Irish News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 31, 31 July 1902, Page 9

Irish News.

OUR IRISH LETTER. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Dublin, Juno 3, 1902. No words can express the general relief and thankfulness at the announcement of peace : the certainty that a war that did not bring h gleam of joy to any one household in the whole United Kingdom is at last at an end. If we except unprincipled army contractors, tho veriest Shylocks in creation, I do not believe there is in the whole civilised world a feeling save that of thankfulness that there is an end to the fearful waste of life and money that has been tho sole outcome of tho long struggle ; gam there is none to anyone, and who can compute, along with th 0£230,000,000 of money spent and 65,000 lives lost or wrecked on tho British side, the amount of mental and bodily agony suffered at home and abroad during those long two years and eight months ? I have heard it said that! the grandest prayer tihe human heart can frame is that prayer t>o often on Irish lips, the prayer that is indeed now echoed in every heart — no matter on which side, English or Boer, its sympathies — on this declaration of peace : ' thanks bo to God ! ' The Christian Brothers. Here in Ireland, simultaneously with many other parts of tho world, we have within these last few days been celebrating the victory in a far longer, though bloodless, war that has been waged by a valorous body of Irishmen for an entire century against tho powers that fon three) and a half centuries have sought to crush out the Catholic religion and national feeling from the heai ts and lives of the Ir.ibh people. Wo have been celebrating with ioy and pomp tho centenary of the foundation of the Institute of Irish Christian Brothers, whoso great educational work was begun just onq hundred years ago and has for a century been so successfully carried on that the fame of those humblo brethren is now world-wide Yesterday the Pro-Cathedral m Dublin was thrown open to all who could laid room within its walls to loin in the religious coiomonv of thanksgiving to Almighty God for tho hundred years of unbroken success lie has granted to the labors of these Chnstian Irishmen, generation after generation of whom have devoted their lives to tho grand servico of Vecpmg His holy rehgioni and the sacred love of fatherland in tho hearts of those for whom St Patrick prayed so earnestly, yet who seemed doomed, by anti-Catholic laws, to lose thenfaith and their nationality But man proposes and God disposes, and ono of the great weapons used by the Almighty to frustrate the aimsi of our powerful Protestant lawgivers has been the groat teaching Order of the Irish Christian Brothers, men who voluntarily take up a life of poverty and humility, who, labor hard without any worldly reward, who have gone on their way quietly and unostentatiously, working mostly amongst the poor, yet havo come to bo recognised as a great and successful educational power, a great power m tho Churih in our land, and now in other lands as well as in this. All Catholics are aware that what are known as the Penal Laws were the laws enacted from time to time with a view to stamp out the Catholic religion in Engkuul and Jlreland by penalising every act that could tend in any way to keep that faith in existence, once tho English sovereigns had decided to abandon Catholicism aAc\ i oi cc their subjects to do tiho same. These laws pressed in an especially heavy manner upon the;

Irish, for the simple reason that tiie more the latter were persecuted tho more passionately they clung to them Faith and to th|lir nationality, for lovie of country has ever been indissoltibly bound up with tho Irishman's religion, so that in this country tho Penal enactments always had a twofold aim : tdie destruction of the Catholic religion and of all sentiments of nationality. The surest way to attain this end was to deprive the people of both religious; and secular education ;uid therefore it was that our priests, the religious teachers and our Catholic schoolmasters, the secu.ar educators were persecuted and hunted as wild beasts, while no parent dared, except at the risk ol dire penalties send his child/ to be instructed save by teachers of an alien faith, and although tho Irish Catholics, rich and poor, clung with bravo, marvellously brave tenacity to the teachings of their Church and seized upon every opportunity of obtaining secret education, wherever and whenever it could bo snatched, tho work of intellectual destruction was fast being accomplished amongst the poor by the end of tho 18th century. How could it be otherwise ? The wealthy could sometimes evado (lie laws and smugglo their sons out of the country to give them such scholastic advantages denied them at home ; but for our poor, what was there ? On the one hand, total, brutish ignorance, or tho daily risk of imprisonment, increased poverty from fines, and other sufferings of untold severity if they were discovered in any attempts to escape from the bonds of ignorance . on the other hand, nchlv -endowed schools, tempting a people e\er gioedy of knowledge ; schools where they could learn free and obtain worldly help and advancement in trade, business, or profession; every worldly advan<ago held out as a bait, and the onu only thing asked in return wa.s that they should become renegades to the faith of their fathers Byamiiacla of grace tho people at large accepted tho poverty, tho ignorance the sufferings of tho.se terrible penal days and trusted in God to release them ftom their bondage Those who know what the true histoiy of that noble, long-suffering self-denial of our laccv is will not consider that I use an exaggerated figure of speech when I say that the Alnnghtv sont the Irish nation ;i second Mo<-es m the poison of Mi other Ignatius Rice. tha founder of tho Irish Chiistian Brothers, and tho man \\ ho did so much to lead tho Catholic youth of Ireland out of tho bondage of ignorance into tho light and freedom of Christian knowledge. Tho Founder of the Order. Born in or about the \ ear 1760 in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ignatius Rico was educated pai tly in his iu^ livo place, partly m tho city of Kilkenny. When Hearing manhood, ho removed to Waterford to h\e with a, iclativo and to follow business as a merchant Being of an earnest, thoughtful turn of mind, Mr Rica pondered often and seriously over tho. painful condition of ignoranco to which tho laws had reduced his fellow-Catholics, the eh ldren of the| poor He gradually thought out and finally, m 180:2, when the Penal Laws wuro somewhat relaxed, devoted his life to the carrying out of .i scheme for tho teaching of poor boys, a scheme by menus of which these boys should receive an education that would gradually raise them to an equal intellectual footing with their Protestant neighbors and enablo them to Surmount tho social barriers that had been deliberately raised to keep down all who would not abandon the Catholic religion In 1802, Ignatius Rice gave up tho world and devoted his largo fortune and tho remainder of his lifo to this work. Ho was quickly joined by other men actuated by a like religious and patriotic spirit j

schools wero opened, the first in Waterford, and it was not little by little, but by leaps and bounds that tho marvellous work of the Irish Christian Brothers progressed. Their system of education was so well thought out and planned that there has never been one backward step in their success since the day the first Christian Brothers' school was opened. Primarily teachers for the poor, accepting no fees, as a rule ; receiving no State aid ; purely Catholic and eminently national in their teaching, using no books but those compiled by members of their own Order, these Brothers' schools havo long been celebrated as some of tho best educational establishments m tho kingdom, and are frequented not only by the poor, for whom theyj wero originally founded and ara still maintained, but by the sons of wealthy Catholics and Protestants who desire a thoroughly sound and useful training for their children. No favor is shown the rich over the poor lad in these schools ; all must stand alike and merit alone takes precedence ; hence the fact that we have in our midst numbers of Catholic men of eminence in their various professions who were trained in the Christian Brothers' schools! and who gratefully acknowledge ttfiat/ they owe their success in life to that training. Religious Celebration. The sight yesterday in the ProCathedral must indeed have been a proud and a happy one for tho Brothers present ; it was a touching ceremony for others. The Archbishop of Dublin presided at High Mass and the Lord Mayor and Corporation attended in State, but of all tho men in tho vast throng that could scarcely get standing room from an early hour in the morning, scarcely ten but wero ' old boys ' como to ofter their thanks to God for tho liberty once more to bo Catholics, and educated Catholics, m their own land, and to testify thoir gratitude towards and their lovo for the unselfish men to whom they ovvo so much. Looking around at the faces, one could easily tell this Tho celebrant of the Mass, tho deacon, tho subdeacon, the master of ceremonies, and assistants were all 'old boy«; ' , so was tho eloquent preacher, so wero the acolytes , so likowiso was Mr Vincent' O'Brien, tho v\ ell-known conductor of the now colobrat(Ml Palestrma Choir, all of whose members were or arc still Christian Bi others' boys Isut it was amongst the congregation ono noted best the ' old boys ' There wore the successful men, evidently going back in memory over their own lnes as they listened to tho orator telling of careers such as theirs , there were poor men, but honest, intelligent, respectable^ thank mo God, as they went back to boyhood s ria.vs, for all they had that was domed their fathers ] there wore old men, the tears rolling down their cheeks, tears, perhaps, of regret that they had not profited to tho full as they might have dono, by their opportunities, tears for days gone by and memomes that had long lam dormant., until some word utteiod by the preacher or some boyhood's friend recognised m the throng had awakened and stineri the heart Yes, it was unmistakably a vast cony legation (at least the male poition) of old pupils that listened so ea!>erlv as tho speaker told of the .starling and growth and now woi ld-wule work of these Irish religious, who have schools not only in evory corner of Ireland, but in England. America, Australasia, Africa, India, Gibralter, even in Rome itself, where they arc doing to-day for young Kalian boys that for which) tho founder instituted the Order at home giving young Catholic Italians a good education and striving to freo them fi om the temptations of proselytism which has begun in Roino tho very same work that a hundred years ago threatened tho faith of tho Irish.

It would, I suppose, be impossible to give the numbers of those) who in that century passed through the hands of tho Brothers, but some idea of what they have accomplished may be formed from figures as they stand to-day. The Brothers have at present a total of 473 schools, attended by 41,070 boys. And so, wo have had two great celebrations this week : the cessation of tho miserable strife in South Africa and the centenary of the opening of a war against ignorance and irroligion, a war that we hope to see waged with redoubled energy and success in the new century just begjun. Coronation Festivities. Preparations for Coronation festivities in Ireland are not progressing on a very elaborate scale, as their 1 Majesties are not coming over. There will be some gay dressing of certain streets, a good deal of gunning, a good deal of flutterings in tho breasts of certain folk who hope for stray coronation honors, but most of those loyally inclined and a,ble to spend money will go to London and enjoy the sights there, and a good many others, with frugal minds and purses not so full as before the war, will draw down the blinds in ' Fitzwi, liana Square,' retire to the rear of; the mansion and cause tho report to go forth vthat they have gone over to the coronation. Such things have ibeen. A Practical Proposal. There is a movement on foot to celebrate his Majesty's accession to the throne in what is considered a very loyal manner : i.e., to make charity begin and end at home. I once knew a wealthy but eminently frugal young couple who paid each other handsome compliments and at the same time mis-spent no money. When his birthday came, she gave her spouse the lamp that was lackin the dining room ; when her birthday came he gave her a new oiL-clioth; for the entrance-hall, and so forth. In this economic way we compliment Royalty. When nor late Majesty, Queen Victoria, celebrated her jubilee! we — that is, the loyalists of this] particular and fashionable wateringplace near Dublin — presented ourselves and the public at large with a most exquisitely-situated park, one of the loveliest spotfc, in all Ireland ; now that loyalty must expend- itself in honor of Kinj> Edward's coronation, an institution providing for Irish nurses is to be founded and endowed in Dublin-. I think the. Irish 'loyalists havo an eminently wise and! practical way of paying a compliment and at the same time making the money stay as much as possible at home. M.B.

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