31 MAY 1873, Page 6

THE O'KEEFFE JUDGMENT.

IF the Pall Mall finds it impossible to discover what Lord Chief Justice Whiteside really decided in the O'Keeffe case from the long summary in the Times, it would not find the matter mended, but rather involved in still deeper con- fusion, by consulting at least one of the would-be verbatim reports in the Dublin daily papers. We hope the Chief Justice may publish an authorised report of what he really did say, for the benefit of the very many who would like to hear his discus- sion of the ecclesiastical rights involved in the contract made by a Roman Catholic priest with his Church at the time of his ordination. So very much of the future of Ireland depends on the way in which the Courts of law treat a question of that kind, that we doubt if any matter of equal interest has been approached, even in the important Irish legislation of the last four Sessions. Lord Chief Justice Whiteside was fully aware of the importance of the decision, though we cannot think that he approached it in a manner quite worthy of him, or of his functions, when he threw out the rather unjudicial and injudicious sneer against the disestablishment of the Protestant Episcopal Church, im- plied in these words to the jury :—" A great responsibility rests on you, and I advise you to consider these questions with stoical composure, if you can. It is essential to understand the practice towards the Law and State of the great voluntary Churches now existing in this kingdom. I say now,' because, as you are awara, the branch of the old-established Church of England and Ireland existing in this kingdom has, by a thorough, and I may without impropriety add, as descriptive of it, almost a revolutionary measure, been overthrown. It has been severafrom the State, its property sequestered, and every °mut or tribunal connected with it, abolished. The Judges are paid off, and at leisure. That being so, all Churches here, Episcopal or otherwise, are supposed now to rest on a founda- tion of contract, as will hereafter be more particularly ex- plained." This would, show, however, that the Lord Chief Justice was fully aware of the importance of a trial testing how far contract would go in establishing conditions of Chureh discipline, and we can only regret that the excessive confusion of the reports of his charge leave us almost as much in the dark as before on this most important point. On one point especially, we need the clearest possible decision, and that is just the point which remains one of the cloudiest after study- ing such reports of what the Lord Chief Justice said as have come in our way. It is this,—whether the Lord Chief Justice's judgment went against Cardinal Cullen because there was not sufficient evidence that the line pursued in the sentence of suspension passed on Father O'Keeffe had been in the ordinary form, and accompanied by the regular ecclesiastical process which the methods of his Church would have led the plaintiff to expect, or whether it went against him simply on the ground that a Roman Catholic priest's contract to give up any right which he would enjoy as a citizen to the benefit of the British law is against natural justice and public expediency, and therefore can not be recognised as a binding contract at all, not even so far binding that if he breaks it he must give up the position, autho- rity, and advantages he enjoys as a priest of the Roman Church. As far as we can gather from the very confused reports, the Lord Chief Justice did not take the latter, but only the former and more reasonable view, though there is much in the congeries of inarticulate sentences recorded which seems to imply the contrary. We conjecture that what Lord Chief Justice Whiteside said was this,—that in accordance with the decision of a majority of his brethren on the Bench, he was bound to admit that a Catholic priest might, if he chose so to do, con- tract to be liable to a sentence of suspension on account of any litigation entered into by him with one of his clerical brethren, and that if he had really so contracted, a sentence of suspension based on that ground would be no longer an injury of which he would have a right to complain but would be a fair and valid consequence of a special contract on his part to forfeit a citizen's otherwise unquestionable right to appeal to the laws of the land against any one who injured him. In such a case, however, we believe, or rather conjecture, with some feeling of reasonable hope, the Lord Chief Justice to have said that the Court would require very clear evidence indeed that the contract was understood by both parties in the same sense, and that there had been a full compliance with its terms ; and that the Court would not presume that any citizen had parted with his natural rights, except on the most explicit evidence. And in this case, though it might, perhaps, ,be admitted that Father O'Keeffe knew he was liable by his ordination vow to be regu- larly suspended by his Bishop, after full inquiry, on the ground of his having entered into litigation with brother clergymen, yet it could not be presumed at all that he had ever assented to be suspended after an irregular fashion by a prelate who was not his own bishop, and who issued the sentence of sus- pension after an inquiry of an inadequate kind not conducted in the usual forms to which Roman priests are accustomed, and to which they may be assumed to have given-in their adhesion when they take orders in the Church. In short,- it was, as we are inclined to hope, Chief Justice White- side's decision, that the law will interpret any contract to forfeit the natural rights of citizens in the manner most favourable to him who suffers by it, and will admit no mere presumption against him ; and that as Father O'Keeffe was not suspended after the ordinary fashion and by the ordinary processes of the Roman Catholic procedure, the law will presume that he had not contracted to submit to a sentence so passed, but only to one passed according to the forms and methods with which every parish priest in Ireland is familiar. It may be true that by himself appealing to Rome, Father O'Keeffe had virtually acknowledged the authority even of the Pope himself, and therefore also of his Legate ; still it does not follow that because he pursued this course in his own defence, he should be presumed to have thereby so widened the contract between him and the Church of Rome as to acquiesce in every sentence passed by its higher authorities, without the regular and satisfactory inquiry to which he had a claim; and as the law interprets all such contracts jealously, instead of favourably, it may be fairly assumed that Father O'Keeffe did not get the kind of inquiry and the kind of ecclesiastical justice in relation to his unsacerdotal litigation with which he had virtually contracted to be satisfied.

If that be all that Chief Justice Whiteside has decided, we do not think that there is any danger in the decision; indeed, we are quite as anxious as he can be, that contracts to forfeit any natural right of a citizen should be interpreted in the most stringent fashion as against the Church which requires them,

e valid, even for the purpose of justifying the raunicoltunro held of e between a religious communion and any officer of thimmunion, except when the conditions of the contract ar.

)st clearly complied with on both sides. But

if the Lorraef Justice decided, as some people appear to think, thao contract is to be held valid, even as be- tween enurch and a priest of that Church, which forfeits right conferred by natural justice and the law of the 'd, such a decision would strike at the very root of Rol Catholic discipline, and render it possible for any TA in Ireland who chooses to marry, for instance, or ret secrets confided to him under the seal of confession, orto any other act which he would have a perfect_ right to do a citizen, but has voluntarily forfeited the right to do by teg orders in the Church, and yet to obtain damages against hscclesiastical superior for the libel implied in the publication ra sentence of suspension. We repeat that we do not for a oment believe that this is what the Lord Chief Justice has ecided. It would be as great a revolution as the Bismarckian iegislation in Prussia, and far more "revolutionary," to use the Chief Justice's own term, than anything involved in the disestablishnaent of the Church of England. - Roman Catholic vows would not only not be binding at law, which of course they never have been, but they would no longer even be conditions of ecclesiastical service. A priest might violate all the obligations which the Roman Catholic faith imposes on a priest, and still recover damages against his ecclesiastical superiors for inhibiting him from the exercise of his office. Of course if such a law were in force, the discipline of the Church would soon be at an end. And it is therefore especially to be desired that Chief Justice Whiteside's judgment should be clearly reported and generally understood. As far as we can gather its meaning from the very inarticulate reports, we believe that it is not only harmless, but, on the main point at least, valuable, because likely to compel the various voluntary Churches of Ireland to make the ecclesiastical conditions they impose on their clergy clear and precise, and to act in the strictest conformity with those conditions. But if this be so, it is certainly much to be desired that the judgment should be universally understood to mean what we have conjectured it to mean. For if it implies the view we have rejected, the Catholic religion has virtually been disallowed in Ireland.