Background
Matthew Anthony O'Brien was born on May 1804, in the village of Bawn, County Tipperary, Ireland, where his father managed to rear a family of thirteen children from the profits of a distillery.
Matthew Anthony O'Brien was born on May 1804, in the village of Bawn, County Tipperary, Ireland, where his father managed to rear a family of thirteen children from the profits of a distillery.
Matthew O'Brian was poorly educated in a local hedge school at Nenagh. Later O'Brien was tutored in the classics by the rector and by the Jesuit Fathers at St. Mary's College, Marion County, Kentucky (1829 - 1835). He also entered the Dominican seminary of St. Rose's, where he subscribed to the final vows of the Dominicans on September 8, 1837.
In April 1826, Matthew O'Brien sailed on an immigrant ship for Quebec. From Canada, he managed to work his way to Savannah, Georgia, and thence to New Orleans, where he had maternal uncles. Apparently, he had a desire to enter the priesthood, because he tramped and labored on boats for his passage until he reached Bardstown, Kentucky, where he presented himself to Bishop Flaget, who urged that he become a lay brother in view of his age, irregular education, and aptitude for a trade. This he did in 1827, but the institute at Bardstown failed and was dissolved, whereupon he was enrolled at St. Rose's, Springfield, Kentucky. This time ill health thwarted his hopes, but he found a friend in an Irish priest, William Byrne, who had established St. Mary's College, Marion County, Kentucky. Here, from 1829 to 1835, he taught elementary subjects and was tutored in the classics by the rector and by the Jesuit Fathers who took over the institution. At length he was prepared to enter the Dominican seminary of St. Rose's, where he subscribed to the final vows of the Dominicans on September 8, 1837, and was ordained by Bishop R. P. Miles in 1839. As submaster and master of novices, he continued his studies and reading.
In 1842, he was assigned to master of novites at St. Joseph's House of Studies in Perry County, Ohio.
Not until 1844 was he given a parish - that of St. Patrick's on Rush Creek near by, a German and Irish settlement, where he built a new church, and as procurator for his order superintended its general construction work. His controversy with a Protestant divine, Thomas Harper, and his missionary tours made him a familiar character in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio.
Soon after returning from a short vacation in Ireland, O'Brien was elected American provincial of the Dominicans, October 30, 1850. While St. Rose's remained his center, he was engaged in establishing St. Joseph's College, which died with the Civil War, in building a number of churches, schools, and convents, including St. Dominic's in Washington, D. C. , and in promoting vocations for his own order as well as for the Dominican sisterhoods. He brought the Dominicans to the seaboard and won popularity for the order as he preached missions from the Gulf states to New England.
At the end of his term he became prior and pastor at St. Rose's, where he remained from 1854 until ordered to organize a Dominican parish in London, Ontario, in 1861.
Two years later, O'Brien was recalled to work among the soldiers in Kentucky and to compromise warborn hostilities among the people. He himself was no violent Northern partisan. As a visiting preacher, O'Brien continued to win attention and incidentally made his share of converts.
At sixty-six, aged far beyond his years, he fell a victim to pneumonia in Louisville and was buried in the community cemetery at St. Rose's in Kentucky.
There was little expectation that Matthew Anthony O'Brien would develop into a preacher because of his awkward bearing, diffidence, piercing voice, and wretched memory, but he made an ideal novice-master because of his sound common sense, sincere piety, and marked tact. Moreover, with time, he became a magnetic if not a brilliant or erudite preacher, whose heartfelt sermons, interspersed with homely illustrations and unvarnished truths, appealed not only to the lowly but challenged critical scholars like J. A. McMaster and Orestes Brownson.
