The Rest is Silence

This is our last issue. This week the "Donegal Vindicator" dies and we ourselves have chosen to bury it.

It is not an easy task--we perform it with sadness in our heart, mind and eyes but with the full and certain knowledge that what we do is right, just and honorable.

Sixty-seven years ago we raised the "Vindicator" bannerhead in the service of the Irish and Catholic cause. We have fought with all the strength of our convictions in that service. Through those years we have savoured fully the fruits of reversal and victory, of oppression and freedom, of sorrow and joy; pleasing and offending; encouraging, exhorting and leading; sympathising, congratulating and decrying; living, sharing and working with our own, with the people of Donegal.

We are human and we are mortal. Human, we take pride in our record, and on our departure re-affirm every syllable penned and printed as our views. Mortal, we bow to the inevitable; on earth all things must die.

It is our privilege to write our own obituary, but we do not do so. What we have written is writ, what we have done is done.

Our experiences have been varied and many; they have taught us much and they have taught us nothing. We had one path to follow and we did not leave it. In these later weeks, leading to that decision we now enforce, the background of those experiences eased its making. They were the sounding-board and they all rang with the one note.

We have been, and we are to the final period, a Donegal paper, jealously and bitterly parochial and none the worse for it. In our last moments we abjure, and spit upon, the tinsel proffered by party dilettantes, those who preach for reward, for they are a revulsion of putrefaction.

To those journalists, newspapermen and printers who survive us in Donegal, with truth and sincerity, we wish God's blessing. To our colleagues elsewhere a fond farewell, and to you, dear reader, let memory be kind.

One further and special word, and that to Ballyshannon, the centre of our coming and our going. We have been happy together, through the good and the bad. May your happiness continue and increase, and with wisdom, charity and forbearance may the one essential for all good come your way--unity.  

A copy of the above hand-written editorial was preserved by my brothers and returned to me by my niece, Carol, in February of this year. The sadness is gone, replaced by pride in what we of the "Vindicator" attempted and accomplished.

© John Ward, Canada
Friday, May 3, 2000 A.D.
Eighty-fourth anniversary of
the execution in Kilmainham Jail of Thomas MacDonagh.

In homage to Eily MacAdam and her hero, Thomas MacDonagh, two poems are appended.

Ecumenical Council (An Easter Thought)

"Who will roll back the stone?" the holy women sighed
Bearing, at dawn, anointing unguents to the tomb
Of the Beloved Master in anxious gloom
That turned to joy, for angel hand had set it wide.
He who was dead is risen--It was Eastertide--
He who had woven with mankind, in upper room,
Fabric of mystic brotherhood, which the loom
Weaves ill to-day--the master-piece all blurred by pride.
Wherefore, from Peter's Chair, comes invitation
That Christian men seek Christ as holy women sought
In bond of love, sad for the world's desolation--
To quest the tapestry of one-ness that He wrought,
Bearing the fragrant spice of charity alone,
What joy if angel hand roll back the sund'ring stone!

Death 

Life is a boon--and death as spirit
and flesh are twain;
The body is spoil of death, the spirit
lives on death-free;
The body dies and its wound dies and
the mortal pain;
The wounded spirit lives, wounded
immortally.

The End

[Postscript] In the second edition of The "Vindicator Story" the content dealing with Pa McAdam's early life in Ireland has been altered to correspond with research carried out by his great-granddaughter Carol Briscoe (nee Ward). All references to Lipton should be deleted.