The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-17 00:00:00

7HE _IRISH CHURCH COMMISSION.

The Irish Church Commission, issued in the
month of September last by Sir John Gray,
M.P., in the name of the Dublin Freeman's
Journal, of which he is the principal proprietor,
has this week published its seventeenth and
concluding Report ; and, having carefully read
these seventeen Reports in the order in which
they appeared, a long and wearying previous
acquaintance with blue books enables us to say
that no Commission of Inquiry issued by the
Crown in Ireland during the last sixty years
has succeeded in collecting for the legislative
guidance of Parliament an equal amount of
such valuable information upon any one ques-
tion as these Reports embody respecting the
origin, progress, and present condition of the
Established Church in Ireland. Sixteen of
these Reports are devoted to most accurately
describing the past and present state of Pro-
testantism, as by law established, in every
diocese and archdiocese in Ireland, and the
seventeenth investigates the religious, educa-
tional, and financial position of the Catholic
Church wholly supported by the voluntary
contributions of the faithful. The commissioner
well and properly observes, in the beginning
of his Report, that the voluntary support of
religion by Catholics does not mean the same
thing when spoken of them as it does in the
case of Protestant Dissenters. The law of the
land may exempt a Catholic from any civil pro-
cess compelling him to pay for the support of
religion ; but no Parliamentary or State enact-
ment can relieve him from the duty of yielding
obedience to that commandment of Holy Church
which requires him to pay tithes to his lawful
pastors. And hence in Ireland the payments
made to parish priests and the secular clergy
are called by the people dues ; while what
is contributed towards the support of the seve-
ral Religious Orders, such as the Dominicans,
Franciscans, Redemptorists and Marist Fathers
goes by the name of offerings. The long per-
secution of the priesthood, while it had the
effect of engendering in the hearts of the Irish
people a hatred of the law of the land, in a cor-
responding ratio intensified their obedience to
the law of the Church. Hence the overflow-
ing liberality with which, during the darkest
days of persecution, they contributed to the
support of their beloved clergy.
Regarded from a mere wordly point of view,
few things are more wonderful than the pro-
gress made by the Catholic Church in Ireland
during the last hundred years. When George
111. ascended the throne. Irish Catholics were
only emerging from a state of serfdom. From
the accession of Elizabeth till the death of the
Second George all the power of England, as
far as it could be exerted in and over Ire-
land, was devoted to the utter extirpation of
the Catholic religion. There are men now liv-
ing who remember when Catholic priests in
some districts in the north of Ireland travelled
from place to place dressed as farmers to escape
being insulted or worse, on account of their
religion and sacred profession. There was then
hardly any edifices in the land worthy of the
name of convents, churches, or schools. Now,
according to the Report of the Freeman's
Journal commissioner, there are in Ireland
1,842 churches, 218 convents, 41 colleges and
seminaries, 44 hospitals and asylnms, 600 paro-
chial houses for priests, 2,290 non-vested
Catholic schoolhouses, and 70 establishments
of Christian Brothers, all erected since the year
1800, at a cost of not less than £5,690,995.
What progress to make in sixty-seven years !
In spite of every effort to exterminate them,
the Catholics of Ireland are as ten to one com-
pared with the number of their oppressors.
And, though they are the poorest people in
Europe, it is estimated that they contribute
three-quarters of a million sterling annually
for the maintenance of the bishops and clergy,
the education of their children, and the repairs
and erection of churches, independently of
what they give for other religious purposes,
and in modes incapable of being estimated,
because secretly given to God without the
left hand knowing the alms-deeds of the right.
And in the case of poor Ireland it has proved
to be a more blessed thing to give than to re-
ceive. The people sacrificed their earthly pos-
sessions, but they retained the faith—the jewel
above all price. And, indeed, in the case of
all Catholics in this country it would be well
if a spirit went abroad in the land inspiring to
greater liberality—to greater self-sacrifices in
the interests of religion. There are few English
Catholics in easy circumstances, the surplus
adornments of whose drawing-rooms would not
go a great way towards building a school,
founding a convent, or providing for the due
celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. We have
heard of shopkeepers in Ireland devoting the
proceeds of the sale of one article to purposes
of charity, and it was observed by their neigh-
bours who knew nothing of their adoption of
this pious custom that everything went well
with them. Children should be early taught
to contribute to the adorning of altars, and to
the raising of temples to God. It is a sure
mode of elevating their thoughts, and of keep-
ing their hearts pure and free from the germs
of that selfishness which, when indulged, is the
bane of childhood. No trait in the Irish cha-
racter stands out more beautifully than the
liberality with which the very poorest contri-
bute towards the support of the clergy, and
none in its essence is more thoroughly Catholic.
Unless Irish Protestants be altogether a dif-
ferent race from their Catholic fellow-country-
men, there is little danger of Irish parsons
suffering from want in the event of even the
speediest abolition of the Anglican Church
Establishment. If the Catholics who are
taunted with their abject poverty and their
non-possession of those broad acres wrested
from their ancestors by the persecutors of their
creed, so cheerfully and bountifully support 28
bishops, 1,036 parish priests, 1,491 curates, and
about 500 regulars, that neither bishops,
priests, nor curates, will consent to exchange
such maintenance for a liberal state endow-
ment, we may surely conclude that rich Irish
Protestants will he but too-eager to provide
abundantly for the wants of their spiritual
teachers. Indeed, the whole opposition to what
is understood to be the policy of the Premier—
namely, the early abolition of the Irish Church
Establishment—is based upon the territorial in-
fluence and great wealth of the Irish Protest-
ants. This, in itself, is really a powerful,
and, in the case of Ireland, an unanswerable
justification of the line of policy which is
understood to find most favour in the eyes
of the Premier, and which has never been more
ablyaaid convincingly advocated than in Nixteen