| THE BRENNAN FAMILY HISTORY of Co LAOIS |
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The Diocese of Ossory "Ireland's Oldest Bishopric" |
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The Bishop of Ossory is the leader of the Diocese of Ossory in south central Ireland. Since the English Reformation there have been different bishops for the Roman Catholic Diocese and the Church of Ireland Diocese of Ossory and Cashel. The diocese' territory corresponds with the Kingdom of Ossory in the province of Leinster and counties Kilkenny and Laois. The diocese is centred on St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny. Following the Synod of Rath Bresail, the see was moved to Athbone and subsequently to Kilkenny.
The coming of Christianity
to Ossory is associated with St. Kieran of Saighir, the "first-born of the
saints of Ireland" (Promogenitus Sanctorum Hiberniae). His foundation at
Saighir Kieran flourished for many centuries. Not far distant in Aghaboe,
St. Canice founded a monastery in the 6th century which grew in
importance, giving Feargal to the church of Salzburg and eventually
becoming for a time the site of the bishop's see.
The diocese of Ossory,
"Ireland's oldest bishopric", was probably co-terminus with the ancient
kingdom of Ossory. Its present boundaries were set at the synod of
Rathbreasail. It includes most of the county of Kilkenny (except for the
parishes of Graiguenamangh and Paulstown), part of Co. Laois and the
“island” parish of Seir Kieran in Co. Offaly. For a time in the 13th
century its boundaries extended as far as the Barrow and included
Graiguenamanagh.
Already before the arrival
of the Anglo-Normans the winds of change had been blowing from Continental
Europe. The coming of the Cistercians to Jerpoint probably around 1160
and to Kilkenny had already signalled the passing of the old Celtic order,
and soon the Canons Regular of St. Augustine were firmly installed in
Saighir Kieran and Fertagh and had set up new foundations in Aghmacart,
St. John's, Kilkenny, Kells and Inistioge; their sisters were in the
nunnery of Kilculiheen.
The transfer of the
Cathedral from Aghaboe to Kilkenny in the last decade of the twelfth
century, the foundation of a cathedral chapter and the establishment of a
parish system through the system of tithes introduced by the Anglo-Normans
radically transformed the ecclesiastical organization of the diocese.
More than half of the new parishes were in the hands of the religious,
while the rest were run by the secular clergy - mostly the dean and
chapter of St. Canice's. A few were in the hands of lay patrons. In the
13th century the Dominicans came to Aghaboe, the Black Abbey in
Kilkenny and Rosbercon. Because of their importance in the diocese the
suppression of the monasteries in the wake of the reformation led to
enormous changes.
It was only at the
beginning of the 17th century with the arrival of an increasing
number of priests from the continental colleges and the appointment of
David Rothe first as vicar apostolic and then as bishop (1618-50) that the
Church began to reorganize. Rothe was the most prominent bishop in Ireland
- at one stage he was the only bishop in the country - and he took a
leading role in this renewal as well as publishing a number of important
works. In Ossory the old civil parishes were reorganized into twenty nine
or thirty unions, clerical conferences were introduced, confraternities
established, and ecclesiastical legislation was updated. Rothe's
prominence in the country and the relatively peaceful state of Kilkenny
led to the Confederate 'parliament' meeting in the city in the 1640s.
That period saw a flowering of religious and political activity in
Kilkenny particularly during the stay of Archbishop Rinuccini, the Papal
Nuncio. The Cromwellian invasion led to a period of great difficulty for
the Church with the poet priest Bernard Fitzpatrick who was vicar general,
martyred in 1653 and others forced to flee.
James Phelan's episcopacy
(1669-95) was a period of renewal. The number of priests increased,
diocesan synods were regularly held, chapels were built or restored, and
the people were able to worship in relative safety. Protected by the
Butler web of contacts Phelan ordained almost one eighth of the priests of
Ireland on the 1704 list during his twenty-seven year episcopacy, more
than any other bishop in the country.
The passing of the act of
1697 saw the exile of Bishop Daton and many regular clergy but some
priests remained and the registration of 1704 meant that they could serve
their flocks in relative peace apart from a few years around 1714. New
chapels were constructed and apart from another brief period of difficulty
in the 1740s the Church slowly recovered. As the population increased in
the latter half of the century the need to divide the large parishes was
felt and extra priests were required. It was really in the first half of
the 19th century that most of the large parishes were divided
and that the situation that obtains today was largely reached. The 18th
century saw three Dominican bishops in Ossory, two of whom were
significant figures on the Irish stage - Thomas De Burgo who wrote
Hibernia Dominicana and John Thomas Troy who later became archbishop of
Dublin.
The last quarter of the 18th
century saw the level of tolerance towards Catholics gradually improve,
and with the passing of the relief act of 1782, which enabled Catholics to
found schools, a turning point was reached. The diocesan school that was
founded in Kilkenny was the first of its kind in the country. Its motto,
“Hiems transiit”, reflects this moment. Two years later schools for the
education of poor boys and girls were founded in the city. By the 1790s
upheaval on the continent led to the need for the provision of education
for priests at home and in 1792 the college opened its doors to students
of philosophy and theology, the first college in Ireland to do so. The
Presentation Sisters arrived at the end of the century and soon afterwards
the Christian Brothers - both providing education for those who could not
afford it. The many churches built or renovated in the 1790s reflected
the changing position of the Catholic community. The winter indeed had
passed. The early part of the 19th century saw the clergy of Ossory led by Richard O' Donnell oppose the Veto and support O’ Connell. Bishop Marum succeeded the pious Bishop Lanigan and he in turn was succeeded by a Carlow man, William Kinsella. Church building continued apace between 1811 and 1845, with the new St. Kieran's College, a number of new parochial churches and the beginning of a new Cathedral (1843) making a definite statement about the growing self-confidence of the Catholic community. Bishop Edmond Walsh oversaw the completion of St. Mary's Cathedral and consecrated it in 1857. The year 1849 saw the founding of the Callan Tenant Protection Society by two curates in Callan. It was a society that was eventually to have a profound effect on the land agitation in the country.
The ‘Callan Case' achieved great notoriety both at home and
abroad between 1868 and 1875 as Robert O' Keeffe, the parish priest of
Callan, Bishop Walsh, his successor Patrick Francis Moran (1872-84) and
Cardinal Cullen became involved in civil court proceedings. Moran made a
notable contribution to many areas of life in the diocese during his
twelve year stay in Ossory - local ecclesiastical history, liturgical
reform, the renovation of churches, the addition to St. Kieran's. Ashlin
was his trusted architect. Moran was heavily involved in education on a
national and local level. He brought the Mercy Sisters to Callan, the
Sisters of Charity to Kilkenny and the Sacred Heart of Mary Sisters to
Ferrybank. He became archbishop of Sydney in 1884 and Australia's first
cardinal the following year. He also found time to publish an edition of
Archdall's Monasticon Hibernicum, his three volume Spicilegium Ossoriense
and David Rothe's Analecta. The clergy were already quite involved in
political life at that time and were to become more involved in the land
question and later still in the co-operative movement - a largely
unwritten chapter in their history. The diocese had only three bishops between 1884 and 1981 - Abraham Brownrigg, Patrick Collier and Peter Birch. Bishop Brownrigg made additions to the Cathedral, brought the St. John of God Sisters to the diocese and promoted Canon Carrigan's work on the history of the diocese which eventually bore fruit in 1905 with the publication of a four volume history of unrivaled value. During Patrick Collier's time work continued on St. Mary's Cathedral, and a number of churches were built and renovated. Peter Birch, bishop in the heady days after the Vatican Council, oversaw changes in the liturgy and in the churches themselves. It was a period of great change and adaptation not just for the Church but for society in general. Much work was done in Ossory for those afflicted by poverty and suffering from disability, work that saw Bishop Birch achieve national prominence. The suspension of the seminary in St. Kieran's College in 1994 marked a watershed in the history of St. Kieran's and of the diocese. But the college continues to have an active role in adult religious education and formation through CREIDIM and the Maynooth Outreach Programme. Parishes within the Diocese of Ossory in the County of Laois:
Source: http://www.ossory.ie/history.htm |