Category Archives: Anglicanism
Animosities In A Vacuum
by Brendan Clifford,
Church and State; Third Quarter, 2008
Oxford University was appealed to by Raymond Crotty (founder of the Irish Sovereignty Movement) to take Ireland in hand intellectually, because the Irish were unable to think for themselves. It has now published a volume on Ireland as part of its Oxford History Of Modern Europe. But, alas, it farmed out the work of writing it to a Stickie academic, who was a political adviser to David Trimble during the years when Trimble was leading the Ulster Unionist Party to disaster, and who has now joined his leader in the House of Lords.
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1641: The Massacre Propaganda
by Brendan Clifford,
Church and State; First Quarter, 2011
Almost fifty years ago I spent a month in isolation in a remote and English part of England, called Winchester, with nothing to do and nothing to read except a volume of Edmund Spenser’s Poems that somehow came to hand. I read it because it was there, and nothing else was there. And so I read about the Fairy Queen, who never actually appears in that never-ending poem with her name to it as far as I recall, and about Knights and Ladies and Chivalry and the Blatant Beast and other strange creatures that lurk in the undergrowth of the English mind. And I got to know about Colin Clout’s Homecoming to Buttevant, which had been cleared of the Irish so that Greek Nymphs and Shepherds might play in it, and Greek goddesses along with them, but no gods that I recall. And then I was released from captivity and promptly forgot about Spenser, except to wonder occasionally how that bizarre poem, afflicted with uncoordinated gigantism, remained in print.
For remain in print it did. And Senator Harris has fallen down on the task he has set himself, because I have not heard yet that he has hailed it as the great Irish poem to whose influence we should all submit ourselves in order to be re-created and saved.
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Irish Hierarchy’s Statement on Proselytism in Ireland
The following statement was issued in 1925 by the Irish hierarchy at their June meeting in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth:
We are of the opinion that the Catholic public generally are not aware of the extent to which proselytism is carried on in this country, especially in large centres such as Dublin. It is no exaggeration to say that within recent years thousands of children, born of Catholic parents, have been robbed of their inheritance, the faith, owing to the nefarious activities of the proselytisers, who, well equipped with funds, seek their victims among the poor and the fallen.
In combatting this appalling evil the ‘Catholic Protection and Rescue Society’ (30 South Anne Street, Dublin) has been doing excellent work. It has saved hundreds of children and others from the clutches of the proselytiser. But it is sadly handicapped for want of funds.
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Priests and People in Ireland
The following lecture was given to the annual Maynooth Union Summer School in 1957 by Rev. Kevin Smyth, S.J., Professor of Fundamental Theology at Milltown Park, Dublin.
Dr. Samuel Johnson said that the Irish were a very fair-minded people: he never heard one Irishman speaking well of another. The same sentiment was echoed unconsciously by an Irish priest when he was asked was there any prospect of the beatification of Father Willie Doyle: “No….you’ll never get one Irishman to swear to the sanctity of another.” This attitude causes a grave difficulty to anyone taking a Gallup poll about how people regard their priests in Ireland: the first thing that the subject thinks of is criticism. “The bitther word” rises only too readily to the lips of the Irishman, and if you were fool enough to ask a straight question of a layman, he would probably begin by translating your question into: “What have I got against the priests?”
On the other hand, just as the first reaction is one-sided, it is also often superficial, and the Irishman is as insincere in his blame as he is extravagant with it. Loose talk does not represent the permanent and deep-seated attitude of people towards priests, and most people are incapable of valid generalisations, and inarticulate about their most vital and fundamental loyalties. Our difficulty is therefore to assess the real relationship on its merits, apart from conventions and habits, and to distinguish glib criticism, which people do not really stand over, from the real discontent which may be as potentially explosive as it is silent and unformulated.
My own effort to get some facts, to relate particulars to the universal, to interpret such generalisations as I dared to form, has been haunted by misgivings. Ever since I accepted the invitation to read this paper I have been saying to myself: who am I to draw up the indictment of a nation? How does one take the pulse and the temperature of a people? My only excuse and encouragement is that each of you in the audience is better informed than myself, and therefore that each of you is even more keenly conscious of the difficulty of describing “the present position of Catholics in Ireland” than I am, so that I can count on your sympathy. The best I hope to do is to spark off discussion or contradiction on some points, so that you yourselves may complete and balance the picture, out of your better judgement and wider experience. At any rate, we shall be dwelling on matters about which we all care deeply: our own purposes are involved, as well as the great issues of Ireland’s Catholic future and her almost indispensable contribution to the Church in England and overseas.
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Cardinal Bourne on Ecumenism
The following is the Lenten pastoral letter of Francis Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster from 1924.
The discussions which have taken place since the beginning of this year on the question of the union of Christendom, so long broken by heresy and schism, have been of special interest to those who as members of the Catholic Church see clearly how such union can be accomplished. They have noted with thanksgiving to God that on all sides there is a renewed and intensified longing for such union, and a keen realisation that disunion is evidently contrary to the declared will of Our Lord and Saviour and the cause of untold harm to men.
At the same time it is clear that on the part of our fellow-countrymen who do not accept the authority of the Holy See there is almost complete misapprehension of the sole basis of union which is in conformity with the will of Christ — namely, the frank and complete acceptance of divinely revealed truth.
In the letter issued from Lambeth in 1920 the following words occur, taken from a report of 1908, and they are quoted also in the recent letter of his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury: —
“There can be no fulfillment of the divine purpose in any scheme of re-union which does not ultimately include the great Latin Church of the West, with which our history has been so closely associated in the past, and to which we are still bound by many ties of common faith and tradition.”
It is fitting, therefore, that we who today in England represent that Latin Church, which was from the early preaching of Christianity until the 16th century the only Church known to and accepted by the English people — to which we alone now stand in a relation of unbroken continuity — should make quite plain our attitude towards the desires and suggestions for reunion which meet us on every side.
How Ireland Became Catholic and How Ireland Has Remained Catholic
Catholic Ireland;
how Ireland became Catholic
AND
how Ireland has remained Catholic
by Rev. P.J. Kirwan
Published in 1908
In the Pastoral Letter of His Eminence Cardinal Logue for Lent, we find the following- “A great work is being done by the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland for furnishing the people with such reading as will deprive them of all excuse for resorting to the poisoned sources from which so many were wont to imbibe an irreligious sensual, and often corrupting draught. Their efforts must and should receive every support. Whenever I see in a church the well known box destined for the distribution of their publications, I take it as a clear proof of the pastor’s zeal for the best interests of his people”
“It is well known”, writes His Grace the Archbishop of Tuam, “that various printing presses in Great Britain daily pour out a flood of infidel and immoral publications, some of which overflows to this country. We have a confident hope that the Society’s (C.T.S.I.) publications will remove the temptation of having recourse to such filthy garbage, will create a taste for pure and wholesome literature, and will also serve as an antidote against the poisons of dangerous or immoral writings”.
“Allow me, dearly beloved,” writes Dr. Fennelly, Archbishop of Cashel, in his Lenten Pastoral, 1903, “before concluding, to say something in favour of the Catholic Truth Society, which has been got up for the purposes of counter-acting a growing taste amongst our people for an overflow of filthy literature from England, and other countries. Its publications are racy of the soil, and very varied in point of subject: and, as far as I can judge, are, in many instances, of high literary merit. I ask priests and people to support the Catholic Truth Society, by taking and reading its publications.”
St. Patrick was born around the year 397, and when he was but 16 years of age he was seized upon and sold as a slave to a man in the County Antrim. It is believed he spent his six years in slavery, as he was taken captive more than once. Who can conceive his sufferings and privations during those six long years? A noble youth, who had been brought up with the tenderest care, and who had been accustomed from his earliest infancy to the enjoyment of all that could render life pleasant and happy – for we must remember that St. Patrick was of distinguished birth – is suddenly torn away from his parents and friends, and is sent into slavery to tend cattle in the far north of Ireland, There he has no one to help or to pity him, and he has to bear the greatest trials and sufferings; but patiently and bravely did he endure all.
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Lux Occulta 