Whenever two or three priests gather stories are often told of other priests. In the diocese of Killala many stories are told of Canon Michael James Kilgallon, a native of Ballina and for over 40 years parish priest of Kilmore Erris.
As a chaplain in the First World War he had seen many horrific things. Afterwards he regarded Irish clerical life, especially its pomposities, with ironic detachment and wry amusement. He was wont to keep a running commentary, from his perch at clerical conferences and retreats – somewhat akin to the late Terry Wogan in the Eurovision Song Contest.
On one memorable occasion he was attending a priests’ retreat in the college. The lecturer swanned into the room, the soutane wings flapping, and launched into an abstruse treatise on the priesthood. As he began Canon Andrew Dodd was putting batteries into his hearing aid – to be interrupted by an audible whisper from Kilgallon, ‘Don’t waste your batteries, Andy, he’s no good’.
That’s my way of saying you can switch off now. I am merely the relief band for the main act – Bishop Fleming and Fr. Brendan – who follow.
As we mark a substantial contribution to the history of the diocese of Killala, it is relevant to ask the question, ‘Why study history?’
Reflecting on this question brought me back several years to when I taught history in the Convent in Belmullet. Many students looked on history as a worthless endeavour, unconnected with how they were spending or hoped to spend their lives.
In their philistinism they were encouraged by some teachers, oblivious of other subjects, who reckoned history was an unnecessary accessory in preparing students for employment. The new practical emphasis was on new subjects like economics, woodwork and metal work. One woodwork teacher made it his special mission to disparage history.
I got to recognise the pattern. It was usually in second year in November. A hand would go up at the back of the class to ask a question – what use is history?
At this juncture of the term I would usually be trying to evoke for the students the Renaissance splendour of a sun-soaked Florence in a dilapidated pre-fab on the edge of the Atlantic on a wet and windy day.
When this happened first I was innocent enough to construct a somewhat abstract answer on the value of history that gloriously failed to engage the second year mind. When you are explaining, you’re losing.
As the years went on I contented myself with the rather glib answer that history was useless which is why we should try to enjoy it.
Yes, history can be enjoyable, can be fun. For in its fullness, in the meeting of its political, social and religious dimensions, it is the evocation, not of a list of dreary dates and battles but the story of how people have lived and loved, succeeded and failed, cried and celebrated over the centuries.
Not only enjoyable but useful. The study of history is intertwined with our identity as individuals and communities. The American novelist, Carson McCullers, once wrote that to know who you are you must have a place to come from. That arresting phrase captures the importance of identity. Not only must you have a place to come from, you must know that place. This is why the study of history is important for it can give you a sense of place and tradition, in the memorable adjective that William Butler Yeats used of his friend, John Millington Synge a ‘rooted’ person. The study of history can enable you to enter imaginatively into other cultures and to honour and critique your own. It can help acclimatise you to the process of change.
Yes – the process of change is especially relevant in Irish Catholicism in its present condition. Among the liberal arts history is the one most concerned with understanding change. Historians seek not only to explain historical causality. They also try to account for the endurance of traditions, understand the complex interplay between continuity and change and explain the origins, evolution and decline of institutions and ideas. In the study of history we confront not only human achievement but its failure, cruelty and barbarity. All human life is there. History therefore can help us understand the human condition and deal with moral questions and problems.
Christianity in Ireland has a long history. Christians have over the centuries pitched camp in every settlement in our society. Given its pervasiveness it is still partly provided with a study of its history. I think it was the brilliant Dominican historian, Hugh Fenning, who said that an adequate understanding of Irish Catholicism can’t prosper until there are comprehensive diocesan and parish histories.
Tonight we celebrate a substantial contribution to the jig-saw as Brendan’s book is launched.
But not only is it a substantial contribution to the jig-saw of Irish Catholicism, this book honours priests who are not of or served in the diocese. With its 880 pages there is a substantial record of pastoral ministry. It is a story that opens the centuries, from the crucifixion on cross slabs on Iniskea and Duvillaun islands to the proud cathedral by the Moy, it is the story of the arrival of St Brendan on Inisglora to the monks of Holy Hill in Skreen. It is the story of men who celebrated the Eucharist from Beltra to Ballycroy, from Aughris to Aughadoon. It is the story too of priests from the diocese who served on every continent of the world. It is the story of men often forgotten, the kind of men that the Welsh Anglican poet, R S Thomas wrote about in ‘The Country Clergy’:
I see them working in old rectories
By the sun’s light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men’s hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten.
This book in remembering them, honours them. It is the story of men whose lives were intertwined with the community. It is the story of men who preached the Good News. It is the story of men who bound up hearts that were broken. It is the story of men who celebrated the Eucharist, Sunday after Sunday, in the past on Mass-rocks and roofless chapels. It is the story of men who baptised and forgave in the name of Christ. It is the story of men who at times of death gave, in the words of the poet Thomas Kinsella, ‘ecclesiastical discipline to shapeless sorrow’. It is the story of men who fought valiantly for the human rights of their people. It is the story of men who were gentle with people harried by pain, failure and scruples. The novelist, Francis Start, beautifully describes such a priest in the novel, Redemption: ‘He had a very great gentleness and those who needed gentleness came to him. Many of them did not know why he came to them but it was in the first place because of this gentleness that was a rare thing and which they found nowhere else’.
Indeed. And sometimes they were asked the strangest things. Bishop McDonnell told me that shortly after he was ordained a man came to his house in Ballycastle and asked to see the new priest. Bishop McDonnell assumed he was looking for the first blessing of a newly-ordained priest but no. The man told Tommy McDonnell he was harassed by his neighbour and taking a crumbled envelope from his jacket announced ‘There are five people here I want you to curse’.
Of course the priests here were not perfect. They had their oddities and their addictions, their phobias and their fantasies, their fragilities and their failures, their sadness and their sins. All human life has its light, shade and darkness.
A fitting epitaph is the poem by the Norwegian poet, Knut Odegard:
Uncle Knut was a priest.
He was a practical man, but Latin was Greek to him.
He died after his retirement.
He stood and dug the site for his new house when his heart gave way.
He was more an electrician than a preacher.
He began all his speeches by saying
‘I’m not one for long speeches’, and he was right about that.
He did not really have much to teach his parishioners.
They had their own troubles with their births, with their love and death.
And he did not have words for such things.
But he had learnt how to repair electric wires
And he visited people in their homes.
And mended short circuits and defective fuse boxes.
He screwed lamps into place.
And wherever he had been, there was light.
May I end by paying tribute to Brendan. He is a one-man publishing industry and a columnist in the Western People for over thirty years. Since 1995 he has published 15 books. He presents a programme on Mid-West Radio and is a leader of the Association of Catholic Priests. All this and also parish priest of Moygownagh. He has given unremitting commitment and stamina to this project. It is a prodigious feat of research and he has unearthed many great stories.
I wonder where he gets time for it all. He reminds me of a cartoon I saw many years ago in The Observer when Henry Kissinger as American Secretary of State travelled the world engaged in shuttle diplomacy. How could he remain fresh and engaged one day in London, the next day in Moscow and then to Jerusalem? The cartoon depicted a frazzled and tired Kissinger entering a hotel bedroom while out from the wardrobe stepped a totally refreshed Kissinger, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
I began with a story. I’ll end with one. In 2004 Mayo gifted the success-starved players of Kerry with the All-Ireland. The day after Tony Rea was celebrating Mass in Árus Deirbhile, a senior citizens home in Belmullet. A woman somewhat advanced in senility, confused by the raised chalice and the Sam Maguire, shouted out: ‘Fair play to you Canon Rea, over the bar.’
Fair play to you, Brendan. Over the bar.