Fictitious Lough Derg in the Chapel of Monea, Diocese of Clogher

Fictitious Lough Derg in the Chapel of Monea, Diocese of Clogher

Lough Derg--Pilgrimage--Replication--Monea

"We cannot permit the circumstance of a Roman Catholic priest constructing a fictitious Lough Dearg in his Chapel for the use of his people, when prevented going to the real one, to pass without a word or two of remark..."

Philip Dixon Hardy, 1794-1875

Hardy, Philip Dixon, The Holy Wells of Ireland : Containing an Authentic Account of Those Various Places of Pilgrimage and Penance Which Are Still Annually Visited by Thousands of the Roman Catholic Peasantry. With a Minute Description of the Patterns and Stations Periodically Held in Various Districts of Ireland, pp. 48-49

Hardy & Walker, Dublin

1840

Digitised by archive.org, sponsored by Boston Public Library

Public domain

Monograph

English

Holy wells

Text

DD_0012

54.398007,-7.753150

http://archive.org/details/holywellsofirela00hard

"We cannot permit the circumstance of a Roman Catholic priest constructing a fictitious Lough Dearg in his Chapel for the use of his people, when prevented going to the real one, to pass without a word or two of remark. The Priest who did this, had regularly, at former periods, allowed such of his flock as desired it, to incur the fatigue and expense necessarily attendant upon making a journey of many miles to that place of supposed sanctity, Lough Dearg. But when his Bishop forbade their admission there, he makes forsooth a hole in his Chapel floor, fills it with water, sticks crucifixes around, and tells them that they may wash there, and be as clean every whit as at the other. In one or other then of these he must have been a deceiver. Either there was no superior efficacy in the lake-water, &c. so in permitting them to toil and labour to it, he suffered them to incur most unnecessary bodily inflictions, or else there really was, and so in passing the water of his puddle-hole upon them for a substitute, he put a plain cheat upon them. We speak here, judging this man’s conduct as a Roman Catholic might judge it, who believes in the peculiar sacredness of some places above others, and that the washing in particular water, or saying prayers and doing penances at particular places, are profitable for cleansing the soul from sin.

It is ignorance alone which supports the idea so unhappily propagated by the Church of Rome, that rocks, and wells, and caves, and lakes, afford peculiar facilities of approach to the throne of grace; need we then wonder that the Romish Laity are studiously kept in darkness? for by the light of Scripture how many profitable delusions would at once be dissipated."

Monograph