Dossier 4 - Correspondence regarding the editorship of 'The Father Mathew Record'

Letters regarding a dispute over the editorship of the temperance publication, 'The Father Mathew Record', also known as 'The Irish Home Journal'. The file includes a letter from Brian O’Higgins to Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OSFC, Provincial Minister, complaining about his dismissal as associate editor of the 'Record' by Fr. Joseph Fenlon OSFC who ‘desired to keep politics out of the Journal’. O’Higgins, a member of Sinn Féin, admits that he is ‘on what is known as “the run”’. With notes by Fr. Edwin regarding the proprietorship of the Journal, and the need to reserve the appointment of editor to the council of the Capuchin Franciscan Order in Ireland. Later, Fr. Joseph wrote to Fr. Edwin confirming his resignation from the Presidency of Father Mathew Hall and the temperance sodality. The file also includes a signed notice of a special meeting of the Hall Committee affirming that the ‘"Record" was started by Fr. Aloysius [Travers], President of the Hall … [and] that the Office of the Record was transferred to the Hall premises’. The committee members contended that the 'Record' magazine was the property of the committee ‘and that the Provincial Superiors acted without consideration of the circumstances when … they decided to take it over and have it conducted independently of the committee and its President’. (10 June 1920).