Ireland's Catholic Underground

2022 marks the centenary of the Legion of Mary, the Irish church’s greatest success in the Twentieth Century.

From confronting Communism in China and North Korea to confronting poverty in South America and Africa to confronting atheism in the West, Frank Duff’s visionary apostolate has amassed tens of millions of followers.

As part of the celebrations for their centenary, the Legion are running a series of Men’s Conferences throughout the year. The Morning Star Hostel, which provides accommodation, food and spiritual support for men in need, has hosted the first two events.

The second one involved Father Brendan Kilcoyne, of the Brendan Option podcast, hosted by Immaculata Productions who filmed the event for Youtube.

In a wide ranging keynote speech, Father Kilcoyne spoke about the upcoming Synod and the dangers of being too tame in conversations surrounding it. He also spoke about the need for Catholics to be unafraid of what they have to offer the world, a world which as Father Kilcoyne puts it, has little in the way of philosophical thought underpinning it.

The event is part of what Father Kilcoyne calls the ‘Catholic Underground’, a part of the burgeoning undercurrent of renewed faith and dynamism of spirituality that is taking place away from the mainstream establishment. Impressed with the turnout and vibrancy in the room, Father Kilcoyne asks, ‘Who knew that Catholic Underground was so big?’

How fitting that it takes place in so meek yet powerful of a place as the Legion of Mary headquarters.

Starting from those humble beginnings in Dublin, the Legion of Mary grew to encompass presidiums in China, South America and Africa, surviving and even thriving amongst poverty, tyranny and violence.

Frank Duff, if you are not familiar with him, was a civil servant who had a remarkable perception of theology and of its practical implications within the world. He had worked for Michael Collins and later for WT Cosgrave during the early years of the state. The Legion of Mary may have an image of being non confrontational, but when it came to proclaiming the gospel, Duff’s zeal for apostolic work was anything but. Fr. Thomas O’Flynn C.M. wrote in his book Frank Duff As I Knew Him:

He had unflinching honesty in asserting what he believed to be the truth. Sometimes at the Pauline Circle, the ecumenical group run by the Legion, I would wince at the fortrightness with which he put forward the teaching of the church to our separated brethren. But even if they did not always agree with him they respected him for his honesty.

He was a fighter, never afraid to defend his corner when the interests of the faith or the Legion were at stake. This courage was part of the psychological gear necessary for his task. When he was launching the new movement in the lay apostolate that later became known as the Legion of Mary he had encountered opposition: sometimes from people in high places. A pioneer in any walk of life needs courage. Frank Duff had it in plenty.

Duff was largely overlooked by the hierarchy in Ireland and one can only wonder how different the history of Twentieth Century Catholicism in Ireland would have been had he been listened to.

In a talk published on the Iona Institute website, Duff’s biographer Finola Kennedy wrote of how Duff broke the norms of secular culture in trying to help unmarried mothers to gain stability in their lives, housing them in his hostel The Regina Coeli. She wrote:

Duff’s special sympathy for unmarried mothers was at odds with the mores of the time when the consequences of an extra-marital birth were disastrous, rendering both mother and child social outcasts. He was probably close to the view of the writer George Moore who in his powerful novel, Esther Waters written at the end of the nineteenth century, tells the story of a mother’s fight for the life of her illegitimate son. Moore wrote, ‘Hers is a heroic adventure if one considers it – a mother’s fight for the life of her child against all the forces that civilisation arrays against the lowly and the illegitimate’.

Anyone who has ever visited Frank Duff’s house in Dublin will notice that in his living room, one finds copies of National Geographic, travel books and encyclopedias concerning every part of the globe and various dictionaries for other languages. The inception of the Legion coincided with the birth of international travel through airplane and also the missions of Irish priests, particularly the Columbans, to the Far East and elsewhere.

One of the most famous examples of these was Fr. Aedan McGrath SSC.

In his book Navan to China, McGrath tells the story of Chinese Legionaries who exhibited profound faith as he had witnessed on countless occasions since his first arrival there in 1930. One of the most striking of these was one where he says:

Under the most trying of circumstances, the Legionaries behaved splendidly in every way. On one occasion a drunken Army Official, who was suspicious of the Praesidia meetings, wildly broke into a junior meeting when the young girls were reciting the Rosary. As he strode into the room, swearing vengeance on all and sundry, not one little head turned: the Legionaries continued their prayers uninterrupted under the leadership of the young girl President! As he surveyed the scene, the officer’s face changed completely, he removed his cap, bowed his head reverently and quietly left the room - conquered by a group of little Legionaries praying to the Mother of God!'

How proud I was of the behaviour and spirit of my Legionaries both on this occasion and at other times when bombs and shells were dropping thickly all around the Mission.

McGrath also told of how in 1946, Pope Pius XII had sent word to the Chinese church to follow the model of the Legion of Mary so as to reach millions of Chinese people with the Good News. Pius XII was not naive however and told them:

You are going to be expelled sometime and in the meantime it is vital that you build up a framework which will caretake the Church in your absence, and that instrument lies ready for you in the Legion.

The Chinese bishops became familiar with the Legion handbook as a means of educating themselves with this new tool. The Chinese Communist Party were completely terrified of the Legion of Mary, it put women into positions of authority, it had no clear centralised structure and it seemed to be spreading like wildfire. Most terrifyingly, it carried with it the name of ‘Legion’ and other Roman inspired paraphernalia.

They tried to paint the Legion as a tool of Imperialism in order to deter Chinese people from joining it.

McGrath writes:

The legion was charged with being ‘reactionary’ at several ‘accusation meetings’ convened by the city authorities. The accusations were sustained, but the ‘reasoning’ at these mass meetings followed the line that ‘foreign priests’ were influential in organising the various groups of Legionaries and since foreigners were imperialists, the Legion was therefore a tool of Imperialism.

At this point in time, the Legion had reached 90 dioceses in China. Such was the disdain towards their success, that the Chinese Communist Party referred to Frank Duff as ‘Ireland’s greatest imperialist’.

Fr. McGrath ended up being imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese Communist Party for 32 months in 1951. In his recollection of his interrogations, he talks about how the Chinese police held one meeting in a church and demanded to know about what the Legion meant by ‘conquering the world’.

The Legion grew rapidly also in Hong Kong, where it was reported that 74 presidia were in operation in 1954.

One of the core motivations for Duff to found and build the Legion of Mary was St. Louis Mary de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary.

The Legion has three causes for canonisation, one of which was Alphonsus Lambe, who recognised the importance of De Montfort’s book when he travelled to Argentina. In her book Envoy Extraordinaire, Hilde Firtel writes:

Alfie breached a very thorny subject, namely the sentimental and unenlightened devotion to Our Lady that is occasionally found in Latin America. In Europe one hears criticism that some people have saved nothing of devotion to Catholicism save devotion to Our Lady. But this fact which is taken as true is taken as an excuse to deprecate devotion to Our Lady. This is to err in the opposite extreme.

Alfie proposed the remedy as acquainting the faithful with the ‘True Devotion’ of Saint Louis Marie De Montfort. This would give them a true picture of Our Lady’s role in God’s plan of salvation and would gradually rectify their ideas.

The centrality of De Montfort and the deep Marian spirituality of the Legion handbook are core aspects, which transmit profound theological truths to even the lay person.

Duff met a number of popes, but was largely unappreciated in his home country. Perhaps it was because of the uncomfortably prescience with which he could perceive the future for Ireland not just in spiritual terms but economic terms also:

Obviously all this constitutes a danger signal for us in Ireland. We have arrived at the point when taxation has become oppressive and We know it is going to get heavier. At what stage will it amount to a taking over of our ,entire lives by the State" Then there will be no more effort; no more initiative. An eminent man of our own times has said that it is impossible for a dishonest people to become a great nation. I would amplify this thought and say that a people which does not give value cannot hope to keep the Faith.

The mere contemplation of such a nest of problems is enough to paralyse. Solution must be attempted in a spirit of pure faith. The crisis is as great as any of the classic ones of the past. So Legionaries of Mary will, quite naturally, turn to her who is the help of Christians, the destroyer of all heresies, the woman of perpetual succour, to whom recourse has never been made unavailingly.

Duff foresaw that Ireland’s poor catechesis would eventually lead the slide towards atheism:

It has always been imagined by us that the Irish people have a unique regard for the Mass. Therefore it is a shock to encounter proofs to the contrary. I have now covered a good deal of the surface of the country and I tell you our experience in regard to daily Mass, which surely is the test of appreciation. The attendance is miserable in proportion. Yet in the smaller places there is nothing doing at that time and the majority could attend. I specify one case where we had a priest with us and offered a week-day Mass to a village which normally has one on Sunday only. Not a single local person turned up for it. Other places would be better but not much better. Does that sort of thing afford justification for our alleged love of the Mass?

Quite evidently that degree of religion is not going to stand up to the adverse influences which are every day thickening and marshalling themselves. Therefore we find ourselves at a crisis point of religion. The thought forces itself upon me: Is it possible that the tragedy of France and so many other countries is going to reproduce itself in Ireland? We are walking on a slippery slope at the moment. That cannot continue. It improves or it deteriorates-usually the latter.

It was not possible to save France. Portugal. Spain. Italy. Holland. all of which have lost the Faith in the main. Acute French observers coming here soon after the Second World War declared that they saw a remarkable likeness between the Ireland of that time and the France of two hundred years previously: the same characteristics and the same weakness. Two hundred years ago would have been the period in which France would have prided itself on being the most Catholic country in the world that is immediately preceding the French Revolution. The Revolution did not create all thy hollowness and the hatred of religion which then appeared. It only revealed what was there. It was like taking off a mask.

Spain and Portugal spread the Faith over great tracts of the world's surface but those supreme services to the Church did not mean that the keeping of the Faith was guaranteed to them in perpetuity. They plunged into the most hideous phase of anti-religion which could exist and set themselves to propagate it over the world. It could not be said that the people in those country is put up any fight worth while against that horror. After a little flurry of resistance they abandoned themselves to the irreligion which their governments decreed. Even though the more violent aspects of atheism have worn off, the percentage of belief and practice there is negligible and it cannot be claimed that things are improving.

Does that likeness of conditions discerned by the French observers suggest that we will in due course slide into what they have become? We would be insane if we just shrugged off that possibility.

The Legion of Mary was an antidote to all of this. In many countries across the world, it has been a successful antidote. In Ireland, there is still time for it to be so.

Legionaries across Ireland can still be found today, visiting hospitals, feeding the homeless and handing out miraculous medals on streets.

Duff may have had a profound impact on the rest of the world, but he had a special place in his heart for Ireland, including Joseph Mary Plunkett’s poem I See His Blood Upon the Rose with accompanying artwork at the back of the Legion of Mary handbook.

He saw that the mission of the Legion in Ireland was similar to that of the St. Columbanus and the apostles before them, to go purify within before going out into a chaotic world:

These poured out from their little Isle into that continental wilderness. They invaded nearly every part of it. They rebuilt the lost Faith, built it better than it was before because this time it depended on conviction and not on State scaffolding. They may be said to have made modern Catholicism. That was the Peregrinatio pro Christo.

They would have viewed their mission in a very different way from that in which the Apostles looked on theirs. Much more was known about the world than in the year 33. Christianity moreover had taken root. It might have been laid waste over most of the world but those monks would have seen that as a mere temporary calamity which must be repaired. Certainly ( the Faith was not suffering in Ireland. It was new there and boiling with fervour. The monks were providentially ready for a supreme adventure of that kind.

100 years on from its foundation, the Legion of Mary still has the potential to show the vision and determination that Duff embodied and that has sustained millions of Legionaries, many in secret in China, North Korea and elsewhere.

How blessed we are in Ireland to be able to claim this as our recent spiritual heritage.

You can watch the full video of the conference below:

Monks of the West by Frank Duff

7th September 2021 begins the centenary year of the Legion of Mary, founded by Frank Duff in Dublin. With millions of members across the world, the organisation is the defining legacy of the Twentieth Century Irish Catholic Church. Oft neglected are some of Duff’s writings, which are perceptive, provoking and rich in wisdom.

I have heard legionaries confess to their feelings of extreme apprehension when a difficult work was about to start. What they had measured up and cheerfully committed themselves to, now took on the aspect of danger and folly. The temptation rises up in them to seek an excuse for backing out. Panic takes possession, which means that one has become irrational, virtually an animal. We must redeem ourselves from that condition.

It is not so difficult; a touch of logic brings the brain into control once again.

A simple reflection is: "What sort of soldier am I? The moment the battle impends I wish to take to flight!"

Secondly, one should always put to oneself this simple question: "What am I afraid of?" Very often that question demolishes the fear. It did in the case of a legionary who was overcome by panic when about to enter Russia. But she asked herself that question and it dispelled the panic. For she realised that the worst that could happen would be that she would be sent home. Thirdly, it is one of our mental kinks that on the eve of a momentous and carefully planned undertaking misgivings rush in and declare it to be lunacy. Chaos rules where all had seemed so clear. The enterprise is in danger.

Dealing with such a situation, Hindenburg, the former German Chancellor, says that we must never change plans at the last minute; that history, the great summary of experience, supplies the watch word: "Hold firm." Fourthly. and here I become more positive, more in line with legionary thinking and with Peregrinatio idealism. Do you want to go off on something with no formidable or disadvantageous aspects? A P.P.C. project offers excitement, congenial company, new and strange experience, a certain glamour.

If it meant no more than that to you, it would be a cheap programme. It is a vital consideration that the attraction of the ancient Peregrinatio lay just in features of an intimidating character. That Peregrinatio was not a pure missionary enterprise. It was a pursuit of souls plus other ingredients. Those indomitable monks did not intend their pursuit of souls to be a mere picnic- to use Edel Ouinn's word. They wished it to be not only an uncompromising response on their part to the command of Our Lord on Mount Olivet but also to His other one that we take up our cross daily and follow Him; and also to His startling injunctions on the subject of heroic faith.

Previously I have discussed with you that wonderful moment of the Ascension.

He Whom they now know to be God delivers that Commission that they ransack the whole world for souls. Then, as they gaze in stupefaction, He raises Himself up and finally a cloud receives Him into itself and they see Him no more. It would be absurd to suppose that they set themselves at once to a deliberate contemplation of that world adventure to which He had bound them. They would be too confused for that. Moreover, between now and the time of that going forth there is to be something else which is so thrilling, so overwhelming as to absorb all their thought. That is the promise of the Paraclete Who is to come and do extraordinary things to them, to fit them for all that lies before them.

That prospect, like a thick veil obscuring everything else, postponed real thinking about the conquest of the world. But the moment that the transforming event of Pentecost took place, they set themselves to their task in the wide world, about which so little was known. That contemplation must have been a most formidable one, even fantastic to persons who had never travelled out beyond their own little country.

It was that same sort of proposition which presented itself to the minds of the Irish monks 500 years later. But of course there were differences. The Christian Faith already had a history. The purely apostolic age was over. The Faith had been announced over much of the known world and had been embraced by multitudes. Many too had laid down their lives for it in 'the persecutions which raged against the infant Church. Moreover, something which was unbelievable, impossible, had taken place. The supreme enemy, Rome the persecutor, had been converted and had become the arch-supporter. All its paraphernalia of power had been thrown into the work of spreading Christianity throughout the Empire. The triumph had been bigger and quicker than anyone could have imagined. The world seemed to be converted, or practically so.

But no. Things were far from being as good as they seemed. The arch-support collapsed, the Roman Empire fell, and it brought down the Church with it. Perhaps in this was intended to lie a Divine warning: that God builds His Church with supernatural bricks. These alone last. The human props serve a temporary purpose, but the builders should see them in that light and should not rely upon them. Build away while the help of the scaffolding is there, but do not lag lest the props be taken away before we are ready.

The Roman Empire had played that role of support for the Church at a period when it was necessary. Let us suppose that God had appointed a term of a century or so for the Church to construct firm fabric. to turn into true Christian cells the half-baked material that flowed in because of the State encouragement? Are we to go on to suppose that the builders were lax? That they relied on the permanence of the Empire; and that they did not impart solidarity to the individual cells?

Whether or not this imagining is precisely justified. there would seem to be a just reasoning in it. It is conformed to the method of God as we see it-around us in lesser manifestations. In any case there would appear to be a drastic lesson in that Empire collapse. It is that Church authorities should take unto themselves the wise thought of Shakespeare. which echoes the Psalm: "Put not your trust in princes nor in the faith of men" (Ps. 145).

Unhappily that same lesson had to be repeated many times afterwards. The Church put its trust in governments and in human policies. and these always failed it in the end. And during those spells of confidence it was content with gerry-building. The only safe construction lies in the filling of the individual parts with true faith. If there are circumstances in play which help the Church. such as a favourable government or other external force. it should not be used as an excuse for relaxing one's own effort. On the contrary that favouring climate should be availed of to work the harder and build the better. We can never afford to relax in regard to souls because they relax in unison with us. But apart from this. it must be borne in mind that the friendly government will change its tune after a while. and so will everyone of those other propitious circumstances. Supports will fall away from under us. and the favour of today may be hostility in the next generation.

However that may be, the fall of the Roman Empire laid waste the world. The state, the style. the noble -edifice of imperial Rome with its far-extended might, its splendid institutions and culture, its order and dignity, its Pax Romana, and its office as educator of the nations-all dissolved into chaos and dust. Never before had the like existed and we must pray that such may never again come on earth. We might almost compare the resulting situation to the Deluge in which everything of the old world perished except what was carried in the Ark.

The picture of the post-Roman Europe could not be exceeded for desolation. The arts and crafts ceased to be practised. Agriculture was neglected, for who would sow when he saw no prospect of reaping. Europe drifted back into its primeval state of forest-land, in clearings of which lived communities. In the main there were two broad categories of survival: To attach oneself to the retinue of some great baron or to remain savagely independent through brigandage.

Pope Pius XI, summing up that scene, declared that Christianity was humanly speaking a lost cause. It was a sort of re-enactment of Good Friday when Christ Himself appeared to be a lost cause.

But the great Pope, goes on to say that God had provided a remedy which would restore Christianity.

It was the monks of the West.

These poured out from their little Isle into that continental wilderness. They invaded nearly every part of it. They rebuilt the lost Faith, built it better than it was before because this time it depended on conviction and not on State scaffolding. They may be said to have made modern Catholicism. That was the Peregrinatio pro Christo.

They would have viewed their mission in a very different way from that in which the Apostles looked on theirs. Much more was known about the world than in the year 33. Christianity moreover had taken root. It might have been laid waste over most of the world but those monks would have seen that as a mere temporary calamity which must be repaired. Certainly ( the Faith was not suffering in Ireland. It was new there and boiling with fervour. The monks were providentially ready for a supreme adventure of that kind.

In one respect the prospect was worse than faced the Apostles. To the latter the world more or less meant Rome. Its hand held or overshadowed the known world and throughout its expanse the Roman civilisation and Roman law and order prevailed. One could travel.

But the Europe of St. Columbanus and his followers was in collapse. Law did not exist. Might was right. Those like the monks who did not carry arms would probably be thrown back for protection on their religious habits. In their missions they would have to penetrate the vast forests in which wild animals lived. So their adventure was as brave as that of the Apostles.

They were taking to themselves in fullness and in literalness the Ascension words of Christ. They were going to do what He had ordered. The dangers or obstacles in the way meant nothing to them. In fact an extraordinary element is observable in their outlook. It was not simply that they saw a star and followed it with a total disregard for the pains and penalties. No, we-see from their Annals that those pains were clearly seen and were eagerly desired. They wanted to carry the Cross of Jesus as well as to preach like Him.

Another distinctive feature in them was what one would have to call a reckless faith. Such was it that some would allege it as a defect. Because we are not supposed to put care and common caution altogether aside. Prudence has its due place; it is not a vice. But those incredible persons had no room in their make-up for any half-measures. They saw their mission as a way of pure faith and they were determined to apply their faith all along and in every circumstance. Such an uncompromising vision naturally tends to disregard any circumspection as a weakness. In fact they seemed to set at defiance what are now proposed as the rules of prudence. But perhaps those modem rules go too far in the other direction and hamper faith. Much of what is being prescribed today would seem to undo faith. In any case the monks' method built up religion whereas the new sceptical method is disintegrating it before our eyes. So much so that humanism and social science are being proposed as substitutes for religion.

St. Brendan and his companions in their earlier voyages did not use sails. They used oars, which of course ministered to another facet of their faith, the desire for penance. The Peregrinatio was specifically seen as an exercise of penance. A very large element of that penance was the perpetual exiling of themselves from their own country.

St. Columbanus, finding his group without an abode where they were about to build a monastery, heard of an immense cave which could accommodate them. But it was in the occupancy of a ferocious bear. The Saint went over to the cave where its owner stood menacingly in the entrance to receive him. Columbanus addressed him as if he were a human being; informed him about their need; suggested that the bear could more easily than they find alternative lodging; and finally requested him to give them possession. Throughout this oration the bear listened as if with understanding. When it was finished, he at once shambled peacefully away.

Nor was there in the method of the monks any special effort to conciliate the great; rather the contrary. The highest were treated as members of the flock and told their duty and defects. They did not like this, for the great are seldom humble. Frequently the monks had to pay the price for their frankness. It secured St. Columbanus's expulsion from France. But therein we must recognise the detailed workings of Providence. because that expulsion sent Columbanus to Switzerland and Italy. In both of those countries he and his companions continued their career of conquest.

It is an intriguing thought that St. Columbanus toyed with the idea of going to Russia instead of to Italy. He did not go to Russia; but if he had, he would have changed the history of the world. Unquestionably he would have made in Russia the same impact as he did everywhere else. This would have meant the beginning of evangelisation there four hundred years before St. Cyril and Methodius opened it up. That gain of four hundred years might have saved Russia from the Great Schism of 1054 and might have been decisive in other ways as well.

Such was the Peregrinatio of the monks of the West. It was so great as a historical episode that the only thing of its kind to which one can compare it is the original apostolic adventure, that is of the Twelve and their successors. It was of the same calibre, covered roughly the same territory, and had the same success. The Peregrinatio was the renewal of the apostolic feat.

As between that Peregrinatio and your own there is an infinite. gulf. But at least the outlines are the same. You make the gift of your holidays and money where they poured out their whole lives. You travel in speed and luxury where they were lucky to live in a bear's den. Fear must have been their atmosphere whereas your main apprehension is a snub at a door. You return to appreciation while none of them ever came back, and half of them were never heard of again.

Nevertheless, the outline of resemblance is, there. In a soft and selfish era your gift is a generous one. Underneath what you do lie great reserves of faith and readiness to give if needed. As such it will be taken hold of as the older Peregrinatio was and used to accomplish eternal purposes.

Every such adventure for souls partakes of the character of the first Pentecost and is linked to it. Tongues of fire are there waiting for such as you who open yourselves to them. You are not only in the company of Mary but are her very devoted children and often made a mockery of for her name's sake. The Paraclete will not deny Himself to you. In the time of preparing to go, you are after a fashion restaging the. time of expectation in the Cenacle, when the Disciples had received the command to go to every creature and the promise that the Holy Spirit would come to them and supply them with all they needed for that seemingly impossible mission. To you too He will come through Mary and lavish on you His abundance; indeed He comes no other way than by her. You will not see the tongues of fire nor hear the sound of a mighty wind, but the giving will be no less real and efficacious. You will go off on your various journeys well armed spiritually for the tasks which await you.

Your special ambition should of course be a difficult assignment, one worthy of the things we have been discussing under the title of Peregrinatio. Feed that ambition by thinking of those inconceivably selfless monks. They deprived themselves of absolutely everything that human nature values: esteem, comfort, home. Their sharpest sacrifice was that they would never again return to Ireland. They shed everything in order to take Christ at His word and to take Christ to every man. Some aspects of that nobility can be imitated by you. In .one way your task will be more difficult than theirs. They had to deal with more violent but simpler characters than will confront you.

You will probably not encounter physical danger. Your problem will be the blank wall of unbelief and sophistication which has all the look of being impenetrable. The Apostles and the monks of the Peregrinatio had not that to face; their world was readier to believe. So your particular contribution must be intensity of Faith. We are told on the highest authority that Mary has given you a special Faith. Use it like a battering ram against that blank wall, and you may find that it totters under your blow. It is not as solid or as sure of itself as it pretends to be. Some of it is composed of our own emigrants or their descendants and their affectation of ir religion is not completely genuine. Most of the others would be the descendants of the Reformation in whom survives in varying degrees the Catholic tradition. Catholicism dies hard. Like the faint glow under the ashes, it can be fanned to life again.

Faith is a Divine, almost handleable quality. It can be used like money to buy things. But unlike money it can increase in ourselves according as we bestow it on others. It is supposed to be communicated from one to another. Faith is passed on by giving and hearing. It is not a remote, impersonal element which can be imparted through the communications media. Religious history is full of examples where unbelieving persons suddenly got Faith from others who willed to give it to them.

You are privileged to see signs of this operation in connection with your use of the Miraculous Medal. The fact that this medal works is uncontestable. There is not one among us who has not had startling evidence of its power to soften and to produce effects. The only valid explanation of its efficacy is that it is faith reduced after a fashion to visible form, which is precisely what a Sacramental amounts to. It applies our faith to a particular purpose in a tangible way. Again I use the analogy of money which conveniences us in purchasing. We are looking for something in the higher or spiritual order; we assign the medal, So to speak, to that purchase. Our faith puts itself forth through the medal and our desire is granted to us. The medal almost enables us to handle grace, and I repeat that this is the idea of the Sacramentals. Present the medal to a person and you have brought your faith into very close touch with him.

Some of you have heard the story of the Indian girl drowned in the Cowichan River. The body had been sought unavailingly for a week by the whole tribe. It came at once to the surface at the spot where a Miraculous Medal was thrown in at the moment of the abandonment of the search. One day I told this story to a legionary group. An hour afterwards a watch was lost in a mountain-side wilderness where ten thousand men would not have availed to find it. Remembering the story, a medal was thrown into the midst of the tangle of vegetation. It fell on the watch. The medal could bring up a body, it could find a watch. More important, it can awaken life in a dead soul. But it is only a channel of Faith, so never just give the medal mechanically. Deliberately intend it to be a carrier of your Faith and the confiding of that soul to its Mother Mary whose image is on the medal. Your Faith is the treasure which you carry. Though it is yours, it is not altogether a personal possession.

It is God in you.

He wants to widen His place in you and at the same time to issue through you to others. Indeed these two things are bound up with each other. If we do not try to share our Faith, it may dry up in us. If we do try to put it to a full use, it can become a vaster force than anything in nature, immeasurably greater than the atom bomb, more far-reaching than space travel.

Let us set that force at work on the most neglected cause of the day, conversion. Because conversion is the central idea of the Church and yet so neglected, effort directed towards it will draw omnipotence from on high. Listen, Our Lord Himself is speaking: "Have Faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain: arise and cast yourself into the sea, and does not waver in his heart but believes that whatever he \ says will be done, that shall be done for him" (Mark 11, 23). And Our Lord adds: "And nothing will be impossible to you" (Matt. 17, 19).

Let us take Him at His word.

The Mass: A Thrilling Adventure by Frank Duff

7th September 2021 marks the beginning of the centenary year of the Legion of Mary. To mark the occasion, we are republishing some of founder Frank Duff’s essays. In this one, he discusses the mystery and beauty of the Mass.

I am going to talk to you about the Mass. It is a subject which I have not previously included in the many which I have discussed at Congresses, Reunions or on other occasions. So perhaps it is time to do it, all the more so as it is so seldom treated in a simple way. Even the experts seem overawed by the intricacies of its theology and hold off from it. But as the mighty Mass is the last thing on earth about which we should be silent, I am going to be the fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread.

My approach may seem to be a little round-about, but in reality not so. I properly put the horse before the cart. The Mass is the culmination or growth out of certain things. This setting must be presented first if the Mass is to be understood.

The Mass sacramentally reproduces the Passion and death of our Saviour. Here we are faced with a profound mystery: Mysterium Fidei. While there is no question of Jesus dying again in the Mass in the physical sense, neither is there any question of a mere symbolism after the fashion that the immolation of the ordinary paschal lamb was a type of the future Sacrifice of Christ. Calvary and the Mass are one and the same Sacrifice. (1 Cor. 11,26).

The sublime narration of the New Testament nears its climax on Holy Thursday in the Last Supper. This latter is described by the four Evangelists, but Our Lord's moving discourse to the Disciples is only given by St. John. All the accounts begin with the betrayal by Judas. Obviously an importance is attached to it. We are caused to wonder as to this. Of course it has its place inasmuch as it, so to speak, sparked off the tragic events which followed. But there seems to be more at stake than that. Such a major stressing of the false Apostle's part denotes that it possesses a highly mystical significance and that Judas and his sin enter in as something strictly necessary.

One might think: why? Because humanly speaking that betrayal need not have taken place at all. The hostility of the priests and scribes towards Our Lord had been boiling up. In such circumstances there is always some event to cause an explosion. Could not Judas's treachery have been in that accidental category? No, it is made too prominent in the Four Gospels to be only that. Even very important items are often chronicled by one Evangelist only whereas all of them emphasise Judas's role as a primary circumstance.

Firstly, Judas is shown as conspiring with the priests and the scribes, this episode being introduced by the dread statement that Satan had entered into Judas. Then in the Last Supper itself there is a further stressing of his action as if it belonged to the essence of the mystery. Jesus alarms His Disciples by announcing that not all of them are clean; that one of them is about to betray Him. He follows up this by telling St. John that the traitor would be the one to whom He, Jesus, would give bread. And this He gave forthwith to Judas, upon which we are again told expressly that Satan entered into Judas. This phrase is repeated by the Four Evangelists, and St. Thomas Aquinas interprets it as meaning that Judas had now finally given himself into the power of Satan.

Judas said to Jesus: "Is it I, Rabbi"? And Jesus replied: "Thou hast said it." That exchange between Jesus and the faithless one was private so that the others did not notice. But the narrative goes on to say that Judas went out quickly and that now it was night.

I repeat: surely there is a profound significance in this process of Judas giving himself to the devil and thus becoming part of the process by which the plan of Redemption was effected. In it are we not looking at a repetition of what took place in Eden in the original Fall, which the Messiah is now about to repair? Then Satan likewise besieged Adam and Eve and succeeded in gaining possession of them so that in them the human race collapsed. The very part which the devil rook then, he renews by taking possession of Judas. But with this radical difference that it now becomes part of the process of the divine mercy whereby the new Adam and the new Eve reverse the Fall in precise detail. Then Satan initiated things. Here again he is shown in that capacity. He was an essential part of the tragedy, so he is now made an essential part of the restoration. That is what I would venture to read into that strange scriptural insistence on Judas as the tool of Satan. It has been made plain that Satan, who was the instrument of the original Fall, has now by his own very malice become the agent of his own undoing: Satan inaugurates the Redemption; Judas is the wretched instrument which he uses for this.

And after that, Jesus rook bread and wine and blessed them, using the words which we hear invoked over the same elements in the Holy Mass. It is by those sacred words that He institutes the Mass and with it the Catholic Priesthood with power to perpetuate the same act.

After that unique Supper, Jesus accompanied by the 11 Disciples went to the Mount of Olives where He told them of His impending arrest; thence to the Garden of Gethsemane taking with Him Peter, James and John to be witnesses of what was to follow. Retiring from them a stone's throw, He entered into His Agony which was of such an extreme nature that He, the strong and perfect Man, the headline of patient, brave suffering, the model of martyrs, is forced to cry out to His Eternal Father those poignant words: "Father, if it be possible, remove this chalice from Me. Yet not My Will but Thine be done." And His sweat became as drops of blood running down upon the ground. The explanation of this supreme ordeal given to us by the Church is that He, the innocent One, had formally assumed the sins of the whole world, and that the contemplation was such that it surpassed even His power to bear, so that the angel had to come to His side to strengthen Him.

When that passed, He rose from His prayer and awakened the Disciples of whom it is pathetically said that they were sleeping quite overcome by sorrow. And then that summit of betrayal arrives in the shape of the chief priests and captains of the Temple and the elders, led by Satan in the person of Judas. And there is the ultimate horror of the kiss which formed the sign and which has become proverbial to designate the deepest depths of treason, and which echoes throughout all time as symbolic of unsurpassable outrage.

They seized Jesus and led Him to the high priest's house where they mocked Him and beat Him. The Gospel says that they kept striking His face and reviling Him. For how long? Apparently this devil-instigated performance went on all night, for the account says that when day broke they brought Him into the Sanhedrin and began their savage interrogation as to who He really was.

They secured His admission that He was the Son of God, whereupon He is taken off to Pilate and accused, because the power of putting to death is reserved to the Roman Authority.

There follows the confrontation between Pilate and Jesus by which the Governor is impressed to the depths of his nature, so much so that he determines that he will not ally himself with the proceedings. He tries to release Jesus, first through recourse to Herod, and then by seeking to satisfy the hatred of the accusers by the shocking scourging of the Victim, followed by the crowning with thorns and the arraying of Jesus in the symbols of a mock monarchy.

Finally Pilate unavailingly offers the people the privilege of freeing Jesus according to the special privilege of the Passover. But as St. Luke says, the mob persisted with loud cries demanding that Jesus would be crucified. That clamour prevailed. Pilate delivered Jesus to their will and He was led away to execution. And when they came to the place called Golgotha or the Skull, they crucified Him there, and two other malefactors along with Him.

How afflicting it is to read that expression of the Scriptures: "Two other malefactors"! But that was really the position. As Isaias had prophesied seven hundred years previously: "Jesus has delivered His soul unto death and is reputed with the wicked, and He has borne the sins of many" (Ch. 53, 12). Our Beloved Lord has so united Himself to us and so steeped Himself in our sins that He has veritably become sin. The Lamb of God has assumed that burden and is now about to be immolated in order to take away the sins of the world.

The Three Hours' torment on the cross ensues, punctuated by those utterances which we call the Seven Words. Perhaps the most significant is that one which Jesus spoke to His Mother standing at the foot of the cross. "Woman," He said, "behold in the Disciple your son," bridging in that phrase the great gap of years since kindred words were delivered to the serpent by Almighty God: "I will set enmities between you and the Woman, between your seed and her seed. She shall crush your head" (Gen. 3, 15).

Now has come the fulfilment of that promise. Mary is the prophesied woman. Her Seed is the Messiah Who speaks and is about to die, and Who will in that dying crush the serpent and turn the world's sorrow into joy. St. John, now hailed as her Son, is truly so by the union of the Mystical Body.

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished said: "It is consummated" and He gave up His Spirit (Luke 19, 30).

Of that the Mass is the living memorial. But how disregarded it can be! How seldom one hears it urged upon people other than as a Sunday obligation! Even when it does receive attention, its wonders are inadequately disclosed, Sometimes the vestments and the sacred vessels are discussed in minute detail as if they were the things that mattered. Of course they are important because they are the trappings of the great ceremony. But they are only trappings, much in the same category as the clothes we wear. It is the central idea or essence of the Mass that I am discussing.

Today there are many who are trying to tone down on the Eucharist on which the Mass depends. The idea at work is to propitiate the Protestants, to devise a formula which they would accept. That must obviously mean that we have to give away to some extent so as to meet them. But how can we abandon one inch of ground in regard to the Eucharist? It is either the Real Presence of Jesus or it ceases to be that.

Luther was one of those who interfered with the doctrine of the Eucharist. His definition substituted for Transubstantiation what he called Consubstantiation. But the prefix "trans" denotes a change of substance. "Con," which means "with," denotes that there has been no change of substance and means that Our Lord somehow comes to us along with the bread and wine whose substance has not changed. Moreover His coming depends on the faith of the recipient at the moment of Communion. As he is not present in the elements, there can be no adoration of them and therefore no Reservation. It is a case of the Real Absence of Jesus Christ. There is no parity or approximation there to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist.

Formulae which seek to bridge that gap or to disguise its existence are but devices aimed at deceiving either one side or both. It is a transaction equivalent to putting paper across a hole to hide it.

Consubstantiation is more like what we call a Spiritual Communion, but Consubstantiation is far removed from the true Eucharist. The Council of Trent was emphatic in its condemnation of Luther's formula. It did not represent the Eucharist.

The modern tendency towards that error would deprive us of the Eucharist and of the Mass, our most precious heritage.

The Mass is the divine expedient which obliterates the distance and the two thousand years which separate us from the event of the Crucifixion. It places Calvary in our midst; or if you like-transports us to the moment and spot of the actual Sacrifice of Our Lord. Through the Mass we take part in the reality; we are present there along with His Mother, St. John and the others. It is no symbolism, no mere pious idea such as Consubstantiation would offer.

All Masses meet in Calvary just as the rays of the sun find their centre in the radiant sun; so that when Our lord hung on the Cross, His eyes rested on all who would attend the Masses which would ever be said.

The Mass is the fullness of the Sacrifice of Christ, There is the difference that at Mass we do not see the underlying reality. If we could, we would be rent with sorrow, such as could kill us. Today our Faith substitutes our eyes and our ears, but the merit which comes through that medium of Faith is the greater.

As a help towards comprehending that infinite mystery of the Mass I propose television. Of course it is a weak image inasmuch as it only projects into our homes a copy of what occurs at the place of origin. It does not actually station the persons before us. But the Mass reaches the celestial height of setting the Drama itself before us in its utmost completeness, though without its sight and sound, for an essential idea of the Mass is that it be an exercise of Faith. Between it and ourselves is a veil which the senses do not penetrate. But never, never let routine prevent us from trying to pierce that veil with our thought.

Strange to say, the venerable prayers of the Mass tend to distract one a little from the hidden reality. If during the Mass we could keep the mind concentrated on that reality, it would be well to put aside the prayer books and let the Drama absorb us utterly. That would be a justification for the old-time use of the Rosary at Mass. It enables the mind to devote itself to what is there happening to Jesus and Mary; and that is the centre point.

Possibly by reason of the popular devotion of the Three Hours' Agony on Good Friday, it is commonly thought that the Mass comprises the time from the nailing of the Victim to the Cross on to the moment of His death. But there is more in the Sacrifice of Christ than His dying. That Sacrifice was enacted precisely according to the ritual of the Old Law. Of that ritual Our Lord had to fulfil every detail because that sacrifice looked forward to it and prefigured it. He said He had come to fulfil it. Therefore His fulfilment would be perfect, descending into detail which no thinking of ours can probe.

The special efficacy of that old sacrifice lay in the fact that one day the Redeemer would incorporate it into His own pure Sacrifice. He would reproduce every item of it and thus unite it to Himself and to His own Sacrifice.

In that way did the Old participate in the merit of the New for those Jews who reposed their faith in the old sacrifice originated by Abraham which looked forward to the Redemptive Sacrifice. One will be struck by the fact that the liturgy of the Mass is chiefly drawn from the Last Supper, and we must understand why. One explanation is that the Last Supper is an anticipation or prestaging of Calvary, just as the Mass is a prolongation or post-staging. This idea would present us with, so to speak, a three-storeyed house; the storeys being the Last Supper, Calvary, the Mass. It is the one house; we would be in it whether we are at the Last Supper, or on Calvary, or at today's Mass.

A great Jesuit writer, Maurice de la Taille, has popularised a different conception which amounts to a two-storeyed house; the ground floor being the Sacrifice of Christ extending from the Cenacle to the Cross; the other storey being the Mass. It is much more than a captivating theory of his own. His work, Mysterium Fidei quotes for us abundant statements of the great ones of the past who held the same view. Higher than any such exalted testimony would be the fact that it was a proposition approved of by the Council of Trent.

Examining the ritual which Jesus fulfilled in His Sacrifice, de la Taille contends that it was not discharged on Calvary alone and that we have to go back to preceding stages to supply all the ingredients of a true sacrifice under the Old Law, which is what Our Lord intended to enact precisely. That missing part of the recognised ritual is the oblation or formal offering of the Victim to God by the Priest. Jesus is both the offering Priest and the Victim. It is certain that in the pivotal event which would terminate the Old Law and usher in the New Sacrifice He would fulfil the stipulated requirements in a manner which could not be questioned.

De la Taille holds that on Calvary there is no utterance of Jesus which can be construed in that sense of a formal offering of Himself and he declares that to find it one must go back to the Last Supper. On that occasion Christ Our Lord, in all due form according to the recognised ritual, did make such an oblation of Himself to God. He pledged Himself to His Passion and Death for many unto the remission of sins. (Matthew 26, 28). The Sacrifice of Christ began at the Last Supper but the immolation of the Victim did not take place then. Thus offered and bound to Sacrifice, the Great Victim gave effect to the oblation by entering immediately afterwards into His Passion which was consummated by His death. That was begun in the Cenacle was completed on Calvary, or rather on Easter morning in the glory of the Resurrection.

The Mass contains the Sacrifice of Christ in its full essence and completeness. Therefore, according to the foregoing comprehension of things, we assist at all that dread liturgy when we attend a Mass. We are really present at, and part of, all that train of events which I starred off by quoting to you from the pages of Holy Writ. I recapitulate them briefly: We mingle with the 12 Apostles at the Supper and receive with them the Body and Blood of the true Paschal Lamb. And then we go with Jesus and the Disciples to the Garden of Cerhsernani where the most excruciating part of His sufferings is submitted to by Him and given visible expression in His Agony.That is His contemplation of the sins of men which He, the Divine Scapegoat (Levit. 16, 8-10) had taken on Himself. That ordeal ends in His arrest, made more bitter by Judas's betraying share in it.

Then unrolls all the grievous paraphernalia of ill-treatment: the tormeming by the soldiers, the scourging and crowning with thorns, the trial and sentencing, the Way of the Cross, and the Cross itself. Jesus dies and the world's ransom has been paid.

* * *

All that came into the compass of the Sacrifice of Christ, Therefore all of it is comprised and compressed by divine Power into the Mass. What a thrilling adventure, therefore, it is to assist at Mass! We enter then into the order of the supremely miraculous. Time and space are set aside and we are back in the world of Jesus and Mary. We are at that eternal moment designated by God when He told the serpem that his head would be crushed by the Woman and her Seed. At Mass that crushing is in progress. Jesus is dying on the Cross, and Mary, the Woman, stands at the foot of it. Look, all who pass, and see if there is any sorrow like unto that sorrow!

Those exciting contents of the Mass are no affair of meditation only or imagination, bur are fact and sheer reality. The Sacrifice of Our Lord is not worth more than me Mass, for the two are one and the same. Or to pur this in a way which will compel thought: Ifby an impossibility me two were severed without depriving me Mass of me virtue which it draws from the original Sacrifice, then the Mass by itself would be our sufficient ransom.

It was the Mass which the prophet Malachias, speaking for Almighty God, foretold four hundred years before Christ in these tremendous words: "From me rising of me sun even to its going down, My Name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place mere is Sacrifice and mere is offered in My ame a clean oblation. For My Name is great among me Gentiles, saith the Lord of Hosts" (Mal. 1, 11).

And it was to the same Holy Sacrifice of the Mass mat St. Andrew me Apostle referred when he was about to be crucified like His Master: "Daily do I immolate to Almighty God not the flesh of bulls nor me blood of goats but the Immaculate Lamb of God Himself, whose flesh is then partaken of by every believing people. For that Lamb which was sacrificed remains living and entire."

That amazing and supremely important experience of the Mass is mere beckoning to us at practically every hour of the day, pleading for our participation.

True Devotion to the Nation by Frank Duff

In this essay from a half century ago, Legion of Mary founder Frank Duff diagnosed many of the ills plaguing the Irish nation. He saw it as a country which was devoid of patriotism and self sufficiency, evident in high levels of emigration and inability to produce goods for their own people. Duff's essay also discusses Communism and the antagonism that it held towards the Legion of Mary.

The centenary year of the Legion of Mary begins 7th September 2021.

THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL

As Our Lady has that special part in Christianity, so she is the key to our problem of today: True Devotion to the Nation.

In the mystical Nazareth it is still a question of Mary tending her Son. She is not interested alone in feeding him and unfolding his mind. She is solicitous about every aspect of his life, his physical welfare, his comfort, his recreation, all things which would surround him and affect the life of the individual. She sees him in all people. She looks on his life as a whole. It would be intolerable to her that he should be afflicted in any department. It is certain that she would wish to remedy anything which was wrong. And this is the basis of True Devotion to the Nation.

Of course first things rank first. The essence of everything is the spiritual, the Divine things. But the body is inextricably entwined with the soul, and material things with the spiritual; each affects the other. It . is not properly possible for us to concern ourselves only with the soul of a person. Love does not think along such lines of restriction. You love the whole person and you long to serve him in every way. It would constitute a peculiar position to talk religion to a person and to be indifferent to his misery. A natural mother would not act in that way towards her child, and neither would Mary towards her mystical child. We are supposed to be the agents of Mary, tending her child, united to her action. We must be as Our Lady to the community. But I insist there is no abandonment of our traditional scheme.

There is no dropping of our spiritual programme, but only an intensification of it. We have not relaxed our rule against the giving of material relief. In fact we have become progressively strengthened in regard to it. We believe it to be our bulwark against the mere humanism which has absorbed so much of the Catholic apostolate. Too much of the alleged apostolate of today is but a cult of the material even though a spiritual gloss be imparted to it. With sufficient agencies devoted to the giving of material relief it is vital that the Legion should remain constant to its aim of seeking first the kingdom of God.

True Devotion to the Nation is an effort to do this, and then to reach out to the 'other things'. This order of values is essential.

The spiritual must be the motive. The prevailing tendency is to rule out that motive and to commit the people's lives to secular and technical handling. This is not even a distant relation to Christianity and we must energetically try to impart true balance. But 'material relief' is to be correctly interpreted. It does not include that rendering of services to the individual and the community which constitute True Devotion to the Nation. While our great preoccupation is the spiritual, it must not be viewed too narrowly, for that spiritual concerns all life. All life springs from it and ministers to it. If we have to distinguish between what is primary and secondary, it should not result in the neglecting of either. If we are dealing with the secondary aspects stressed in True Devotion to the Nation, it must not be to the detriment of the primary one.

We must not for a moment lose sight of the soul. It is to the soul that we are really addressing ourselves through the means which we use, each of which should be viewed as a lever to uplift faith, to promote moral good. Mary's own outlook must be ours. Whether she was attending to Jesus himself or to the more remote operations of running her home, she always had the interest of the Holy Trinity in clear focus. So in any situation where we are in doubt, think of her, how she would act, and she will give us true direction.

The legionary must see Jesus in his neighbour, who is all mankind, and then must serve him in every way, using each way to lead people on to proper levels of ~ religion. Too much of common Catholicism is a veneer. I do not say that it is insincere but it does not go deep enough to influence the ordinary life. Included in that process of Christianising must be the making of one's place more happy, more prosperous, more beautiful, more enlightened; the creating of employment, the stopping of emigration. One of the special means of aiding in that process would be the fostering of honest dealing in every shape.

So dislocating is defect in this department that I have wondered if a ten per cent improvement in common honesty would not bridge the gap which separates the improvement of the world from a modest comfort.

WHAT IS TRUE PATRIOTISM?

If this is fulfilment of duty to the Church and to one's neighbour it is, likewise, patriotism. This word opens up before us unknown, uncharted territory, for what is true patriotism? There is no model of it in the world. The nearest is the brand of self-sacrifice and devotion which develops during a war. But this is motivated by hate more than by love, and appropriately it is directed towards destroying. So it is imperative that a correct model be somewhere provided. This is doubly necessary having regard to the way in which the Modern State tends to widen its functions. Animated usually with the best intentions, it seeks to manipulate people's minds. It moves more and more towards thinking for each one, arranging his life in detail. By a creeping process it is appropriating to itself rights which Christianity has always regarded as belonging to the individual.

This could work out to a pure tyranny. The modern idea attributes to the 'State' a quasi-omnipotence. Governments honestly imagine that they have an unlimited power over the citizens. This could prove intolerable even if operated on lines of true democracy. But often enough it is a case of the dictatorship of a few persons. This has all the colour of the menace described in that novel "1984", which Big Brother looks into every room through a television apparatus and supervises everything for the twenty-four hours of the day. It is towards something like that dismal position that the State idea is steadily slipping. More and more is being taken into its scope. Possibly this may result in providing for every material need. But analysed, such an improvement looks dangerously like a comfortable slavery. And inevitably that evolution will clash with the Catholic Church which ultimately has to insist on certain rights for the individual, believing that God has given those rights.

"From the useful institution which it was, the national State has become the threat to civilisation that it now undoubtedly is". These words are not mine but Toynbee's. That tendency towards taking over by the State is largely due to the passivity of the citizens. Having been taught no sense of responsibility in respect of the defects around them, they do nothing towards remedying them. So it is inevitable that the State is forced to intervene in regard to the greater evils. Then the intervention and the inertia are both progressive. The citizen fades away into a cipher put into a computer which will decide what is to be done with him. If the people are shown a proper sense of responsibility, much ofthis would have been avoided and healthy communities would be the result.

Most of the graver problems are due to maladjustment of some kind, and would yield to principles of self-help and Christian behaviour. So there is no need for the individual to forfeit his rights to the State in order to be able to live. 8 But this is a truth which must be practically demonstrated. This is of such importance that God will help if we but play our part. The lack of a model in this particular case results disastrously in the absence of any idea as to what patriotism is. In the case of flying, for instance, the correct theory was present long before the practical model was attained. People understood what flying meant. They knew its laws and indeed everything. about it. The one thing missing was an engine which could lift more than its own weight. The moment the internal combustion engine was discovered, the problem of flight was solved; all the laws and principles were ready. The usual procedure is that the idea precedes the working model, and eventually the model emerges. But it is different in that case of patriotism where there has been neither the proper idea nor the working model.

Then what is patriotism?

What are its basis, motives, scope?

This degree of uncertainty declares it to be an unknown quantity. It will be understood either as: a) That wartime formula; or as b) A sentimental conception without rational roots. As such it will be seen as a mere rivalry and rejected by sensible people; or as c) A device for exploiting people. Doctor Sam Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel. Therein lies the extreme importance of True Devotion to the Nation.

It is the practical working model which teaches us the correct theory of Christian patriotism and shows how it is to be applied. If it can be made to prevail, it would usher in a revolution infinitely greater than that produced by the discovery of the steam engine or electricity or atomic science, because it is in the superior moral order. One helping circumstance is that everybody is at least in a hazy way searching for such a thing; nobody is satisfied with those common conceptions of nationhood. For all its defects Ireland is in this matter the best off by reason of its having Faith. If we could ameliorate our position in a worthy and striking way, we would secure imitation for the world which seems to be wheezing to death in terrible convulsions. We would qualify as that Nation visualised in the Handbook of the Legion of Mary which solved its problems and as a matter of automatic consequence attracts the other nations to learn from it. Moreover, and more important, it would afford convincing evidence as to the power of Christianity, so much derided today as an obsolete superstition. There is a further reason why the Legion must enter on this new territory of True Devotion to the Nation. Big changes are about to accomplish themselves in the apostolate. Certain aspects of it have been seen to be based excessively on the economic and material.

Many of them repudiate any programme of trying to win souls. If in certain places the Legion is taken up instead of those other apostolates, it will be required to undertake works which they had specialised in. Through True Devotion to the Nation the Legion is enabled to attend to them inside its own framework of motives and method. There is another reason why we must work True Devotion to the Nation vigorously. Perhaps it is due to the Legion's vivid projection of the apostolic idea that there is a surge of new' societies and humanitarian projects around us. Most of them have no religious note in them. Add on new efforts by Communism. So that if we do not go at once into that field we may find it largely taken over by those agencies. This would be serious as presenting that position deplored in the Legion Handbook where we had been anticipated and out-soldiered. Also it would mean that certain works are being left at the mercy of purely human motives. How far will these bring us?

NO NATIONAL IDEALISM

But a paramount reason lies in the necessity of the country which is the taking off ground for this project - Ireland. Let us be frank about it: there is nothing in the country which could be described as national idealism. There is a poor realisation of duty or service of the community. It would be a great mistake to think that our problems are mainly economic. Actually there is much money flowing, hundreds of millions of borrowed money among it. It is difficult to get labour. There is much drinking and misconduct. There is insufficient public spirit. There is a determined and partly unnecessary emigration. There are jobs available but the people are determined to go. Patriotism should be showing itself in some sort of dutifulness towards one's country, at the very least in a willingness to stay in it. But that is not in evidence.

Some aspects resemble anarchy.

Definitely there is at work a malady, which, if it is to be cured, will kill us spiritually and probably nationally. - A group of us have just come back from a short trip which involved the staying in a different place every night. I would not say that it evidenced a consoling religious position. In two of the places eleven people were at Holy Communion in the morning, of whom we were seven. In another at Sunday's Mass the priest appealed that everyone should go at least monthly to Holy Communion, and he pleaded that people be not ashamed of being seen going to the altar rails! This in the era of daily Communion! That rural inadequacy compares badly with the Adjutorian degree which the Legion is proposing to the people, namely, daily Mass, Holy Communion, Rosary and 12 the saying of an office.

With backing, that programme could be made to sweep Ireland. In those localities one felt that the life of religion had reached an irreducible minimum, and. that it is not presenting the true face elf Christianity. If there are any idealistic impulses stirring in those communities, these are not derived from religion. Nor are those places capable of withstanding a moral or religious attack. Yet they are leisured, nothing stirring in the early part of the day, and thus affording scope for the Adjutorians, the Patricians, etc. The Patricians is a positive necessity; it is an efficient way of teaching the adults their religion. Need I add that there are no praesidia in those places? All that sounds bad. But we are far from being the only victim's of a misunderstood civilisation. All the other countries are suffering similarly, or far worse.

In a recent issue the London Times published a survey of conditions on the English countryside. it shows a like unsavoury stagnation, but deprived of the religious note which at least we have. Beer, weekly bingo, and a discontent with one's surroundings: these constitute a fine formula for the warping of human material. A better order does not spring up of itself. There must be some force.to animate it. But not all such forces are good. For instance, a Communist cell would be an energising influence. It would be a bad one, but it would certainly set things moving in various ways. It would start every sort of hare; plans to reform, schemes for taking over the property of the "rich", promises to give something to everybody. And somewhere in the picture would be the weaning of people from that enemy of progress, religion! That stirring, that animating must be done. But it must be approached on correct lines, that is, for Christian ends and out of Christian motives.

My formula for that animating principle would not exactly constitute a sixty-four dollar question, because you all know the answer. It is a well-worked Praesidium. I do not suggest that the Legion is the only animating principle. But it is the only large-scale, recognised one which carries the religious motive to its full logical conclusion. It does not base its apostolate on a vague appeal to Christian humanitarianism which could mean absolutely nothing. Even unbelievers constantly have that word 'Christian' on their lips. The Legion proposes as motive power the doctrine of the Mystical Body in all its detail, including, of course, Our Lady. This doctrine obliges us to think in terms of every person in each place and of all aspects of life there, cultural, economic, recreational and of development in every sense. Commonly the absence of unemployment is regarded as denoting prosperity, so that the people do not bestir themselves towards development. That apparent prosperity is fictitious because those places are providing for their children by the simple method of emigrating them. The resulting position is the opposite to true prosperity. For a community, like a family, should normally provide for its children. This can only be done by a continuous development of industry in all its forms.

All this must not amount to selfish localism. It must be expansive.

People solving their problems in a small country place must at the same time be thinking of the whole country. More than that, there should be a holy internationalism. Here I point to the movements which the Legion has produced. They emerged in a particular place, but an essential thought was: how are we going to apply this to the whole world?

Just now you are witnessing this legionary instinct at work in the Peregrinatio Pro Christo and the Viatores Christi".

Under the Peregrinatio movement at present (1970s) about 2,000 Irish legionaries give their holidays and holiday money each year to go on mission projects in Britain. And already this movement has caught on in places as far away as Haiti, Venezuela, United States, Canada, the Philippines and will soon be imitated elsewhere. Under the Viatores Christi movement some 200 Irish lay people have already gone to work in missionary countries. To the extent that we progress with True Devotion to the Nation it will *Viatores was part of the Legion system then similarly be utilised for the benefit of the world.

Is it necessary to point out that this sort of thing, done all over a country, builds up into Christian patriotism? Necessarily that Christian love must concentrate initially on the people one meets, but it must ambition .to help everyone. If patriotism is basically religion, then the Legion is perhaps the best organisation to implement it because it unites the two ideas.

EXAMPLE OF COMMUNISM

There is also a primary psychological consideration to be reckoned with. Man is not meant to be alone. In the individual resides an extraordinary quality of helplessness. It must be supplemented if he is to be made effective even in the mildest degree.

This defectiveness is at its greatest in the moral order. But the gaining of a helper makes all the difference. A few working together stimulate each other on to courage and conquest. As a special exemplification of this I again give the case of Communism. A handful of them can take possession of and control a nation. They accomplish this by binding themselves together in a tight, single-minded unity, and then by striking at any unity outside themselves. Thereby they throw the population into individual isolation and consequent helplessness. The mechanism for this is universal spying and fear. No one has any real communication with others and therefore cannot lean on them, is afraid even to express his thoughts to another. That effected, the highly organised few can do what they like.

It is because they correctly recognise in the Legion a counterprinciple that Communism fears the Legion.

The Legion works for religion instead of against it, for unity instead of division; exhibits the.martyr-spirit instead of weakly yielding. True, the Legion cannot avail ofthe Communist mechanism of secrecy, spying and fear, but love and grace will outweigh those things.

If a sufficient number be induced to assert themselves, it becomes impossible to suppress a whole people like a flock of sheep. In what way is the foregoing applicable to a merely nominal Christian community? Suppose a Communist cell to be operating there. It would not have the power to force its will by direct action. In these circumstances it would not sail under its true colours. It would work with supreme effectiveness by creating a wrong atmosphere, one of cynicism, quiet pressure, jeering at any sort of idealism, at patriotism as a narrow, outmoded sentiment; at religion as a superstition which has been disproved by science; and so forth. Religion can be put completely on the defensive in places like those previously pointed to where there is no praesidium, no Patricians, and where the people are ashamed to be seen going to Holy Communion! Surely there is some malign activity there! I do not say that Communism is at the bottom of all those rotten attitudes. There are other agencies. It is a matter of life and death that we organise on proper lines. The Praesidium is the perfect stimulant for that. It brings together persons on a basis which more or less excludes really unworthy elements, that is, it summons them to prayer and disagreeable tasks. Then it educates them in the full Christian philosophy, doctrinal and practical. Soon they understand each other and this is the beginning of action.

They realise, too, that their ideas are held by many in the community. In this feeling of unity lies strength.

If that Praesidium works faithfully according to its principles, it can accomplish good. Better still, it can enable good to overpower evil. Definitely there is some moral force in the Legion which make it effective in dealing with the cynical, materialistic and falsely intellectual brigades. It commands a hearing for its views and it expounds its spirituality and idealism without timidity or human respect. We do not find the legionaries ashamed to be seen going to Holy Communion! But I repeat that without the Praesidium those same compelling and essential ideas would be submerged by all that cynicism and mockery and materialism which exercise a withering effect on the mediocre Catholic. It goes without saying, however, that the Praesidium must be given its chance by leadership and encouragement. I think that the place without some form of organisation equivalent to the Legion is in peril. For there is no doubt that the materialistic arid evil aspects are gaining ground. If the Legion were to be eliminated at a stroke, I believe that the effect on Ireland would be like the breaking of the dykes which protect low-lying land, that is, the oncome of a deluge. In the second place, I contend that the proper working of the Legion would cause good to prevail and would lead on to a Christian order.

Such are the principles of True Devotion to the Nation and there in the Praesidium is the machinery to put them into operation. I contend that they must work, because they are based on grace and the love of God. Those simple strivings will be effective where statecraft and governmental power are helpless.

AN EXAMPLE

As a crowning evidence of what can be accomplished by the balanced scheme of True Devotion to the Nation, I give a case in Ireland where the circumstances of an entire district, twenty two miles long, were so uniformly deplorable that it would seem reasonable to call it hopeless. Since the previous century it had lost nine tenths of its population, and the flow of emigration persisted. No marriage in the preceding five 19 years, and only two children born. With an ageing population extinction seemed to be certain. Every feature of failure present; self-help absent, family feuds so general that even sports did not exist; schools under closing order. Disheartenment such that it had become the very atmosphere, paralysing energy and good intention. The Parish Priest declared that it would require a miracle to revive the place, but he added: "I believe in miracles". Building on his faith, True Devotion to the Nation was set to work in conditions which represented a supreme test for it.

What happened in the next five years forms an epic of all-round restoration.

I do not term it miraculous because I would think that, though startling, it is really in the common order, only waiting to be evoked by proper procedure. It is not the will of God that communities be extinguished or languish in misery.

A model sufficiency is available to all who reach out properly for it: neither too much nor too little, as the Liturgy petitions. God has pity on the multitude and wants to save it. But human co-operation must enter in: such is his law and he insists on it. When that self-help animated by faith offers itself, it can effect marvels of restoration. This process need not be a slow one; it can be rapid and such was the case in that territory. In five years a new spirit had declared itself. The place had put itself 20 on the tourist map. Early vegetables were being profitably grown. A knitting industry had been launched. Every aspect of its defect had shown striking amelioration. The revival has taken in all sections of life, the spiritual, the economic, marriages, culture. There is no doubt that it will remain so and do better still, provided, of course, that the same positive thinking is maintained.

It is probable that this animation (not necessarily of-the same kind nor in the same degree) could be accomplished everywhere by the same methods. Obviously too it can be put in motion in every place simultaneously. Then is there not the presumption that any country could be rendered economically sound and otherwise reasonably healthy in a comparatively few years? And it would be a case of true health, because the spiritual and moral consideration would be prominent.

TOURISM

When it comes to choice of schemes, I am not sure but that for us the heart of the matter lies in tourism. Some have taken a different view and reckoned that it lies in the land, in the exploiting of the bounty of nature. So I say that we must not depreciate the one for the other, not omit the one for the sake of the other. Obviously we must think in terms of everything which affords a possibility; there is no necessary antagonism between the different expedients. Tourism can 21 reach its greatest heights where the land is unsuited to agriculture. As well it asserts itself comprehensively, germinating other industries.- It should be our desire not only to help our own country economically but also to show it forth in an advantageous light. The doing ,ofthis latter work must comprise everything from cleanliness to making the most of the scenery and also exhibiting the customs, history and religion.

On the economic plane tourism has a particular value to Ireland. Many countries have to import the food which they supply to the tourist. For Ireland it would mean the saving of the costly exportation of its produce, some of it at a loss. But note: accommodation is the first requirement, scenery taking second place. Therefore the effort should be made to induce householders to cater for a visitor or two. In Scotland this is much developed. One is struck by the prevalence of the sign 'Bed and Breakfast'. It is essential that the accommodation reach certain qualifying levels. Another aspect is that if people can be induced to take in visitors, it makes them improve their own homes and raise their standards. Moreover, they should be encouraged to do what they never do at present, that is, tell the visitors about religion.

This the visitor is anxious to hear as lending 'character' to their holiday, but it is denied to them out of a mistaken delicacy, a reluctance to interfere with their beliefs. That could be a costly error from the Catholic point ofview. For the amount of appreciation foreign visitors show when trouble has been taken to explain such things to them is often quite touching. It embellishes their holiday. They go away and talk about how much they have learned. It would be much as if we were visiting India and somebody took the trouble to bring us around the Buddhist temples and explained them to us. But there would be this difference between the two transactions that God may seize upon the contact at home as a means of bringing the Faith to the visitor.