Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
contin
{
1
minished, ;
WHY PROTE
A CATHOLIC REVIEW OF THE CAUSES.
[For Redputh’s Iustrated Weekly.)
A CURIOUS pamphlet has been published in Ireland on the
LA. decay of Protestantismin thateeuntry, ‘This is not precise.
ly its title but this is really the meaning of the pamphlet. t
is written by a Protestant clergyman ‘‘nominally ” on the
decay of preaching, but really on the decay of Episcopalian-
ism.
‘Thai church, as every one knows, has undergono a revolu.
tion, i
z
&
=
0
3
4
&
ues 50 enormous thet nothing like it was to
that we read of Asia, of Europe, of ‘Australia or of the King- ,
dom of Timbuctoo, It was ascertained by learned mathema-
ticians, who worked the rule of three with great success on the
back of the bellows, that the salvation of every Trish protes.
tant cost she country six hundred pounds. “This was easily
demonstrated. Each Protestant was supposed to live sixty
years. The cost of his salvation during «single year amounted
to ten pounds; an n multiplied by sixty amounts to six
hundred. | The souls of Irish Protestants fifty years ago were
the costliest souls in christendom. If they are not ail in the
mansions of the blest a gross fraud has been practised on the
tax-payers of Ireland. "ne
‘ne established church combined ia ‘its clergy the most
enormous wealth and the most abject penury. > The bishops
were magnificently paid; the crates. were miserably poor,
We have seen the Episcopal archbishop of Cashel seated in
a splendid carriage— shining with gilding and paint—bis liv-
eried footmen glittering i
each—sweeping through
the squalid streets of that decaying town like a crowned head.
The contrast between the ragged misery of the surrounding
bins ani e rich magniticence of this equipage was
camething that might be equalled in Turkey, perbaps, but
ainly no where else,
Certhis was a rare sight, for generally the bishops with their
sands and the rectors with their hundreds—wrung from
thouct poyerty—lived on the Continent or in some luxurious
abieering place in England while the eurate—drudged and
watyed and starved on sixty or eighty pounds a year. He did
the work of the parish.
Sl We have known a curate to eke out life on sixty pounds a
ear whilé the rector had eight hundred, curate—buried
yn the wilds of Connaught—read the service every Sunday in
itwo distinct churches—miles asunder while the rector in Bath
° ndon read nothing but the newspapers—a perfect
sybarite. Having uo mode of measuring time—no clock or
watch—the curate we allude to was sometimes too late and
sometimes too early at those distant churches, Wiping his
brow on a summer morning, and utterly exbausted by the
length of the walk, he wonld drop into his seat on arriving at
the church pale, languid and faint- In short, his life was a
Jong martyrdom. ‘The wing cares that harrassed his ex-
istence owing to the extent of his family-—no words of ours
can adequately convey.
Since the disestablishment, however, this grievous ineqnal-
ity has disappeared. The voice of democracy has penetrated
the most aristocratic of institutions. The vestries rule the,
church and the carates as a consequence were never so well
paid; but the income of the Bishops has proportionably di-
‘The disestablished church is not poor. | Let noone suppose
it. The ecclesiastical revenues are as ample, as princely as
ever; but the accents of justice preside over their distribu-
tion, and for the first time in the long history of Irish Protes-
tantism the laborer gets his hire!
‘his is the rain of the Protestant church, That church
was founded upon injustice, and to remove this injustice is to
bring it to the ground.
‘There are no prizes in the disestablishment, ‘The gifted
@ startling instance of this fact, He
class of divinity students whom he
epistle to the Romans. After having labored at his task fora
whole term with the greatest possible care—after having
made his pupils go over the argument again and again, write
it out and rehearse it—he was at the end astonished at being
told his instructions had gone for nothing; for not one of
those whom he so zealously sought to instruct was capable of
following an argament. ‘They had not rains enough for
such a process! Here are his own wo! :
“ There were, in olden times, and there are even still in established
to) aud consequently very
over youth in order to attuin them,
e heur it stated as xd feature in the present Protestant
church that every curate cau conimand twice the sulnry he coud frome
erly obtain, we should ask what about the bishops and deanet Whee
about the best livings?° And wheu we heur that a young man is likely
to get.as much sulary in five years as he will ever get then we wey
the Irish the difficulty and dislike of iving theif new bishops sore
thay a respectable piitance—w salely couchide that though the
betier pay of the curates will secure for such aministry tie ereoee oe
@ great many poor men who want a quick return for the outhey of then «
education the luck of real prizes wili deter all such €sare ableaud am-
nls they at the same time feol a devp hut coms
te themselves to the texching of religion &
n of Mabally. “But this. is not the
true cause. | maintain that, no matter how brilliant the
gulaxy of talent which beamed over its heirarchy— illustrated
its annals, illumined its pulpits or enlightened its conferences,
P ism in Ireland was destined to ruinous discomfi
It could not succeed as a missionary Church, .
It was the religion of the landlords. It blessed and sane-
tioned the terrible confiscations. It was the slave and syco-
phant of aristocracy whose evictions it never rebuked, whose
oppressions it never resisted, whose atrocities it never anath-
one
sought to instruct in the
is :—
amize : 7
The Highlanders of Scotland, the Cymri of Wales, the
Celtic islanders of Mav, embraced the new religion, ‘they
are zealous Protestants, The Iri St
diated this doctrinal revolution.
Catholics in Christendom.
‘ecause, amongst other reasons, Protestantism is associated
in their minds with ail the calamities, all the misfortunes, all
i ‘Their jailers, op-
8
‘They are the most ardent
the famines which have desolated Ireland.
pressors, defamers and torturers havo all professed the Prot.
estant religion, Who cau wouder if they abor it? The
would be more or less than human if they failed to do so.‘
“Protestantism was present, and, with wings ontepread,
Fiend-like sat brooding on the vast abyss
NEISH DECAYS IN ERELAND,
at the evolution of those penal laws which ought to have been
written in blood!
It was Protestantism which prompted the renegade child to
turn his gray-haired father out of doors and seize his prop-
erty.
It was Protestantism which suggested those abominable
words :
“Come on gallant peclers, with pistol and sword,
And recover my tithes in the name of the Lord’!
It was Protestantism which pronounced from the Bench that
the ‘prosecuting and informing against Papists is an honor-
able service to the government.”
t was Protestantism which, refusing the evidence of its
senses, ‘did not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish
Catholic,”
It was Protestantism which met the child at the entrance of
the school and slammed the door in his face.
t was Protestantism which met the corpse at the entrance
of the cemetery, and thrust it out of the churchyard.
It exulted with diabolical joy at the penury, ruin and degra-
machine of wise and elaborate contriv-
ance as well fitted for the impoverishment, degradation and
oppression of a people and the debasement in them of human
nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity
man.” , .
During ages it watched the Irish people with argus eyes,
and kept them down with i
g
iron hands, and indignantly refused
to allow an Irishman to possess a musket, a sabre, or a horse
worth more than five pounds.
It reduced the Irish in every part of the island to the con-
dition of the Catholics of Derry, in our own memory, when
they were outraged and trampled on—insulted and murdered
~Wwhen no woman was safe in her honor, no male Catholic in
his life or property—when Catholic gentlemen were excluded
from the Grand Jury—Catholic merchants from the bank, and
when the Catholic soldier was publicly flogged for daring to
go to mass.
It is impossible for a church with such guilty recollections—
with such a weight npon its conscience—to succeed in preach-
ing the gospel of Him who ‘“‘had not whereon to lay His
head.”
These are the chief political causes of the decay of Protest.
antism in Ireland. It is this which paralyzes its action and
gags its utterance and strikes it preachers dumb. Memory
hangs like a millstone round its neck and stifles its elocution.
Protestantism in Ireland resembles Richard IL. in his tent.
its long patronage of
oppression—its aiding and abetting the rapacity of landlord-
ism—the cruelties of confiscation—the bloodthirstiness of
Orangeism, It wants
“Some sweet oblivious antidote
‘To purge its foul bosom of the perilous stu
Which weighs upon its heart.”
«The Decay of Preaching:” By P:
Dublin. The American Protestant
word Protestant iu Ireland, and, therefore, in tae present article, refers
exclusively to the English Establishment—or Episcopalianiam, and not
to any other form of Protestantism,
fessor Mahaffy, Trinity College,
jer should beur'in mind that the
Mr. Reprara: Will you candidly answer
three questions:
1—Are you not ashamed of your friends
the Irish—always squabbling in publicand
the leaders accusiug each other, as they
are doing to-day, of cheating and rasvality ?
2—Whet was the skirmishing fund?
swindiing levy on the poor servant girls?
3~With all your enthusiasm and ability, how can you de-
ferd these Irish leaders? Do any other people act like them ?
J.T. D
IRISH FRAUDS
26 AND ¢ 5
‘ARISH RASCALS,
Was it another
our friend,
Why, certainly, I will answer you.
I candidly admit that the Irish are the only people whose
leaders are constantly quarrelling among themselves in pub-
lic, and the only people whose leaders ever accuse each other
of cheating and other disreputable offences. It is alas too
true that they thus act. For example: in the Fenian times
there was a Credit Mobelier scandal, in which it was proven
that the most distinguished and “ Christian statesmen ”—all
Irishmen of course—were implicated. ‘There was O'Pomeroy,
of Kansas, and an ex-Speaker of Congress, and an ex.Secre-
tary from New Hampshire, and James A. Mac Garfield, (after.
wards elected President ef the Order), all implicated—
proven to have been thieves, perjarers, and bribs-takers, and
so-called by their infuriated Irish compatriots on the evidence
given by a Saxon informer named Oakes Ames. Then there
is James Fitz-Biaine and John O'Sherman, and scores of
others who have grown rich with no visible means of support
except the Skirmixhing Fund. ‘Then it is well known that
millions of acres of the public lands of Ireland have been cor.
ruptly voted away by these Fenian leaders to Railroad corpo-
rations, and that the Fenien Congressmen, who s0 voted
away the public lands, grew rich suddeuly. ‘Then, under the
etext of encouraging the Domestic Industries of Ireland, it
to improve the rivers and harbors
of Ircland, but really to support the Ring, although Charles
Stewart Parnell’s chief private Secretary, Mr. Chess, Arthur,
said there could be no use for the half of it. :
. Then, there ix this Inst and latest scandal—which shows
that O'Reilly or, Devoy or Parnell or some other of these un-
scrapalons Irish leaders actually made a “blind pool” and
swindled their followers out of millions. The pretext that
Cornell was the mau i a joke.
One peenliarity distinguishing the Irish leader—of ra’al
Trish ”—from the Irish-Fenian-American, is that
O'Donovan Rossa aud John Devoy and all the rest of them
are poor men; whereas, Fitz Blaine aud O'Sherman and the
other Irish ‘‘ Christian statesmen” are all rich -
What was the “Skirmishing Fund? It was a levy of 2 per
cent. on the wages of Irish servant girls, of conrse, and poor
Irish laborers, made by. Fenian Head Centre Jay O’Hubbell,
of Ballymichigan, under the threat of being boycotted if they
refused to pay it.
wean I defend them? The devil a defend will they
get fromme!, . - .
The days of imprisonment without trial
by jury which has so long disgraced
American legislation are rapidly coming
to a close, Alrendy the New York Herald,
phic, Sun, Star and Truth—all daily
papers—are exposing the iniquities of the Insane Asylums or
advocating a reform in the methods of committing persons
accused, (generally by rich relatives) of insanity, in order to
IMPRISONMENT
TRIAL BY JURY,
REDPATIVS ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY- . T
obtain possession of their property. We have no space this
week to summarize the results of recent investigations into
the conduct of Insane Asylums, The Graphic says:
‘*Unquestionably there are dozens—perhaps scores—of per-
‘ectly sane men and women confined as i it
maisons de sante, public and private, throughout this State.
Al more of these cases of public wrong
'y more left.’ Nothing can
be more disgraceful than this state cf things. Cannot effectual
means of abolishing this most wicked abuse be found and put
in operation ?”
Was there ever a more imbecile question asked in public
by a journal professing to be a leader of public opinion ?
What possible difficulty is there in finding a remedy for this
harmonize moss-grown errors with ‘sprouting truths. They
cannot be reconciled. There is one aud only one remedy for
injustice in this world—and that is: Justice.
FOR FATHER NUGENT?S EYE!
SHALL AMERICA SUPPORT THE EVICTED?
Rev. Father Nugent is in. this city. Ile comes to look out
for homes for emigrants from the West of Ireland. He is ,
Working with Quaker Toke aud the British aristocracy,
headed by the Duke of Bedford, to unload on America the
victims of Irish landlord rapacity and of British Govern.
mental cruelty in Connemara.
I call the attention of the American people to the fact that
unless we make an emphatic protest at once, we shall not
only be taxed, as our Irish boys and girls are now taxed, to
pay the rents in the West of Ireland, but, after these poor
people are no longer needed by their lendlords, that we shall
be called on to support them in our worl jouses.
I was at Pittsburgh on the 14th of this month. This was
the first paragraph that caught my eye on opening that ex.
cellent friend of the Irish, and able journal, the Pittsburgh
Dispatch:”
VICTIMS OF IRISH LANDLORDS,
England Unioading Upon America Paupers Made by Her
ars,
to face with a shattered
whu told him that he
Chas. Blake, Towerhill,
his father and himself held
the Blake family in the townland of Dun-
laughlan, near Clifden, County Galway, as well-to.do tenants
for generations past.
‘he failure of the crop in 1880 and the succeeding year
n from his homestead in a penniless condition—for hig
landlord sold the crop he had growing—he was obliged to
take a last look at the ruin, once his home, and go out upon
the world. For some time his family and he lived upon the
lief to the Guardians of the Poor of Clifden Union, a
men by right of property,
of the Union and Distric!
This body became alarmed at the increasing numbers of
paupers thrown upon the rates of the union for support, by
2 body of
chiefly composed of the landlords
lin, known as t! ‘al Gove it Board for
Poor Law Commissioners, devised a plan of providing against
the approaching di ty by a me for pauper emigra-
eme
matter the son of the Vice President of the Local
Government Board, Mr. H. A. Robinson, took in hand, and
y the assistance of a man named Yuke, and other means, suc-
ceeded in gatheribg together a large number of these paupers,
and by the cheapest means of transport shipped them to this
side of the ocean, thus relieving the treasury of the un
Amongst the number landed in this manner came Pat Mal-
ley, his wife, five children and his aged father.
shillings which these poor people had managed in some way
to scrape together, previous to their enibarkation, were speit
in defraying railroad faro to this city, so that upon their ar-
rival there was no money left to provide a singte day's sup-
port. They wandered about the streets. a saffering, unso-
phisticated and poveity-stricken family. “Unable to take em-
ployment in any skilled labor or branch of loval industry, the
m:
no account of whatever, as they have scattered over the coun.
try. He thinks that they are probably in some other poor
house.
—Next week I shall have comments to make on Father
Nugent’s Mission. oe
—o-—
“Grandpa, dces hens make their own eggs?”
‘Yes, indeed they do, Johnnie.”
‘An’ do they always put the yolk in the middle >”
“Guess they do, Johnnie.”
‘An’ do they put the starch around it to keep the yeller
from rubbin; ”
‘*Quite.likely, my little boy.”
‘* An’ who sews the cover on?”
‘This stumped the old gentleman,
p.
and he barricaded John.
nie’s mouth with a lollipo;