In the Vatican list of the Irish clergy in 1579, Dr. Strong is twice commemorated, first, under the heading of those who
were pursuing their studies on the Continent we find him described as “Thomas Strongius, Parisiis, annorum 32”; and again, under the heading: “Qui sunt in Hibernia fideles operarii vel certe facile eo transmitti possunt”, we find him thus mentioned in the fourth place: “D. Thomas Strong, Waterfordiensis: hic tenet utramque linguam Anglicanam et Hibernicam sed melius Anglicam” (Ex Archiv. Vatic.) Immediately after his consecration he set out for the theatre of his missionary labours; but it was only “in ruffling apparel with gilt rapier and dagger”,[16] that a bishop could then visit his flock, and so vigilant were the agents of Elizabeth in his pursuit, that he was soon compelled to seek refuge in Spain. It is thus the bishop of Killaloe writes on 29th October, 1584:
“Thomas Ossoriensis episcopus mansit in Hibernia aliquot mensibus in habitu saeculari, tandem contulit se ex Hibernia ad Hispaniam”.
We cannot say with certainty whether Dr. Strange was able at any time subsequently to return to his see. Whilst in Spain he devoted himself to the sacred ministry as assistant of the bishop of Compostella, and he died there (according to the new computation) on 20th January, 1602. The contemporary, Malachy Hartry, in his Triumphalia Sanctae Crucis, thus briefly sketches his career:
“Dum in hac sua patria degisset, Catholicae fidei causâ et ecclesiae permulta et gravissima a persecutoribus sustulit et in Hispaniam ire cogitur; Compostellae in Gallicia, demum anno Domini 1601. Januarii die 20ᵒ obiit atque in claustro Cathedralis Ecclesiae D. Jacobo consecratae, sub marmoreo lapide, uti vidi cum Strangorum stemmate inciso, terrae traditur”.
PETER FRANCIS XAVIER DE RAM.
The great question of the present day is the question of education. The Catholic Church, as the infallible teacher of men, claims for herself the right to control human thought, and exercises that right by sitting in judgment on each newfangled system as it appears. This claim is peremptorily rejected by the civil power, which, on its part, wishes to make of education a department of government. The science of the age sides on the whole with the civil power as against the Church. Towards the ecclesiastical authorities it assumes at
times an air of pity, as towards men whose otherwise estimable qualities are warped by a religious bigotry which is eminently unscientific; at times it exhibits irritation and distrust; at times again it is in open and undisguised antagonism. In the face of a jealous government, to urge, and to urge successfully, the inalienable rights of the Church, requires no ordinary tact; in the face of the contempt, or distrust, or antagonism of the intellect of a country, to take every understanding captive unto Christ, demands no ordinary courage and ability. And yet this is what is meant by founding a Catholic University; and this has been achieved in the nineteenth century in Belgium, under God, through the instrumentality of one priest, Monsignor Peter Francis Xavier De Ram, the late Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain. A life such as his is a model which all may study with great profit. It is only with his spirit and through his principles that we may hope to obtain for Ireland what he obtained for Belgium—the full liberty of Catholic education.
De Ram’s great work, but not his only work, was the foundation of the Catholic University of Louvain. At the time when he was called by the bishops of Belgium to form and direct the new institution, he was diligently engaged in promoting the spread of good books, in illustrating the antiquities of his country, and especially in publishing the lives of the saints and other distinguished men who have shed glory on his native land. Almost in his infancy he imbibed a special predilection for the study of the lives of the saints from a holy aunt, a religious of the Premonstratensian Order, who lived in his father’s house, having been driven from her convent at the time of the first French Revolution. Even before he had completed his clerical studies, this taste made him publish, as author or editor, several works bearing on the lives of the saints, and before he was twenty-five years of age he undertook a new edition in the Flemish language of the great works on this subject by Alban Butler and Godescard. This taste he preserved through life, and to it when fully developed we are indebted for his other great works, the Collections of Belgian Synods, the Synodicum Belgicum, the Synodicum Antverpiense, and Ecclesiastical History of Belgium, Belgica Sacra, of which he published the plan in 1830, for which since then he has been collecting most abundant materials, but which, alas! he has not lived to finish.