Denver, Colo., Mar 17, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- They’re Irish, they’re Catholic, and they’re proud. But you maybe haven’t heard of them.
They’re the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Lady’s Ancient Order of Hibernians, the oldest and largest Irish Catholic organizations in the United States.
Non-Irish need not apply to the orders – membership is reserved for those who can prove that at least some Irish blood flows through their veins. The word ‘Hibernian’ is another word for Irishmen, taken from ‘Hibernia’, the classical Latin term for Ireland.
Members also must be practicing Catholics willing to stand up for and support the Catholic Church.
Today, the order functions similarly to other Catholic charitable organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus, but with an Irish twist. They support many Catholic causes such as vocations and pro-life work, but they also promote Irish culture and education on Irish history, and help modern-day Irish immigrants to the U.S. and support a free and united Ireland.
“If you had a group of us in a room you’d have twice as many opinions as you’d have people,” Danny O’Connell, National Vice President for the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, told CNA.
“But the thing that pulls us all together is our culture, our music, our traditions, many of which came from the immigrants.”
Why the Ancient Order?
The orders come from a time when secret societies were in vogue, and the stakes were much higher.
After the Protestant Reformation, the English, who had conquered Ireland, tried fiercely to convert the stubborn Irish Catholics, to little avail. Irish Catholics soon became accustomed to “Mass rocks”, where a priest would say Mass outside on a rock and quickly be able to hide the altar cloth and feign a picnic if they were found out.
At this time, secret groups with names like the Whiteboys, Ribbonmen, and Defenders supported rights for Catholics, but their first job was to protect their clergy. Despite persecution, the Catholics clung fiercely to their faith.
As Catholic oppression continued and crop failures struck Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Irish began to move, and their secret societies, now a learned defense mechanism, came with them. It was around this time that the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Ireland and the UK was born.
Many Irish also immigrated to the United States, with more than 1 million doing so around the time of the Irish potato famine between 1845-1852. So many sick Irish died on the trip that the boats that brought them over began to be referred to as “coffin ships.”
“When people refer to the famine, most of the Irish see it as a genocide,” O’Connell explained. “It was the Great Hunger. They were exporting more food from Ireland than they are today, yet the Irish Catholics were dying and their teeth would be stained green because the only thing they could even try and eat was the grass. It was the British government starving the people who weren’t allowed to eat the food on their land except for the potatoes, and it was land that the British stole from us.”
But despite promises of religious freedom, the Irish found that United States was also hostile to Catholicism, under the guise of patriotism.
Since colonial times, Americans had been suspect of Catholics from all immigrant groups, suspicious that their allegiances to the Pope would trump their loyalty to the U.S.
“Like any immigrant group, when you were new in the U.S., you were low on the totem pole, you were the ones abused and beaten and robbed and not given good jobs,” O’Connell said.
“And people didn’t understand Catholicism, so they would prevent you from practicing your religion. So if you were having a Mass, they would beat up or often kill the priest … so the Hibernians would stay outside or wherever they were, and stand guard. Back in those days that’s what you did, you stood outside and protected the life of your priest, and that was the only way you could continue practicing your religion,” he said.
The Hibernians also helped their own to overcome discrimination when they were looking for housing and employment. In 1894, the Daughters of Erin, which eventually became the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, was founded in order to protect young Irish immigrant women in the United States.
The Hibernians today
A strong Irish Catholic identity, forged in the overcoming of numerous adversities, can still be felt strongly in many parts of the United States, and is what bonds the Hibernians together today.
Marilyn Madigan, the National Treasurer for the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, said the camaraderie among the early Hibernians can still be felt strongly in the organization today.
“It’s the best organization I’ve ever belonged to, we’re like a second family,” she said.
Madigan said one of the most important things the orders do today, besides their Catholic charitable work, is to help undocumented Irish immigrants in the United States, of whom there are an estimated 50,000. Most of them entered the country legally, but are now here on overstayed visas.
Fears and anxiety are even higher among this group after the election of President Donald Trump, who promised to crack down on illegal immigration.
“There are a lot of undocumented Irish in this country, and most of the Irish organizations do work to try to document those Irish, so we haven’t forgotten where we came from, we hold that country dear to our hearts, as well as our religion,” Madigan said. In fact, the two are really inextricably linked.
“Most of the famine Irish were Catholic, their religion was taken away from them, they had to go to Masses behind rocks, so our Irish and Catholic heritage is very important,” she said.
Because the orders are non-profit groups, they do not engage in any kind of lobbying for Irish immigration, and they also declined to comment politically on the immigration situation of other undocumented immigrants in the United States.
A completely free and independent Ireland is another cause near and dear to the Hibernian heart, and the group hopes to see a peaceful and legal reunification of the country soon, though Brexit has raised some doubts.
“We’re very involved with Brexit, the fear is that we could see a return to a hard border between the North and the Republic,” O’Connell explained. Ireland and Northern Ireland (the six northern counties that still belong to the U.K.) have enjoyed relatively open borders since the 1990s, to the benefit of both countries’ economies, he added. Several members of the order will be travelling to Europe to voice their support for an open border.
The diversity of causes that the order supports and the faith that undergirds it continues to tie them together, O’Connell said.
“The culture, the music, the song, that brings us all together, and it’s kind of like with a family … and it’s driven by being Catholic. There’s not another Irish group in the country that has that diversity, and that’s why we’re so strong.”
But membership is waning. The women’s and men’s orders combined have a membership of about 80,000 in the U.S., at a generous estimate. It’s something that has both O’Connell and Madigan concerned.
“It seems like the younger generations do not join organizations like we have in the past,” Madigan said. “It seems like the younger generation, while they’re proud of their heritage, they don’t join, or they may join or not be as active.”
“We’re trying to do a better job of welcoming people who are younger than 60,” O’Connell said.
“We’re in the process of really kicking off what’s going to be a several-year membership campaign. We’ve never really done that before, and we realize how many people say, ‘I don’t know anything about this, why don’t I?’”
What a Hibernian wants you to know about St. Patrick’s Day
While you might think you’d find a Hibernian dressed in green and drinking steadily like the stereotypical St. Patrick’s Day celebrant, there are a few things the Hibernians wish the general population understood about the holiday.
“First and foremost, to a true Irishman, St. Patrick’s Day is a feast day,” Madigan said.
“We start out with Mass, with the majority of us participating in parades prior to or on the day itself, where we highlight our Irish heritage.”
Getting drunk, she said, is not part of the plan.
“The things that upset me the most is that people think it’s just a day to go out and celebrate and imbibe in alcoholic beverages, and maybe be overserved,” she said.
“They wear shirts that are very denigrating to the Irish, making us look like we’re a race of drunks. We’re not, we’re a proud irish race that has spread Christianity throughout the world through our missionaries. And I don’t think that the general public really sees what we do.”
O’Connell said that he is also “very disturbed” by the T-shirts and decorations that denigrate the Irish.
“What I try to tell people when I talk to them about it, is I say change it to a different nationality, change it to a different race … can you imagine?”
St. Patrick’s Day is also an Irish-American holiday, he added. We eat corned beef and cabbage because that’s what the Irish immigrants in America ate because they couldn’t afford other cuts of meat. They wanted to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in a big way because they wanted to feel close to their Irish heritage. It wasn’t until recently that the holiday became anything more than any other feast day in Ireland, and they only started holding big celebrations for tourism purposes.
Still, he said, it’s hard to completely blame those who want to be Irish for a day.
“Being Irish is just so much fun.”
[…]
What’s with these airplane interviews? Everything was so clear after the Pope snuggled up to Bonino, Pelosi, Biden, Clinton, Soros, Sachs, et al. Now the Pope confuses us again by saying he is against murder. How long Lord?!
Unlike pro-life heroes Popes St. JP II and BXVI, Pope Francis uses the papacy to legitimize worldwide abortion leaders like the Clinton Foundation. That is fraudulent. Who could be surprised since he told us in 2013 that abortion was not a priority of his pontificate, and every action confirms this travesty. If sins below the belt do not matter, why should the pregnancies that result? Why should anyone be impressed when Pope Francis rarely tacks abortion onto his interests? There is no one more poor than the unwanted child in the womb. Abortion and it’s proponents have thrived unchecked everywhere Bergoglio has been a Bishop. He has no credibility on the issue.
“God does not give up if we are late in responding to Him.” The murdered unborn are with God and praying for us.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-pope-interview/pope-says-church-must-end-obsession-with-gays-contraception-abortion-idUKBRE98I0S020130919
Yes. How long? You don’t play with life, you just rehabilitate rapists.
Mmm. I’ll be waiting to see how much coverage this presser gets in the so-called mainstream media.
There’s no need to pan the Pope. Especially when the pontiff is willing to stand up for human life and when he is willing to admonish us about the dangers of playing God with human life.
“Whether it is the law not to let the child grow in the mother’s womb or the law of euthanasia in disease and old age,” he said, “I am not saying it is a faith thing, but it is a human thing: there is bad compassion.”
Faith has no bearing? I’m confused
I think the Holy Father is saying that one doesn’t have to be a believer to know that abortion and euthanasia are wrong: the inviolability of human life is defensible according to reason.
He means that you don’t need to believe in God to know that a child in the womb and an elderly person are human beings and that to kill them is to kill a human being. It is a matter of DNA. A being with a human DNA is a human being. Whether you believe in God or in the gods or in no god doesn’t change the fact that you are killing a human being.
As Catholics, we believe that each human being is created in the image of God and has immeasurable value. That is a further step. He is trying to get the first fact across.
Those who support abortion and euthanasia keep trying to get people to believe that it is a matter of religious belief, not a matter of science. If it is a matter of religious belief, then one can believe in it if one wants. If it is a matter of science, then it is an objective fact. But people don’t like objective facts nowadays.
But if there is no God, no after life⁹ no suffering on the cross, why would abortion or euthanasia be wrong? If it was a case of one life over and out then the avoidance of suffering would be critical. Only Faith makes sense and gives purpose.
I believe that the recent president of the pro-life Democrats was an atheist. Is it unthinkable for someone to value human beings because of humanism and a knowledge of science?
I believe the Holy Father was trying to emphasize that killing has no place regardless of one’s religion (or no religion). This perspective is pretty consistent with his views on the death penalty and war.
Actually, it is not. He has never been consistent about anything, including life issues. A blanket condemnation of war and capital punishment is not pro-life. Moral applications of both save lives. And Francis has been soft on abortion in the past through his actions. His beliefs often appear to shift with his mood of the moment. A few years ago, after speaking out against euthanasia, he hastily added, “But the moral law must not be applied mechanically.” I’m glad he is mostly right on this occasion for a change even though there is a slight inference that euthanasia is more wrong now because of better management of pain, which is a falsehood. He still has trouble understanding that truth is eternal. It never changes. Still, maybe he is finally discovering some aspects of orthodox Catholic theology.
Yeah, miracles do occur, so yeah, he may discover and accept some aspects of orthodox Catholic theology. It is hoped that miracle will not be too long or late in occurring.
My interpretation would be that one needn’t have faith to condemn abortion and euthanasia. Anyone of good will committed to upholding principles of natural law could see their way to doing so. Faith commands us to obey the natural law. But one can do so without faith as well.
I would think that traditional, orthodox, backwardist Catholics would all – to a person – be very much aware that murdering the unborn and tossing the sick and useless eldering onto a garbage heap was morally offensive. Who was Francis reminding of Church teaching and the natural law? Surely not those he despises.
He was speaking to everyone, Catholics, non-Catholics, non-believers. Please see me previous comment in reply to knowall.
But, he has a habit of ‘running away from God.’ There are documents that have come out of Francis’ Vatican that have little or no mention of Christ. He speaks about evangelizing without proselytizing yet he shies away even from referencing Christ in his promotion of morality. Since when does giving preference to what we know by dint of our reason mean that we should avoid any mention of God? Let’s remember that Francis is not some university professor of philosophy; he is the Vicar of Christ.
We are encouraged by this papal reference to moral absolutes…
While tangential to our Holy Father’s focused message, a larger listing is supplied below. Hopeful, too, his clear message will be included—and broadened—at the end of Synod 2023, when “the leadership” offers its Questions for Reflection heading into Synod 2024 and its recommendations.
About the interim Reflections, here are three suggestions from the back bleachers:
FIRST, that “subsidiarity” will be substantially developed throughout, such that local bishops (within the “hierarchical communion” and as successors of the apostles are reinstated as more than initial “facilitators”). No need for centrally (mis)managed and larded up programs franchised to (pre-Vatican II) bishop administrators.Especially where prudential judgment is a factor, as in all Catholic Social Thought/Teaching.
SECOND, that the Synod members and the leadership, both, will discern clearly, and fully reject wherever the “smoke of Satan” might have ambiguously insinuated itself into the synodal rhetoric and shopping list.
THIRD, that clarity on how synodal engagement in the world fits into (does not replace) the higher mission of the Church—as is concisely clarified in mutually complementary parts of Gaudium et Spes and elsewhere:
Examples: “Earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom. Nevertheless, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the kingdom of God” (n. 39, citing Pope Pius XI), but also, yes, “The Christian who neglects his temporal duties neglects his duties toward his neighbor and even God, and jeopardizes his eternal soul” (n. 43).
AND, of course, Veritatis Splendor (nn. 56, 95, 115) which now explicitly incorporates [!] Natural Law and moral absolutes into the permanent Magisterium.
These non-ideological perspectives become greater synodal “concerns” as we seem to be drifting away from a world of so-called “progress” and toward one of disintegration, with sins of moral omission—inattention to blindsided and real victims of all kinds, to natural disasters, to invertebrate “tolerance” by uprooted culture, economics, politics and society—and by less-than-steadfast word games, imposed on moral/ecclesial certainties in some parts of the Church itself.
_____________________________________________
NOTE: From the Catechism and the Magisterium (n. 2033-5), those intrinsically evil acts which are immoral under all circumstances and non-negotiable, include: intentional killing of the innocent (nn. 2270, 2273), infanticide (n. 2268), abortion (n. 2273), euthanasia (n. 2277); AND sexual immorality (nn. 2352, 2353, 2356, 2357, 2370, 2380, 2381). And, from the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, these significant entries: Gaudium et Spes, n. 27 third paragraph, and n. 79 second paragraph.
On second thought, are the above “recommendations” actually IMPERATIVES? Not to be deferred from 2023 to 2024? What kind of “leadership” cajoles Successors of the Apostles (apostello: “sent”) to have a meeting about a meeting?
The Holy Spirit? Did he do this at Pentecost…”come back next year”? Maybe yes to a phased approach, but what really are the ground rules???
After a solid decade of deliberately – and undeniably – uttering confusing, contradictory and divisive statements, Pope Francis has nevertheless revealed his cunning method of eroding Catholic belief. Pope Francis gushes over his abortionist, homosexualist and pan-en-theist friends and then – after exposing himself as a Globalist cheerleader – he shrewdly says something “Catholic” to neutralize criticism, thereby protecting the platform of the papacy he requires to continue attacking the full and authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ. If Pope Francis truly believes that abortionists are “hitmen”, then why does he honour hitmen with the Order of St. Gregory ? If abortion is murder, then why does Pope Francis call murderers “good Catholics” ? These questions are rhetorical – and the answers are obvious.
Honestly, my first thought was that he was just playing to the crowd. He might believe. He might not. I don’t honestly know for sure.
Bingo. Thank you, Father. It is hard for me to fathom how any believing Catholic can take any statement like this from PF seriously. His actions speak louder than his words.
I thought you are supposed to “hate the sin and love the sinner”. Now you’ve got me totally confused! How are we supposed to talk to sinners?
What does the duplicity of Francis have to do with that admonition of Our Lord considering that the criticisms here are that Francis has a long record of hypocrisy on the matter of abortion and being supportive of the world’s most notorious abortionists rather than “hating their sins”? What you might take into consideration is the deep-rooted inconsistency of Francis, a reality that traditionalists or orthodox or simply conservative Catholics (Catholics who are Catholic) have been agonizingly aware.
Francis slanders faithful, non-ideological Catholics around the world as faithless ideologues, which his warped sociology equates as Americanism, while remaining oblivious to his own devout ideological views of global social management by Davos elitists and his non-religious faith in their syncretistic cult of inevitable progress knowing full well of their imperatives of mandatory abortion policies in pursuit of their secular utopia, which he also affirms with his theology where God changes His mind to accommodate His creation. Thus, his preposterous word for those who do not see God as an idiot as backwardists.
Whatever religious beliefs Francis actually has is a mystery for anyone willing to be honest about the totality of what he has said. But his moral sense has been blowing with the wind for a long time and Catholics are wise to not take impulsive statements too seriously when he might well undermine them a month later before the same global audience. Hailing him as a supreme example means we share the moral evil when he does damage later.
I appreciate CWR’s sidebar of past articles. I just now read “Michigan religious order criticizes the LCWR”, June 14, 2012.
Congratulate me! I’m only 11 years behind!
Belated kudos to the Michigan sisters.
At this stage of his game, I don’t give a whit what he believes, thinks, or claims to receive from his ‘holy’ spirit. I’ve given the pope up and over to God. Is there any reason why we need attend to words coming from forked tongues?
Thank you to those who clarified my “faith” quandary. It is difficult to reach those who are so obtuse on the future of the human race, but perhaps it will impact some.
To get a correct perspective on Bergoglio’s remarks on life issues Google up:
Actions do indeed speak far louder than words.
How impressed would you be if Confederate president Jefferson Davis had occasionally remarked that racism was wrong. His actions would far outweigh his words, right? So it is with Bergoglio on the life issues.
From womb to tomb, life is sacred and a precious gift.
Amen Papa. Bravo, belle parole da vivere.
Amen Papa!
These comments underscore the major problem of this papacy — it’s not when he’s clear like this, it’s when he’s ambiguous that’s the problem.
I’m sure the crowd he hangs out with doesn’t help him in these matters.
“I am not saying it is a faith thing, but it is a human thing: there is bad compassion.” . . . by defining the argument to be a non-spiritual “thing”, pardon me for thinking so, but doesn’t he just undermine his own authority to speak on the matter? I am not looking for excuses for the man, but I am also not looking at him through what years of disappointment have wrought.
One of Pope Francis’ cunning tactics is to speak truth and falsehood on alternate days, thereby dividing the Catholic faithful, pitting them against each other, arguing over what they think he may have said – instead of forming a unified phalanx that could effectively battle against his Anti-gospel.
You don’t play with life.
I will pray for you under obligation and out of love. God will hear my prayer.
Sinner that I am, you can not tell me or anyone else better than I or worse than I, to “Let’s go to the peripheries”, when it is leading them to co-operate with purveyors of abortion and contraception.
You can not. You shall not. The Lord will not have you change subjects like that let alone with so many whimsies attending and ignoring the one who speaks to you in His Name.