Mount Carmel Monastery : brief history

BACKGROUND

To understand the background and much else concerning our foundation and its subsequent history, it is essential to be acquainted with our country’s political situation during the era involved.

In the 13th century, Ireland was invaded and conquered by the Norman/ English and remained under British rule until the end of the second decade of the 20th century. Hence, when England embraced the Protestant Reformation, a systematic persecution of Catholic Ireland began too. Monasteries were confiscated and the Religious executed or dispersed. This state of things continued for almost three centuries, in varying degrees of intensity, until Catholic Emancipation was achieved in 1829. Only then could native Religious Congregations be founded to cater for the Religious Instruction and education of Catholic youth, especially the poorer section. Such communities as managed to survive, or come into being when persecution abated somewhat, were obliged to keep a very low profile and often wore secular dress to avoid detection. Most of them were enclosed in principle, but in practice, many accepted a small number of young girls as boarders, to whom they imparted such arts and accomplishments as they possessed; this provided them with a small means of livelihood. Ranelagh Carmel, Dublin, from which ours was founded, was this type of community early in the 19th century.

FOUNDATION OF A CARMELITE MONASTERY IN NEW ROSS:

The memory and consequences of the 1798 Rebellion were fresh in the minds and lives of a largely dispirited Catholic population in New Ross in the early 1800’s Many of them were living in abysmal conditions and abject poverty, without hope. The Very Rev. William Chapman was the Parish Priest of New Ross for close to 40 years and is remembered as a zealous priest who laboured indefatigably for the welfare of his flock living in crushing poverty. He was acutely aware of the need for education among the poorer classes as a means of improving their chances in life. This inspired him to seek the services of a community of religious who would impart secular and religious instruction to the children of the parish.

Needless to say, many difficulties beset his project. At the time, Irish Catholics still lay crushed under the oppression and restrictions of the Penal Laws and Catholic Emancipation did not take place until 1829. Catholic education was banned by law and threatened by penalties.

Religious Orders were then very few in Ireland so Dean Chapman turned to an unlikely community of religious, the enclosed Order of Carmelite Nuns. One of the sisters in the Carmelite Community in Ranelagh was a connection of his own family. Mary Teresa Kavanagh, born in New Ross, and from Ringwood in the Rower, was a professed Carmelite since 1791, Her sister’s brother-in-law was Dean Chapman. For many years Mother Kavanagh had nurtured hopes to found a monastery in her native town as reparation for the defection of her father and brother from the Roman Catholic Church to safeguard their property and profession during the Penal Laws. It is coincidental that it was through another family member that her prayers were answered! Mother Kavanagh had completed three terms as Prioress, when her relative, Dean Chapman, requested the foundation of a Carmel in her native town. Ranelagh Community provided generous resources, as well as church plate, books, and everything necessary; one of the postulants included in the founding group had also inherited family property. Nevertheless, the new Carmel seems to have experienced some lean years, but they soon won the loyal support of the local people which has never failed to this day.

Thus, Mother Kavanagh returned to New Ross as Foundress and First Prioress of Mount Carmel Monastery on 18th July 1817. No religious order of Nuns had been anywhere in the Diocese of Ferns since the Reformation in the 16th century and a storm of bigotry arose but Dean Chapman and Mother Kavanagh were equal to the occasion and weathered the storm.

NAMES OF THE FOUNDING NUNS:

Mother Teresa of the Holy Ghost ( Kavanagh) , Foundress and first Prioress

Mother Augustine of the Incarnation ( Madden), Sub Prioress

Sr. M. Gertrude of Jesus ( Hodgens)

Choir Postulants:

Miss Dorothy Hickey , who became Sr. Mary Joseph

Miss M.A. Mc Donagh ,whoc became Sr. Mary Agnes

All five came from Ranelagh Carmel, Dublin. They made the journey by coach ( about 160 Km) and were accompanied by the Vicar Provincial, Fr. Leo of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary ( James Oates), under whose jurisdiction the Monastery was founded. They formally took possession on 18th July 1817, and Fr. Leo celebrated the first Mass two days later, on the feast of St. Elijah. Before returning to Dublin a week later, he clothed Miss Hickey, the first novice.

In October 1817, three months after their arrival in New Ross, the nuns opened a Poor School in the ground floor room of their residence. A year and half later, work began on a new building, comprising a small chapel upstairs, school rooms underneath, and extra residential quarters built onto the original house. This work was completed and was blessed by Bishop Keating in 1823. As proof of “Protestant Ascendancy” at that time, Mother Kavanagh had to obtain a license from the Protestant Bishop of Ferns to run a school. This school was linked with the National School System in 1831.

The census returns of 1821 record that there were between one and two hundred pupils attending the free/ poor school. There were now eleven Carmelite Nuns in the Monastery.

Quite a comprehensive account of the “Mount Carmel Free School” is contained in the Second Report from the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry issued in 1826. It recorded that 160 Roman Catholic girls were enrolled and that it was not a “pay school” and the teaching nuns had no income from the school and that the classroom was in good condition.

Mother Kavanagh opened an Industrial Lace School in 1833, in order to provide employment for the girls and women of the town. The front room of the school building was a workroom, so it was probably housed there. Needlework orders were sought and carried out, and the proceeds were divided among the workers. The oldest extant samples of crochet and lace are rather thick and heavy.

In 1837, when the nuns numbered fifteen, it became necessary to demolish the small house which was their home twenty years earlier, and extend the newer building towards the front.

Finally, in 1848, work was begun on a much larger school, public chapel, and nuns’ choir. This was blessed and opened in 1853 and remained until 1971 when the current monastery was built.

The Sisters of Mercy came to town in 1853 and opened a National School for girls a few years later, but Mount Carmel School continued for almost a further 80 years. Various factors contributed to this delay, but in 1932, it was decided the time had come to abandon one good work for another. Henceforth the nuns were fully enclosed, and free to give themselves entirely to a life of prayer for the Church, as St. Teresa had envisioned.