Download the Mungret College Annual 1968 - Mungret College Past ...

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THE RED LACQUERED GATE
by William E. Barrett
Sheed & Ward, New York. 1967.
FR. P. FAIJY
FR. J. O'LEARY
At last, the book that needed to be written:
the story of Bishop Edward Galvin,
and as a backdrop the story of the growth
of the Society of St. Columban, " The
Maynooth Mission to China."
Mr. Barrett not only gives us the details
of Bishop Galvin's life, but as a necessary
aid to understanding the gigantic work of
the Society's first Bishop, he works in quietly
the story of 20th century China. What a
story, and what fearless men and women
they were to achieve so much in so short a
time and in such incredible circumstances.
Putting it briefly, the priests and nuns of
Ireland, fired by a faith whose enthusiasm
nothing could daunt, went to China and in
the first decade (1920-'30) faced banditry,
looting, destruction, hairbreadth escapes and
imprisonment ended by ransom. In the
second decade, expansion, first held up by
enormous floods, was slowed by the Sino-
Japanese War, with its attendant bombings
and restrictions on apostolic work. In the
third decade came the World War It and
subsequent Communist take-over. Yet, in
those years, Bishop Galvin and his coworkers
sustained all with a heroism that
must surely make him rank as Ireland's
most outstanding apostle of modern times
in the Far East, and place him beside that
other giant of Ireland's apostolic work,
Bishop Shanahan, C.S.Sp., whose work in
Africa has been unparalleled. To sum up,
in Bishop Galvin's own words (page 393):
" We never had years of normality, so we
didn't know what was normal for China."
Two well-known members of the Catholic
Church in the U.S.A. had this to say of
him (page 391) - His Eminence Cardinal
Spellman met him in 1953 and said of him:
He was a living saint. What more can
you say!" The Most Rev. Fulton. J. Sheen
sought to sum him up: " He is not a mart
who can be written great, he has to be seen
great. I wonder if anyone in a lifetime has
had such spiritual filiation. There are few
founders who have had such progeny in
their generation."
It will be recalled that when Fr. Edward
Galvin came back to Ireland after the Easter
Rising, his purpose was to persuade the
clergy and people of Ireland that an enormous
opportunity awaited the Irish nation of
spiritual expansion in China - an expansion
that would surpass in its ruggedness and
achievement all that St. Columban and his
co-missionaries had accomplished. To his
undying memory that has been done, and
today the Society of St. Columban, denied
access to China, seeks to further the work of
the Church elsewhere in the Far East and
more recently in South America, while at
home, Rev. Fr. Blowick could speak for the
nationwide effort of priests and people behind
our National Missionary Society when
he said at the laying of the cornerstone of
the modern " Dalgan " in 1938: " The
lamps which burn before the tabernacles in
China, Korea, Burma, and the Philippines,
have been lighted by the pennies of our
people."
Congratulations to " Dalgan " and its
men on their Golden Jubilee, 1918-'68.
May the Society of St. Columban grow from
strength to strength towards its centenary
and beyond it.
—M. O'M.
Social Service Group (Apostolic School) with Rev. Fr. Morrissey, S.J. (front row,
right), and Rev. Bro. Brady, S.J. (front row, left)
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