The Secret Paths That Led Ireland’s Catholics to Forbidden Mass

On Ireland’s southwest coast, in County Kerry, there is a small village called Caherdaniel. Nearby, there is a national park, a fort that offers glimpses of the Skellig Islands, and the sloping shores of Derrynane Bay. And, etched into this countryside, is the Caherdaniel Mass Path. Like other such paths around Ireland, this narrow track was used by Catholics to attend mass 300 years ago, during a time of religious persecution.

The locations of these passages were closely held secrets, which is why it took Irish photographer Caitriona Dunnett years to research her project Mass Paths. It was the one at Caherdaniel that first sparked her interest. “I photographed it and remembered learning about the penal times at school,” she says. “It inspired me to research and find other penal paths to photograph.”

Path to Murrisk Mass Rock.

Beginning in the 1690s, the Protestant-controlled Irish Parliament, in conjunction with the English Parliament, passed a series of increasingly stringent, brutally wide-ranging penal laws that imposed serious restrictions on the already oppressed Catholic majority. No Catholic person could vote, or become a lawyer or a judge. They could not own a firearm or serve in the army or navy. They could not set up a school, or teach or be educated abroad. They could not own a horse worth more than £5. They could not speak or read their native Gaelic.

In an attempt to decrease Catholic land holdings, in the early 1700s, a new law prohibited primogeniture, and instead, when an Irish Catholic died, his land was divided among his sons and daughters. But any son who became Protestant could inherit everything. According to one report, Catholics made up 90 percent of the country’s population. A the end of 1703, they owned less than 10 percent of the land.

Catholic bishops were forced to leave the country. One priest per parish could remain, if he registered with the authorities. The rest were banished, and any who returned would be executed. In 1709, another law was enacted that forced priests to take an oath of abjuration to Protestant Queen Anne. Only 33 priests are recorded to have taken this oath, and the rest had effectively been outlawed. The law also forced people to declare where and when they had attended mass during the prior month, and report any hidden clergy.

Fowley’s Falls Mass Path.

These hidden priests held mass in secret, away from watchful eyes. It might be in a shed, or outdoors, with a rock as an altar. Priests sometimes obscured their faces, so if anyone in attendance was later questioned, they could honestly assert they did not know who had led the mass. Priest hunters, who received a bounty for any bishop, priest, or monk they captured, created further peril.

Mass attendees were at similar risk. Some walked to mass along streams, to mask their footsteps, while many took these secret mass paths to worship. Penal law reforms began late in the 18th century and continued throughout the 19th century, but it was only in 1920 that the last laws were finally repealed.

Dunnett’s project Mass Paths will be exhibited at the Custom House Studios and Gallery in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland, from March 22 to April 15, 2018. She is also running a crowdfunding campaign. Atlas Obscura spoke to the photographer about memory and landscape, researching oral histories, and how she produced her evocative images.

Given that these paths were secret, how did you find them?

The locations of these paths were traditionally passed on by word of mouth and local knowledge handed down through generations. I discovered the paths by doing searches on the Internet and finding little snippets posted by schools doing projects on local history, parish newsletters informing congregations about annual mass at the mass rock, and walking clubs that give directions, using penal sites as way-markers. These fragments led me to local maps and hunts for locations, which were hidden in the landscapes. Some paths were easily found, while others were not so straightforward! In those circumstances, I was lucky to find very helpful local people who directed me.

Caherdaniel Mass Path.

Did you find any remnants of the places where mass was held?

There are a lot of penal sites remaining in Ireland and some of my photographs document physical remnants of the places where mass was held, such as mass rocks. Some parishes still remember these sites by holding an annual mass at their local rock.

Cnoc Na Toinne Mass Path.

How did it feel to retrace these paths?

A few paths stand out from the others for being physically challenging, in particular Cnoc Na Toinne Mass Path in County Kerry. I remember thinking how committed people must have been to climb this path on a regular basis. Young and old would have walked it in all types of weather. I didn’t connect with the faithful’s fear of being discovered or the ensuing consequences, but I did sense a hope, a hope of trying to keep something alive. I came across a few very special mass rocks that emitted a sense of peace and tranquility.

Path to Bishop’s Cave.

Did you learn of any individual stories, either of worshippers or priests?

There is a plaque on Alt an tSagairt (Priest Mountain), in the Mourne Mountains, commemorating Father O’Hagan and his congregation, who were murdered by Cromwellian soldiers. This mass rock is situated 1,362 feet above sea level and has commanding views across County Down. It’s an impressive place with a very sad history. The story goes that a priest hunter spotted the group and alerted the soldiers. Priest hunters roamed the country during this period looking for, and murdering, priests for a cash bounty. There are also lots of ghost stories about mass paths and rocks. You are not supposed to build on a mass path, and those unlucky enough to live on one say they have experienced spectral events at night. Walkers also tell stories of coming across ghostly priests and their congregations at penal sites.

Cnoc Na Toinne Mass Path.

Path to Catsby Cave.

Tell us a little about the image production process, and why you decided on this treatment.

The project developed over a few years and it took a bit of experimentation to find the right printing procedure. When I started Mass Paths, I was working on another project using digital contact negatives, and I decided to try this approach. I printed cyanotypes, an early photographic technique introduced by John Hershel in 1842. The cyanotype has a blue Prussian color and I explored the effect of different toners on it. I tried a variety of toners, different teas, coffee, and tannic wine, before choosing black tea.

My photographs were shot with a digital camera and converted into negatives using Photoshop. The negatives were printed onto acetate, then contact-printed onto paper coated with the cyanotype formula, using a UV light box. The prints are fixed in a bath of vinegar and water, and then washed in water. I then tone my prints in a bath of tea for a few hours.

The cyanotype printing and subsequent toning became important in communicating the heart of the Mass Paths project. I like the idea of the process being layered like the Irish landscape, which has been coated over time by personal and national narratives.

Caherdaniel Mass Path.

Path up Masshill.

In the first century-and-a-half after the beginning of the Protestant Revolution the newly Protestant countries were authoritarian to the point of being almost totalitarian as we think of it today. Then the built in weaknesses of Protestantism - the false doctrines of sola scriptura and sola fide - began to take their toll. Fragmentation and mutual denunciation caused so much havoc that the only solution was indifference and pan-Protestant universalism (i.e. “anything but Catholic”). This inevitably led to the heresies of Liberalism and Modernism. This led - as Pope Pius X said they would - to atheism. Just look at the U.K. today.

And now it has infected many Catholics in what used to be strongly Catholic countries like Ireland.

Very interesting, sad period in Christian history. I never knew the Protestants gained that extensive of a foothold in Ireland.

Caherdaniel and the peninsula that juts westward into the North Atlantic Ocean is the next peninsula south of Dingle peninsula where Ryan's Daughter was filmed.

A land so barren of trees but otherwise beautiful and sparsely populated. The climate is fairly mild as well.

“Laudabiliter was a Papal Bull issued in 1155 by Pope Adrian IV who was the only Englishman to serve in that office. Existence of the bull has been disputed by scholars over the centuries; no copy is extant but scholars cite the many references to it as early as the 13th century to support the validity of its existence.[1] The bull purports to grant the right to the Angevin King Henry II of England to invade and govern Ireland and to enforce the Gregorian Reforms on the semi-autonomous Christian Church in Ireland”

It was all set in motion centuries earlier by an English pope; how did that work out for the English Catholics (to say nothing of Ireland’s)?

I knew about Adrian but not the rest of it. Both sides suffered. It was terrible in England, too. I have some, very little Catholic in my known ancestry. No known English Catholic. No Irish whatsoever.

I didn't want to feed into reigniting the horrors of it, but it's history, and we all have to live with it.

I have a lot of Scots Irish ancestry that settled in N. Ireland, County Derry to flee English persecutions of presumably Presbyterianism. In time the Irish Catholics gained control and persecuted the Scots Irish, mostly in property rights and taxes, records burned or unknown. So they fled to Pennsylvania.

I would like to think it wouldn't happen again. The bible clearly shows Christ not calling down fire on a city that rejected him and giving freedom of religion to another group that was casting out devils in His name but not united with the main group of apostles. Jesus I think said those who were for him can't remember.

But freedom of religion really still people hate each other and don't respect their beliefs. If it weren't for civil law, maybe most are enlightened enough to show tolerance and restraint. I don't know. I respect both sides in the English-Scottish-Irish horrors in past centuries.

And people who were brought up with closer ancestors who did suffer terrible persecution, their bitterness takes several generations to burn out if it ever does.

Irish Catholics never regained control of the North (even to this day); the Scottish Protestants were transplanted there to solidify England’s Protestant claim to the land, and the Scots-Irish have dominated the Catholics there ever since; that is the reason why the North remained in British hands when the Irish Republic became independent. Those who came to America did so for opportunity, not because of persecution (Andrew Jackson was one of them). In fact, when the North lost its luster (and economic value) and England no longer wanted to keep it, Protestants then threatened a bombing campaign to prevent the Crown from abandoning them. That same government centuries earlier had pushed them to settle there to begin with.

When the Titanic was built in Belfast, Catholics weren’t employed on the job; maybe they’d have built a better ship...

Yes, I was aware of most of that history. To this day the protestants dominate certain parts of the north. And your article says even though the Catholics were a majority, they were persecuted throughout Ireland.

There was a lot of bloodshed between the Catholics and Protestants. Bill Clinton gets/takes credit for the truce now.

Maybe they would have built a better one. Better had they had a captain less arrogant (unless he was being pushed). Or builders less boastful that it was unsinkable. It's like fate intervened in a very horrific manner.

You sound like maybe you are still bitter and blaming about it but if you had ancestors that suffered, I can't say as I would blame you. I'm sorry if it's true that the English withheld aid so that so many died and they gained power to the extent they did of which I wasn't aware, only the north. And the irony of depending on a New World plant for so much of a mainstay of their diet. There must have been some rural folk that had sheep and chickens. In any case, it must have been horrible indeed, have seed some of the photos.

Some of my ancestors came due to English persecution. I figured that many came for the opportunity and not particularly religious. And I don't want to think my Scots Irish ancestors made up about persecution but maybe they did. If I could turn back the clock and make it all right, I would. But I can't.

I was kidding about the Titanic; the Irish probably never built a ship half as big.

Clinton’s involvement was decades after “The Troubles”; basically young people from both groups started regarding the strife as their grandparents’ war and moved on (which is a good thing).

The problem wasn’t just that England withheld aid; it was that English landlords demanded payment (always paid in crops) from the little that survived the blight, and evicted those who couldn’t pay (literally tearing the roofs off the houses - an earlier version of using a tractor to smash in one corner of the farmhouses on the Great Plains during our Depression as banks foreclosed on farms). It was a genocide engineered by an England that wanted a farm at its rear (rather than an independent people) while it could focus on the continent, and the land was to be used for grazing animals rather than Irish people. In the end, it worked; nearly a quarter of the population died or fled, and the island never really industrialized outside of the tightly-controlled North.

As far as the diet, those who raised animals often did so only with the intent to sell them. The potato replaced the wheat crops because it grew more easily, could feed more people, and is a complete diet unto itself (unlike bread, people can derive all required nutrition from potatoes - they did so for centuries, with only a little meat and some fish in the diet).

I’m not bitter; it’s history, but worth remembering if only to prevent a repeat of it. I’m proud to come from a nation that never occupied another’s country, never allowed slavery, abortion, etc. - a country young enough to avoid the horrors older countries inflicted on others throughout their histories.

I wasn't aware of the extent of English brutality/oppression/persecution. Some with the landlord tenant relationship, yes. Naturally I'm ashamed of some of it an knowing a little of my English heritage naturally wanted to feel some pride in it. Some I picked up in bits and pieces in reading novels, most dealt with England and different troubles. I converted to Catholicism and became aware of the English martyrs and how priests had to hide and say mass and perform other sacraments in secret. Now I'm a lapsed Catholic but there's no looking back to Protestantism, maybe some of it and some happy childhood memories.

The Irish have a sense of pride I seldom see in other European ethnicities which is not a boastful kind or haughty. Most of my people were lowborn; a few were not.

I did read the book Trinity (and a few others that touched on Irish history) but the author was Jewish and the book seemed biassed in favor of the Protestants for being more "progressive". Per usual, my memory for detail is abysmal, but I remember his writing about there was plenty on Protestant tables and the Irish lived in poverty because they had so many children. Why? The Protestants used birth control. I hope I didn't imagine that :-).

It's getting late for me, but the passion and dedication of the photo journalist is so evident. And the care she took to tone her digital photos. Simply amazing.

I'm so glad I chanced across that post; I've learned a lot from others about their native land.

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