CULLEN PAUL was born in Buxton, Norfolk, United Kingdom in 1803. Hugh Cullen owned about 700 acres when his son Paul was born. In the south of Ireland, Catholic families took advantage of this relaxation and began to buy land formerly reserved for Protestants. This gave him the status of strong Catholic farmer, a class that greatly influenced 19th-century Irish society.
Young Paul was sent to the Quaker school in nearby Ballitore because it provided the best education available in the area and the Quakers had aided Hugh Cullen during the anarchy of the rising.
In all, the Cullen clan sent nine of its members to this school, where the famous political philosopher, Edmund Burke, had received the rudiments of his training. In 1816, at the age of 13, Cullen entered Carlow College.
This support stemmed from Cullen's natural conservatism and his adherence to the Ultramontane belief that the pope truly was the universal pontiff, the focal point of Catholicism to whom all Catholics owed obedience. While Cullen was a student, Daniel O'Connell's campaign to emancipate Irish Catholics was making rapid progress.
The college, reestablished in 1826 after having been a barracks during the Napoleonic occupation, was in poor shape.
On the recommendation of his godfather, James Maher, Cullen's family decided that the talented Paul should follow this strong-minded uncle to Rome.
Ten years older, Maher was just completing his theological studies when the 17-year-old Paul arrived in Rome early in 1821 to enter Propaganda College. As a young man from rural Ireland, Cullen was enthralled by the dynamic life of Rome and by its great baroque churches filled with the spirit of the Counter-Reformation.
It was the end of the pontificate of Pius VII, the pope who had stood up to Napoleon. The romantic hero of conservative Europe, Pius was revered as a symbol of all that was worth preserving in the tumultuous 19th century. In the atmosphere following Napoleon's defeat, the Eternal City was once again alive. The grandeur of the liturgical observances, the magnificent processions, the rich dress, and notable personages had a profound impact on the young seminarian from Ireland where, due to the lingering effect of the penal laws and local tradition, Catholic worship was held without pomp and ceremony. Amid the triumph of Pius' reign and that of his successor Leo XII, Cullen formed his lifelong system of religious and ecclesiastical beliefs. Recognizing his intelligence, the Vatican asked Cullen to keep them abreast of developments back home. But Ireland was not the foremost thing on Cullen's mind, for he was preparing to defend his doctoral dissertation. On September 11, 1828, Cullen brilliantly defended his 224 theses before an audience that included Leo XII, the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda, the future Gregory XVI, and nine other cardinals. The Pope was so impressed that he personally conferred on Cullen the doctor's cap.
The Pope and others in the Vatican hierarchy then took Cullen into their confidence on the affairs of the Irish Church.
At this time, Europe was rocked by a series of political revolts.
Many of the liberals prominent in these revolutions held anticlerical beliefs that frightened Cullen.
Of special concern was the threat posed to the papacy's temporal possessions by the Young Italy movement founded by Giuseppe Mazzini in 1831.
He expected the Irish College to be instrumental in helping to bring Ireland into the Ultramontane camp.
Under the strong guiding hands of Cullen and his vice rector and eventual successor, Tobias Kirby, the college was dedicated to molding young Irish priests who would then return home and lead in the reshaping of the Irish Catholic Church.
Increased Influence in the Vatican
Papal authorities saw in Cullen a kindred soul, and his influence in the Vatican grew.
In the 1830's, when the Irish bishops became aware of Cullen's influence, they began to seek his assistance.
Both parties benefited from this relationship.
First enunciated by the French Church in the 17th century, Gallicanism was the antithesis of the Ultramontanism.
They wanted the Church to be free to identify with the liberal and national movements sweeping over Europe—movements that the Pope and Cullen feared.
The followers of MacHale objected to the National Schools and Queen's Colleges as being either "godless" or establishments of proselytizing Protestantism.
Cullen, like the MacHaleites, opposed all this legislation and gave support to these nationalist clerics.
His opposition to these measures, however, stemmed not from a nationalist dislike of the British, but from his passionate Ultramontanism.
In Cullen's eyes, schools, colleges, and charity boards controlled by the government and aided by the old Gallicans threatened to undermine whatever hold the papacy still had on overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland.
In 1849, while still negotiating to save Propaganda College from the forces of Mazzini that had captured Rome during the revolutions of 1848, Cullen was given a chance to carry his crusade to Ireland.
During Holy Week of that year, William Crolly, archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, died.
Passing over the three nominated candidates, the pope appointed Cullen archbishop in December 1849.
After his consecration in Rome in January 1850, he landed in Ireland in May.
Meanwhile, in April, he had been made Apostolic Delegate and ordered by the pope to convoke a national synod as soon as he arrived in Ireland. Cullen acted as their agent in transactions with the apostolic see. The bishops gained an influential representative at the nucleus of the Church, while Cullen expanded his knowledge of Ireland and obtained information on Irish churchmen that would prove useful when he returned to Ireland in the 1850's as Apostolic Delegate. The Irish bishops fell into two camps, which Cullen perceived as Gallican. One group of Irish bishops, the old Gallicans or "Castle bishops, " allied themselves with the crown—as opposed to the pope—even though the Irish crown belonged to the Protestant monarch of Great Britain. These clerics, led by John MacHale, the archbishop of Tuam, were deeply involved in Daniel O'Connell's drive to repeal the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and did not wish to be told by a conservative Pope to stay out of politics. Three great issues divided the Irish hierarchy during the years Cullen acted as agent in Rome.
An assembly of all the bishops and abbots in the land had not been held in Ireland since the 12th century.
This gathering was intended not only to strengthen the ties between Ireland and Rome, but also to bring the bishops together in hopes of ending episcopal divisions.
When the synod was convoked at Thurles on August 22, 1850, the split over the Queen's Colleges was papered over but remained.
Cullen succeeded in securing near unanimous approval of the papal recommendation to establish a Catholic university to compete with the "godless colleges, " but his proposal to forbid priests to accept posts in these colleges and to exhort Catholic parents not to enroll their children passed by only two votes. At his request, decrees were passed which mandated that the sacraments of baptism, marriage, and confession take place in the church building and not at the recipient's home.
These dictums were part of a reform policy begun by Cullen in Armagh and continued when he was transferred to the Dublin archdiocese in 1852.
This program sought to make Irish religious practice more respectable by having it conform to Vatican teaching, which centered worship in the parish church.
He also endeavored to move some traditional Irish practices, like the stations of the cross, from lay people's houses into the confines of a church or chapel.
Many of these bishops, especially those in the West where churches and priests were thin, preferred the traditional Irish customs to what they saw as foreign innovations.
He thought clergy should spend their time strengthening the faith of their congregations rather than participating in ill-fated movements to topple the British government.
Cullen's opposition was not to political activity per se, but to movements that were secretive and/or potentially revolutionary.
In the 1860's, he denounced and opposed the Fenian brotherhood because it was a secret society pledged to obtaining Irish independence through violent revolution.
He did not want to destroy the British Empire, but rather to build an Irish one based on Catholicism.
His political goal was to strengthen the position of Catholics within Ireland and the Empire.
To this end, he aided in pressuring Prime Minister William Gladstone's Liberal government to pass some conciliatory measures.
In 1870, a Land Act granting fixity of tenure and free sale to Irish tenant farmers was passed, and the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871.
With the power of the government no longer supporting the Church of Ireland, Cullen, who was now a cardinal, continued his drive to make the reformed Catholic Church the true national church of Ireland. Because of his influence with the Vatican and knowledge of the Irish clergy, Cullen was able to have most vacated bishoprics filled to his liking, thereby gaining unprecedented control over the Irish Church.
In 1875, he again presided over a national synod at Maynooth.
This synod confirmed Cullen's influence over the Irish Church by reinforcing the mandates of Thurles to further Romanize Irish religious practice.
In February 1878, Cullen received the news of Pius IX's death.
Pio Nino had been pope longer than Cullen had been a bishop.
Cullen departed from Ireland to pay his last respects, but arrived in Rome too late to participate in the election of a former Propaganda classmate to the papacy as Leo XIII.
In 1864,
Cullen founded the National Association to press for limited rights for tenant
farmers, the disestablishment of the Protestant Church of
Ireland, and government endowment of the Catholic University.
During his tenure (1849 - 78),
Catholicism began to touch every part of Irish life. The number of
priests, nuns, and teaching brothers doubled and there was a tremendous spate
of church, convent, and school building. The great bulk of Irish men and women
became Catholics in practice as well as in name, their Catholicism an integral
part of being Irish. Whether they remained at home or immigrated to foreign
shores, they no longer identified themselves as "Irish" but as
"Irish Catholics. "
Throughout his life, Cullen remained an adamant Ultramontanist.
He wholeheartedly supported the religious, ecclesiastical, and political conservatism of Leo XII (1823 - 29), Gregory XVI (1831 - 46), and Pius IX (1846 - 78).
Quotations: Writing to his father, Cullen reported proudly that, "Your son was the first among Irishmen who attempted to show his skill in theology in the presence of the Vicar of Christ. "
