My paternal grandmother Mary Ellen Murphy was the daughter of two Murphys.
They were principals of the Boys’ and Girls’ Model Schools in Kilkenny and
my grandfather Patrick Kennedy who had been studying for the priesthood
with the Holy Ghost Fathers (a French order) and spent some time in Paris
was asked to tutor Mary Ellen (apparently destined for a nunnery) in French.
Anyhow they got married and though Patrick had not taken any of the Orders
it was regarded as a disgrace and he was never welcomed home to his native
Cloughjordan.
Although my father only visited France on the way to and from s pilgrimage to Rome
in 1933, he and all his siblings were taught French from their cradle days and spoke that
language with the right BLAS.
Mary Ellen’s brother, Jeremiah Mathias Murphy SJ was Rector of Newman College
of the University of Melbourne from 1923 to 1953 and his appointment was regarded
as a step-up for the previously despised Papists there. He was an intimate friend
of Archbishop Mannix who had been President of Maynooth previously.
The Library in Newman College is named after him.
In 1954 when HM Queen Elizabeth visited Melbourne she awarded Murphy with a GONG
and Murphy sat for the artist who painted Her Majesty on the occasion of her visit,
WHO WAS WHO lists Murphy two names down from Rupert Murdoch’s father, who owned
papers in Melbourne
They were principals of the Boys’ and Girls’ Model Schools in Kilkenny and
my grandfather Patrick Kennedy who had been studying for the priesthood
with the Holy Ghost Fathers (a French order) and spent some time in Paris
was asked to tutor Mary Ellen (apparently destined for a nunnery) in French.
Anyhow they got married and though Patrick had not taken any of the Orders
it was regarded as a disgrace and he was never welcomed home to his native
Cloughjordan.
Although my father only visited France on the way to and from s pilgrimage to Rome
in 1933, he and all his siblings were taught French from their cradle days and spoke that
language with the right BLAS.
Mary Ellen’s brother, Jeremiah Mathias Murphy SJ was Rector of Newman College
of the University of Melbourne from 1923 to 1953 and his appointment was regarded
as a step-up for the previously despised Papists there. He was an intimate friend
of Archbishop Mannix who had been President of Maynooth previously.
The Library in Newman College is named after him.
In 1954 when HM Queen Elizabeth visited Melbourne she awarded Murphy with a GONG
and Murphy sat for the artist who painted Her Majesty on the occasion of her visit,
WHO WAS WHO lists Murphy two names down from Rupert Murdoch’s father, who owned
papers in Melbourne
This was not meant for a BLOG but as a reply to Jude, because I counter-attacked David Murphy
who first attacked me for a piece I had not mentioned him and, very happily was unaware of his existence, his aversion to the Irish Language, his sneering at de Valera and his (David’s) other
hang-ups. The great Samuel Johnson described language as the Pedigree of a Nation and the
loss of a language an impoverishment of the world.
But I also had referred to the Jesuit Professor Seamus Murphy, who in the wrote Tripe and Treason
in THE IRISH TIMES on the Centenary of the 1916 Rising.
The Professor asserted that Daniel O’Connell who, 201 years before that Irish Timsepiece, had killed a man in a pistol duel and had in that same year been arrested in Ostend, on the way to answer a challenge by Robert Peel of whom the Professor has, perhaps heard.
In more enlightened times schoolboys were flogged for such Howlers. (Is that how they came to be
called Howlers?)
Irish Barristers in O’Connell’s day were habitual duellists. O’Connell a Catholic in a country where
Catholics were despised by those in power could not, wihout bringing further contempt mount up
not defend his honour to the death.
A Scholar and a Gentleman should appreciate that.
But the Dog-Collared Columnist unleashed a corner-boy attack on Pearse, Connolly and those buried
at Arbour Hill, none of them known to have personally shot anybody, who surrendered to save further
civilian lives from (mainly) Crown Forces shot and shell, knowing full well that they themselves
would be dsepatched by firing squad.
Forgive me God, but I cannot regard Seamus Murphy as a trustworthy scholar nor an an upstanding
gentleman.
As for THE IRISH TIMES TRUST it was set up by the late, Crooked Lord Goodman, fixer for the
late crooked Harold Wilson, following a message of the late British Ambassador Sir Andrew Gilchrist,
following a message from the late Major McDowell (British Army) of the IRISH TIMES .
Gilchrist in 1965, when Ambassador to Indonesia in 1965. engineered the propaganda campaign which
launched a genocidal coup which oberthrew Sukarno and installed a puppet regime which transferred control of the almost limitless resources of the archepelligo to Western Companies.
John Pilger wrote a book about it,
Britain’s Royal Navy ferried the assasination squads between the islands.