ENGLAND

New Zealand Tablet, 11 January 1917, Page 47

ENGLAND

.•. ■ ;a; ; ____ < ’ - THE DOMINICAN CENTENARY. ' This country lias good reason to join in the celebrations . which’ are taking place throughout the , Catholic world in commemoration of the seventh centenary of the foundation of-the Order of the Preaching Friars (says the Liverpool Catholic Times). The sons of St. Dominic were •at work in England at an early date and down to "the time of the so-called Reformation were energetic promoters of progress in . many .directions. Some of them were men of light and leading in learning and intellectual pursuits. The Order had a famous house at Oxford, and Blackfriars Bridge ; is to-day a reminder of their great London friary. .There were fifty-eight such friaries in England at the dissolution of the monasteries, and the Preaching Friars largely helped to mould the opinions as well as'the religious belief and practices of the people. To the Dominicans be--longs the honor of having given to the Church that prince of theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas, three Popes, over sixty Cardinals, more than 150 archbishops, and upwards of 800 bishops. The Dominicans have at all times earned a high : reputation ' for pulpit -oratory. Pere Lacordaire, whose eloquence at the Cathedral of : Notre Dame in Paris did so much to revive the faith in France at a time when unbelief had ,become -fashion-; able in the-intellectual circles of /Paris, was proud to wear the robes of a Friar-Preacher. In Ireland, as in England, the Dominicans did much to preserve the faith in the penal days. Forty-three Dominican convents were destroyed there during the persecutions. When, in the Cromwellian period, all the Catholic ecclesiastics were ordered to depart from the kingdom within twenty; days, and were warned that if they returned they would be hanged, drawn,' and quartered. Preaching Friars defied the ukase. Hiding in the bogs, wandering on the mountains, or concealing themselves in huts and cellars, they consoled their flocks and strengthened. them with the Holy Sacraments: They used many disguises. Father Thomas Fitzgerald, D.P., put on the dress of a peasant and served the Catholics of Cork during the whole period of Cromwell’s usurpation. . Sometimes the priest-catchers were so active that flight was the only means by which the risk, not- only .of the loss of life, but also of revealing the whereabouts of neighbors who were in peril could, be avoided. Father Kirwan, a Galway Dominican, having been summoned to give evidence against some of his friends, whereby they would have been deprived of their property, went into voluntary exile and died abroad. The Dominicans can point to a glorious record of the Order in Ireland, and to-day thousands of Catholics in that country are grateful for the fruits of their preaching and ministrations.