From Faith, Famine and Fatherland - Perceptions of a Priest and Historian - Anthony Cogan 1826-1872
In his political views on the evolution of Irish society, Cogan's thinking reflected the spiritual concept of the Communion of Saints, where living believers share in a Christian fellowship with those who have already died in Christ. In Cogan's Diocese of Meath the reader is struck by the fact that there is scarcely no accommodation made for the division between the living and the dead. Cogan reminded his readers in 1862, that 'the old grave-yards where their fathers sleep, and where many of themselves expect to repose' also contain the remains of heroic priests whose records must 'be rescued from oblivion and neglect'. And in all this, the writing of history played a key role in shaping the consciousness of the local community and the nation.
__
Little of Cogan's achievement or of his short life was remembered within his own diocese or by his clerical successors. His friend and fellow historian of Dublin, Fr. John O'Hanlon, believed that because of his labours and his personal sanctity 'in aftertime his grave shall be sought by many a pilgrim and from many of distant land.' But twentieth-century Ireland, languishing in the petty politics of the post Civil War era, and blinkered by an exclusive sense of remembrance of the heroes of 1916, allowed the memory of men such as Anthony Cogan to fade and die. A housing estate in Navan was named after him but few could explain the significance of the name By 1990, in spite of the presence of the monument on the wall of Slane church, all memory even of Cogan's grave had vanished...The very thing which Anthony Cogan had laboured so hard to prevent had now happened. Ireland was losing its collective memory--ironically not under a foreign oppressor, but under its own complacent independent regime.
No comments:
Post a Comment