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.