THE TABLET AND THE BISHOP OF LIMERICK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 46, 9 March 1888, Page 7

THE TABLET AND THE BISHOP OF LIMERICK.

(From the Dublin Frewnan.)

The Tablet has had an undoubted find I The letter of the Bishop of Lunenck has been welcome to it as to the Saturday Review, and it gloats over the document with equal satisfaction. But it expresses iti delight in a manner somewhat different from its freethinking Tory colleague. The Satwday Review is grateful for the Bishop's service to the cause, in its own contemptuous fashion, makes what capital it can out of the Bishop's denunciations, but cannot bring itself to be gracious or grateful for his co-operation. The Tablet, on the other hand, is unctuousnees itself. It finds the Bishop's letter "clear, generou?, tender, and loving, uncompromising, courageous, and wise." After this outburst of adjectives it was natural to expect tears. And the tears follow in due course. In much groaning and labouring of spirit it commiserates the prelate who has been, it states, " unscrupulously attacked and calumniated by the Nationalist Press, which has spared neither the Pope's Envoy nor the Pope himself," and it is moved beyond the limits of repressive emotion by the contrast between the tone of this irreligious and irreverently violent journalism and that 11 something inexpressibly pathetic in the tender charity and sensitive consideration for his people that runs through the Bishop's simple narrative," etc. We leave the Tablet to its emotion, and hope it will find solace in the tearful contemplation of the pathetic features it has discovered in the Bishop's simple narrative. For ourselves we have not found his Lordship's letter specially tender, nor, if we may say it, without disrespect, specially generous, at least to us. We do not, for instance, regard it as a singular evidence of tender and generous treatment to be charged with " sending vile insinuations from Dublin to the London papers for publication there, in order to be copied, with an expression of disbelief, into our leading columns," and the Tablet will hold us excused if we are not sensibly affected by " love " in this form. Again, we do not find the letter which has stirred the raptures of the Tablet so " uncompromising." In fact we regard it as a distinct profession of the policy of compromise. His Lordship declares that he considers Boycotting to be " irreligious," and the Plan of Campaign " unjust," and that holding these views he made up his mind "simply to stand aside." We cannot conceive a less uncompromising attitnde on the part of a Catholic Biahcp. That a policy which he holds to be " irreligious," and which, in another part of his letter, he characterises as " bad and sinful," should be adopted and practised publicly and widely among his flock, and that he should " simply stand aside," appears to us to require in a Catholic Prelate, who has a sense of his obligations, a large measure of the spirit of compromise. To " simply stand aside " and permit " sin and irreligiDn " to spread in his Church, is not " uncompromising" in a Catholic Bishop, and it may be doubted further whether it is 'courageous and wise. But these nicer points of ethics we do not care to discuss further with the Tablet. To a practical question which it puts us, and in which the softer emotions are not so largely concerned as in its previous comments, we will venture a reply. The Tablet asks, "Why do not the Freeman's Journal, United Ireland, Mr. Dillon, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and others take up the demand made by the Bishop of Limerick on behalf of Catholic education ? Here is something within their reach, gomething that will be a Catholic benefit to the people, something Government would grant. Is it that party politics and agitation are their all and all f" To which query we make answer :— lt is not that party politics and agitation, but that Irish Government for Ireland, is to us all in all, that we do not take up the demand. Our zeal for Catholic University education is quite equal to that of the Tablet, though we did not, like the Tablet, begin a series of articles on the subject concurrently with the departure of his Grace of Norfolk for Rome. But we aim at securing the object the Tablet has at heart after our fashion. la asking for Home Rule we ask implicitly for the settlement of the education questioa, and for much more besides. And it is precisely bacauae our demand includes much more than the education question that we are not satisfied to confine our efforts to the soiall field the Tablet would assign us. The nation has not at present sufficient energy to carry on two agitations — one for self-government and the other for educational rights. As our present method permits us to unite both demands in one, to make the effort that wins the one available for winning the other also, it would be waßte of political effort, to put it on the higher grounds of expediency, to adopt the welKmeant suggestion of our tender-souled contemporery.