RELIGION AND PARTY POLITICS.

New Zealand Tablet, 9 January 1913, Page 39

RELIGION AND PARTY POLITICS.

Speaking at the opening meeting of Dublin University Gaelic Society in Trinity College, Rev. Canon Harinay, better known by his pen-name of ‘ George Birmingham,’ said the question of priests in politics used to be a reproach which members of his Church - cast at the Catholic Church in Ireland; but they had themselves degraded their Church. They had dragged it down into the mire of politics, and to him there was nothing in the happening of recent months in Ireland more terribly sad than the pitiful series of sophistical excuses made by the heads of the Church to which he belonged for what seemed to him an intolerable betrayal of the religion which they professed. They ihad got up time after time and said to people, whom they must have regarded as fools when they used such words, that the Home Rule question was not politics. 'To the man of taste it seemed to him that this dragging <oi religion into politics was disgusting. To the man of : sincere and patriotic feeling that mingling of politics with religion was a sad and terrible thing. To the reli-

gious man it was worse than either of these, and he could imagine the Master saying, ‘ My house should be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of politicians.’ Coming from a Unionist parson, this is strong evidence of the extent to which the Irish Protestant Bishops carry their zeal as party politicians. .. J r