Mass rock

A Mass rock (Irish: Carraig an Aifrinn) was a rock used as an altar during the 1533-1829 religious persecution of the Catholic Church throughout the British Isles, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, as a location for secret and illegal gatherings of faithful attending the Mass, which was offered by outlawed priests.

During the particularly notorious, but ultimately unsuccessful, religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland, isolated locations were sought to hold religious ceremonies. This was because attending the Mass was a matter of difficulty and danger as a result of the Protestant Reformation and Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII, the Tudor conquest of Gaelic Ireland under his daughter Elizabeth I of England, Oliver Cromwell's use of similar scorched earth and ethnic cleansing tactics in his own campaign against the Irish, the anti-Catholic show trials concocted by Titus Oates and Lord Shaftesbury, the 1688 overthrow of the House of Stuart in favour of William of Orange, the Penal Laws of the 1690s, the 1714-1783 "Age of the Whig Oligarchy", and the aftermath of the Jacobite risings, which sought to achieve religious toleration through regime change.

On pain of the death penalty, outlawry, "penal transportation for life", and enslavement in the British West Indies, all Irish bishops were banished and all priests were commanded under legislation passed in 1709 to abjure under oath the spiritual authority of the Pope, the independence of the Church from control by the State, Transubstantiation, and the Real Presence as "base and idolatrous". Just as in mainland Britain, priest hunters were commonly employed, as may be seen in the facts surrounding Irish Catholic Martyrs Patrick O'Hely, Dermot O'Hurley, and William Tirry, to arrest underground bishops, priests, hedge-schoolmasters, and seminarians.

Similar altars, known as Mass stones (Scottish Gaelic: Perthshire Gaelic: Clachan Ìobairt, Lochaber Gaelic: Clach na h-aifrinn, Creag an t-sagairt, & Port na h-aifrinn, Glen Urquhart Gaelic: Clach Iosa) and sometimes hidden inside secret "Mass houses" disguised as barns with mud floors and no windows, were used by outlawed "heather priests"; such as John Ogilvie, Alexander Cameron, William Fraser, Alexander Macdonnell, Thomas Innes, and John Farquharson, of the Catholic Church in Scotland, which was similarly criminalised by the Scottish Reformation Parliament in 1560 and remained strictly illegal until Catholic Emancipation in 1829. There are also cases of similar clandestine altars being used by persecuted Welsh Catholics and even by the Catholic Church in the Isle of Man.

For these reasons, as it's effective mastermind through a William Wilberforce-inspired campaign of nonviolent direct action, Daniel O'Connell hailed the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 as, "one of the greatest triumphs recorded in history - a bloodless revolution more extensive in its operation than any other political change that could take place."

Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, who received John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church, was similarly to pronounce in 1861, "The year 1829 was to us what the egress from the Catacombs was to the [early] Christians."

In modern Ireland, Mass rocks accordingly remain sites of Christian pilgrimage by local Catholic parishioners and open air Masses are offered annually at some sites. In response to restrictions on indoor gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, regular services were offered at several Mass rocks throughout 2020. Regular Masses were also offered during the summer of 2021 at Mass rocks in every Diocese throughout Ireland, "for renewal of the faith through the intercession of the Irish Martyrs."

Ireland

Use and records

Mass rock on Achill Island, County Mayo

In Ireland, Mass rocks were in use from at least the mid-17th century. Tony Nugent, in a book about the history and folklore of Mass rocks, traces their use even earlier, to the 1536 Act of Supremacy and the 1540 Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII.

Religious persecution of Catholics in Ireland began under King Henry VIII (then Lord of Ireland) after his excommunication in 1533. In 1537, the Irish Parliament adopted the Oath of Supremacy, which declared the Irish Church subservient to the State. In response, Irish bishops, priests, and laity who continued to pray for the pope during Mass were tortured and killed. The Treasons Act 1534 defined even unspoken mental allegiance to the Holy See as high treason. Many were imprisoned on this basis. Alleged traitors who were brought to trial, like all other British subjects tried for the same offence prior to the Treason Act 1695, were forbidden the services of a defence counsel and forced to act as their own attorneys.

According to D.P. Conyngham, "Though the faithful underwent fearful persecutions toward the latter part of the reign of Henry, few publicly suffered martyrdom. Numbers of the monks and religious were killed at their expulsion from their houses, but the King's adhesion to many articles of Catholicity made it too hazardous for his agents in Ireland to resort to the stake or the gibbet. In fact, Henry burned at the same stake Lutherans, for denying the Real Presence, with Catholics, for denying his supremacy."

When the Dissolution of the Monasteries was extended to Ireland as well, the Annals of the Four Masters reports for the year 1540, "The English in every place throughout Ireland where they established their power, persecuted and banished the nine religious orders, and particularly they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, and beheaded the guardian and a number of friars." A 1935 article by historian L.P. Murray identifies the martyred erenagh of Monaghan Monastery as Fr. Patrick Brady and adds that he was beheaded alongside 16 fellow Franciscan Friars.

In response, stones were taken from the ruins of Pre-Reformation churches or monasteries, and relocated to more isolated areas, often with a simple cross carved on their tops, to continue being used for religious purposes. In addition, "megalithic tombs, ring-forts, stone circles, druidic altars, and wells - these monuments to a once proud race - were to be recycled by a persecuted people in order that they could practice their religion in secret".

During and after the subsequent Tudor Conquest of Ireland, the Irish clan system collapsed and stripped the bardic profession of the traditional hospitality and protection of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland. In response, the teachers and students of the traditional Bardic training schools of Gaelic Ireland adapted by becoming the teachers at illegal village hedge schools, which also served as minor seminaries which prepared students for the priesthood to be smuggled abroad to continue their studies at the Irish Colleges in Catholic Europe.

Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 leader John Mitchel, an Ulster Scots Presbyterian from County Londonderry, later wrote, "I know the spots, within my own part of Ireland, where venerable archbishops hid themselves, as it were, in a hole of the rock... Imagine a priest ordained at Seville or Salamanca, a gentleman of a high old name, a man of eloquence and genius, who has sustained disputations in the college halls on a question of literature or theology, and carried off prizes and crowns -- see him on the quays of Brest, bargaining with some skipper to work his passage... And he knows, too, that the end of it all, for him, may be a row of sugar canes to hoe under the blazing sun of Barbados. Yet he pushes eagerly to meet his fate; for he carries in his hands a sacred deposit, bears in his heart a holy message, and he must tell it or die. See him, at last, springing ashore, and hurrying on to seek his Bishop in some cave, or under some hedge -- but going with caution by reason of the priest catcher and the blood-hounds."

Nugent also states that "until the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829", the observation of Catholic ceremonies at Mass rocks was illegal and services were not regularly scheduled. Parishioners would therefore spread word of services at Mass rocks covertly. According to some sources, which were believed by Irish traditional musicians Seamus Ennis and Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, such communication could occur through two coded sets of Irish language lyrics to the Sean Nós song An raibh tú ag an gCarraig. Other sources question this association.

Secret routes, referred to as "Mass paths", were taken by the laity. In many areas, Catholic worshippers walked to the Mass rocks through streams and rivers, in order to leave no footprints that could be followed by the priest hunters.

According to Irish historian and folklorist (seanchaí), Seumas MacManus, "Throughout these dreadful centuries, too, the hunted priest -- who in his youth had been smuggled to the Continent of Europe to receive his training -- tended to the flame of faith. He lurked like a thief among the hills. On Sundays and Feast Days he celebrated Mass at a rock, on a remote mountainside, while the congregation knelt on the heather of the hillside, under the open heavens. While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest-hunter and his guard of British soldiers. But sometimes the troops came on them unawares, and the Mass Rock was bespattered with his blood, -- and men, women, and children caught in the crime of worshipping God among the rocks, were frequently slaughtered on the mountainside."

On 24 October 1644, the Puritan-controlled Rump Parliament in London, seeking to retaliate for acts of sectarian violence like the Portadown massacre during the recent 1641 uprising, resolved, "that no quarter shall be given to any Irishman, or to any papist born in Ireland." Upon landing with the New Model Army at Dublin, Oliver Cromwell issued orders that no mercy was to be shown to the Irish, whom he said were to be treated like the Canaanites during the time of the Old Testament prophet Joshua.

In addition to well-documented atrocities during the subsequent Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, such as the Sack of Cashel, the Sack of Wexford, and the Massacre of Drogheda, there were also cases of attacks against the priests and worshippers at Mass rocks. For example, the Mass rock near Kinvara, County Galway, is known in the Irish language as Poll na gCeann ("chasm of the heads") and is said to have been the location of yet another British war crime by the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. Historian Tony Nugent states that, "According to local tradition, there was a college nearby and some of the student monks were killed there by Cromwellian soldiers while attending Mass and their heads were thrown into a nearby chasm".

On 15 August 1653, New Model Army soldiers based at Castlemaine, County Kerry, arrested underground Dominican Friar Thaddeus O'Moriarty (Tadhg Ó Muircheartaigh) while the latter was saying Mass at the secret altar known as Poll an Aifrinn, at Killaclohane Wood (Coill chill an chlocain). Arrested at the illegal Mass with Fr Tadhg, according to at least some accounts, was his brother in law, Irish clan chief, Irish language bard, and local folk hero Piaras Feiritéar. Other sources question this account of Feiritéar's arrest, but it is well documented that they were hanged together at Cnocán na gCaorach in Killarney on 15 October 1653.

Fr William Tirry, an underground Augustinian Friar formally of St Austin's Abbey in Cork City, was arrested by the New Model Army at Fethard, County Tipperary while vested for Mass on Holy Saturday, 25 March, 1654. To the fury of both the New Model Army and the judges, one of the discoveries at Tirry's arrest, in addition to his vestments, was, "a manuscript work composed by him discrediting Protestantism". Fr. Tirry was taken to Clonmel Gaol and held there pending trial. Three local men had reported his whereabouts to the priest hunters in return for the £5 bounty.

On 26 April 1654, Tirry was tried by a jury and a panel of Commonwealth judges, including New Model Army Colonel Solomon Richards, for violating the Proclamation of 6 January 1653, which defined it as high treason against the Commonwealth of England for priests to remain in Great Britain or Ireland.

In his own defense, Fr. Tirry replied that while he viewed the Commonwealth as the lawful government of Ireland, he had no choice but to disobey its laws, as both the Pope and his Augustinian superiors had ordered him to remain in Ireland and to continue his pastoral ministry covertly. Fr. Tirry was according found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, which was carried out in Clonmel on 2 May 1654.

Friar Matthew Fogarty later recalled: "William, wearing his Augustinian habit, was led to the gallows praying the rosary. He blessed the crowd which had gathered, pardoned his betrayers and affirmed his faith. It was a moving moment for Catholics and Protestants alike."

Despite the efforts of a Puritan minister to silence him, Fr. Tirry told the assembled crowd, "there is only one true Church, whose head is the pope: Pope and Church are to be obeyed. He publicly forgave the three men who had betrayed him, and... stated explicitly that he had been offered life and favour, if he would renounce his religion." Fr. Tirry was then hanged, after which the crowd surged forward to soak pieces of cloth in the blood that ran from his nose, which were seen as relics of a martyr.

According to historian D.P. Conyngham, "It is impossible to estimate the number of Catholics slain the ten years from 1642 to 1652. Three Bishops and more than 300 priests were put to death for their faith. Thousands of men, women, and children were sold as slaves for the West Indies; Sir W. Petty mentions that 6,000 boys and women were thus sold. A letter written in 1656, quoted by Lingard, puts the number at 60,000; as late as 1666 there were 12,000 Irish slaves scattered among the West Indian islands. Forty thousand Irish fled to the Continent, and 20,000 took shelter in the Hebrides or other Scottish islands. In 1641, the population of Ireland was 1,466,000, of whom 1,240,000 were Catholics. In 1659 the population was reduced to 500,091, so that very nearly 1,000,000 must have perished or been driven into exile in the space of eighteen years. In comparison with the population of both periods, this was even worse than the famine extermination of our own days."

During the Stuart Restoration, Catholic worship generally moved to thatched "Mass houses" (Irish:Cábán an Aifrinn, lit. ‘Mass Cabin’). Writing in 1668, Janvin de Rochefort commented, "Even in Dublin more than twenty houses where Mass is secretly said, and in about a thousand places, subterranean vaults and retired spots in the woods".

In County Wexford, Vicar General and future bishop Luke Wadding returned from exile in France and sought to rebuild the annihilated Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns from the ground up following the Cromwellian conquest. In addition to starting a hedge school with the assistance of two priests of the Society of Jesus, Bishop Wadding was a highly sophisticated author of Christian poetry. In addition to composing the lyrics to two of the Wexford carols as well as to the Sussex carol sung at Christmas, Bishop Wadding's extent poetry collection reveals that he also drew heavily for inspiration upon the English Metaphysical poets of earlier generations as well as from the more recent Restoration satires of John Dryden and Samuel Butler. In addition to his other duties, Bishop Wadding also took the enormous risk of building a public "Mass house" and pro-Cathedral inside the walls of Wexford city, which only the protection of the highly influential Anglo-Irish and Protestant elite enabled him to get away with. The project took him 12 years to complete and cost a total of £53.14s.9d.

According to Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, "He gives details of its glazing, ceiling, thatching, etc., in his account book, and mentions that he had to remove a great heap of dung from the site before he could lay the foundations of his little chapel. It is evident that he maintained as best he could the dignity of his office and he had a good quantity of chalices, ciboria, pixes, silver cruets, and silver and pewter oil-stocks. He had a plentiful supply of vestments."

Also during the Stuart Restoration, the Franciscan Friars returned to the ruins of Creevlea Abbey, near Dromahair, County Leitrim, and continued to live in thatched cabins nearby. During the early 18th-century, pioneering antiquarian and Celticist Charles O'Conor of Bellanagare, a descendant of the local Gaelic nobility of Ireland, received his early education at a hedge school taught by the surviving Friars. Although it was once widely assumed that Gaelic Ireland completely missed Renaissance humanism and the revival of interest in the Classics, O'Conor later recalled that he was taught the Latin language using the grammar of Corderius, and the writings of Ovid, Suetonius, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. O'Conor recalled that he was also taught the playing of the Celtic harp, as well as fencing and dancing. According to Tony Nugent, the surviving Franciscans also used a Megalithic tomb site in the nearby townland of Sranagarvanagh, or in Connaught Irish Srath na nGarbhánach, as a Mass rock, also during the 18th-century. A walking track has since been built to the site under a Fás scheme.

Catholic worship, however, was soon to return to the Mass rocks due to the Exclusion Crisis and the anti-Catholic show trials masterminded by Lord Shaftesbury and Titus Oates.

While he remains less well known than Oliver Plunkett, according to Tony Nugent, a Catholic priest named Fr. Mac Aidghalle was murdered c. 1681 while saying Mass at a mass rock still known in Ulster Irish as Cloch na hAltorach that stands atop Slieve Gullion, County Armagh. The perpetrators were a company of redcoats under the command of a priest hunter named Turner. Redmond O'Hanlon, the outlawed but de facto Chief of the Name of Clan O'Hanlon and leading local rapparee, is said in local oral tradition to have avenged the murdered priest and in so doing to have "sealed his own fate".

The persecution and use of the Mass rocks escalated further following the 1688 overthrow of the House of Stuart in favour of William of Orange. Following the defeat of the Jacobite armies, which were led by Patrick Sarsfield and who sought the restoration of King James II during the Williamite War in Ireland, the Penal Laws were passed in flagrant violation of the peace terms of the Treaty of Limerick.

According to Seamus MacManus, "The Penal Laws... provided amongst other things that: The Irish Catholic was forbidden in the exercise of his religion. He was forbidden to receive education. He was forbidden to enter a profession. He was forbidden to hold public office. He was forbidden to engage in trade or commerce. He was forbidden to live in a corporation town or within five miles thereof. He was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five pounds. He was forbidden to purchase land. He was forbidden to lease land. He was forbidden to accept mortgage on land in security for a loan. He was forbidden to vote. He was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection. He was forbidden to hold a life annuity. He was forbidden to buy land from a Protestant. He was forbidden to inherit land from a Protestant. He was forbidden to inherit anything from a Protestant. He was forbidden to rent any land that was worth more than thirty shillings a year. He was forbidden to reap from his land any profit exceeding a third of the rent. He could not be guardian to a child. He could not, when dying, leave his infant children under Catholic guardianship. He could not attend Catholic worship. He was compelled by the law to attend Protestant worship. He could not himself educate his child. He could not send his child to a Catholic teacher. He could not employ a Catholic teacher to come to his child. He could not send his child abroad to receive education. The priest was banned and hunted with bloodhounds. The schoolmaster was banned and hunted with bloodhounds."

Meanwhile, a miracle connected to the ongoing religious persecution in Ireland took place, according to Diocesan and municipal records, at Győr in the Habsburg-ruled Kingdom of Hungary.

During the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, a painting of Mary, Comforter of the Afflicted had been removed by Bishop Walter Lynch from Clonfert Cathedral to protect the image from desecration by the New Model Army. Bishop Lynch had kept the image hidden while held in the prison camp at Inishbofin, and, before his death in Hungarian exile, had willed the image to the Cathedral (Mennyekbe Fölvett Boldogságos Szűz Mária székesegyház) of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Győr. On Saint Patrick's Day 1697, the "Irish Madonna" (Ír Madonna), as she had come to be called, was seen many witnesses to weep tears of blood. The wall and even the canvas behind the image were closely examined and found to be dry. Signed statements remain and bear the signatures of many non-Catholic eyewitnesses, including local Lutheran and Calvinist ministers, the Orthodox Jewish Chief Rabbi of Győr, and Count Sigbert Heister, the Captain General of the town's military garrison. A copy of the "Irish Madonna of Hungary" was presented in 2003 to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clonfert by Bishop Pápai Janos of Győr and now hangs inside St Brendan's Cathedral in Loughrea, County Galway.

Ironically, while "the 1688 project" and Williamite War, which the Orange Order still celebrates every year with anti-Catholic parades on July 12th, created what is now often called "the Protestant Ascendancy", in reality it was only an ascendancy of the State-controlled Anglican Church of Ireland; the Penal Laws also persecuted and disenfranchised Protestant nonjurors, dissenters, and nonconformists almost as much as Irish Catholics.

After King William III's sudden death in 1702, following an accidental fall that broke his neck after his horse stepped into a mole hole, the late King's Whig admirers adopted the toast, "[To] the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of William the Dutchman", whereas euphoric Catholic and Protestant adherents of Jacobitism adopted the counter-toast, "To the chestnut horse [and] the little gentleman in black velvet!" Ironically, Queen Anne, King James II's Protestant daughter and William's successor, proved even more more determined to both persecute and impose forced conversion upon Catholics and all other adherents of dissent from the established churches in the British Isles than the Prince of Orange had ever been.

Seosamh Ó hÉanaí was later to state, "I think Queen Anne was the most hated queen that ever lived, especially by the Irish, as she enforced the Penal Code that was started in 1695 during William’s reign. And when he died, everybody thought when he died, well, something good will come, but [it was] from the frying pan into the fire, when Queen Anne came into power."

A 1709 Penal Act demanded that Catholic priests take the Oath of Abjuration, and recognise the Protestant Queen Anne as Supreme Head of the Church within all her dominions and declare that Catholic doctrine regarding Transubstantiation and the Real Presence to be "base and idolatrous".

Priests who refused to take the oath abjuring the Catholic faith were arrested and executed. This activity, along with the deportation of priests who did conform, was a documented attempt to cause the Catholic clergy to die out in Ireland within a generation. Priests had to register with the local magistrates to be allowed to preach, and most did so. Bishops were not permitted to register.

In 1713, the Irish House of Commons declared that "prosecution and informing against Papists was an honourable service", which revived the Elizabethan era profession of priest hunting. The reward rates for capture varied from £50–100 for a bishop, to £10–20 for the capture of an unregistered priest: substantial amounts of money at the time.

According to D.P. Conyngham, "The priest-hunters were now called into full activity, and for some thirty years pursued their lethal trade in full force. Each of these wretches had under him an infamous corps, called priest-hounds, whose duty was to track, with the untiring scent of the bloodhound, the humble priest from refuge to refuge. In cities and towns the Catholic clergy were concealed in cellars or garrets, and in the country districts they were hid in unfrequented caves, in the lonely woods, or in the huts of the Irish peasantry. De Burgo tells us that this persecution and hunting of priests was most bitter towards the close of Anne's reign and the commencement of George I; and he says that none would have escaped were it not for the horror in which priest-catchers were held by the people, Protestants as well as Catholics."

For these very reasons, the outlawed Jacobite rapparees of the era, who in at least some cases protected priests and illegal worshippers at great personal risk from the priest hunters and the redcoats, remain folk heroes in modern Ireland. The widely popular Aisling genre of bardic poetry in the Irish language also kept public hope alive for the success of the Jacobite risings, due particularly to heir presumptive Prince James Francis Edward Stuart's promise among his other intended political reforms to overturn the Penal Laws and grant Catholics, like all other British subjects being persecuted and disenfranchised for their religion, both freedom of worship and all other civil rights. For very similar reasons, at least some members of the Irish military diaspora known as the Flight of the Wild Geese, such as Captain Felix O'Neill], were intimately involved with every single one of the Jacobite risings. Despite being almost achieved by Prince Charles Edward Stuart before the retreat from Derby during the Jacobite rising of 1745, a second Stuart Restoration was not to be.

For this reason, the most widely known Aisling in the Irish language is Mo Ghile Mear by Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill, a coded lament in the persona of the pre-Christian goddess Erin for the religious persecution, denial of civil rights, and impoverishment of the Irish Catholic majority since 1688, the widespread shattered hopes felt following the Jacobite Army's recent defeat at the Battle of Culloden, and the continued exile of the Stuart heir:

"Seal dá rabhas i m’ mhaighdean shéimh

'S anois im’ bhaintreach chaite thréith,

Mo chéile ag treabhadh na dtonn go tréan

De bharr na gcnoc is imigéin.

"Bímse buan ar buairt gach ló,

Ag caoi go cruaidh ‘s ag tuar na ndeór

Mar scaoileadh uaim an buachaill beó

‘S ná ríomhtar tuairisc uaidh, mo bhrón.

"’Sé mo laoch, mo ghile mear

‘Sé mo Chaesar, Ghile Mear,

Suan ná séan ní bhfuaireas féin

Ó chuaigh i gcéin mo Ghile Mear."

"Once I was gentle maiden,

[Now] I'm a spent [and] worn-out widow,

[For] my consort [is] strongly plowing the waves,

Over the hills and far away.

"Every day [I] constantly [mourn],

Weeping bitterly and shedding [many] tears,

[For] my lively lad has left me

And, [to my grief] no news is told of him.

"He's my champion my Gallant Darling,

He's my Caesar, Gallant Darling,

I've found neither rest nor [good] fortune

Since my Gallant Darling went far away."

Folklore

""February 3, 1828

...There is a lonely path near Uisce Dun and Móinteán na Cisi which is called the Mass Boreen. The name comes from the time when the Catholic Church was persecuted in Ireland, and Mass had to be said in woods and on moors, on wattled places in bogs, and in caves. But as the proverb says, It is better to look forward with one eye than to look backwards with two..." "

―{{{2}}}

~From Cín Lae Amhlaoibh by Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin (1780 – 1838).

According to a book of history and folklore associated with Mass rocks by Tony Nugent, "There is a common story associated with quite a few which relates how the priest was shot or killed at the moment of Transubstantiation. There is a common belief that at this point in the Mass the priest cannot stop for any reason. There are various stories of Protestant neighbours hiding or helping priests. There are stories of miracles, the story of the widow's hunger, happening at these sites, stories of cures and indeed a whole fabric of folklore which if lost would be a cultural tragedy".

Bragan Penal Cross, alias Leacht a 'tSagairt, Slieve Beagh, County Monaghan.

For example, in the Slieve Beagh mountains of County Monaghan, a large Celtic cross now tops a Mass rock known as Leacht a 'tSagairt ("The Priest's Flagstone"). The cross is said in the local oral tradition to mark where a priest hunter shot a Fr. McKenna while he was saying Mass there on Christmas Day, c. 1754. The priest hunter was assassinated soon afterwards in nearby Emyvale by local rapparee leader and folk hero Shane Bernagh. Another oral tradition version of the same events credits the killing to a Yeomanry unit from Clogher and gives the slain priest's name as Father Milligan. The same source also alleges that Shane Bernagh, after learning almost immediately afterwards of the priest's murder while in hiding nearby, "swore that he would have a Yeoman's life for this". Bernagh and his band of rapparees are then alleged to have ambushed the Yeomanry during their return to barracks, killed one of them, and thrown his body into Lough More.

Though the name of Fr. John O'Neill does not appear on the 1992 list of Catholic priests known to have served locally, a local oral tradition alleges that he was the last Catholic priest killed at a Mass rock, at Inse an tSagairt, near Bonane, County Kerry, c.1829. The local "folk belief" suggests that a criminal gang, based in Glengarriff and consisting of a woman and five men, conspired to kill the priest and split a £45 bounty among themselves. According to the story, after capturing Fr. O'Neill, beheading him, and bringing his severed head to Cork city, the six conspirators learned that Catholic Emancipation had just been signed into law and that no reward would be given. The perpetrators then allegedly threw O'Neill's severed head into the River Lee in frustration. O'Neill's clerk was also taken prisoner by the gang and was handed over to notoriously anti-Catholic local Anglo-Irish landlord and Church of Ireland vicar Denis Mahoney at Dromore Castle. After Rev. Mahoney set "two mastiff bloodhounds" on the clerk, the latter managed to escape by swimming to safety and drowning the two attack dogs. The site at Inse an tSagairt was also associated with the reputedly miraculous cure of the mother of Fr. Eugene Daly. Both Fr. O'Neill's martyrdom and the cure of Mrs. Daly have been commemorated in locally composed poetry. A Mass path was later built to the site in 1981, by Coillte, at the insistence of Fr. Daly (who died in 2001). Inse an tSagairt is still sometimes used for open air commemorative Masses and there is a plaque next to the altar which names Fr. John O'Neill. Other Mass rock locations in the same area were an Alhóir, near the summit of Mount Esker, An Seana-Shéipeil at Garrymore, and Faill-a Shéipéil at Gearha.

Legacy

Lithograph of Daniel O'Connell refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. Caption: "One part of this Oath I know to be false; and another I believe to be untrue. /House of Commons, May 20, 1829."

I am the advocate of civil and religious liberty, all over the globe, and wherever tyranny exists, I am the foe of the tyrant; wherever oppression shows itself, I am the foe of the oppressor; wherever slavery rears its head, I am the enemy of the system, or the institution, call it by what name you will. I am the friend of liberty in every clime, class and colour. My sympathy with distress is not confined within the narrow bounds of my own green island. No - it extends itself to every corner of the earth. My heart walks abroad, and wherever the miserable are to be succored, or the slave to be set free, there my spirit is at home, and I delight to dwell.

• Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847)

Even though similar tactics were pioneered in William Wilberforce's decades-long campaign to abolish the Transatlantic slave trade, the successful campaign of nonviolent resistance led by Daniel O'Connell for Catholic Emancipation was compared by Leonard Wibberley in 1956 to the Satyagraha tactics of the Indian independence movement under Mahatma Gandhi and have since received even higher praise from British historian Antonia Fraser. Subsequent legislation, which was also pushed through at O'Connell's insistence, similarly removed all remaining legal disabilities from Protestant dissenters, nonconformists, and Jews. In addition to his further role in masterminding the Repeal Campaign and the Tithe War, O'Connell also helped push successfully in the House of Commons for the 1837 abolition of slavery throughout the global British Empire.

This is because O'Connell considered it his duty to demand "civil and religious liberties" for other similarly conquered and colonised peoples throughout the world; including the peasantry in India (subject, under the British East India Company, to what he dubbed, "a system of monstrous and perfect oppression") Maoris in New Zealand, Aboriginal people in Australia, Jews facing anti-Semitism throughout Europe, and enslaved African-Americans in the United States.

After the Catholic Church in Ireland finally ceased through O'Connell's efforts in 1829 to be an illegal organization and began to legally build parish churches and religious schools for the still often destitute laity and, particularly after the 1851 Synod of Thurles, worship at the Mass rocks declined. They continued to be used as places of worship in some regions, however, where "poverty and bigotry, rather than persecution, dictated their use".

Even so, when writing in 1914, Rev. William Burke laid the blame for both Ireland's economic stagnation and the lingering colonial mentality among the Irish people, whose adherents are traditionally termed West Brits or shoneens, less upon the seven hundred years of colonialism beginning in 1172, than upon the almost three hundred-years of religious persecution. In particular, Burke wrote, "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that most Irishmen are still haunted by a sub-conscious feeling of inferiority social or even intellectual." Burke then enumerated, the "habits of slavery induced by the Penal code", as a lack of, "personal dignity, mental independence, and self-restraint". He also accused the legacy of religious persecution of having deprived the Irish people, "of that sturdy individualism which respects oneself and respects others and which is as widely removed from insolence as it is from servility."

Rev. Burke continued, "While the code in so far as it was meant to pauperise and degrade was completely successful, it was a signal failure in its main purpose of Protestantising the people. Nay even, it had the very opposite effect; for whilst in the sixteenth century they, clergy as well as laity, gave evidence of the wavering convictions of the period, in the nineteenth century they had become the most staunch Catholics in northern Europe."

Partial data on Mass rock sites is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland (for pre-1700 sites), and, to a lesser extent, the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (for post-1700 sites). Some of the Mass rock places may also have been used for pattern days.

While being interviewed in the 1950s by Tadhg Ó Murchú of the Irish Folklore Commission, Peig Minihane-O'Driscoll of Ardgroom, of the Beara Peninsula in County Cork said that the local Mass rock, known in Munster Irish as Clochán a' tSagairt was located at a cairn to the south. Minihane-O'Driscoll also stated that her late husband had been born before Catholic Emancipation and that her in-laws had twice carried their baby son up into the Slieve Miskish Mountains, seeking to secretly make contact and request the baptism of their son from one of the two outlawed priests known to be in hiding locally, one near Ballycrovane Wood and another near Castletownbere. Minihane-O'Driscoll concluded, "I don't know... there was some strength in them (the old people), with the grace of God. Oh, may God not blame us for complaining now, dear, there is a good life in it compared to that time."

In 2020, because of the restrictions on indoor gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland, the Irish Bishops approved proposals to hold services at the Mass rocks. The practice continued even after the lockdown, with regular Masses offered during the summer of 2021 at the Mass rocks in every Diocese throughout Ireland, "for renewal of the faith through the intercession of the Irish Martyrs."

In both 2022 and 2023, Irish-American Cardinal Timothy Dolan visited rural County Kerry and offered Mass at the Mass rock near Killarney where Irish Catholic Martyr Fr Tadhg Ó Muircheartaigh was arrested by Cromwellian soldiers on 15 August 1653.

In June 2025, the annual cultural festival known as the "Leitrim Gathering" was opened with a public Mass offered by Bishop Paul Connell and Fr Patsy McDermott at the Tullynascreena Mass Rock, near Creevelea Abbey in Dromahair, County Leitrim. Two scapulars blessed by a locally venerated underground Franciscan Friar who offered Mass at the site under the Penal Laws were brought to the Mass for those who wished to venerate them.

In August 2025, Father Nigel Ó Gallchóir of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raphoe offered Mass at the Mass rock in Crohyboyle, County Donegal. Music was provided by the Annagry Parish Choir. In his homily, Fr. Ó Gallchóir declared, "It is a privilege to stand here in this sacred place where the faith of our fathers and mothers was tested in the hardest of times. The rocks around us became altars, the heather became pews. Our ancestors believed in [the] truth [of the Gospel] so strongly that they risked everything, even death, to be nourished by the Word of God and the Bread of Life in the middle of a lonely bog. We are called to continue that legacy – to live our faith with courage, not just in sacred places like this, but in our daily lives."

Scotland

The entrance to Cathedral Cave upon the isle of Eigg, with An Sgùrr in the background.

In Scotland, Mass stones were used by the Catholic Church in Scotland, membership in which had been criminalised by the Scottish Reformation Parliament in 1560 and which remained unlawful until Catholic Emancipation in 1829.

Although strictly illegal under the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560 and other similar legislation, an underground Catholic Church continued to survive in Scotland. In 1565, for example, John Knox relates that for one hour and four hours on two separate days underground priest Sir James Tarbet was tied to the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh and pelted with eggs after being caught saying the Tridentine Mass, which had been criminalised five years previously.

According to John Watts, "It is almost impossible today to appreciate the extent and vehemence of anti-Catholic sentiment in Scotland at this time. The language of Knox and the Book of Discipline of 1560 was still being invoked, and it's repetition over nearly a century and a half had succeeded in creating a national idée fixe, according to which Catholicism was an evil to be extirpated, its leader the Man of Sin, its beliefs superstition and its Mass idolatry." For this reason, the State, ministers and elders of the Church of Scotland, parish schoolmasters, and the British armed forces were deemed to have a "God-given duty" to "free those still living in delusion... where the Reformation never obtained." Whenever possible, the Penal Laws, the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, and the other legislation passed by the Scottish Reformation Parliament were used to treat the existence of underground religious communities following Catholicism or Episcopalianism as high treason against the Crown.

According to George Scott-Moncrieff, "Papists were forbidden to take employment or to employ others. Their houses could be broken into and robbed without redress. Fines and penalties brought many families to ruin. There are tinkers in Scotland today who come of families driven to take to the road for their faith. Every now and again the execrate ornaments of the Church would be discovered, to be carried through the streets in mocking procession, the common hangman wearing the priest's vestments, the crucifix jeered at and spat upon and finally burnt with the other baubles at a Mercat Cross that had been given a fresh significance. Catholic marriages were not recognized, so that husband and wife could be branded and savagely punished as fornicators."

In contrast, the underground Catholic Vicar Generals, clergy, and laity of the Highland District, motivated by the doctrine of Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, were equally determined to, "hold onto those followers they had and wherever possible win back others... For both sides the issue was a matter of (spiritual) life and death."

According to George Scott-Moncrieff, "They were like smugglers, bringing a contraband Faith, and bringing it to what we would now call a police state. Even when they were not the ascendant party, the Covenanters could always worship in private how they wished, but for Catholics there was no privilege of privacy; all their prayers were Penal. Their houses could at any time be broken into and a search made for evidence that they worshipped in the immemorial way of Christians, which could bring down upon them fines, eviction, banishment, or death itself."

In times when anti-Catholic feelings were very high, priests, "moved about disguised as merchants, physicians, bards, and so forth." Sometimes private houses or chapels disguised as barns were used for offering Mass, but sometimes the numbers of the laity forced outdoor Masses to be offered at secure locations. In some cases, "curious do-it-yourself altar stones appeared -- pieces of slate, scratched with five crosses and quite devoid of relics", and were used as an more portable alternative.

On the isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, which was described in 1698 as almost entirely Roman Catholic, the laity secretly and illegally attended Mass at a Mass stone inside a large high-roofed coastal cave, which could only be accessed during low tide and which is still known as the "cave of worship" (Scottish Gaelic:Uamh Chràbhaichd; in English Cathedral Cave).

In Lochaber, two Mass Stones, termed Clach na h-aifrinn in the local dialect of Gaelic, remained as of 1966. One, stands upon the summit of Maol Doire, near the intersection of Glen Roy and Glen Spean. Another, which was moved from its original location to preserve it from being damaged by the burn, now stands along the Cranachan Road, three miles north of the Roy Bridge Post Office. A silver Mass cruet, dating from 1838, was discovered in the burn near the altar's original location during the 1880s.

Even at the height of the Penal Laws, Loch Maree, located near Kinlochewe in Wester Ross, which contains an island traditionally believed to have been the hermitage of 7th century Irish missionary St Mael Rubha, remained a site of pilgrimage, secret religious worship, and pattern day festivals. In particular, individuals seeking cures from mental disorders through the Saint's intercession were brought to the Loch and rowed three times sunwise around the island, followed each time by a dip in the water. The grateful families of those who were granted cures would donate cattle for slaughter, roasting, and consumption by the pilgrims gathering at the Loch in celebration of the Saint's next feast day.

Even though they do not appear as characters in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of romance novels or their adaptation into a television series, between 1735 and 1746, Clan Chisholm and Clan Fraser of Lovat were served by three outlawed Roman Catholic priests of the Society of Jesus; Charles (Scottish Gaelic:Maighstir Teàrlach, an t-Athair Teàrlach Mac Fhearchair) and John Farquharson (Maighstir Iain, an-tAthair Iain Mac Fhearchair) and future Catholic martyr aboard a post-Culloden prison hulk Alexander Cameron (Scottish Gaelic:Maighstir Sandaidh, an t-Athair Alasdair Camshròn).

According to John Grant of Glengairn, the local oral tradition alleges of the Farquharsons, "Both the fathers, John and Charles, were held to be saints. Many persons possessed by devils were brought to them from far and near, and by them restored and cured. They had also, we are told, the gift of prophecy. Their piety gained them the veneration, their learning the esteem, and their urbanity the love of all those who knew them."

During his Victorian era interviews with Alexander Chisholm of Craskie, the grandnephew of John Farquharson's cleirach (lit. "clerk", fig. "altar server"), The Celtic Magazine correspondent Colin Chisholm of Lietry was shown the three priests' former residence and secret Mass house, which was located inside a cave still referred to as (Scottish Gaelic:Glaic na h'eirbhe, lit. "the hollow of the hard-life"), and which was located underneath the cliff of a big boulder at Brae of Craskie, near Beauly (Scottish Gaelic:A' Mhanachainn) in Glen Cannich (Scottish Gaelic:Gleann Chanaich). Odo Blundell considered Colin Chisholm's sources of information to be credible and used his article as a source.

From the cave, the three Jesuits travelled around disguised in tartan and hose and secretly visited the secret altars at Fasnakyle, Crochail, Strathfarrar (Scottish Gaelic:Srath Farair), and at Balanahaun. Whenever it was not possible for the three priests to safely leave Glen Cannich, their parishioners would come to the cave at Brae of Craskie for Mass, the sacraments, and, especially, for the illegal Catholic baptisms of their children. A Bullaun, or natural cup stone, known as (Scottish Gaelic:Clach a Bhaistidh, lit. "the stone of the baptism") was used by the three priests as a baptismal font.

According to Colin Chisholm of Lietry, the cup stone had been used for performing baptisms in Strathglass, "from time immemorial". This may mean that, similarly to what was common practice at the time among persecuted Catholic Gaels in Ireland, the natural cup stone had been brought to the cave from the ruins of a local church or monastery dating from before the Scottish Reformation, such as the former Celtic Church monastery and "college of learning" at Clachan Comair, which is alleged locally to have been founded by St Baithéne as a daughter foundation of Iona Abbey, or the 13th-century Valliscaulian Order monastery still known as Beauly Priory. This explanation is plausible, as what Marcus Tanner has termed, "the links between the region and Ireland", still remained very strong. Before a Highland minor seminary had been founded, first at Eilean Bàn in Loch Morar and then moved to Scalan in Glenlivet, Catholics in the Gàidhealtachd of Scotland were largely ministered to by Ulster Irish-speaking missionary priests sent by the Catholic Church in Ireland. At least two such Irish priests, Frs. Hugh Ryan and Vincent White, are known to have served under the Penal Laws in Strathglass. Fortunately for the Jesuits and their many secret visitors, the entrance to the cave was so well hidden that the three priests successfully eluded, "all attempts of the local garrison to find them".

In Loch Morar, which, according to Allan MacDonald of Eriskay was believed to have been blessed by St Columba and was traditionally venerated as a holy well allegedly responsible for miraculous cures, the island known as Eilean Bàn was the location first of a Mass stone and then of an illegal and clandestine Catholic minor seminary founded by underground Bishop James Gordon, until the Jacobite rising of 1715 forced its closure and eventual reopening at Scalan in Glenlivet. Until it's looting, desecration, and destruction by church arson during a post-Battle of Culloden attack by Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone and the crew of HMS Furnace on 8 June 1746, Eilean Bàn remained a secret chapel and library for Bishop Gordon's successors.

Eilean Bàn in Loch Morar, as it appears today.

Legacy

According to Bishop John Geddes, as outlawed clergymen of an illegal and underground church denomination, it is understandable why both Bishop Hugh MacDonald and the outlawed priests of the Highland District would have felt very hopeful about Jacobitism, due the House of Stuart's promises of Catholic Emancipation, religious toleration, and civil rights to everyone outside the established churches of the realm. Due to the ongoing religious persecution they faced, many members of Scottish Catholic laity were just as hopeful about a Stuart Restoration, which seemed poised to restore to them the rights and privileges of "free-born citizens."

Religiously persecuted Nonjuring Episcopalians, like the famous Donald Cameron of Lochiel, felt very similar hopes for virtually identical reasons. Both Catholic and Protestant Jacobite leaders, though, had expected Prince Charles Edward Stuart to arrive at Loch nan Uamh with a larger military force than the Seven Men of Moidart and only agreed to support the Jacobite rising of 1745 with great reluctance.

This is why Bishop MacDonald, in violation of strict orders from the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith in Rome to maintain an apolitical stance, reluctantly blessed the Jacobite Army standard before its raising in the presence of an overwhelmingly Protestant audience at Glenfinnan. This is also why he appointed several of his priests as military chaplains to the Jacobite Army.

Despite the eventual crushing of the uprising at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the no quarter given afterwards to the prisoners and the wounded of the Jacobite Army is now considered to have been so dishonourable that none of the modern British regiments that fought on the government side still include the engagement among their battle honours.

At least one Catholic military chaplain lost his life at Culloden, either during the battle itself or as part of the subsequent massacre of the prisoners and the wounded; Ardnamurchan "heather priest" and former priest hunter, Fr Colin Campbell of Lochnell, whose body was never found. At least one other Catholic military chaplain, John Tyrie, who was assigned to the Doric-speaking Jacobite army regiment from Banffshire commanded by John Gordon of Glenbucket, received two gashes on his head from a cavalryman's sabre, but survived the Battle of Culloden and successfully escaped afterwards from enemy custody.

According to John Geddes, "Immediately after the Battle of Culloden, orders were issued for the demolishing all the Catholic chapels and apprehending the priests." Historian John Watts confirms that this policy was followed by government troops and that, "In doing so, they appear to have been acting on official orders."

According to Bruce Gordon Seton, these official orders did in fact exist and actually preceded Culloden. On 6 December 1745, a proclamation had revived two laws formerly rendered obsolete by the Popery Act 1698, the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584 and the Popish Recusants Act 1605, and further promised a bounty of £100 for the capture of Roman Catholic priests.

According to historian Daniel Szechi, however, the government's post-Culloden backlash, still known in the Highlands as (Bliadhna nan Creach "The Year of the Pillaging"), focused upon the Catholic clergy and laity of the Highland District, while leaving the much larger and better organized Lowland District reasonably unscathed.

According to Maggie Craig, "The Duke of Cumberland issued a proclamation soon after Culloden telling lurking Jacobites that they should surrender themselves and their weapons to the nearest Church of Scotland minister. Yet despite keeping an inquisitive eye on their Jacobite neighbours before, during and after the event, many Presbyterian ministers refused to supply lists of those either well-effected or disaffected in their neighbourhood. Many, to their eternal credit, hid Jacobite fugitives and helped them to escape."

Catholics were far from the only targets, however. Also according to Maggie Craig, "Throughout the '45, Episcopalian meeting houses were ransacked and wrecked by redcoat soldiers. Considering that the Episcopalians and the Established Church of England were so close together in terms of doctrine and worship, this is more than a little ironic. Given how much the Episcopalians suffered because of their loyalty to the House of Stuart, it's also rather sad that their Church is so often in Scotland today referred to as the English Church."

After the brutal persecution of both Catholics and Nonjuring Episcopalians that followed the Battle of Culloden in 1746, much of the remaining Highland population either emigrated voluntarily, were evicted en masse by Anglo-Scottish landlords during the Highland Clearances, or converted to Presbyterianism. In the process, many outlawed "heather priests", including Alexander MacDonnell, Angus Bernard MacEachern, William Fraser, and Ranald Rankin, the composer of the famous Scottish Gaelic Christmas carol Tàladh Chrìosda, chose to willingly follow their evicted and voluntary émigré parishioners into the Scottish diaspora.

According to Marcus Tanner, "As the Reformed Church faltered in the increasingly industrialised Lowlands, Presbyterianism made its great breakthrough among the Gaelic Highlanders, virtually snapping cultural bonds that had linked them to Ireland since the lordship of Dalriada. The Highlands, outside tiny Catholic enclaves like in South Uist and Barra, took on the contours they have since preserved - a region marked by a strong tradition of sabbatarianism and a puritanical distaste for instrumental music and dancing, which have only recently regained popular acceptance".

Since Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the history of the Catholic Church during persecution has been carefully researched, even as it's parishes and schools have continued being rebuilt.

For example, the oral tradition preserved the former locations of Mass stones and Mass houses even in at least some Protestant regions. According to the autobiography dictated to John Lorne Campbell by South Uist seanchaidh and crofter Angus Beag MacLellan (1869–1966), while working as a hired hand on Robert Menzies' farm near Aberfeldy, Perthshire in the 1880s, Menzies told him that a Mass stone had stood in the farm field. A nearby high cross, marked the site of an important college of learning dating from the days of the Celtic Church. Though the local population had long since switched to Presbyterianism, former Catholic religious sites were still locally viewed with superstitious awe and were never tampered with. Menzies explained that the term for Mass stones, in the Perthshire dialect, was Clachan Ìobairt, lit. "offering stones".

Following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Catholic population of Aberfeldy was served by priests visiting from Strathtay, who would offer the Tridentine Mass at the site now known as Tigh an Tuir, lit. "the house of the death-dirge". Since it was first built as a tin tabernacle paid for by the Marquess of Bute in 1884, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church has stood at the same location and has been part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dunkeld.

Also following Catholic Emancipation, Catholic worship on Eigg eventually moved from Cathedral Cave into "the lower floor of an old farmhouse" which remained the island's "Mass house" until 1910. In that year, St Donnan of Eigg Roman Catholic Church was built in Cleadale by the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles and continues to be served by visiting priests from Morar.

According to A. MacDonell and D. McRoberts, "Presumably there were other Mass Stones in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and, no doubt, a fresh look at some Gaelic place names, with that possibility in mind, would reveal other localities, associated with the celebration of Mass during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Near Invergarry, for example, occur the place names: Allt na h-aifrinn, or 'Mass burn', and Creag an t-sagairt, or 'Priest's Rock', which local tradition associates with the practice of the Catholic Faith in Penal Times. Donald Ross of Beauly, who was a septuagenarian when he died in 1948, recalled a similarly named burn, Allt na h-aiffrinn, at Teanassie in Kilmorack Parish, Inverness-shire, where local tradition pointed to a dell alongside the burn as the place where the Catholics of the neighbourhood heard Mass in earlier days. On the Sunart side of Loch Shiel, not far from Eilean Fhiannan, there is another Creag an t-sagairt with a very definite tradition that this was the place where Mass was celebrated during Penal Days. Some miles further north at Ardnish Point the name Port na h-aiffrinn -- 'Harbour of the Mass' -- commemorating the celebration of Mass there on a July day in 1707 by Bishop James Gordon. Other places names come to mind which might have a similar origin, such as the stone called Clach na h-iobairt near Bridge of Tilt at Blair Athol, or the stone called Clach Iosa near Urquhart in Moray. The same scrutiny might be extended to the occasional Allt an t-sagairt in the far north, which excessive enthusiasm for the early Celtic Church sometimes too readily associates with the seventh century St Maolrubha."

The 1467 ruins of St. Mahew's Chapel in Cardross, which stand on the site of a 6th-century Celtic Church monastery, are also the former location of a Mass stone. Before St Patrick's Church was formally organized in 1830, the growing population of Irish and Highland Scots Catholics living in nearby Dumbarton would meet at the chapel ruins for prayers and Masses offered by a visiting priest from Greenock. For this and other reasons, ownership of the chapel ruins were acquired by the Archdiocese of Glasgow, who restored them in 1955 into a Catholic church which remains in use. In September 1965, building operations in Dumbarton revealed the grave, located just outside of the Church of Scotland cemetery, of an outlawed Catholic priest. Both a Mass chalice and altar crucifix dating from the early 18th-century were found buried in the grave with the priest, whose name remains unknown.

St Mary and St Bean's Roman Catholic Church, Beauly.

Furthermore, the Bullaun, or natural cup stone, known as Clach a Bhaistidh and used by the three outlawed Jesuits to perform secret Catholic baptisms in the cave at Glen Cannich, was removed from the Cave, "in order to protect it from damage", by Black Watch Regiment Captain Archibald Macrae Chisholm and placed upon a stone column, where it is now venerated as a relic by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Aberdeen at St Mary and St. Bean's Roman Catholic Church at Marydale, Beauly, Glen Cannich. Despite the depopulation of much of the countryside by both voluntary emigration and the 1801-1855 Highland Clearances ordered by Archibald Campbell Fraser of Lovat and Mrs. William Chisholm of Chisholm, construction of the church building commenced following Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The church was completed in 1866 and solemnly consecrated in 1868.

Marian grotto and Christian pilgrimage shrine dedicated to Our Lady of the Highlands on the grounds of Immaculate Conception Church at Stratherrick, near Whitebridge, Inverness-shire.

At the Christian pilgrimage shrine to 'Our Lady of the Highlands', within the grounds of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church near Loch Ness, a new outdoor Mass stone was consecrated by Bishop Hugh Gilbert of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Aberdeen in March 2017.

More recently, Kelsey Jackson Williams has argued that the history of the Scottish Age of Enlightenment needs to be rewritten to include the earlier literary and intellectual contributions of religiously persecuted Catholic and Nonjuring Episcopal Jacobites. Williams has also conceded, however, that there are still considerable risks involved in raising unwelcome questions about, "traditional narratives of the Scottish Enlightenment and it's beneficent, progressive, moderate nature. In particular, it challenges the still often implicit Whig narratives about Scotland, Great Britain, and progress during the eighteenth century. If Jacobites were Enlightened, where does that leave us? If Enlightened Scotland was a persecuting society with Episcopalians and Catholics acting as it's Huguenots, how does that force us to reassess the century? Such questions strike close to the heart of many too easily made assumptions about the nature of Enlightenment in Scotland."

In 2020, near three centuries after his arrest at Morar by priest hunter Captain Lachlan Dubh MacNeil of Ballygrogan, delivery to Captain John Fergussone on 12 July 1746, and subsequent death from torture and the many other cruelties of his four month imprisonment aboard the Royal Navy prison hulk HMS Furnace, the Knights of St. Columba launched a campaign to canonize outlawed Jesuit "heather priest" and Jacobite Army military chaplain Fr. Alexander Cameron (1701-1746), "with the hope that he will become a great saint for Scotland and that our nation will merit from his intercession." In a 2024 essay, Catholic biographer Joseph Pearce expressed support for the Knights' campaign and compared Fr. Alexander Cameron to Elizabethan era Catholic martyr St Robert Southwell. Other more recent efforts to publicize Fr Cameron's life and martyrdom have been made by Anglican Use Catholic parishes founded in Scotland since Anglicanorum Coetibus and by the St Austin Review. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for Canonization in the Catholic Church that there is an existing Cult of Devotion to the saint.

Wales

Old Penrhyn Hall at the foot of the Little Orme

In Wales, a nation with deep roots in the Celtic Church and whose missionaries had helped evangelize their fellow Celts in both Ireland and the Isle of Man, much of the population reacted to the Protestant Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Elizabethan religious settlement with a sense of being "baffled rather than antagonized", and by, "objecting only so far as to cling to belief in signs, wonders and holy relics that the new establishment so despised, or to cross themselves or tell their beads in church." Other, more "sophisticated traditionalists protested more actively".

Welsh bards, like St Richard Gwyn, routinely acted as secret messengers on behalf of outlawed Roman Catholic priests and recusants within the Welsh nobility and commons. In this way, the Bards of Wales were highly important within the Welsh Catholic underground and were how news was spread about secret Masses and pilgrimages.

Similarly to in other parts of the British Isles, Welsh candidates for the priesthood were trained domestically at clandestine minor seminaries, such as the hedge school Richard Gwyn taught from a barn in Erbistock or that taught by Fr. William Davies at Old Penrhyn Hall in the Creuddyn Peninsula, before being smuggled to continue their education at the English Colleges in Catholic Europe.

It is well-documented that rows took place between English and Welsh seminarians who were studying together in the English Colleges. It was facetiously alleged at the time that these disputes were rooted in the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain led by Hengist and Horsa, the legendary Celtic resistance to it led by King Arthur, and centuries of subsequent Anglo-Welsh Wars. There is also evidence that English and Welsh Recusants influenced one another's intellectual life.

For example, among the surviving Welsh language poems by St Richard Gwyn is Gwrandewch ddatcan, meddwl maith ("Hear a song, a great thought,"), which is both a versification and a summary of English Jesuit Robert Persons' 1580 illegally printed and circulated pamphlet "A brief discovrs contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church". Furthermore, Welsh Recusant landlord John Edwards the Younger of Plas Newydd, Chirk, translated from Elizabethan English into Middle Welsh St Robert Southwell's An Epistle of a Religious Priest unto his Father in 1612.

For this reason, the vitally important role of poets in Welsh culture, and the similar verse of other Recusant Bards, such as Robert Gwin, Catrin ferch Gruffudd ap Hywel, and Gruffydd Robert, who sought to spread the theology of the Counter-Reformation through poetry and song in the Welsh language, Queen Elizabeth I of England had commanded that the bards of Wales be subjected to government censorship. Bards were first to be examined by the officials of the Crown and then licensed to be allowed to compose Welsh poetry or compete in Eisteddfodau. Poets who were refused a licence, according to Hywel Teifi Edwards, were coercively, "put to some honest work." This also among the reasons for the trials and executions of Recusant poets Richard Gwyn and William Davies. Despite this, secret altars continued to be in use.

A secret altar and an equally illegal printing was hidden in a seaside cave at Y Gogarth Fach ("Little Orme Head") on the Creuddyn Peninsula of North Wales. Prior to the discovery and capture of both during a raid led by magistrate and priest hunter Sir Thomas Mostyn of Gloddaith on 14 April 1587, the cave, print shop, and hidden chapel had provided a shelter for hunted priests and Recusant laity and was also the location for the 1585 secret publication of the first book in the Welsh language; Y Drych Cristianogawl ("The Christian Mirror") by Fr. Gruffydd Robert.

In contrast to other pre-Reformation Welsh pilgrimage shrines, such as those at Llanderfel, Ynys Enlli on Bardsey Island, and Ystrad Fflur, pilgrimages never ceased to St Winifred's Well, which is now often compared with Lourdes. For example, in his posthumously published Latin memoir of his strictly illegal and underground 1588-1606 ministry in defiance of Sir Richard Topcliffe and the other priest hunters of England and Wales, John Gerard, a Lancashire-born English priest of the Society of Jesus, describes his own secret Elizabethan era pilgrimage to St Winifred's Well. In 1698, diarist Celia Fiennes witnessed the prayers of still other Catholic pilgrims at the holy well, whom she denounced as "poor people... deluded into an ignorant blind zeal and to be pity'd by us that have the advantage of knowing better." Twenty-five years later, Daniel Defoe commented that outlawed priests, adopting disguises such as physicians, surgeons, or their patients, always abounded in the district of the shrine and that Mass was regularly offered for pilgrims at secret altars throughout the surrounding countryside.

Site of St Michael's chapel, atop Ysgyryd Fawr

The ruins of an Iron Age hill fort and a mediæval chapel, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, lie at the summit of Ysgyryd Fawr in the Black Mountains. During the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Wales, the mountaintop remained a regular site of Christian pilgrimage. Furthermore, the illegal and underground Jesuit mission based at Cwm and led by future Catholic martyr St. David Lewis, who was known to the local population as "Tad y Tlodion ("Father of the Poor"), regularly visited the ruined chapel atop Ysgyryd Fawr, which was the site of a Mass rock. In 1676, Pope Clement X promised a plenary indulgence to those who went up the mountain upon Michaelmas. In 1678, local Whig magistrate, Titus Oates plot conspirator, and priest hunter John Arnold, whom transgender journalist and historian Jan Morris has termed, "Of all the persecutors of the Catholics in Wales, the most ferocious", told the House of Commons in 1678 that, "he hath seen a hundred Papists meet at the top of Skyrrid for Mass."

Both the Welsh-language Bible translation of Elizabethan era Anglican Bishop William Morgan and the repression that followed the Titus Oates Plot eventually caused the vast majority of the Welsh people to switch to Protestantism. Only on the estates of the few remaining Welsh Recusant gentry did their tenants retain their ancestral religion. The Anglican Church in Wales came to be referred to in the Welsh language as y fam eglwys ("the Mother Church") until the late 18th-century, when the increasing policy by the bishops and clergy of coercive Anglicisation in Welsh-speaking parishes, which was favoured by the now English speaking Welsh nobility, caused the Welsh-speaking population to defect to non-conformist denominations like Presbyterianism and Methodism. Even so, many non-Catholic folklore and oral poetry collectors of the era, including Iolo Morganwg and William Jones of Llangadfan, wrote down and preserved many pre-Reformation religious poems in the Welsh language, many with roots in the spirituality of the Celtic Church.

The numbers of Catholics in Wales only began to increase once again during the 19th-century mass immigration from Ireland. Even though this trend, similarly to in many English and Scottish communities, often caused anti-Catholic riots and other acts of religious violence, Catholicism in Wales was until far more recently, an English-speaking denomination. Despite high some profile conversions, such as that of Welsh-speaking nationalist, poet, playwright, and literary critic Saunders Lewis, it was only in the 1950's that the numbers of Welsh-speaking Catholics began to increase to significant numbers.

Although this trend was derailed by 1960's secularisation, the numbers of converts to Catholicism have risen much higher in more recent decades. In what British media sources have termed "The Quiet Revival", the number of young converts, particularly with completely secular backgrounds and upbringings, has skyrocketed. During a 2025 interview, Mark O'Toole, the Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff was asked why the numbers of Catholics in his Archdiocese had recently doubled. O'Toole explained that young converts were often longing for a sense of purpose in their lives and had often searched for answers online before choosing Catholicism, "They are not extremist or fundamentalist, but they have been looking for something and the words they use a lot about the Catholic Church is coherence and consistency."

Four original copies of Y Drych Cristianogawl survive, and during the 2010 Papal visit to the United Kingdom by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Wrexham, Edwin Regan, as a gift to the Holy See from the Welsh people.

At the Capuchin friary at Pantasaph, a Lourdes Grotto and outdoor Stations of the Cross are overlooked by a large bronze Calvary Hill. At its plinth is the inscription, "Special indulgences are granted by the Holy See to all who shall devoutly visit this Calvary or make the Stations or who looking from a distance to this cross shall say a Hail Mary for the conversion of England."

See also

• Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair
• Catholicism in Ireland
• Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
• Irish Catholic Martyrs
• John Ogilvie (martyr)
• Priest hole
• Priest hunter
• Religion of the Yellow Stick

Further reading

Books

• Peter Anson (1970), Underground Catholicism in Scotland, Self-Published.
• Odo Blundell (1909), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland. Volume I: The Central Highlands, Sands & Co., 21 Hanover Street, Edinburgh, 15 King Street, London.
• Odo Blundell (1917), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland. Volume II: The Western Highlands and Islands, Sands & Co., 37 George Street, Edinburgh, 15 King Street, Covent Garden, London.
• William P. Burke (1914),The Irish priests in the penal times (1660-1760): from the state papers in H. M. Record Offices, Printed by N. Harvey & Co., Waterford.
• William Forbes Leith (1909), Memoirs of Scottish Catholics during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries. Volume I The Reign of King Charles I, Longman, Green, and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London.
• Colin Murphy (2013), The Priest Hunters: The True Story of Ireland's Bounty Hunters, The O'Brien Press.
• Tony Nugent (2013), Were You at the Rock? The History of Mass Rocks in Ireland, Liffey Press. ISBN 9781908308474.
• O'Reilly, Myles (1880). Lives of the Irish Martyrs and Confessors. New York: James Sheehy. OCLC 173466082. https://archive.org/details/LivesOfTheIrishMartyrsAndConfessors/. 
• David Aneurin Thomas (1971), The Welsh Elizabethan Catholic martyrs: The trial documents of Saint Richard Gwyn and of the Venerable William Davies, University of Wales Press.
• John Watts (2004), Hugh MacDonald: Highlander, Jacobite, Bishop, John Donald Press.

Periodicals

• "The Mass Stones of Lochaber", by A. MacDonell and D. McRoberts, Innes Review, Autumn 1966, pp. 77-198.

External links

• Find a Mass Rock
• Ireland's Mass Rocks, from Aid to the Church in Need Ireland.
• A 1982 recording of award-winning sean nos singer and seanchai Seosamh Ó hÉanaí recalling the era of the Mass rocks and the hidden symbolism in the song lyrics of An Raibh tú ar an gCarraig?, which Ó hÉanaí then performs.
• The Secret Paths That Led Ireland’s Catholics to Forbidden Mass by Annika Burgess, Atlas Obscura, January 10, 2018.

Wikipedia

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Mass rock. The list of authors can be seen in the page history.