The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-04-04
Conversations Is
Our Club = BBy gs S5sst si;. g.


his Uncle, and accepts and admires the
four articles adopted by the French
clergy in 1852, should object to political
atheism, or complain that God is eX-
Guided from the state
In religion remarked O'Flanagan,
/ am papist, and | bow to the au-
thority of the church; but in politics 1
am Independent of all ecclesiastical
control, and do not suffer my clergy,
however muchI love and venerate them,
to prescribe to me the political party
shall support. My religion has nothing
to do with my politics.
And yet" replied Diefenbach, ''un-
less have been misinformed, the clergy
in Ireland are your political leaders,
virtually chieftains of the clan as we'll
as ministers at the altar; and by the
authority of their sacred character as
priests, attempt to direct your political
action"
In Ireland, the case is peculiar" re-
piled O'Flanagan. Through a variety
of causes but too we'll known, the Irish
people have been deprived of their le-
Ultimate temporal chiefs. The nobility
are, for the most part. aliens to them in
blood and in religion, and for a long
time there has been wanting a Catholic
laity able and willing to look after their
society have lacked sympathy with the
Catholic peasantry, and the priests
have been the only class who by their
intelligence, their position and their
sympathies could speak with any effect
for the poor people. If they had been
silent, all voices would have been mute,
and no opposition could have been
made to the non-Catholic and foreign
oppressor. Yet even in Ireland the
clergy take part in politics not for the
sake of politics, but for the sake of
religion. They do it in defense of re
iigious liberty, or because the political
connected with their religious inter-
ests.''
"Or rather, because they are init
mately connected with the aspirations
of nominally Catholic demagogues 40
offices seekers, who wish to use the
Catholic religion as the means of Civ
ing themselves Importance or power"
suggested Diefenbach. Mr.. De Bonnie
Vile may find his difficulty solved in
the fact that British Wings have, in
late years, been more liberal in their
promises to British Catholics than
British Tories, and have shown some
Willingness to give subordinate offices
to Catholics"
But, 1 see no real gain to religion"
said De Bonneville. mo Catholic, either
in the United Kingdom or in the United
States. can be elected or appointed to
any office in which he can really serve
| his religion, or to any office at all, un-
less he is man who will sacrifice the
interests of his religion to those of his
political party. If really attached to
his religion. and placing it first in his
thoughts and affections, the Catholic is
feared, distrusted; and such is the
overwhelming non-Catholic force of the
government in either country that he is
far less able to serve his religion than
would be liberal Protestant in his
place. 1 cannot see that religion has
gained much in Ireland from having
the Wises the Shiels. the Keoghs, the
O'Flaherties, the OFarrels, the Fitz-
geralds, and others in parliament or in
Offices and TO me it is very doubtful
whether religion stands as well with
the Irish people as it did before O'Con-
nell commenced his political agitation,
and induced or forced the clergy to join
| him. The Irish youth, brought UP in
the midst of agitation for political OBJ
Jects, inf1amed with vain worldly hopes
and ambition, lose their simplicity of
character lose their religious sensibil-
ity, and suffer their faith to relax its
lAOlNl vi l4lCll iIllIuS ttllNl llIS1I ItCetl
The clergy, .engrossed with efforts to
effect political changes and ameliora-
tons, necessarily, to some extent at
least, neglect their spiritual functions,
and leave their people uninstructed, to
grow up in spiritual ignorance, exposed
to the seductions of error and an easy
prey to the artful and the designing.
The clergy themselves, trained up in
the seclusion of the college and SEM
mary, in as entire ignorance of the
world as possible, unprepared to Crap
pie with politics and politicians, open,
candid, unsuspicious, become in the
field of politics little else than the tools
of the Dublin agitators, and retard in
stead of advancing the interests to
which they devote themselves. With
out intending or suspecting it, they play
| into the hands of the demagogues, and
! find as the result that they have aided
| in elevating men who only falsify their
pledges and turn out a scandal to their
| religion"
"The clergy in Ireland, as elsewhere, -
remarked Winslow, take that course
which they judge wisest and best for
religion, and it is not my province to
censure them, even if they sometimes
/ err. 1 am not their judge; they are my
| judges, not 1 theirs; 1 have never been
|
| cept that she has held fast for ages the
Catholic faith under every temptation
| to desert it, and that her faithful chill
dren are, in the hands of God, the chief
agents in spreading and maintaining
the Catholic religion in the English
speaking world. She has been for ages
| cruelty misgoverned and oppressed, and
every Catholic, wherever born, or what
ever language he speaks, does and must
! sympathize with her and love and hon
or her Her clergy have not always
done all they would, but they have, in
/ general, l presume, done the best they
could, and the best evidence of it is the
! love and veneration felt for them, even
/ in spite of political agitation, by the
mass of the Irish people.
1.-THE part the clergy take in politics
! with US" proceeded Winslew, "has been
greatly exaggerated. They may have,
and they have the right to have as well
as any other class of citizens, their pO-
litical opinions and preferences, but if
So they have them as citizens, not as
priests AS priests they teach their
flocks to be loyal citizens, to vote hon
estly and conscientiously, according to
! their own convictions of the true inter-
ests of the country, but they do not tell
them how or for whom they must vote.
| Catholics may have very generally
voted with the Democratic party. but
they have not done so by the dictation
of their clergy, and any one who knows
anything of Catholic voters knows that
the last thing they will submit to is
clerical dictation in politics. They carry
their independence in this respect even
to an unjustifiable extreme. The clergy
have not in this country involved the
[ church in party politics, and given her
a political character, and the only
ground for assuming that they have IS