The Irish Catholic Bishops have plucked up courage to put
their shoulders to the wheel, and help on the higher education of the country without that State-aid which. they render difficult by demanding such impossible conditions. After a long conference held last week, they adopted a series of resolutions, the effect of which will be the affiliation of all their seminaries to the Catholic University; the government of " the House of residence " on St. Stephen's Green, by the Jesuit Fathers ; a collection in every Catholic parish in Ireland on the third Sunday in November for the Catholic University,—which is to take precedence of all local claims ; a number of new lectureships in Arts ; the building of a new School of Medicine; and the foundation of good classical schools in the principal towns of the Catholic dioceses. The Bishops further resolve that they and the priesthood will make sound, i.e., denominational, educational policy, the one condition of their political support for Parliamentary candidates. Moreover, they have begun their University work in earnest, by appointing Mr John Casey, LLD , a distinguished mathematician, to the chair
of the higher mathematics in the Catholic University. We have discussed elsewhere the question on what conditions the degrees of the renovated Universitymay hope for sanction from the State, but with or without that sanction, we congratulate the Catholic prelates on their new zeal, tardy though it be, in this great cause, and on the sincere belief it implies that we Protestants are mistaken in thinking that instead of their faith being eventually merged in knowledge, knowledge,—even partial and human,—may swallow up their faith.
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