Tours around Cavan Town – Farnham Street
by planetparker
Tours around the town.
Farnham Street
Farnham Street was once described by someone on gange as Cavan’s Champs Elysees. It seems to have a hidden message for visitors – it leads away from the town. When it was first laid out the idea was to provide Cavan with a wide, clean street which would take away from the grot of its other thoroughfares, Now it is just as grotty as everywhere else alas. It used to have a nice little park along part of its length, but that was swallowed up by ugly bourgeois houses and office blocks in the mid twentieth century.
Pat & Felim’s Druids’ Hall of Fame
Let’s start our tour of the town at the top of Farnham St., near the junction of the Cathedral Road and Keady Lane. The latter was the old road to Belturbet, and the place where it joins Farnham St is probably where a lot of the fighting in the bloody Battle of Cavan took place in February 1690.
At the street;s northern end is Pat & Felim’s Druids’ Hall of Fame. It is a very solid icon of the faith of those poor people who helped pay for it, when they probably had better things to do with their few bob, such as feed themselves or pay their children’s fares into exile. It is also an excellent example of Catholic ‘We-Won- The-War’ triumphalism; it sits on a hill overlooking the Church of Ireland on the other side of the street as if saying: ‘My spire’s bigger than yours mate.’ ‘But mine’s got a lightning conductor …’
Not so long ago Frankie’s Ten o’clock show (The Golf Club At Prayer) was a sell-out every Sunday while his Christmas Midnight Mass special (when there was often standing room only), literally emptied the pubs. He had only to utter his catchphrase: ‘Let us pronounce the Entrance Antiphon together’ in his dry, nasal tones to bring the house down. His sermons were masterpieces of – woodwork. The same, tired homilies were wheeled out with nauseating regularity, with even some of the regulars groaning sotto voce “…ah no, not this one again… .” He intoned every one with the passion of the answerer in a Greek drama. They involved the usual denunciation of liberals, humanists, communists, the Dublin Media, as well as some snide snipes at “Our Separated Brethren”. His style of homiletics might be described as austere. No passion, no emotion, unless there was some group of recalcitrant progressives against whom he wished to thunder. Whenever he grew passionate in these he became especially pathetic, like the inmate of a lunatic asylum complaining about room-service. He had a way of enunciating the name “Christ” which demonstrated that he considered the holder of the name as a colleague (probably of junior rank) – as much as to say “Christ down in Customer Accounts…” Then there were the prayers for “Our three diocesan missionaries in Min-na…” These brave souls were fighting the good fight against the forces of darkness and “paganism” in “NI-Geree-a – now that’s in darkest Africa my dear people.”. He had once visited them there, and had met the bishop of “Sock-oto … an indefatigable Irish American” who had urged him to tell his flock on returning to the Forty Shades of Green to ‘Pray fervently night and day for the conversion of Nigeria’s Muslims’ “.
He oversaw the devoted and bored listeners who entered this intellectual abattoir like a prison guard during a recreation period. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist things brightened up; when he prayed for “me your unworthy servant…” the congregation began a rhythmic chant of “He’s the Man!” worthy of any southern Baptist church in deepest Mississippi.
But it was often difficult to hear the punk on the altar, as even with amplification his utterances had to compete with a chorus of squawks and screams from the younger members of the congregation, for the good, Mass-going battlers of Cavan insisted on attending en famille, with “Daddy”‘s eyes bleary from the previous night’s skinful and his face smarting from Brute, and “Mammy” trying to hide her embarrassment at the belated realisation that the man she had married was a no-good boozy, abusive bowzy who bet on horses and who chased other women if only with his eyes. One of the couple usually held the latest little horror up in their arms, but not even the strongest remonstrations could keep them quiet. Eventually “Mammy” would have to rush outside when the rafting of a rank odour signified that little Johnny (aged 3 and a quarter) had shat himself again.
The druids have hit hard time since the days when the hall was built in the 1930s and ‘40s. Now the punters are sadly fewer, maybe some of them relied too much on “Do-As-I-Say, Not-As-I-Do” exhortations to the faithful. We’ve all heard about the scandals and the cases of clerical sexual abuse. My own opinion is that the rank and file of the Catholic clergy, who are a really decent and hard-working group who often have to operate in difficult circumstances, have been badly served by prominent members of the Catholic laity, especially those belonging to certain quasi-masonic lay-groups who think that they own the church. They have often insinuated themselves between the clergy and the laity, and because they often have a few bob they always seem to be able to catch the ear of the hierarchy. Yet everyone sees through the presence of these “holy joes”. They see how they use a pretence of religious orthodoxy and unswerving belief to reap rich gains for themselves and their families. People may have heard the joke about how “the lad with the horns” came onto Earth one night – near Mullingar actually, I don’t know why. Anyway he was trying to cross a road when he got hit by a car which tore off his tail. Anyway he takes the separated member and walks up the road to a pub. He enters it and immediately asks: “Do you re-tail spirits here…” Groan. But these are the people who have tried to silence any mention of clerical wrongs. The vast amount of priests are innocent of any involvement in such heinous acts. They are revolted by them, They also want an opportunity to clearly distance themselves from them, but their lay protectors like to think they know different. (Is it the fact that I discuss these things that “annoys” some people in Cavan?)
In the past people used to trot to mass out of a mixture of duty and fear. You got the feeling that most people were there simply for the sake of appearance “an’ sure it does no harm like.” Now buildings like Paddy & Felim’s are truly cavernous. This too in my opinion is a pity, for now more than ever the world needs to hear a message of love and forgiveness. True to form we Irish can never do anything by halves: it’s all or nothing.
But let’s get back to Frankie, who, incidentally often seemed to be a lonely figure, surrounded by a crowd of yes-men and women telling him how wonderful he was. It is often said that when you become an Irish Catholic bishop there are two things you’ll never get in the future: a bad meal or the truth. Frankie especially belonged to what might be described as the Erin Soup brigade of Christian ministers – Get this inside you, it will do you good. On one occasion, around 1977, I remember him telling his flock not to listen to any tales their children might bring home from school. In the light of what was happening in some locations this was advice which was truly frightening. But maybe Frankie didn’t know about this stuff (as he claims) and even when told about it he didn’t understand that it was bad, as so many of his fellow bishops claim. This is somewhat disingenuous, because when it comes to what is bad and sinful one would expect the Catholic hierarchy to be able to recognise it at some distance. In those days they were aficionados at denouncing those who disagreed with them, but when it came to sin within their own ranks they became somewhat more sheepish.
The inherently decent and spiritual Dr Willie Walsh, Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, recently stated that there are wide areas of the Catholic church in Ireland which are still in denial as far as child abuse is concerned. He is correct. More important though is the fact that there are still many members of the Catholic laity who are still in denial. Quite literally they are out of the boat and in the N… (old joke).
