Most folks do not realize there was a very strong temperance movement in Ireland in the 1840’s. Fr. Theobald Mathew, a Capuchin priest in County Cork, started a temperance movement seeking to reduce the reliance of so many Irish on alcohol. He found a very receptive audience and quickly built a large successful organization. The movement jumped across the Atlantic ocean. In New Orleans, Fr. James I. Mullon, pastor at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, organized the St. Patrick’s Total Abstinence Society. Fr. Mullon, a very popular priest in his own right, administered “the pledge” after High Mass every Sunday. In 1842, the society was the pride of the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.
In 1850, Fr. Mathew crossed the ocean and visited the South. In New Orleans, he collected 13,000 new pledges. In New Orleans, Fr. Mathew was welcomed much as this country did when Mother Theresa – now Saint Theresa of India – came to visit. The Father was perceived as a virtual saint. At Memphis, he gathered 700 new pledges. At Natchez, he preached to Catholics and Protestants at St. Mary’s Cathedral. “Throngs” pledged abstinence at the altar rails.
Before Fr. Mathew was welcomed by the Southern Irish, he had to assure them that despite his meetings with abolitionists in the North, he had no intention of interfering with slavery. He assured the Southern Irish that while in the South, he would only address temperance.
Fr. Mathew arrived just in time to help dedicate a new church for the growing Irish immigrant population in New Orleans. He dedicated the new St. Alphonsus church during his visit. That first 1850 edifice was much smaller than the current St. Alphonsus church building.
Sources:
David T. Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815-1877 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press 1995), p. 61-62, 132.
Samuel Wilson, Jr., The Church of St. Alphonsus (New Orleans: Friends of St. Alphonsus 1996), p. 3.
Irish Confederates 