Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1906-03-18
lRELAND'S GIFT TO EUROPE
Christian Religion Kept Alive for
Humanity During the Dark
Ares.

Sacred Heart church was filled 10 it's ut
most Friday evening with an interested au-
dience to enjoy a program IN cele-
bratiou Of st. Patricks Eve. It
was essentially St. Patricks pro-
gram. The chief feature OF the evening
was the address Of Right Reverend Bishop
Keane, %. D., OF Cheyenne. whose theme
was The Moral Aspect Of the Irish Race"
The lecture was preceded by a short
musical program, in which the children's
choir sang THE Harp That Once Through
Tara's Halls" Mr.. Leo Hoffman gave a
medley OF Irish airs on the violin with q
harp accompaniment, the air being Come
Back to Erin Kathleen Mavourneen"
and Lakes OF Killarney" Frank Gentle
man sang Meeting Of the Waters" and
Miss Eileen McUrann gave harp selec-
ton "Garryowen. with pleasing effect.
Bishop Keane, who was formerly assoc
cisted with Bishop ireland and who is one
of the most eloquent Catholic churchmen
in the country, began his address with a
tribute to the purple hills OF ireland and
its beauty as home land, which has been
! imperishably embaimed in song, poetry
and story. He said in part:
All nations are great i'm some event. either
in war, commerce. art or science but the
greatest idea Of the Irish nation is the
religious idea. Rome taught us how to
| govern and the Hebrews taught us the
valuable personal God. The great secret
/ love and Gods liberty.
The Christian religion is an intellectual
! religion. 1t was His apostle, our patron
saint, that consecrated Ireland to the tenn
/ pie OF the true God In the earliest DAYS of
/ the Christian religion, and there planted Il
tmperishably. When the Germanic hordes
swept down upon Christian Rome and es-
tablished their barbarian kings upon the
thrones Of the Christian emperors and
ruled with barbaric sway from Carthage to
the walls OF China, and bathed continental
/ Europe in sea of blood, thus destroying
every vestige Of the Christian faith thus
desolatlng the land from Brittany to the
! steppes of Russta, ireland alone chung to
! the Christian faith. Fifteen or sixteen
! years after the fall of Rome a new apostle
/ OF God arose who was to be to the new re-
] hgton what the Hebrew patriarchs were
| to the old. F
The Irish nation was converted and ac-
eepted the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in a
rev years q hundred monasteries covered
| the face of ireland. They answered the
| spirit Of God from the first day. These
! monasteries were the centers of the great
The pope transferred to ireland the duty
, of keeping intact the religion of Jesus
Christ and they kept II well. Men vested
| with the spirit of teaching were there when
they could be found nowhere else, and It
was these teachers that brought the re-
| ligton of Jesus Christ back to Europe,
thus driving back barbarianism. France
| had lapsed back into almost worse than
Roman paganism. The Irish monks pitched
their tents throughout continental Europe
| and around them arose intellectual centers
| and intellectual development and instilled
| new life into those lands. II was an in
vasion Of faith where 800 years before 1t
had been an invasion of harbarism. Then
Charlemagne appeared, but not until Ire
! land had handed back to the European
| world the garlands of God IL had received
| from Europe centuries before.