The Christian Brothers and a Story.

Chapter XIX

The Christian Brothers and a Story.

The Christian Brothers give a religious and general education at their eleven schools in the city of Dublin. They are laymen who have taken a vow of chastity, and live in community; and they are saturated with Italian ideas, unctuousness, superficial holiness, and all that sort of unmanly behaviour, which makes Roman Catholics in general so unintelligible to members of any of the Reformed Churches. I rather feel for the Christian Brothers, and find it hard to say anything against them. But I should like to see them try the experiment, now that they have gained a reputation with the community, of converting themselves into ordinary laymen, while maintaining their organisation, and continuing to conduct their schools, even on their present lines. They do not take vows for life, and there are a great many Dublin laymen, teachers in priests’ schools, and in other positions, married men and fathers of families, who were at one time Christian Brothers.

The Christian Brothers’ schools ought to be self-supporting, or there should be some business-like arrangement by which this order of men who do the important work of giving primary and superior education to thousands of Catholic children, whose parents are prepared to pay for them, might be saved from the necessity of mendicancy. In my native town our parish priest had a difference with the Christian Brothers and ordered them to leave the town. The Catholic population objected; a large new school and residence having been built for the Christian Brothers, and several acres of ground enclosed for their use. The parish priest persisted, and introduced an incompetent, elderly “classical teacher” into the town, to whom he recommended parents to send their children, there being no Catholic National school. The principal parishioners met to consider the difficulty, and they guaranteed an annuity to the Brothers on condition that they remained in the town. The guarantee was accepted; the Brothers remained; and no begging appeals were thenceforth made in the parish on behalf of the Christian Brothers. The parish priest refused to allow the parishioners’ committee to make an annual collection at the chapel gates, so they used to place their collecting tables on the road side at some distance from the gates at mass time on a given Sunday. The schools continued to flourish; and the only fault, looking back over a long distance of years, which I can find with the Brothers, is that they inculcated too much respect for the priests into the boys who attended their schools. They literally heaped coals of fire upon the head of the parish priest, who is now dead, and who tried to do the Brothers all the injury in his power.

But the Christian Brothers are becoming infected with the spirit of beggary; and they will, in course of time, I fear, become a body of money-hoarding mendicants.

A doctor of philosophy from Maynooth, Father Sheehan, delivering a charity sermon on the Brothers’ behalf in a Dublin parish, is reported as thus putting their cause before the public:-

“The Christian Brothers had, by their chivalrous loyalty to religion, a special right to the name they bore. In their schools were to be found the crucifix, the images of the saints, the statue of Our Blessed Lady, and very often an altar, which at certain times* *of the year, within the octaves of the great Feasts or during the month of May, was adorned with flowers and lights. During the day prayers were recited several times, and a suitable religious instruction was given. If a pupil of the Christian Brothers did not leave school with a spiritual constitution proof against the microbe of irreligion, no one could blame them for his fall.” [Freeman’s Journal, February 24, 1902.]

I believe that it is the excessive importance accorded to altars and statues and the materialistic ministrations of priests which causes the large desertions from Roman Catholicity amongst the Irish in England and America? When the Roman Catholic goes abroad, and does not bring his statues and his priest with him, he gives up the religion of the statues and the priest. And how worthless a religion must be, when a man, face to face in a strange land with new difficulties and fresh surroundings, discovers that his creed is not part of his life, but only an incumbrance, which it is his interest to shake off. The doctor of philosophy is profuse in his flattery for the denizens of Catholic Ireland, who are so generous to his profession:-

“Irish people had grown so accustomed to the blessing of faith that they often failed to appreciate it. Let them look to the lands where faith was on the wane; they would find society being dragged down to the filth of Roman paganism, they would find the anarchist whose dagger was dripping with the blood of president or king.”

A stranger would naturally be led to infer that we had never known the curse of the assassin’s dagger dripping with blood in Catholic Ireland. Would that such was our happy history!

I find that the Christian Brothers are reported as being dealt with by the Dominican, Father Keane, in a charity sermon on their behalf in another part of the city, as follows:-

“The learned preacher took his text from the Canticle of Cantides, ‘Thou art all fair, oh my love, and there is not a spot in thee.’ In the course of an eloquent and powerful appeal, he said there were thousands of millions of degrees distance between all these saints and the Queen of Saints, whose spotless sanctity the universal Church was honouring that day. After years of striving, of generous self-denial, of generous correspondence with God’s abundant graces, other saints at the close of life reached the perfect acceptability in God’s sight of having their souls immaculate. It was there She began. Her giant strides in the course of Her unimaginable sanctification commenced with a perfect spotlessness.” [Evening Telegraph, December 9, 1901.]

That seems a far-fetched beginning for a charity sermon in aid of the Christian Brothers’ Schools in North Brunswick Street, Dublin. But the Dominicans are famous - if one may use such a word in connection with them - for that kind of introduction. The well-known Father Tom Burke is said to have once commenced a sermon on behalf of the Jesuits by a most original exordium. I have heard the reprehensible story told a thousand times, always amongst ourselves, and sometimes in company with priests, but never accompanied by a word of disapproval. It is narrated that the Jesuits entertained Father Burke at dinner before the sermon, which was an evening one, and the company partook, not of German beer, but of vintage wines, of which the Jesuits are connoisseurs. Some of the elder Jesuits-possessed of that “hard head,” or capacity for drinking without getting drunk, which one of Father Sheehan’s characters recommends Irish priests to acquire before they go into society - feared that Father Burke was not in a fit condition to enter the pulpit. They are said to have remonstrated with him, and one of their number offered himself as a substitute to preach the intended sermon. Father Burke is said to have become violent and indignant that any suspicion or doubt should be entertained as to his “hardness of head,” and he threatened to create a scene if they persisted in preventing him from entering the pulpit.

This would have been a subject worthy of a historic picture; the “hard headed,” sly Jesuits, in their black soutanes, remonstrating with the big Dominican in his robes of white and black. Father Burke was a large man, with jet-black hair, and a very florid face, and the Dominican used to preach in the showy robe of his order. The dispute in the sacristy ended in the Jesuits giving way to Father Burke. I should be inclined to say myself that the Jesuits would not have been particularly sorry to have seen this distinguished Dominican making a fool of himself in the pulpit, if it had been in another church. Father Burke strode out into the church and ascended into the pulpit, and found the building was crowded. The “hard-headed” Jesuits arranged themselves in trepidation in all sorts of holes and corners close to the pulpit. We can well understand that they were exceedingly nervous lest the dreaded misbehaviour of the preacher should do injury to their business.

Imagine, then, their consternation when Father Burke, standing up in the pulpit and pulling back his sleeves, bared his wrists, and commenced operations by thumping the ledge of the pulpit with the clenched fist of his right arm. And he bellowed forth in stentorian tones, as he brought his hand down with a thud, “Damn the Jesuits!” And he struck the pulpit again and cried out, “Damn the Jesuits!” The audience became intensely excited, and one might have heard a pin fall in the church. It is said that one of the most “hard-headed” Jesuits had his foot upon the first step of the pulpit stairs, about to go up and remonstrate with the preacher. And Burke again cried forth, in the most pointed way, swinging himself right and left in the pulpit, “To hell with the Jesuits!” It now seemed as if Burke was going to denounce the order, which, in so many respects was a rival to his own, and was going to utilise the Jesuits’ own pulpit for the purpose!

The poor Catholic lay congregation listened awestruck, waiting for the development of these adjurations. For them, of course, nothing that could emanate from the pulpit would ever sound wrong. And they knew nothing about the dinner. Their faith assured them that the apparent inexplicability of the situation was bound to be satisfactorily unravelled. But the lurking Jesuits round the corners, looking through their spy-holes in the passage doors, and who knew all about the consumption at dinner, can have had no such comforting assurance.

Burke however relieved the tension by proceeding to speak somewhat in this vein: “Yes, my dearly beloved brethren, *To Hell with the Jesuits! *that is the irreligious cry which is now ringing throughout Europe. That is the unchristian cry which is now ringing throughout atheistical France. *Damn those holy men, the Jesuits; down with the Jesuits; *yea, and other more ribald and even more impious curses than those I have mentioned, on the heads of the worthy order which is one of the principal pillars of the Church.” And then he proceeded to preach an eloquent panegyric of the Jesuit Order, which succeeded in its purpose of eliciting the required subscriptions from the congregation; for Burke had a great flow of words and, though a wag, was not a fool as are many men and women possessed of that gift.

The Dominican, Father Keane, with whom we are now concerned, thus tortuously makes his exordium germane to the body of his discourse:-

“Gazing upon Her that day, on Her beautiful feast, the Christian heart found some manner of consolation in looking down from the great Mother of God to the one department of ordinary humanity in which they might rejoice to find an immaculate condition of soul, he meant the dear little children over whose spirits and whose lives the dark cloud of sin had not yet come to lower. Any child whom they might see in any of the streets or lanes adjoining the church was the child of the Eternal God. From all eternity God’s Imperial Mind conceived the design of him, and it was the power divine of God’s Right Hand that created him. He was the veritable child of the all-holy and all-perfect God. Before he was three days old he became God’s child in a higher and holier sense. When the baptismal grace shed its beauty on the child’s fresh young soul an angel bright and fair immediately took his stand beside that young soul to be its guardian during life. As the child was being conveyed away from the church he could imagine the Sacred Heart of the Incarnate God in the Tabernacle sending a smile and a message of ethereal love down the church after him. He could imagine a battalion of heavenly spirits sweeping down from the clouds and coming in at the church door to look upon the new beauty which the touch of God’s Hand in the Sacramental Benediction had invested the child with.”

I scarcely think Father Burke would have spun off such high-flown hyperbole as that; but the extract gives a fair idea of the staple oratory of the Dominican Order of to-day. Is that all the Dominicans can do for the deserted, starved Catholic children of Dublin?

The roaring Dominican next proceeds to thunder forth his contempt for kings, more especially for English kings:-

“Perhaps next year the monarch of the realm would visit the metropolis. If they bore him from Dublin Castle to the Viceregal Lodge, and if his way was along the northern quays, if there were a poor hunchbacked, starved child m Hammond Lane or Bow Street, they might stop the monarch’s progress, ask him to get down from his gilded chariot, and, standing before the baptized child, take off his jewelled crown and bend his knee and adore a greater than he was - the Everlasting Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, within the breast of the poor little child.”

Why is the King thus disrespectfully invited to kneel down in worship before the destitute Roman Catholic children of Dublin? Such language is not an incentive to our poor to elevate themselves in the scale of life, but rather to continue in degradation. It is the priests, not the King of England, who claim, and make money by, the custody of such children. One of the first acts of the King’s reign displayed his generous thoughtfulness for his poorest subjects. But the Dominican gospel of dirt - worship and starvation - worship and deformity - worship is not kindness, but cruelty to the poor. Groping his way to the subject of his sermon, Father Keane is further reported thus:-

“If they were to look for a child of to-day a thousand years hence they should look for him either on one of the gilded thrones of heaven or in the dismal pit of eternal hell. Therefore the solicitude of the Church, which has been charged by her divine Founder with the care of the everlasting welfare of souls. She drew her flaming sword and defended the soul of the child, or she strove to do it, against all things that contained the most shadowy possibility of imperilling its everlasting interests.”

Is Father Keane’s ranting the “flaming sword” which the Church draws to protect the child? If so, it is an effete weapon. Those who draw the sword shall perish by the sword; and the children live and die in misery despite the sword of the Dominican tongue.

At length he arrives at the Christian Brothers, and it would be hard to imagine anything more derogatory to the claim of that body of men upon public support, as instructors of youth:-

“Chief amongst the agencies whereby her motherly zeal displayed itself towards the child was the Christian school. He pleaded to them that day for the Christian Brothers” Schools in North Brunswick Street, where nearly 400 children daily received a Christian education. Who could so well impart to the child a thoroughgoing Christian education as the man who, in his young life, consecrated himself to God by religious vows and gave his body and his heart and his brain and his soul and all his life to the service of God in the teaching of the young? In that description they recognised the devoted Christian Brother. They were schools where the children *could pray when they liked, *and no officer of the Government could come in and say ‘How dare you pray at this hour!’ In the Christian Brothers’ Schools they taught for God, and through and through the school there was the Christian spirit. *The child’s everlasting welfare was first of all, *and his training was of such a sort that the grace which the Lord shed upon his soul at the baptismal font might remain with him to his dying hour.”

And the preacher, we are told, closed his discourse by referring “to the expenses incidental to the carrying on of the school work, and he made a powerful appeal to the congregation to give generous aid to the Brothers in the continuance of their magnificent educational labours.”

It is to be hoped the day will arrive when the Christian Brothers, or whatever body of men may hereafter happen to be in charge of the better-class primary education of Catholic Dublin, will be saved from the necessity of having to engage the service of such advocates.

The industrial school, which the Christian Brothers conduct at Artane, is one of the great glories of clerical Dublin. The boys are marched through the city on every possible pretext, in ranks of two deep, sometimes accompanied by their band, and, whenever they appear, they form a most striking demonstration. One hears nothing but admiration expressed on all sides for the appearance and turn-out of the boys. They defile past the astounded Dubliners like soldiers on parade. It has often occurred to me that such an enormous brigade of boys demonstrating through the city, instead of being a subject for congratulation should be a subject for lamentation to the citizens. Assuming that they are all boys who have been *genuinely *convicted for vagrancy and begging before a magistrate, should we not regard it as a standing reproach to our city that such an army of young vagrants can be maintained in permanent strength from the delinquents of its population. But, assuming that a great part, or the majority of them, are boys who have been *spuriously *convicted of vagrancy and begging, is the display not even still more lamentable? It is bad enough to have real beggars in our midst, but it is far worse to have numbers of people who can work, but won’t; parents who can support their children, but will connive at having them committed for crime to such institutions so that they may be supported by the State. One can realise how the labourer, overburthened with a numerous family, must wish that one or two of his boys could join the smart regiment of Artane as it defiles before him under its clerical officers, and preceded by its band!

The Christian Brothers own a large quantity of valuable land in the district of Fairview, Clontarf, and Artane. They have, as we know, three important buildings on this land. The superior-general’s residence, at one time Lord Charlemont’s; the O’Brien Institute; and the Artane Industrial School; and they are erecting an expensive novitiate. They carry on extensive farming operations; and they are in a position to utilise the labour of the boys for the cultivation of their land; This gives them a great advantage over the ordinary county Dublin farmers, with whom they are to be seen competing at the cattle market on Thursdays, at the corn market and at the hay market.

In one of his official reports I find that the inspector of those industrial schools criticises the conduct of the religious managers of those establishments in acquiring more land than is necessary for the purposes of the institutions. A reason for excessive acquisition of land would be that the soil can be worked by the free labour of the boys in the schools, and that, in consequence, money can be earned by farming, in addition to the profit which is made out of the Government and municipal stipends allowed for each boy.

But the Brothers at Artane are not content with the Government grant, or the Corporation subsidy, or the revenue from their fertile lands in the county Dublin - the richest to be found in all Ireland. They also make a house-to-house canvass in the city of Dublin for subscriptions to Artane. On the begging mission, the mendicant Brother is always accompanied by a couple of plump orphans, who are in as prime condition as the fat cattle, which, perhaps, at the same time one of the other Brothers is engaged in selling at the highest market price on the North Circular Road!

All that sort of procedure is bad public policy. The lay Catholic population suffer in the competition with the religious orders, but they never make an effective or straightforward protest. The following represents, perhaps, a typical cry from the thinking Dublin tradesmen. It occurs at a meeting of the Irish Industrial League, held at 47 Dame Street, on the 21st August 1901, at which the president of the branch delivered a lecture in answer to the question, “Are industrial institutions an industrial evil?” [Freeman’s Journal, August 22, 1901] We are told that:-

“the lecturer replied with a strong affirmative, and in the course of his remarks he protested against the manner in which the boys of the Artane Industrial School were enabled to compete with the legitimate Dublin trader. The Artane boys, he said, were paid little or no wages, and the goods were sold in the Dublin shops much under the ordinary trade price, to the great detriment of legitimate manufacturers, who had to pay regular wages. There were 10 labour members in the Corporation who had promised on their election to see that those matters would be rectified.”

Those 10 Catholic labour members dare not seriously criticise anything done by a religious institution. Indeed one finds that Catholic labour members in Parliament and in corporations seem to be the least competent to effect any substantial reform in connection with the interference of religion in the secular affairs of life in Ireland. The lecturer went on to say:-

“The Corporation should withdraw the 5s. per week per boy which was now paid to the Artane institution, unless a guarantee was given to sell goods only at trade prices. He suggested that the boys should be apprenticed to local tradesmen, who were, in many cases, much in want of apprentices.”

In 1900 the Dublin Christian Brothers had 882 vagrant boys under their charge at Artane and Carriglea, and they received from the State £16,372, 16s. 11d. for their maintenance, or an average of about £20 per boy per annum. It stands to reason that if those boys were distributed as apprentices to local tradesmen, it would be much better for the community, better for the boys, and better for the tradesmen, than to have them herded up in the barracks of Artane, working for the benefit of a religious order.

The Christian Brothers have establishments in no less than 57 Irish cities and towns, in which they assert that they teach 28,980 pupils. They own four industrial schools, receiving a total grant of £22,626 per annum. They draw large capitation result fees under the Intermediate Education Act. They receive numerous and substantial legacies, and appear to be growing rapidly rich. We may learn from the sermons of Dr. Sheehan and Father Keane that the strongest points in their educational system are the statues, altars, and prayers at any hour; and they produce a class of adult Irishman who remains a profitable and docile subject of the sacerdotal aristocracy to the end of his life. Last, and worst of all, they deprive the lay Catholic community of a vast amount of employment and emolument.

Before entering upon a consideration of the nuns of Dublin, let us travel through the province of Leinster and study the influence of the priests upon the people.

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