ARCHBISHOP CROKE ON IRISH DEVOTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 351, 9 January 1880, Page 5

ARCHBISHOP CROKE ON IRISH DEVOTION.

The following passages are taken from a sermon lately preached at Camck-on-Shannon by the Archbishop of CasheL:— You are a reading and intelligent people, and must be familiar with the leading ecclesiastical events of the epoch in which we live. Consider what is being done, and what of sacrifice is being made for religion's sake on all sides throughout the length and breadth of this great old Catholic land. _ Let me instance one case in point. Away in the very extremity of the south, in a town of not fully 3,000 inhabitants, and midst a people far from being exceptionally favoured as regards wealth or the means of acquiring it, a church is now all but completed at the enormous cost of £27,000, of which £24,000 is actually paid. The poor but spirited Catholics of that southern town have already given £12,000 of that vast sum, and have, furthermore, engaged to pay half as much again within a specified time. One other example also may be cited. When employed in missionary work as a bishop at the Antipodes, I remember having preached in a small Australian village for the good Sister? of Mercy who were solicited to settle down there and open a denominational school. Three hundred and five persons were present at the sermon. They were Irish without exception, and although above want, did not belong to what are called the wealthy classes. A collection was made by myself in person, on the occasion, and I solemnly assure you that, independent of promises, which were pretty numerous, I received then and there, in cash alone, the very considerable sum of £1,546. For these practical reasons, and for countless others, I am, and shall be, a firm believer in the big-heartedness and boundless generosity of the Irish race. Has anyone ever heard of a church having been put up for sale in Ireland, or that an Irish priest ever undertook a needful good work, however costly, which he was forced to abandon for want of funds 1 There never existed, and dies not exist this moment, on the face of the glole, a more faithful, virtvovs, God-fearing, t,orely -tried, and devoted people than ours. How priests and bishops should love and labour for them ! They are our pride, our crown, our glory. United m every interest of earth and heaven, sprung from the same stock, fed from the same fountain-head of faith, linked indissolubly together by the same bonds, for weal or woe, poor in each other's poverty, rich in each other's wealth, partners of old in the sanguinary penalties of our Irish origin, as we are now sharers in the advancing light of freedom and civilisation, who will dare attempt to separate the fr* 8 * 1 P riesthood itoTa tke Irish people— the pastor from his UOCiC •