The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-13 00:00:00

THE _IRISH CHURCH.

The connection of the State with the Pro-
testant Church of Ireland, the motives which
impel Catholics to vote against it, and the
duty of maintaining the religious principle in
politics, are questions which ought to be probed
to the bottom. There must be no false issues
raised. No attempt to confound Catholic oppo-
sition to the Irish Establishment with the un-
Catholic motives which actuate Dissenters,
irreligious Liberals, and philosophical secu-
larists in their attacks on the principle of
Church Establishments, must be allowed to
pass unchallenged. Such an attempt at the
confusion of the true with the false motives
of opposition to the Irish Establishment is to
play into the hands of the enemies of Catho-
licity. It is pushing party politics to an un-
wholesome and unreasoning extreme. With
such tactics Catholics can have no sympathy.
They indignantly repudiate the imputation,
come whence it may, that their opposition to
the Irish Church is equivalent to a renuncia-
tion of the Catholic principle of union between
Church and State. The religious principle in
politics is, as we argued last week, an essen-
tially Catholic principle ; it is truly what Mr.
Disraeli described it in the late debate—a great
security for civilization—and this principle can
only be carried out in its fulness by a union
of State and Church. But to be valid, such
a union must be founded in justice. It must
not violate the principles of morality by aim-
ing even at a good end through evil means.
The Irish Church, the religion of a small
minority, was established by force ; its main-
tenance as a national Church is an act of the
grossest injustice. On the commonest dictates
of morality, therefore, the first thing to be done
is to remove this injustice. Repair the evil
done, not by perpetuating the original injus-
tice, offering, we will not say as a bribe, but
as a sop, to endow the Catholic Church out of
some of the superfluous and ill-gotten revenues
of the Establishment, but by a complete act
of national reparation, the disestablishment
and the disendowment of the Irish Church.
" But," says Mr. Disraeli, " what becomes of
the religions principle in connection with the
Government of Ireland if you disestablish the
Protestant Church ? Will you endow—will
you connect with the State the Roman Catholic
Church ? Such a procedure would be utterly
impracticable. The United Kingdom is a
Protestant Kingdom. The people of the United
Kingdom are a Protestant people. . . Any
attempt to establish a Roman Catholic Church
in connection with the State would be a thing
which no practical man. would support. There-
fore you must have either a Government in
Ireland which is not connected-with the religi-
ous principle, or you must maintain the Church
in Ireland. You must accept one or other
of the alternatives." Mr. Disraeli's political
morality amounts to this—Perpetuate an in-
justice in order to preserve, for such is his
main defence of the Irish Establishment, the
religious principle in the government of Ire-
land. But Christian ethics forbid the per-
petration of evil for any end whatsoever.
In truth, the religious principle is to be sac-
rificed, not because Catholic Ireland will no
longer submit to an unendurable injustice, but
because the Protestant prejudices, as Mr. Dis-
raeli avows, of the people of England will not
tolerate the Establishment of the national
Church of Ireland. The crime is theirs. The
loss which the relinquishment of the religious
principle will inflict on the civil Government
of Ireland is not the fault of Catholics but
of Protestant bigotry. Between the two alter-
natives which alone Mr. Disraeli offers, Catho-
lics can have no hesitation. Christian morality
forbids them to consent to any participation
in an act of injustice, such as the maintenance
of the Irish Establishment. .The other alter-
native of the State's surrendering the religious
principle in the government of Ireland is no
choice or work of theirs, but is forced upon
them.

As to the Catholic supporters of the Irish
Establishment who are anxious to effect com-
promise by " levelling up " the Catholic
Church, by partially endowing it out of the
superfluous revenues of the Establishment, we
would have them remember that the Catholic
Church is alone the rightful owner of the
Church property of Ireland, that it has been
violently dispossessed of its heritage and of its
status, and that restitution simply is its due.
The first act towards restitution on the part of
the State, if it be sincere in its repentance,
is to undo its work of spoliation by removing
the unlawful possessor—the second is to re-
store it to the lawful owner. But if, as in
the present instance, the rightful owner, the
Catholic Church of Ireland, by the unani-
mous and deliberate declaration of its appointed
rulers—for reasons of which they are the com-
petent judges—declines to receive the restitu-
tionof the old endowments which once belonged
to God, then, as the Archbishop of Westminster,
in his letter to Lord Grey, suggests, let the
restitution be fully made. But let it be made
to Him in the hands of His poor. They
are His representatives. Justice would thus
be satisfied. Justice is not revenge. Vin-
dictiveness is a small and petty motive. It
does not move the heart of a nation; to impute
it to the Catholics of Ireland as the ground of
their desire to be rid of the Establishment, is
utterly to misconceive or to misrepresent the
character of the movement and the motives of
the bishops, clergy, and people of Ireland. It
is much to be regretted that any English
Catholic writer should give utterance to so
unjust and unworthy a sentiment. It is a libel
on the Catholics of Ireland. Is there not such
a thinc, as a sense of justice outraged ? Is not
Protestantt ascendancy embodied in the Irish
Establishment a wrong keen enough to arouse
a generous indignation ? It is not to " rob
Protestants," but to see justice done to Catho-
lics, that the removal of this wrong is desired
by all lovers of justice—lrish or English,
Catholic or Protestant.

Because every Catholic of the United King-
dom, whose judgment is not unsettled by party
politics, because bishops, priests and laymen
cry, " Down with the Protestant Church Esta-
blishment! down with the alien Church !" they
are not on that ground to be accounted " ad-
vocates of revenge ;" neither is it for the paltry
and -vicious motive of gloating over Irish
Protestants, dispossessed of the unlawful

enjoyment of Church property, that they
insist upon the disestablishment and. disen-
dowment of the Irish Church. Such an impu
tation cannot be supported by a single proof,
and ought, therefore, never to have been
advanced. It is a weak attempt to raise a false
issue. What Catholics unite in demanding is
a simple act of justice for a grave wrong
inflicted upon a Catholic people. What they
insist upon is not palliatives, but the only
reparation possible—the removal of the wrong
itself. Moreover, when a Catholic, be he priest,
bishop, or layman, rejects Mr. Disraeli's plan
for propping up the Establishment, he does not
on that account, as grotesquely alleged, " adopt
the creed of English Dissenters, and become a
Cromwellian, an Independent, a Voluntaryist,
and a Secularizer of Church property."
Neither does he " join a crusade against the
principle of the union between Church and
State," nor "affirm a condemned proposition."
The reason why Catholics object to the Irish
Establishment is not out of love of the creed

of English Dissenters, is not because they
disregard the sacred principle of union between
Church and State, so recently re-affirmed by
the Church, but because the particular Irish
Establishment which they condemn exists in
violation of a primary principle of Christian
ethics. They uphold the principle of State
Churches, but they condemn the Irish Esta-
blishment, because it was founded and is

maintained by an act of naticnal injustice.
The further accusation that in demanding the
disendowment of the Irish Church a Catholic

becomes a secularizer of Church property, is
refuted by the declaration of the Irish bishops
that "by appropriating the ecclesiastical pro-
perty of Ireland for the benefit of the poor,
the Legislature would, realizeone for the
purposes for which it was originally des-