Subfonds 467 - Fr Matthias A McDonnell SJ

Born: 25 December 1823, County Mayo
Entered: 04 December 1861, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Ordained: - 1859, pre Entry
Died: 20 March 1871, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare

Educated at St Jarlath’s, Tuam and St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg and then St Patrick’s College, Maynooth

Relative of Fr Daniel Jones - RIP 1869 and Fr James Jones (ANG) - RIP 1893

Matthias McDonnell (Bodkin) - relative Matthias McDonnell Bodkin became leader-writer of the Freeman’s Journal and author of “Lord Edward Fitzgerald”

1861-1863: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Novitiate
1863-1864: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Subminister, Subprocurator, SPiritual Exercises
1864-1866: Grand Séminaire, Montauban, Occitanie, France (TOLO), Theology
1866-1871: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Assistant Procurator
1870-1871: Procurator

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Had been a Priest working in the Harrogate Mission in England before Entry. His Entry annoyed the local Bishop.

He was sub-Minister at Milltown, and spent a year at Montaubon studying Theology.
He was then procurator at Clongowes until his death there 20 March 1871.

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 29, Number 3

“Father Matthias McDonnell SJ and Father Daniel Jones SJ - Aspirant and Deterrant - by Father Matthew Russell SJ” p409

Mattthias McDonnell, if questioned as to his birthplace, might have given the answer attributed to a Connaught peasant, “I'm from the County Mayo, God help me”. He was born there on Christmas Day 1823. His name survives in that of his kinsman, a well-known citizen of Dublin, Matthias McDonnell Bodkin, Q. C., who gave up his career at the Bar to become a leader-writer in the Freeman's Journal and the author of "Lord Edward Fitzgerald" and several other spirited novels. Another relative of his, as we shall see, was Father Daniel Jones. Matthias McDonnell became first a secular priest. I do not know in what College he made his studies. One at least of his missions (and his last, if they were more than one) was Otley in Yorkshire, a mission which was begun in 1851 and was then in the diocese of Beverly, which had only been established the year before. In 1878 Beverly was divided into the dioceses of Leeds and Middlesbrough, and Otley belongs to the former.

In 1861 Father McDonnell tried to make an important change, for which, perhaps, he had long been yearning. His kinsman, Father Daniel Jones, his senior by ten years, was then Master of Novices at Milltown Park, Dublin, the first to hold that office in the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus since the Restoration of the Society. To him accordingly Father McDonnell opened his mind on the subject, and he received the answer which we are about to venture to print. It will be an interesting pendant to the letter which Father Edmund O'Reilly wrote from the Naples Novitiate to Professor George Crolly of Maynooth, and which was printed in Woodstock Letters some years ago.That very mature Novice figures there as a decoy-duck, (of an honest kind, however) while the Novice Master acts rather as a watch-dog warning trespassers off the premises.

Father Jones begins with a little trace of the formality of a bygone generation. Which of us has ever acknowledged the receipt of “a respected letter”, especially from a relative younger than ourselves. As our juniors feel less reverence for us perhaps we show less reverence to them. To a communication like Father McDonnell's many would nowadays, in this age of postcards, reply with a mere sentence: “Come and try by all means, but take care that you do not repent”. Father Jones takes considerably more pains, and puts the pros and cons of the matter, especially the cons, at full length before his correspondent. Though the Irish Jesuit's sphere of action at home and especially in Australia has widened considerably since the following letter was written, yet, even at that time, Father Jones might have drawn with perfect truthfulness a far more alluring picture; and indeed he seems occasionally to have strained truth in the other direction:-

Milltown Park, Donnybrook, 6th October 1861

I received yesterday your respected letter of the 3rd, I shall follow your own wise course and confine myself to the matter immediately before us. I shall only observe that in the remarks I shall have to make you will not, I am sure, suspect any want of a cordial welcome if you do come amongst us. It is better, however, to set the whole truth before you.

In the first place, therefore, the vocation to the Religious State is undoubtedly a good thing and ought to be followed. If, however, any one were to follow a mere human inclination, he would follow a “will o'the wisp”, which would lead him only to disappointment.

I will tell you plainly that the presumption is against your having any vocation to the Society. To have lived to your present age in the secular mission is a good reason for supposing that to be your vocation, and it is, moreover, a great obstacle to your ever finding what you seek, in a Religious House. You will have infinitely greater difficulty than others in learning the methods and spirit of any religious order. You are formed and “set” in one mould and cannot be recast in another. The consequences of any change might be continual misery and discomfort and disappointment, if you submitted to the training, or that you would be a religious merely in name if you were to shirk it-as some have been able to do. You would be always tempted by the thought that you had left work which you could have done, to a line out of your power; that you gave up a great deal of solid merit to enter on a course where you would have no external useful work, and where your interior would continually be a wilderness of distractions and desolations and perhaps temptations. For, what have you to expect in joining us? First, you will have to spend two years in the society of children just from school. You will be on a perfecl level with them - separated totally from the Fathers of the Residence - not employed in any work suited for a priest. Your time will be spent in learning new methods of doing religious duties that you have been long accustomed to do well in another way which you will have to unlearn. You will sleep in a dormitory like a schoolboy, be under the authority of a boy of 16 or 17, be employed in sweeping galleries, serving in the kitchen etc, etc. In me, who am at present your friend and relation and equal, you will have a taskmaster and a distant superior. At the end of two years you will be sent to be usher in a school where you may spend the rest of your life in attending on boys, watching them in their studies, walking round and round a playground, sitting in their noisy and dirty schoolrooms or playrooms for hours together etc, etc - and all this without hope of relief or power to change - and all this bound by vow which, while it will bind you irrevocably, will not incapacitate Superiors from sending you away whenever they judge you unfit for the Society.

You will be liable to be employed for 8 or 10 hours a day in this sort of work, and the rest will be taken up with your spiritual duties. If you should be employed later (and not till after many years) in the Residence (we have but one), the work there is incessant and destruc- tive to health. Then, you may be sent to any part of the world, and must give up all choice of place and work, and leave yourself like a stick in the hands of the Superior.

And all this perhaps unsustained by one gleam of spiritual consolation. You must not judge of us by the life of an English Jesuit on a single mission. They live more or less like the secular clergy. But we have no missions of that sort in this country. We never dine out - never receive visits from friends or write letters to them.(?)

Now you see partly what you have to expect if you Jotn us. You see that no mere human inclination would stand that sort of thing long. If you have a true vocation - and are ready and willing to undergo everything - then the unction of the Cross will sustain you.

Think over these things carefully and pray to God for light. Do not act rashly either way. If you wish for more particulars, write to me again. I should be glad to get a line from you in any case. Do the will of God.

Believe me, my dear Mr McDonnell,

Ever most faithfully yours in Christ,

D Jones SJ

PS If you are still of the same mind, let me know further particulars etc. What would you think of making a Retreat here to try your vocation, reserving power to resume your mission if you wished?

In spite of the foregoing letter Father McDonnell came to Milltown Park to try his vocation. In his railway journey from Otley to Holyhead, one of his fellow-travellers was an English parson who denounced a Convent recently established in his neighborhood, and took this as a text for a general homily against the grasping spirit of Religious Orders. He inveighed in particular against the anxiety of the Jesuits to entrap clever men into their body. Father McDonnell had in his pocket the letter which we have just had the privilege of reading forty
years after date. Accordingly he intervened in the conversation at this point. “Well, I cannot pretend to be a clever man; but it happens that I am on my way to a place where I shall try if I be able to become a Jesuit; and this letter will show you how little pains they have taken to entrap me”. The gentleman was greatly struck. It may have been the first step towards his emancipation from worse delusions.

Father McDonnell never returned to Otley. He began his noviceship at Milltown Park on the 4th of December 1861, within three weeks of his 38th birthday. He was an edifying religious for ten years, and died at Clongowes, March 21st 1871. Father Daniel Jones, a singularly holy and gifted man, had preceded him by two years. May they rest in peace.

Father McDonnell and I made together at Clongowes in September 1866 a Retreat which was conducted by Father Jones; and it was then that I was allowed to take a copy of the letter which now after many years I am sharing with many readers.

Matthew Russell SJ,