actions on Christmas Eve had caused quite a stir in the locality. It was unheard of for anyone, let alone a woman, to walk out of the Mass, and at Christmas too! And then to insult the holy priest, and him on the altar of God.
Michael, who had followed her out, supported her actions. ‘We can’t depend on the Church. The bishops will always line up with the Crown to get more money for Maynooth, and more power for themselves. And come the day when we’re all lying stretched with the hunger, and no one to give us a decent burial, the Church and the Crown will still be saying, “What can we do? It’s the will of God.’”
She nodded. ‘We have to leave Ireland, Michael – get to America before it’s too late.’
‘We will, Ellen. I promise you, we will.’
But now, the priest was coming to see her.
The village would see this as a sign of shame on it, that the priest had to ride out from Clonbur to talk sense to Ellen Rua. But the way Ellen saw it, the priest had more to answer for than she did.
‘I’ll speak to him alone,’ she said to Michael, who wanted to stay. ‘Please. You take the children to the Tom Bawns’.’
Michael reluctantly left her, and she could hear him rounding up the children outside as they made a fuss of the horse that had carried her visitor. Then the light from the doorway darkened, signalling the approach of her visitor. She got up from where she tended the fire, and wiped her hands.
‘God bless all here,’ the figure in the doorway said.
‘God bless all who enter,’ Ellen responded. ‘You’re welcome, Father.’
At her invitation he sat across from her at the fire. ‘I think we might have a fall of snow yet – the sky has that colour to it,’ he began.
She nodded, allowing him to ease into the conversation in this way if he chose. ‘Yes, Father, pray that we will. A green Christmas makes a fat churchyard, a white Christmas a green harvest,’ she said, quoting one of the many sean-fhocails she had learned from the Máistir. The priest, she could see, was uncomfortable at the choice of her words.
He straightened himself, tore his gaze from the fire, and looked directly at her. ‘The Midnight Mass – it was a wrong thing to do, walking out like that. You caused scandal among the people, and scandal to your children.’
Ellen was prepared for this, but was not prepared to sit meekly through it. ‘Well, Father,’ she said, ‘the Church is always great with condemning people for causing scandal. Sure, isn’t it their way of keeping the people down?’
She saw him tense at this.
‘Is it not a scandal that the people are going hungry?’ she put to him. ‘Yet food is being exported to line the pockets of the merchants. Is it not a scandal that there is no work for our menfolk, when the whole country is a disgrace with lack of roads and bridges? Yet Ireland is a part of the great British Empire – the richest power there is?’
Father O’Brien was taken aback by this attack.
‘Well?’ she challenged him.
‘Mrs O’Malley, please—’
‘Is it not a scandal that my husband journeyed all the way to Clonbur to tell you how, in the face of Famine, we are being further ground down by Pakenham, for you to say, or do, nothing about it?’
‘You’re wrong, Mrs O’Malley,’ he countered. ‘I went to Tuam. I spoke with the archbishop.’
‘Then why is the Church silent on this? Why will the Catholic Church not lead us out of our poverty and misery? That is the scandal, Father.’
‘Ellen Rua!’ The priest raised his voice, demanding her attention. ‘Now, you listen to me for a moment. When Michael visited me, I was horrified to hear of Pakenham’s doings. Shortly thereafter, I set out for Tuam. Archbishop MacHale, in his wisdom – and he is experienced in these matters – advised that I should neither say nor do anything which might inflame the situation. I am bound by my vow of obedience to obey his Grace in all things.’
‘But is nothing to be done, then?’ she demanded.
‘The archbishop is doing something: he will consult with the other bishops in General Assembly at Maynooth. They will assess how the Crown is dealing with the present crisis, and if necessary, a deputation will go to Rome to petition the Pope to intercede with Queen Victoria. In the meantime, there should be no disturbances, no riotous behaviour, which might prejudice the position of the Holy Father.’
‘This is an old story, Father,’ Ellen replied, unappeased. ‘Nothing has been done by the bishops to improve the position of the poor since we were joined with England in the Union. And neither Queen Victoria nor her Government will recognize the Church of Rome. All that will happen is that more monies will be sent to Maynooth, and the bishops will fall silent again.’
‘It is not right for you to speak this way about Holy Mother Church, who always cares for her flock as Christ did.’
‘The Church cares only when it comes to the collection of dues,’ she rejoined. ‘It is no longer the Church of Christ. It is the Church of businessmen and traders, the Church of towns and cities, not the Church of the hills and valleys. When did the archbishop ever set foot out of Tuam to see how like animals we live, scavenging the bogs and bare rocks for what we can get to keep body and soul together?’
‘This is blasphemy you are speaking, Ellen Rua,’ the priest retorted, thinking what a mistake he had made in coming here.
‘Well, if it is itself then God will strike me down, Father!’
‘God forgive you for that, Ellen Rua, for I cannot,’ he said, making the Sign of the Cross on himself.
She looked at him across the hearth. ‘You are, I believe, a good man,’ she said. ‘But you have been too long at Maynooth, among the men of power – the priest-politicians.’
Father O’Brien studied her now. How did she know these things? Her father, the fallen priest, must have turned her against the Church, the Church that had turned on him, turned him out. That was it.
‘The Church that I, and these villagers, belong to is the Church of no voice, but it is the real Church of Christ. And you and the bishops have forgotten that, Father.’
There, she had said what she meant to say, she would say no more to him. It was not against him she spoke. He had to follow the rules. It was against the system itself that she raged. Layer upon layer of privileged, educated men laying down the law for the uneducated and underprivileged.
She rose as he made to leave. ‘God go with you on the road, Father,’ she bade him, no trace in her voice of the anger she had displayed towards his Church.
As he nudged the big grey mare on to the mountain track which would carry him back towards Finny, the young priest’s mind was filled with the woman’s fierce condemnation of the Church he served.
Ellen Rua was a devout woman, but also a strong woman who dared to speak her mind. He had no doubt she wasn’t alone in her feelings about the Church. He had sensed for some time that the people felt let down by him, but most of all by the Church. A Church that
