[Cardinal] Paul Cullen (1803-78)
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Life
| b. 29 April 1803, at Prospect village [var. Ballitore], Co. Kildare, the son of prosperous farming family with priests on both sides; ed. at the Shackleton Quaker school in Ballitore, then Carlow College, and afterwards the College of Propaganda, Rome; impressed Pope Leo XII and the cardinals at public disputation, Sept. 1828; ord. in Rome, 1829 [by Pietro Cardinal Caprano]; appt. to chair of Hebrew and Sacred Scripture in the School of Propaganda with responsibility for the printing house; appt. rector of Irish College, Rome, 1832; opposed British influence in Rome; experienced invasion of Vatican by Mazzini’s Republicans, and saved the Office of Propaganda from confiscation by persuading the American Consul to fly the US flag over it in view of American students enrolled therein, 1848; |
| returned to post-Famine Ireland having been consecrated Bishop [Archbishop] of Armagh by Cardinal Castruccio Castracane degli Antelminelli, , 24 Feb. 1849 [var. 1850], and appt. Apostolic Delegate at the instance of his personal friend Pius IX, 1849-52; convened synod of Thurles, 1850, bringing Irish church into line with Roman practices; successed Archbishop Daniel Murray to Dublin See, 1852-78; abhorred Young Ireland and the Fenians as ‘a compound of wickedness and folly’, opposing Charles Gavan Duffy and the Tenant League, but saved Thomas F. Burke [q.v.] from hanging; rejected Peel’s Queen’s Colleges, 1844, and supported the Catholic University idea; presided over the Synod of Thurles (1850) and warned of the dangers of modern literature; |
| assisted Frederick Lucas to win Meath seat, Gen. Election, 1852; forbade priests from engaging publicly in politics,1853; fnd. Catholic University in 1854 with Newman as rector; issued pastoral letter addressing threat of Protestant proselytism; fnd. Clonliffe Seminary, 1859; elev. to Cardinal, and created Cardinal-Priest of S. Pietro in Montorio, 22 June 1866 - being the first Irish cardinal; he promoted the Irish Brigade to defend papacy against Garibaldi in 1859; said to have drafted dogma on papal infallibility, 1869-70 [see infra]; appt. president of Synod of Maynooth, 1875; transformed Irish Catholicism into a centralised, pastorally efficient and denominationally combative organisation; involved in the Callan School Affair of 1872; |
| showed unremitting hostility to the Fenians while working with moderate nationalists who supported Catholic interests especially in education; viewed Irish emigration as ‘a special dispensation of God to disperse Irish people over every country of the globe’ through agency of the British Empire ‘in order to lift the standard of the Church’; unable to participate in the episcopal conclave of 1878; d. 24 Oct. 1878; bur. at Clonliffe, Dublin; once boasted that he had never dined with a Protestant; there is a monumental full-length statue of Cullen on a sculpted plinth in the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough St., Dublin his remains were removed from beneath the high alter at Clonliffe College and reinterred in the Pro-Cathedral crypt in June 2021; he is known as the chief Ultramontane cleric of Ireland. DIB DIH DUB FDA |
| See The pastoral letters and other writings of Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin [... &c.], ed. the Most Reverend Patrick Francis Moran (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1882), Vol. 1, 873pp. |
Criticism
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See also Colin Barr, The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868-81 (UCD Press 2011) [see review by Joseph Doyle in History Ireland, March/April 2011 - online]; also refs. in Irish Book Lover, 3. |
Dáire Keogh & Albert McDonnell, eds., Cardinal Paul Cullen and His World (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2011), 480pp. 27 contribs. incl. [here alphabetically] Liam Chambers; Colin Barr [‘An ambiguous awe: Paul Cullen and the historians’]; Sean Connolly [‘Cardinal Cullen’s other capital: Belfast and the devotional revolution’]; Virginia Crossman; Mary Daly [‘Catholic Dublin: the public expression in the age of Paul Cullen’]; Eamonn Duffy; Matthew Kelly; Emmet Larkin [Chap. 1: ‘Paul Cullen: the great ultramontane’- see extract]; Miriam Moffitt; Gerard Moran; Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh; [Afterword: ‘Paul Cullen and his world’]; Oliver P. Rafferty; Andrew Shields, and others. See review by Conor McNamara in History Ireland, Isss. 6 (Nov-Dec. 2011) - online; accessed 17.08.2021]
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Commentary
[Sir] Charles Gavin Duffy: Duffy wrote of him: ‘He had an awkward unimpressive figure and his speech was colloquial and commonplace; but under an unpromising exterior lay a decisive will and an overwhelming sense of authority, which with the mysterious attributes of a delegate of the Holy Father gave his bearing not dignity indeed but an air of individuality and power. His idea of government was said to be simple to crudity, Ireland should be ruled as Rome was ruled-by ecclesiastics.’ (Quotedin Roger McHugh, Tribute to Newman; cited in Sencourt’s Life of Newman, p.158.)
| Archbishop-Cardinal Cullen and Thomas Francis Burke (Catholic Encyclopaedia [1917]) |
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| —Available on New Advent website - online; accessed 08.07.2010. Here re-paragraphed for readers’ convenience. |
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‘M’ [unknown pseud.], writes in ‘Irish Politics and Irish Priests’, in Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 1 (1870): ‘The Irish British priest is a sacerdotal species introduced into Ireland by Cardinal Cullen. It was to its transplanting that poor Fr. Prout alluded when he spoke of the process of Italian Cullenisation. The cardinal himself is the type of Irish British priests. The political creed of the class is very simple. Ireland is an organic part of Britain … it is as absurd for Ireland to demand self-government as it would be for Wales … [&c.]’ (p.493.)
James Joyce, Stephen Hero (1944), on students at the Royal University: ‘Without displaying an English desire for an aristocracy of substance they held violent measures to be unseemly and in their relations among themselves and towards their superiors they displayed a nervous and (whenever there was a question of authority) a very English liberalism. They respected spiritual and temporal authorities, the spiritual authorities of Catholicism and patriotism, and the temporal authorities of the hierarchy and the government. The memory of Terence MacManus was not less revered by then than the memory of Cardinal Cullen. If the call to a larger and nobler life [155] ever came to them they heard it with secret gladness but always they decided to defer their lives until a favourable moment because they felt unready.’ (p.156). See also Theodore Spencer’s ftn. to same: ‘when the body of Terence Bellow MacManus (?1823-1860) was brought to Ireland in 1861 for burial at Glasnevin, the demonstrations were opposed by Cardinal Cullen, the first Irishman to be made a cardinal. He was an ultramontane of a rigid type, with strong feelings against Fenianism. He is said to be the author of the final form of words used to define papal infallibility. He was the founder of the Catholic University (p.155).’
Seán O’Faoláin, The Irish: A Character Study (Sussex: Penguin 1947), ‘The operative date for the second stage is 1852 when Cardinal Paul Cullen persuaded John Henry Newman to come to Dublin and found a Catholic University in opposition to Peel’s ‘godless colleges.’ Newman had a very sad time of it with the Irish bishops, and he soon found himself at loggerheads even with Cardinal Cullen - over the amount of control, if any, which the laity might be permitted in the Catholic University. He saw that Cullen was utterly suspicious of the rebelly spirit then alive in Irish political thought, what His Grace called ‘Young Irelandism.’ ‘Dr. Cullen,’ Newman wrote to a friend, ‘seems to think that Young Irelandism is the natural product of the lay mind everywhere, if let to grow freely’: and as a corollary would not tolerate almost any measure of lay-control. To this Newman could never agree: he said that if Dr. Cullen’s views were to prevail the University would ‘simply be priest-ridden.... I mean men who do not know literature and science will have the direction of the teaching. I cannot conceive the professors taking part in this. They will be simply scrubs.’ And, again, / “On both sides of the Channel the deep difficulty is the jealousy and fear which is entertained in high quarters of the laity [...]. Nothing great or living can be done except when men are self-governed and independent.” (p.119); ‘It was not just Dr. Cullen’s personal experience in Rome that lay behind this episcopal distrust of the layman and the rebel - he had seem the Republican Mazzini take possession of Vatican property, and had personally saved the College of Propaganda by persuading the American Minister to float the Stars and Stripes over it - Dr. MacHale was just as adamant. [...] In short it is obvious that although Dr. Cullen had a political antipathy to the Young Irelanders, as Dr. Egan had to the United Irishmen, nobody will ever pin down Dr. Cullen’s distrust of his people to a purely secular political - not to speak of anti-nationalist - bias.’ (pp.119-20.)
| Archbishop John Charles McQuaid on Cullen: ‘No writer has done adequate justice to his character or stature [...] Silent, magnanimous, far-seeing, Cardinal Cullen would seem to be as heedless of self-justification after death, as he was intrepid in administration during life. Not his the multitude of letters and scrupulous autobiography that help a later age to reconstruct a picture of the unspeaking dead.’ (Sermon on the occasion of the Catholic University of Ireland Centenary, 1955; quoted under McQuaid, in Wikipedia article online; accessed 05.12.2010.) |
Malcolm Brown, The Literature of Irish Politics (1972): Cullen was ignorant of Irish ethnology and believed the term ‘Fenian’ to be a corruption of ‘Phoenician’ rather than a derivative of the Fianna. (p.182.)
Joseph Lee, Modernisation of Ireland, 1848-1918 (1973), where Cullen is discussed at length: Rector of Irish college at 29 in 1831, he retained the character of headmaster of the Irish Church; Armagh, 1849; Dublin 1852; influential at Vatican Council in 1870; ... first Irish cardinal in 1866 ... whipped the Church into line with Roman discipline, initially at the synod of Thurles in 1850, tightening discipline and introducing greater conformity in religious observances ... winkling out deviations ... [he] symbolised the triumph of ultramontanism over Gallicism [represented by the more local vision of Arhcb. MacHale of Tuam] ... founded Catholic education for all classes, esp. attending to the urban poor ... emphasis on church building ... believed in separation of Church and state and cautioned against clerical intervention in politics ... his ostentateous fidelity to Pius IX veiled a genuine librealism which led him to dissent from the Syllabus of Erros of 1864 which proclaimed separation of church and sign of Satan’s presence in the infidel world ... rejected ‘concurrent endowments’ for the Catholic Church ... ‘He followed O’Connell’s dictum, “Our religion from Rome, our politics from Ireland”. That Irish Catholicism, the most piously popular religion in northern Europe, eschewed the spirit of the Syllabus of Errors and remained politicallly pragmatic must be partly attributed to the guidance of Paul the Prudent.’ Lee notes temporary hysterical anti-Protestant outbursts (‘the devil who animates Protestantism ..’), but an essentially moderate and tolerant attitude towards the social and civic role of Protestant politicians. (pp.44-49.)
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David Cairns & Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland, colonialism, nationalism and culture (Manchester 1988) - writes: ‘Emmet Larkin has argued that during the supremacy of Cardinal Paul Cullen [dates], this “devotional revolution“ entailed for the clergy increased standards in administration, scrupulous adherence to the doctrinal position of the papacy, and ready acceptance of the instructions of superiors, particularly the Cardinal Archbishop [...]. By the time of Cullen’s death in 1878 he had placed his stamp firmly on [the] Catholic Church in Ireland, which subsequently followed the trajectory he had impelled it along.’ Bibl. Larkin, The Historical Dimension of Irish Catholicism (NY: Cath. UP 1984); P. J. Corish, ‘Gallicanism at Maynooth, Archbishop Cullen and the Royal visitation of 1853’, in Cosgrove and MacCartney, eds. Studies in Irish History Presented to R. Dudley Edwards (UCD 1979).
Davis Coakley, Irish Masters of Medicine (Town House ?1993), Author opines that the disastrous attack on the ‘godless colleges’ by Cullen held back the intellectual development of Ireland by 50 years.
Roy Johnston, ‘Godless Colleges and Non-Persons’, in Causeway 1 (Autumn 1993), pp.36-38, ‘The harm done by Cardinal Cullen has left us with a university system divided along sectarian lines up to recent times-even (it could be argued) to this day.’
Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices: Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Poolbeg 1994), p.22-28, ‘Cardinal Cullen, Manager of Nationalism’, cites Monsignor Patrick J. Corish, ‘Cardinal Cullen and the National Association’, in Reactions to Irish Nationalism (1987) [intro. Alan O’Day], ‘Cullen was intensely Irish, but his patriotism, in marked contrast with, say, Thomas Davis, rested on a complete identification of Faith and Fatherland, his interpretation of past history, which is the basis of all patriotism, was dominated by the fact of Irish attachment to the Catholic faith’ (p.127). [Cont.]
Conor Cruise O’Brien (Ancestral Voices, 1994) - cont. [Cullen [In defence of the Christian Brothers’ history teaching]: ‘What is [clear is] that almost all the leaders of Fenianism have been educated in the Protestant Dublin University, in the Queen’s colleges and in the normal and [interdenominationally] mixed national schools. The youth of the Christian Brothers schools, of the Catholic colleges, and of the Catholic University, have not been compromised.’ (Quoted in Larkin, Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland 1860-1870 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1987). Further quotes Larkin: ‘The Fenians were in their quarrel with the Church attempting to drive a nationalist wedge between the clergy and the people, and Cullen was determined that this was to be resisted at all costs.‘ (Consolidation, p.423-4). [Cont.]
Conor Cruise O’Brien (Ancestral Voices, 1994) - cont.: During proceedings of Powis Commission into primary education, 1868, Judge William Brooke questioned Cullen on Christian Brother history-teaching, ‘Professing to cultivate a spirit of Irish nationality, the Christian Brothers have compilded for their more advanced pupils reading books abounding in narratives of English perfidy and cruelty, and many passages in pros and verse of such a character that the Irish student cannot failed to be imbued with a detestation of any connection with England ... ’; he was answered that the books mentioned facts ‘certainly not creditable to the English Government’ but that the books inculcated Christian faith and therefore taught acharity and respect, ‘Faith thus strengthened ... tends to preserve a spirit of subjection and obedience in the people’ (cited from Barry M Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland, The Christian Brothers and the Development of Irish Nationalism 1838-1921 (Dublin 1988), called a ‘seminal work’ by O’Brien [25]
Thomas Hachey, Joseph Hernon & Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Experience: A Concise History (NY: M.E. Sharpe 1996): What Cullen never understood was that the success of his effort to unify, discipline, and dogmatically and liturgically Romanise the Irish chruch owed as much to the advance of Irish nationalism, with its religious and cultural identity connections, as it did to his leadership ability. The Irish saw their religion as an identity badge. As they increased their commitment to nationality, they intensified their Catholicism. However, stronger Catholics did not make weaker nationalists. Cullen and other biships found out that in politics, they could only lead where people wanted to go.’ (p.95.)
Brian Cosgrove, reviewing Frank M. Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (Yale UP), in The Irish Times (18 Jan. 2003), “Weekend”, concluding that the author fails to understand by the Tractarians were opposed to evangelical Christianity. Cosgrove quarrels with Turner’s view that ‘Newman became a Roman Catholic so that he could continue to remain a monk, and, if possible, a monk surrounded by his Littlemore friends’ on the grounds that it falsely impugns Newman’s sincerity.
Fintan O’Toole, ‘Lessons in the Power of the Church’, in The Irish Times (6 June 2009), Weekend: ‘After the Famine [...] the Catholic Church began to recreate itself as an institutional structure with power over the civil and intimate lives of the majority of the population. As part of that process, it set about destroying the national schools and replacing them with a specifically Catholic system. Its leader, Cardinal Paul Cullen, declared the national school system to be “very dangerous when considered in general because its aim is to introduce a mingling of Protestants and Catholics.” [...] There was a brilliant pincer movement of carrot and stick. On the one hand, the Brothers and other orders offered a Catholic and nationalist education, leavened with Victorian gentility, that was in tune with the emerging identity of the Catholic middle class. On the other, Cullen reinforced this pull with a crude push of spiritual intimidation. In 1869, he made an explicit threat to deny the sacraments to parents who kept their sons in “the lion’s den” of the national schools rather than send them to the Brothers.’ (For full text, see Ricorso Library, “Reviews”, infra.)
Emmet Larkin, ‘Paul Cullen: the great ultramontane’, in Daire Keogh & Albert McDonnell, in Cardinal Paul Cullen and His World (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2011) - of which Conor McNamara, reviewing, writes: ‘Larkin’s opening contribution [...] reprises the author’s pioneering work on the so-called “devotional revolution thesis” and the pastoral dimension of ultramontanism, and serves as a succinct synopsis of why the Irish people as a whole were so willing to embrace Cullen’s psychological commitment to ’becoming pious”. An ecclesiastical imperialist, Cullen believed that the greatest danger to the Catholic Church in Ireland was the modern liberal secular state, which promoted a society, as he viewed it, which had to be unmasked as promoting “materialism dressed up as progress”, premised on “rampant and irresponsible individualism&148; and “infected by the values of the enlightenment”.’ (McNamara, in History Ireland, p. 16; available online; accessed 16.08.2021).
Note: In the same collection [Keogh & McDonnell, Cardinal Paul Cullen, 2011), Oliver Rafferty quotes Cullen on his mission: ‘‘to rescue this Catholic country from the [...] religious inferiority in which it now lies’ (p.74). Further observations: "Protestant monopoly of Dublin Corporation was only ended by the 1840 Municipal Reform Act, which replaced a self-perpetuating closed group of exclusively Protestant freemen with an electorate based on property; in 1849 over one million people were receiving outdoor daily relief under the Poor Law, and boards of guardians remained dominated by Protestant landowners; it was not until 1860 that Catholic charities could be registered and thus enabled to operate on a similar basis to Protestant charities; until 1862 every foundling child was automatically registered as Protestant. It is within the context of securing a firm position for educated Catholics that Cullen could plausibly represent his cause as the steady advance of a proud but long-downtrodden Catholic people on the citadel of Protestant privilege in Ireland.’ (McNamara, idem.).
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Quotations
Fenians: ‘If the Fenians in America were to succeed in driving out half starved and unarmed people to revolt, the masacre of Cromwell w[ould be renewed and all that religion has gained during the present century would be lost in six months. I think we are rather in a dangerous position, and that measures ought to be taken to check the progress of Fenianism.’ (Cullen to Spalding, in Spalding Papers; quoted in Oliver Rafferty, S.J., ‘The Catholic Church and Fenianism, 1861-1870’, in Bullán: Irish Studies Journal, 1997-1998, p.54; incl. further quotations from Cullen to Kirby et al.)
Too high an education will make the poor often time discontented and will unsuit them for following the plough or for using a spade or for hammering iron or building walls.’ (quoted in Jacqueline Hogan, writing on ‘the main differences between the Hedge School and National School’, for EDU 3102: Education in Irish Society, QUB 2014, citing in Y & A. Fernandez-Suarez, ‘An Essential Picture in a Sketch-Book of Ireland: The Last Hedge Schools’, in Estudios Irelandeses, 1 (2006), pp.45-57.)
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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2:| In Lecky’s Leaders of Public Opinion, ‘No one, we think, can deny this [the determination of the clergy to prevent Catholics and Protestants from ‘mingling’] who has followed their policy on the educational question’; a footnote [FDA2, ed.] explaining the evolution of the so-called ‘godless colleges’ says that Cullen, an agent for the bishops at Rome, was also opposed, [218n]; The Pope’s Brass Band, a group of MP’s jointly opposing the Ecclesiastical titles Bill in 1851, supported by Cullen, they founded the Catholic Defence Association under the leadership of George Henry Moore, father of the novelist, [254n]; John O’Leary (Recollections, 1896, Chp. IX) deals disparagingly with the Cardinal, citing Kickham’s editorial to The Irish People (1865) dealing ‘with what he [the latter]”calls “a furlong or two of the Pastoral” from Dr. Cullen, who was nearly as long-winded as some of his successors’. O’Leary quotes to show that ‘ecclesiastical tactics have not changed’ and that ‘if you differ from priests in politics you must necessarily be subverting the faith’; ftn. adds that Cullan was a bitter opponent of the Fenians, a vigorous supporter of the papacy and the predominant influence in the reorganisation of the church in 19th c. Ireland, [257]; the funeral of Terence Bellow MacManus; Cullen refused to allow the lying in state in the pro-Cathedral; the graveside oration given by a rebel priest, Fr. Patrick Lavelle (1826-86), events which fixed the division in Irish religious politics, with MacHale taking Lavelle’s side when he [the former] issued his lecture, ‘The Catholic Doctrine of the Right of Revolution’ in Dublin the year after Thomas Francis Meagher’s death ... unlike Cullen, his successor at the time of O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral Archbishop Walsh, was a nationalist [Devoy’s Recollections, 1929) [266, 275]; opposition of Cullen to Independent Irish Party of Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas, [277]; ‘he remembered that it was Cardinal Cullen who had denationalised religion in Ireland’ (‘A Letter to Rome’, The Untilled Field); Cullen the great champion of Ultramontanism in Ireland [ed.; l.c. ultramontane], [1035n]; Irish Ecclesiastical Record, founded by Cullen to promote his Ultramontane policies ... promulgated and explained papal doctrine in terms of universal Catholicism [eds. fnt. to My New Curate], 1043n; allusion to the Irish Brigade’ (i.e., ‘the Pope’s Brass Band’), [ibid., 1044n]. |
Don Gifford, Joyce Annotated [rev. edn.] (California UP 1982), gives details: cardinal in 1866 and subsequently apostolic delegate, i.e., ruler of the Catholic Chruch of Ireland; did condemn the IRB (Fenians) and other agitators form Home Rule and Land Reform; advocated support of British government and popularly regarded as one who sought favours from the government for himself and his friends. (p.149.) Also supplies a note on Pius IX [Count Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792-1878; elected Pope in 1846), who issued a decree propounding the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the BVM in 1854, and convened the Vatican Council in 1869, for the first time since the Council of Trent (1545-63), which - amidst controversy, deceed the doctrine of Papal Infallibility affirming the doctrinal truth of what is spoken by the Pope ex cathedra. (Gifford, op. cit., p.106.) The opposition of Johann Döllinger, a priest and politician, to the decree, resulted in his excommunication in 1871, while John MacHale resisted the doctrine until it was approved by the Vatican on 18 July 1870, though not present - being in Ireland at the time, when he was reputed to have said “so be it” (ibid., pp.107-08).
Libraries & booksellers}
British Library lists titles by Cullen published by James Duffy: Pastoral Letter [...] announcing the Prayers and Indulgences of the Jubilee, 18 Sept. 1851, With an Encyclical Letter of our most Holy Father Pope Pius IX. ordering Prayers, and announcing a New Jubilee, 21 Nov. 1851 (1852), 29pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, with an appendix, containing a letter of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore (Francis P. Kenrick) on mixed education. [28 July 1852] (1852), 30pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. [23 Nov. 1852] (1852), 15pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Festival of St. Patrick [1 March 1853] (1853), 32pp. (Dublin: James Duffy 1853); Pastoral Letter [...] on the Fast of Lent, 1853. [2 Feb. 1853] (1853), 8pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Threatened Legislation against Convents. [14 May 1853] (1853), 25pp; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. [25 Nov. 1853] (1853), 15pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Holy Season of Lent. [22 Feb. 1854], 20pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Feast of the Assumption [28 July 1854] (1854), 15pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Jubilee granted by His Holiness Pius IX. 18 Sept. 1854, with an Encyclical Letter of our Holy Father the Pope granting a General Jubilee, 1 Aug. 1854, and S.D.N. Pii Div. Prov. Papæ IX. epistola encyclica, 21 Nov. 1851 (1854), 27pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Fast of Lent, 1855. [2 Feb. 1855] (1855), 15pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Feast of the Assumption [n.d.] (1855), 11pp.; Pastoral letter [...] on the feast of the Immaculate Conception [n.d.] (1855), 32pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Festival of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. [23 Jan. 1856] (1856), 24pp; Lenten Pastoral, etc. [15 Feb. 1863] (1863), 15pp.; Pastoral Letter [...] on the Festival of St. Patrick [1 March 1856], pp.311. ALSO Letter [...] to the Rt. Hon. Thomas O’Hagan, M.P., on national education, etc. (1863), 31pp.; Two Letters to Lord St. Leonards on the Management of the Patriotic Fund, and on the second report of the Royal Commissioners. [letter to Lord St. Leonards, 21 Nov. 1857; the other dated 3 May 1858] (1858), iv, 128pp.; A Letter to Lord St. Leonards on the Management of the Patriotic Fund, and the application of public moneys to proselytizing purposes [...] [Dated 21 Nov. 1857] 2nd edn. (1857), 54pp.; Do., 3rd edn. enl. 1857, 63pp.
Gilbert Collection of Pearse St. Library, Dublin contains a newscutting of Cardinal Cullen’s Pastoral on ‘The Wretched Condition of the Labouring Classes of the People of Ireland’, preached 26 Jan. 1868, as part of the R. R. Madden Papers (Gilbert MS 276).
De Burca Books (Cat. 44; 1997) lists The Pastoral Letters and other Writings of Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin. Edited by the Rt. Rev. Patrick Francis Moran, D.D. Bishop of Ossory. Three volumes. Dublin, Browne, 1882. Pages (1) viii, 873 (2) vi, 802 (3) x, 813. Ex. lib. Fine set in orig. cloth gilt. Rare. £325.00. Peadar MacSuibhne, Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries. With their letters from 1820-1902. Illustrated. Five volumes. Kildare, Leinster Leader 1961-1977. V.good in dj’s. £250.00
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Notes
Callan School Affair: Cardinal Cullen became involved in the Callan School Affair of the late 1860s when Fr Robert O’Keeffe, PP of Callan, Co. Kilkenny, accused Bishop Edward Walsh of Ossory, Edward McDonald (Vicar-Gen. of Ossory) and Cullen of libel after he (O’Keeffe) had invited Sisters of Mercy from Beziers in France to set up a school in Callan seemingly without permission of his superior Walsh who was then supported by Cullen. A public court hearing was held under British law in 1873 where the many figures appeared and were cross-examined in a confrontation between Gallician and Ultramontane elements of contemporary Catholicism. resulting in a well-known engraving of Cardinal Cullen giving evidence in court. The episode later became the topic of a novel, The Big Chapel (1971) by Thomas Kilroy [q.v.]. See also Colin Barr, The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868-81 (UCD Press 2011).