Visits of Archbishop Walsh.

XVII. - Visits of His Grace, the Most Rev. Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, to Lucan.

1. The Consecration of a new Bell, 3rd November 1899.

This was the first new bell consecrated by his Grace the Archbishop in the Diocese of Dublin. The ceremony was on 3rd November, 1889. Amongst those who were present were - The Right Rev. Monsignor Fitzpatrick, P.P., D.D., V.G., then President of Holy Cross College, Clonliffe; the Venerable Dean Walsh, P.P., V.G., Kingstown; Very Rev. R. Nagle, Chancellor of the Diocese of Massachusetts, Boston; Rev. M. F. Flatley, Boston; Rev. J. J. Nulty, Boston; and the Right Rev. Dr. Browne, Bishop of Cloyne, the President of Maynooth College.

After the ceremony the following address was read to his Grace

“May it please Your Grace,

“With feelings of inexpressible joy, deepest reverence and sweetest affection we, the clergy and people of Lucan, hail your Grace’s presence amongst us today. Your Grace’s untiring zeal in the promotion of Catholic interests commands universal admiration and love and posterity must hold in everlasting remembrance the heroic and successful efforts you are making to eradicate for ever that religious intolerance which made our fathers suffer, and to fling open and for ever, to us their children, the portals of religious equality. We feel then, that while through the metropolitan diocese the interests of religion are advancing with great speed, that while no work of charity is unaided by your golden counsel and practical co-operation, this part of the vineyard is also in bloom, and we, your not less devoted charge, are marching apace and onward under your divinely appointed guidance. May the Lord God spare you to us, who so sorely need you, and grant you ‘length of years’ in the fulness of a long, bright, and glorious regime. May every sound of the new bell arouse in our hearts, and the hearts of succeeding generations, the kindliest instincts of filial and grateful love, and when our bodies are laid low in the new cemetery made ‘holy ground’ by the functions of this memorable day, may our souls be filled above with the fruits of those saving graces, which you, our devoted father, our illustrious Archbishop, our noble protector, are momentarily dispensing to your loving and faithful children, the clergy and people of Lucan.”

His Grace’s reply

“Father Donegan and People of Lucan,

“I thank you most heartily for you kind words of welcome. I thank you no less heartily for having given me the opportunity of performing the impressive ceremony, which was the chief occasion of my coming to Lucan today. Your address refers - I must say in language of somewhat unduly exaggerated grandeur - to my labours in this diocese. It will then, I dare say, surprise you, that this is the first time I have had the opportunity of performing this ceremony of the solemn blessing of a bell. There is scarcely another function of the office of bishop which I have not had occasion to perform - which I have not, indeed, frequently had occasion to perform - during the past four years. But it was reserved to your pious zeal to providing this new bell for your parish church - or, as I should rather have said, for the church of this district of your parish - it was reserved for you to give me my first opportunity, of performing this solemn ceremony. For this then, whilst commending in the first place your zeal and generosity, frequently displayed before, and displayed now once again, in this new gift of yours to the house of God, I owe you also for myself, these special words of personal thanks.

“In tendering them to you, let me assure you, that in performing this ceremony to-day, for the first time, it has boon a special pleasure to me to perform it here in Lucan. For more than one reason I am glad of it; glad that this church of yours should be associated in my memory, with one of those specially solemn occasions, which even in the life of a bishop, cannot be of very frequent occurrence. For in the beginning of my priesthood, and even before it, I was often here. During the years that I spent in the College of Maynooth, first as a student, and then for long afterwards as a priest, Lucan, as it happens, was one of the few districts of the diocese in which it was my privilege, from time to time, to take part in some sacred ceremony. This was so especially during the years - I was then but a student in the College - when this district was first blessed by the ministry of the present Parish Priest of Maynooth, Father Hunt, who was then the curate here. Perhaps it was, because in this and other ways, I knew more of this parish than I knew of many others, I frequently need to think, both then and afterwards, how richly blessed by God the people of Lucan were, and how deeply grateful they should feel to Him, as I trust they always have felt, for the great happiness that never seemed to fail them, of having their wants, both spiritual and temporal, so efficiently, so zealously provided for, by the untiring labours or the priests, who, in succession one to another, have had charge of the church and district of Lucan, since I first knew it. Your good Parish Priest, who, I am sorry to say, hass been prevented by a severe illness from being here today, I know feels deeply grateful for all this - grateful for the help that it has always brought to him, in lightening the burden of his* *responsibility for this outlying and distant portion of his parish. Your feelings of thankfulness will not, I trust, fall short of his.

“Just now, let me say it, you the parishioners of Lucan, are an object of envy to many. We are about to enter upon a memorable year - a year that, if we are only true to ourselves, only faithful to the duty that we owe to Ireland and the Irish Church, will be looked back upon by the future chidren of the Irish race as a year most truly memorable in the annals both of our Church and of our nation. I am speaking to you now in reference to an event of which, no doubt, you must have heard something; indeed, I should be surprised if you had not heard a good deal about if from your present worthy and zealous curate, Father Donegan. I mean the festival that all Ireland will be called upon to celebrate, with joy and with pride, on the 10th of next October - the centenary, as it is called, that is to say, the hundredth anniversary, of the birth of our great Irish Apostle of Temperance, Father Mathew. At this present time our people are engaged in more than one great work of national importance. These are important, vitally important, all of them. But of them all I know of none that can claim to surpass in importance the great work of preparing for the worthy and suitable celebration of the great day that is before us. When I speak of a worthy and suitable celebration of the coming festival, you know very well that I do not mean to speak of the mere glory and splendour of a passing pageant, with processions, and bands and banners, and meetings, and possibly banquets, to bring the day to a close. We are singularly good at that sort of thing in Ireland, and, no doubt, it is all good and excellent in its* *way. But in this matter of temperance it is not all that we want just now. We want first of all, to make the Irish people sober; we want to make them what the fellow-countrymen of Father Mathew ought to be, and ought to glory in being - not only sober and temperate themselves, but models of sobriety and temperance to the people of other nations.

“Many of us remember a great celebration in Ireland, now 14 years ago. It was* the centenary, the hundredth anniversary, of the birth of the great champion of the liberties of our country, Daniel O’Connell. That was a very joyous celebration. Not only Catholics, but many of our Protestant friends as well, took part in it.* **Yet it was a celebration in which some, at least, of our countrymen did not feel themselves called upon to take part, and in some instances did not even feel themselves free to do so. There will, please God, be no such drawback in the celebration of the coming centenary of Father Mathew. Upon the merits of the great political charge, which was the chief object of the public life of O’Connell, there was, even amongst Irishmen, and to some extent, indeed, even amongst Catholics, differences of opinion and of sympathy. But, surely, amongst Irishmen, no matter what may be their political party, no matter what may be the religious creed that they profess, there can be no difference of opinion or of sentiment as to the merits of the great moral reform, the accomplishment of which was the great, the sole object 0of that public life of Father Mathew. Father Mathew, whilst always in sympathy, as we know, with the work of O’Connell, kept steadfastly, all the time, to his own work in another sphere. But these two great Irishmen worked on, each upon his own line, each keeping his own object in view, but always in the knowledge that the work of each was helping on the work of the other.

This reference to the relations between O’Connell and Father Mathew, and between the labours of the two, reminds me, by the way of contrast of a strange expression - I do not know whether any of you may have met with it - I have seen it sometimes in the newspapers - a strange saying attributed to a famous orator in Parliament, one of the bishops, if I am not mistaken - I mean, of course, one of the English Protestant bishops - in the House of Lords:- ‘England free, rather than England sober.’ There was, under discussion, it would seem, some bill by which it was sought in some way to check the ravages of drink in England, and this prelate was opposed to its passing. There would, of course, have been nothing strange in his opposing it if he went upon the principle that the proposed measure was not likely to be effective for its purpose. It was, I think, a Sunday-Closing Bid, or some such proposal; and we all know, that on particular measures of the kind, on the question of the efficiency of some particular measure, as a means of promoting the observance of temperance, the views of some sincerely zealous workers in the cause of Temperance are not always in accord with the views of others. But, according to the reports that I have happened to see, this prelate of whom I am speaking did not oppose the Bill, merely on the ground that he could not regard it as likely to help on the work of Temperance among the English people. No! he took altogether different ground. He objected to all such legislation. For every law puts some restriction upon freedom. And for his part, he said, he would rather see England free than England soben. It seemed a strange thing for any responsible man to say, strange, especially, for one holding the office of bishop. Freedom, whether in nations or in individuals is a priceless treasure. You know what the Pope, his present Holiness, has said of it in the great Encyclical Letter which he addressed last year upon this subject to the whole Catholic Church. In the very opening words of that letter, speaking of freedom, he describes it as ‘the foremost, the most excellent of all the natural gifts of man.’ But freedom, such as the English prelate is said to have claimed for the people of England - freedom to get drunk - especially when that freedom has been abused to such an extent that it had reached the dimensions of a national reproach - that is hardly the sort of freedom that anyone should wish to see upheld amongst a people for whom he entertained a feeling of respect - not to say of esteem or affection. Was it not a sad contrast to set forward, a sad restriction of choice: on the one hand England free, and on the other hand England sober?

“We may be sure that to neither of the two great Irishmen of whom I have been speaking - Father Mathew and O’Connell - to neither of these two would it ever have occurred that, in reference to their fellow-countrymen, could such things be put in contrast. On the contrary they both knew well that the sobriety of our people would give the best promise of the freedom of that people, and that from a sober Ireland to a free Ireland the distance remaining to be traversed would be short indeed. Instead of opposition, then, there was harmony, there was mutual help. O’Connell working in the way that seemed best to him to bring about the freedom of his country, and Father Mathew labouring with no less energy and zeal to enable the edifice of freedom to be raised upon a foundation both deep and solid, by making the people of Ireland a sober and temperate people.

“Now as we are to celebrate next year the centenary of Father Mathew’s birth, it will, I trust, be found that we have done beforehand, and in good time, the work of preparation for it, without which the celebration will be but a passing show. A statue, as a matter of course, will be erected in some public place in Dublin. It will stand there as a monument to remind future generations of Irishmen of the great work that was accomplished in their country in the 10 or 12 last years of the first half of this century, by the energy, the devotion, the personal, and at times, almost singlehanded, labours of one zealous priest. But if the erection of a statue in our streets were to be the sole, or even the chief work of the coming celebration, I for one, as I have already publicly declared, should have no part whatever in a proceeding that I could look upon only as a piece of childish folly. If we are to have a statue erected in Father Mathew’s honour, let us, first of all, before the day on which that statue is to be unveiled, take what *steps *we can to secure that it is not to confront us as a standing reproach. A reproach it must be, if it is to stand there amongst a people who have turned aside in indifference, if not in contempt, from the path into which it was the mission of his life to lead them. If we are to have a statue, as of course we are, let us do all that lies in our power to guard it from the profanation of looking down upon the drunkard reeling along the street in which it stands.

Father Mathew’s work has many lessons for us. It must serve as an encouragement. It may also serve as a warning. The success that he attained was in many ways a striking one. But we must not forget that it was but transient. We must look, then, well into the causes of its temporary failure. We cannot hope to have in undertaking the renewal of his work some of those advantages which led him so rapidly forward on the path of success. There is, then, all the greater reason for our looking carefully before, examining every winding of that path, every obstacle that we must expect to meet with in it, endeavouring to forecast the future in the strong light that is thrown upon it by the chequered experience of the past. We must not aim at making a merely brilliant success. Whatever we may hope our success to be, it must be our great aim to make it lasting; and lasting it cannot be, amongst our Catholic people, unless we place it upon the solid foundation which religion and a religious organization, an organization blessed and enriched by the favour of the Holy See, alone can supply. I may say to you now, that I have already given much thought to the subject of an organization such as I describe.

“I am encouraged to proceed in the work by the earnest and, I must add, enthusiastic support that I have received from many whom I have consulted of my venerated brethren in the Episcopacy of Ireland. I do not feel myself free as yet to speak upon the matters in detail. But this, at all events, I may say to you - that, if we are to succeed, it must from the very outset be our aim sooner or later, to bring into the ranks every Irish Catholic who does not wish to have it thought of him that he makes light of the law of God, or that he makes light of the obligations which that law imposes upon every child of Adam, first, to keep clear of drunkenness and of the occasions that lead to drunkenness; secondly, to practise the virtue of temperance, and so to adopt those means without which the observance of that virtue cannot but fail; and in fine not to rest satisfied merely with the personal observance of these things, but to secure by every reasonable means, and as far as may be, the observance of them by others.

It will, I should trust, be the desire of every Catholic Irishman, of every Irish Catholic woman, of every Irish Catholic child, to he privileged to take some part in the national rejoicing on Father Mathew’s centenary feast. I should wish to feel that here in Dublin, at all events, when the 10th of next October comes round, we shall find all who are willing to take part in that celebration already enrolled, in some capacity or other, in the ranks of the organization that, under God’s blessing and the blessing of the Holy See, may yet be destined to make the fruits of Father Mathew’s labours not only universal, or all but universal, in Ireland, but also, what is far more important, to make the fruits of those labours permanently enduring amongst our people.

All this may seem to you a project too vast to be proposed with any hope of realisation. But I will ask you today, as, when the proper time comes, I will ask the people of each locality in this diocese, to look at it, not as they may think it concerns others, but only as it concerns themselves. I ask you, then, the people of Lucan, to consider whether the work is not possible here. No great work can be taken in hand, with any prospect of success, unless it is taken in hand, as we may say, piecemeal, bit by bit. The people of each parish, the people of each district of a parish, must look at home; they must think only of themselves. Let the work be done in each district, and it will be done throughout the parish; let it be done in each parish, and it will be done throughout the diocese; let it be done in each diocese - that is to say, in each diocese where there is nothing better to be found - and then we shall have reached the end at which we aim; for our organization, or something better than it, will be found from north to south, from east to west, throughout the length and breadth of Ireland.

“Well, now, one other point before I conclude what I have to say. When shall we begin? There may be some enthusiastic spirits who may say:- ‘Why should a day even be let slip? Why not begin at once?’ But we have to depend under God’s Providence, not upon enthusiasm, but upon calm, deliberate, steady work. We are bound to see that when we make the start, it shall be a good one. It would be a mockery and a profanation to ask God’s blessing on a work such as this without first making use of every human means at our disposal to ensure success. I mean, then, to wait for some little time yet; to wait: in fact, until the work can be begun on the day most suitable for beginning it - next Passion Sunday - the anniversary, as you know, of the dedication of your parish, of this diocese, and of Ireland, to the Sacred Heart of our Lord. A work begun on such a day, if we but begin it in the proper spirit, if we are faithful to the grace which that beginning will surely bring upon it, cannot but be rich in blessings, and, under God’s blessings, cannot fail to do for us what yet remains to be done, to enable us to look forward without shame and without misgiving to the part that we, the Catholics of this diocese of Dublin, will be called upon to take in celebrating the centenary feast of Father Mathew.

“Before I leave you I wish to give you my blessing now that you are kneeling before me to receive it, I will ask you whenever, for the next few months, you hear the sound of this new bell that has been blessed today, and especially when you hear it calling you to Mass, Sunday after Sunday, let it remind you of what I have said to you here today. Then, please God, when the day comes that I have told you of; you will be prepared, all of you, to take up the work that lies before you.

The Archbishop’s words bore great fruit in Lucan. On the lines laid down by His Grace there sprang forth a splendid organization which still flourishes in the district, and through it the most sanguine hopes of His Grace, have been realised in every home. The new bell still chimes forth, and in response, the faithful seem alive to the soul-stirring words of his beautiful and historical address to them. What a change! In the old dark days there was a tumult amongst the non-Catholics of Lucan at the sound of the chapel bell. They resolved that the bell should come down, but an amendment was carried that as the bell was so faint in its tinkling, it should be tolerated. On the occasion of this visit of His Grace, many of the most respected Protestants of the district were present, and they were unanimous in praise of the beautiful new bell, and in their praise of the efficiency of Mr. Matthew Byrne, of James’s-street, from whose famous foundry it came.

The New Cemetery, 11th May, 1890.

After the Consecration of the Cemetery the Very Rev. Father Moore, P.P., read the following address to His Grace:-

“From the Lucan Branch of the New National Temperance Organization to His Grace the Most Reverend Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland.

“May it please Your Grace,

“We, the Members of the Lucan Branch of the New National Temperance Organization, welcome your Grace amongst us with feelings of sincere affection, reverence, and delight. We venture to give emphatic utterance to these feelings, intensified by the consciousness, that deep, indeed: must be for us your personal concern, which gives us the privilege of sharing in the solemn ceremony of to-day, notwithstanding the arduous and incessant labours of your already illustrious episcopate. Significant ceremony! which consecrates the lowly beds of earth, in which after life’s day has sunk into the night ‘when no man can work,’ our bodies shall lie, and from which they shall rise on the Great Accounting Day.

“But the hour of another resurrection is at hand. On the occasion of your Grace’s last memorable visit to Lucan, its first light began to dawn with the first notes of our new bell - the first consecrated by your Grace - your words of promise were heard ringing throughout the land. Your Grace witnesses today their fulfilment. In unfurling the banner of Temperance, nobly did your Lordship touch the spring of Ireland’s hope, salvation, and glory. The heart of Ireland leaped with exultation at the bidding of your Grace, and we are proved your loyal children. We are alive to the sense of our duty - the duty of the hour - in one of the greatest movements of our time.

‘I have always said,’ spoke, in last November, one of England’s greatest orators, one of Ireland’s greatest friend, ‘that the Temperance movement in this country is the greatest movement, the most far-reaching and deep-seated movement since the great antislavery time.’ And in the establishment of that movement on a religious, national, and permanent basis, your Grace has not only fixed in the niche of imperishable fame, the name of a ‘great priest,’ Theobald Mathew, but crowned your own life with the noblest of deeds, the Church with the loveliest of offerings, our country and posterity with the most solemn and solid guarantee of peace, prosperity, and independence.”

The Archbishop’s Reply

“Father Moore, Father Donegan, rev. and dear friends, I must thank you for speaking as you do of my last visit to Lucan six months ago. I am glad to know that it is associated in your memories, in any degree, with the origin and growth of that great organization, our Temperance movement, which even already has taken its place amongst the most solidly-established religious institutions of our country. It was here at Lucan, on the occasion of that visit, that I first spoke in public of my desire to have the Temperance movement of Father Mathew’s centenary year put before the people - at all events of this diocese - as a religious movement, From the time that I first turned my thoughts to the subject it seemed to me that the Passion Sunday of this year, the anniversary of the consecration of this diocese, and of all the dioceses of Ireland, to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, would be the most fitting day to take the first step in the great work. If I am not mistaken, it was when speaking to you here, last November, that I first suggested, or, at all events, that I first suggested in public, that the anniversary of that consecration would be the best of all possible days for the formal beginning of such a “work amongst us. Well, Passion Sunday came round, and when it came I had the happiness of feeling that the success of the work was already, in great measure, assured; for on that day I had the privilege of bringing with me into the pulpit of the Pro- Cathedral, Marlborough-street a Pastoral Letter - a letter which on that same day was read from the pulpit or from the altar of every church, not of this diocese only, but of all the dioceses of this ecclesiastical province; a letter in which the Bishops of these dioceses - the Archbishop, that is to say, myself, and other Bishops of the province - spoke with one united voice, and with all the weight of our united pastoral authority, to all our priests and people, commending this work to their adoption. We spoke with confidence. Has that confidence been misplaced? Has it, not, indeed, been more than justified by all that has since been done in response, in hearty, enthusiastic response, to our appeal? You know as well as we do that it has been. For this great work has been done in your midst. It has been done, your own part of it, by yourselves, You may remember something of what I said to you when I last spoke to you here about it. I told you not to be disheartened or deterred by any thought of the vastness of the work that lay before us to be done. I told you that widespread as the sphere of that work was, yet wherever the work lay to be done, there the workers were also to be found. The work, no doubt, is a national work. The field in which it lies spreads out north and south, east and west, through the length and breadth of Ireland. But, as I reminded you, all Ireland is mapped out into so many dioceses, and every diocese into so many parishes, and every parish is made up of its own small districts. Let every parish, then, every district of a parish, do its own small share of the great work by doing simply its own work within its own borders, as you have done it here, and the victory is won all along the line. Here, you see, is one great advantage of starting such a work as this on the lines of a religious and ecclesiastical organization.

“But there is another, and in many ways, a greater advantage. For years past we have had individual effort in abundance. Father Donegan here, was working away, zealously, indefatigable, elsewhere. But, just as in Father Mathew’s time, the work that was done in this way, great and fruitful in good as it was, was the work rather of individuals than of the Church. And so it became quite plain to me and to others that if something were not done to take up the work in the name of the Church, this work of our day would, in time, in great measure die out with the good priests whose work it was. We had an example and a warning before our eyes - the example of that great national work of Father Mathew, which in such large measure, unhappily died out with him, our great Apostle of Temperance, to whom it owed its origin, and I may say, all its success.

“I hope that what I have now said of Father Mathew’s great movement will not be found fault with by anyone. I trust, too, that it will not give pain to anyone. There are still living among us - I dare say there are some here in Lucan as elsewhere - faithful followers of that great priest, that glory, as we may well call him of our Irish priesthood, and of our Irish race. There are still among us some of those faithful veterans of that first great crusade against intemperance. For some of them , it is half a century since they took the pledge - Father Mathew’s pledge - from Father Mathew himself. They took it 50 years ago, and they have kept it faithfully ever since. They are proud of that. They have reason to be proud of it. They have reason also to give thanks for it to God through Whose grace, as they must always remember, they have kept faithful to their promise, through all the temptations to be unfaithful to it that these 50 years must have brought. But, proud as they may be of all this, grateful as they may, and must be for it to Almighty God, they cannot shut their eyes to the fact that the mighty army enrolled by Father Mathew for the capture and final overthrow of the one stronghold of the devil in Ireland, almost melted away when he, its great captain, was taken from its head. How sadly the hopes then raised ended in disappointment none can know so well as they who themselves shared in those hopes, 40 or 50 years ago, they, who, themselves, had a part in that great movement, when, taken up, as it was, with fiery enthusiasm by our people, it was carried onward in triumph from end to end of Ireland.

“That movement then, as a great national movement, came speedily to an end. But, thank God, it did not altogether die out. The presence amongst us of those veterans of Father Mathew’s grand army of total abstainers is the evidence of this. I have always felt that so long as they were amongst us, there was a hope, and a strong hope, for the future of the work of Temperance in Ireland. They have kept the old flag flying through years of depression, when any man might well have given up hope. But they kept their hope and trust unshaken. The events of the last few weeks and months have come at length to cheer them. But whilst those events came upon many others as a pleasing and altogether unlooked for surprise, I have no doubt that to Father Mathew’s faithful veterans they came as the fulfilment of a hope that had never wavered. We must make it a main point to secure that hope against such another trial.

In this new movement, then, we must aim almost first of all, at making the work permanent. To succeed in this we have many things to avoid, and many things to do. But it has seemed to us, your Bishops, that the first essential element of permanence in any such work as this in Ireland must be its close connection with the organization and with the work of the Church. Henceforward, then, it will not depend, here or there, upon the energy or the zeal of any one priest, however zealous, however energetic, he may be. Moreover, so far at least as regards the dioceses of this ecclesiastical province, it will not depend on the zeal or the energy of any one Bishop. The work has now been made part and parcel of the work of the Church herself in these dioceses. Through the agency of an ecclesiastical synod it will soon, please God, be placed upon a footing here as solid as the canon law of the Church and the blessing and authority of the Holy See can give it. And as we, the present Bishops of these dioceses, die off; one by one, those who come after us will not be left in doubt or anxiety, as I, for instance, was for the last five years, besieged and bewildered by counsellors, everyone of them bringing his own counsel and making scorn of the counsels of all the rest. No. The organization will be there all the time, working on steadily, without a break, under the blessing of the Holy See. Each new Bishop when he comes to the diocese will have for his guidance the advice, not of amateur counsellors, but of his brethren and fellow-workers in the episcopacy. In this way, then, so far, at least, as human effort, working on the lines of ecclesiastical unity, can effect our object, we have provided for that second great quality, which should distinguish such a work as this, by making it durable as well as widespread.

Now, as I have spoken of Father Mathew, there is a matter I must not omit to mention. For some time past a committee has been at work in Dublin endeavouring to raise funds to erect a statue in honour of Father Mathew, to perpetuate his memory and the memory of his work. When the project of a memorial statue was first put, before the public, several months ago, I thought it my duty to speak out my mind very plainly as to what seemed to me to be a danger to be guarded against. We had reached a point that manifestly was a critical one in the progress of the work of Temperance in Ireland. The centenary, the hundredth anniversary of Father Mathew’s birth, was to be celebrated this year; and I could conceive no form of celebration worthy of so great an occasion but that of an earnest and united effort of our people to root out from Ireland the gigantic evil, in warring against which Father Mathew’s life was spent. I was afraid, I confess, that if men’s thoughts were turned, in the first instance, to the raising of a statue, the real work of the year-the establishment of a great Temperance organization, durable and widespread - might be neglected, or that, if it were not neglected, it might come to be looked upon as having but a secondary place in the work of the year.

I subscribed, of course, myself to the raising of the statue. But, as I put it to you here in Lucan when I was last with you, I wished, at the same time, to do what I could to arouse public opinion to a sense of the mockery that would be presented by the spectacle of a statue of the great Apostle of Temperance standing in some public place in our city, whilst no serious effort was made to guard it from the profanation of the drunkard reeling along the street in which it stood. Some words of mine, some things that I said, and some things that I wrote, have had, I am told, the effect of checking, in some degree, the ready flow of subscriptions that would otherwise have come in. Why there should have been a moment’s hesitation about it I cannot conceive. Nor can I conceive how we can have a worthy celebration of Fr. Mathew’s centenary festival in Dublin, next October, if the unveiling of a statue to his memory is not a leading feature of the work of the eventful day.

“I am told that the sum needed is £1,000. That, surely, should not be too large a sum to raise, even within a month or two, for a work like this. For, remember, it is a work in which no difference of religion or of party politics can arise. The Protestant Archbishop, Lord Plunket, has subscribed to it, as I have. Moreover, on the list of subscribers, you will find the name of the Lord Lieutenant, the representative of the Crown, and chief official head of the Tory party in this country, side by side with the name of the Nationalist Lord Mayor of Dublin. With these solid foundations of united action laid, what difficulty can there be of having £1,000 or more, within a month or two? But for one consideration I would take this work in hand myself, and I would carry it to completion by a penny-a-month subscription from the members of our new Catholic temperance organization within this diocese alone. But I should far prefer to see the statue raised by the united effort of all classes of our people. It is not often that we get in this country a chance of working together in thorough unity of spirit for a common end. When an opportunity of doing this presents itself I, for one, will not be a party to throwing it away.

“Now, to make this matter practical, I will tell you what you can do. I know that what I say to you will be in the newspapers tomorrow, and I hope it will be taken as a friendly suggestion of mine, not to you alone, but to all who are in a position to take part, even a small part, in this great work. I have told that the sum still wanted is about £1,000. Now £1,000 means 20,000 shillings. I believe 25,000 shillings would fully cover all that is required. Welll, an energetic worker in the cause, a Mr. Carty, of Grafton-street, Dublin, has written to the newspapers suggesting a shilling subscription as the best and readiest way of raising the sum that is required. It seems to me that Mr. Carty is right. I do not know the gentleman personally. But I mean to help him in this practical worth. I mean to send him 20 shillings this evening. Some others, I have no doubt, will follow my example. Very many others, who cannot afford 20 shillings, will be able, at all events, to send him one. And if this suggestion of mine be taken up, as I think it ought to be, and as I trust it will be, the Father Mathew Centenary Celebration Committee will not be long in want of £1,000.

“And now, before I give you my blessing, let me offer you a word of congratulation on the beauty and solemnity of the ceremony, the blessing of your new cemetery, here today. All the ceremonies prescribed by the Church for such an occasion were carried out in a degree of perfection that could not have been surpassed in Rome itself The impressive procession of the parishioners from the church to the cemetery was worthy, in its simple beauty, of the most Catholic parts of Germany. That procession was, in my eyes, one of the most pleasing features of the great ceremonial of the day. I trust that none of you who took part in it - and you all took part in it - will ever forget it, or ever forget that you were indebted for it to the kindness of Mr. Shackleton, who so good-naturedly threw his fields open to you for this purpose. I was going to ask you to give him a cheer, but you have anticipated my wishes and given him three cheers. He deserves them. That act of his was a kind and neighbourly act. I take it upon myself to thank him here publicly in your name, and to thank him also for that other kind and neighbourly act of his in coming to meet us as he did at the entrance of the new cemetery, before the beginning of the religious ceremonies of the day. You see that Mr. Shackleton, though he has not learned our Catholic Catechism, has given practical proof that he knows, at all events, one of the answers that we all have learned from it, when it tells us that by ‘our neighbour’ is meant, in the Christian law, mankind of every description, without any exception of those who differ from us in religion.”

The large assembly present then knelt down, and the Archbishop administered the episcopal blessing. As his Grace was leaving the platform he was cheered most enthusiastically by the people.

The last visit of his Grace to Lucan was in connection with the new National Convent Schools, when he subscribed the munificent sum of £100. His important and historical pronouncements, his paternal solicitude for the people, will never be forgotten in Lucan. The strong, fervent faith of its people is widely acknowledged, and no wonder; for if Youghal and Lourdes have their shrines dedicated to the Mother of the Redeemer, so has Lucan, whose parochial church in the far-off centuries, as it is now, was dedicated to her. May “the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lucan” still guard and save it, from generation to generation!

Some of the oldest parishioners say that they took the pledge from Father Mathew in the present church of Lucan, when it was but partially built and before the roof was slated. They glory, as the Archbishop said, in having kept it, and in being veterans of the old guard. They also state that Colonel White (Lord Annally) laid the foundation of the church in the beginning of the last half century. It is to be hoped that his lordship will substantially commemorate its golden jubilee.

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