I Remember the Bishop
(C.A. 25-1-90)
Having read and heard the many tributes paid to this truly outstanding man since his untimely death and convinced that he deserves every one of them and many more, I feel the urge to add my modicum of praise and to place on record my personal appreciation of the late Dr. Patrick Lennon, former Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin.
I have had the privilege of knowing him both as priest and bishop since I came to Carlow almost half a century ago. We met many times during the intervening years, both officially and socially, and I invariably found him to be kind, gracious and helpful. I still treasure the letter of sympathy he sent me on the occasion of my son’s sudden death in the U.S.
My first contact with him was when I visited St. Patrick’s College with a colleague of mine whose wife, a native of Borris, had just died, to ask him to attend her funeral. Needless to say, he was most sympathetic and unhesitatingly agreed to officiate at the graveside.
Shortly after his appointment as President of the College I had occasion to visit him again to discuss the possibility of some of his students attending the Technical School in order to take my own students for religious instruction. He gently turned down the suggestion tactfully, pointing out that parochial matters were outside his jurisdiction but that he would keep my problem in mind.
How faithfully he kept that promise emerged a year or two later, when he informed me that he would make as many students as I required available to me. With the result that dozen or more senior seminarians attended the school twice a week to take classes in Christian Doctrine. This system continues to this day even though a regular chaplain has been appointed to the school. Incidentally, the experience proved beneficial to the seminarians also, to meet, and sometimes argue with adolescent boys and girls not many years younger than themselves.
During my Presidency of the local rugby club I approached him once more and rather impertinently asked him to permit us to hold dances in the club during lent. Looking back on it he would have been quite justified in refusing point blank and ordering me out of the house. But that wasn’t his way. We spent an hour or so talking rugby while he reminisced about his own short career in the game and mentioning that he had permanently injured his arm while playing. He ended by implying that while he had no wish to deny me my request, he couldn’t in conscience grant it. He later blessed the club’s new pavilion which, incidentally, was originally a temporary chapel in Athy which we bought, dismantled and re-erected in Oak Park.
Dr. Lennon’s final act of courtesy to me occurred a short while ago when he helped me reverse my car out of an awkward situation behind the Cathedral after Mass one night. As a handicapped driver I am no longer dexterous at this manoeuvre, especially between trees in the dark. As luck would have it our present bishop, Dr. Ryan, arrived on the scene and added his ‘ha’port of help’. This must surely be one of the rare occasions when it took two bishops to get a parishioner out of a tight corner.
The End.
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