OLIVER PLUNKET’S BEATIFICATION

New Zealand Tablet, 30 May 1918, Page 27

OLIVER PLUNKET’S BEATIFICATION

Following is the English translation of the address read by Mgr. O’Riordan, Rector of the Irish College, Rome, to the Pope on the occasion of the reading of the Decree for the Beatification of Oliver Plunket : Most Holy Father, —Through the Decree which your Holiness publishes to-day, you enable Ireland to pay Oliver Plunket a debt which she has owed him for nearly two centuries and a half. In July, 1681, he was condemned to death in London, and was consigned to a grave of legal dishonor. But God's ways are not man’s ways. Your Decree of to-day contradicts that condemnation, and solemnly assigns to him that honor in which Ireland has always held him, and which historians, non-Catholic as well as Catholic, have written of him. The way of religious and civil right has progressed in Ireland since those days when Oliver Plunket left' his professor’s chair at Propaganda, and was sent from Rome to rule over that See of which SI. Patrick was (lie first Bishop. lie had to take possession of his See by stealth, and had to govern it in secret. But those laws are (.lead which obstructed in Ireland the exercise of the spiritual rights which the Vicar of Christ holds, not. from man, but from God, everywhere through all, the kingdom erf God on earth. The fidelity of the" Irish people to Catholic principle, and their insistence on the religious and civil rights which it includes, have made those laws disappear one by one. Their resistance left some of them still-borff, some ineffective ; others they had cancelled from the Statute Book, thus securing religious and civil liberty for their brethren in Great Britain as well as for themselves. The struggle lasted from the days of Plunket till within the memory ol some still living, and it involved many sacrifices. It cost the life ol many like Plunket : for Ireland itself it meant the martyrdom of a nation. But “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice and all things else shall be added unto you” must have a very real meaning, for they are the words of eternal truth. The people of Ireland found themselves at that parting of the ways set forth by St. Peter “ You must obey God rather than man.” They chose the former, and the choice has cost them dearly. But they never lost hope, for they never lost faith. Divine Providence provides for nations as well as for individuals, for the one as well as the other must rest on the Divine Law or it quivers on a quagmire. Hence, in those days when the storm was fiercest and the clouds were thickest their faith shone through, and gave them a glimpse of the calm and sunshine, which they had always hoped should come at last. By your solemn act ol to-day. Holy Father, you take Oliver Plunket from the grave and you place him on the altar. For this gracious act, I come to offer you the thanks ol the Irish Episcopate the living representatives of an hierarchical chain unbroken for fifteen centuries, of which Plunket is one of the golden links of the clergy and laity of Ireland, as pure in faith and as strong in hope as were those of Plunket’s day, and

to whom he was the forma facta (/rc(/is c,r ti/inna. And 1 present to you (he profound thanks of my own dear and venerable College, where Oliver Plunket. cultivated the science of Catholic teaching and the fortitude to die for it.