They Shall Bear You Up: Memories of a Catholic Priest

by Fachtna Joseph Harte

Overview

For Monsignor Fachtna Joseph Harte, walking with Christ every day of the year was a privilege that was unrivalled. In this memoir, he narrates his journey to priesthood-from answering the call, to walking the roads with the Lord, proclaiming His kingdom, listening to Him in one's heart, and going among His people with compassion and love.

They Shall Bear You Up begins in the country parish of Kilfian, near Killala Co Mayo in the Diocese of Killala, where Harte knew from an early age he desired to serve the church. He discusses his family background, his upbringing, and his experiences of the Irish strife against the British. The story follows his schooling and his subsequent move to the United States, where he was called to begin a ministry of tourism in Orlando, Florida, holding the first service in a hotel ballroom in 1975. He served in Orlando until his retirement October 31, 2007

.A testimony of faith, They Shall Bear You Up emphasizes that as human beings we are never alone and that for those who wish to carry out God's will in their lives, "nothing is impossible with God." Through many and varied stories, Harte shows that the priesthood is not for weaklings, but for men of strong faith who live close to the angels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462036271
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/05/2011
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.83(d)

Read an Excerpt

They Shall Bear You Up

Memories of a Catholic Priest

---

By Fachtna Joseph Harte

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Fachtna Joseph Harte
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3627-1

---

Chapter One

The Longest Night

"The sun halted in the middle of the sky. Not for a whole day did it resume its swift course. Never before or since was there a day like this" (Joshua 10:13). This is Joshua's description of the longest day "when the Lord delivered up the Amorites to the Israelites." There is nothing in the Bible about the longest night!

I am going to tell you it was the night of August 14–15, 1939. I was nine years old then. Despite my young age, my parents had allowed me to join them on their pilgrimage to Knock Shrine in my native County Mayo—an all-night vigil that began at dusk and ended at dawn. At the age of nine, I knew that for dawn to come the sun must rise and the moon must get out of its way. But that night the moon simply stood still. How I longed for the comforts of a bed and blankets! There never was a night as long as this.

I was standing with my parents near the gable end of the church, site of the apparition of Our Lady on August 22, 1879. In the intervening years, Knock had become a place of pilgrimage visited by thousands of people from all over Ireland. Crutches hung in various places as a reminder of the power of the Virgin who had literally sent patients home without any need for the crutches that helped them get there. The apparition had taken place on the evening of August 22, but for some reason, most likely that it was a holy day, the all-night vigil had developed on the eve and morning of August 15, the Feast of Our Lady's Assumption.

On the morning we were there, it had just been announced that Mass would begin at dawn. After being up all night for the first time in my life, how I longed for any sign of that morning sun that would herald the dawn! It would just have been my luck that my first night up would coincide with the moon standing still and holding up the arrival of the sun for the first time in the history of the world.

"Look to the east," my dad encouraged. In due course it happened. The moon got out of the way! The first rays of a new day began to come above the horizon. A bell rang to announce that Mass would shortly begin. We were standing outside with the crowds awaiting the start of Mass at the spot Our Lady had appeared. The priest came to the altar at the gable end. My father stooped down and whispered that I should ask God for what I wanted most. "We have been here all night honoring His mother, and ask her too for what you want."

The very first words of the Mass in those days were Introibo ad altare Dei, or, in English, "I will go unto the altar of God." That was what I wanted most! To go to God's altar as a priest. I whispered my petition to the Mother of God. And I kept it secret, of course!

After Mass that morning, we departed for home. I don't recall the journey because, like Robinson Crusoe after his shipwreck, Mary Queen "sent the gentle sleep from Heaven that sped into my soul." But the Mother of God had heard my petition. My journey to priesthood would possibly be a little different than that of most others. That was of no importance to me. I would have been a deliriously happy youngster had I known my prayer was heard.

There was really nothing very unusual about a nine-year-old making a pilgrimage and praying the rosary. Praying the rosary together as a family was the normal ending to our day. At nine I was well aware of God's presence in my life. And I had a yearning to please His mother too. I'm sure that yearning was absorbed in me by our nightly recitation of the rosary. Looking back, although I had no notion how it affected me and entered into my soul, it left a happy memory of a tranquil and effervescent home.

And so this story begins at home. It was a wonderful home—a place of peace, contentment, and love. It was a place to be remembered forever. It was a happy home, and it still holds a special place in my heart. It stands a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean on the north Mayo coast, just a short distance from historic Killala and the pier at Kilcummin where a French force landed in 1798 to help an Irish revolution. My father would know Kilcummin and its quiet and friendly people well. He was principal teacher of their school for a quarter of a century.

That was long before the modernization of Ireland.

When I go home—to the very same kitchen—it is now equipped with all the paraphernalia of modern times. The open heart his no more. Gone too is the crane that hung across the turf fire and served to hold the utensils in which the breads were baked or the food was cooked. Naturally the kerosene-oil cooker, which put forth so many wonderful odors of my mother's cooking, is no more either. The kitchen is comfortable, with the "comforts" of modern times, still beautiful in its own way. But it is not the kitchen of my childhood!

The house is centrally heated now. Sometimes my mind wanders back to the old days, when the family was gathered of a winter evening around the blazing turf fire, which provided the only heating for the house. But in those days it was normal to have just one peat fire in the home, and most of the heat was therefore in the kitchen.

There were eight of us children, five girls and three boys. Mary Teresa was the oldest, followed by another sister, Ita Bernadette. Then came Patrick Enda, and later I arrived on the scene. I was followed by Aidan, the last boy in the family, and later by Carmel, Anne, and Monica. Both my parents were teachers, but when my mother married, she quickly gave up her profession in order to care for her family.

My earliest memories go back to the building of our home in 1933. It was located at Moneen, just three miles from the historic town of Killala. The word Moneen comes from the Gaelic for "little bog" or "little meadow"—you can take your pick. The present home replaced the old home, a thatched three-room cottage my father had purchased from a local farmer as well as the little farm that came with it. It bordered my grandfather's own farm, which in time my father came to own. Indeed, our new home was one of the first two-story homes in the neighborhood, with a slated roof and decorative front walls.

My father had qualified as a primary teacher in Waterford College, and his first position was in the quaint town of Baltimore, not far from Skibbereen and perhaps forty miles from Clonakilty in County Cork where he was born. "The sack of Baltimore" is still remembered in Irish lore, keeping alive the recollection of that terrible evening when Algerian pirates came ashore on June 20, 1631, sacked the village, and made off with almost all its inhabitants, the majority of whom were never seen again. It is believed that they finished their lives as slaves in North Africa.

The revolution of 1916 changed the lives of many Irishmen, including my father. His family was involved in the war for Irish freedom, and one of his brothers, Patrick, was arrested while playing a football game in Clonakilty. Patrick was an officer of the original Irish Republican Army in the most rebellious county in Ireland. To this day, Cork is known as "the Rebel County." Toward the end of July 1920, British troops captured him, along with a companion, Tom Hales, and brought him to the mansion of a landowner in the area. Here he was severely tortured. With his face smashed in and his nose broken by a soldier's rifle butt and almost every tooth gone, his nails were removed one by one with a pliers in order to get him to give information on his companions. He refused. Later on, after a British court had found him guilty, he was sent to Pentonville prison in England. The severity of his torture took its toll, and he died some short years later, never having recovered from the ordeal. Tom Hales lived to tell the tale, which he narrated on his release from Dartmoor prison later on. The story is retold in The IRA and Its Enemies, by Peter Hart (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998). There are many Cork locals who believe that the recent movie The Wind that Shakes the Barley told in its own way the story of the capture and torture of Patrick Harte.

Toward the end of World War One, the British government opened its jails and sent volunteer criminals to repel the Irish revolution. The British called them auxiliaries, but to the Irish natives they were known as the "Black and Tans" by reason of their uniforms. Being natural criminals, now given unrestrained freedom, they ran amok throughout the countryside. Civilians going about their everyday affairs were not spared by their rampaging. They left an unenvied record of murder and mayhem in their wake and are to this day remembered for their deeds of infamy against innocent civilians.

Following Patrick's arrest, the hated Black and Tans arrived in Clonakilty one evening, in search of my father. Fortunately, he was out of town, and the Tans wrought their "revenge" on some other poor unfortunate. When Timothy Harte got home, he was advised by his friends and a local priest to get out of County Cork as expeditiously as possible. His escape—with the help of the priest—took him to an island off the west Mayo coast where he was to become the principal teacher in the small island school.

There's a movie called The Great Escape that reminds me of my own father's journey to freedom. His priest friend advised him to head west, where a teaching post would be awaiting him. Hetooka bus from Clonakilty to Tralee, having been warned to be careful of Limerick City, where the Tans were rampant at the time. All went well until his Tralee bus arrived at the outskirts of Limerick City. There in front of it was a roadblock with a group of auxiliaries standing on the roadway, signaling the bus to stop. One of those "criminals"—because criminals they were!—boarded the bus at the rear, where the bus entrances were placed in those days. My father was sitting toward the front, not quite sure what was happening or if they might be searching for him. But as if through some angelic intervention, the leader of the group called off the intruder, and the entire band jumped into their truck and rode away at reckless speed.

Everything else went well until he got to Westport a couple days later. There he began to inquire about the whereabouts of his destination—the island of Innishkea. "There is no bus there, sir; it's an island, you know," someone said roguishly, "and you'll have to take a hackney car to the dock to meet the boat." With little choice he took the hackney car, paid a moderate fare, and found himself in a seemingly deserted area with a few homes looking out upon the Atlantic Ocean. Nor was there any sign of an island out there! The boat was no steamer! Apparently it was a modern-day outboard, or something akin to it; he remembered the spray washing over the few occupants as the boat wended homeward. His arrival signaled the end of an era: he was not "on the run" anymore, and there was little danger of the Tans or any British soldiers coming ashore.

It so happened that a young woman came to teach on Innishkea too. Her name was Elizabeth O'Neill. It was love at first sight. The couple were married in Binghamstown in west Mayo and in time went on to have the children mentioned above. Somewhere or other there is an irony in the name! Bingham was an English landlord, an avaricious and unfeeling man. In order to hinder his tenants from taking their livestock for sale to the neighboring town of Belmullet, he erected a barrier through which the cattle had to be driven after a tax on each had been rendered. To this day, the Gaelic name for Binghamstown is An Geata Mor, translating directly into English as "The Large Gate." And so an Irish citizen recently "on the run" was married in a village whose name recalled the injustices against which he had railed!

My father was a quiet man, not given to boasting or quarrelling. He had a great love for Ireland. A compatriot and cousin of the great Michael Collins, he was always saddened by the Civil War that followed the successful Easter Rising. To him Collins was a hero. "We beat the might of the British Empire," he would say, "and then sadly we turned our guns on ourselves." He would rail against the stupidity of those who could not see the political intent of everything Collins did in his life. "Collins died at thirty-two," he would say, "and how could anyone not understand the life he dedicated to Ireland's freedom?" According to DeValera and his followers, Collins erred when he took part in signing the treaty that gave an Irish government control over twenty-six counties but left the six northern counties of Ireland to be governed by Orangemen loyal to the Union Jack—this despite the fact that over 80 percent of the population had approved the treaty in a public plebiscite. Indeed, Collins had requested not to be included in the group traveling to London at the time of the treaty, as the British had not the faintest notion of what he looked like. DeValera insisted that Collins be a member of the deputation to London, and the rest is history. A vicious Civil War ensued at DeValera's instigation, a war in which Collins lost his life.

In my younger years, my father kept a small revolver. Following the Civil War the country was divided, and it was well known which side my father had been on! On his arrival in north Mayo he was regarded as a "blow-in" who didn't really belong. His partiality to Michael Collins also became known. Civil wars come from dangerous and irrational thinking that does not end with the conclusion of armed skirmishing. Indeed, I remember my early years of primary school. I should mention here that we did not attend my father's school as children but were enrolled in Kilfian school, a school closer to home and within the parish in which we resided, though still two miles walking distance. Roadside workers would call me a "blueshirt" as I walked home from school with my companions. I really did not know what they meant, nor did my parents alarm me by telling me. Here was a child of six being badgered by adults because they judged his father on the wrong side in an irrational civil war.

Many years later I would find out about Blueshirts. After ten years of pro-Treaty government DeValera's party was elected to power in 1932. Pro-Treatyites were naturally disturbed at the turn of events. When Eoin O'Duffy was removed as chief of police almost as soon as the new government took office, there was an outcry that those who had not sided with DeValera would all suffer recriminations. O'Duffy himself began a protest movement, encouraging those who took umbrage at what was happening in the country to gather at town meetings wearing blue shirts for the purpose of identification. The movement eventually came to nothing, but the name "blueshirt" was now attached to anyone who was seen not to favor the DeValera government. For the roadside workers, the six-year-old son of Master Harte was a blueshirt! And the same Master Harte had involved himself in the struggle against Britain, though not one of the workers most likely had ever had their finger on a rifle.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from They Shall Bear You Up by Fachtna Joseph Harte Copyright © 2011 by Fachtna Joseph Harte. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................xi
Acknowledgments....................xiii
Chapter One: The Longest Night....................1
Chapter Two: Memories....................10
Chapter Three: Faith Steeped in History....................17
Chapter Four: The School Inspector....................24
Chapter Five: God Reigns!....................28
Chapter Six: A Meeting on the Bridge....................35
Chapter Seven: A Parish Mission and a Picture....................42
Chapter Eight: Supernatural Crisis and the Joy of the Lord....................46
Chapter Nine: First Experience of Death....................52
Chapter Ten: A First Answer to Personal Prayer....................56
Chapter Eleven: Christian Hospitality....................59
Chapter Twelve: A Year to Remember....................64
Chapter Thirteen: An Altar Boy!....................70
Chapter Fourteen: Holy Week Experiences....................73
Chapter Fifteen: War in Europe....................77
Chapter Sixteen: Saving Crops and Standing Firm!....................83
Chapter Seventeen: A Bend in the Road....................88
Chapter Eighteen: A New Commitment....................91
Chapter Nineteen: A New Life....................93
Chapter Twenty: Marist Novitiate and Beyond....................97
Chapter Twenty-One: Rebirth of a Dream....................103
Chapter Twenty-Two: A New Beginning....................106
Chapter Twenty-Three: Bad News....................110
Chapter Twenty-Four: A Bishop Helps Out....................114
Chapter Twenty-Five: My Father Dies....................117
Chapter Twenty-Six: Life in the Major Seminary....................120
Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Priest Forever....................126
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Arrival in the New World....................131
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Early Assignment in the Priesthood....................135
Chapter Thirty: The Winds of Change....................139
Chapter Thirty-One: Beginning Again....................145
Chapter Thirty-Two: New Life with a Slap....................148
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Summer of My Discontent....................151
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Wait....................154
Chapter Thirty-Five: A Strange Court....................156
Chapter Thirty-Six: Case Over....................159
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Beginning a Tourist Ministry....................162
Chapter Thirty-Eight: A New Light....................165
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Walking the Pavements....................168
Chapter Forty: A Handy Gestetner!....................172
Chapter Forty-One: A New Parish Church....................175
Chapter Forty-Two: Fund-Raising....................179
Chapter Forty-Three: Parish Activities....................183
Chapter Forty-Four: Serving the Lord and Country....................188
Chapter Forty-Five: A Dream is Born....................191
Chapter Forty-Six: Writing to Our Friends....................195
Chapter Forty-Seven: An Agreement with the Diocese on Taxation....................202
Chapter Forty-Eight: A Roadblock....................205
Chapter Forty-Nine: Follow-Up to a Crisis....................209
Chapter Fifty: Controversy Plus the Arrival of a Dignitary....................213
Chapter Fifty-One: First Artist Is Commissioned....................217
Chapter Fifty-Two: Designing the Shrine Church....................222
Chapter Fifty-Three: A Shrine is Born....................228
Chapter Fifty-Four: First Buildings Completed....................231
Chapter Fifty-Five: Absentees from a Celebration....................238
Chapter Fifty-Six: Faith-Filled Matchless Volunteers....................246
Chapter Fifty-Seven: Mary's Shrine a Landmark....................254
Chapter Fifty-Eight: A Pilgrimage and a Gift....................258
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Signature Statue Arrives....................264
Chapter Sixty: Saint Joseph Statuary....................271
Chapter Sixty-One: Masses Ended at Disney Complex....................273
Chapter Sixty-Two: Monsignor....................278
Chapter Sixty-Three: The Gates of Paradise....................283
Chapter Sixty-Four: Facing A Health Crisis....................288
Chapter Sixty-Five: Aftermath of a Problem....................297
Chapter Sixty-Six: Summoning Bells....................303
Chapter Sixty-Seven: Traditions Passed On....................307
Chapter Sixty-Eight: The Rose Window....................315
Chapter Sixty-Nine: Catholic Devotion....................318
Chapter Seventy: Understanding One's Vocation....................325
Chapter Seventy-One: One for the Road....................329
Chapter Seventy-Two: The Rosary Garden....................332
Chapter Seventy-Three: Ay, Fleeth the Tyme....................337
Chapter Seventy-Four: A Fond Farewell....................344
Epilogue....................353