Delighting in the Jarlath Diaspora

A few years ago, I thought it was odd when a co-worker asked me about the St. Jarlath's t-shirt I was wearing -- Jarlath being a rarely-used Irish name, and me being related to four people who have it. Come to find out, there's a St. Jarlath's Catholic church and school in Oakland. 

This week I decided to find out why.

So I went to mass Sunday morning to see what I could see. I learned nothing about the reason for the Jarlath, but it was Palm Sunday, which I happen to love*. I left during the homily because I was bored and then to my utter delight, there was a vendor making bacon-wrapped hotdogs in the church parking lot. Not a total loss.

Later, I had a fruitless google of it while I texted with my cousin Jarlath about the failed mission -- "They are missing a trick there - the jarlaths of the world would buy some," he replied ruefully when I answered that no, they did not have any merch available. 

Undeterred (and since I'm on leave from work), I made myself an appointment at Oakland Public Library's Oakland History Center for the next afternoon. A research adventure!

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Lately I'm more inclined than ever to follow threads that lead back to Ireland like this one. My mom is dying of colon cancer. She's receiving hospice care at home in Chicagoland, and I'm across the country in Oakland, making monthly trips back to spend time with her and processing the ocean of terror I feel about life on this planet without her. One wave that has come up is that in losing Mom, I'm somehow losing my connection to Ireland, my status as an Irish Irish-American (because American Irish-Americans are deeply embarrassing a lot of times). My little brother and I even sent in for our Irish passports; I think he senses this aspect of our loss, too.

Anticipatory grief is fun because you get this frantic and futile guilty urge to capture every bit of the utterly uncapturable. I'm on this quest to find out why a church in Oakland is called St. Jarlath's as if knowing why will save me losing Mom.

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God smiles on librarians.

When I got to the spacious room on the second floor of the downtown branch, someone had already pulled a file of newspaper clippings related to the Catholic church in Oakland, including a photocopy of the article below which solves the mystery:

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St. Jarlath's parish opened as an offshoot of St. Anthony's, pastored by Father Peter C Yorke, proud alum of St. Jarlath's College in Tuam.

My granddad went to St. Jarlath's in Tuam, too. Father Yorke was "a labor activist and an Irish patriot," and though I don't know the family history back that far, I do know that our family home in Dunmore, just outside Tuam, had enough IRA pamphlets on guerrilla warfare in it for me to suspect that Yorke could have been a comrade of one of my great-great-greats. Mom was delighted by my findings. Me too.

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So anyway, that's the answer: He said "it was the delight of the Catholic church to remember her glorious dead."





* On account of the props (sword-shaped palms) and a dramatic reading (with parts!) of Jesus' arrest, conviction, and execution. Palm Sunday mass is kinda like Catholic Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had dinner with friends that night, and when I told them about my providentially-timed visit, the other one who was raised Catholic gleefully raised his fist in the air and shouted "Barabas! Free Barabas!" which is from the crowd part that we get to play lolllll. Palm Sunday mass was my second favorite behind Good Friday mass because when I was a kid that's when the priest would lay face down sprawled out on the ground in the same shape as Jesus on the cross for three minutes of silent prayer at 3 pm, the scriptural hour of Jesus' death. The drama!