No Drinking!
Fr Theobold Mathew was the guest speaker at the opening of St. Peter's Church in Warrenpoint in 1841. It was said that up to 26,000 people were in attendance in the town on that day for the occasion. Fr. Mathew administered the Pledge to people on the Square on the same day.
Theobald Mathew (1790–1856), an Irish teetotalist reformer, popularly known as Father Mathew was born at Thomastown, near Golden, County Tipperary, on October 10, 1790.
He received his schooling in Kilkenny, then moved for a short time to
Maynooth. From 1808 to 1814 he studied in Dublin, where in the latter year he was ordained to the priesthood. Having entered the Capuchin order, after a brief period of service at Kilkenny, he joined the mission in Cork.
Total Abstinence Society
The movement with which his name is associated began on 10 April 1838 with the establishment of the "Cork Total Abstinence Society" which relied on one enduring act of will to keep a person sober for life. It was called simply The Pledge.
Father Mathew did not believe in gradual approaches or temporary commitments. He advocated a promise that meant complete commitment. One simple commitment, encased in the words of the Total Abstinence Pledge, supposedly did the trick. The surroundings did not make much difference. One could take the pledge as a single individual or as one of a waiting line coming up in a parish, mobilized and brimming with enthusiasm for the occasion. However, Father Mathew arrived at this conclusion only after much prayer for guidance and after urging by others who proposed total abstinence over moderation.
In less than nine months no fewer than 150,000 names were enrolled as taking the Pledge. It rapidly spread to Limerick and elsewhere, and some idea of its popularity may be formed from the fact that at Nenagh 20,000 persons are said to have taken the pledge in one day, 100,000 at Galway in two days, and 70,000 in Dublin in five days. At its height, just before the Great Famine of 1845-48, his movement enrolled some 3 million people, or more than half of the adult population of Ireland. In 1844 he visited Liverpool, Manchester and London with almost equal success.
