A ‘Dawn Breaking’ in Ireland

August 28, 2024

By Jim Towey

There are some things about summer that Labor Day can’t erase, like my memories from a recent trip to Ireland. My grandfather was born in County Roscommon and my dad was proudly all-Irish.  The people of Ireland I’ve met on my several visits there feel like my own tribe. My sense of humor connects with theirs (as does my sense of impending doom!).

And where else can you order an entrée of “turkey and ham with stuffing and mashed potatoes” and have as the side dishes that come with the meal, a platter of “chips” (french fries) and a potato and cheese casserole? In my modified Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, potatoes have always been just below self-actualization.

Childhood memories of Irish priests

You would think that I would consider myself French. My mom raised me and my siblings and was 100% French.  But other than preferring a glass of Bordeaux to a pint of Guinness, my identity reflects my Irish roots. This in part owes to growing up around Irish-born priests who were regularly invited into our home in Jacksonville, Florida by my mom. By the time I was in 8th grade, fully two-thirds of the priests of the Diocese of Saint Augustine were Irish missionaries who had begun arriving a century earlier. 

Nearly two million Irish emigrated to America during the mid-to-late 1800’s as successive famines plagued Ireland. Not long thereafter, more than 4,000 Irish-born priests were serving in the United States. Three out of five priests in the Archdiocese of New York were from Ireland, and by 1950, four out of five priests of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles were Irish born. After World War II, and because of the relationship between the seminaries of Ireland and new bishops in the state of Florida, Jacksonville and Miami saw a massive influx of Irish clergy.

I cannot recall a single priest during the time of my youth who wasn’t Irish. I heard an Irish brogue from the pulpit every Sunday. The surnames of the priests – Cloonan, Cody, Gordon, McMahon, Jordan, Danaher, Regan, Killoran, Logan – tell the story. They all were positive influences in my life and not one crossed a boundary or behaved inappropriately with me.

Abuse of trust

But unfortunately, a significant number of Irish priests abused the trust of their parishioners and preyed upon vulnerable kids living in single-parent homes like mine. Nowhere was this disgrace more apparent than in Ireland itself. Predators like Brendan Smyth, a priest of the Norbertine religious order, who had untold scores of victims and later died in prison only one month into his sentence, became the disgraced face of the Church in Ireland. So, too, did the nuns who ran the Magdalene Laundries throughout the country. The shame of what took place in these reformatories for young “fallen” women was exposed in major motion pictures like “The Magdalene Sisters” (2002) and “Philomena” (2013). What made the pain of these disclosures all the greater was the cover-up at the time by some Catholic leaders.

This deep sense of betrayal meant the pendulum shifted from a virtual intertwining of church-state interests in Ireland to a governmental hostility toward the Catholic Church and the values it propagated. The number of citizens who practice their faith has plummeted. The Irish seminary, which at one time enrolled as many as 500 seminarians, has just 20 men in formation for the country’s 27 dioceses.

A new dawn

Fortunately, light is beginning to dawn in the land of Saint Patrick, and it comes from the most improbable of places. A new lay movement, headed by a woman, Kathy Clarke, seeks to revitalize the Catholic Church and restore trust in its leadership. Her organization, the Apostolate of the Returning King (ARK), is headquartered in County Cavan on the same grounds where Brendan Smyth is buried. ARK purchased the property from the Norbertines when they fled Ireland. 

Clarke believes Ireland and the Catholic Church must forever remember Smyth’s victims and honor them through a renewal of authentic spirituality rooted in the mutual respect of the clergy and laity. ARK is constructing an International Center for Human and Spiritual Formation that will include state-of-the-art media facilities to allow it to expand its already-successful international ministry that today forms catechists and prepares lay leaders for service. She has the support of bishops and cardinals in Ireland, the U.S., and elsewhere.

I attended the ceremony for the demolition of Kilnacrott Abbey and construction of the new ARK building.  It was more of a “dawn breaking” than a groundbreaking. While the wounds of the Catholic faithful continue to heal, the tears that fell these past decades have watered the fertile grounds that made Ireland the land of missionaries; green shoots are sprouting again.

Ireland can’t ignore its Catholic identity and rich heritage any more than I can.  Irish eyes are made for smiling.

(The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)