The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1919-12-13
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
REMARKS ON THE ULSTER DELE
CATION.

To the Editor of The Catholic Bull
| letin:
| The Orange drum is beating in the
| land. A delegation of clergymen and
brush, have arrived in New York city
and through the Associated Press,
have issued a manifesto to the Amer
| lean people. In the Pioneer Press of
December 5, we read as follows:
CAS- an official delegation from the
Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyter-
ian Churches of Ireland we are here
to say to America that the Sim Fem
movement in Ireland is radi-
cal and destructive in it's methods.
. that it is not supported nor
respected by the better type of people
in Ireland, whether Catholic or Prot
estant that it is movement
akin to the Bolshevist republic in
Russia"
Our first thought on reading this
pronouncement, q speak as one of
hundreds of your readers), is that our
press at the present time could be bet
ter employed than to use valuable
space spreading insinuations of Boil
shevism against the Irish people. We
have been taught that Bolshevism
stands for free love, abolition of pri-
vate property and the soviet in gov
eminent Does Irish Catholicism
stand for these things? Although
some of their ablest leaders are Prot
estant, the rank and file of the Sim
Fem are Catholic. To assert, nay,
even to insinuate, that eighty per
cent of the Irish nation are tainted
With Bolshevism, is monstrous libel
on the most moral, most home-loving,
most religious-minded people in
Europe.
The delegation, however, does not
boggle at insinuations. They come
out roundly with the statement that
their mission is not sectarian,"
that they ARE here in the interest of
truth and honesty, fair play and prin-
ciple" 1t would seem that such vir-
tues as truth and honesty are relative
terms, and sectarianism here is surely
a misnomer. If they speak for truth
and honesty, for whom and what do
the Irish Catholic clergy speak? For
that clergy, including the episcopate,
are Sim Fein almost to man. Are
they to be excluded from that "better
type of people in Ireland who have no
interested or prejudiced motive; in
other words, who have no Ascendancy
axe to grind? Or are they, too, to be
numbered among the admirers of free
love, no property and the soviet?
Let the American people be their
Bolshevism," (mark the word "akin') !,
if their methods are alike, namely,
coercion, threat and assassination"
and if the Irish priesthood openly side
with the republican movement while
they denounce, yet condone, occa-
sional cesses,-possible in human
beings who have not lost all SEM
blance of manhood-then we in Amer
lea, millions of us, have been grossly
deceived and are well-nigh criminal
in our sympathy for that beautiful,
ill-starred land. But if on the other
hand, none of these things are true, if
the Sim Fein in the last analysis is
movement toward American liberty
and nothing else, what is to be
thought of a body of reputable men,
preachers of the gospel, who cross
the ocean and the moment they set
foot on American coil launch charUaS
calculated to brand an ancient
Church, an honorable people and over
twenty millions of their race in this
county alone, with the stain, Of Boil
! shevism?
crew M. J. CASEY.