One of the most powerful symbols of the Catholic faith in Ireland is the Penal Cross.
While certain subversive voices will craft their own hysterical tales of Catholic history on this island, the actual history can be felt in the dead of night listening to the waves crash on Skellig Michael, it can be tasted in the dry toast and salt and pepper water in Lough Derg and it can be found in the lonely and remote Mass rocks where our ancestors sought the sacraments at risk of death of slavery.
It can also be found, as can the simple beauty of our faith, in the witness given by the Penal Cross.
From the 1600s to the 1800s, the Penal Laws criminalised the Catholic faith, leading to priests being hunted down and hanged, worshippers being killed and enslaved and Catholics in general being barred from participating meaningfully in public life. They could not build churches or be educated. The persecution of the Catholic faith and the sufferings of the Irish people are intertwined inextricably and anyone who says otherwise is not being honest.
The Penal Cross was a cross that would be wrapped around the faithful’s wrist so that they could pray covertly.
If we are to take one high quality one that remains in existence today, there is the Penal Cross that is currently residing in the National Museum after being donated from Galway. This Cross reveals the typical nature of these crosses.
It contains a crude drawing of Our Lord, the inscriptions of IHS and INRI and also a crude and humorous carving at the bottom of a bird above a pot and the carving of lashes.
The story goes that Judas got home after betraying Jesus and asked his wife for a rope so that he may hang himself, as he knew that Jesus was to return from the dead on the third day.
His wife, dismissing this, drew his attention to the cock that she was cooking in a pot. She told Judas that Jesus had as much chance of returning from the dead as the cock had of coming back to life from the pot that she was cooking him in.
No sooner had she spoken the words than the cock flew out of the pot and crowed, sending Judas into despair.
There are other variations of this story but the core is the same, the cock was representative, to a primarily rural and peasant people, of the simplicity and majesty of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. There is a touch of humour about it and a touch of defiance, for a people who faced death, slavery and imprisonment for practising their faith, there was a real sense of the thrill of perseverance in this story.
Take a trip to any of the remains of old Irish monasteries, at Mellifont at Bective and elsewhere, and see the remains of a church that was gutted. Take a trip to the head of Saint Oliver Plunkett. Take a trip to the stolen cathedrals like Christchurch.
In those places you will see a church that was dead, a faith cooking in the pot. Much like our church today you could say.
Then take a journey to any town centre in Ireland today and see the churches, the statues of Our Lady, the streets, schools and GAA clubs named after priests, nuns and saints. And there you will see a church that like Our Lord, found its way out of the grave.
The church in Ireland today feels much like the stone is being rolled in front of our tomb once more, but we would be as naive as the wife of Judas if we were to think that we will not fly out of the pot.
