Monsignor O’Callaghan played a big part in establishing the Medical Missionaries of Mary when he was parish priest in Drogheda. It is no surprise that he encouraged the St Louis Sisters, when he came to Monaghan, to turn to the African Mission, which has been so fruitful an apostolate. The Mercy Sisters of Enniskillen have a flourishing mission in Florida.

A number of our priests, some still happily with us, worked alongside the very first priests of St Patrick’s Society as pioneers of the Nigerian Mission. But our missionary commitment and involvement did not begin in this century with the Columbans, whose patron is said to have studied at Cleenish monastic school. The list of bishops and priests, natives of Clogher, who spent their lives in the service of the Church in North America would fill a book. At the top of the list would be John Hughes, Archbishop of New York, a native of Truagh and his Vicar General, William Starrs, a native of Dromore. To name a few out of the hundreds that follow there was a James Duffy a native of Aughnamullen, it seems, who ended his days as pastor in Nova Scotia. He had a brother Peter who was pastor in Kilmore and Drumsnat.

There were the two Montague brother priests from Dromore parish, who ministered in the West Indies. In the early years of the nineteenth century Fr Philip Connolly was a pioneer in establishing the Church in Australia and Tasmania. In India we had a Fr McCarron and another of the name in Scotland in the last century.

Some of the most talented entered religious congregations. Two Gunns joined the Marists: one of them became bishop of Nachez in the U.S.A. A number of MacVicars also joined the Marists. Father John McElroy joined the Jesuits in the U.S. Fathers Charles McKenna and Michael Martin as priests also joined. Father Bernard McCaffrey was one of the group of monks of Mount Melleray that founded New Melleray Abbey in the U.S.A. around the 1840s. He was a native of Clones.

This is merely a sketch of the diocesan involvement in the missions. Much more could be said. One can only mention the lay contribution, the generosity and loyalty to the faith of the thousands of young people who left Ireland in search of a better life and built up the parishes and dioceses and religious houses wherever they settled.

There is not a parish in the diocese, or hardly a family, that has nor been affected by the missionary effort. Our involvement as a diocese has recently become explicit and formal by the sending of two of our priests on mission to Kitui in Kenya.

What we have outlined is the Church in this diocese of Clogher as an organisation of clergy and people with parishes, chapels, schools and religious houses; changing with the times but always carrying the unchanging mission of Christ to teach, to reconcile, to sanctify in his name. ‘We believe in…. the holy, Catholic Church’.

As early as 1850 MacNally had plans to bring nuns into the diocese. In 1856 the Sisters of Mercy came to Enniskillen from Sligo, and in 1859 the Sisters of St Louis came to Monaghan from France. In Bishop Donnelly’s period the Christian Brothers came to Enniskillen in 1865, where the Presentation Brothers replaced them after some years, and in 1867 to Monaghan, which they recently vacated. In Bishop Owens’ time the Passionist community was founded in the Graan, near Enniskillen; the Patrician Brothers came to teach in Carrickmacross, and the De La Salle Brothers to Ballyshannon, which they vacated in 1972.

St Joseph’s Orphanage, Bundoran, was established at the turn of this century through the charity of Miss Sarah Crudden, a native of Galloon?Drumully parish who had inherited wealth from her relative, Revd Peter Crudden of Lowell, Mass., U.S.A. There was much controversy at the time as to whether it should be sited in Clones or Bundoran. For some years it has ceased to house orphans and the buildings have been leased to the St Louis Sisters for a secondary school.

In Bishop O’Callaghan’s time (1943?70) a number of religious foundations were made to meet the flow of vocations that had been remarkable since the 1920s. Some of these foundations closed as the flow of vocations dried up ? the Franciscan Sisters in Castleblayney, the Marie Reparatrice convent in Clones, the Holy Ghost Sisters on Beech Hill, Monaghan, the Legionaries of Christ near Bundoran. Some are still with us ? the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Ballybay, the Convent of the Sacred Hearts in Clones, the Montfort Missionaries in Monaghan, the Sacred Hearts Fathers at Tannagh,

Dr O’Callaghan also set up a diocesan newspaper, the Witness, which survived for some years. And he was patron of Cumann Seanchais Chlochair, which still flourishes. Canon Hugh Finnegan, President of the Seminary in Monaghan, felt strongly the need for a school to train boys for farming. With this in mind he bought ‘Poplar Vale’ while Dean Keown was Vicar Capitular in 1942. Dr O’Callaghan supported the project and St Patrick’s Agricultural College was established. Dr O’ Callaghan also set up St Tiarnach’s Secondary School, Clones and St Mary’s Secondary School, Castleblayney, and added a badly needed block of classrooms to the Seminary. But his most significant achievement in this area was the staffing of St Michael’s College, Enniskillen, with diocesan priests and its development as a diocesan institution to serve Fermanagh and part of Tyrone. In those same years seven Intermediate schools were built in the northern part of the diocese. Presently St Macartan’s Seminary is undergoing expansion to meet educational needs since the closure of the Irish Christian Brothers Secondary School at St Mary’s Hill, Monaghan.

Catholics, properly qualified, could vote in an election for parliament; but their landlord expected them to vote for his candidate, and to ignore his direction could have serious consequences – under open voting. But no Catholic could sit in parliament. This reminder of second-class status was not removed, as had been hoped, after the Act of Union in 1801. Daniel O’Connell, ‘king of the beggars’, set himself to remove the humiliation and successfully organised the parish priests of the country to support a mass campaign for Emancipation. Meetings were held, sometimes in the chapels, sometimes chaired by the bishop, Dr Kernan. The best speeches were made by the clergy – Fathers James Duffy of Clones, Thomas Bogue of Roslea, John McCusker of Ballybay, Charles McDermott of Truagh. Randal Kernan, the barrister, and Alexander Maguire of Kinawley and James McKenna of Willville, Monaghan, were the foremost laymen. Westminster, under great pressure, conceded Emancipation in 1829. While it removed the humiliation it brought no practical improvement in the day-to-day life of Catholics: it was many years before a Catholic would sit in Westminster for Monaghan or Fermanagh or Tyrone.

Tithes for the minister were an immediate issue and often resisted with violence. But O’Connell’s campaign had showed Catholics – and all Europe – the power of the vote, the power of the people. And, for good or evil, it had set the role of priests in politics as dominant at grass roots for nearly a century.

In his last years O’Connell revived the campaign for Repeal of the Union. This was not a Catholic issue in the way that Emancipation had been. But O’Connell, the ‘Liberator’, was strongly and warmly supported by Bishop Charles MacNally and his clergy, particularly James Duffy of Tydavnet, a close relative of Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Tierney of Clontibret. Bishop James Donnelly, who succeeded MacNally in 1865, found himself before long in conflict with the local ascendancy, still in control, because of its bigoted abuse of power over local institutions – the Board of Guardians, local hospitals, national schools. The conflict lasted until Donnelly’s death in 1893. Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the Land Acts dismantled the ascendancy as a power structure. As part of it Donnelly brought Dan McAleese from Belfast to Monaghan to set up the People’s Advocate newspaper.

At the time of Dr Donnelly’s death in 1893 one could say that the diocese was complete in that it had all the structures and institutions required by canon law for the preaching of the word of God and the administration of the sacraments. Under Dr Owens it was further enriched by the addition of an imposing episcopal palace and an orphanage in Bundoran. The Palace replaced a house, which Revd Patrick McGinn had built for the parish priest at the start of the nineteenth century. Concurrently important additions were erected at the Seminary under Presidents Mulhern and O’Doherty.

Under Dr Owens one gets the impression of the diocese working smoothly like a well-tended machine with the momentum built up under Dr Donnelly and operated with the minimum of episcopal intervention by an able body of clergy – Thomas Smollen, Peter McGlone, Peter Bermingham, among the senior clergy and among the younger Laurence O’Neill, Daniel O’Connor and James E. McKenna. The two last-named must ever be honoured for their writings on the history and antiquities of the diocese.

Bishop McKenna succeeded Bishop Owens in 1909. As professor in Maynooth he had been nicknamed ‘the fear’ – ‘the man’ par excellence. Gaelic ‘fear’ means ‘man’. The name was awarded to him as a compliment to his humanity. He ruled by praise – fulsome, perhaps, at times: his clerical ‘changes’ were always referred to as ‘promotions’, and in an end–of–term speech he referred to the Seminary staff as the finest in Europe! Those who remember his patience and placidity in his last years, when he was so loved by his flock, would confirm the judgement of ‘humanity’ which his students passed on him as a young priest. The diocesan engine took some hard knocks in Dr McKenna’s early years as Bishop. Dean Smollen of Enniskillen died in 1909 and was replaced by Patrick Keown there as P.P. and V.G. Keown had been an Administrator in Monaghan and in the ‘corridors of power’ under Dr Owens was second choice of the parish priests for Bishop when Owens died in 1909. Peter McGlone, P.P., of Carrickmacross died in 1910 and was succeeded by Eugene McKenna. Father Thomas O’Doherty, of a famous family, had been replaced as President of the Seminary by Fr Eugene McAdam in 1910. Keown was already Prior of Lough Derg and one might single out the development of the pilgrimage under his long priorate which included the erection of the Basilica (1926-31) as the most important diocesan development of Dr McKenna’s episcopate.

At the turn of the century some of the younger clergy, as one would expect, were active in the movements of national revival—the G.A.A., Connradh na Gaeilge and co?operative societies, even the Volunteers. This ‘new wave’ of clergy showed a lack of docility that Donnelly would have found incredible. Among the foremost were Matt Maguire, John Tierney, James O’Daly and Eugene Coyle.

Since before 1800 the Church’s political ‘constant’ had been the condemnation, repeated regularly, of secret societies and organised violence. It has not changed. Early in this century some younger priests were involved in the Volunteer movement, especially in the aftermath of the rising of 1916. Since 1921 priests have had a diminishing role in politics.

Neither people nor clergy were beyond reproach. The most common abuses, regularly and severely condemned by the bishops, were excessive drinking, horse?play at wakes and funerals, secret societies and party fights. At one time or another scandalous and violent conflicts took place in most parishes over politics or farms, or tithes or even religious matters. Sometimes a fight was just ‘for fun’. The first part of the nineteenth century, which Carleton describes, was the worst period. There was an improvement later in the century, though abuses did not completely die out. But our own day has experienced the revival of secret societies linked to violence, that not even the Pope’s appeal in Drogheda in 1979 could put a stop to.

Irish was the vernacular until well into the 1800s and the priests taught catechism and preached in Irish. ‘Let him learn it’, Bishop Kernan wrote of a curate in Truagh who had forgotten his Irish, around 1830. In the early 1700s Michael O’Reilly’s catechism, in Irish and English, appeared and for over two centuries was the basis of instruction. There was also a wealth of religious poetry in Gaelic which people knew by heart, not to speak of Donlevy’s catechism. At the same time, the Irish language was losing ground after 1690. We have only to Took at the old headstones in our graveyards: all in English after 1700. English was the written language and language of business.

Bishop Murphy’s attempt to set up a diocesan college in Monaghan shortly after 1800 failed after some years, though it produced some priests. The idea, however, did not die. A small farm near Monaghan was bought from Lord Dartry as a site and Bishop Kernan laid the foundation stone of the College in 1840. But funds ran short, Dr Kernan died, and the Famine came; so the College was not ready for occupation until 1848. Building continued for ten years and more under Bishop

MacNally until it had accommodation for sixty students and was a show?piece for the country. As well as accommodating students and staff, the Seminary, as it came to be known, was the centre for priests’ conferences and retreats and for the liturgy of Holy Week. Bishop Donnelly made several attempts to get a religious order to take over the Seminary, but failed. He took a very active interest in it and its academic standards were high. It entered for the Intermediate examinations in 1880 with sensational success, the telegram announcing the result to Donnelly earned an ‘Hurrah’. The following year the Seminary got five prizes. (The Convent School got six.) His comment was, ‘Very good in the circumstances’.

In the 1880s under Act of Parliament, the Fermanagh R.C. Board of Education was set up giving Catholic schools a share in the income from the ‘college land’ which had been set aside in every county in the Plantation of 1609 for the support of grammar schools. The Board remains the governing body of the Seminary and St Michael’s, Enniskillen.

 

The earliest Catholic school that we have identified in Clogher after the Penal Laws was set up at Urbleshanny in Tydavnet parish in 1791 by Fr James Murphy – the parish priest, soon to be bishop. When the National Board of Education was set up in 1831 many schools already in operation were affiliated to it and more new schools built so as to avail themselves of the Board’s grants. (These schools were visited regularly by inspectors and the standard of teaching improved greatly.) Priests generally were active, some more than others, in promoting national schools. The Established Church did not approve of them in the first years.

Against the background of Mass celebrated in private houses or in Mass?gardens – if the householder could not take the risk or if the congregation was too big – the practice of ‘stations’ developed. During Advent and Lent the priest(s) of the parish came on an appointed day to an appointed house, preached or catechised, heard confessions and celebrated Mass. In this way, all the parish was visited regularly and many people, who for some reason might not attend Sunday Mass, heard the word of God and received the Sacraments. The practice was extended to cover ‘month’s mind’ Masses. So as not to make the practice too onerous on the people, priests were admonished, in the statutes, to be content at stations with a light breakfast and not to remain for dinner. The practice, so much a part of pastoral care in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was still alive well into the present century.

As far as we know, house?stations were not held in Summer, at least in the early 1800s. Possibly this had some connection with the old practice of people taking to the mountains and bogs – the fearann barr – to graze their cattle during the Summer months. Possibly too, it explains the tradition of Mass?rocks – ‘Carraig an Aifrinn’ and ‘Carraig na hAltóra’ – in remote places far from normal habitation. It should not be surprising if the priest visited his flock at least occasionally to celebrate Mass for them. Maybe he took his holidays with them!

A decline mainly in rural population accompanied the depression of the 1920s. The standard of living was poor, tuberculosis claimed many young lives. Emigration continued, mostly of young people whom no country can afford to lose. Belfast was no longer employing labour as in the nineteenth century. In fact, many Catholic families who had settled there were driven out and back to Monaghan or other places by the pogroms. Following the Treaty, many Monaghan Protestants were unhappy at the prospect of life under a Dublin government and moved into Northern Ireland. The Table of figures for 1958, for some of the parishes which suffered most severely, indicates the extent of the decline. The figures in brackets are for the year 1922.

There was a strange loophole in the Penal Laws: one priest was allowed to register for each parish on substantial bad for his good behaviour, which included living at a fixed address and not leaving his parish without permission. For purposes of the law, the parishes were those of the Established Church, which were substantially those of the pre-reformation period. It was on this shaky foundation that Catholics began to rebuild their parochial organisation, with unregistered priests taking the places of registered priests when these died.

 

For the second half of the eighteenth century Daniel and Hugh O’ Reilly – natives of Cavan, uncle and nephew – were successively bishops of Clogher. Near the end of his life, in 1774, Daniel moved residence from the vicinity of Monaghan to Carrickmacross, where Hugh also continued to live. The arrival of Daniel as bishop, from Antwerp where he was President of the Irish College, coincided with a relaxation of enforcement of the Penal Laws: after their defeat at Culloden the exiled Stuarts were no longer a serious threat to British ‘security’. But the laws remained on the statute book and made bishops cautious about exercising papal jurisdiction. Lord Clanbrassil, for example, threatened to have Bishop Hugh O‘Reilly put in jail if he found him in Dundalk. But generally the landlord and the priest seem to have been on good terms as it suited them both.

 

Around 1780, when it had become legal for Catholics to lease land on acceptable terms, substantial chapels were built in Carrickmacross and Enniskillen. Other parishes built as circumstances allowed. The laity was very much the leaders in this early building of chapels, as they were of the early movement for Emancipation. The clergy, perhaps because they were more vulnerable, kept a low profile. These chapels gradually replaced earlier ‘Mass houses’ or ‘Mass gardens’ over the years. The last Mass garden in use was at Clontibret, until St Mary’s Church was completed in 1859. In 1858 Bishop MacNally reported to Rome that there were ‘still people alive who remember that in their time there was scarcely a Catholic church or chapel in the entire diocese’. (He estimated that the Catholic population of the diocese at that time was over 260,000 – three times what it is today). The early chapels had no seats except perhaps some pews owned by the better-off families. The altar was against the sidewall. Many had galleries. Some were used as schoolhouses. Enniskillen and Carrickmacross were replaced around 1870 by churches of a new style and design. Other chapels were replaced later, but some of them, remodelled and repaired, are still in use.

 

With so many roads to advancement barred to them by penal laws, ambitious Catholics often turned to business: shopkeeping, brewing, dealing in cattle’ linen, provisions, shipping. Many of them made a lot of money. They lent money to landlords who were often short of it. They were to be found in the larger towns – Carolans in Carrickmacross, MacMahons in Ballybay, Kernans and Mihans in Enniskillen, Boyles in Ballyshannon. They formed a network of mutual support by arranged marriages. They educated their children well and got some of them into the legal profession at the first chance. They became the new leaders of the community: of the Kernans, Edward became bishop and Randal a famous barrister.

In his Dictionary of the Clogher Clergy (1535?1835) in the Clogher Record, Fr P. Ó Gallachair writes: ‘By far the most numerous group of our post?reformation clergy bear the Fermanagh surname, Maguire’ and many of these were Franciscans.Next comes MacMahon, some of them Fermanagh?born as well.’ The old leading families held fast to the Faith and atoned for the faults of their forebears through the worst of the persecution. Towards the end, around 1770, some of them weakened. Conn MacMahon of Cavany, Scotshouse, a relative of the great Primate Hugh MacMahon at the start of the century, conformed to the Established Church. So also did the Rev. James MacMahon, receiving a pension from MonaghanGrand Jury. So also did the Maguire families of Tempo and Tullyweel in Fermanagh.

The harsh reality of their new situation only came home to Catholics of these parts in the dispossession and plantation of Ulster which followed the defeat of O’Neill and O’Donnell and Maguire at Kinsale. King James1 appointed his own bishops who took possession of the diocesan and parish structures and property of the Catholics. In the previous century Miler Magrath had been appointed bishop by Queen Elizabeth, but he seems to have confined himself to an annual visit with his retinue, combining a hunting holiday with collection of revenue – cows or horses or money. In Fermanagh after the Plantation only a remnant of the old aristocracy was left with title to about one fifth of the land, mainly in the barony of Magherastephana. The natives in general were now tenants of the new landlords. From now they only went to the old parish church to bury their dead.

In this critical period it was the friars, more than the depleted and disorganised parish clergy, who kept the Faith alive. Even when their houses were broken up they remained ‘strolling priests’ among the people, likely their own relatives. The Magherastephana branch of the Maguire family, living in Aghavea parish, set up a house of Dominicans at Gola on the edge of the estate on the shore of Lough Erne. (Again, the site is intriguing). These Dominican friars played an important role in South Fermanagh in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, keeping the name of Gola alive after they had to abandon it. Father Patrick Kiran, ‘Prior of Gaula, and Family of St Dominic’ died in 1747 and is buried in Donagh cemetery, as is Fr Felix Mulligan, ‘rector of Dromolly’ who died in Co. Fermanagh, 1753, also a Dominican. Fr George Mohan, O.P., cried parish priest of Tullycorbet in 1817. The Franciscan ministry was important in Monaghan and Lough Derg as well as Fermanagh. The last Guardian of Lisgoole, listed in 1831, was Fr Louis Sweetman, a curate in Clones parish.

By the start of the seventeenth century the native Irish, whatever their previous shortcomings, had chosen to remain in the 01d Church and, if necessary, to pay the price in suffering persecution. They could not know how long and painful was the road they had chosen. It was providential that a dozen or more colleges had been set up for the education of priests, diocesan and regular in France and Spain and the Low Countries, so that Ireland did not run short of priests, even in the worst times of the persecution. In 1985 we still have some priests here who were educated in Paris and Salamanca.

Under the native way of living, ‘féile’ – generosity, hospitality – was the quality that poets had successfully extolled for centuries as the leading virtue in princes. Lord Maguire’s home in the early 1600s was ‘Ráth na Féile’, recalled by Stranafeley townland between Lisnaskea and Brookeborough. But in the money economy following the Plantation this open-handedness became improvidence. What was left of the old ar1stocracy soon got into debts and mortgaged or sold their lands to people who had a better sense of property. Still it may be due to them in some measure that generosity is still esteemed among us.

One personality exemplifies the extraordinary renewal of the Faith that had taken place in a generation or two – Connor Lord Maguire of the older Magherastephana branch. Because he was a leader of the old stock his example must have been of the greatest importance for other Catholics. He was arrested in Dublin and tried in London for complicity in the rising of 1641, having been refused trial by his peers in Ireland. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. While there can be little doubt about his complicity in the plot to seize Dublin Castle, it is clear from the account of his trial that what his prosecutors really had against him was that he was a papist. After sentence he was denied the ministry of a priest and tormented to deny his Faith. Again and again he begged them, ‘For God’s sake, give me leave to pray . . . to depart in peace . . . Give me a little time to prepare myself’’. They found in his pockets only some beads and a crucifix, which were taken from him. There were also some papers which he carried in his hand on his way to Tyburn, mainly prayers’ in preparation for death. There was, too, a letter from a certain Grey, ‘your own poor afflicted servant’, and a short note ending ‘Mo mhíle beannacht chugat, a mhic m’anma’ (‘My thousand blessings unto you, son of my soul.’)

For two hundred years persecution ebbed and flowed. The Cromwellian period was a bad one. On the death of Owen Roe O’Neill, the unfortunate Heber MacMahon, bishop of Clogher, had been persuaded to take charge of an army. It was routed in Donegal and Heber was captured in Glendorcha near Ederney and executed in Enniskillen. Some years earlier, Fr.Edmond Mulligan, a Cistercian priest, was caught near Killeevan and executed. There are ballads and folklore stories of other priests being put to death, but in the absence of evidence they can be discounted. Priest hunters, indeed, were not popular with anyone. Whenever persecution eased for a period Catholics took advantage of it. St Oliver Plunkett, before his arrest, travelled inside and outside his diocese, confirming and ordaining. And he held a synod in Clones.

The period of the Penal Laws, following the Jacobite wars and the Treaty of Limerick, was also bad. These laws, enacted by an Irish Parliament, offered material rewards to Catholics who conformed to the Established Church. But their main intent and thrust was to impoverish them so that they could never again engage in war against the English Parliament, as they had done in supporting Charles I and James Il. And left without bishops or means of renewing their priests it was hoped that Catholics would disappear in a generation or two.

In Clogher, as in the country generally, the change in the ownership of the land (through confiscation) was the biggest social and economic change between 1600 and 1700. In 1600 Catholics owned it nearly all; a century later, while still in a big majority, they owned very little of it – perhaps a fifth. They had become tenants, at best, of a handful of Protestant landlords; and tenants they remained until the Land Acts of the last century made every farmer a landlord.

This was clearly a sensation – possibly because he preached so well, but more likely because the people, the ‘hungry sheep’, so rarely heard a sermon. One of the Donegal friars, Brian bocht MacCraith, who died in 1549, deserves to be remembered for his sanctity, which was recognised by everybody who knew him. (The faithful kept him busy working miracles for them.) It is ironic that he quite lately knew the notorious Miler Magrath who was also a Franciscan friar and from Termonmagrath, who died (at a great age) Protestant archbishop of Cashel (1622).

Many members of the old literary families – Ó Cléirigh, Mac an Bhaird, Ó hUiginn – entered the Franciscans and put their literary talents to the service of the Church. The religious poetry of Giolla Bhríde Ó hEodhusa, one of our own, passed into folklore and had wide influence for centuries in strengthening the Faith in Gaelic?speaking Ireland.

The agreement setting up the Franciscans in Lisgoole in 1580 shows, on the one hand, the move to reform and, on the other hand, how a religious house – the Augustinian canons – became completely secularised through falling into the hands of a branch of the Maguire’s. The settlement, which was made and signed by Cúchonnacht Maguire (chief of his name), Bishop Cornelius MacArdle and other notables of the diocese, guaranteed the family which had usurped the twenty odd townlands belonging to Lisgoole, full and peaceful possession of them. Out of it all the Franciscans got just a house and some gardens.