CARDINAL LOGUE ON “NO POPERY” CRY

New Zealand Tablet, 11 July 1918, Page 31

CARDINAL LOGUE ON “NO POPERY” CRY

Cardinal Logue has been interviewed - by the special correspondent in Ireland of the Manchester Guardian, who gives an interesting account of the conversation in a recent issue of that journal. The interviewer says: Time was short, and I asked him (the Cardinal) point-blank whether the Irish Catholic Hierarchy was taking the lead against conscription as part of a proGerman plot engineered from the Vatican. It was a very broad leading question, but the Cardinal traversed it in detail. "I don't suppose you need telling yourself," he said. "But if you think anybody else needs telling, then tell them from me it is nonsense. The Irish bishops have received no instructions and no suggestions from the Vatican about their attitude towards conscription. If they had, -it is surely myself who would know, and I do not know anything of the' kind. But everybody knows that the Catholic Church has got sons on both sides in this horrible war: and everybody ought to know that, so far as the Vatican is concerned, the Vatican has been neutral throughout. The Vatican could have been no other." I asked the Cardinal what was the root of tinIrish hostility to conscription, and he referred me to the official declaration of the Maynooth Conference. He reinforced it with 6ome considerations of his own, which may be called the human economic argument. It is, perhaps, the gravest indictment of English rule that during the last 60 or 70 years Ireland has lost nearly half her population. The Cardinal's point was that by their emigration, caused or stimulated by an unpopluar form of government, the country had already lost far more or her manhood than she could afford. Emigration had been stopped during the war, but there was a great rush of recruits at the beginning, a rush which might have continued if England had behaved decently, and if the War Office at one time had not set itself against the raising of Irish divisions as such. I suggested that some of his colleagues on the. Episcopal bench had taken a definitely anti-recruiting line, but the Cardinal said he had not heard of it. In any case Ireland—or certainly rural Ireland—was already short of men. Last year she. put a million or twelve hundred thousand new acres under tillage, and to-day many—perhaps most—of the farms were being worked by one man and a horse : but I fancy this was intended only as "an argument of expediency supplementary to the stronger ground of principle that no nation ought to be conscripted against its will. The Cardinal talked like any other Irishman talks of the probable and even certain results. "I am told you mean this business," he said. "You have more soldiers in Ireland now than you can ever get by their aid, and if and when you get the conscripts, what are you going to do with them?" He made it clear that he is strongly against physical resistance, but short of that, if it can be avoided, the national sentiment will make itself sufficiently troublesome in other ways. I put several other questions. Question: "Was this a new departure, or had the Catholic bishops ever before taken an active interest in politics Answer: "Of course they had, and whenever the welfare of their people demanded it." Question: "Had the bishops now thrown themselves into the arms of the Sinn Feiners ?'' Answer: "No, they had not. He himself had always been against Sinn Fein as such, and had frequently said so. It was the British Government themselves who were encouraging Sinn Fein by bringing forward conscription." Question: "Was the 'No-Popery' cry likely to do harm to the Church itself?"

Answer: “Not a bit of it, but if persisted in it might do harm to the Allies. Leaving out of account the Irish and Continental Catholics fighting on the side of the Allies, he was told that 40 per cent, of the American soldiers were Catholics, either of Irish birth or Irish descent ; and it was a stupid thing in England to try to raise a foolish and false issue. The Catholics would see through it, but all the same they would not like it.” * /