Catholicism may be raising its head high but the body underneath is ailing |
The Catholic inner city faithful face a new dawn this Christmas. St Mary’s in Marlborough Street has recently been elevated to the status of a cathedral. The Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin has welcomed this with “great joy” as it ends St Mary’s temporary designation of procathedral (from the Latin pro tempore) dating from the 19th century. It is extraordinary that a country so steeped in the Catholic faith for so long – some two and a half thousand Catholic churches were built in Ireland between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries – only now has once again a Catholic cathedral in its capital city, nearly 500 years after the Reformation. But church buildings and their status have always been affected by temporal as well as spiritual preoccupations.
The building of St Mary’s was championed by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Daniel Troy, who served from 1786 to 1823. The Marlborough Street site was purchased in 1803, costing £5,100. It was opened in 1825, but the portico was not completed until 1841. In generating funds for church building during that period, there was an expectation that while wealthy benefactors would be generous, it was also incumbent on the devout poor to do their bit. This was no easy path – in 1821 the building committee was........