Great heritage work of catholic lay teachers

Great heritage work of catholic lay teachers

20 Jul 1935

At the annual Congress of the Catholic Truth 8ociety in Kilkenny, Very Rev. T. Corcoran, S.J., D. Litt., University College, Dublin, read the following paper:—

The outstanding sources of guidance and of power for the Catholic worker are the express teachings of the Holy Bee concerning the duties and status of such work, and the record of how the work has been done in- the past, under Catholic rule and order. Both of these sources are amply available in the service of the Catholic lay teachers of Ireland, for guidance to their professional lives within the Catholic order to which they essentially belong.

Each of them affords many practical lessons for the immediate future.

Developed all over our country at the epoch of the rise of European Universities, and solidly established long before the movement of Renaissance culture and learning, the Gaelic system of lay professional teaching in literature and law, in philosophy, history and medicine, was unique by reason of the prestige it accorded to the national language as the medium, conjointly with Latin, of the most advanced forms of Instruction and of creative scholarship. The scholar-families, such as Mac Egan, O’ Davoren, O’ Clory, O’ Mulconry, O’ Daly, thus served our people. In many cases for twelve and even sixteen generations. They were high in social position; such groups wore a large part Indeed of the old aristocracy of the land; unlike all other aristocracies known of in human history, they gave, by hereditary duty, the nationwide service of literature and learning, general alike and professional. They were fully maintaining their splendid work, when, In the greatest of all the centuries for Irish learning in Ireland and in Europe, the Ulster, Stuart and Cromwellian confiscations cut the economic of that work. With the Annals of the Four Masters, and the fine body of teaming and ft writing evidenced Jn the numerous other Irish centres of scholarship’ such as Louvain, Florence and Rome, their close was fully worthy of their honourable record over more than four centuries before. Not less worthy work was done in our schools of the later Renaissance centuries, by men of Norman as well as of Gaelic stock, which were so highly esteemed by the Catholics of Ireland ever since the English State severed all connection with the Church Catholic—centre of culture no less than of unity. The Salamanca records at the close of the 16th and the opening, of the 17th century, to take but on a instance of limited range, give us the names of scores of devoted teachers. So do the Stuart State documents, which tell of their arrest and Imprisonment because of such service;, .there is available the order book of the Cromwellian Army Government at Dublin Castle, which decreed the transportation . Into penal1 servitude for life, of every Popish schoolmaster. Had wo the carefully prepared list which gave not only their names, but their times and places of teaching •service to their country, we should have, for the years 1653 to 1658,’ an unexampled roll of Irish Catholic lay teachers, confessors of the faith even unto bondage Cor life, by reason to their very work.

Some such liets we have—for certain parishes in the city of Dublin. Just over two centuries ago, for the counties of Limerick and Kerry a decade earlier. The Limerick list an Assize List, lor transportation; it contains in its Very Incomplete state some twenty names or more. With It let us place the illegal teachers of people’s forbidden schools, for Just one- mediaeval parish of Dublin. Prepared by the Anglican church Wardens of St. Luke’s in Donore, and reported to the Colonial House of Lords at College Green in 1731. it tells of “Popish schools. In Mill St., kept by Catherine Anderson in New Row, on the Poddle River, by Catherine Hanley.

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