Religious sisters feel they can’t even be listened to respectfully, writes Garry O’Sullivan
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones,” William Shakespeare writes in Julius Caesar.
“You would think we were evil” a source close to the Religious Sisters of Charity told The Irish Catholic last week. “We’ve been treated like monsters. In no way do they want the Church involved in any way. Yet many, many people experienced the care and the work the nuns had done, many in the Irish population experienced care and concern and compassion. Yes, there were some exceptions but for the most part the good that was done was amazing.”
But nobody in the media or body politic wants to hear about the good that was done.
Bishop William Crean, speaking on Vocations Sunday, got it spot on when he said: “The odium of the nation has been poured out on virtually all religious women and men from previous generations.”
Frontlines
It is still being poured out today and the sisters, founded by Mary Aikenhead, are on the frontlines. The nuns are bewildered that they can be painted in such a negative light and are apparently terrified of the Irish media, feeling that there is no point engaging as whatever they say will be misconstrued or vilified. Isn’t that an extraordinary state of affairs in our modern public sphere, where a tiny minority group are demonised to the point that they feel their voice won’t be listened to or treated respectfully as another point of view?
No one is saying the Religious Sisters of Charity are all saints – although I’m sure people who were on the receiving end of their care and compassion since they first started caring for cholera victims in 1832 would say they met many who were – they are Irish citizens who for the most part have given their lives to make our country a better place. As Bishop Crean said: “All who responded to a vocation did so with generosity and humility and having expended their lives in nursing, teaching or social outreach they left the world without a cent in the pockets of their shrouds. They gave of their all for others. But they were like all humanity earthen vessels subject to failure and imperfection.”
Contribution
He went on to say: “From Penal Times we have a well-documented history of the contribution of priests diocesan and religious who dedicated their lives to the service of people spiritual and temporal. Priests and religious as ones who had the benefit of education were the voice of the people who had no voice. So many of the educational and healthcare structures of the nation were laid down by those in Church leadership in service of the poor and under privileged. While through the decades of the 19th and 20th century so many left our shores because of the lack of opportunity at home, they still distinguished themselves by their dignity, sense of values and initiative, despite their difficult backgrounds”.
The bishop continued: “In the current narrative ‘round the place of the Catholic Church in Ireland there is a real imbalance. Because of our skewed populist and inadequate historical perspective, a whole dimension of our culture and identity is being denied at our peril. What is at stake is the inclusion or exclusion of the ‘community of believers’ from participation in key dimensions of society”.
He adds: “That selective narrative which conveys a message of negativity ‘round all things religious and spiritual is the fruit of a commentariat group think that operates in self-referential silos. As an entity it exercises great influence. Even the representative political apparatus is on the run before them. Our citizens assemblies are a fabrication of controlled selectivity to which unaccountable authority has been ceded.”
Heroes
We’ve come so far from the days when priests and religious were heroes to Irish society. With Covid-19 fresh in our minds, let’s jog the collective memory a bit and go back to the work of the Religious Sisters of Charity during the Cholera Epidemic of 1832/33, two years before the founding of St Vincent’s Hospital in 1834 – when they and other religious and priests and clergymen and doctors all risked their lives in the full knowledge that it would likely kill them.
Cholera, a highly infectious disease, spread from India to Russia and then on into Europe reaching Ireland in early 1832. From 1832 to 1833 it claimed 50,000 lives. It killed people very quickly and very painfully. Hugh Fenning OP wrote an article in 2003 published by the Catholic Historical Society of Ireland documenting – from sources such as death notices from newspapers of the day – the number of priests, ministers and doctors who died having come into contact with the disease through their work and or ministry.
Obituary
Here are a few obituary entries:
1832, Before May 3. A medical gentleman who came to Dublin to see some cases of the distemper was himself a patient in a few hours and his life is now despaired of. From The Dublin Times.
1832, May 3. Long tribute to the clergy of Dublin and the Sisters of Charity for their attention to cholera victims. Text of a letter from one of the nuns to a friend describing their work in the Hospital at Grangegorman Lane. Even the nurses are terrified (WC 3 May, from The Freeman’s Journal).
1832 May 17. On the 17th instant in the 76th year of his age, the Rev. Nicholas Kearns, many years parish priest of Rathfarnham, in the county Dublin…Briefly arrested in 1798 while curate in Meath Street.
1832, May 19. John Ryan, bishop of Limerick, addresses a circular letter from Park House to the clergy. On the adjustment of Church services during the outbreak of cholera. Sermons and Vespers are forbidden. Communion to be given only after Mass. Benediction to be given seldom and as briefly as possible. He repeats the directives of the Central Board o f Health on the washing and cleaning of churches; their windows should be left open and chloride gas be used every day (Connaught, 24 May).
The article lists numerous RC and CofI clergy who suffered and died from the disease as well as doctors. People were terrified of the disease and in one instance a protestant clergyman has to dig graves because no one else would.
In June of 1832 the role of the Sisters of Charity in Cork hospitals is mentioned. Another entry says that the “poor were abandoned by all” except for a Rev. Mr James O’Rafferty and his assistants in Tullamore.
1832, July 23. Death of the Catholic Primate due to cholera.
1832, October 5. A Rev. P. Downey died of cholera in Kilkenny aged 27. “During the day he attended persons ill of cholera, of which he had a natural and unconquerable dread…with Christian fortitude, delivered himself up a voluntary sacrifice, having a premonition that he would not escape the mortal contagion.” (from The Kilkenny Journal).
1832, October 17. Cholera. Since April, 3,600 have died in Dublin
1833, March 10. The Rev. Robert Connell, for many years the worthy parish priest of Hospital in the county [Limerick], was seized with cholera last Sunday, shortly after celebrating the second Mass, and was a corpse before evening. Eleven of his parishioners died the same day of the fatal malady, and the mortality since is most appalling.
1833, November 15. The Sisters of Charity. During the frightful visitation of the cholera, the services rendered by these ladies to the cause of humanity surpass all praise (Freeman’s Journal November 15).
Interesting
One of the most interesting obituarys seen by this writer was an editorial comment beneath the obituary of a young priest (27) who distinguished himself in care for the victims of cholera but caught the disease and died. The editorial writer says: “With such devotional zeal and attachment, for religion and their flock, can it be a subject of astonishment why it is that the people – particularly the Irish people – evince such reverence and respect for their priests?” (Kilkenny Journal, October 10).
In 1833 the work of the Sisters of Charity surpassed all praise. In 2022, it seems no amount of criticism is too much.
“All things that we ordained festival/turn from their office to black funeral–/our instruments to melancholy bells/Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;/Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;/Our burial flowers serve for a burial corse.” Capulet – Romeo and Juliet- Shakespeare.
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