Courtney McGrailThe Diary of Fr Daniel O’Loan: A View from Maynooth 1886-1893
ed. by Hugh O’Neill
(Fountain Publishing Ltd, ISBN-13: 978-0952556534, no price stated)
J. Anthony Gaughan
Fr Daniel O’Loan (1855-1911) of the diocese of Down and Conor served in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, as dean of discipline and professor of liturgy from 1883 to 1892 and as professor ecclesiastical history from 1892 to 1900. His diary covers most of these years and from internal evidence it is clear that he intended it to be for more than his own eyes.
Most of the entries concern college routine and his responsibilities.
As dean of discipline he had charge of the pastoral formation of the students and teaching them the rubrics associated with liturgical ceremonies.
Other entries refer to appointments to the staff, comments on spiritual exercises, visits of bishops and priests and correspondence with members of his family.
The years from 1886 to 1893 were among the most turbulent in the nation’s history. There were such events as the founding of the Land League, the Plan of Campaign, the Parnell Conspiracy Trial, Balfour’s Coercion Acts, boycotting and the papal condemnation of it, the downfall of Parnell and his death.
O’Loan was a committed supporter of Irish Home Rule. His heroes were Gladstone and William O’Brien. He pushed through a crowd to board a train at the station in Maynooth to shake the latter’s hand!
He raged at the maltreatment of O’Brien, when he was imprisoned under the Coercion Acts, regarded by O’Loan as no more than an abuse of the law. On a number of occasions he went to Dublin to attend the trials of others – priests and politicians – who had also defied those laws.
O’Loan was greatly exercised by the Plan of Campaign. This included boycotting and the refusal to pay rents. The Holy Office in Rome condemned these practices and the great majority of bishops (led by Archbishops Croke and Walsh), priests and people reacted with anger.
For O’Loan, the use of boycotting was legal, its abuse illegal. Clearly he was convinced that the pope was not better able to pass judgement on the situation in Ireland than the bishops and theologians of the country.
He was horrified at the possible effect of the papal condemnation on the country’s traditional loyalty to the Holy See. In the diary he indignantly dismisses the intervention of Bishop Edward O’Dwyer of Limerick, who told the mayor that the pope had a right to issue his condemnation.
When O’Loan learned of the scandal which involved Parnell and Mrs O’Shea he merely noted in his diary that the leader would have to retire. When Parnell did not do so and his actions threatened to destroy the Irish Parliamentary Party his tone changed.
He denounced him as an ‘able, self-seeking, unscrupulous villain’ and bewailed his influence in gathering followers to begin a crusade against religion and morality under the slogan of ‘no priest in politics’. He wrote a pamphlet denouncing Parnell, but it was not published, as the printer was a ‘Parnellite’.
O’Loan’s diary rewards serendipity.
An entry records that he led the senior students in the college on a walk to the grave of Wolf Tone at Bodenstown. Another entry, on 3 May 1888, states that The Irish Catholic, a weekly journal devoted to Catholic interests, made its first appearance; and O’Loan continued that it was the successor to the Weekly News, owned by T. D. Sullivan who composed the song ‘God save Ireland’.
Taste for history
The editor Hugh O’Neill is a retired Northern civil servant, with an inherited taste for history.
He is to be complimented on making this fascinating diary accessible to the public and for his incisive commentary thereon.
The diary will arouse a host of memories in priests who have been trained in the national seminary and, for those with a particular interest in the 1880s and 1890s, it provides an invaluable insight into the clerical mind-set during that contentious period.