Me, priests, nuns, brothers, Frank Duff and St Vitalus of Gaza
From cradle to early teens I grew up in the Dublin north coastal village of Baldoyle. I remember my mother had a small photo snap of my pram outside the door of our cottage in Parochial Avenue. It was the end house in an avenue that comprised 16 attached cottages, 8 on each side, that led up to a large and imposing Parochial House where the Parish Priest lived. Today that house contains business offices. Back in the early 1940s my pram was in front of a tall grey wall behind which stretched the land and properties of the Irish Christian Brothers, where future Brothers completed their second level studies and where in time they would returned to retirement and finally, the large cemetery where they would be buried.
Baldoyle
In the years to come I was educated in one of their schools. I would serve as an alter boy for that same Parish Priest, kneeing behind a man conceited enough to attempt, badly, to dye his grey hair black. and behind the Parochial House, a massive square of land owned by the nuns, the so called ‘Sisters of Charity.’ Snug in my pram I didn’t yet know that my Aunt Bella was already locked away in one of their Magdalene Laundries, for the sin of giving birth outside of marriage. (See my previous item on this in Dublin Dossier Issue 110 Mar./Apr.2021.
This in an Ireland that banned contraception and nurtured judgemental religious accusations on families with an unmarried pregnant girls. I would in time realise that my little pram was smack in the middle of a Catholic ghetto. Not anymore, Baldoyle is free, the nuns have gone, the Brothers too and the priesthood dwindles.
This little rant, while acknowledging there had to be some good in all of these God fearing people, was inflamed by an article that included Frank Duff, a Dubliner, born at 97 Phibsboro Road and the founder of the Legion of Mary, a man who strangely, went up in my estimation, when he came up with a more thoughtful solution to his religion’s fixation with unmarried mothers. Duff actually defied the Archbishops of Dublin, with his outreach to the prostitutes in “Monto”, at the time, Dublin’s thriving hub for prostitution and late-night drinking and named after Montgomery Street, nowadays Foley Street.
Both Archbishops of Dublin, Edward Joseph Byrne and John Charles McQuaid, favoured the nuns Magdalene Laundries workhouses solution, of locking unwed mothers away for life and taking their babies to sell to rich Catholic families. Duff was devoutly religious but he defied the usual consensus in Ireland at that time by helping women, in or out of wedlock, to keep and raise their children instead of giving them away for sale or adoption, and sought to provide accommodation for them and their children. Many were so poor, couldn’t work and look after their children. So for many the only alternative was prostitution.
Frank Duff
For this good work the Archbishops attempted to restrict Duff’s new Legion of Mary, even banned his discussion groups. The Bishops even sought to censor his Legion of Mary’s activities and publications. But Duff was also an influential civil servant who the middle of the Civil War managed to influence WT Cosgrave, the then minister for local government to provide accommodation for homeless unmarried women WT Cosgrave also gave Duff a premises at 76 Harcourt Street free of rent and taxes.
The previous owner was Batt O’Connor, a builder and friend of Michael Collins. Cosgrave later also gave a building used by North Dublin Union as place for homeless men. It became The Morning Star and was opened in the presence of President Cosgrave. In 1930, the Regina Coeli, a hostel for homeless women and their children, opened beside the Morning Star. Both hostels, were served by voluntary workers, members of the Legion of Mary. In !931 Duff was received in audience by Pope Pius X1, years before he was received recognition by his own archbishop in Dublin.
Over time, the Legion of Mary went on to major international recognition. Duff in 1965 was invited to attend the Second Vatican Council as a lay observer.
Frank Duff was known to be a believer of Saint Vitalis of the Monastery of Seridus near Gaza in the mid-6th century. At the age 60, during the episcopate of Patriarch John the Merciful (609–616), Vitalis felt called to leave the monastery and travel to Alexandria, a bustling port city rife with moral challenges, to address the plight of women trapped in prostitution. There he worked by day and used his earnings to hire prostitutes, and by prayer and scriptural readings urged their repentance and to avoid any scandals he urged them to secrecy. Often effective, leading many women to enter monasteries, others married and some found other work. Despite much criticism from clergy and laity, an investigation found him to be ‘pure of intention’. He died in 625 AD from injuries received from a man who misunderstood his visits to brothels. He is venerated as a saint by Roman Catholics on January 11., and by Eastern Orthodox Churches on April 22 and January 11.
Saint Vitalis of Gaza
What’s in a name?
A proposal to dename Herzog Park in Rathgar was due to take place at a meeting of Dublin City councillors in early December. On a count forecast the councillors were set to vote on the plan with a majority in favour. In the ensuing controversy caused the Taoiseach Micheál Martin to wade in saying the councils actions were “divisive and wrong, and should be withdrawn”.
The council then announced the vote has been suspended. That whole Dublin City Council procedure had started as far back as last June and it came to nothing. Turns out that under 2011 legislation, a consultation and ballot is required to change a placename and these legislative procedures had not been understood or followed.
The public park was named in 1995 in honour of Chaim Herzog, Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993, Although born in Belfast,t he son of Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, Ireland’s first chief rabbi from 1919 to 1937. So Chaim Herzog spent most of his early childhood in Dublin. He was just nine months old when the family relocated to Dublin and from 1919 they lived at 33 Bloomfield Avenue, Portobello. His father gave his full support to the republican cause during the War of Independence and was a fluent Irish speaker.
He was raised as an Orthodox Jew and attended a traditional Jewish cheder (primary school) at Stratford College on the junction of Zion Road and Orwell Road. It’s the only Jewish school in Ireland. He celebrated his bar mitzvah in the Adelaide Road synagogue and continued his education at Wesley College in Ballinteer. Rathgar has long been at the centre of Jewish life in Dublin. Also beside the park is the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland at Herzog House.
When there was Turkish Baths on Bachelors Walk
Alison Healy had an interesting piece in a recent Irish Times ‘An Irishwoman’s Diary’ of a hot and cold sea-water Turkish Baths on Bachelors Walk opened in 1771 by am impressively turbaned Dr Achmet Borumborad. Seemingly he already a Turkish Baths in Finglas. Achmet claimed to have been from Constantinople but he was actually plain Patrick Joyce from Kilkenny and is said to have spent some time in what is now Izmir a city on Turkey’s Aegean coast.
There are no longer any Turkish baths in Dublin. The largest and most elaborate was the one at Lincoln Place. It opened in February 1860. It was large with separate bathing areas for men and women and even included a area for horses and other animals. It was topped by its most prominent feature, a 50 foot high ogee-shaped dome and was referred to by Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses as “the mosque of the baths” It was demolished in 1970.
McQaid’s plan to build a cathedral in Merrion’s Square
There was a grandiose plan to build Catholic cathedral in the city. However times have changed, church going has dwindled and Catholicism isn’t as powerful. During all the years of British rule their penal laws disadvantaged and punished Catholics and as a result the importance of Dublin produced two major Protestant Cathedrals. As the penal laws were relaxed towards the end of the 18th century, the Marlborough Street site was bought in 1803 and when completed 200 years ago on November 14th, 1825. Since that was feast day of St Laurence O’Toole, canonised 801 years ago this year. What we used to call the Pro (short for Pro Tempore) Cathedral on Marlborough Street will now be known as St Mary’s Cathedral.
John Charles McQuaid, perhaps the most flawed and pompous Archbishop of Dublin, had planned in 1940 to build a monstrous cathedral on Dublin’s Merrion Square. A site there was bought in 1930 for £100,000 (€113,167). The funds collected for the new cathedral were used on new churches in the rapidly of the time growing archdiocese and on the Archbishop himself.
(see ‘Dublin Dossier’ Senior Times, Issue126, Nov/Dec 2023).
