[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR, —I was grieved
to see the Spectator, which has always been so scrupulously fair and just to the Catholic Church, ridicule our Bishops on Saturday in language worthy of the Record. You say that our Bishops in Ireland " are rapidly pushing their rigid moral logic into farce." Can rigidity in the exercise of duty ever become a farce? "Are they going to object to united read- ing-rooms as well as to united education?" you exclaim. Our pastors have received a Divine commission to guard youth from error, and you cannot fairly expect them to be indifferent to the playmates and companions our young men mingle with during the period of life when opinion is formed and early impressions are received. The Library of Trinity College, as you well know, is replete with mischievous books which the Holy Father has seen fit to place on the list of the Index, and then you call out :—" The Irish Bishops had better secure a separate planet, say Mars, for Roman Catholics at once, and banish heresy to Saturn." Is this language worthy of your accustomed fairness ? You wish to be sarcastic, and you have done homage to the truth. Do you ex- pect our clergy to become indifferent to the truth, and to desist from their indefatigable war with error? Our militant Church will ever labour to " banish heresy from this planet," and we have divine assurance of ultimate success.—I am, Sir, &c., A CATHOLIC.
[We have always tried to defend the Roman Catholics when we thought them reasonable, and to criticise their action when it seemed to us thoroughly unreasonable, as it seems now. We hardly believe our correspondent to be serious when he implies that a University library should have no book in it which is on the Index. Why, half the philosophical manuals which Catholic teachers train their pupils to understand and answer, are on the Index.—ED. Spectator.]
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