps in Italy trying to get news of prisoners reported missing in action, so as to notify their families through Vatican Radio if he found them alive.

The Nazis' Nemesis Ireland's Shining Priest

by Rosa Kasper

From to 1942-43, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty was the most-wanted man in Rome. During this time, he saved at least 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers from near-certain death.

O’Flaherty was a brawny man, who stood 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed over 200 pounds. Those who met him said his eyes twinkled behind his cheap wire-frame eyeglasses. He was known and loved by many for his authentic Irish charm and for his deep compassion for all who suffered, and he inspired affection and trust in people from all levels of society.

Born in Lisrobin, County Cork Feb. 28, 1898, to Margaret and James O’Flaherty (family photo above), Hugh called himself a loyal Kerryman having grown up on the Killarney golf course in County Kerry, where his father worked as a steward. By the time he reached adulthood, O’Flaherty played an impressive golf game and excelled at boxing and hurling. Some people looked askance when he later became amateur golf champion of Italy, for diocesan priests weren’t allowed to play golf.

O’Flaherty’s powerful education In 1918 O’Flaherty enrolled at the Jesuit Mungret College in County Limerick, to page 108

When Benito Mussolini was overthrown on July 25, 1943, his replacement, Gen. Pietro Badoglio, sought peace with the Allies, attaining an armistice on Sept. 3. 1943. One month later, after Italy surrendered to Allied forces, it declared war on Nazi Germany, which had occupation troops stationed in Rome and throughout the country.

During this chaotic time, released or escaped British and Allied POWs risked being recaptured by the Germans, and killed or shuttled off to Germany in cattle cars. Recalling visits by O'Flaherty, some escapees reached Rome and implored him to help them.

O’Flaherty assembles helpers O'Flaherty then recruited or inspired the assistance, financial and practical, of an international group of Rome residents, often acting without waiting for formal permission from his superiors. The fugitives needed food, false documents, and medical care, as well as safe lodging, and those who could contributed sacrifically from their own funds, including O’Flaherty.

Among those willing to help were priests, nuns, laymen, and laywomen, including New Zealanders Fathers Owen Snedden and John Flanagan, as well as Italian aristocrats, members of the Free French, British Major Sam Derry, and Sir D’Arcy Osborne, British Ambassador to the Holy See and his butler, John May. One woman who valiantly hid escape Allied soldiers in her apartment among her children was the Maltese widow Henrietta Chevalier.

Working together, these people hid escaped Allied soldiers and Jews in safe houses and apartments throughout Rome, as well as in farms, country cottages, monasteries, and convents.

O’Flaherty becomes a master of disguise and evasion During this time, O’Flaherty became a master of disguise and evasion, sometimes assuming the uniform of a street sweeper or a postman, and, it was rumored, even the habit of a nun.

During one narrow escape from a Nazi SS raid at the home of one of his supporters, Prince Filipo Doria Pamphili, O’Flaherty raced downstairs to the coal cellar, rubbed himself with coal www.reginamag.com

dust, persuaded one of the coalmen pouring sacks of coal into the trapdoor to lend him his clothes, and climbed out of the coal chute, with his monsignor’s robe and hat stashed in an empty coal sack.

He then strolled past two lines of SS troops to safety.

O’Flaherty’s facility for disguise and for evading capture inspired his admirers to dub him “The Vatican Pimpernel” after 'The Scarlet Pimpernel,' a 1903 novel and a play by Emma Orczy, featuring a self-effacing hero with a swashbuckling secret identity who rescues French aristocrats and others sentenced to death by the guillotine during the French revolution.* The 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel film based on the play was popular during World War II. The price on O’Flaherty’s head When the Germans discovered the leader of the network was a priest, they tried to assassinate him and threatened to torture him if they should catch him. The head of the SS and Gestapo in Rome, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler, put a 30,000 lire bounty on his head.

O’Flaherty would taunt Kappler’s men in an elaborate cat-andmouse game in which he always remained a step ahead. Kappler ordered a white line to be painted on the pavement delineating the border between the neutral Vatican and Italy, and promised to kill O’Flaherty if he should step over it. An attempt to drag him over the line and kidnap him failed utterly.

Empire, and awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom with a Silver Palm. But he declined to use the lifetime pension that Italy had given him.

Colonel Herbert Kappler was tried and sentenced to life in prison in Rome for his war crimes. O'Flaherty visited him month after month in prison, and in 1959 converted him to Catholicism and baptised him.

O’Flaherty returns to Ireland In 1960, O'Flaherty suffered a stroke while celebrating Mass in Rome and came home to Ireland to Cahersiveen where he lived with his sister, at whose home he died on October 30,1963, aged 65. He was buried in the cemetery of the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church in Cahersiveen. There is a monument in Killarney town and a grove of Hugh O'Flaherty Trees in the Killarney National Park.

Another tree stands in his honor in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Authority conferred on him the title “Righteous Among Nations.”

During this time, Kappler also ordered the killing of some 300 civilians chosen at random in retribution for an attach by resistance forces on German soldiers. In addition, he led the removal of many of Rome’s Jews to Auschwitz.

After the War, a shocking conversion After the war Hugh O'Flaherty was named Commander of the Order of the British

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S

St. Brigid founds aint Brigid, the double known as monastery at ‘Mary of the Kildare.

Gael,’ is one of Ireland’s most In 470 Brigid beloved saints. Along founded and with Saint Patrick became abbess and Saint Columba, of the double she is a patron saint

by Meghan Ferrara monastery at of the Emerald Isle.

Kildare.

Kildare Her influence was as essential as St. Patrick’s in the spread of Catholicism was the first convent in Ireland and became renowned as a among the Irish, and her story is equally remarkable. Her center of spirituality and learning. This center gave rise to strength, grit, and faith helped forge the character of Irish the Cathedral city of Kildare.

Catholicism.

Brigid also founded a school of art at Kildare. The Brigid was born in 451 at Faughart near Dundalk, Louth, illuminated manuscripts produced there became famous, Ireland to a pagan father and a Christian mother. Her particularly the Book of Kildare, which was arguably father, Dubhthach, was a pagan chieftain of Leinster. the finest of all illuminated Irish manuscripts before its Brigid’s mother, Brocca, was a Christian slave in her disappearance three centuries ago. Brigid’s religious life father’s court. St. Patrick eventually baptized the entire was rooted in prayer, but also involved substantial manual family, though the family faced many difficult obstacles labor including cloth making, dairy farming, and sheep raising. along the way.

The Woman Who Helped Forge Irish Catholicism Strength, Grit, and Faith

Throughout her life, Brigid’s munificent nature led her to provide extraordinary aide to the poor. However, when she was a girl, many of the goods Brigid gave away belonged to her father, and Dubhthach did not appreciate his daughter’s magnanimity. When he protested, the young girl explained, ”Christ dwells in every creature.” In frustration, Dubtach even attempted to sell Brigid to the king of Leinster. While they bargained, she gave a treasured sword of her father‘s to a leper. Dubtach was furious, but Brigid explained she had given the sword to God through the leper, because of its great value. Then the king, a Christian, intervened saying, “Her merit before God is greater than ours.” After this incident, the chieftain gave his daughter her freedom.

Kildare was unique as the only known Irish double monastery. It included a separately housed men’s community, led by the bishop Saint Conleth. Brigrid became an avid traveler, journeying across Ireland founding numerous additional religious communities.

Brigid first began to prepare for her vocation with St. Macaille at Croghan. Brigid eventually professed her full vows in the presence St. Mel of Armagh, who, according to legend, conferred abbatial authority on her. St. Patrick himself, whose preaching so influenced Brigid as a child, heard her final vows upon entering the convent. After Brigid professed her final vows, she resided at the foot of Croghan Hill for a brief period with a small group of fellow sisters. About the year 468, Brigid followed St. Mel to Meath.

Brigid dies and is buried with St. Columba and St. Patrick. Brigid passed into eternal life on February 1, 525 at Kildare. She is buried at Downpatrick with St. Columba and St. Patrick, with whom she is patron of Ireland.

Brigid founded the double monastery at Kildare, the first convent in Ireland renowned as a center of spirituality and learning -- eventually becoming the great Cathedral city of Kildare.

Many miracles are attributed to Brigid

Brigid was one of the most remarkable women of her times. There are many legendary, incredible, and amazing miracles attributed to her. Brigid was particularly renowned From a very early age, Brigid expressed an interest in for her generosity, her healing, and her feeding the poor. religious life. Despite her father’s wish for her to marry, and the excellent offers she received, Brigid never waivered According to one of many such tales, as a child Brigid gave in her desire to become a bride of Christ. away her mother’s store of butter. It was then replenished as an answer to Brigid’s prayers. Similar narratives about In frustration, Dubtach even attempted to sell Brigid to the king of Brigid’s miraculous deeds were told throughout her life.

Leinster. While they bargained, she gave a treasured sword of her While there are many legends surrounding Brigid, there father‘s to a leper. Dubtach was furious. is no doubt that her extraordinary spirituality, and her St. Mel and St. Patrick hear St. Brigid profess her boundless charity and compassion for those in distress was real. vows

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Saint Brigid’s feast day is February 1. Her determination, energy, and abounding faith helped form the rich Catholic heritage that is still integral to Irish identity today.

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place called Cluain Creadhail, which some have interpreted to mean “Meadow of Faith,” where she founded and became the abbess of a convent that attracted many Irish women to become nuns. It is now called Killeedy or “Ita’s Cell.”

A legend says she was directed to Killeedy by three heavenly lights; one at the top of the Galtee Mountains, the other on the Mullaghareirk Mountains, and the last at Cluain Creadhail. A local Irish chieftain wanted to give her a huge parcel of land, but Ita would accept only as much land as she needed for gardens large enough to grow fruits and vegetables sufficient to feed her fellow nuns and herself.

St. Ita born to a chieftain and a princess. St. Ita was of royal lineage. She was born around the year 470 near Fathlegg outside Waterford, to Kennfoeladd, a Deise chieftain, and Necta, a princess.

By legend, her original name was Deirdre but because of her thirst (iota) for holiness or Divine Love she became known as Ita (also Ida, and Ite.) Growing up wise, pure, and beautiful. From childhood, Ita exhibited holiness. She often prayed and fasted, and was benevolent and solicitous toward everyone and considerate in her speech. She displayed the six signs of womanhood that the Irish of old looked for in educated women: wisdom, purity, beauty, music, sweet speech, and embroidery.

Ita displayed the six signs of womanhood that the Irish of old looked for in educated women: wisdom, purity, beauty, music, sweet speech, and embroidery.

When she reached the marriageable age, her father wished her to marry a noble young chieftain. After she had fasted for three days, an angel appeared to her father and told him to let her pursue her desire to enter the religious life. He consented to her (and Heaven’s) wishes, and Bishop Declan of Ardmore bestowed her veil upon her. The story is that the Devil acknowledged defeat, saying: “Alas Ita, you will free yourself from me and you will also free many others.”

St. Ita of Kileedy

Foster Mother of the Saints of Ireland

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St. Ita stayed there for the rest of her life, spending much of her time in prayer and fasting, and in serving those who came to her for aid and wisdom. www.reginamag.com

Detail of the east window of the north transept, depicting Íde of Killeedy by Andreas Franz Borchert / CC BY-SA 3.0

t. Ita of Killeedy is second only to St. Brigid among the female Saints of Ireland. Nearly everyone knows of St. Patrick, and many are familiar with St. Brigid, St. Columba, and St. Brendan the Navigator. Outside of the ‘auld Sod,’ except for those of Irish descent, few are aware of one of the more noted of Irish saints.

“Foster Mother to the saints.” In the old Celtic tradition, the well during school hours who say, “Bubble up, bubble up, children were sent to her convent for fostering, leading St. Ita Blessed well!” three times are said to have been cured. to found a school for young boys. Thus, St. Ita gained renown A lullaby to the Infant Jesus was inspired by her: Some say for being “The Foster Mother of the Saints of Ireland.” she herself was the author, others say it was written by an Her students were said to have included the future Saints anonymous 9th century poet inspired by her and her life. The Fachtna of Ross, Pulcherius of Liath, Cummian of Clonfert, lullaby is called “Jesukin.” and Brendan of Clonfert, who later became known as St. Brendan the Navigator. Brendan’s Feast Day is May 16. St. Ita has a strong following in Munster, especially in (According to legend, St. Brendan made landfall in America Waterford and Limerick, and many Irish girls are named five hundred years before Leif Ericson and one thousand after her. In the mid 1800s, Bishop Butler of Limerick years before Christopher Columbus.) obtained from Pope Pius IX a special office and Mass for her

In the old Celtic tradition, children were sent to her convent for fostering, leading St. Ita to found a school for young boys. Thus, St. Ita gained renown for being “The Foster Mother of the Saints of Ireland.”

St. Ita tells St. Brendan what God loves -- and hates -- most. St. Brendan is said to have visited St. Ita between his voyages, seeking her advice and wisdom. Once he asked her what were the three things God loved the most and St. Ita replied, “A pure heart with true faith in God, a simple life with a religious spirit, and openhandedness inspired by charity.”

When he asked her what were the three things God hated the most she answered, “A scowling face, obstinacy in wrong doing, and too great a confidence in the power of money.”

When St. Brendan asked her what were the three things God hated the most she answered, “A scowling face, obstinacy in wrong doing, and too great a confidence in the power of money.”

St. Ita works miracles. St. Ita worked miracles, healed, and prophesied. In one instance she is said to have reattached a head to a man who had been decapitated, and another story recounts her living off food given to her from Heaven, recalling the manna given to the ancient Hebrews in the desert. In another story, a wise man lost his speech and came to St. Ita to be cured. Before she had even finished praying for him, the wise man was cured.

Once, a nun who was under her care committed the sin of fornication. When St. Ita asked her why she hadn’t guarded her virginity, the nun denied her sin, St. Ita then told her exactly where she had committed the sin and what had happened, after which the nun became contrite and did penance, knowing that Ita was a prophet.

The Death of the Saint. St. Ita died on January 15, circa 570. To this day, her grave in the ruins of Cill Ide, a Romanesque church in Killeedy where her monastery once stood, is always decorated with flowers.

Feast Day, January 15. (Editor’s Note: January 15 happens to be the birthday of the author of this article.)

esukin Lives my little cell within What were wealth of cleric high Al Jesu of the skies, who are next my heart through every night.

Jesu, more than angel aid, Fostering not formed to fade Nursed by me in desert wild Jesu, Child of Judah’s Maid.

Unto heaven’s High King contest Sing a chorus, maidens blest! He is o’er us, though within Jesukin is on our breast.

There also is a holy well nearby, the water from which is reputed to have cured everything from smallpox to warts over the centuries. Children from the local school who go down to

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