silver jubilee: the central catholic library celebrates its twenty-fifth birthday

Irish Jesuit Province

Silver Jubilee: The Central Catholic Library Celebrates Its Twenty-Fifth BirthdayAuthor(s): Charlotte M. KellySource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 75, No. 888 (Jun., 1947), pp. 237-240Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515663 .

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237

Silver Jubilee The Central Catholic Library celebrates its Twenty-Fifth Birthday.

By Charlotte M. Kelly

TWENTY-FIVE

years ago the Central Catholic Library was

founded in Dublin by an associa tion of priests and laymen as a work of

Catholic Apostolate, and to fulfil the ideals of Pope Pius XI who gave it a

special blessing. Its first home was a single room

above a city shop, its stock-in-trade

under 2,000 books, and its financial resources little more than nominal.

The time was not propitious for the

establishment of what was to be a

pioneer enterprise, for Ireland was

rent by civil war. But the courage of the founders was undaunted and on

25th June, 1922, the C.C.L. opened its doors to the public.

There followed a quarter of a cen

tury of unceasing effort on the part of all concerned, and of steady pro gress despite opposition, indifference,

tepidity, and misunderstanding. This

year, which marks its Silver Jubilee, finds the library firmly established at Nos. 74 and 75 Merrion Square, where

it has built up a collection, in some

respects unique, of almost 50,000 volumes. Its activities, confined at

first to a Reference Library have been

developed into several departments; and to the many who use it, as well as

to those who help to make possible its use to others, it has become an

essential part of their lives.

While all this has been accom

plished only by the devoted zeal and

unswerving loyalty of a large number

of people, it is still not uncommon to

hear on the lips of those who regard themselves and are regarded as excel

lent Catholics these two questions :? "

What is the Catholic Library? "

" Where is the Catholic Library ?

"

Implied if not actually stated is yet a third : "

Why do we need a

Catholic Library, when every school

and church society has its own

selection of religious works? "

If one fact has emerged more

clearly than another from the disas trous records of the past decade it is

that now, as never before, the world is

sharply divided between good and evil. No longer can mankind remain merely

passive, but must choose between God and Mammon under new disguises.

Moreover the Christian, still more the

Catholic, must be prepared to justify his choice, to give reasons for the



238 THE IRISH MONTHLY

faith that is in him. The assaults that have been made and will continue to

be made upon the most fundamental

doctrines of Christianity must be com

bated with knowledge and assurance.

In this country, perhaps because such

attacks have been more covert than

elsewhere, the average Catholic, secure

in his possession of a strong faith, is

inclined to leave its defence to its pro fessional exponents, the clergy. Yet

any chance encounter in club or social

gathering may see the Church's

teaching criticised or openly denied, and the particular knowledge some

times required to meet such criticism is not always readily obtainable, short of direct appeal to ecclesiastical

authority, since few public libraries even in this avowedly Catholic State have more than a very small percen

tage of Catholic books. It was to render accessible to the

general public, books on all subjects of interest to Catholics that the C.C.L.

was established. It should be empha sised that it is not a purely religious

library. One of the hardest tasks of

its founders has been to dispel the

idea, prevalent even among educated

Catholics, that a Catholic library must contain only spiritual books and lives of the saints. These are to be found there of course, but with them works on history, travel, biography, political economy, socialism, communism,

democracy, as well as all that is best in Catholic literature, drama, poetry,

essays. There, too, are books ora

theology, Canon Law, and medical

ethics, not obtainable by the layman in,

any other public library. Thus it can

be seen what a vast gulf separates the

ordinary sodality or college library,

designed for the instruction and edifi

cation of a limited set of people, and

the Central Catholic library, which is

intended for readers of all classes.

What are the aims of the C.C.L. ?

It wants to help the average

Catholic, the man-in-the-street, the

housewife, as much as the teacher, the

student, the social worker, the journa list, the professional man, and the

priest, in their separate spheres of

work. It wants to be a permanent

exhibition of Catholic achievement in

literature and art, a centre of Catholic

culture and thought, and a practical aid to Catholic writers and publishers by making known the wealth and

variety of Catholic literature. It

wants to act as a kind of international

link, enabling Irish people to study the history and literature of other

nations, and foreigners living in

Ireland to find something of the litera

ture of their several countries. It has

been helped towards this end by the

generous donations of books, pam

phlets, and periodicals from the official

representatives in Ireland of foreign

governments*.

While, therefore, the publications of the United States, Great Britain, and many European countries are



SILVER JUBILEE 289

fully represented in the C.C.L. those

of our own country are naturally given a prominent place ; the comprehensive collection of books in Irish being aug

mented regularly by the publications of An Gum and the Gaelic League. It is hoped in time to possess a

selection of Catholic books in Scottish

Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

Of the various criticisms that have

been levelled at the ?.C.L. from time

to time one was the impossibility of

carrying on such an

enterprise with

voluntary help. That the library was

successfully launched, maintained for

25 years, and has reached its present

status largely with voluntary worker

is proof sufficient that, given goodwill and perseverance, such a system is

quite practicable. But the complaint most often heard

is the old one of "

narrowminded

ness " because of the library's policy

of almost entire exclusion of non

Catholic writers, even of fiction, from

its shelves. Such an accusation can

only be made by those who do not

understand the particular character of

the C.C.L. It is a specialist library,

specialising in Catholicism just as

other libraries specialise in engineering or science. As such it does not want

to compete with or imitate other

libraries, but to supplement them. Its

ambition is to provide its readers with

books that are difficult to get else

where. By thus concentrating its resources it can hope to attain a degree

of completeness in its own subject im

possible to a more general library. If, therefore, among the novels in

the Lending Department, Dickens,

Thackeray, Trollope, not to mention modern non-Catholic writers, are not

to be found, it is no spirit of bigotry that is responsible for their absence, but the fact that in an exclusively Catholic library these books and

others like them, however excellent, have no place. Any public library can supply them ; not so easily perhaps the Irish Catholic fiction of the 19th

century, the Banims, Kickhams,

Griffins, of which the C.C.L. has a

small but precious collection. But if

it retains these upon its shelves

together with the "

best-sellers "

of

the day-before-yesterday, Benson,

Marion Crawford, Canon Sheehan,

Conrad, it also buys every new pub

lication within its scope, whether it be a serious work on theology, the latest

American biography, or the most

recent novel of Maurice Walsh or

Philip Gibbs. It is noticeable that

those who visit the C.C.L. almost

invariably return ; were the public as

a whole more fully

aware of the vast

material at its disposal the library would be even more availed of than it

is at present.

What is the Central Catholic

Library as it stands to-day ?

From the original Reference

library with its tiny store of books

has sprung : ?



240 THE IRISH MONTHLY

(a) A free Reading Room, open

daily from 11.0 a.m. to 10.0 p.m. with access to some thirty to forty, thousand books and over a hundred

Catholic periodicals from all parts of

the world.

(b) A free News Room, open from

11.0 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. containing

daily and wtekly papers.

(c) A Lending Department where

Catholic fiction and non-fiction,

including books for children, and

Irish, French, German, Spanish, and

Italian publications, may be borrowed on very moderate terms. Country

readers can get their books by post, and may be helped in their choice by the Catalogue of Novels and Tales

by Catholic writers compiled by the

Rev. Stephen J. Brown, S.J. (Price

2/6), and the List of Accessions (Price

6d.).

(d) An Information Bureau that

supplies, free of charge, information on all subjects of Catholic interest,

(e) A Lecture Hall where series of

lectures by prominent speakers are

held every winter.

(f) The Central Depot of the

Branch Libraries of the C.C.L, eleven

of which are already established in the

environs of Dublin.

While all this represents a notable

achievement in 25 years a great deal more must be accomplished before the

ambitions of its founders, particularly

the Hon. Librarian, Father Stephen

Brown, S.J., are realised. Since the

library is always growing the problem of space is an ever-present one, |This

Silver Jubilee year has seen a further much needed expansion of the

premises, including the taking over for

library purposes of rooms hitherto let

to augment finances. Save for one

small grant for the News Room the

C.C.L. has no source oi income other

than its own efforts and the donations*

of the public. The cost of main

tenance was never higher than at

present, and if the policy of pur

chasing all suitable new publications is

to be continued it must have help from

those for whose benefit it exists.

What is the future of the Central

Catholic Library ?

It is impossible to forecast how it

will develop in the next quarter cen

tury. But one thing is certain. If

the need for a Catholic library was

so urgent 25 years ago that it was

founded at what was, practically

speaking, a very inauspicious moment

for such an undertaking, that need is^

infinitely greater now. Ireland as a

nation is rapidly becoming more

important in the eyes of the world ; as a Catholic State it is essential that an institution so representative of the

land of saints and scholars as is the

Central Catholic Library should be

fittingly supported.



silver jubilee: the central catholic library celebrates its twenty-fifth birthday

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