6 - Roman Catholic Approaches to Begging and Alms-Giving

Summary

Introduction

Mary Aikenhead, foundress of the Irish Sisters of Charity (later Religious Sisters of Charity), attributed her conversion to Catholicism and her call to devote her life to the poor to the influence of hearing the parable of Lazarus the beggar (Luke 16:19–25) as a young girl. Around 1802, shortly after the deathbed conversion of her father from Anglicanism to Catholicism, Aikenhead heard a preacher recount the gospel parable, in which the starving mendicant Lazarus pleads for crumbs from the table of the rich man (Dives); Lazarus subsequently dies and is accepted into the bosom of Abraham, while Dives is banished to Hell. Aikenhead subsequently followed her late father in converting to the Roman church and in 1815, with the assistance of Fr (later Archbishop) Daniel Murray, she founded the Sisters of Charity, whose fourth vow of service of the poor distinguished this congregation of female religious as a significant presence within Irish Catholicism and Irish society. Aikenhead serves as a useful entry-point into this discussion of Catholic perceptions of and responses to beggary in pre-Famine Ireland. Her congregation was founded for the express purpose of attending to the poor and their foundation in 1815 represented an important moment in the history of Catholicism and also philanthropy in Ireland. Through her private and public utterances, Aikenhead expressed views of poverty and charity that differed noticeably from those of many (male) clergy, yet the charity practised by Aikenhead and other female religious nonetheless framed the recipients of assistance in terms of the meritorious and the unworthy. Aikenhead's example not only allows for a consideration of women's perspectives on perceived social problems, but, crucially, highlights the difficulty in talking universally about the attitudes and responses of members of a particular confession. This discussion will analyse distinctions in how Catholic teachings on charity and good works were understood by Catholics and Protestants, with both sides perceiving disparate moral consequences for both giver and receiver in the alms-giving transaction. As Brian Pullan has urged,2 consideration of distinctly Catholic approaches to poverty and begging ought not to be confined to the question of good works and alms-giving. Instead, the evolution of Catholic attitudes and responses to poverty and beggary in the pre-Famine period requires contextualisation with reference to the wider movement within European Catholicism for revival and reform, as reflected in the archbishopric of Daniel Murray.