Born: 24 April 1874, Honeymount, Roscrea, County Tipperary
Entered: 07 October 1891, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 1904, Petworth, Sussex, England
Final Vows: 02 February 1915, St Ignatius College, Riverview, Sydney, Australia
Died: 14 May 1940, Xavier College, Kew, Melbourne, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

Younger Brother of Timothy Corcoran - RIP 1943

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1895 at St Aloysius, Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1903 at Petworth, Sussex (ANG) health
by 1904 in San Luigi, Napoli-Posilipo, Italy (NAP) studying
by 1905 at Petworth, Sussex (ANG) health
Came to Australia 1905

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
His parents were Irish, and whilst they left Australia to return to Ireland, he later joined the Society at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg.

His studies were in Dublin and Jersey, Channel Islands, and then he was sent to teach mathematics at Mungret College Limerick and Belvedere College Dublin. He then became ill and was sent to Petworth, Sussex, England where he made Theology studies. He was Ordained there in 1904 and then sent to Australia.
1904-1906 He arrived in Australia and was sent to the Norwood Parish
1906-1913 He was sent to St Ignatius College Riverview
1913-1914 He returned to Ireland and St Stanislaus College Tullabeg to make his Tertianship.
1915-1919 He came back to Australia and Riverview
1919-1940 He was appointed Novice Master and remained in that position at Xavier College Kew until his death in 1940. He was highly regarded by the Jesuits whom he trained.

When he was at Riverview he was given the task of Minister and so had responsibility for the wellbeing of the boarders. He was considered very adept in catching any boy who returned later after leave in the city, or in posting or receiving letters in an unorthodox way. He was known as the “Hawk”, but this name was given with the utmost respect for him, as the boys experienced him as a most charming man who went about his duties very quietly and thoroughly. They also liked his sermons.

His Novices appreciated his thirty days Retreat. He addressed them four times a day, sometimes speaking for an hour without the Novices losing interest. He spoke with considerable eloquence and feeling, slowly, pausing between sentences, and from time to time emphasising something dramatically. While Novice Master he hardly ever left the house. He lived for the Novices. His life was quietly and regularly ascetic. He went to bed around midnight at rose at 5.25am. He loved the garden, especially his dahlias.

His companionableness was memorable. The Novices enjoyed his company on their walks. He was unobtrusive and yet part of it, a most welcome presence. He was an unforgettable person, a wise and gentle director of souls. He taught a personal love of Jesus and was deeply loyal to the Society. he considered the rules for modesty to be among the great treasures of the Society, and gave the Novices true freedom of heart to make wise decisions.

He was a cheerful man, optimistic in outlook and easy to approach. People at once felt at home with him. He was experienced as a striking personality, a kind man with a sense of fun who spoke little about himself.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 15th Year No 3 1940
Obituary :
Father John Corcoran
1874 Born 24th, near Roscrea, Co. Tipperary Educated Clongowes
1891 Entered. Tullabeg 7th October
1892 Tullabeg, Novice
1893 Milltown, Junior
1894-1896 Jersey, Philosophy
1897-1900 Mungret, Doc
1901 Belvedere. Doc
1902 Petworth. Cur. Val
1903 Naples, Thel.
1904 Petworth, Cur. Val. Ordained 1904
1905 Norwood (Australia) Cur. Val
1906-1907 Riverview, Adj, proc, Doc. Stud. theol. mor.
1908-1912 Riverview, Minister, Adj. proc., etc.
1913 Tullabeg, Tertian
1914 Richmond (Australia), Oper
1915-1918 Riverview, Minister &c.; Doc. 17 an. mag
1919-1940 Mag. Nov. First at Loyola, Sydney; then at Victoria. For a time he was. in addition. Lect phil. in Univ., and for a great many years Cons. Miss. Sydney, as well as lending a hand in many other ways.

Fr Bernard O'Brien, one of Fr Corcoran's novices, kindly sent us the following :
Half the members of the Australian Vice-Province have done their noviceship under Fr Corcoran, and it seems strange to think that the noviceship is no longer under his kindly care.
His health was always weak, and his heart gave him trouble, he used to chuckle as he recalled how his ordination had been hastened for fear that he might die at any moment.
He could be extremely stern. He had no patience with deliberate wrong-doing, with irreverence or contempt of holy things. The novices sometimes' received electric shocks, as when after retreat points on sin that grew more and more heated he turned back from the door and burst out “There is no omnibus marked Jesuit for heaven”.
He kept himself, however, remarkably under control. Though at times the blood would rush to his face, he would say nothing at the moment, but sleep on the matter before acting, a practice he frequently recommended to his novices. Often nothing came of it at all, but the dead silence and the suspense of anticipation was a punishment severe enough to sober any culprit.
He became more and more kindly and sympathetic as time went on. “Gently Brother!” was a favourite remark of his.
He came to rely less and less on external regulations and reproofs, and to form his novices by personal contact and encouragement. In his first years he used to check all trace of slang, but later it became common to hear a novice who had received an order leave him with a cheery “Good-O Father!”
He gave and aroused great personal affection. The timid first probationer, whatever his age, was at once called by his Christian name and adopted among his “babies”. As the noviceship was usually small, he could give each novice individual attention. Even the candidates who left remained strongly attached to the Society.
Fr Corcoran was a man of strong emotion and imagination. He disliked giving the more abstract exercises of the long retreat, and was happiest when he came to the early life of Our Lord. He had made a thorough study of historical Palestine and one heard much about the Vale of Esdraelon and Little Hermon. Some of the other Fathers in the house were shocked to see coloured pictures of camels crossing the sandy desert appear at this time on the novices' notice board.
United with this imagination and emotion went a deep spiritual life. He may not have supplied very clear notions of Church and Society legislation, but he gave his novices strong draughts of the true Jesuit spirit : devotion to Our Lord, constant striving to give God greater glory and better service, love of the Passion and zeal for souls.
One Christmas he gave a remarkable series of points for meditation. He took as subjects the crib, the straw, the cave, the star and so on. The points began with homely remarks and simple reflections, but almost imperceptibly the objects described became symbols and we were on a high level of contemplation.
In his deep and gentle affection, his preference for the concrete and his high spirituality there was much to remind one of St. John, whose name he bore.

◆ The Clongownian, 1940

Obituary

Father John Corcoran SJ

Father Corcoran was born near Roscrea, in Tipperary, on the 24th of April, 1874. In October, 1891, soon after leaving Clongowes, he entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Tullabeg, where he had been preceded by his brother, Rev T Corcoran SJ, whose fame as an educationalist is world-wide. Ill-health. limited Father John's literary studies at Milltown Park to a single year, and from 1894 until 1897 he studied philosophy with the French Fathers at Jersey. The next five years were spent in teaching-four at Mungret, and one at Belvedere. His great understanding of boys, and his bright, genial sympathy made him a great favourite with all.

It was now time to study Theology (1902). His health had been seriously impaired by tuberculosis, which was to give rise to grave fears for a number of years, and Theology requires hard work and strength. But, to quote a phrase which Father Corcoran loved to repeat in later years, “difficulties are things to be overcome”, and at Petworth, in England, and at Naples, he overcame them sufficiently to be ordained priest in September, 1904.

The following year he was sent to Australia, and under its sunny skies he regained the health and strength required for his future work. After recuperating for a year at Norwood, he spent the years 1906-1913 on the staff of Riverview College.

In 1913 he returned to Tullabeg for his Tertianship; and twelve months later said a last good-bye to his native land, whose green fields and limpid streams lingered in his memory, and gave him “heartaches”, as he put it, even during his last years. After a year at Richmond, he once more became the Father Minister at Riverview, in 1915. In May, 1919, he was given the responsible position of Master of Novices at Loyola, Sydney, a position which he filled for the remaining twenty-one years of his life. Henceforth all his energies were to be devoted unsparingly to the religious formation of Jesuits. He used laughingly to speak of his novices as his “babes”, and he was in truth the spiritual father of the whole generation of post-war Jesuits in Australia.

His genial simplicity and kindness won the veneration and deep affection of all with whom he had to deal. He had the happy gift of making people feel at once at home with him; but perhaps his strong influence over others came mainly from his intense but child-like spirit of faith, which made him converse as familiarly with the Holy Family as with his novices, and which transformed the world for him into a temple of God. He was an enthusiastic gardener who loved weeding his flower beds, and tending his dahlias - but a gardener who could describe the garden as one of the best teachers of the spiritual life. It is often said that Christ's life was full of sorrow from the beginning; but, for Father Corcoran, “the rafters of the Holy House must often have rung with the sweet laughter of the Boy Christ” characteristic illustration of the joyful spontaneity of his own character and outlook.

He could be stern when occasion required; but those he trained treasure the memory of his remarkable gentleness - a trait which became more and more pronounced during the last years of his life. A prominent Jesuit remarked of him that he was an outstanding example of the transforming power of the Jesuit rule when it is lived and sincerely loved in all its fullness; and those who knew him during the latter part of his life were astonished at the constant mellowing of his sanctity. The Society of Jesus in Australia has suffered a great loss by his death, but he himself has surely passed to the happy state which he delighted to think of as “home”.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1939

Obituary

Father John Corcoran SJ

As we go to press a cablegram from Australia announces the death of Father Corcoran at the age of sixty six. Of these years forty-eight had been spent as a Jesuit. For the last twenty-two years he fulfilled the important office of Master of Novices and had given retreats to the clergy both in Australia and New Zealand. Father Corcoran's connection with Mungret was not very long - 1897-1901 - but the boys of these years never forgot the kindly scholastic who played with them and who prayed with them and who always found time to give them a word of encouragement in their trials. He was always ready to smooth out their difficulties and to lighten their load. He treasured to the end of his life, a kindly message from Florida that reached him through the “Annual” in 1907. It was as follows:

“If Father John Corcoran is still in this vale of tears, let him rest assured that the lads of 1900 loved him. In him we ever found a sincere sympathiser in our little troubles and I could not restrain my tears when I grasped his hand for the last time at Naples in 1902”.

Father Corcoran said that since the day of his ordination he never forgot these “boys” in his daily Mass. They are now priests and we ask them and indeed all Mungret priests, to pray for the repose of the kindly soul of Father John Corcoran. May he rest in peace,

Born: 21 January 1933, Berkeley Street, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 24 May 1964, Clongowes Wood College SJ, County Kildare
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, Catholic Workers College, Dublin
Died: 01 June 2014, Blackrock Clinic, Dublin

Part of the Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin community at the time of death.

Son of Joseph K Dargan and Teresa Deary. Father was a Pharmacist.

Youngest of three boys with two sisters.

Early education at Dominican Convent, Eccles Street, Belvedere College SJ for three years, one year at Rockwell College, and finally six years Clongowes Wood College.

Father Provincial of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus : 01 September 1980-1986

by 2003 at Mwangaza Nairobi, Kenya (AOR) working

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/joe-dargan-vision-and-task/

Joe Dargan: vision and task

It is rare for us to mourn such a servant of the Irish Jesuits as Joe Dargan. His looks were unremarkable: small, bespectacled, usually smiling. He was sturdy, a wing forward on Clongowes cup teams. His friends would describe Joe’s style of rugby as robust. It showed the steely determination hidden under a mild façade.

Wherever he went, he was landed with responsibility: starting with Third Line Prefect in Clongowes (he commented ”In 1958 when I volunteered to go to Zambia, I was told that my Zambia was to be Third Line prefect in Clongowes.”). He went on to be Director of the Province Social Survey, Rector of Emo, of Manresa (twice), of Clongowes, of Gonzaga, and of Belvedere. He was Master of Novices, Instructor of Tertians, Pastoral planning Consultant to the Irish Bishops, and also to the Major Religious Superiors (CMRS), director of the Manresa Centre of Spirituality, Socius to the Provincial, and Provincial. They never made him General, though it’s said that they thought of thrusting a bishopric on him.

You’d imagine that a man with such a gift for administration might be a nerdy type, with rows of secretaries ticking boxes for him. Joe was indeed a methodical man, who consulted wisely, prayed before making decisions, and stayed on the job till it was complete. For instance, he not merely designed the tertianship house in Manresa, but visited the site every day, made friends with the workmen, and so created a beautiful, functional building.

When, as rector of Belvedere, he had to raise funds for a school building, he showed his ability to balance the short-term and the long-term issues. As he put it to groups which he addressed: “A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope for the future.” Parents were constantly reminded that education was the greatest gift they could leave to their children. With this vision before them, Joe and his collaborators worked on a 30-year plan. Part of the process entailed winning over all the constituents of the college: the Jesuit community, boys, teachers past and present, and past pupils. The target was four million pounds, and Belvedere passed it. If it has received generously, it also gives generously. Between their various projects Belvedere boys raise about a quarter of a million euro annually for charity. It is that vision of men for others, rather than lists of figures, that made these years a stimulating time for Joe Dargan rather than a begging bowl nightmare.

What people remember of Joe, however, is not so much his administrative ability as his kindness, and his readiness to give his time lavishly. He was every inch a priest, with a special gift for being with those in their last illness. It was probably this ease in his priestly role, coupled with his passion for sport, that underlay his friendship with Alex Ferguson of Manchester United.

When he was told some very few months ago that his illness was terminal, Joe was immediately filled with consolation and gratitude for the key people in his life – those he had met and loved, in his family, in the Society, in those extraordinarily rich friendships that he so enjoyed with such beloved friends, male andfemale. As the doctor actually spoke to him, those people’s names and images passed before his inner eye and he was filled with joy and gratitude. Most of us would have sunk at such a moment: not Joe, because the gratitude was to God and to those who were God’s hands and eyes and ears for him in this life.

A friend remarked that Joe was the most extraordinary of ordinary men, unthreatening, affable, and open to the Lord, who achieved great things through him.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 157 : Autumn 2014

Obituary

Fr Joe Dargan (1933-2014)

21 January 1933: Bom in Dublin.
Early education at Dominican Convent, Eccles Street, Dublin, Belvedere, Rockwell College and Clongowes Wood College
7 September 1950: Entered the Society at Emo
8 September 1952 First Vows at Emo
1952 - 1955: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1955 - 1958: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1958 - 1961: Clongowes – Third Line Prefect: Teacher
1961 - 1965: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
24 May 1964: Ordained at Clongowes Wood College
1965 - 1966: Rathfarnham – Tertianship
1966 - 1968: CIR – Director of Province Social Survey
2nd February 1968: Final Vows at CIR
1968 - 1969: Emo - Rector & Master of Novices
1969 - 1974: Manresa House – Rector and Master of Novices
1974 - 1977: Manresa - Rector; Director Centre of Spirituality
1977 - 1979: Clongowes - Rector; Asst. Provincial (visitor)
1979 - 1980: Socius to Provincial
1980 - 1986: Loyola House - Provincial
1986 - 1987: Loyola House - Sabbatical, assisted CMRS
1987 - 1993: Gonzaga - Rector & CMRS General Secretary
1993 - 2002: Belvedere - Rector; Consultant to Bishops on Pastoral Planning; Belvedere – Rector; Consultant to Bishops on Pastoral Planning (until 1997) Chair of Boards of Management of Manresa and Belvedere College.
2005 - 2014: Manresa – Vice-Rector; Tertian Director
2006 - 2012: Manresa Rector; Tertian Director
2012 - 2014: Vice-Rector and Tertian Director

Joe was not feeling well for some weeks and went into the Blackrock Clinic on March 23rd. Tests revealed extensive cancer. He accepted the results and the prognosis with grace and faith, continuing to reach out to people over the following weeks. There was a gradual decline in his condition and he died peacefully on Ascension Sunday morning. May he rest in the Peace of Christ

Since Fr Joseph Dargan, or just Joe (as I came to know him), passed away on the day we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension, he has been pointing not to himself but to the God he loved. In the manner of his dying, down to the very timing, and at his funeral, he was asking us to grapple with the question in the first reading at the funeral Mass from Deutero-Isaiah: “Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges: can you not see it?” He was inviting us to listen to the message of hope and encouraging us to live out of that hope. The words of St. Patrick's Breastplate have been reverberating in my mind these past days:

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me.

These words represent the key to understanding what Joe desired, and the reality to which he pointed in all his interactions with us, when talking of God or mammon (in the form of Manchester United) - and everything in between.

The American Poet, Mary Oliver, in Honey Locust, describes a tree, native to North America, in blossom and the bees seeking the nectar:

The bees circle the tree and dive into it.
They are crazy with gratitude,
They are working like farmers.
They are as happy as saints.

I am going to frame my words around these lines.

The bees circle the tree and dive into it
This is the disposition that Fr. Joe brought to everything he did. He engaged fully. He dived into life, in whatever circumstances: in Manresa, in the then CMRS, in Gonzaga, Clongowes and Belvedere, in Mwangaza, in Loyola. And in whatever role, from Provincial to spiritual director, from Chair of the Board to lover of family, and so on.

And how he loved bis family: while I name only his brother Michael (or Mick) and his beloved sister Mairéad, they stand for all the family, those who have gone before Joe, those here present including the 18 nieces and grandnieces - not forgetting the nephews, including Joe the younger. He also enjoyed the deepest of friendships. And I have often thought that his great gift of being able to relate with women was modelled on the way that Jesus himself related to women in the Gospels, Joe engaged with all persons in the fullest way possible.

The bees are crazy with gratitude
Joe had almost zero concern for the material things of this world. As a. novice, I remember a fellow novice speculating one day that he thought that Joe had only one pair of shoes: in fact, watching thereafter, we never saw him in other than that one sturdy, black pair. That's not to deny that he didn't enjoy being able to stream the big football game - say Man U at home to Liverpool this season! But when challenged about such a worldly use of the computer, Joe would say simply, that the computer is merely an apostolic aid!' He was truly indifferent to worldly possessions. Given that significant business people who came to know him well, even to depend on him in some measure, would say that had Joe chosen a different path, that he would undoubtedly have been a very successful businessperson, we might ask ourselves, what is the source of his indifference to worldly goods?

The answer in significant part lies in the reading from Deutero Isaiah. Like the exiled Jewish people in Babylonia, so Joe needed to hear - and did hear at the deepest level of his being - those words from God through the prophet:

“I regard you as precious, since you are honoured and I love you. Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you. No need to remember past events. Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges: can you not see it?”

These words were heard as being addressed to him - and to each of us! It intrigued Joe that the reading ends with a big question: “Can you, can we, not see it?” In the Ascension, God did something new with Jesus and it emerges that there is hope and that hope is grounded in the death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God. And, in his dying on the Feast of the Ascension, God did something new in Joseph. Can you not see it?

Out of this was born the person that Joe became: a most grateful person.

When he was told some very few months ago that his illness was terminal, Joe was immediately filled with consolation and gratitude for the key people in his life - those he had met and loved, in his family, in the Society, in those extraordinarily rich friendships that he so enjoyed with such beloved friends, male and female. As the doctor actually spoke to him, those people's names and images passed before his inner eye and he was filled with joy and gratitude.

Most of us would have sunk at such a moment: not Joe, because the gratitude was to God and to those who were God's hands and eyes and ears for him in this life.

But, to be clear, Joe was not like a plastic or alabaster statue. As a young Jesuit student in Rathfarnham and Tullabeg and Milltown, he would come from his room, football boots in his hands, pay a visit to the Blessed Sacrament on the way to the pitch, pray intensely out of gratitude to God - and then go out on the pitch and hack down anyone who dared to try and pass him, leaving his opponent sprawling on the ground, with Joe standing over him, full of concern!

And in the spirit of consolation that sustained him in recent weeks, on being visited by Mr. Gerard Foley, currently headmaster of Belvedere, Joe's mischievous sense of humour enabled him to whisper, Thank God you came in to Belvedere when you did: that other fellow left an awful mess!'

Gratitude and grace - the latter understood as relationship with God - and consolation - but never without bite, never without humour!

The bees around the honey locust are working like farmers
Out of that spirit of gratitude, I suspect that unlike most of us, Joe wasted very few moments during his 81+ years. He gave his all to every project and to every person: in his presence, one never felt that Joe had to be elsewhere - you got his undivided attention.

From sticking faithfully to a physiotherapist's instructions, to thorough engagement with the Irish Province social survey in response to Vatican II back in the 1960's, to the meticulous attention to detail in the planning document, Our Mission in Ireland drawn up during his time as Provincial - strategic planning was a prominent feature of every work that he engaged in, not least with the CMRS - down to the legacy that is the tertianship today, co-created with his Dutch colleague Fr. Jan van de Poll - in all of that, the focus was always on the mission, to bring the love of Christ to the other.

Who knows how many lives he saved - I mean that in the deepest sense - through his love-enriched, Christ-focused interaction with so many people, bom of the Spiritual Exercises, of his love of the poor - witness his work in Africa, his work on the bursary programme in Belvedere, his reception of the orphans from Africa every summer - and of his love of the Church?

In the Letter to the Ephesians, read like Deutero-Isaiah at his funeral, St Paul prays for his “hidden self to grow strong”. Richard Rohr says somewhere that “the True Self is that part of you who knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you are - but thinking doesn't make it so”. Throughout his life, Joe took the risk of going deeper, below the ego, to discern “who and whose” we are. Joe lived the self-reflective prayer of Ignatius known as the Examen. He truly devoted himself to prayer and reflection. And so his “hidden self” grew out of and into God, into Jesus Christ, enriched greatly through his love of Mary, the Mother of God, and of the Church, and of the Society of Jesus.

Everything he did was to try to get us on the same path, knowing it was the way to genuine inner peace and contentment for each of us. In the prayerful words of the late Pedro Arrupe S), former General of the Society:

Grant me, O Lord, to see everything with new eyes,
To discern and test the spirits
That help me read the signs of the times,
To relish the things that are yours
and to communicate them to others.
Give me the clarity of understanding that you gave Ignatius'.

This became Joe's own prayer.

In a wonderful little piece, Leonard Cohen asks, “what is a saint?”:

A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos....but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have amongst us such (persons), such balancing monsters of love.

Joe was just such a person, filled with the energy of love and with that balance. He knew, of course, that it is in Christ that an ever deeper hope resides.

But this is not to go back to the alabaster statue. A Jesuit friend and I went out to dinner one night, in a restaurant very close to Manresa. (I remember it well because I paid!) This mutual friend put a little idea into our heads: why not call in to visit Joe on the way home, but not tell him why we were there together, leaving him with the impression that the Provincial had given us a very important task, on behalf of the Province, which we were not free to talk about! We didn't have to travel far into Manresa: there was Joe walking the upper path, rosary beads in hand. At every opportunity, for months after, indeed for the past couple of years, Joe never missed an opportunity to try to find out what was going on. He was innately curious. He loved to know what was going on.

A Board colleague of the time reminded me of a Board meeting in Belvedere in the days when Belvedere was well run!) when, as headmaster, I conveyed some information about an issue to do with rugby (of all things!). Joe, sitting next to me, rounded on me and asked if I was informing the Board of this matter or asking their opinion. A bit perplexed, I - allegedly - floundered and said I supposed I was informing the Board. Joe's two hands stretched out, in a familiar gesture of his and said: “Fine, fine, that's fine - because if you were asking us, I wouldn't agree with you!” Saintly, but as cute as a fox, wise as the serpent, simple as the dove.

Like his fellow Jesuits, he knew himself to be a sinner yet loved by Jesus: on his sick-bed he acknowledged that he had made mistakes in his life, but that these were forgotten and forgiven.

Those bees are as happy as saints
The integrity, the consistency of the spoken word and gesture, and the manner of his dying, confirm for us that Joe meant what he said, and said what he meant.

He understood himself and each one of us to be a new creation, and that in life and in death we give witness to the Resurrection. All this in faith and in hope. He made as his own Pedro Arrupe's prayer in his own illness:

Now more than ever I find myself in the hands of God.
This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.
But now there is a difference:
The initiative is entirely with God.
It is indeed a profound spiritual experience
To know and feel myself so totally in God's hands!

In recent times, Joe was unable to celebrate Mass: a Sister friend suggested to me the other evening that this was his time to be, like Pierre Teillhard de Chardin SJ, offering his “Mass on the world”. Once, when in China, Teillhard had no bread or wine with which to celebrate Mass. He expressed his deep love for the Eucharist in his essay of that name, which begins:

Since once again, Lord .... I have neither bread nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

Joe chose the funeral Mass reading from Matthew's Gospel because the words, “This is My body - this is My blood”, were the centre-piece of his vocation. These, he said as he faced death, are the most important words to say at that hour.

In the final lines of Honey Locust, Mary Oliver writes:

So it is if the heart has devoted itself to love,
There is not a single inch of emptiness.
Gladness gleams all the way to the grave.

A fitting epitaph for Joe, as God in him and throughout his life, says to us: “Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges: can you not see it?!”

Leonard Moloney

Joe Dargan: Three Memories

Brendan Staunton

First memory:
During my first year theology in Milltown, Joe asked me to come to Manresa on Sunday mornings and introduce the novices to literature. So I'd cross the city on my Honda 50, with Saul Bellow, Ayn Rand, James Joyce and Co., in tow. The rhetoric of fiction was closer to my existential concerns than the theological questions we were being fed. In fact, the fare was all answers to issues and battles fought long before our time. So the answers were stale. The waves of Vatican Two were approaching, however, onto Irish shores, and Milltown, broadly speaking, was receptive and open to the experiential and empirical. So Joe's invitation was a Godsend, and at the end of our two-hour sessions he would hand me a ten pound note, saying “that's for petrol”! (Less than two would fill the tank!)

Second Memory:
I'm about to go on Tertianship. Joe calls. He had been at a function in The Red House, where Dermot Ryan had complained about all the Religious going abroad to be trained for formation work Particularly the USA. Joe, Head of CORI, told him he had someone at home now who had trained in London. So the idea of Loreto House was born, and I was asked to set it up and get it going with two Sisters. And the rest is history!

Third Memory:
We are in Rome for a month's Conference on the Spiritual Exercises, attended by 101 people, mostly Jesuits, but also other religious and lay collaborators from 40 countries. The approach is mostly academic: content orientated; lecture style; dense and heavy. Starting with Fr General, the lecturers were all stately, formal figures from the Greg. After three long mornings, Joe raised his hand, and asked a question. A huge burst of applause broke out! Only Joe would have got away with it, as there was no offense heard, but the feedback hit the nail on the head. The fact of his being a previous Provincial probably helped too, and the talks and afternoon sessions became more experiential and participative.

◆ The Clongownian, 2014

Obituary

Father Joe Dargan SJ

“Fr Joe Dargan SJ who died in June, had been ill for the previous three months” - writes the Headmaster, Fr Moloney. “Fr. Joe was at school in Clongowes, where he won a JCT medal and served as Captain of the College. He joined the Jesuits straight from school, returning as Third Line Prefect from 1958-61 and as Rector in the late 1970's before going on to be Provincial of the Irish Province (1980-'86). Until recently he was Tertian Master at Manresa House in Dublin. In his time he was also Master of Novices, Rector of Belvedere (1993-2002), spiritual director at the Jesuit Retreat House in Nairobi, and Director and Rector of Manresa Retreat House. He was a great person, accepting the results and prognosis of recent medical tests with grace and faith, continuing to reach out to people over the past few weeks, He died peacefully on Ascension Sunday morning”.

We print the following tribute to Fr Joe, Courtesy of Irish Jesuit News ...

Joe Dargan: vision and task

It is rare for us to mourn such a servant of the Irish Jesuits as Joe Dargan. His looks were unremarkable: small, bespectacled, and usually smiling. He was sturdy, a wing forward on Clongowes cup teams. His friends would describe Joe's style of rugby as robust. It showed the steely determination hidden under a mild façade.

Whereverhewent, he was landed with responsibility, starting with Third Line Prefect in Clongowes (he commented “In 1958 when I volunteered to go to Zambia, I was told that my Zambia was to be Third Line prefect in Clongowes”.). He went on to be Director of the Province Social Survey, Rector of Emo, of Manresa (twice), of Clongowes, of Gonzaga, and of Belvedere. He was Master of Novices, Instructor of Tertians, Pastoral Planning Consultant to the Irish Bishops, and also to the Major Religious Superiors (CMRS), director of the Manresa Centre of Spirituality, Socius to the Provincial, and Provincial. They never made him General, though it's said that they thought of thrusting a bishopric on him.

You'd imagine that a man with such a gift for administration might be a nerdy type, with rows of secretaries ticking boxes for him. Joe was indeed a methodical man, who consulted wisely, prayed before making decisions, and stayed on the job till it was complete. For instance, he not merely designed the tertianship house in Manresa, but visited the site every day, made friends with the workmen, and so created a beautiful, functional building.

When, as rector of Belvedere, he had to raise funds for a school building, he showed his ability to balance the short-term and the long-term issues. As he put it to groups, which he addressed: “A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope for the future”. Parents were constantly reminded that education was the greatest gift they could leave to their children. With this vision before them, Joe and his collaborators worked on a 30-year plan. Part of the process entailed winning over all the constituents of the college: the Jesuit community, boys, teachers past and present, and past pupils. The target was four million pounds, and Belvedere passed it. If it has received generously, it also gives generously. Between their various projects Belvedere boys raise about a quarter of a million euro annually for charity. It is that vision of men for others, rather than lists of figures, that made these years a stimulating time for Joe Dargan rather than a begging bowl nightmare.

What people remember of Joe, however, is not so much his administrative ability as his kindness, and his readiness to give his time lavishly. He was every inch a priest, with a special gift for being with those in their last illness. It was probably this ease in his priestly role, coupled with his passion for sport that underlay his friendship with Alex Ferguson of Manchester United.

When he was told some very few months ago that his illness was terminal, Joe was immediately filled with consolation and gratitude for the key people in his life - those he had met and loved, in his family, in the Society, in those extraordinarily rich friendships that he so enjoyed with such beloved friends, male and female. As the doctor actually spoke to him, those people's names and images passed before his inner eye and he was filled with joy and gratitude. Most of us would have sunk at such a moment: not Joe, because the gratitude was to God and to those who were “God's hands and eyes and ears” for him in this life. A friend remarked that Joe was the most extraordinary of ordinary men, unthreatening, affable, and open to the Lord, who achieved great things through him..

PA

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.

Born: 18 September 1852, Clonmel, Co Tipperary
Entered: 27 November 1871, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 15 August 1891
Final Vows 02 February 1891, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 27 November 1908, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Twin brother of John Murphy - RIP 1898

Early education and CUS Dublin and UCD

Father Provincial of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus: 13 November 1900-1905
Novice Master: 1905 - 1908

by 1871 at home for health
by 1873 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) studying
by 1874 at Roehampton, London (ANG) studying
by 1875 at Laval, France (FRA) studying
by 1885 at Oña Spain (ARA) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He was a twin brother of John Murphy SJ - RIP 1898. He was also a brother of Canon Henry Murphy of Arran Quay and Lieutenant Colonel William Reed Murphy DSO, who had a distinguished career in the Indian Civil Service.

After First Vows he studied Rhetoric at Roehampton and then three years Philosophy at Laval, where Fathers Bucceroni and Fredet were teaching at the time.
He was then sent as a teacher to Tullabeg and later as a Teacher and Prefect of Studies at Clongowes for Regency of seven years.
1884 he was sent to Oña to study Theology. This was at that time the largest Theologate in the Society, whose chief Theologian, Father Mendine, was of great repute. Here he read a most distinguished course in Theology and shortly after his return to Ireland he was appointed a Chair of Theology at Milltown. He was a profound and able Theologian. Whilst this work was significant, he also found the time to exercise his love of children and the poor, by gathering the local poor boys together on Saturday evenings to teach them.
1895 He was appointed Master of Novices.
1900 he was appointed Provincial, and when he finished this in 1905 he went back to Milltown which he loved, including all his former work. he was not known as a Preacher as it was not necessarily in his gift, though when speaking or talking to groups who could follow his high train of thought, he was very effective. In this regard, his Priests Retreats were highly valued, and he also earned a great reputation as a Spiritual Director, adding prudence and sanctity to his learning.
Early in 1908 his health became a concern. From the outset there was not great hope that he would recover, and he died at Tullabeg an edifying death 22 March 1908.

At his end he was said to have described his experience as being like a man travelling from Dublin to Bray Head, shut up in a dark stuffy tunnel, but expecting at every moment to dash out into the sunshine with a glorious view before and around him, the glittering sun stretched out on his left, and inland on the right, green fields, woods and fair mansions, and in the distance the beautiful mountains. “Some happy change like that of a spiritual sort is before me please God”. In his dying he didn’t seem to suffer much, never tired of thanking those around him, and they considered themselves privileged to have witnessed his dying.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father James Murphy SJ 1852-1908
Fr James Murphy was one of those men who left an indelible mark on the Province. He was one of those men to whom those who met him could not be indifferent. One might put it this way : Fr Peter Kenney was to the infant Mission what Fr Murphy was to the growing Province.

Born in Clonmel in 1852, he entered the Society in 1869, where he had the famous Fr Sturzo as Novice Master. After a brilliant course of studies, especially displaying exceptional intellectual ability in Theology an Oña Spain, he was appointed to the chair of Theology in Milltown Park. In 1895, he became Master of Novices, his favourite Office in the Society. He used to say that God had given him the “tit-bit” of the work of the Province. He had a special flair for training novices. He had immense and infectious enthusiasm for the Society. His influence on the novices was profound and lasting, the central strand of which was his spirituality, a strong and effective love of the Lord. Regnum Christi was the inspiration of his life.

He was a fluent and forceful speaker and had a special gift of expounding attractively deep spiritual truths like the varietes of grace. His way of giving the Exercises, such as the Foundation and the Kingdom, so impressed his hearers, that novices could approach it only from his direction, and when afterwards as priests, they themselves had to give the Exercises, they revealed at once the Master from whom they learned.

He aimed at making the novices men of principle. “What is right is right” he would say, “and what is wrong is wrong, and that settles the question”. He did not forget the traditional methods of training in the Society, and by public and often unconventional commands, he raised them in poverty, obedience and humility. The great majority of his novices always admitted that he was the greatest influence on their lives.

In 1900 he was appointed Provincial, and he set about moulding the Province to his own high standard of spiritual values and ascetic living. As Provincial he was a man of vision. Foreseeing the growing importance of Biblical Studies, he sent three brilliant Juniors to the University of Beirut to learn Oriental languages. One of these, Fr Edmund Power, by his distinguished career at the Biblicum and Milltown Park, more than justified Fr Murphy’s foresight. He retired from this post in 1905 to become once more Master of Novices.

Health failed him in 1908, and he died on March 22nd at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore. To the end he displayed these high principles of the spiritual life, which he had inculcated into generations of novices.

His actual death was most edifying, painless and effortless. From his deathbed he delivered his last exhortation to the novices gathered round him, gathering up the gist of his teaching, which left an indelible mark on all of them. Describing the scene that bursts on one emerging from a stuffy tunnel at Bray Head, he said “Some happy change like that if a spiritual sort is before me, please God”. The bystanders considered themselves privileged to have witnessed so holy a death.

◆ The Clongownian, 1908

Obituary

Father James Murphy SJ

On Sunday morning, March 22nd, Father James Murphy died at Tullabeg. Though not educated either at Clongowes or Tullabeg, he was so intimately connected with both Colleges that his memory deserves more than a passing notice in our columns. Born at Clonmel in 1852, he was only 17 years of age when he entered the Noviceship of the Society of Jesus at Milltown Park, Dublin. After the usual term of preparation he went to Tullabeg as Master, and in 1878 passed on to Clongowes, where he soon became Prefect of Studies, a post which he held for several years, It was during his tenure of this office that the Intermediate Act was passed, and that that system of examination came into operation. It was well that there was such a man as Father Murphy at the head of affairs at so trying a time, for it required no little skill and manipulation to graft the Intermediate system on to the old ratio studiorum. During these years at Tullabeg and Clongowes he won the esteem of all the boys, and the affection of not a few. ·All recognised his great qualities, his vast erudition, his untiring zeal, his impartiality, his self-sacrifice, and many came to realise that in him they possessed a true friend, one to whom they could safely confide their troubles and difficulties, sure of a sympathetic hearing and kindly assistance, Indeed it would be no exaggeration to say that when the notice of his death appeared in the papers, many who read it felt tbat they had lost their truest and best friend. From Cloogowes in 1884 he went to Oña, in Spain, to study Theology, acquiring the reputation of a brilliant Theologian, so much so that his opinion was always asked by his fellow-students when some especially kootty point had to be settled. After his return to Ireland he was appointed Professor of Theology in Milltown Park, where he fully upheld the reputation he had gained for himself in Spain. In 1895 he was appointed Rector and Master of Novices in Tullabeg, a post which he held until November, 1900, when he became Provincial of the Irish Province. In this position he was necessarily brought again into close touch with Clongowes, and he always evinced the keenest interest in its doings, and to no one was its success more grateful. When his term of office as Provincial had expired he returned to his old post, which he loved so much, of Master of Novices at Tullabeg, and there, after a lingering illness, borne with the most edifying patience and resignation, he passed to the reward of his services for his Master. May he rest in peace.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1908

Obituary

Father James Murphy SJ

Two special friends of Mungret have been, during the past year, called to their reward. These were Rev Francis Daly SJ, who died at Rhyl, N Wales, 17th October, 1907; and Rev Jas Murphy SJ, who died at Tuliabeg, Ireland, March, 1908.

Although Rev James Murphy SJ, never belonged to the Mungret staff, he was very well known to very many of the Mungret pupils of both schoois, in whom he always showed a lively interest.

During his career as · Provincial of the Irish Province SJ (1900-1905), he proved himself a steadfast and powersul friend of the College, to which he rendered great and far-reaching services; and after that time, when he again resumed his old post of Master of Novices in Tullabeg, he still retained a deep interest in Mungret. The Past pupils of Mungret who knew him, and upon whom his imposing personality and extraordinary abilities did not fail to make a deep impression, will learn with regret of his untimely death. His illness was protracted, and his death, which he himself had long desired, was the death of a saint. RIP

Born: 15 August 1589, Cashel, County Tipperary
Entered: 13 May 1610, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1621, Louvain, Belgium
Final Vows: 14 July 1633
Died: 13 July 1664, Irish College, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)

Had studied Rhetoric before Entry then at Douai and Louvain
1655 In Irish College Rome (Fr Ferri being Rector)
1656-1660 Rector Irish College Rome (Bellarmino and Philip Roche are Consultors)
1662 John Young and William St Leger ask and obtain a papal indulgence for 100 Irish Jesuits (Arch Ir Col Rom XXVI 6)
Taught Humanities, Greek was Preacher, Superior, Master of Novices and Tertian Instructor
He wrote “Relationem de Civitate Corcagie et de Civicate Kilkennie” and “Libros Tres Militia Evangelicae” and “Vitam St Patrick Apostoli” and many other books.
His portrait was published in 1793 by William Richardson, Castle St, Leinster Sq, London

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of Robert Yong and Beatrice née Sall or Sallan (Sallanus)
Studied Humanities in Flanders before Ent, and then in the Society two years Philosophy and four years Theology.
1624 Sent to Ireland. He knew Latin, Greek, Irish, English, French and some Italian.
He taught Humanities and Greek for eight years; Preacher and Confessor for thirty years; Director of BVM Sodality twenty years; Superior of various Residences eighteen years; Master of Novices at Kilkenny and Galway five years; Consultor of Mission five years; Vice-Superior of Mission one year. (HIB CAT 1650 - ARSI) also Master of Tertians
He devoted himself to the Irish Mission for thirty years, chiefly in Cork, Waterford and Galway. During the persecution, he frequently went to people’s houses disguised as a miller.
He laid the foundation for the Novitiate at Waterford (should be Kilkenny?). He had to move this Novitiate to Galway, on account of the advance of the rebel Parliamentary forces, and was soon compelled to go with his novices to Europe.
He was then made Rector of the Irish College in Rome, and he was in office for eight years, and died in Rome 13 July 1664 aged 75 (Tanners “Confessors SJ”)
Several of his letters are extant and interesting. Several to Fr General dated Kilkenny, 30 January 1647, 30 June 1648, 31 December 1648, 08 February 1649, 22 June 1649 describe the situation relating to the history of this period. Later there are two letters from Galway to Fr General, 20 April 1650 and 14 August 1650 (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS).
A Writer; A very holy Priest; He took a Vow to observe the Rules.
Mercure Verdier (Irish Mission Visitor reporting in 1649) described him as “a distinguished Preacher, and remarkable for every species of religious virtue”
Father General ordered his portrait to be taken after death and his panegyric to be preached in the Roman College

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Robert and Beatrice née Sall
Had made his classical education in Flanders before Ent 13 May 1610 Rome
1612-1617 After First Vows, because of ill health, he was sent to Belgium and Courtray (Kortrijk) for Regency where he taught Greek.
1617-1621 He was then sent for Philosophy at Antwerp and Theology at Louvain where he was Ordained 1621.
1621 Sent to Ireland and Cashel, Clonmel and Kilkenny - to the great regret of Lessius who had wanted him appointed as a Chair in Philosophy - where he devoted himself to teaching young people and giving missions.
For many years he was Superior at the Cork Residence
When the Novitiate opened in Kilkenny he was appointed Novice Master
1646-1647 During the inter-regnum that followed the resignation of Robert Nugent as Mission Superior he acted as Vice-Superior of the Irish Mission
1651-1656 When the invasion of Cromwell resulted in the closure of the Novitiate he went back to Rome, initially as Procurator of the Irish Mission (1651) and then sent as Spiritual Father of the Irish College (1652-1656) as well as Tertian Instructor in Romanae Province (ROM)
1656 Rector of Irish College Rome 24 February 1656 where he remained until he died in Office 13 July 1664
He died with the reputation of a Saint. Wonderful stories were told of the favours he received from God in prayer, and information as to his virtues was gathered in Ireland and forwarded to Rome as if it was intended to prepare his cause for beatification.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962
John Young (1646-1647)
John Young, son of Robert Young and Beatrice Sall, was born at Cashel on 15th August, 1589. Having finished his classical studies in Flanders, he entered the Novitiate of Sant' Andrea in Rome on 13th May, 1610, but had to return to Belgium two years later on account of ill-health. In Belgium he taught Greek at Courtray, studied philosophy at Antwerp and theology at Louvain and distinguished himself so much that it was with great regret that Fr Leonard Lessius, who hoped to have him appointed to a chair of philosophy, learned that he was ordered to Ireland. Returning home in 1621, he devoted himself to the instruction of youth, and worked as a missioner in Cashel, Clonmel, and Kilkenny, and was for many years Superior of the Cork Residence. He was admitted to the solemn profession of four vows on 14th July, 1633. When the Novitiate was opened at Kilkenny he was appointed Master of Novices, and during the interregnum that followed the resignation of Fr Robert Nugent he acted as Vice-Superior of the Mission (1646-47). When the triumph of the Cromwellian arms dispersed the noviceship he was sent as Procurator of the Mission to Rome (1651). At Rome he was made Consultor and Spiritual Father of the Irish College (1652-56), and Instructor of the Tertians of the Roman Province. He became Rector of the Irish College on 24th February, 1656, and continued in that office till his death on 13th July, 1664. He died with the reputation of a saint. Wonderful stories were told of the favours he received from God in prayer,
and information as to his virtues was gathered in Ireland and forwarded to Rome, as if it was intended to prepare his cause for beatification.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father John Young 1589-1664
Fr John Yonge or Young was born in Cashel in 1589. He was the son of Robert Yonge and Beatrice Sall, being thus on his mother’s side a relative of the two Jesuits Andrew and James Sall. He became a Jesuit in Rome in 1610.

He was an accomplished linguist, numbering Latin, Greek, Irish, English, French and Italian among his languages. He taught Humanities for eight years and was a preacher and confessor for thirty, Director of the Sodality of Our Lady for twenty, Superior in various houses for eighteen, Master of Novices for five, Consultor of the Mission for five and Vice-Superior of the Mission for one year.

He laboured mainly in Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and Galway. It was he who founded the noviceship in Kilkenny, reporting in 1647 that he had eleven novices, of whom four were priests, six were scholastics and one brother.

He used often penetrate into the houses of Catholics at the height of the persecution disguised as a miller. For him we are indebted for may letters on the state of the Mission. He also wrote a life of St Patrick.

In 1649 he was forced to move the novices to Galway and thence to the continent. He became Rector of the Irish College at Rome for eight years and finally died in 164 with the reputation of a saint and a thaumaturgus.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
YOUNG, JOHN. For thirty years this apostolic man devoted himself to the Irish Mission. The Counties of Cork, Waterford, and Galway, were the principal theatres of his labours. We learn from p.871 of Tanner’s Lives of the Confessors of the Society of Jesus, that this good Father frequently contrived, during the rage of persecution, to penetrate into the houses of the Catholics, in the disguise of a Miller. His spirit of discretion and experience, his eminence as a Preacher, his profound learning, his solid interior virtue, recommended him as the fittest person amongst his Brethren to lay the foundation of the Novitiate at Kilkenny; and no wonder, that under so great a master of Spiritual life, such Ornaments to their Country and Luminaries of Religion as FF. Stephen Rice, William Ryan, &c. &c. should have come forth. Pere Verdier reported him in 1649, to the General of the Order, as “Vir omnium Religiosarum virtutum genere insignis, et concionator egregius”. Obliged by the successful advance of the Parliamentary forces to remove his interesting Establishment from Kilkenny, he conducted it to the Town of Galway; but thence also he was compelled to emigrate with them to the Continent, where he saw himself under the necessity of drafting these dear children in various houses of the Society. Retiring to Rome, he presided over the Irish College there for eight years, and was rewarded with a happy death in that City, on the 13th of July, 1664, aet. 75, as I find it written under his beautifully engraved Portrait. A few original letters of this meritorious and saintly Father are still extant : some Extracts may afford pleasure to the reader.

1. Dated from Kilkenny, the 30th of January, 1647 OS.
   “Our long expected Superior, P. Malone, by the blessing of God, is at last arrived. His coming was indeed welcomed by all; but, above all, by me, who have been sustaining the double burthen of the Novitiate and the Mission. Now, blessed be God, I am relieved of the care of superintending the Mission. With regard to the Novitiate, we have eleven Novices, of whom four are Priests, six are Scholastics, and one a Temporal Coadjutor. Domestic discipline and regular observance proceed in due course, as I flatter myself. I do trust in the Lord, that they will not degenerate from the primitive spirit of our Fathers. They are trained in the simplicity of obedience, in the despising of themselves and the World, in subduing their passions, renouncing self-will, in the practise of poverty, in the candid and unreserved manifestation of Conscience, in inward conversation and familiarity with God : and of these things, praise be to God, they are very capable and most eager. Nothing is omitted which the Rules prescribe for their formation in the spirit of the Society of Jesus”.

The 2nd is dated from Kilkenny, the 30th of June, 1618.
“The letters of your Rev. Paternity, bearing date the 24th of August, 1647, did not reach me until the 23rd of last month. Never since the memory of man have the affairs of this kingdom been in a more turbulent state than at present, by reason of the discord now prevailing between the Supreme Council and the Nuncio”.
He then states that the Supreme Council, in consequence of severe reverses of fortune during the Campaign, and the great want of ways and means, had concluded a Treaty for six months with Inchinquin, the General of the Enemy’s forces : that some of the Conditions were judged unfavourable to Ecclesiastical rights by the Nuncio, who signified his utter disapprobation, and threatened an interdict, unless the Truce was recalled within the space of nine days; that the Supreme Council appealed to the Holy See; but notwithstanding such appeal, the Nuncio had proceeded to carry his threat into execution; and that confusion and the worst species of civil hostilities were engendered between the parties.

In this and other letters, dated from Kilkenny, the 31st of December, 1648, the 8th of February, 1649, the 22nd of June, 1649, he enters into many details relating to the history of this sad and eventful period, and gives proof of his own quiet and meek spirit, of his tender regard for Charity and the interests of Religion.

From Galway the Rev. Father addressed two letters to the Gen. Piccolimini.

The first is dated the 20th of April, 1650 : he remarks on the bright prospect there was for the Irish Mission of the Society in Ireland but seven years ago; what a wide field was opened for extending the glory of God, and procuring the salvation of souls; that several cities had petitioned for Colleges of the Order, and that competent foundations* had been offered and some accepted; that the small number of labourers for such an abundant harvest of souls (for they hardly amounted to sixty for the whole of Ireland, nam vix sexayinta in toto regno fuimus) induced them to apply for powers to admit Novices at home, who being instructed in virtue and afterwards in learning, might succeed us, most of whom are advanced in years, in the work of the Ministry. The necessary permission was obtained; it was confirmed and increased afterwards, and the Novitiate had prosperously maintained its course during the last four years “et Novitiatus hoc quadriennio prosper suum cursum tenuit”. But as nothing is stable in human affairs, during the last year the Establishment was disturbed by the din of arms and by the assault of the Parliamentary forces, insomuch that a transmigration to Galway had become necessary. Every day the political horizon grew darker, and the panic and despair of the confederated Chiefs portended the worst consequences to the Country. He adds, “For the more advanced of our Brethren we are not so concerned; for they are prepared by age and the long exercise of virtues to meet the brunt and storm of Persecution : but for the Juniors, as for so many unfledged young from the hovering Kite, we are all solicitude”. After earnestly consulting Almighty God, and deliberating with the Fathers of Galway and its neighbourhood, he states, that it was unanimously resolved to send the young men abroad as soon as possible, trusting in God and in the accustomed charity of the Society, that provision would be made for them. He finishes by saying, “My bowels are moved with the danger impending on those whom I have begotten in Christ; for, as their Master of Novices, I have brought them forth with the anxiety of a mother. I now commend and commit them to your Rev. Paternity, that they may be distributed and accepted through the Provinces; hear, I implore you, my good Father, this first petition of their very poor Mother; I do not say, my Petition; but of this declining Mission; because Satan waxes fierce and cruel, intent on extinguishing the spark which is left, and on leaving us no name or remainder upon the earth”. (2 Kings, xiv. 70.)

The second letter is dated the 14th of August, 1650. After briefly adverting to the successes of the Puritan Factions, and the atrocities and sacrileges which marked their triumphant progress, he says, that he will take the first safe opportunity of shipping off his dear Novices to the Continent, and conjures the General to exercise his tender charity towards these interesting Exiles.

• Amongst these benefactors (we have already noticed the greatest, Elizabeth Nugent, Countess of Kildare, who died on the 26th of October, 1645) we must particularize Dr. Thomas Dease, Bishop of Meath; Mr. Edmund Kirwan and his relation Francis Kirwan, Bishop of Killala (his Lordship had obtained to be admitted into the Society “pro hora mortis”, and was buried in the Jesuits Church at Rennes); and Thomas Walsh, Archbishop of Cashell, who died in exile at Compostella. The Supreme Council had also engaged in 1645. to erect a new University, to be under the charge of the Jesuits, as also to found a College under the name of Jesus.