DIOCESE OF TUAM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 158, 12 May 1876, Page 14

DIOCESE OF TUAM.

The Lenten Pastoral addressed by his Grace the Most Eev. Dr. Mac Hale to the Very Eev. and Eev. clergy and laity of the diocese of Tuain, was read on Sunday in all the churches in his diocese. His Grace says , — " Never was the want of any fixed principle of belief on the part of the opponents of the Catholic Church more mp-nifest to the world than during those latter years, when the wildest decisions of past times have been called up from the forgetfulness in which they slumbered, and men, glorying in their weakness, have aspired to the strange distinction of being only the brethren ©f beasts of the field, with no loftier destiny than the dust, to which their bodies are dissolved, and utterly insensible to having been created in God's image, in order to be sharers for all eteinity in God's ineffable bliss. Those foolish men remind one of the significant of the writer, ' Men when in honor did not understand, but became as one of the beasts of the field/ Not to occupy your attention further with those creatures than to Bolicit your pity'for their blindness, and your prayers for their conversion, we proceed, as we have been wont, to advert to the manner in which you are called upon to sanctify the coming forty days of Lent. Although the duty of preaching and propagating our holy religion belongs in a special manner to the clergy, to co-operate with them and give them every assistance in carrying on this holy work has been ever deemed the glory of the Irish race. As long as they were a free people that freedom was always manifested in'dispensing among the neighboring nations the blessings of their religion, which they never neglected but when they ceased to be free. There is now no overt persecution to create alarm ; but there is an incessant study to introduce educational contrivances through school boards, whose history or example affords no inducement for their adoption. It is to be regretted that several well-meaning men even among the clergy, unsuspicious of the crafty designs of those untiling intermeddlers, suffer themselves to he so easily acquiescent in projects which they have afterwards reason to deplore. Besides, all these educational schemes add considerably to the pecuniary burdens of the people. All the school projects now afloat are not unlike those which, some years ago, urged several of the gentry to co-operate with an adverse government in planting over the land very expensive model schools and infidel colleges. What has been the consequence ? That the zeal of the clergy and their faithful flocks took the alarm, and those hostile buildings remain to the present day striking monuments of the folly of their projectors, as well as of the zeal and piety of the people. It would be well if a portion of those funds, originally belonging to the Catholic Church, of which it has been despoiled, were restored to it for assisting the education of so many Levites, bereft of the adequate means to complete the varied course of classics, philosophy, and theology required by candidates for the priesthood. In the ab-

sence of any such assistance, we are obliged to appeal to the pious generosity of our flocks to come to the seasonable aid of the Church, and to enable our young candidates to realize their aspirations to the priesthood in preference to any secular vocation. It is said, that through the generous contributions of the people the ecclesiastical students of several other dioceses are engaged to go through their regular course of studies at Maynooth, enjoying free places ; so creditable a state of things will, we trust, have a beneficial influence in persuading- our clergy and people to exert themselves in imitating their example."