TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. ERRINGTON AND THE PAPAL SEE.
THE attitude of English Protestantism on the subject of our relations with the Papal See always seems to us a little crazy. We cannot pretend to understand either that state of the public mind which appears to make it an unpopular thing for the Government to hold any formal communication with Rome, or the timidity of the Government in not boldly confronting this condition of feeling and challenging its rationality. Of course, if the popular feeling be really as deeprooted as the timidity of the Liberal Press and the triumphant tone of the Conservative Press in relation to all communications, official or unofficial, between the Government and the Pope, appear to indicate, we should understand the attitude of the Government on the matter, and perhaps approve it, for the good to be gained by official relations with the Holy See is not enough to render it worth while to assume prematurely a saner state of public feeling than would in that case exist. Only, we confess that we do not believe in the least in the reality of the popular panic which is supposed to exist on this subject. Supposing that there were any religious authority amongst the Mahommedans as well recognised and as constantly exerted over the Mahommedans of the world, as that of the Pope over the Roman Catholic Church, we should advocate quite as strongly our sending an official Envoy to the seat of Mahommedan authority, for the purpose of informing that authority rightly on all matters connected with the good government of our Mahommedan subjects, and of using every right influence which could be used to promote their moral and domestic welfare. If the Government could gain anything by explaining fully its fears and hopes for those of its subjects who are Methodists, or Independents, or Baptists, or Positivists, we should encourage it at once to explain fully the drift of its fears and hopes to the highest authorities in the Methodist, or Independent, or Baptist, or Positivist Church. Of course, that is unnecessary, because there is nothing singular and unique, nothing foreign enough about the genius of these Dissenting bodies, to render it in the least likely that special explanations would be explanatory. But that is not so as regards the Church of Rome, and would not be so as regards the Mahommedans and the Hindoos, if there were religious authorities in those Churches of anything like the active and influential kind to be found in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a matter of the first importance that the Papal See should know truly what the Government believe the state of our Catholic population to be, as well as, of course, what those who are opposed to the Government believe it to be ; and nothing seems to us gained, and very much lost, by the crazy dread of official communication which once pervaded English society, but which, so far as we can judge, has vanished away almost as completely,—unless it be from that last refuge of dead beliefs, the Press,—as the dread of witchcraft itself.
However, the Government have told Mr. Cowen and Mr. O'Donnell, and the whole gang of Obstructionist orators on this subject, quite frankly that while they spoke to the Holy See of Mr. Errington as a man well informed on Irish affairs, who might, in their opinion, convey much useful information to the Roman Catholic authorities on those affairs, they did not take any responsibility for what Mr. Errington said, and did not use him to get the recent Papal Circular issued, and consequently have not congratulated him on the result of his efforts. What, therefore, we have to consider is the value of Mr. Errington's personal exertions in this matter, and though the Government have not congratulated Mr. Errington on the result of his efforts, we do congratulate him very cordially on that result. It seems to us that the more widely we differ from the Roman Church or any other Church, the more we should value all that it does to promote the cause of what we believe to be genuine morality, and the more warmly we should encourage those of its efforts which seem to us to further the cause of true religion. If the Pope has been very cautious in his declaration on the moral consequences of the Land League organisation in Ireland, the Pope has in this matter only followed the British Government at a respectful distance. The primary object of the Land League was not only legal, but good. It was very long before the British Cabinet could make up its mind that the authority of the Land League organisation in Ireland was so exerted as to promote distinctly immoral and illegal, as well as unchristian conspiracies, which no decent Government could allow. It is natural enough that what the
British Government was long in finding out, the Pope, at a great distance from the scene, and receiving all sorts of contradictory accounts of what was going on, should have been still longer in finding out. However, he has found out the truth pretty fully at last, thanks, no doubt, in great measure to Mr. Errington, as well as to Archbishop Croke, and the extreme weakness of the case which that Parnellite Archbishop had to present on the other side. The Pope has heard, all sides fully, and has satisfied himself that, on the whole, the British Government were right when they put down the Land League, and right on those clear moral grounds which would have compelled the Papal Government itself to condemn the action of the Land League. In a very important paper published in Rome, confessedly on the highest authority,—the authority is, the Journalde Rome says, that of a venerable ecclesiastic " well known and honoured in Ireland, and who, in spite of all solicitation, has always had the courage to affirm the imprescriptible right of Christian morality, at the risk of being boycotted,"—the moral mischiefs resulting from the action of the Land League are carefully enumerated from the point of view of the moralist, and are shown, on the evidence of the Confessional, itself, to be moat terrible. The people no longer feel as they used to feel, it is said, the obligation of paying their debts-. The No-rent cry has weakened the sense of pecuniary obligation most seriously, and that not only in relation to rent,. but in relation to all other debts. The sin of perjury has grown rapidly in Ireland. The sin of lying has grown still more rapidly, and is now almost treated as no sin at all, even though the lies affect the most important interests. The people commit perjury so often that they are prevented from attending the Sacraments of the Church, from their reluctance to confess it. Even in Confession itself, the priests find that their penitents now often tell lies, so greatly has their sense of the sacredness of truth been undermined. " Boycotting " has been the cause of cruelty in many persons, and of ruin. to great numbers, and " boycotting " is the confessed fruit of the Land-League agitation. Assassinations, and outrages of all kinds both on men and on the lower animals, have resulted in large numbers from that agitation ; and honest priests who condemn these things, as they are bound to condemn them, lose influence with their people, and are no more treated as their moral and spiritual guides as they
were before. How is it possible, pertinently asks this. Irish ecclesiastic, " with such excesses before their eyes, for the bishops or priests to praise the first author, the chief, of this movement, as if he were the benefactor of his country, deserving a national testimonial I" Of course it is impossible ; and it is because the Pope has seen how impossible it is that he has issued his very plain condemnation of the Parnellite testimonial, and instructed all good Catholics not to give their support to that testimonial. If Mr. Errington has been one great means of ensuring this result, Mr. Errington deserves thethanks of every good Irishman and Englishman, whether Lord Granville should ever recognise his merits officially or not.
Nothing can show more clearly that the Pope, in taking thestrong line he has taken, is simply acting on the uniform tradition of his See, than the pamphlet which has just been published, containing the various charges and circulars of Cardinal Cullen to the Irish people in relation to similar movements in earlier times. Cardinal Cullen is supposed to have represented the policy of Pio Nono rather than the policy of Leo XIII., and so, no doubt, he did. But the policy of Pio Nono and the policy of Leo XIII. on subjects of this kind could not but be identical. It is impossible for any Church which holds by Christian principles at all to encourage movements which result in assassination, cruelty, perjury, lying, insincere confession, desertion of the Church's Sacraments, and so forth. Cardinal Cullen was as severe on the illegal and immoral practices of the secret societies of his time, as ever Cardinal WCabe has been on the illegal and immoral practices of the secret or semi-secret societies of the present day. " All I insist on," said Cardinal Callen, in May, 1870, " is that unlawful and sinful means of obtaining redress, all conspiracies, all violence, all resistance to authority, all deeds of darkness, so well calculated to bring the wrath of Heaven upon us, should be avoided, and that the maxim of Ireland's greatest friend, namely, that any one who commits a crime is
a traitor to his country, should not be forgotten The statesmen now [1870] in power, encouraged by the good dispositions and growing liberality of the English people, have determined to obliterate the memory of past wrongs, to bind up the wounds of the country, and to put us on a footing of
equality with all other classes of her Majesty's subjects. By a great measure carried last year, they commenced the good work of conciliation, and they are determined to go on in the same direction, settling the relations between landlord and tenant, and providing protection for the existence and welfare of the great masses of our poor people. This is a great undertaking, but it is surrounded by innumerable difficulties in itself, and is opposed by the interests and passions of many." Can it be doubted that Cardinal Cullen, if he were now living, and had watched the Land Act of 1881 in its passage through Parliament, would have done all that Cardinal M'Cabe has done to put down the violent and unprincipled men who have endeavoured to defeat that beneficent legislation for the merest germs of which Cardinal Cullen was so grateful ? We do not believe that Rome, while it remained Christian at all, could have acted otherwise than it has acted. None the less, every good Protestant, no less than every good Catholic, owes his thanks to Mr. Errington for having urged Leo XIII. to act as he has done. And whether that appreciation is to be expressed formally by Lord Granville or not, all men of sound morality and common-sense will approve ; and think that Mr. Errington has done well if he has urged the Pope to act as he has acted, and that the Pope has done well in following Mr. Errington's advice. We suppose that there may still be a few Mr. Newdegates to whom it seems positively impious to say that Rome ever does anything well. But we confess to the belief that there are very few, and that on this occasion English public opinion will cheer on the Pope, and not fall into hysterics at the Pope's name.
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