The death of a friend who returned to US in the 1990s

Paul and Dawn Ruth Nelson in a photograph posted on her Facebook page

Patrick Comerford

Paul Joseph Nelson, who died at Souderton Mennonite Home in Pennsylvania, last Thursday [13 September 2018], spent many years in Dublin in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.

Paul’s wife, Dawn Ruth Nelson, died last year, on 21 August 2017.

During their time in Dublin, I shared many activities with Paul and Dawn, including protests organised by Christian CND, conferences organised by the Student Christian Movement, and editorial workshops on a nonviolence journal called Dawn – the name was truly a coincidence – which was produced in the SCM House in Dublin, then at 168 Rathgar Road.

Paul was born in Iowa City on 23 April 1951. At the time, his parents – Boyd H and Welma B (Graber) Nelson – were living in Wayland, Iowa. The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, in 1952. Paul was baptised in Prairie Street Mennonite Church in 1964.

As a child and a teenager, Paul was intellectually curious, adept at math and science, and designed things such as a unicycle, a skateboard and a banjo.

Paul graduated from Bethany Christian High School in Goshen in 1969, and from Goshen College in 1973 with a degree in chemistry. In the mid-1970s, he was part of Assembly Mennonite Church (Goshen), took classes at Associated (now Anabaptist) Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart), and for a time was director of the Elkhart County Home.

Paul and Dawn were the first of a group of US Mennonites who came to Dublin in autumn 1979. There they were part of the Mennonite mission and peace witness team to support an Irish Mennonite, Mike Garde. They were sponsored by the Mennonite Board of Missions and the Mennonite Central Committee and the community shared a large house in inner-city Ballybough, close to Summerhill and Croke Park, where I was often a welcome guest.

In Dublin, Paul returned to graduate studies at Trinity College Dublin, and earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. Paul and his friend Graham Corcoran then established Phoenix Cycles, which operated for several years in a workshop near TCD.

This was an effort to be self-supporting and to provide jobs at a time of high unemployment in Ireland.

I bought one of those Phoenix bikes around 1984 – I remember it was lightweight, green and had ten gears – and while I was studying for my BD I used it for a year to cycle from Firhouse to Kimmage Manor for lectures each morning, before heading on into work in The Irish Times.

Eventually, cycling home from work in the late evening in Dublin became a hair-raising if not life-threating experience, with potholes big enough to be craters but invisible in the dark, and late-night drunks driving home from the pub. I passed Paul’s bike onto another friend, but still remember its pioneering qualities.

Paul and Dawn returned to the US with their three children in 1991, moving to Harleysville, Pennsylvania, near Dawn’s family home. He worked as information technology manager in Hatfield, where he worked for 20 years, making the 12-mile round-trip to work on his bicycle in all kinds of weather. I wonder whether it was based on his Phoenix prototype, and whether he remembered my scary stories about the bike he had sold me.

Paul and Dawn were part of Salford Mennonite Church, Harleysville, then Methacton Mennonite Church, Eagleville, where Dawn served as pastor for 11 years until 2014, and Plains Mennonite Church, Hatfield. They were part of Bridgefolk, a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics who come together to celebrate each other’s traditions and explore each other’s practices.

Paul was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a form of frontotemporal dementia, late in 2014. For some time, he continued to volunteer several mornings a week at the Mennonite Central Committee Material Resource Centre in Harleysville.

Paul shared Dawn’s interest in Christian formation, and he enjoyed classes and retreats, and the conversation and companionship of Barry’s Boys, a men’s group that provided support as Paul’s health declined. He moved from the cottage he had shared with Dawn at Souderton Mennonite Home into Park View and then into nursing care.

He continued to take pleasure in frequent visits from his children, listening to audio books, and following English Premier League soccer and the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles.

Dawn continued to write after their return to America. We kept in touch occasionally, and we were sorry to miss each other during her last visit to Ireland.

Throughout his life, Paul’s deep commitments, his fundamental decency, and his dry wit endeared him to his family and his friends.

In keeping with his generosity of spirit, Paul has donated his brain to the University of Pennsylvania Medical Centre in the hope that study of his brain can contribute to understanding and effective treatment of the brain disorder that took his life.

He is survived by his children – Sarah Ruth, Peter Levi (Emily Bender), and Benjamin Henry Paul Nelson – and by an older brother, Benjamin H (Susan Gardner) Nelson, and a younger sister, Barbara (James) Nelson Gingerich.

A memorial service takes place in Plains Mennonite Church, Hatfield, at 3 p.m. on Sunday 23 September.

Dawn Ruth Nelson (left) leading the hymn-singing at a service outside the US Embassy in Dublin on 9 April 1982 to protest against naming a nuclear submarine ‘USS Corpus Christi’ … with (from left) Brian Judge, the Revd Feargal Brennan SJ, Linda Liechty, Patrick Comerford, and Martin Rowan of the Student Christian Movement

Saint Ailbe’s Church continues 1,500 years of Christian worship in Emly

Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, Co Tipperary, stands beside the site of the former Cathedral of Alibeus, dismantled in 1877 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

When the Church of Ireland realised the Cathedral of Saint Alibeus in Emly, Co Tipperary, was surplus to its needs and a drain on finances burden, the local Roman Catholic Parish priest, Canon Maurice Power, offered to buy the empty cathedral for £2,000.

However, his offer was rejected by Bishop Maurice Fitzgerald Day … on supposedly legal grounds, although they were never fully explained. These were the days immediately after disestablishment, and the grounds for Bishop Day’s refusal were flimsy, if not a reflection long-time tensions between the two traditions.

The Roman Catholic Church already had a small, pre-famine chapel in Emly, built in 1809, 20 years before Catholic Emancipation, and the cathedral would have provided an appropriate replacement. But the cathedral was demolished in 1877, and in 1880-1883 Canon Power built a new Roman Catholic parish church, dedicated to Saint Ailbe, beside the grounds of the cathedral.

Inside Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, Co Tipperary, designed by Pugin’s son-in-law, George Coppinger Ashlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In the aftermath of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Emly had an unsettled history from the mid-16th to the early 18th century. In that period, there were only three Bishops of Emly and one vicar apostolic, and one of these had been executed.

Dermot O’Hurley, who was born at Emly ca 1530, spent much of his time working in Leuven and Rheims as a professor of philosophy and then a professor of law. He was still a layman when he was appointed Archbishop of Cashel by Pope Gregory XIII in 1581. He was ordained and consecrated in 1583 and returned to Ireland that year, landing at Holmpatrick Strand in Skerries, Co Dublin.

But he never reached his diocese. Instead, he was arrested in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, imprisoned and tried for treason. He was tortured and then executed in June 1584, and was buried in Saint Kevin’s churchyard in Camden Row, Dublin.

Terence Albert O’Brien, a Dominican friar from Cappamore, Co Limerick, was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Emly, with the right of succession, and he was consecrate an on 11 March 1647 by the Papal Nuncio, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Rinuccini. At the time, the Papacy did not know Bishop Maurice O’Hurley had already died in office in September 1646.

Terence O’Brien was consecrated bishop on 2 April 1648.He actively supported the military policy of the Confederation of Kilkenny, and was captured by the Cromwellian troops after the siege of Limerick. He was tried before a court martial and sentenced to execution by Cromwell’s son-in-law, General Henry Ireton. He was executed in Limerick on 26 November 1651.

Terence O’Brien was the last Bishop of Emly. Although James Stritch was nominated Bishop of Emly in 1695, he never took possession of the see.

From then on, there were long periods when Emly was vacant or administered by the Archbishops of Cashel. Edward Comerford was appointed Archbishop of Cashel on 14 November 1695 and administrator of Emly and Kilfenora. He lived in Thurles and died in office on 21 February 1710.

He was succeeded by Archbishop Christopher Butler, and in 1718 Pope Clement XI decreed the union of the sees of Cashel and Emly.

The foundation stone of Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, was laid by Archbishop Croke of Cashel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Saint Ailbe’s Church in Emly was designed by Pugin’s son-in-law, George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921), and was built of limestone from quarries at Hospital and Knockcarron, Co Limerick, in 1880-1882 by Healy Brothers of Tralee, Co Kerry, at a total cost of £14,500.

The church was built close to and parallel with the site of the demolished Church of Ireland Cathedral of Saint Alibeus. The foundation stone was laid by Thomas Croke, Archbishop of Cashel (1875-1902), on 30 May 1880, and the church was dedicated to Saint Ailbe on 6 January 1883.

Saint Ailbe’s is a robust Gothic Revival church and its architectural quality is seen in its scale, form, features and materials, with an interesting combination of rock-faced rubble limestone and ashlar dressings.

This is a cruciform church with clerestories, a nave, aisles and chancel, and a four-stage bell tower with a spire on the north side. The elaborate composition at the entrance front links the portal doorway and the rose window above.

The East Window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, with Bishop Terence O’Brien (left) Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley (right), and their episcopal coats-of-arms below (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Outside, there are limestone cross finials, polychrome limestone walls, a carved limestone chimneystack, a cut limestone plinth course and stepped buttresses. The rose window at the front is set into a round-arch recess with an ornate keystone that supports the projecting base of a pointed-arch recess with statue of Saint Ailbe.

The sculpted tympanum has trefoil-arch recesses with statues over the pair of square-headed door openings, which have moulded architraves, carved recessed shoulders and timber battened doors flanked by colonnettes with dove and floral motifs on the capitals. Colonnettes support the decorative archivolt to the tympanum and all are flanked in turn by a second pair of colonnettes that continue upward to support the archivolt of the overall composition.

Inside, the church has a five-bay nave and four-bay side aisles, double lancet and triple lancet windows, rose windows, cinquefoil windows, and a pointed-arch five-light East Window with geometrical limestone tracery. There are colonettes with dressed stone capitals and floral capitals, and a visually magnificent array of stained-glass windows.

The three-light window by Alfred Ernest Child (1905) depicting the Archangel Michael (centre), the Archangel Gabriel (left) and the Archangel Raphael (right) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018).

The main altar and the side altars have ornate sculpted marble reredoses. The pointed arcades of the side aisles with continuous hood-moulding and with human head stops, over clustered marble columns with vegetal capitals. The decorative marble gallery over the entrance end of the nave is supported on an arcade of brown marble columns. There is a timber scissors truss roof with braces supported on ornate corbels linked by moulded string courses.

The sandstone water font at the West Door is probably the mediaeval font from the early cathedral that stood in the adjoining churchyard.

The stained-glass windows are the work of the Mayer Studios of Munich and Dublin, James Watson of Youghal, Sarah Purser and Alfred Ernest Child, Michael Healy, Catherine O’Brien and other members of An Túr Gloine studios.

The five-light East Window depicts (from left), Bishop O’Brien, Saint Patrick, Saint Ailbe, Saint Bridget, and Archbishop O’Hurley. The episcopal coats-of-arms of Bishop O’Brien and Archbishop O’Hurley can be seen beneath their depictions.

Dermot O’Hurley and Terence Albert O’Brien were among the 17 Irish martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II in Rome on 27 September 1992.

A window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, depicting the Visitation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, depicting the Flight into Egypt (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018).

A window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, depicting the young Christ in the family home and workshop in Nazareth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, depicting the Last Supper … notice Judas to the right without a halo but holding the purse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, depicting the Garden in Gethsemane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A two-light window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, including Christ the King (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This morning: The Cathedral of Saint Alibeus, Emly, Co Tipperary.