READINGS IN IRISH HISTORY

New Zealand Tablet, 17 May 1917, Page 15

READINGS IN IRISH HISTORY

By ' Shanachie.'

THE ORTHODOXY OF THE EARLY IRISH CHURCH. The claim is sometimes openly made by Presbyterians and Anglicans that they are the legitimate heirs of the founders of the Early Irish and British Churches. They refer to St. Patrick and Columba, Aidan, and Colman as their spiritual fathers. This they also insinuate when they name churches and collegies after these illustrious saints. It is but natural. Upstarts have always shown a marked weakness for an old and honored ancestry. It is true their pretensions often provoke the laughter of their neighbors, and call forth the sneers of the cynic. "My good woman," said a parson one day to an old Irish Catholic lady, "St. Patrick was a Protestant like me." "Musha, then, maybe he was; but who was his wife?" The poor old woman could not see the resemblance between this modern evangel with his wife and his bairns and the good saint whose descendant he claimed to be. Perhaps she was blind? It will be our business in this sketch to set forth the grounds on which Protestants base their extraordinary claims. Our chief reason for doing so is this Catholic children in primary and secondary schools are often obliged to read histories written by Protestant authors such as Ransome, Oman, Tout, and others, where the Protestant theory is set forth, not as an opinion, but as an established historical fact. The writers of these text-books start with the assumption that claims made by unscrupulous controversialists like Ledwig, Mason, and others are true, and base'the whole superstructure of their narrative upon such fabrications. Thus their opinions receive at the very beginning a fatal bias. We begin by admitting that there existed between the Early Irish Church and the Mother Church of Rome certain well-known differences. They may be stated thus—(a) the date on which Easter was kept; (b) the kind of tonsure worn by the clergy; (c) a difference in rites or liturgy. The question is: did these differences give rise to two religions ? In other words, were they essential or accidental, vital or nonvital points? No well-informed person will say they were vital. Here then is where the average third or fourth-rate Protestant historians err : they fail to see that disagreement between the Irish and the Roman Church on these points did not amount to a difference of religion. Briefly expressed their error is this: they do. not mark the plain and necessary distinction that exists between things that belong to faith and things that belong to the laws of the Church, that is, discipline. For example, to abstain from meat on Friday is a law of the Church, a matter of discipline; to believe in the Real Presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist is a matter of faith, something all Catholics are bound to believe. Well, then will anyone say that, because the law of abstinence from meat on Friday does not bind the Catholics of Spain, therefore, they have a different religion from the Catholics of New Zealand, who follow in this matter the law that prevails in Rome? Apply this to the differences between the early Irish Church and the Roman Church, and the case is clear. The date of keeping Easter, the manner ■of wearing the tonsure, the different styles (rites) of offering Mass, and administering Baptism were matters that amounted to differences of discipline, divergences in human laws made by the Church ; they did not touch the kernal, the substance, of religion—faith. What matters is: did the early Irish Christians believe that the Mass is a real arid true Sacrifice of .the Body and Blood of Christ? The mere rite they used in offering Mass is a non-essential. Different rites exist even at the present day among Catholics in East and West.

When, therefore, ministers of mushroom religions appealing - to 'biased or ignorant historians, tell ns, in all seriousness, that they are the lineal descendants of Patrick and Columba, of Aidan and Colman, we can smile at their simplicity and pity their shallowness. To be deep in history,” said Newman, “is to cease to be a Protestant.” Unfortunately they rarely are so circumstanced; for the most part they feed on garbage. - Many Protestant historians tell us, for instance, that it was Henry 11., and his Anglo-Norman ecclesiastics who taught the Irish reverence and obedience to the See of Rome. Even such a worthy historian as Green commits this mistake. Moreover, the expression ( Celtic and Roman Christianity,” taken to mean two distinct brands of religion, has now become almost stereotyped in the average text-books of English history written by Protestants. They have been repeating this false assumption so long that they have long since convinced themselves that it is a solid fact.

The following are a few leading questions, which we fancy these parrot historians will find it very difficult to answer: (a) Ireland, after the Anglo-Norman conquest, was, they say, Roman Catholic ” ; until then she had not been in communion with Rome. . It was the AngloNormans made her Roman in faith and obedience. If then, as is asserted, the Anglo-Normans imposed a religious, as well as civil yoke on the clergy and laity of Ireland, where are the protests of the Irish clergy against this new religion ? There are none. This is very significant. Yet there are outcries and appeals to arms against the Anglo-Norman military occupation. So then the Irish and the Anglo-Normans must have been in agreement from the very beginning in matters of faith, though they were often deadly opposed in matters of State.

(b) If the Irish were not “Roman” Catholics how comes it that Irishmen reared and educated in Ireland were the defenders of Catholicism against heretics on the Continent ? Witness Columban crushing Arianism in Lombardy and Dungal smashing Iconoclasm. Where did these men learn “Roman” Catholicism? Not surely on the Continent: Columban was over fifty years of age when he left Ireland and he was too busy travelling, preaching, and founding monasteries and churches to study a great deal. Moreover, are we to suppose that the man who would not give up Irish customs in regard to liturgy and the date of Easter, would betray Irish faith, “Celtic Christianity,” if such a thing existed ? Those who think so, we are afraid, know very little of the stern and uncompromising character of this great man. (c) If the Irish were not “ Roman ” Catholics, how and why did they establish “Roman” Catholicism in their monasteries and in those provinces of Europe which they made Christian ? If the Irish missionaries were not “ Roman ” Catholics, but “Independents,” Nonconformists to Rome, so to speak, where did the Provincial and General Councils assemble that condemned them ? History does not know. Where are the decrees of the Popes branding them as heretics? hey cannot bo found. To say that they could escape detection is to mistake the spirit of those times. Popes and bishops were then always on the lookout for false teachers. Would a Catholic like Pepin, would such a vehement “Papist” as Charlemagne entertain, protect, and shower favors on these Irish missionaries had they been non-Roman in faith and obedience To say that they could wander as free lances through England in the time of the Roman monk Augustine, or throughout Europe,, when it was intensely “Roman” Catholic, without being set upon, howled down, and execrated is to show oneself ignorant of even the elements of Church history. True the Irish missionaries were sometimes called upon to repel attacks of their enemies. This circumstance, however, does but make their 'orthodoxy shine out more conspicuously. When, for instance some bishops in France summoned Columban before

them to answer certain charges in regard to his Easter and his liturgy, he did not appear, but appealed to Rome against them. Strange conduct this from a " Celtic" Christian! Perhaps he was only complaining them to their superior, just as an old spinster might complain naughty school boys to their teacher ? No; he wrote in self-defence. So also when Boniface impeached the theology of Virgilius, the accusation was v that the Irish monk taught that there was a race of men not redeemed by Christ. No other point of Catholic faith was in question; not even this, for the alleged error existed only in the imagination of the Saxon monk. Now Virgilius was a priest for some time before he left Ireland, therefore, his education was Irish. Again, at the Synod of Whitby, a discussion took place between Colman, the Irish Abbot of Lindisfarne, and Wilfred, afterwards Archbishop of York, a Saxon, who, as Protestants say, was a strong partisan of Rome. Here they discussed the date on which. Easter should be celebrated. Colman tenaciously clung to the Irish date of observance. He was refuted by Wilfred. Was he convinced? Not he. He left England, returned to Ireland with most of the Irish and Saxon monks of Lindisfarne, and continued till death his Irish mode of reckoning the date of Easter. Why was this? Because Colman looked upon this point as of discipline, not of faith, and, therefore, while he adhered to Rome in matters of dogma, he clung to Irish tradition in what he regarded matters of secondary importance, the dates of festivals. Now we know from Bede (book 1), that Wilfred, in the year 681, at a council held in Rome, solemnly attests the purity of Irish faith. "Wilfred, Bishop of York, confessed the true and Catholic faith on behalf of the northern parts of Britain, and the islands of Ireland which are inhabited by the English and Britons, as well as by the Scots and Picts, and attest that faith by his signature." . How Wilfred would have made Rome ring with his denunciations of the Irish had they been schismatics. Not so, however, rather was he able to stand up in the mother Church and proclaim to the world the Orthodoxy of Irish Faith. In our next contribution we will cite our authorities to prove that the Irish Church was thoroughly Catholic and Roman, while clinging to the customs introduced by St. Patrick in regard to Easter, tonsure, and Liturgy. "