DUBLIN CATHEDRALS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 August 1916, Page 39

DUBLIN CATHEDRALS

Everyone who has read Irish ecclesiastical history (says a correspondent of the Catholic Times) knows that St. Patrick’s Cathedral was erected in 1190 by Archbishop Cornyn, and that the tower was erected in the following century by Archbishop Minot, both of whom were in communion with the See of Rome. Regarding Christ Church, we know that it was founded by Donatus, a Danish Archbishop of Dublin, in 1038, who was in communion with the Catholic Church, and was completed in the following century by St. Laurence O’Toole, also Archbishop of Dublin. People often ask why Catholics did not make a fight to keep those cathedrals. Keep those cathedrals, indeed, against British bayonets at a period when the disembowelling of Catholics was the order of the day ! A glance at the annals of Dublin will give some idea of what Catholics had to suffer in those dreadful days. In 1563 a tax was levied on all householders who absented themselves from the Protestant church,. In 1623 there was another proclamation requiring' all Catholic clergymen to quit the kingdom within forty days. There was another in 1678 to the same effect, and one in 1630 confiscating fifteen Catholic churches. In 1508 we read of George Browne, the first Protestant Bishop of Dublin, taking the staff of St. Patrick, together with a pile of invaluable manuscripts from Christ Church, and having them publicly burned, on the principle, I presume, of ‘ dead men tell no tales.’ In 1743 another proclamation was issued offering £IOO for the discovery of any person harboring a Catholic priest or bishop, and annuities_.were offered to any priest or bishop who would apostatise.

In the face of those diabolical persecutions it is simply miraculous how Catholics were able to remain faithful to God. Lecky, who certainly held no brief for the Catholic Church, says : ‘ The Catholics clung to their old faith, with a constancy that never has been surpassed, during generations of galling persecutions at a time when every earthly motive urged them to abandon it.’