Few have endured the hardships of persecution and tyranny as have the Irish people. Over the course of many centuries, the Irish suffered misery and degradation under a foreign occupation that took away their rights, land, language, and even their food. Of the many trials that have befallen this nation, this year marks the 175th anniversary of the worst. 1847 is known as Black ’47” in folk memory as it was the height of the Great Famine (often called “the Great Hunger”), an epochal event that profoundly changed Ireland.
The Great Famine lasted roughly from 1845 to 1850. It began with a blight of the potato crop on which most of the Irish peasantry was dependent. What turned the failure of this single crop into a famine was England’s long-running political hegemony over Ireland. The English owned the land and rented small plots to the local population. Competition for these plots resulted in higher rents and increasingly smaller plots. The Irish renters had no rights over the land they worked. The landlords were “absentee,” residing in England, so few improvements could ever be made. The better grain crops were exported to England while the Irish peasant, basically a landless serf, was left to subside primarily on the potato alone. When this crop failed, the local population was left to starve and the English government did little to nothing to alleviate the crisis.
At the start of the Famine in 1845, the Irish population is estimated to have numbered between eight and nine million. When it ended five or so years later, the population was reduced by a quarter—a million died and another million was forced to flee to other parts of the world, especially in large numbers to Canada and America. Destitution led to continuing mass immigration for decades. By 1881, the population of the island was reduced to just five million. In 35 years, three million people had died or emigrated; a third of the nation’s population was gone.
175 years later, most other countries in Western Europe have doubled or tripled their population. But not Ireland. The total population today, including Northern Ireland, is around seven million, which is still below the pre-famine number.
The deaths were a result of starvation and related diseases of fever, diphtheria, cholera, smallpox, dysentery, and influenza. Those forced into exile had to endure a treacherous journey across the Atlantic on crowded and disease-ridden vessels known as “coffin ships.” Some reported being followed by sharks because so many bodies had to be thrown overboard.
The first ships escaping the Famine sought refuge in Canada and had to pass through Grosse Isle, a quarantine station located in the St. Lawrence River of Quebec. It became overwhelmed in the summer of “Black ’47.” Ships with thousands on board were forced to wait in a row measuring several miles long. That year alone, over 5,000 burials took place on Grosse Isle with another 5,000 listed as having been buried at sea en route.
Estimates place the overall number of Irish exiles buried on Grosse Isle between 12,000 and 15,000. Today the island is a National Historic Site serving as a memorial of the Great Famine. The dead lie buried beneath a large Celtic Cross. One of the inscriptions at its base reads:
Sacred to the memory of thousands of Irish emigrants who, to preserve the faith, suffered hunger and exile in 1847-48 and stricken with fever ended here their sorrowful pilgrimage.
Preserve the faith they did. From the black pall of Famine that lay over Ireland came the light of a more vibrant Catholic faith. In the midst of their misery, the Irish turned to God for hope and the strength to endure.
Prior to the Famine, centuries of British colonial policy crippled the Church. The Penal Laws enacted in the 1690s left far too few priests in the country to adequately teach and guide the faithful. Only a century after the Famine, however, the future Pope Paul VI would refer to Ireland as “the most Catholic country in the world.”
The fidelity of good priests certainly helped. Fr. William Slattery has written an inspiring article detailing how priests in Ireland and Canada rose to the occasion, acting according to their identity as spiritual fathers in living, working and even dying among their beleaguered people.
Through their guidance, the Irish became as a nation, deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart. Great hope was taken in the words of the Entrance Antiphon for the Mass of the Sacred Heart from Psalm 33: “The designs of his Heart are from age to age, to rescue their souls from death and to keep them alive in famine.”
Devotion to the Sacred Heart became almost synonymous with Irish identity. On Passion Sunday in 1873, the Irish bishops consecrated their nation to the Sacred Heart. In 1888 Fr. James Cullen, SJ became director of the Ireland’s chapter of the Apostleship of Prayer and soon founded the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart, a periodical which successfully promoted this devotion. Images of the Sacred Heart were ceremonially enthroned in family homes across the country with votive lamps perpetually lit beside them.
From these homes came forth many vocations. So many that there was a surplus in the country. With too few beds in local rectories, many Irish priests became missionaries again, like in the days of Saints Columba and Columbanus who evangelized the pagan tribes settling in the ruins of the Roman Empire. For decades Ireland was one of the great missionary-sending countries in the world.
Those struggling to remain firm in the faith in the midst of the spiritual famine engulfing Ireland and the rest of Western Christian civilization today can take inspiration from the hope that spurred the Irish people 175 years ago. The faith of many of the Irish did not just endure the Great Famine, but grew stronger. The fires of affliction, though always painful, can either scorch or can become a purifying tool. The Great Famine tested the Irish, but the faith given them by St. Patrick remained firm and unshaken in the decades that followed. May the same be said of us.
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What a wonderfully researched and well written article. On the feast day of our great saint can I recommend to your readers the prayer written by St Patrick himself and sung by an Irish singer, Lisa Kelly, ‘The Deer’sCry’. It’s available on YouTube and music streaming services.
Thanks for this article, Father, and for the story of Grosse Isle. A damning commentary on the corruption of the current manner of “celebrating” St. Patrick’s Day, at least here in Canada.
This reminds me of the “Holodomor,” the famine forced on Ukrainians by Stalin and his friends.
Thank you father. My family came over here in the time of the famine but I can not trace them back to Ireland because the Irish in this country were looked down on as less than citizens. They did however contribute greatly to this country and the rest of the world. I am proud of my Irish heritage.
“Pope Paul VI would refer to Ireland as “the most Catholic country in the world.”
So what happened? How did it go from that to dead?
The one positive from the COVID lockdowns was that I was able to “attend” Mass anywhere in the world. One of my first stops was Ireland only to tell myself a few minutes into the mass : never again. Perhaps there are some good liturgies around but the one at Knock was simply awful. Lame, banal, bad homily – everything that is terrible about the Novus Ordo.
How did we get here? How does wholesale death of faith happen?
” Faith is lost through Decadence!”
Cultural Marxism as developed in The Frankfurt School in Germany and the works of Antonio Gramsci ,an Italian Communist who was jailed by Mussolini, are in my mind the foundational stones in the demise of Judaeo-Christian Western Society!
The Core Tenet of their designs was to roll back 2000 years of Judaeo-Christian theology and developments and to replace it with A Secular Humanist Dictatorship or ” Utopia on Earth !”They understood that ” Faith ” is the thread that binds and bonds people together and that is was ” Faith ” that had to be destroyed before they could supplant it with their Secularism!
As in The A. A. 12 Step Plan to Sobriety Cultural Marxists and their latest proponents, who peddle Critical Race Theory, Political Correctness, Transgenderism and every other abhorrent abomination that is antithetical to everything Judaeo-Christianity espouses, seek to force those that adhere to ” Faith ” to relent and unlearn all they know and understand about their Faith and to indoctrinate our children from Pre-Kindergarten through Grade to High School and College with every aspect of their Odious Theology!
I believe the most effective tool they have used to unmoor Christians from their ” Faith ” has been “Materialism! ”
People of ” Faith ” have been seduced into giving up their personal responsibility, self reliance , personal independence, self motivation, individual freedom with the lure of ‘ Things ” that they have become dependent upon in order to live their lives!
Western Judaeo-Christian Society was built by rugged individuals who were strong enough to build their own lives and to defend what they had built but were wise enough to come together to defend and fight against anything that threatened the Family, The Church, Their Community,Their Country, Their Traditions and Culture! People knew dependency was the path to corruption and it was excoriated throughout society!
Letting others do for you what you know ethically and morally you should do for yourself and your family has become the knife used by Cultural Marxist Politicians to cut away ” The Threads of Christian Faith ” that once bonded all Judaeo-Christian Nations together!
The huge Welfare States and vast Government Programs ,in former Judaeo-Christian Countries, now do for too many Citizens everything they should be doing for themselves!
Slavery was abolished over 150 years ago but many people today are still enslaved to government benefits and that dependency has led to a cultural rot in many cities throughout Western Society!
The unchecked growth of government dependency is by design as is the invasion of illegal aliens across borders of former Christian Countries around The World! When a system can no longer support that which it was built to support it then collapses! When a Nation is forced to carry the social burden of millions of illegal, non native speaking illegal immigrants with no knowledge of how their new home works then Societal Fractures and De stabilization begins to tear the Nation apart!
Nations are not destroyed from outside they are destroyed from within when it’s Citizens no longer believe that their failing Nation is worth fighting to protect and preserve!
So as we look across The World and see how former Judaeo-Christian Countries handled ” The Pandemic ” perhaps we should analyze their performances based upon how many had and still do have dictatorial measures which robbed their Citizens of Their Basic Human Rights! As we watch in horror at the war in The Ukraine while The World stands by and lets thousands of innocent people die we can see how former Judaeo-Christians do not exercise wisdom to come together to fight and subdue the excises of a Dictatorial Monster!
Millions of Babies around The World in Former Christian Countries are put to dead in the name of convenience and nothing but a whimper is heard in an attempt to stop it! This all by design and Western Judaeo-Christians who have had their consciences removed by decadent living change the channel and believe it is someone else’s problem!
That is how ” Faith Dies!”
We have a beautiful Famine Memorial at Gaelic Park in Chicago. It was sculpted by Fr. A.P, Brankin of the Chicago Archdiocese.. Here is an picture:
http://www.chicagogaelicpark.org/pics/famineMemorial.jpg