Two parishes separated almost by the entire breadth of Ireland are encountering their past in different ways over this month and next. It is a fair stride from Achill to Ballymacash, Lisburn. The memories have been healed about the mission at Achill.
Achill’s mission graves
Achill’s Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland people will begin the marking of 19th century Achill Mission graves in the four churchyards and graveyards of the old Mission at 2pm on Saturday September 24th at St Thomas’s Dugort.
Most Revd Dr Michael Neary, Catholic Archbishop of Tuam and Right Revd Patrick Rooke, the newly consecrated Church of Ireland Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, will preside and speak.
Some 190 unmarked 19th century graves are now identified in the Mission’s churchyards and graveyards. The names of many of those buried are known but in most cases we don’t know whose bones lie where. We will place crosses on ten such unmarked graves within our ceremony. Each of the 190 will bear a simple cross by the end of the year. The crosses are a gift offered with respect by the people of St Thomas’s.
St Thomas’s was the principal church of the controversial Achill Mission. Some Achill people buried by the Mission had become Church of Ireland members, inspired by Reverend Edward Nangle, the Mission’s founder, and his community. Others, who likewise changed denomination or were linked closely with the Mission, are more likely to have lived and died in the Roman Catholic community had the times not been so desperate materially, and so aggressive spiritually. There were hurt and angry feelings about both groups for many years, and a mix of anger and admiration about Nangle’s methods.
The Reverend Val Rodgers said, “God knows the full story of those buried by the Mission. But it’s time we ensured that they all have Catholic as well as Anglican blessing, and that from the most senior local leaders of both Christian denominations, within shared prayer for all the island’s faithful departed
“We will honour the efforts and decisions made in good faith by Achill people up to the present day about faith and love, food and livelihood. We will commend to God all those buried from St Thomas’s, no matter who, why, when or how. We will remember all of Achill’s dead, whatever their denomination and whether their bones lie in Catholic or Protestant ground. We will focus above all on the dilemmas, sufferings, efforts and decisions of Achill’s poor from 1831 when the Mission began, through the Great Famine, to the Mission’s end in 1886.
“We will acknowledge the heroic, though fractious, efforts of Catholic and Protestant alike to bless, save and serve the people of Achill’s 19th century as best they understood and could. We will thank God that affection between our leaders and peoples have replaced that period’s acrimony. And we will rededicate ourselves to respecting and helping each other’s efforts always for both body and soul.”
Historical background:
St Thomas’s Dugort and the Church of Ireland parish of Achill grew from the Achill Mission founded in 1831 and led by Revd Edward Nangle [1800-1883]. It was part of a heavy push from the early 1800s by English and Irish evangelicals to convert and save the Irish from what were considered Roman Catholic errors, ignorance and neglect.
The Mission community saw itself as a colony placed to show and proclaim what to believe and how to live. It offered worship of God as Dr Nangle and his co-workers understood it, aggressive evangelisation and religious education, and a hectic monthly paper, The Achill Missionary Herald and Western Witness, published from 1837 to 1868. It delivered primary education [in Irish], modern agricultural training, employment, orphanage care, and through the saintly Dr Neason Adams and his helpers, health care. It provided food for the poor, whatever their denomination, before, during and after the Great Famine, which aid you had to work for if able-bodied. Catholic Archbishop John McHale later replicated this pattern in Achill, at Bunacurry.
By 1842 the Mission had its own corn mill, kiln, grain store and hardware shop; houses for the clergy, doctor and teachers; a hotel, and thirty thatched cottages. By 1851 the Mission owned three-fifths of the island, and their several churches were packed.
Edward Nangle and his Mission were suspected of being ‘Soupers’, that is, of providing food only to those willing to ‘convert’. His defenders believe the charge was never justified. The label ‘Jumpers’ [from the Irish ‘d’iompaidh sé’, ‘he turned’] was used of those who came under suspicion of accepting such a bargain, either because they had joined the Church of Ireland or had become associated with the Mission and its projects, even for employment.
Revd Nangle’s work and words led to bitter conflict. The then-Archbishops of Tuam – Power le Poer Trench and his successor Thomas Plunkett of the Church of Ireland, and Catholic Archbishop John McHale – engaged in headlong verbal brawls, as did their clergy. Parishioners came to blows and shunned Mission personnel and enterprises. To counter the influence of “these venomous fanatics”, Archbishop McHale visited Achill in 1837, and in 1854 established a school and Franciscan monastery at Bunnacurry, the first of several Catholic schools in Achill and the Corraun.
Dr Nangle moved to Skreen in Co Sligo in 1852. The Mission had lost steam by the late 1860s, and emigration and financial difficulties led to its closure in 1886, three years after his death.