Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice

In March of 1966, my great grandfather Dr. Fergus O’Connor received the medal of the Holy Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Paul VI in recognition of his contributions to medicine for over sixty years. The papal nuncio came to the house at 193 Earl Street in Kingston, Ontario to bestow the medal, due to the advanced age of the recipient, celebrating Mass there as well. In March of 2008, when my late Aunt Mary's belongings were being distributed among the relatives, I happened to come across the certificate that accompanied the medal from the pope. (See photo above.) According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice was instituted by Pope Leo XIII (17 July, 1888, "Quod Singulari") in memory of his golden sacerdotal jubilee, and bestowed on those women and men who had merited well by aiding and promoting, and by other excellent ways and means assisted in making the jubilee and the Vatican Exposition successful. This decoration was made a permanent distinction only in October, 1898 (Giobbio, see below). Its object is to reward those who in a general way deserve well of the pope on account of services done for the Church and its head. The medal is of gold, silver or bronze. The decoration is not subject to chancery fees. The medal is a cross made octangular in form by fleurs-de-lis fixed in the angles of the cross in a special manner. The extremities of the cross are of a slightly patonce form. In the centre of the cross is a small medal with an image of its founder, and encircling the image are the words LEO XIII P. M. ANNO X (tenth year of his pontificate). On the obverse side are the papal emblems in the centre, and in the circle surrounding the emblems the motto PRO DEO ET PONTIFICE is stamped. On the obverse surface of the branches of the cross are comets — which with the fleurs-de-lis form the coat of arms of the Pecci family. On the reverse side are stamped the words, PRIDIE (left branch); KAL. (top branch); JANUAR. (right branch); 1888 (at the foot). The ribbon is purple, with delicate lines of white and yellow on each border. The decoration is worn on the right side of breast.

Fergus Joseph O'Connor was the son of Charles and Emily O'Connor of Long Point Farm, born on April 1, 1879, Easter Sunday. As Fergus' second son and namesake wrote of him: "It's hard to describe a man with such integrity of character. He was the perfect son to his parents -- the brother to his only sister and complete support to his family." (Dr. Fergus James O'Connor, Because You asked For It)

Fergus loved horses and wanted to become a jockey, for which he was suited due to his stocky stature. His mother, however, encouraged him to seek as much education as possible. He went to high school in Athens, Ontario, and then went to the “Normal School” for teachers' training in Ottawa. It was around that time that he decided to study medicine. His father had wanted Fergus to help him maintain the homestead, but accepted his decision to become a doctor. He taught school to earn his tuition for medical school at Queen's University in Kingston. In his third year, he missed classes the first term because his funds had run out and he had to teach school again to make more money, but his roommate took notes for him, so he was able to pass anyway. He did not have much recreation, and only went to one football game all the time he was at Queen's.

In the summer of 1902, when Fergus first registered at Queen’s he rode his bicycle the 32 miles into Kingston. After finishing his business at the university, he became lost. He drove past three young ladies playing croquet on the front lawn and asked them for directions. One of them was Frances Keating. Frances Margaret Keating was of Norman-Irish stock on her father’s side; her mother was an O’Neill. Fergus and Frank were married at the dawn Mass at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Kingston on September 3, 1907. The Mass was followed by a simple wedding breakfast. The new Dr. and Mrs. O’Connor moved to Gananoque in the Thousand Islands area where Fergus set up a practice and built a house.

Fergus' practice involved house calls, as was the custom in those days. He was often called out at night to deliver a baby, and often had to travel unlit roads into remote areas. It was vital for a country doctor to have a reliable horse so as to get him to his patients; my great grandfather had many stories about horse traders. After tending to a patient in the countryside, he could doze in the buggy or sleigh, since the horse knew the way home.

In December of 1916, Fergus was elected mayor of Gananoque. His election was a tribute to the respect generated by his professional dedication and personal integrity. It was remarkable given the local history of conflict between the few Irish Catholics settlers and the Protestant majority, especially the Irish Protestants, called “Orangeman.” Fergus, without compromising any of his beliefs and principles, was able to overcome a great deal of anti-Catholic prejudice, and became the popular “little mayor.”

In 1918, my great-grandparents moved to 193 Earl Street in Kingston, Ontario, with seven of their soon-to-be eight children. They decided to move into Kingston so that their children could go to the Catholic schools available there. A white rose bush from the original that old Daniel had brought over from Ireland was planted outside the front door. Fergus slowly built up a new practice. He taught medicine at Queen’s University, and continued on the faculty for forty years. His close friend, Monsignor J.G. Hanley said of him:

His concern for his students was not limited to their professional development. Working in an area fraught with deep moral implications, he instilled in future obstetricians sound ethical principles to guide them in making crucial decisions which would crucially affect the lives of their patients. Moreover, he was not merely a professor to his students; they all regarded him as a personal friend, and so he was.

By the late 1930’s he was delivering one third of all the babies in Kingston. He had many poor patients who could not pay, but to Fergus being a doctor was a vocation, not a career. However, he would gratefully accept an offering such as a bag of potatoes in the place of money, so that he could feed his family. He eventually became Chief of Obstetrics at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston and remained so for almost half a century. He delivered his last baby at age eighty-four.

Fergus was also active in the community and the church. He was on the Separate School Board for many years, as well as being a city alderman. He belonged to the Knights of Columbus and in 1945 founded the Queen’s chapter of the Newman Club.

Fergus died on April 21, 1971. I am grateful for the few memories I have of this wonderful man, a true patriarch. I recall how approachable he was, how kindly and gentle with small children. A Kingston newspaper article described him in his nineties as being “still active and spry…his eyes twinkling….with short quick steps“ and that is exactly as he appears in my memory. One of the main characters in The Paradise Tree is based upon him.
 

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'Obergefell' Has Harmed Children

 From The Federalist:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the Obergefell majority opinion, wrote that same-sex couples needed to be afforded the “constellation of benefits” that marriage provided. The last 10 years have proved that children are among those so-called “benefits.” Thus, in the name of constitutional rights, the law had to accomplish what biology prohibits: making two same-sex adults the parents of a child. That legal mandate has reshaped family law in sweeping ways: parenthood statutes have been stripped of sexed terms, regarding mothers and fathers as interchangeable “parents;” infertility has been reclassified so that same-sex couples can deliberately produce motherless or fatherless children with the help of insurance subsidies; birth certificates have been altered to legally exclude a child’s biological parent; new parentage pathways have been created that bypass both biological and adoptive safeguards; genetic parenthood has been downgraded as just one option among many; procreation has been stripped of its unique social value within adult partnerships.

 Obergefell did not merely extend legal recognition to same-sex couples, it was a legal change that is incongruent with any familial distinctions that had, for centuries, grounded marriage and parenthood in both common law and biological reality. These are not mere academic shifts. They are foundational changes in how the law and culture understand the human family, with real consequences for children. When familial distinctions are erased, children become items to be awarded by state-enforced contract. (Read more.)

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The Internal Politics of the Islamic Revolution Behind the Seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran

 From It Can Always Get Worse:

The 4 November 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy by the “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line” (MSFIL) is often said to have been provoked by President Jimmy Carter allowing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran, into the U.S. for medical treatment on 22 October, and this is criticised as a misstep by the U.S. that destroyed the possibility of salvaging relations with Iran under the new revolutionary government. The problem with this narrative on its face is the date: while it works in a superficial sense for the Embassy crisis a fortnight later, the more important antecedent question is why the Shah, who had needed treatment for more than half-a-year, was only granted access to it at that point.

The answer is that Carter, having contributed to the Shah’s political demise with his staggering incompetence and shameful refusal to properly support a loyal ally throughout the 1978 crisis, had then betrayed the Shah even after he had fallen. Carter told the Shah via the U.S. Embassy in December 1978 that he “would be welcome to come to the United States”, and then withdrew the offer in March 1979. Carter’s motive was to avoid antagonising those who had conquered Iran from the Shah, the gang of terrorists who were openly pledged to an anti-American program and were already at that moment slaughtering the men and women who had served the U.S.-allied Imperial Government. Carter’s behaviour was so disgraceful in forcing the Shah to wander the earth—from Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico—in search of a place to die with a modicum of dignity that it made Henry Kissinger the humanitarian of the situation. Kissinger used his political leverage, threatening to withhold public support for Carter’s ludicrous SALT II agreement with the Soviets, to have Carter relent on the Shah getting medical treatment in America.

That context understood, it casts doubt on the whole premise that it was the U.S. that sabotaged relations with Revolutionary Iran by being too unwavering in its commitment to the Shah. And, indeed, on inspection, the reality is the reverse.

For one thing, the U.S. Embassy had already been stormed by the Islamic Revolution, on 14 February 1979, three days after the Islamist-Communist coup that had brought down the Interim Government left behind when the Shah departed the country on 16 January.1 On that occasion the “students” had withdrawn in short order, but clearly the revolutionary regime had the idea for an attack on the Embassy right from the start. The overarching motive for the second Islamist attack on the U.S.’s Iran Embassy in November 1979 was not that the Americans were being too hostile to Revolutionary Iran, but that progress towards some sort of Iranian-American accord was going too well. (Read more.)

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