IN

GRACE ABOUNDING

A CHAPTER OF IRELAND'S STORY-VII

BY REV. E. J. QUIGLEY

N the Souper war, the Catholics of Ireland lacked leaders. At the Boyne, the beaten Irish shouted to the Williamites, 'Change leaders and we will fight you again.' The Soupers had fine leaders-bold, tactful, active, insistent. In many places in Ireland the priests were leaderless. They stood alone; each making his own plans, working and watching in his own way, isolated, unaided, without guidance. Wonderful was the fidelity of those pastors of old. They were not hirelings, but truly good shepherds of the fold of Christ. Greater heroism is not on record in any country than the history of Ireland's priesthood during the campaigns against the faith in the last century. They stood by their poor flocks in the recurrent famines, in their struggle for their homes and, above all, in their struggles for the faith. The mortality amongst them was alarming; they were so over-wrought that they could not withstand attacks of illness not deemed serious nowadays. The mortality amongst priests in those days was highest on the western seaboard-from Donegal to Kerry ; and poverty, poor food, long day and night journeys in cold and storm, brought scores of the pastoral soldiers of the faith to premature death. God's service was to them and their flocks a fearful and long-standing hardship; and the kindly light of Christ was dim amidst the all-encircling gloom. But God's abounding grace was ever lavished on the children of Ireland to keep them strong in the faith of Patrick and Brigid, in the love of Jesus and Mary.

Shiel and O'Connell could not usurp the functions of prelate leaders. But both those statesmen urged organization

and skilled administration. They knew the country, heard the talk of thoughtful business men, saw what organization and penny collecting could do. They had worked up the peasantry to enthusiasm, bound them in unity and by their pence in four years collected for political uses over fifty thousand pounds. Why could not the same be done to meet the bribes, the lures, the temptations of the proselytising agency? Many a child and adult was lost through the powerlessness of the local clergy to give even a pound in aid. Had they received alms in the famine and povertystricken areas, their honest and judicious outlay of a shilling would go farther than a pound, subscribed to Souper funds. Gold clings, and angry Soupers accused their pious of gold hoarding, and of hoarding other people's gold. The same happened in the recent world war: philanthropists and patriots who spoke and gained much money to soothe the weary and the wounded, are now in prison cells. For gold clings. Ireland needed a clerical Napoleon to organize and direct her people, to plan progress in the Church, Church defence. She needed some such person to formulate and to supervise high standards of clerical conduct and duty throughout the land. She needed effort, sustained, organized effort by rules, laws, supervision, accurate objective, ways and means. She needed central work and above all Press work. She had for long, no clerical Napoleon, no clerical Lannes, Davoust, Ney. And when her Napoleon came to do all these things, he was distrusted, thwarted, defamed. For Dr. Paul Cullen was a hero of mighty mind and great resource. Seeing the sores he tried to heal them; his success was partial. His great sorrow was the freedom of the sees.

As I said before, the Souper Press propaganda was its very life and soul. It lived and gained notoriety and money by its vile and ruinous Press, which had little or no check from the Catholics. In recent years, in this island, we have seen great and unlovely Press propaganda. Indeed, books have been written to show its vile workings and malign success. Who does not remember the veracious (?) Press

reports of war victories, tens of thousands of Germans slain and only fifty Allies wounded, thousands of Germans taken prisoners by a few scores of Allied troops? Then we remember the million of Russians in England on the march to Berlin, the glory of the siege of Antwerp, the brilliance of the Gallipoli effort, the Kaiser to be exhibited in a cage-peeps sixpence-the execution of the bad, old man, the glory, glory, glory victories. The anti-priest campaign in Ireland (1919-1921) is too recent and vivid for readers to forget. But millions believed the Press with a far stronger belief than they had in Holy Writ. And now we see the ink-slasher of Fleet Street destroying the glories of French and Haig and Hamilton and Gough, and of the men who fought in the hell of war. What are we to believe? Whom are we to believe?

It is the same with the vast supply of Souper literature, with its vague hints, its many vaunted triumphs in quality and quantity. If we believe a tithe of what it claimed, Ireland had lost the faith of her fathers. So great and many were the joyous pæans of those consecrated cobblers,' that, like the anti-Christ who is to come, they deceived even the elect. A noisy group here and there shouted and spouted and the Press throughout the land reported and embellished their shoutings and men believed that, from Fair Head, in Antrim, to Mizen Head, in Cork, and from Galway to Dublin, Ireland was Lutheran. Father Mullan-who sang the dirge of the dying Irish tonguedeparting for America, became a prophet-a dangerous and foolish rôle 'Soon, soon will come the day, when the saints will look down from heaven and see their own land a wilderness-none to revere their temples or to sing their praises.' Mr. C. Gavan Duffy, always ready to censure and belittle Archbishop Cullen and his work, wrote in The Nation :

The Irish nation is fast dissolving before the curse of God-as the Carthagenian nation dissolved before the sword of the Romans-as the Red Indian race slowly dissolved before the face of the White Man Ireland is ceasing to be a Catholic nation. . . . In many (?) parishes, the priest gazes on his empty chapel, and thinks of a tempting offer of a

pension from the Crown-a graver peril to religion than a hundred ecclesiastical bills. With the remnant of the Catholic priesthood of Ireland lost in the purlieus of the Atlantic cities, with the youth of Connaught reared up to hate the faith of their race and nation, with the priests fed upon English bounty, the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland will need a Defence Association of Guardian Angels to save it from extinction.

This extract bears re-reading; it is a wretched attempt at prophecy, a weak, poor judgment on the Ireland of that day and such a mistaken and distorted vision of the future, the near future of Duffy's own days in Ireland. Duffy was a type of the lay prophet. Many such jeremiads exist. The Bishops were panicky. We learn from reliable sources that the work of the proselytisers in the Metropolis is beyond all that the worst misgivings dreamt of.' 1 He was told that 20,000 children were being perverted in his city; and he believed it, until he personally and pertinaciously inquired, and found that the report was exaggerated a hundred fold! Prophecy is dangerous; and so is reliance on the oratio obliqua; for 'reliable sources' lie often and largely. The prelate was deceived and was angry with the 'reliable sources.' But Dublin was a centre of Souper activity, and of Press propaganda, and all the flotsam and jetsam of those weak and wobbling in faith made headquarters in Dublin. Father Fitzgerald, a Dublin stalwart, remarked: 'These evils are not irremediable, if the priests were as of old, the tribunes of the people, to enlighten, to cheer, to lead them to peaceful triumphs over their oppressors and destroyers. But as it is, our nation and our Church is perishing.'

It were, of course, idle to deny that this campaign against Ireland's faith brought no evils in its train. Hell should have been poor in tactics and strategy if there were no results. If Satan's attacks were ever and always useless, fruitless and vain, we must claim constant and numerous miracles, day and daily, in the stricken land. Temptation is subtle ever; sustained temptation is difficult to conquer, and in the weak, the ignorant, the non-vigilant, it leads to many falls from grace. The literature of Souperism must

1 November, 1851.

have raised doubts in many souls which led them not to Souperism but to doubt Catholicism and to remain weak, cold, formal Catholics. Then, the number of wrong-reverend clergy in Ireland wrought, by their scandalous lives, a revulsion in the minds of the young and ignorant, who were unable to dissociate the minister from the Holy Sacrifice and the holy sacraments. The few professional men scattered through the land, the Catholic officials, the Catholic landlords, squires and squireens, were cowards who loved and lived in the bigot atmosphere of their well-off Protestant neighbours. They were ashamed to be practical Catholics, Catholics ever and always. They went to Mass as a cold, bounden duty. Often they ignored or despised the priest and his flock. Yearly Communion was the high-water mark of their souls. But in their practices, in their lives they were of mixed religion, shoneens, who loved neither faith nor fatherland. Their works were known and scorned by fervent, brave Dan O'Connell. The following from Sir W. Wilde's Irish Popular Superstitions,' illustrate the mind and manners of the apologetic, weak, shoneen Catholic in bigot surroundings

One of our most learned and observant Roman Catholic friends has just written to us in answer to some queries relative to superstitions : 'The tone of society in Ireland is becoming more and more Protestant every year; the literature is a Protestant one, and even the priests are becoming more Protestant in their conversation and manners. . . . Among all the affectionate mentions of his dearly-beloved father made by John O'Connell, he had not the courage to say, "the Lord rest his sowle." I have watched these changes with interest.'

Now, the giver of this note was not a Souper-he hated them-but he disliked the Catholic religion and restrained his son Oscar from studying or embracing it. The most learned and observant Catholic,' who notes that the priests were 'becoming more Protestant in their conversation and manners' must have mixed with high class clergy; for the rural pastors were utterly un-Protestant in conversation and manners! Their extreme vigilance and zeal were abhorred by Protestants, their conversation, their lives and manners

1 Dublin, 1852.