Cardinal Bourne's Pastoral letter evoked an angry reply from Mr.
Jeremiah MacVeagh in a letter to the Times on Tuesday. " I want to be told by Cardinal Bourne," he wrote, " whether trust in the Coalition Government is a Catholic doctrine, and if not I want to know what right he has to order it to be pro- mulgated from the pulpits of every church in his archdiocese." Mr. MacVeagh goes on to say that when Irish Roman Catholics need guidance on faith or morals, " they will receive it at the hands of their own Episcopacy, and not from the hands of an English Cardinal." That is what we very much fear. The split between the Irish and the English Roman Catholics has become a real one. English Roman Catholics would do well to recognize this and to do what they can to save their Irish brothers from connivance in crime. We imagine that repre- sentations of various kinds have already been made to Rome, but unless the Pope makes a move that cannot be mistaken the Holy See will have another blunder to its credit as great as that which was made in the war. Great moral issues do not admit of equivocal rulings or of statements which try to avoid offending the transgressor.
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