Today is the feast of the Irish Martyrs. These are 24 of the many Catholics who died for their faith in Ireland from 1537 and 1714 and who have been named and either beatified or canonised. The feast day of 17 of these martyrs beatified by St John Paul II in 1992 was selected as June 20th because it was the anniversary of the 1584 martyrdom of Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley. Others of the 24 include St Oliver Plunkett whose feast is celebrated on the feast of the Precious Blood, July 1st. During the years of Irish martyrdom, the rosary was called the “Dry Mass”. The Holy Mass was banned under pain of death. People secretly gathered at night at risk of their lives at Mass Rocks and Mass Houses when they heard that there was a priest in the area. However long periods of time could elapse between these clandestine Masses for the faithful as priests were on the run and had to keep moving. In this situation the “Dry Mass”, the Rosary was the prayer that maintained the faith of the Irish.
I think the saddest story was that of a Catholic mother who was betrayed by her son who had become a Protestant and was executed. I think the son was the Lord Mayor of Dublin. Talk about breaking your mothers heart. It was as if he killed the poor woman twice. The Dublin Martyrs — Catholic Arena Outside of St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, there is a statue of two individuals underneath a cross. If you do not know already, Protestants have two beautiful Cathedrals in Dublin City, while the Catholic Church which allegedly controlled the country in the 1900s, has only a Pro Cathedral. The two individuals portrayed in the statue are Margaret Ball and Francis Taylor. Margaret Ball was a Catholic woman in the 1500s who hosted priests and bishops for dinner in secret when they had been banned by the Protestant authorities. Margaret's son, Walter, was an apostate who knew of his mother's Catholic faith but refused to return to it. When he later became Mayor, the evil child had his own mother arrested ans dragged through the streets to prison for being Catholic. She was imprisoned by her Protestant son and died there aged 70, refusing to recant her faith. A successor to her son as Mayor of Dublin, Francis Taylor, was imprisoned for refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy and also died in prison. Beneath the statue it reads a quote from Pope John Paul II. The quote from 1992 reads: ‘Faithful witnesses who remained steadfast in their allegiance to Christ and his Church to the point of extreme hardship and the final sacrifice of their lives. All sectors of God's people are represented among these seventeen Servants of God: Bishops, priests both secular and religious, a religious brother and six lay people, including Margaret Bermingham Ball, a woman of extraordinary integrity who, together with the physical trials she had to endure, underwent the agony of being betrayed through the complicity of her own son. We admire them for their personal courage. We thank them for the example of their fidelity in difficult circumstances, a fidelity which is more than an example: it is a heritage of the Irish people and a responsibility to be lived up to in every age’. Dublin's Catholic martyrs are often forgotten in the city's history, in comparison to its political ones. With the city having become a shallow and dingy wasteland of American fast food and coffee outlets in recent years, the Archdiocese of Dublin are missing a valuable opportunity by not using these beautiful locations and stories to reinvigorate both the church and the city at large.
