TESTIMONIALS AND PRESENTATIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 335, 19 September 1879, Page 11

TESTIMONIALS AND PRESENTATIONS.

His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin has just issued to his clergy an important communication. It is a circular which had been prepared by his late Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop a few days before his unexpected death, and which it was his Eminence's intention to have sent out as soon as possible after the date of its composition (October 16th, 1878), if his life had been spared. It has reference to " a practice which has sprung up in various parts of the diocese," and which practice, proceeds the circular, " has, no doubt, originated in the kindliest feelings on the part of its promoters, but is not on that account less mischievous." The practice alluded to is " a mode of complimenting or assisting individual priests— parish priests or curates as the case may be— by means of collections set on foot among the people for presentations to clergymen who have or had connection with the parish where these collections are carried on." His Eminence considered these collections " most objectionable," and was of opinion that they were in many cases " highly prejudicial to the public good." In the course of the circular his Eminence expresses " emphatic disapprobation of the growing abuse " and the Most Reverend Dr. M'Cabe, then his Eminence's Vicar-General whose name was to have been appended as such to the document was in it " directed to say that any clergyman, who for any cause or under any name, countenances or tolerates this practice must be regarded as failing in the spirit of his calling." and as not free from just reproach. His Eminence considered that cases might possibly arise when such collections might be permitted, but in such an event the circumstances ot the case were to be laid before him as Archbishop, and no step was to be taken in furtherance of a collection until his decision was made known. His Grace the Most Rev. the Archbishop, in a letter accompanying the circular, says—" As the questions, referred to deeply concern the charity which should bird us piiests and people, together, I beg now to do (by issuing the ciiculm) what the Cardinal would have done were he spared to us."— Dublin Fireman.