At a full meeting of the Irish Hierarchy held at
Maynooth on Tuesday it was decided to issue to the priests and people of Ireland a pastoral letter which strongly condemns the guerrilla warfare in progress against the Irish Provisional Government :- " The guerrilla warfare now oarried on by irregulars is without moral sanction," says this pastoral, "and therefore the killing of National soldiers in the course of it is murder before God. The seizing of public and private property is robbery ; the breaking of roads, bridges and railways is criminal destruction. The invasion of homes and the ill-treatment of citizens is grievous crime. All those who, in contravention of this Catholic teaching, participate in such crime are guilty of the gravest sin, and may not be absolved in confession nor admitted to Holy Communion if they persist in such evil courses."
Nothing could be more edifying, and we hope that this uncom- promising pronouncement will bear as much fruit as previous utterances which pointed in a different direction. The pastoral letter observes that " it is almost incredible and inconceivable how decent Irish boys could degenerate so tragically and reconcile such an amount of criminality with their duties to God and to Ireland." 0 sancta simplicitas t Have the Irish Hierarchy forgotten a certain famous article in the Irish Theological Quarterly in which these " decent Irish boys " were encouraged to believe that under very similar conditions killing was no murder ?
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