A TIME FOR HEROES AND MARTYRS
Dear Friends of the Society in Ireland,
Many of you already know that I was born in
Spain, a country which shares with Ireland not only the ancient
nobility of a Catholic soul, but also a common history of defence of
the Faith. Most important of all, both nations share the most
precious of all ornaments: their countless martyrs.
The friendship between the two countries is
celebrated in the memory of individual heroes like the celebrated
O'Flaherty, jolly and loyal companion of Columbus in the discovery
of the Americas; by men of the caliber of generals O'Donnell,
O'Shea, O'Reilly, and O'Donohue, and by a long list of holy and
learned clergymen .
The common links created by the individuals were
cemented as well by lasting institutions of historical significance.
From 1590, date of the foundation of the first Irish college at
Alcala by a descendant of the Catholic MacDonnells of Antrim, a
phalanx of priests and many bishops were formed in the Irish
colleges of Salamanca, Seville, Alcala, Santiago de Compostela, and
Madrid; some of them became martyrs in their homeland, like Father
Theobald Stapleton, who brought to Ireland the first catechism in
Irish printed in Roman type, and was stabbed while celebrating the
Holy Sacrifice; or Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, formed and
ordained in Spain, who died a martyr in Limerick during the siege by
Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, in 1651. Others remained in Spain to
prepare the young generations of missionary priests, like Dr.
Dominic Lynch, who became the rector of the University of Salamanca.
The majority of those young Irishmen arrived to the Iberian colleges
with no other possession than their generous souls; in order to help
the future priests and their apostolate in the Isle of the Saints,
the fishermen at Seville obtained an indult from Pope Paul V
permitting them to fish on Sundays, in order that they might give
the profits for the support of the Irish Catholic cause. For the
same purpose, the wine merchants granted a percentage on every cask
of wine they sold. Soldiers in the Irish Brigade of the Spanish
service gave a portion of their pay. With such aid the colleges
continued to exist and were able to send every year at least twenty
priests to the Irish mission, along three centuries of brotherly
collaboration.
This symbiotic exchange of the spiritual and the
material reached a glorious height during the Spanish Crusade of
liberation, 1936-1939. Although the Irish Free State advocated an
official policy of non-intervention in the League of Nations, seven
hundred Irishmen left for Spain in the summer of 1936, and hundreds
followed them to fight against Communism and to defend the Catholic
Church, or –as their leader Eoin O'Duffy put it- "to support the
ramparts of Christendom." Dozens of Irish volunteers came from New
York to join their compatriots, after hearing Cardinal Hayes
denouncing from St. Patrick's pulpit "the diabolical enemies of God
and of His Church." The Irish Bishop of Gibraltar, Dr. Richard
Fitzgerald, sent his few young Catholic Action Irishmen and along
with them his "very own heart, since we are talking about the future
of the Religion of Good and Order, not only for Spain but for the
entire world." All doubts were crushed by Cardinal Mac Rory, who
preached a mission in Drogheda explaining that "what is now at stake
is whether Spain will be, as it has always been until today, a
Catholic nation, or a Bolshevik land hostile to God and the True
Faith." Monsignor Byrne, Dean of Waterford, paced the piers for days
hearing confessions and giving blessed rosaries to the volunteers
leaving to war. St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin sent a full pipe
band to encourage the soldiers. Fathers Cahill and Mulrean
accompanied the first contingents as chaplains. Ten thousand wanted
to go, only one thousand could be taken in small ships. In Caceres,
already liberated by the National army of Franco, the bishop made it
his duty to visit every Friday the Irish soldiers –mostly young lads
from a rural background- who were making their period of
instruction, and the governor of the province ordered the Irish flag
to fly over every government building for an entire month. At the
monastery of Santo Domingo, the Irish brigade attended a pontifical
mass, and at the end of the ceremony, while the organ played the
Irish National Anthem, a bronze plaque was revealed: "In honour of
God, and in honour of Ireland, the XV Brigade of Irishmen prayed in
this church while serving the Cause of the Faith, fighting along
their Spanish brothers." Alas, the plaque will be removed in the
immediate future, courtesy of the new laws of the socialist
government of Zapatero. But the memory of the sacrifice will not be
erased. John McSweeney was the first to be immolated, along with his
childhood friend Horan, both from the same street in Tralee; they
were followed by John Walsh, Tom Troy, Eunan McDermott and Thomas
Doyle, all of them buried with honours in Caceres and Salamanca.
There are always fresh flowers on their tombs...
The religious persecution killed in Spain 12
bishops, 4184 priests, 2365 religious, 283 nuns, and over 3,000 lay
Church helpers; there was not one apostasy among them. You have no
doubt learned from the press that a few days ago the pope elevated
to the dignity of blessed a group of 498 martyrs. Among them 2
bishops, 24 diocesan priests, 462 religious, one deacon, one
subdeacon, one seminarian and 7 laymen. The oldest, a canon of 101
years of age, the youngest a seminarian of 15. Although since 1987,
in previous ceremonies, 479 Spanish martyrs had already been
beatified and 11 canonized, the one of October 28 has been the most
numerous and most spectacular beatification of the entire history of
the Christian martyrology. All died confessing the Faith and
blessing their enemies, just as Our Saviour did from the Cross. They
gave testimony of reconciliation, peace, and forgiveness. Pope
Benedict XVI called them "heroic witnesses of the Faith." An immense
banner at St. Peter's square read: "They died for a Catholic Spain."
Now some are saying in Spain that they were not
martyrs at all, and even that they were actually criminals justly
executed. The morning of the beatification, a graffiti appeared on
the walls of the Carmelite convent of Guadalajara: "The assassins
are not martyrs. Let us fight for the historical memory;" as only
signature, the Communist hammer and sickle. Similar graffiti has
popped up everywhere in the country. During mass, protesters
scuffled with Catholics outside a church in Madrid, displaying a
banner that said: "Those who have killed, tortured, and exploited
cannot be beatified." Every newspaper carries articles and letters
attacking the Church and soiling the memory of the newly blessed.
The recently approved "law for the recovery of the historical
memory" requires the removal of monuments, plaques, and public
mementoes of the Crusade of liberation, and churches risk losing
state aid if they do not comply. It seems as if the majority of the
nation is possessed by furious demons.
Among the new blessed, just two testimonies will
permit you to judge whether they were victims or criminals. Josep
Casas Ros, a 19-year-old seminarian of Barcelona, son of a humble,
working family from the small village of Ordal. His brother Francesc
Xavier was for two decades the parish priest of my ancestors'
village, Anglčs; he was seven years of age when his brother was
beaten to a pulp during two days, castrated, and finally shot, only
because he did not want to deny Christ. He says that he never heard
from his parents a word of hatred or vengeance, and that they
refused to identify the person who most certainly denounced his
brother; they even helped him during an illness. "Our son died
forgiving his assassins, who are we to do otherwise?" This is a
first-hand testimony which I have heard myself from Father Casas.
The other testimony is from the Dean of the cathedral of Toledo,
Jose Polo Benito, who died with eighty other clerics in the night of
22 August 1936; his last words were: "God is the witness of the
collective crime you are going to perpetrate. We are all innocent.
We die for our Faith in Jesus Christ. We forgive you and ask Him to
forgive you, for you do not know what you do."
Continuing with the parallel history of Spain and
Ireland, from 1540 to 1713, thousands of priests and religious were
martyred in our island, all killed in odium fidei. The similarities
are astonishing: same heroism before the immolation, same atrocities
committed, same forgiving deaths. The Bishop of Ossory wrote that
"our whole people might justly be regarded as a nation of martyrs."
On 5 February 1905, the Sacred Congregation of Rites was presented
with a petition from the Archbishop of Dublin containing documentary
evidence "in respect of three hundred and forty persons from the
Archdiocese of Dublin, with a view to establish the existence of a
traditional belief among learned and pious Catholics that they
suffered death for the Catholic Faith in Ireland under the penal
laws; that these persons did, in fact, suffer martyrdom in defence
of the Catholic Faith and of the pope's spiritual authority as Vicar
of Christ; and that there is a sincere desire among Irish Catholics,
in Ireland and elsewhere, to see these martyrs solemnly recognized
by the Church."
Primate St. Oliver Plunkett comes immediately to
mind. Chief Justice Pemberton set forth from the bench that there
could be no greater crime than to endeavour to propagate the
Catholic Faith, "than which there is not anything more displeasing
to God or more pernicious to mankind in the world". Sentence of
death was pronounced as a matter of course, to which the primate
replied in a joyous and emphatic voice: "Deo Gratias". This is how
the martyrs of Christ die.
For the time of the suppression there is a
partial narrative in the recital of an old Trinitarian friar,
written down by one of his brethren, Father Richard Goldie, an Irish
professor at the University of Alcala. According to this account, on
the first announcement of Henry VIII's design, Theobald Burke,
provincial of the order, came to Dublin with eight other doctors to
maintain the pope's supremacy. They were cast into prison;
Theobald's heart was torn from his living body; Philip, a writer,
was scourged, put into boots filled with oil and salt, roasted till
the flesh came away from the bone, and then beheaded; the rest were
hanged or beheaded; Cornelius, Bishop of Limerick, was beheaded
there; Cormac was shot and stoned to death at Galway; Maurice and
Thomas, brothers, hanged on their way to Dublin; Stephen, stabbed
near Wexford; Peter of Limerick and Geoffrey, beheaded; John
Macabrigus, lay brother, drowned; Raymond, ex-superior, dragged at a
horse's tail in Dublin; Tadhg O'Brien of Thomond, torn to pieces in
the viceroy's presence at Bombriste bridge between Limerick and
Kilmallock; the Dublin community, about fifty, put to various
deaths; those of Adare, cut down, stabbed, or hanged; those of
Galway, twenty, burned to death in their convent, six were thrown
into a lime-kiln, ten weighted with stones and cast into the sea;
those of Drogheda, forty, slain, hanged, and thrown into a pit; at
Limerick, over fifty butchered in choir or thrown with weights into
the Shannon; at Cork and Kilmallock, over ninety slain by the sword
or dismembered, including William Burke, John O'Hogan, Michael,
Richard, and Giollabrighde.
And then there are thousands whose names and
martyrdoms are only known to God. During the year of the Armada, a
Spanish ship made prize of a Dublin vessel bound for France. A
Cistercian monk and a Franciscan friar were found on board. They
said they were the sole survivors of two large monasteries in the
North of Ireland which had been burned with the rest of the monks.
There seems to be no other mention of this massacre.
Spain and Ireland, two Catholic nations, glorious
in saints and martyrs. Where did the Faith of our fathers go? It is
up to us, my dear friends, to honour their memories and imitate
their examples with honest Christian lives. In the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass we have the same book from which they learned how to follow
Our Lord up to the final personal sacrifice.
May the Queen of Martyrs give us the inspiration
and the strength to be worthy of such sacred heritage. May we, like
our martyrs, experience the joy of forgiving and loving "those who
trespass against us." And may we learn as well how to be heroes of
our daily duty, in simplicity and humility, with Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph,
Father Ramón
Anglés
