The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1886-03-19
FATHER CLEARY,s ADDRESS

FATHER CLEARY'S ADDRESS.
The following is Father Cleary's adj
dress at the Irish-American Reunion in
Chicago Wednesday evening
Mr.. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN !:
tits certainly a proud privilege, that
must expand the heart of any man with
Irish blood in his veins and Irish sym
pathies in his soul, to be permitted to
address such grand and representative
gathering of his race and kindred on st
Patrick's night. I congratulate you, as
fellow Instantaneous or Irishmen, that
you have the manliness, the unselfsh-
ness of soul, and the intrepidity of spirit
to thus unitedly, openly, honorably and
boldly proclaim to all the world that
with unchanged and undying affection
you cling to the old love for our mother
land. congratulate Ireland, too, who is
blessed in her faithful children, in what
soever land they roam, still loyal and true
to her.
As we come together on each recurr-
ing St. Patrick's day, fain would f,ncy
that then our thoughts are engaged with
happier themes than the wrongs and
sorrows of the old land. Then we love
to ponder on the glories OF the centuries
gone, and to think of Ireland only as the
nursery of saints, of scholars and of
sages.
We then would build anew the sane
tuaries of learning that once enchanted
Europe's fairest sons from the banks OF
the Rhine, from La Belle France and
Sunny Italy, and filled all christendom
with their fame. We hear religious
praises sung again with the fervor and
devotion that we'll up from the hearts of
a sanity people. Our souls expand with
joyous pride as, in imagination, we look
back to the ancient race whose blood
we share, and see them the mos religious
and the most learned people of the time.
| But the sanctuaries of learning are
gone, the very ruins have persisted"
| The ancient ivy entwines with tender
love around the crumbling walls of the
old temples of religion, beneath whose
shadow lies the dust of our fathers. The
despoiler has desolated the land. In his
blind fury, as ruthless as Omer who left
the great Alexandrian library in ashes,
he in wanton cruelty brought desolation
and ruin in his track As far as his
frenzy was powerful, he left no vestige
of the glory and greatness of his pros
trate victim behind him. He robbed
him ofhome and his worldly possessions,
he sought to fasten the scorn of the
world on the people he had, by his greater
| force of brute strength, outraged, plum
dered and enslaved. The highways and
byways of Europe were raked as field
of hay" to summon every unprincipled
hireling of the sword" to aid in exter-
minating the Irish people. The fiery
French Huguenot, the cruel AMI relent-
less Dutch Calvanist, were brought to
steep in Irish blood their cursed steel,
that the faith of Ireland and the learning
that faith had fostered might be known
no more in the land.
In the Penal Laws" says Giles, "
"there was more than passion-there was
purpose, compact, settled, systematic
purpose that purpose. was either to
abolish the Roman Catholic religion in
Ireland or to reduce the Roman Catholics
themselves to absolute serfdom." "Three
hundred years ago nation, then perhaps
| the most powerful in the world. sat in
council and calmly, deliberately decreed
that Ireland should either giveup her re-
i ligion or be destroyed. To be a priest
was death-to celebrate Mass was death
Ito shelter priest was ruin and lille
to make provision for the Catholic faith
was to surrender all worldly goods and
go forth houseless and beggared-to be
found assisting at Mass was coniscation
and exile"
"On the faithful and devoted Catholic
clergy was exhausted the whole vocabu-
larry Of denuncation and contempt, of
ridicule, villiiication and scorn by re-
lentless and unscrupulous majority"
In the graphic language Of Father Burke,
The soil was dug as for a grave, the
seed of Professionalism was cast into that
soil, and the blood of the nation was
poured in to warm it and make it grow
1t never grew, it never came forth, it
never bloomed Ireland was as Catholic
the day that Elizabeth died at Hampton
Court, gnawing the flesh off her hands
in despair and disappearing God, as she
was the day that Henry vainly COM
manded her to become Protestant"
land, thank God, Ireland at heart was
no more loyal to Patrick's teachings
when her soil was red with the blood of
her martyred children than sheis to-day
following the leadership of her prelates
and priests to certain victory and free
dom. The last of Ireland's canonized
saints, ST. Lawrence O'Toole, saw with
pain and sorrow the first English invader
set foot on Irish soil. With courageous
patriotism and heroic fortitu,e, the saint
ed prelate opposed the intrusion of the
Anglo-Saxon in the affairs Of his country
May we not hope that his worthy and
undaunted successor in Duhlin's ancient
see is destined in our day to witness the
| final triumph of Irish resistance to Eng
fish invasion and to see the last of the
intruders banished forever from Irish soil.
From st. Lawrence O'Toole to Arch
bishop Walsh, we glance along seven
centuries of cruel, bloody strife, and the
brightest beam of light that chases off
| the shadows of all but hopeless sorrow
| from Irish hearts and Irish homes is
the Irish priest keeping aglow the fervor
of divine faith, Strengthening their eter-
nal hopes and fostering their love of
motherland.
"But then the Soggarths, hero-souled,
Did they rot spurn the tyrants gold?
Did hey not sDuru the chain, the rack
The spy, the bloodhound on theiI ack?''
Without the accessories of art. of
| literature, of schools or colleges, with
out these natural products of their re-
ligion, when left to bloom in congenial
surroundings, the Irish people kept alive
a sense of love and reverence for their
faith unexampled in the history of the
world"
Their noble cathedral domes were
caverns in therock, whose vaulted arches
re-echoed the oceans roar. Their point
ed gothic temples, that in happier lands
send heavenward the longings of the
soul, were the matched little chapels by
the wayside, or the side streets of the
city, from whence most fervent prayers
were sent upward to heavens throne
| from the hearts of devoted people. In
their desolation and misery their religion