CARDINAL McCABE AND THE CAUSE OF IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 6, 29 May 1885, Page 19

CARDINAL M cC ABE AND THE CAUSE OF IRELAND.

SATS the Rev. Bernard O'Reilly. D. J., in a sketch of the late Cardinal McCabe in the New York Sim :— The life of this prince of the Church would have been most •beautiful, because a most beneficent and self-sacrificing life, if the political traditions of the Archiepiscopal See of Dublin, and the influence exercised over him by the strong personality of his immediate predecessor, had not predisposed him to lean rather toward the ruling authorities in the Castle than toward the popular cause and the leaders of the national movement. Cardinal McCabe, as administrator of the metropolitan parish, as rector himself of one of the principal -city parishes, and as parish priest of Kingstown, whs simply worshipped for his piety and goodness to the poor. Had he, without any noisy demonstration of sympathy, manifested that be was with - the nation in its straggle for the full measure of its rights and liberties, he would have been, practically, a king over his people. It is - impossible for us Americans to form a just conception of the deep, trustful, abiding love which the Irish heart entertains for a bishop who is thoroughly with the people in their aspirations toward nationality. To such a man they give themselves with the old, unquencbed, enthusiastic devotion of the Celt for his sept and his chief. It was the misfortune of Cardinal McCabe to have been raised to positions of great responsibility under Cardinal Cullen, a man reared in Rome, who never had any sympathy with the national aspirations, looking on every popular movement in Ireland as tending towards revolution and the ruin of religion. He became Archbishop of Dublin just when the country was fast approaching one of those periodical crises of distress brought on by chronic misrule and -chronic rack-renting. In such a crisis, when the existing laws and the courts of justice afford neither protection nor redress from eviction, .and the real representatives of Government come to the starving peasant's door in the form of the crowbar b:igade, human nature will : inevitably seek relief or revenge for its wrongs. I believe that the only way to render such organizations •unpopular or impossible in Ireland is for clergy and people to unite in pressing upon the Government the just demands of the nation. Public opinion in England and the advance of enlightened liberal sentiments among the leading classes are such that no Ministry could long withhold from Ireland the concession of such demands, when made firmly and persistently by the majority of the Irish people, having at their head the bishops and priests and their trusted political Parliamentary representatives. This was the case in 1879-80. It is 'the case to-day. In 1879 things had come to such a pass in Ireland that nothing but such a union could give the distressed, oppressed, and. maddened : agricultural masses a sure hope to lean upon and save them from .despair, while forcing the Government to save the farmers from .-starvation. Archbishop Croke and not a few of his brother prelateß understood this and threw themselves into the national movement to save it from deviating from the path of legality and order; threw themselves among the people to prevent them from being drawn unto the net of the agrarian and secret societies, and to restrain every tendency toward violence and outrage. The practical effects of this wise determination were shown in 'the fact that, where the bishop and bis clergy thus sympathized with and controlled the suffering masses, there was neither crime nor disorder, whereas, in such dioceses as those of Dublin, Tuam, and ■ others where the bisuops had denounced the Land League, the national movement and the popular leaders, the secret societies had it all their • own way. and there was a carnival of blood. Cardinal McCabe denounced the watchwords of the Land League — "Pay a fair rent,'' and "Keep your grip on the land "—as • communistic, and the Ladies' Land League as an unwomanly and •demoralizing association. It was an error of judgment. His denunciation drew from some of his colleagues a stern rebuke, and this somewhat softened the terrible irritation produced on the popnlar feelings by such a condemnation, and coming at such a moment. But the people never forgave what they considered an act of hostility toward themselves at the very moment when they were made desperate by wrong so long endured against all hope of redress, and when •they were making heroic efforts to seek that redress by constitutional methods and in opposition to the secret societies. I believe the Phoenix Park murders and the other outrages which disgraced Dublin and dishonored the name of Ireland in the opinion of the civilized world never, would have taken place, and that the organization which commanded them could never have existed, had Cardinals 'Cullen and McCabe been beaitily and openly with the people, as were .Archbishop Croke, of Cashel, and such men as Bishops Nulty, Butler, Fitzgerald, and Carr. No one who has not lived in Ireland of late years can have an idea of the intense and absorbing earnestness with which both the Irish people and the overwhelming majority of the priesthood have thrown themselves into the Land League and National movements. •Cardinal McCabe felt that this earnestness was as powerful, as resistless, as the quiet energy of the tide, rising, rising steadily until it has overflowed every obstacle in its way. It deeply pained a fatherly heart like his, one wholly and most unselfishly devoted to ithegood of his people, to be made to feel, as he was daily, and in a hundred ways, tbat he was looked upon as an ally of the Castle, as in league or in sympatly with the now convicted scoundrels who had ■done, in their official positions, so much to aggravate the distress of the -people, so much to provoke disorder, and so much to make of the ' administration of justice a mockery and a snare. _ It was evident to me, when 1 had the honor of conversing with His Eminence, that he was smarting under this sense of being in a false position toward his countrymen. But you could not converse long with him without seeing~all the lovable qualities of this singleiioinded man, Happy' had it been for him had he met in the clergy.men around him who Were his elders, bis' counsellors, and, his 1 models, •even one man of God to tell him 'boldly 'to throw 'himself on bis

people's generosity, and by a single act to show tbat he was with them now, heart and soul, even though he had misunderstood and misrepresented their cause at one unhappy moment of his public life. I had hoped, after the death of A. M. Sullivan, that, following the example of Cardinal Manning and Mr. Gladstone in England, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Dublin would have come forward and sent in his name and his tribute to the Sullivan testimonial fund. This single act would have set him right with the people. Referring to the nomination of Canon Walsh for the succession, a nomination then expected and since made, he says : — " There is one fact connected with the death of Cardinal McCabe that raises the hopes of the Nationalists in Dublin and throughout the country. The canons have chosen as Vicar Capitular, to administer the Diocese during the vacancy of the See, the President of Maynooth College, the Very Rev. Dr. Walsh, one of the foremost scholars in the Irish priesthood, and a man of well known and warm Nationalist sympathies. In a day or two the clergy of the Diocese in convocation will vote for three parsons, among whom the Holy See will choose the future Archbishop of Dublin. It is to be hoped that Dr. Walsh's name will be the very first, and that the Holy Father may be inspired to appoint him to the vacant dignity."