The Tablet on the Duke of Norfolk’s Mission to Rome.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 169, 24 January 1888, Page 3

The Tablet on the Duke of Norfolk’s Mission to Rome.

We are not eager to pay any particular attention to the news brought hero by cable and pretending to give details respecting' Catholic matters. Still, there has been such frequent repetition lately of messages relating to some attempts being again made at Rome to bring about the condemnation by the Holy Father of the Irish National cause, that it would perhaps be rash altoge her to discredit the matter, and more especially since we are acquainted with tho persevering tactics that those Euglish Catholics who are represented by the Duke of Norfolk among laymen and Cardinal Howard among ecclesiastics, have received from their fathers, themselves making constant and unwearying use of, and arc ready in their turn to hand down to their children. The National newspapers, therefore, as we find it rumored, may possibly have seen the necessity of pointing out oneo more how abhorrent to the feelings of the Irish people, and iiow strong aijd dangerous a trial of their allegience to Rome, any concession made by the Pope to the representations of their hereditary enemy would be.

But again, as Cardinal Moran, moreover, claimed tho other day, in bis answer to the addresses presented to him in Brisbane, the safety of the rising democracy las in its alliance with the Church. Is it likely, therefore, that the Pope, seeing this, would risk the deplorable consequences to the world, by taking a steji that must largely help to drive the democracy out of the range of his guidance and to destroy tho confidence that it would otherwise be disposed to place in him ? The Irish National movement is a democratic movement. It stands in the van of tho great democratic movemont of the day, and the people who seek to draw down upon it tho displeasure of the Holy Father aro aristocrats of au extreme and very retrogressive type, who, in addition to tho virulent hatred of Ireland which gives a taint to their traditions and permeates their very souls, fear and detest this movement because if is democratic. Is the Pope, then, to give to the world the spectacle of his yielding to this narrow-ir’nded clique, and, in their favor, breaking away from the great universal life-tide of the times ? Well may tho National papers declare against the danger of such a proceeding, and augur from its possibility tho worst effects to religion.— But, for orr ov, a part, we shall rofuso to credit anything except the clearest declaration made to such an effect by the Holy Father h:mself. And our conclusion, for the time being, shall be that it is rather the insr’.tmg desires and insolent insistances of the Duke of Norfolk and his party that have given them tope to the remonstrances made by the Irish newspapers, than any tokens of au intention to comply with them shown by the Holy Father. We should regard it as treason against the Popo were we to form any other conclusion,