MAYNOOTH AND THE NEW IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 4 March 1920, Page 19

MAYNOOTH AND THE NEW IRELAND

THE IRISH MISSION TO CHINA. (By Eamon Duffy, in the New York Freeman.) The spirit kindled at Maynooth by O’Growney did not die there while it spread around the island. It had the qualities of mercy, for it blessed the institution that gave it birth and gave it to Ireland, and it blessed the country .that received it. I have said that the first and greatest achievement of O’Growney was that he turned the best brains of the country back upon its past history. Whatever be the success of the propaganda for the revival of the language as a spoken tongue, this . first achievement has produced a movement whose fruits will remain. It has brought into being a new Ireland. . In no corner of the island has the flame of this new spirit raised by O’Growney burned more brightly and more steadily than in his Alma Mater! It could not be otherwise when we reflect that it was guarded and nourished there by the cream of the young manhood of Ireland. They took up the initiative of O’Growney enthusiastically. New classes were formed for the study of the language, new associations to keep the flame burning, new methods in Irish History studies. They, too, had turned their minds back on the glories of ancient Ireland. In doing so they could not but be struck in a special manner by the golden period of Irish history when she sent her, missionaries for the space of three centuries and more in a continuous stream over Great Britain and the Continent of Europe. A review for the encouragement of these studies and for the diffusion of their fruits was started within the college by the students themselves, and it is suggestive that it is named in honor of Ireland’s two greatest missionaries and scholars— SS. Columbcille and Columbanusthe two Calumbas. The Cohimbnn lieview is the worthy organ of this student spirit at Maynooth, and thoroughly representative of the new movement.

The young men who were students from 1895 to 1910 are now mature men, zealous priests, on the mission, or professors in their Alma Mater and other colleges. From this body has the idea of the Maynooth Mission to China come. Students of the past, they could not forget or banish the present and future. These studies were not those of the recluse merely; they resolved to do something that would make the Ireland of the past live again; and, being priests, their choice lay but in one direction. So has the Maynooth Mission been born. Maynooth is a great institution; a professorship there is an honorable position and obtained only after rigorous and competitive examinations. Ireland is now an interesting country. It holds many allurements for the young man of education, for the next score years are bound to be one of the most interesting and fascinating periods in Irish history. It is to be the climax of centuries of agitation and national striving. But down steps one of the most brilliant of Maynooth s professors from his chair in the .Teat institu tion, turns his back on all these legitimate" allurements, and calls for recruits for a mission to China. Immediately he is joined by eight others like himself They make an appeal for financial help to the people of Ireland, and, m the first tune months, Ireland, poor impoverished, martial-lawed Ireland, responds bv a contri - tion of over £30,000—$130,000.001!! And vet we are to teet^nd^rVl 118 i nati T is not fittcd to stand on her own feet and to take her place among the nations of the earth in doing her own work and fulfilling her own special mis sion for the benefit of all. p ai 11118 • This ideal of Ireland’s mission as a nation was in M,n minds of the men who created the Irish Revival Indeed 0 “tVn 1 their idea,s of Irish nationality on Ireland s past history as a distinct - nation, they could have formed no other concept of her future mission', if she ere to remain the same nation and faithful to her past F McNeil, lately released from prison, may be taken as fair and distinguished representative of the school of Irish thought and striving from which the Irish Revival r Jnsjl He was one of the pioneers of ~ Rev ! va J sprang. founder of the Irish Volunteers the movement, later the the Gaelic League. ' V ° lm,tCerS ' antl now president of

But he had, as a young man still in his teens, already turned his mind to the study of Ireland’s past : history, her language and her literature, several years before the Gaelic League was founded. In the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for December, 1891, he had an article on the subject, “Why and How the Irish Language Is To Be Preserved,” in which occurs the following passage: “The destiny of Ireland in the future, as in the past, seems to be that of a teaching nation. As the overflow of population carried other races over the globe, so the overflow of national mental and moral advance has sent, and we believe will again; send, a stream of- teachers and preachers from Ireland across the seas. But to ensure that result among many desirable results, it will clearly be necessary to preserve the national character from-' any considerable fusion of admixture with the character of another less mentally active, less self-sacrificing, and less morally zealous race.” The Dublin header, after quoting this passage, remarks that in the light of the Maynooth Mission it reads to-day like a prophecy. Be it noted that it was written by a young man just out of his teens, and a month or two after the death of Parnell when the country was seething with controversy between two political factions. Be it noted also that to ensure Ireland’s moral and spiritual mission in the future this young man claimed it to be absolutely essential that she be not “fused” with another nation, that the “national character must be preserved distinct,” and that the only secure means to ensure this result is to turn on the past and make it live again in the organic development of the future. Such was the ideal of the Irish Revival and it will be seen at once that it was absolutely irreconcilable with the ideal of Ireland’s future set out week by week by T. P. O’Connor in Reynolds’s Newspaper. His ideal was that a future Ireland would send Socialists to the British Parliament to help setting up there “in fusion” with the “British Democracy,” the ideal state which would be realised in Germany by Bebel and in France by Jaurez. Such was the forecast of T. P. in Reynolds' s after returning from a convention in Belfast —at a time when Bebel and Jaurez were the most rapidly anti-Christian exponents of Continental Socialism. The two ideals here noted were mutually exclusive; they begot two tendencies, as we shall see, in Irish politics, which were bound, sooner or later, to come to grips for the possession of Ireland’s soul. It is no longer doubtful which is going to have it. The Dublin header is not the official organ of any league or association connected with the Revival, but it may be said to be the best known and most widely circulated of all the papers that work for an Irish Ireland. It is a secular, not a religious, paper, and its editor is a layman. But it candidly recognises the Maynooth Mission both as an outgrowth of the Irish Ireland movement and as a great impetus to its success. It has accordingly given great prominence to the Mission in its columns. The following is an interesting item from a recent issue :

“The proposition that the Maynooth Mission to China is a part of the Irish Ireland movement may seem at the first mention of it a somewhat far-fetched one, but a convincing case can be made out for it all the same. Of nine priests connected with it at present five are fluent Irish speakers, and the others have at least a book knowledge of Irish. Since the beginning of the year some of them have made their appeals in Irish in Irish-speaking districts; two of the priests have been professors of Irish in their diocesan colleges. From a national viewpoint the Mission helps to place Ireland before the world. It has already done so in Rome and in America, where the Bishops take a considerable interest in it. The Director of the Propaganda of the Faith in America writes: ‘ Cardinal O’Connell looks with the greatest favor on this new movement of Irish priests, for we are convinced that the spirit of St. Patrick still lives in his sons.’ ” In another passage the header wrote “It is at least significant that the new movement should spring up in Maynooth, where the Irish Revival bas been so strong and so pure since the days of O’Growney, and it is significant too that the priests connected with the movement have prominent in the Gaelic Revival either on its intellectual, athletic, or industrial side both within Maynooth and outside it.”

: But a more authoritative statement of. the ; nature of the Maynooth Mission, and of the spirit from - which it has sprung, can bo quoted from one of the young priests who has already volunteered for service in its ranks. At the annual national pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick %n July 29 of last year two sermons were preached, one in Irish and one in English. The English sermon was delivered by Rev. E. J. McCarthy, A.M., 8.D., of the Maynooth Mission to China. ■ “Ireland has always been a religious nation, a Christ like nation,” said he; “she has had a religious and intellectual culture to impart. Europe is her debtor at one period America, Africa, Australia at another; and let us pray that before another century one other great nation in the East will owe its religion, its culture, and its civilisation to Ireland.” Dealing with Ireland’s peculiar mission in the world as a special nation, Father McCarthy had this to say: “The highest expression of nationhood is the nation’s ability to do a nation’s work. That work is both spiritual and material. Tho spiritual and intellectual life of Ireland is fresh and strong and growing in strength. Ireland to-day is as capable of doing the spiritual and religious work of a nation as ever she was, and every nation should aim at.doing at least what it can do. More than that, the spiritual work of Ireland seems to bo pre-eminently her national work. We look back with pride to one period of our country’s history— the Period when she stood peerlessa nation with a forceful culture that impressed itself on the surrounding nations with which she came into contact. Ireland was known to tho world as the Island of Saints and Scholars; and that name, mind you, was not given her by her own people, but by the strangers who flocked to her shores to bring away with them from her monasteries and schools the religious and intellectual culture she had to impart. For centuries the last remnants of the civilisation of Christian Europe was preserved only in the monasteries of Ireland.” Speaking in particular of the Mission to China, as it will be a new manifestation of Ireland’s mission and special place among the nations of the earth, Father McCarthy said: “That Ireland’s mission is not ended is, I think, clearly proved by the unexpected revival of the old ’ missionary spirit in our day. Asia has been the only continent to which so far the influence of Ireland has not penetrated. But this century will, let us hope, see that, too, accomplished. The Irish Church is, as you know’ at the present time preparing to send a national Mission to the Far East. It will be the first time in history that an organised national mission is sent from Ireland to convert the heathcni. In former times missionaries went as individual preachers, and we know what success attended their efforts. Surely there are bright hopes for the movement that is at present being organised, a movement that has the unanimous support of the Bishops of Ireland, and which the priests and people through the country have already helped with magnificent generosity. On October 29, just nine months ago to-day, the first appeal was made on behalf of the new movement; you yourselves are the judges of the extraordinary success with which God has blessed it since. Tho Irish people never took the view that the world’s work must come before that of Christ, and please God never will. They are not the people to tell Almighty God to wait while" Mammon rules the world. How characteristic of the spirituallyminded people that, while other nations are struggling for commerce, conquest, and world-power, Ireland flunks of God and conquests for Him, and for His kingdom that is not of this world.”