Priests born in Ireland have been missionaries to the world.
It was the diaspora of Irish families that brought large bodies of Catholics to various nations and thus, we were reared in the Faith.
The great Catholic historian Hilarie Belloc writes:
"In our own time all that has largely changed. The chief agent of the change has been the Irish people dispersed by famine. They brought a large Catholic body into England, Australia, Canada and America. There has also been more recently a large immigration into the Unites States from other districts of Catholic culture - Poles, South Germans, Italians. There has been to some extent in the United States, but probably with much more effect in Britain, a movement of conversion. This movement has not largely affected numbers, but it has had a profound moral effect, because it has touched so many leaders of thought, so many general writers, and latterly, so many historians."
Sadly now almost gone. There is little, if anything, resplendent about the Church in Ireland today.
ReplyDeleteI am Irish. But by the grace of God our stubborn ancestors secured us in our Christian heritage.
ReplyDeleteThere is great hope for Ireland! Ups and downs. It has even been re-established on critical grounds the historicity of St. Patrick. The "Anti-clerical" religious quarrel which long paralyzed Italy, still heavily handicaps the French and ran through all Catholic Europe with violence , etc. has at long last arrived in Ireland. This, too, shalt pass. Btw, great pic! Ah, that priests might again wear the biretta on church grounds!
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