THE CHURCH AND POLITICS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 17, 3 September 1897, Page 31

THE CHURCH AND POLITICS.

MANIFESTO OF THE IRISH BISHOPS. DANGEROUS ERRORS EXPOSED AND CONDEMNED. At a general meeting of the archbishops and bishops of Ireland, held in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, on June 23, all the Irieh prelates being present, with the exception of the Most Rev. Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath, who was unavoidably absent, the following authoritative statement was unanimously adopted :—: — Some dangerous errors, utterly subversive of Catholic truth, especially in relation to the teaching authority of the Church in what are palled political matters, have recently been put forward by certain prominent Irish politicians. The bishops of Ireland, as the divinely appointed guardians of the faith and morals of their flocks, have read these utterances with deep regret, and all the more as mosp of them have emanated from persons who call themselves Catholics. Hence we feel it an urgent duty to point out these errors to our flocks, to warn them against the danger of being misled by such guides, and at the same time to set forth the true teaching of the Church, which all loyal Catholics are bound to believe and follow, in their public, no less than in their private conduct. The errors to which we refer are the following .—That political acts are outside the sphere of morals, and that consequently they are not subject to the rules of morality, nor to any control on moral grounds, so that it is an invasion of civil rights if the pastors of the people, in the exercise of their pastoral office, pronounce upon the lawfulness of such acts in their moral aspect, or venture to condemn them, if necessary, as in conflict with the moral law. The public men now engaged in disseminating amongst our Catholic people these pernicious doctrines make formal claim to " absolute freedom of thought and action in political matters in Ireland," and assert that civil and religious liberty, as they phrase it, involves complete freedom from all moral control in their public action and political conduct. They utterly repudiate all clerical interference in such matters, and deny that they are amenable in respect of their political action, either to the moral censure of their own pastors, or even of the Pope himself. As a natural consequence, their language, both in public and in private, regarding the clergy, is oftentimes highly offensive and unbecoming, so that there can be no reasonable doubt of their deliberate purpose to seduce our Catholic people from the loyalty and obedience which they certainly owe, and which hitherto they have always yielded, both to their local pastors and to the bishops of their respective dioceses. Such teaching and such conduct cannot be any longer passed over in silence. These errors are in clear opposition 'to the teaching of the Catholic Church and to the observance of Christian morality. As our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII. has declared in his Encyclical Immortales Dei, '-the true mistress of virtue and guardian of morals is the Church of Christ " ; "to exclude her influence from the business of life, from legislation, from the teaching of truth, from domestic society, is a great and pernicious error." Re il freedom, he adds, is exercised in the pursuit of what is true and just : absolute freedom of thought and action, untrammelled by the laws of morality, is not liberty but license. There are, no doubt, many purely political matters about which the wisest and best men may disagree, and in w hith the pastors of the Church, as such, have no desire to intervene, nor to restrain freedom of thought and action, except when the means and methods employed are such as cannot be deemed conformable to the principles of Christian morality. Questions, for instance, about the best form of local or national government, the extension of the franchise, the operation of commercial and industrial laws, belong to this class. But there are many other questions— mixed questions as they are caLed in Canon Law — which have a moral and religious, as well as a political or temporal aspect, and in some of which the religious or moral question at issue i& the predominant one. buch, in the past, weretheemauuipationquestionazadthcdise^t.iblishuientof the Protestant Church, and such, at the present time, are the education question, Poor Law legislation and many kindred subjoots. To say that the clergy have no right to intervene in huch questions*, where oftentimes the highest interests of religion arc at stake ; that they ought not to point out to their flocks the line of conscientious duty, ami cull upon them to follow it ; that th^y cannot and ought not to advise them in such political matters to choose as their leaders men of high character and sound principles, is, indeed, a great and pernicious error, involving a manifest denial of the teaching authority of the Church. The commission which the Apostles received from Christ Himself, and which their successors inherit, was to teach the nations — politicians as well as private persons— all the truth of the Christian revelation— dogmatic truth and moral truth— and to condemn everything which, judged by that code, is untrue, immoral, or unjust. All this the Bishops are authorised to do, and this they mean to do when the spiritual interests of their flocks require it, whether there be question of public or of private conduct, of the rulers, the politicians, or the people. The opposite principle is utterly subversive of Catholic truth and would be fatal to Christian morality. We venture to hope that by this word of warning, given in all charity, the politicians whose erroneous teaching has made the warning necessary may be moved to withdraw from their present reprehensible attitude. But if unhappily they should persist, by their speeches, newspapers and manifestoes, in advocating the same erroneous principles, we shall feel it our duty to exercise to the full our pastoral authority in order to protect our flocks and eradicate this great and growing evil. We also most earnestly implore our faithful pooplc to close their ears against the hearing of such anti-Catholic teaching, and to yield a willing and loyal obedience to the pastors, who are responsible to God for their souls, and whose supreme concern is to promote their spiritual and temporal welfare.