Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Hi, a Dean is a title. So Fr. Stack was known as Dean Stack. Don't know if he was made Cannon later on, but whilst at Sacred Heart he was the Dean of the parish. Also i think the drunken priest was Fr. Morrisey. One of the nicest priests that i remember at Sacred Heart was Fr. Dwyer.


Also i don't know if anyone remembers a 50/60s actor called Robert Stack, i think he was in the untouchables. Well he was Dean Stack's cousin. (As told by my parents.)

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

I used to work at the moorcock Inn, on Waddington fell and Fr Stack and about 5 other priests came in for lunch once a week and had the best wine & food, it was one of the top establishments at that time, they did'nt settle for second best, we used to say the sky pilots are here, money was no object, but they never left a tip. Maybe thats one of the reasons I lapsed.

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Oddly enough, I was musing on such matters only yesterday, ie, the priests I remembered from my childhood. And I was moved to speculate on why so many Priests came from Ireland. I really have difficulty believing that it was because the Irish are uniquely devout. I came to the conclusion that it was because the Church, for many, represented a way out of poverty. A bit like joining the army, but without the unpleasant necessity of having to kill people occaisionally. I know from my own experience that several of the priests at Sacred Heart were addicted to alcohol and the temptations of the flesh. Your story about Fr. Stack and his associates serves to confirm this view.

Not that I am condemning them in any way, the priesthood is often a hard, thankless choice of career and I have always rather admired Fr.Stack, in a sideways sort of way. The Parish certainly thrived under his hand. I suppose it's the hypocracy that irks me.

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

I have done some research into the Sacred Heart and this might answer some of the questions and be of interest to people,
A Dean is a priest in charge of a deanary, it is higher than a father but lower than a Canon.
The Jesuits left the Sacred Heart in 1958, the last members there were Fr Walter Smith, Fr J Taylor and Fr Dinley.
When they moved out, the Salford Diocese sent Dean Joseph Stack, Fr James Brenan and Fr Edward Morrisey to take over in 1959
A in 1975 Fr Denis Dwyer was curate, and in 1976, Fr Liam Comer
Dean Stack remained in charge of the parish until 1977, when he moves to St Peter Rossendale for a year before taking sabatical leave and going to Ireland, He comes back in 1980 and is apointed to the Sacred Heart, Blackburn, He becomes a Canon in 1981 but dies in 1982, i have attached a photo of him.
Fr Stacks sucessor at Accrington was Fr Patrick Desmond with Fr Joshua Sheeky as curate

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Hi greg' your chronology, leaves a couple of questions still standing: namely, why is it that after the Jesuit's handed over the running of the Parish to the Diocese in 1958 did some of the priests still append the initials 'S.J.' to their names on the signs painted on the confessionals at Sacred Heart? And why is there no mention in your chronology of Fr.'s Houlahan (sp?) and Phelan?

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

The Jesuits are a strange order, back in the ninteenth and early twentieth centurys, they considered themselves to be missionary labourers, they would often build a parish from scratch, and then hand it over to the diocese and move else where and start over again, so this could be what happened at the Sacred Heart. they usually kept one main base in a diocese, in our case at the Holy Name in Manchester. there are many parishes in the diocese which they built then left, it was quite a common thing for them to do.

As for the initials on the door, that is slightly more puzzling, Dean Stack and his curates were definatly not Jesuits. Could they have simply been left over from the previous incumbants and never painted out, or were they actually integrated into the names of the priests

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Correct me if I'm wrong greg78uk. But isn't the main base for the Jesuits in our diocese at Stonyhurst? They have been there for some 200 years and as you can see from the excerpt below, from the history of St. Mary's Clayton-le-Moors, they served local catholics from that location.

Mass was forbidden in England by statute from June 24th 1559, and it was 232 years later to the day, on June 24th 1791, that the Catholic Relief Act permitted public Catholic chapels to be established within the law. Following the closure of Dunkenhalgh Chapel in 1816, the new Catholic chapel in Clayton was opened under the Act of 1791, on July 11th 1819. It was built for £1,442.1s.5d, and the inscription over the door read boldly 'The Lord is in his Holy Temple'. The land was given by Mr. R.G. Lomax of Clayton Hall and the priest was Father Charles Brooke, S.J., who at first travelled over from Stonyhurst each Sunday.

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Yes you're right, the main base is at Stonyhurst, the Holy Name was the base for South Lancashire, i got mixed up

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Interestingly enough the former curate Fr Edward Morrisey is still alive, he has been at St Edwards Rusholme for the past 20 years or so, and retired two months ago, and has now returned home to Ireland

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Isn't it a pity that we can't go and look at the door?

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

The door is probably lying at the bottom of a landfill site somewhere, unless it was salvaged then it will be in some trendy expensive apartment for yuppies, as an 'authentic religious door'

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

I am quiet sad about the Sacred Heart church but it has been 18 years since I lived in Accy. When Iwas getting married in 1981 I hadthe choice of either marrying in SH or St Mary's in ossy,the aisle was shorter in St Mary's so it won. Does anyone remeber the baby chapel at SH or was it the crying chapel (where therbabiesand young children went.

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Yes, it was formerly the site of the memorial to the dead of the First World War, which was apparently carved in Rome and subsequently dismantled and moved by Dean Stack during which time he also discarded most of it. The statuary that is now in the grounds of St Mary's, Oswaldtwistle, and is still under a blue plastic sheet seven months after it's removal, is only the top part of it.

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

Thank you all for the effort and time to assemble the pictures of this sad event. I passed through Accrington in late 2005 to find the Grammar School and the Sacred Heart both gone. I remember the SH holding Sunday mass at 7, 8, 9, 10 and High Mass at 11. From 8 onwards they were pretty much sold out and late comers sometimes had to stand on the steps outside.

I think there was a large carry over of religious thankfulness for deliverance from World War II. Time, TV and Apathy all took their toll on attendance. I was sad to find the place flattened and now I know how it happened.

May your soul be in Heaven a half hour before the Devil demolishes your church!

Re: Sacred Heart Church
 

I believe that this Fr. Joe Stack is my relative. Could you by chance find an obituary on him? Thank you very much!