Mulcahy, Charles, 1874-1954, Jesuit priest

Person

Mulcahy, Charles, 1874-1954, Jesuit priest

• Charlie Mulcahy

31 August 1874-12 May 1954

Born: 31 August 1874, Ardfinnan, County Tipperary
Entered: 07 September 1893, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 01 August 1909, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 02 February 1912
Died: 12 May 1954, Milltown Park, Dublin

Early education at Rockwell College, County Tipperary and Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1896 at Valkenburg, Netherlands (GER) studying
by 1898 at Enghien, Belgium (CAMP) studying
by 1911 at St Mary’s College, Kent, England (FRA) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 29th Year No 3 1954
Obituary :
Father Charles Mulcahy
By the death of Father Mulcahy, the Province has lost an excellent Retreat-giver, a much sought guide for young men and one of the best language teachers known to our Colleges.
Born in 1874 at Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary, he received his early education at Rockwell College, where he fortunately found a master suitable to his bent for modern Languages, including Irish, a subject hardly known to the schools in those days. In 1890 he went to Clongowes. There he was a diligent and successful student. A contemporary describes his first impression as “of an elegant young man, strolling round the cycle-track with Mr. Wrafter and a couple of Higher liners”. A small detail, but not without its significance. Apart from tennis, he had no sportive interests.
He entered the noviceship in 1893, encouraged in his Jesuit vocation by a friend of his family, Father Healy, C.S.Sp., a former Head of Blackrock College. We may, perhaps, say that he was fortunate to have finished his noviceship at a time when the pedagogical outlook did not force every Junior into a University procrustean couch, for he was immediately sent to Philosophy; two years at Valkenburg and one year at Enghien, where the foreign diet gives a flavour to speech, not to be found at home. He returned for the long period of scholastic service common in those days; seven or eight years of unbroken teaching work. All past pupils pay tribute to the excellence of his teaching, and his power to create interest in literature.
After four years at Milltown, and Tertianship at Canterbury under Father de Maumigny, whose spirituality influenced him profoundly, he returned to Milltown, for a brief year as Sub-minister, and Master of Juniors. He taught at the Crescent, 1913 and 1914 when he was appointed Minister and Socius to the Master of Novices and Master of Novices 1918-1919 at Tullabeg. During this period he developed his great talent as choir master. Though not a singer himself, he was a good pianist, and more than one Province choir owed its efficiency to him.
In 1919 he went to Clongowes as Rector and Consultor of the Province. St. Paul is very emphatic on the diversity of gifts. Government, as both profane and religious history shows, is among the rarer talents. It does not appear to have been his particular gift. After three years he was back at the teaching work, first at Mungret, where he was in charge of the Studies, then at Clongowes, part of the time as Spiritual Father. Finally in 1940 he settled down in Milltown, at the work which gave the fullest scope to his talents : Retreat work and spiritual direction of an increasing number of men, who got to know his worth in the Retreats, and would constantly return to consult him.
A prominent Government official pays this tribute to him : “I remember well his first appearance in the chapel at Milltown Park and every time I saw him for a matter of 10 years emphasised the impression that he was essentially a man of God, a man who appeared to walk perpetually in the presence of God. He succeeded in communicating that to his hearers. He was for me the embodiment of Ignatian spirituality. There could be no doubt whatever that he had lived a long life endeavouring to carry out the precepts of the Society as perfectly as possible for him. He carried on, until his health broke down, a personal apostolate with scores of men, particularly I think young men, whom he met for the most part in connection with retreats at Milltown Park. He had a charming sense of humour which kept breaking through the seriousness of his character”.
Similar testimony comes from Mount Anville, for whose Community he worked for many years. They say that he gave the exercises a way that could be understood by the children. And the kindness and sympathy shown them enabled them to open their problems to him readily.
It has been said with truth that the measure of a man's achievement and greatness in any walk of life is the devotion and application to duty which it involves : judged by that criterion Father Mulcahy has left an example which all can envy but few emulate. “I have”, says one in a position to judge, “known him over many years and have treated with him in many different capacities : I have never yet known him to deviate by a hair's breadth from the path of duty or allow the claims of any personal interest to obtrude on those of his office. If indeed there is one of whom it can be said that he gave himself to his work without stint, that man was Father Mulcahy”.
From the noviceship days, he was a keen reader of ascetical books. He could tell one, straight off, the best books in French, German, Italian, English on any point in the spiritual life. Though highly appreciative of general literature, the book shelf in his room became, as the years went on, more and more narrowed down to spiritual books, showing that St. Paul's invitation was a living one for him : “I will shew unto you yet a more excellent way”. And the more excellent way was the “conversation in Heaven”, whose gates advancing years reminded him were ready to open wide : “they that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for all eternity”. Father Mulcahy had certainly done that for many years of self-sacrificing patience.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Charles Mulcahy 1874-1954
Fr Charles Mulcahy was born in Ardfinnan in 1874, and received his early education at Rockwell College and Clongowes.

Entering the Society in 1893, he did his studies abroad at Valkenburg and Enghien. His formation completed, he was appointed Socius to the novices in 1914, and in 1918 was made Master of Novices. The following year he went to Clongowes as Rector. Administration, however, does not seem to have been his strong point, so after three years of office he returned to the classroom, in Mungret and Clongowes.

He was a first class teacher of languages and music. From his noviceship days he was a keen reader of ascetical books, and could recommend straight off the best books in French, German, Italian or English on any point in the spiritual life.

In 1940 he returned to Milltown Park, where he gave himself to retreat work and spiritual direction, his real métier. His excellence in this line is eloquently attested by the constant stream of people of all classes who consulted him in the parlour. He had a special gift for directing young men. “They that instruct many unto justice, shall shine as stars for all eternity”. Fr Mulcahy had certainly done that right up to his death on May 12th 1954.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 27 : May 1983

PORTRAIT FROM THE PAST : CHARLES MULCAHY
Dr Leon Ó Broin
The noted Irish scholar and former. Secretary of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs has graciously contributed this vignette of Fr Mulcahy. The author's laconic title for the piece is “An Old Fraud”: you'll see why.

When you went up to the first floor of the Retreat House in Milltown Park you saw in an alcove before you the room. 15A.where Charlie Mulcahy received visitors. It was a large, high-ceilinged, rather cheerless room, with little in it beyond a table with a raft of books, a typewriter, an armchair, a plain chair, an iron bedstead and a priedieu.. It was there in August 1943 - forty: years ago - I spoke to him first, I had seen him a week or two earlier as he. entered the chapel downstairs to give the opening lecture of a week end retreat. He was 69, but did not look it... He was an “old fraud” he would tell you, for his features were those of a man in his middle years, and his light brown hair was strong and plentiful. His walk gave him away, however; though quick and purposeful he shuffled noticeably. His speech was rather like that, too, it was quick and abbreviated. He repeated himself, but that may have been the teacher's practice of stressing the salient points of a lesson.

I have good reason to remember the first lecture of his I heard, because in it he laid the basis for everything he taught me in the next ten years or so, namely the supreme importance of understanding where all of us stand before God, our essential creaturehood and its obligations, the absurdity of Independent Creature. scribbler I wrote down an outline of his lectures and sent it to him from home, with a note asking him to develop a point that seemed to affect me particularly. His speedy reply was not quite what I expected, but it was thoroughly ad rem. “What you want to help yourself”, he wrote, “is much less thinking, and as much praying as you can manage. You seem to enjoy writing your thoughts. That makes for clarity, but hardly for reality”. Reality for him, as I was - to observe, was to live perpetually in the presence of God. Who could not but notice this when he walked in the garden or along the corridor in the direction of the community chapel? He was a picture of quiet, adoring concentration.

He invited me to come to Milltown “to talk myself out” on this question of reality, and when we met I remember how insistent he was that, in the matter of assent to the truths of religions, I should understand the difference between what was merely notional and what was real. He added that I would benefit from reading Newman on the subject. That visit was the forerunner of many. We became good friends, and his interest extended to my work, my literary interests, my ageing parents, my wife and family. He told me a little about himself, very indirectly though. He had run the whole gamut of Jesuit responsibilities, teaching in various schools, being master of novices, rector in Clongowes and Provincial Consultor; now he was “retired”, his function being “to pray for the Society” (Orat pro Societate), which did not mean, I suspect, that he could not direct an occasional retreat, look after the spiritual interests of a religious community, and conduct a personal apostolate among. young men he had encountered on those enclosed week-ends. These he endearingly referred to as his “toughs” They came to see him for. advice and to hear their confessions, sometimes two or three of them in a row and my own chats had to end abruptly when he would explain ever so courteously, that he had another “tough” waiting for him outside. Among his “toughs” in earlier days, if you can call them such, had been the remarkable Father Willie Doyle; and he always spoke warmly of Father John Sullivan with whom he had lived in community.

A native of Arafinnan, Co. Tipperary, Charlie had gone to Rockwell college where he was fortunate to have a teacher who developed his bent for modern languages, including Irish, a subject hardly known to the schools in those days. In time, I gather, he became one of the best language teachers in Jesuit Colleges. He continued his study of Irish in the Balingeary Gaeltacht of which he had pleasant memories - “It had become in a way a sort of home to me”, where he was able to indulge his love of traditional music. He was a good, good pianist and had considerable success with choirs.

As a Jesuit novice he had spent three years studying philosophy in Valkenburg and Enghien, and did his Tertianship in Canterbury under Father de Maumigry whose spirituality influenced him profoundly. He worried over what was happening in Germany during the war, and has my wife praying for that country ever since. He read German, of course, as well as French and English, but more in depth than in breadth. I imagine his practice being to return the books he liked, in order to savour their quality anew. He had a real feeling for the French language; when I introduced a young friend, whom he found full of “thoughts and tastes”, he felt sure that a bookman like me would approve of trying to break him into a little French.

“France was the country of expression”, he believed, and “a country that possessed a Rene Bazin must have a sane outlook for a young Catholic”. One of the things at which he grieved was that, having read a lot of Bazin, his immediate interests meant that he would have to defer beginning on him again for some time.

He hinted on the important things that were pressing on his time. “I have a young Deacon here for a six-day retreat. He is to be ordained on Sunday next. Say a word of prayer to the Lord for him”. In another letter he said “I have one young man here in Retreat. The one is as occupying as a complete bunch of them. He is gloriously in earnest, God bless him. He has a lovely Cork accent”. So his reading of profane literature dwindled to practically nothing. When now he talked of it at all, it seemed it was some thing he had to make an effort to recall. His stock of books became smaller and smaller. Those he retained had, all of them, an ascetical character; they were what he needed for his own spiritual purposes, and those he proposed to lend to his “toughs” in the hope of promoting theirs. I notice in one of his letters - all of which I kept - that the volumes he lent me included: Meschler, Father Arthur Little, and Saint Francis de Sales, At other times it was books by the Jesuits, Coleridge and Goodier, and Saint Augustine. I would feel the uplift of certain chapters in Coleridge, he assured me, and then went on to ask if I did not think it queer how calmly we talk of an uplift? Why, it means entrance into a new world and not merely a World like what Columbus discovered?

Mentioning Augustine, he would say that there was no need to commend the great African Doctor. “You know my weakness for him. He always touches the soul in that human way of his”. From Francis de Sales he culled reams from his writings on the religious life and on pursuit of perfections and gave me a copy of his transcript. Saint Ignatius was never far away from his thought, of course; retreats and his direction of souls were strictly fashioned by the Spiritual Exercises, That, for instance, was where the obligations of the creature came from; and this, on the discernment of spirits. “Keep joy in prayer and all will be well. If you are spiritually: unhappy, then you may know the enemy is near..in The doubt increases; the soul begins to be restless; it loses its sweetness and spiritual joy. Ignatius says at once, without any reservations, that this alone is a sign that 'the light is untrue”.

He gave me once a Ballade of Distractions that a colleague of his in the Society had strung together. It had done him good, and he felt sure I, too, would find it useful. It's real prayer, is it not?. You remember St. Augustine: Lord, you were with me, but I was not with You. That was the theme of the Ballade it began : Here am I in the chapel in retreat, / Lord, at your hidden glory humbly staring, /my soul, that ought to find its joy complete, / the splending of Your Godhead to be sharing / Has found the effort just a little wearing. And off it's gone, the countryside to view./ Taking, alas, a most terrestrial airing / my thoughts are rambling though I'm here with you.

Going through his letters I find some fine things: In one he says “It was not in dialectics God saved his people”. In another “God will be generous as is His wont. I have not had such a good time of late”, (His health was beginning to break) “but that, too is a gift of God as St. Ignatius tells us”. In another still “I will make special mementoes in the Mass for the musicians (my children: Eimear and Noirin) till their troubles are over. Our Lady, the Great Mother, will guide their hands and their brains”, and, when their examinations were successfully passed, he told Eimear not to forget to thank his heavenly helpers. “How human”, he said, “is the Gospel scene with its pertinent question: ‘Where are the other nine?’” And, reminding me and my wife of an approaching feast, he assumed we had a picture of the Holy Family in the house, that the children would gather a few autumn leaves to adorn it, have a lamp burning before it, and pay some visits to it till the feast was over. That would leave an impression on their minds that would do them good.

The autumn leaves typified his passion for flowers. He planted them in profusion in a garden rockery round the beguiling figure of a petite Virgin and used reproductions of them as bookmarkers.

When my father's days were clearly numbered, his concern for him, my mother, and me was most touching. “You may be sure there were many Masses and many prayers offered for him. I offered Mass myself of course and remembered him in my prayers all the day. May God bless him when the hour comes for bringing him to a better home. It will be, I am sure, a relief rather than anything else. What a grand solemnity there is in the scene with Martha: I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me although he be dead shall live, and everyone that liveth and believeth in me shall not die for ever. There is no other consolation. May God bless and console yourself”. In his next letter he wrote that “the Lord has been good to the one He has called by shortening his waiting. May he rest in peace. I offered Mass for him this morning You may be sure of much spiritual help from Milltown, I did not get your message till close on 9 last evening. I hope you got my wire. I will offer Mass on Monday for the dead, yourself, and for the old lady who has been left to grieve, not too long in the Mercy of God one would hope, but God understands better than we. Is not our misunderstanding of what He does and why He does it pathetic and childlike? But you will be understanding it all better every day. May God bless you and console you”. He was very anxious about the dear old Granny, fearing that she might be unsettled; and, feeble though he was now, he went with the Rector one day to see her in her little flat. He continued to remember her in his Masses, putting her especially in God's care and guard.

The first sign that his own mortal end was not too far off appeared in his letters. They were suddenly shorter, disjointed, with words misspelt or omitted altogether. He tried to behave normally, insisting to the visitors that they should take the armchair, and, when that courtesy was refused, sitting bolt upright himself on the edge of it. He was an ascetic, of course, his only concession being a very occasional cigarette which he smoked from a holder, and which he laid aside when someone came to see him. But he could read no more, or read only without fully comprehending. It was utterly pathetic and yet somehow significant that, when the end came, all that this erstwhile lover of books had was his rosary beads and a crucifix. When speaking of the enduring patience of Christ he had said that a secret cross was a very precious thing, and that we shouldn't allow the strength of it to evaporate. It was a weakness to be always searching for a confidant, to be always blabbing out our grievances. In this matter he practised what he preached. He never spoke of his infirmities; even when he could hardly speak at all. When I last saw him he was lying awake but silent, his whole body covered in a white powder whose purpose was to mollify the burning irritation of his poor flesh.
God help us all at the end.

◆ The Clongownian, 1954

Obituary

Father Charles Mulcahy SJ

The death occurred on May 12th of Rev. Charles Mulcahy, S.J., Milltown Park, Dublin, a former Rector of Clongowes Wood College. He was aged 80, and from 1942 until failing health in recent year's compelled him to retire, he was on the staff of the Retreat House at Milltown Park, where he gave many retreats to priests and laymen.

He was a son of John Mulcahy, woollen manufacturer, of Ardindan, Co Tip perary, and was educated at Rockwell and Clongowes Wood Colleges. After a distinguished course in the Intermediate, in which he excelled in modern languages, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1893.

He studied philosophy at the German and French houses of the Order at Valkenburg, in Holland, and Enghien, in Belgium, and taught for eight years at Clongowes Wood before beginning his theological studies. A master of considerable ability, he excelled in the teaching of Irish, French, German and Italian, as well as Latin and English. He was ordained at Milltown Park in 1909, and completed his religious training under the well-known spiritual guide, Père René de Maulmigny, at St Mary's College, Canterbury, then conducted by the Fathers of the Paris Province of the Society.

Father Mulcahy was appointed Rector of Clongowes Wood College in 1919, having previously been Assistant Master of Novices, and later Master of Novices at Tullamore. He was Rector of Clongowes for three years, and afterwards Dean of Studies at Mungret College, Limerick. From 1927 to 1931, and again from 1933 to 1941, he taught at Clongowes, and for most of this time he was also Spiritual Director to the Community and boys.

Father Mulcahy was much in demand as. a director and counsellor of souls giving spiritual guidance to very many people in all walks of life, both by letter and in personal interviews in this work he was distinguished for his quiet kindly manner, and for the way in which he could bring his own wide spiritual reading to bear on the problems brought to him.

Father Mulcahy will be remembered gratefully by the many clients whom he helped in this way, as well as by those who at Clongowes and Mungret Colleges, benefited from the unusual teaching gifts which he developed by meticulous devotion to duty as well as by careful reading during the years he spent as a teacher of languages.

He is survived by his brother, Mr. William Mulcahy, Director of Ardinnan Woollen Mills.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Commnnity

Father Charles Mulcahy (1874-1957)

Born at Ardfinnan, Co Tipperary and educated at Rockwell College and Clongowes, entered the Society in 1893. He pursued his higher studies, at Valkenburg, Enghien and Milltown Park where he was ordained in 1908. He was master here from 1912 to 1914. Unfortunately for the Crescent, he was transferred to Tullabeg as assistant, and later to the important post itself of master of novices. From Tullabeg he was transferred as rector to Clongowes where he relinquished office in 1922. Father Mulcahy felt more at home in a classroom and until 1940 Mungret and then Clongowes benefitted by his matchless pedagogic gifts. He retired from teaching in 1940 and until his death was a member of the Milltown Park community. Here he gave splendid service as retreat director, while many religious communities in Dublin revered him for his ability as a spiritual director.

Irish Vice-Province of the Society of Jesus, 1830- (1830-)

IE IJA J/258

Irish Jesuit Archives

IE IJA