Local history: Archbishop John MacHale and the Famine time
By Tom Gillespie
Part 2
THE souvenir programme printed by The Connaught Telegraph to mark the official opening of MacHale Park on Sunday, June 15, 1952, contained many articles about Castlebar in that period, including a lengthy piece on Archbishop John MacHale, ‘The Lion of the Fold of Judah’, condensed from an article in ‘The Cross’ by J.J. Collins, Castlebar.
He wrote about the Archbishop, who received his early education in Castlebar: The story to this illustrious Prelate is so interwoven with the memorable happenings, religious and political, of the time, that to write about him is to write about almost all of the historic events of the 19th century.
In times past the Protestant landlords of the west supported the Protestant interest, and in many cases they found their Catholic tenants, through fear of extermination and eviction, ready to lend them a helping hand; but a new order of things had risen, and the people were now awakened to the sense of their degradation.
Side by side with Daniel O’Connell were enlisted the abilities of John MacHale. He denounced in unmeasured terms the severity of the Penal code, which had affixed the stamp of inferiority on their brow.
Dr. Trench, the Protestant Archbishop of Tuam, became alarmed at the turn of events and made a visit to Killala, where, in an ill-tempered address, he denounced ‘the damnable doctrines of the Catholic Church’. Dr. MacHale replied in a letter which was scathingly severe.
There was learning and argument in plenty; impatience at Trench’s want for clarity, indignation at his intolerance, disgust at his insolent bigotry, an admonition to remember the character of the reformers.
Despite his manifold duties and activities on behalf of his downtrodden countrymen, he published in 1828 that monumental work ‘The Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church’.
The indefatigable young Prelate next set about providing a cathedral worthy of his diocese, and it stands by the Moy today, a monument to his memory.
On Dr. MacHale's return from Rome in 1931, where, at the special request of the Holy Father, he preached a series of sermons to the English colony, he was faced with a sad picture.
There was terrible distress in the diocese; the potato crop had partially failed; the oats were seized for county cess and tithes for the upkeep of the Protestant clergy, while the rent had to be paid in full to the rapacious landlords even though the heavens might fall.
People died of starvation and the resultant cholera, that dreaded complement of famine, filled many graves.
Dr. MacHale appealed in vain to the British Premier, Lord Grey. The remedy was a Coercion Act. Dr. MacHale was not disheartened; he appealed for help elsewhere, and his efforts were not unrewarded for he received from unexpected sources money to stem the inroads of disease produced by the lack of food.
When, on the death of Dr. Kelly, Archbishop of Tuam, in 1834, Dr. MacHale’s name was sent forward, with those of Dean Burke and Archdeacon Nolan, the British government at once sent an agent to the Vatican to plead with the Pope not to appoint John MacHale, ‘anyone but the agitating Bishop of Killala’.
Every artifice failed. Pope Gregory XVI knew Dr. MacHale, and he was appointed.
Catholic Ireland rejoiced, the joyful news spread like wildfire from one end of the nation to the other. The uncompromising champion of Faith and Fatherland was Metropolitan of the west.
His fame was more than nationwide, it was international, and, while Killala mourned its loss, the soul of Ireland was in a state of ecstatic jubilation.
The day of his transition to Tuam, as he passed through Castlebar and the many villages and towns en route, was an epoch-making one in the history of the country.
In reply to the toast of his health at the banquet in Tuam, he gloried in having stood between the Tyrawley peasant and his oppressors.
“I may now make a sincere profession of faith,” he said. “I must avow that, if my interference in protecting the poor, and stating the heavy stroke that used to fall on them, is a crime - it is a crime I freely confess - but without contrition.”
From the day he entered Tuam his opposition to tyranny and misrule was continued with renewed vigour. The so-called system of ‘national’ education, the rent-racking landlords, the proselytisers and the tithe-protectors found him an opponent who would never yield to threats of sophistry.
He defeated the ‘national’ school system by introducing Franciscan Brothers to teach in the schools; in this he had dual objects. These good and holy men would, by work and example, be in a position to combat the Nangles and their subtler methods of trying to induce the famished and hungry peasants to sell their souls for ‘soup and hairy bacon’.
He gave the weight of his great name and influence to Lucas, George Henry Moore, Gavan Duffy, Maguire and Grey in their efforts to have legislation passed for fixity of tenure, fair rents and free sale.
When the Pope restored the Catholic hierarchy in England, and Dr. Wiseman became Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, a storm of bigotry broke over England and the government of the day passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. This Act - it has not yet been repealed - made it penal for any ecclesiastic to assume titles conferred by a foreign power.
In a public letter, Dr. MacHale defied both the Act and its author, by signing himself ‘John, Archbishop of Tuam’. He invited prosecution by this deed, but the challenge was never taken up.