A Very Contrary Irishman

By Paul Collins

Jeremiah O'Flynn was a wandering priest par excellence. Born in 1786 in Tralee, Ireland, his life spanned England (where he trained as a monk and was ordained a Catholic priest), the Caribbean islands of Martinique, Saint Croix (now the US Virgin Islands), Haiti and Dominica as well as Rome, Hobart and New South Wales (under Governor Macquarie), Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia and upstate Pennsylvania in the United States. On the way to Sydney, he visited Madeira, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. O'Flynn completed a circumnavigation of the world when he was deported by Macquarie from Sydney in 1818, rounding Cape Horn on his way back to London. And he did all of this travel in the decade between 1813 and 1825. He is credited as being one of the founders of the Catholic Church in Australia where historians have treated him as an almost mythical figure who generously travelled to the ends of the earth to minister to the equally-romanticised poor and regularly flogged ("for refusing to attend the Protestant services") Irish convicts, who were really all "innocent political prisoners". He is also seen as the heroic pioneer priest of the Catholic Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania. While essentially well-intentioned, O'Flynn was a very contrary and difficult man who resented all authority figures in both church and state. He seems rather modern in that he valued freedom, and was resentful of any form of personal, political or ecclesiastical authoritarianism. His life intersected with the key political, social and ecclesiastical issues of the day such as the French Revolution, slavery, the establishment of the British Empire, convict transportation, Catholic emancipation and the massive missionary expansion of Catholicism in the nineteenth century. Drawn from primary sources in the UK, the US and Australia, the book situates him in these historical contexts and explains how the bigger political issues of the time impacted on his life. Book jacket.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1498234984
• ISBN13: 9781498234986
• Release Date: July 2015
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.4"