Hitting the wall

1992 was a very trying time to be a Catholic in Ireland.  In February, the X-Case broke which brought about the possibility of legalised abortion.  In May, Bishop Éamonn Casey resigned as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh due to the now well-known scandal.  In July, the Brandsma Review was launched.

One of the initiatives of the Latin Mass Society of Ireland was to write to every Irish bishop asking if permission for the traditional Mass was forthcoming.  Ironically, Bishop Éamonn Casey was the only one who gave a favourable reply.  Most bishops did not acknowledge the correspondence.  Two who did were Bishop Michael Harty of Killaloe and Bishop Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin of Kerry.  Both had questions about the title "Latin Mass Society of Ireland", which they believed to be misleading as there was the possibility of the Latin Mass in the New Order, what we would now call the Ordinary Form. 

One could have asked their Lordships where these were.  St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin has one every Sunday at 11 am.  St Brigid's in Belfast had one at 8.30 am on Sunday mornings - I am not sure what the status of this is now.  There was also a Sunday OF Latin Mass in Dublin's Haddington Road, which has since been discontinued.  I am told that a priest of the Elphin diocese said the OF Latin Mass in St Mary's Cathedral in Sligo, but this was already a thing of the past at this time (Bishop Conway told the petitioners if it was just a Latin Mass they wanted, there would be no problem).

In this, Ireland is very exceptional.  The OF Latin Mass is more common in other areas.  Westminister Cathedral, for example, has one on a daily basis.  There are several venues in Vienna where one can attend an OF Latin Mass every Sunday.  The absence of Latin in Ireland is probably a relic of the hyper ultra montanism practiced in Ireland until that time.

The reaction that the LMSI made was to change their name, choosing Ecclesia Dei Ireland which reflected Pope John Paul's apostolic letter.  This is well and good, but most people would need this explained to him.  Another possibility, Una Voce Ireland, was ruled out as the Irish people remember Mussolini's dictum "Uno Duce, una voce".  Well, actually they don't; they were just reminded of it by the then recent Taoiseach's press advisor PJ Mara during one of the heaves against Charles Haughey when he was in office. 

Charles Haughey, Taoiseach 1979-81; 82; 87-92

Senator PJ Mara

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So the LMSI opted for Ecclesia Dei Ireland.  Meanwhile, reports suggested that there were no new permissions being granted and there was immense curiosity as to why.

 

Holycross

1992 saw the second great achievement of the first Latin Mass Society of Ireland when permission for an annual Mass at Holycross Abbey in Co Tipperary.  Holycross is a restored Cistercian Abbey in the village of Holycross which is in the hands of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly.  The restoration was the brainchild of Archbishop Thomas Morris.  The church houses a number of relics of the true cross and the complex is the national Padre Pio centre in Ireland - Mrs Mona Hanafin, wife of Senator Des Hanafin and mother of Mary Hanafan.

So on a cold October day in 1992, the Latin Mass Society of Ireland (newly named Ecclesia Dei Ireland - more of that anon), had the first extraordinary form Roman Mass in Holycross Abbey since its restoration.  Archbishop Morris presided, the first Irish archbishop to do so since the liturgical changes (I might have mentioned earlier that Bishop Edward Daly of Derry offered the inaugural Mass in the Derry Diocese).  The Mass was offered by Father Pádraig Ó Fithchill in honour of the newly beatified Irish martyrs.  And Mass was to take place in Holycross on an annual basis which still continues.

First breakthrough - Knock

The new Latin Mass Society of Ireland was crowned briefly with one success - Archbishop Cassidy of Tuam granted permission for an annual Mass at Knock Shrine.  This was to take place on the first Saturday of September, beginning in 1990.  Since then, the only year that did not take place was in 2001, of which more anon.

The society took a definitive shape, with Rev Pádraig Ó Fithchill became chairman.  The bulk of members of the new society knew little of the background of the late Father Ó Fithchill and this was to become a source of controversy later.  For the moment, the embryonic society could pride themselves in an early success.  Mass took place in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in Knock in September that year followed by Stations of the Cross and finished with Benediction.  This would be the standard format for these Masses as time went on, complete with a carriage booked on the Dublin train for a group from Ss Michael and John's, or its successor chapels.

Latin Mass Society of Ireland - First Attempt

One could say, theoretically, that organised traditionalist activity in Ireland goes back to the 1980s, but that would be stretching the truth.  The first attempt at founding a national Latin Mass Society here was in the Ormond Hotel in Dublin on the evening of 31 December 1989.  I think the time and date was chosen as there was a solemn sung Te Deum scheduled for Ss Michael's and John's just across the Liffey later that evening.

So a small number of people assembled and founded the Latin Mass Society of Ireland.  The initial acting chairman was David McEllin and the members were substantially, but not exclusively, drawn from members of the congregation in Dublin.  That being said, there were not a lot of people at the meeting.

Nevertheless, this did represent progress.  Lay organising is not a forte in the Irish Church, despite models such as the Legion of Mary and the Knights of Columbanus.   As observed previously on this blog, there was a very well attended Ordinary Form Latin Mass in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral since the 1970s, but no one ever set up a Latin Liturgy Association.  These were things to do with the clergy and the laity took the back seat.   Thus, the Latin Mass Society of Ireland came into being in 1989, taking as its inspiration the much larger, older and more successful Latin Mass Society of England and Wales.  And few people noticed.

Wide and generous permission...

The first set of permissions in Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Donegal, Sligo, Ballina and Islandeady was a good start.  But that was not the end of the matter.  First of all, Ireland is roughly divided in half by a barely noticable geographical phenonemon called the Escar Riada.  This is a long low mound extending from Dublin to Galway.  All these locations are north of the Escar Riada.  So roughly half the country was untouched by the Apostolic Letter.

In addition, many petitions did not have the desired effect.  In the Dromore diocese, petitions were organised in Lurgan and Newry.  I am told about 1700 people signed one such petition.  When this was presented to Bishop Francis Brooke, he alleged that the signatures were sought and obtained in the pubs.  Good to know a bishop has confidence in his flock in Ireland.

In the Killaloe diocese, south of the ancient border, a petition was arranged in Ennis, Co Clare.  Bishop Harty dealt aggressively with the organiser of the petition, which was reported in Faith and Family, a journal circulating in Ireland at the time which was banned in Veritas.

In Cork, Bishop Murphy of Cork & Ross is said to have said he would only allow the traditional Mass over his dead body.  An elderly SMA missionary named Fr Thomas Higgins said a daily private Mass for years in the SMA house in Wilton in Cork.

This is a small selection of the petitions which failed, a point I will return to later on in the course of this narrative. 

Ecclesia Dei Adflicta in Ireland

If Gay Byrne called the response of the Irish Bishops to Quattuor Abhinc Annos grudging, he might have had a point.  The Sunday Mass in St Gabriel's Hospital in Cabinteely, unadvertised as it was, drew a typical attendance of 25 people.  The competition at the Church of St John the Evangelist on the Mouttown Road did much better.  This was to change in 1987 when Father Emerson was replaced by the Quebec native Father Daniel Couture.  I will address this later in the blog, but the Indult Mass in Dublin was crawling.

Archbishop LeFebvre and his ally Bishop de Castro Meyer consecrated four new bishops in Econe in 1988 resulting in the excommunication of the six and a potential schism.  John Paul II's response was the Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei Adflicta.  This initially was taken quite seriously in Ireland.  At the time, the RTÉ religious affairs correspondent was Kieron Wood, who was a faithful adherent of the traditional Latin Mass.  He had been associated with the Society of St Pius X, but after the excommunications he changed to the indult Mass.  This was also to change.

Archbishop Connell considered giving the indult Mass a city location and the Poor Clares in Harold's Cross was suggested.  However, the community did not want this and the priest-in-charge, Mgr Moloney announced it would be cancelled.  Kieron Wood contacted Mgr Moloney and told him he would be waiting outside the convent with a camera crew asking people what they thought.  Mgr Moloney rang him back soon afterward and told him the Mass was going ahead in Ss Michael and John's, Wood Quay which is in the city centre.  Thanks to Kieron's promotion of the Mass, 500 people showed up at the inaugural Mass in Ss Michael's and John's in summer 1988.  This congregation levelled off, but it was always at least more than a couple of hundred.

Other dioceses took the Holy Father's request seriously too.  A Sunday Mass was inaugurated in Belfast by Bishop Cathal Daly.  The problem here was that it alternated between two chapels in the city, in West Belfast and South Belfast on alternative months.  Like in Dublin, there was a roster of priests at the beginning, but unlike Dublin they retired or died quickly - but I am running ahead of the narrative.  At first there was Mass every Sunday in Belfast.

Bishop Edward Daly of Derry set up a Mass on the First Thursday of the month (no, I don't understand the logic of that either) in Derry's Nazareth house and said the first Mass himself, becoming the first bishop in Ireland to offer the traditional Latin Mass since the liturgy changed.

Bishop Séamus Hegarty of Raphoe allowed the Dean of the Diocese, Mgr Deegan, say Mass every Saturday morning in his parish church in Raphoe, Co Donegal.  A priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, Father Pádraig Ó Fithchill, was active in this diocese and said Mass at various locations every Sunday in Donegal.  I will have more to say of Father Ó Fithchill later.

A group from Sligo petitioned Bishop Dominic Conway of Elphin to allow the Mass be said every Sunday in Sligo and this commenced in Sligo's Nazareth House in 1990.

Archbishop Joseph Cassidy of Tuam allowed Father Alan Wilders, a priest of the Brighton & Arundel diocese, to say the traditional Mass every day at the school he opened in Islandeady Co Mayo some time earlier.

Finally, Bishop Thomas Finnegan of Killala permitted Father Robert Ruttledge say the traditional Mass in the Pastoral Centre on the grounds of St Muredach's Cathedral in Ballina, Co Mayo on the 3rd Sunday in the month beginning in 1992.

This is how the application of the Apostolic Letter in regard to older form of the Roman Rite Mass began in Ireland in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Not overwhelming, but not bad either.  But the story has yet to unfold.

Before the Indult...

I don't know how frequently the traditional Mass was celebrated in Ireland between 1971 and 1984.  Not very frequently, but I would be surprised if it had totally disappeared.  My father was aware of an Augustinian priest who continued to say it privately in the early 1970s, probably in the Novitiate in Orlagh which was close to where we lived.

There was some attachment to Latin and the Ordinary Form Latin Mass in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin was and remains very popular.  But the amount of Latin liturgy in Ireland was very low.  There was a Latin Mass in St Mary's, Haddington Road for many years, now abandoned; there was also something happening in Sligo Cathedral.  I am informed St Brigid's in Belfast still has an every Sunday Ordinary Form Latin Mass at 8.30am, but this is the extent to it.  It seems that Latin vanished almost completely from the Irish Church in the 1970s.  I know that the seminaries, in particular St Patrick's College, Thurles maintained something, but this was isolated from the world of the lay Irish Catholic.

The only evidence I have found, which I am not entirely convinced about, for a public Extraordinary Form Latin Mass in Ireland between the promulagation of the Pauline Missal and the 1984 indult was the Mass for the re-interment of William Joyce's body in Bohermore, Co Galway.  The reference is in A.N. Wilson's biography of Lord Haw Haw.  Joyce was a very complex character coming from a mixed marriage, but he identified with Protestantism rather than Catholicism through life.  Nevertheless, he did have some knowledge of Catholicism.  I once had a line manager whose mother knew Joyce when they were both growing up in Galway at the time the traditional Latin Mass was normative.  Joyce could be humourous in interpreting what the Latin meant.  However, about 30 years after Joyce's execution, his daughter requested a traditonal Latin Mass on the occasion of his body's reinterment in Galway.  And this was, apparently, granted.

After the indult...

If Archbishop Kevin McNamara of Dublin wished to locate an indult Mass in a Church closer to St John's, he would have to build a new one. He selected a convent chapel in Tivoli Road, Dún Laoghaire on the first Friday, a chapel just around the corner.  Around the same time, a First Friday Mass was instituted in Delgany, Co Wicklow which is also in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Very soon an every Sunday Mass was instituted in nearby Cabinteely.  This was in the chapel of St Gabriel's Hospital run by the Daughters of the Cross.  There was no advertising allowed.  Cabinteely is on the southside of Dublin, not far from Dún Laoghaire and very close to the SSPX headquarters in Ireland.  At this time, I was growing up in another corner of the Dublin Archdiocese, in the parish of Bohernabreena in the foothills of the Dublin mountains.  I attended school in the Christian Brothers in Synge St and I took Latin to Leaving Certificate.  I was also considering the priesthood within a religious order.  I was interested in this type of development, but a school boy with no available transport could not gone there, even if he had known.

Nevertheless, this minority interest had its way of breaking through.  Gay Byrne interviewed the priest in charge in St John's on The Late, Late Show.  This was a very young Father John Emerson (subquently a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter).  He appeared on the show with the doyen of Spirit of Vatican II journalists, the late Seán MacRéamonn, a  liturgist Fr Seán Collins OFM (now also deceased) and the journalist David Yallop, infamous for the "investigation" into the death of John Paul I In God's Name.  Mr Yallop was very sympathetic to traditionalists; Fr Collins was very weak; whatever Dr MacRéamonn expected to be confronted with, Fr Emerson took him by surprise and won any debate by a long shot.  Fr Gabriel Daly OSA tried to weigh in against Fr Emerson from the audience.  His ambiguity did not serve him well.  The late Fr Michael O'Carroll CSSp gave a balanced view of Archbishop LeFebvre, with whom he was acquainted (Fr O'Carroll was the Archbishop's secretary while he was Superior-General of the Holy Ghost Congregation).  Gay Byrne's role as chairman was interesting.  He challenged the opponents of tradition and described the bishops' response to Quattuor Abhinc Annos as "grudging", which is as good a description of this as any I've ever heard, in both the Irish and international contexts.

We were reminded of this the following week in The Irish Catholic then edited by Nick Lundberg.  Bishop Comiskey SSCC had a weekly column in the newspaper.  This was not long after the bishop moved from being an auxilliary in Dublin to being Bishop of Ferns and he presented himself as the communications and media expert of the Irish episcopate.  Gay Byrne's treatment of liturgical matters was something which obviously exercised Mgr Comiskey as he felt the need to redress the balance in on The Late, Late Show in his column the following week and make up for the deficit left by Dr MacRéamonn and Fr Collins.  The bishop didn't convince me.