Jeremiah O'Callaghan

Background

Jeremiah o'Callaghan was born in 1780 in County Cork, Ireland, one of fifteen surviving children of Jeremiah and Mary (Twohig) O'Callaghan, pious farmers.

Education

Jeremiah O'Callaghan was educated at St. Patrick's, Carlow College.

Career

Jeremiah O'Callaghan was ordained in 1805 by Dr. William Coppinger, Bishop of Cloyne and Ross, and appointed to curacies on the Island of Cape Clear and at Aghnakishey. At the latter place, a controversy raged concerning the righteousness of taking interest, especially usurious interest, and O'Callaghan became a fanatic on the subject. When his preaching involved him in difficulty, he applied for a decision to his bishop, who in 1818 transferred him to Ross Carberry, and when he got into trouble again, censured him for not remaining silent on the question of usury. For more than a decade thereafter, although he carried an exeat guaranteeing that he was "of good fame and conversation, under no excommunication, " he was something of a wanderer.

O'Callaghan went to the College of Picpus in Paris and served at Soissons; returning to Cork in 1820, he opened a classical school at Ross Carberry.

Three years later he emigrated with high hopes to New York, but despite the intercession of his friend, John Power, Bishop Connolly, who did not relish his anti-capitalistic views, refused to place him. Neither was he accepted by Archbishop Maréchal of Baltimore, nor by Bishop Plessis of Quebec.

In Montreal he wrote Usury, or Interest, Proved to be Repugnant to the Divine and Ecclesiastical Laws, and Destructive to Civil Society, for which an irregular publisher was procured in New York. The volume appeared in 1824 and sold readily. The author maintained that the attack on trusteeism which it contained saved the church in New York $3, 000 per annum. William Cobbett republished the work (1825, 1828) without the author's knowledge and forwarded him the profits. Cobbett also included a eulogy of O'Callaghan's work in his History of the Protestant "Reformation" in England and Ireland (2 vols. , 1824 - 1827), which was republished in Rome under the censor.

O'Callaghan's book caused no sensation in the Sacred Congregation. Rome ordered him to make peace with his bishop, but the latter would not relent. Neither was O'Callaghan accepted in London, despite the shortage of priests; for a time he gained a livelihood by tutoring in Cobbett's household.

In 1830, he returned to New York where Power, now vicar general, recommended him to Bishop Fenwick, who accepted him for the diocese of Boston. He traveled enthusiastically through the frontier settlements of French Canadians and Irish emigrants and gathered scattered congregations; he built the first Catholic church in Vermont at Burlington, and rebuilt an enlarged structure after an incendiary fire in 1838; he organized schools and Sunday Schools.

O'Callaghan renounced none of his views, but republished his Usury in 1834 and again in 1856, when he included an account of Jackson's war against the second United States Bank and a reprint of his "Exposure" of banking in Vermont.

Removing to Holyoke, Massachussets, in 1854, he organized a congregation and built St. Jerome's Church. Here, worn out by missionary labors and intellectual harassments, he died seven years later and was buried in his church, where a monument was erected to his memory by loyal parishioners.

Achievements

• Jeremiah O'Callaghan's most important work was Usury, Funds, and Banks: or Lending at Interest (1824). O'Callighan's other famous works: A Critical Review of Mr. J. K. Converse's Calvinistic Sermon (1834); The Creation and Offspring of the Protestant Church; also the Vagaries and Heresies of J. H. Hopkins, Protestant Bishop, and Other False Teachers (1837); The Hedge around the Vineyard (1844); Atheism of Brownson's Review, Unity and Trinity of God, Divinity and Humanity of Christ Jesus; Banks and Paper Money (1852); and Exposure of the Vermont Banking Companies (1854). O'Callaghan built the first Catholic church in Vermont at Burlington in 1830 and did such noble service there that he is referred to by local historians as the "Apostle of Vermont"; he also organized a congregation and built St. Jerome's Church in 1854.

Works

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  • Usury: Funds and Banking, Monopoly, Forestalling, Traffick, Gallican Liberties, Graves, Anatomy

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

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Connections

Father:

Jeremiah O'Callaghan

Mother:

Mary (Twohig) O'Callaghan