The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1923. IRISH BISHOPS' PASTORALS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 14, 12 April 1923, Page 29

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1923. IRISH BISHOPS' PASTORALS

RTHUR GRIFFITH and his fellow delegates v/WvSfe signed the Treaty as a pledge to advocate l/sv\y ts acce P tanoe by Dail Eireann. Dail fRTHUR GRIFFITH and fellow majority signed the Treaty as a pledge to advocate its acceptance by Dail Eireann. Dail Eireann ratified the Treaty by a majority SWt&Zs of seven votes. Later, at the elections, pEajfcpf the people of Ireland by returning ninetytwo P'Treatyites and thirty-six antiyjf* '% Treatyites (only nineteen of the latter being elected by the vote of the people) made it clear that the will of the people supported Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins as strongly as it rejected de Valera and his No. 2 Document. The debacle of the anti-Treatyites was complete. Twenty-two candidates, most of them prominent men, were rejected by the Irish people. Erskine Childers, Liam Mellows, Lord Mayor O'Callaghan, Countess Marciewicz, and Mrs. Pearse were all defeated, some of them securing so few votes that their rejection was marked and absolute. The defeated men did not take their beating. Up to that time they spoke and pleaded for the right of selfdetermination. Now their cry was that they would wade through Irish blood in order to force the Irish people to accept their views. They have done as they said they would do.. In the tumult and trouble which they brought on the country the united Hierarchy spoke out forcibly and declared that the Government of the Free State, ruling by the will of the people, was the lawful Government of Ireland, and that the killing and burning done by the defeated leaders were crimes against the law of God. The Bishops' pronouncement was severe and uncompromising, but they felt called upon for the sake of religion in Ireland to denounce the moral Modernism which was bringing a large number of young people to the verge of Protestantism. Many people thought the pronouncement extreme or premature, but we take it that the Irish Bishops are as good judges as to their duty as are any of their critics, lay or clerical or episcopal. ;..:.: ■*, S What the Bishops laid down in their joint pronouncement they have now repeated more strongly in their Lenten Pastorals. In the Home papers which arrived by the last mail we find numerous extracts from them, and they make sad reading for Irishmen. The Cardinal says: "The' plagues of bloodshed, destruction, rapine, pillage, robbery, even sordid theft, have in-

vaded at least a part of the archdiocese with a virulence which leaves in the, shade even the most, outrageous excesses of the Black-and-Tans. 7 .. Never before; in the world's history did. such a wild.and destructive hurricane spring from such a .thin, intangible, unsubstantial vaporthe difference between some equivocal words in an oath, the difference -between external and internal connection with the British Commonwealth. . . . It seems as if the powers of darkness were from day to day. inspiring with fresh ingenuity the agents of destruction. The torch has been added to the revolver, the bomb and the road mine." And this, although the Bishops, the divinely appointed guides of the Catholic people, laid down clearly the duty of the people towards their Government and condemned the crimes of the men who were opposing it. "Last October," continued the Cardinal, "in their joint Pastoral, the Bishops gave a short summary of the evils with which the country has been afflicted. In spite of all the misrepresentation and insult with which they have heen assailed not one word of that summary can be contradicted." He deplores the loss of brave young lives, the corruption of youth by those who put arms into the hands of boys of from sixteen to nineteen years of age, and most of all the demoralisation of the girls who are agents in the orgy of crime and destruction. "All this is the work of a comparatively few fanatics. But the great body of the people are, thank God, sound, sane, and determined not to yield one jot or tittle of the advantages which they have secured, and to support the legitimate Government which is all that now stands between vs and absolute anarchy." Bishop Gilmartin says: "The majority of the people's representatives accepted what we call the Treaty. As a result of that acceptance, a certain form of government has been set up. A minority were opposed to the acceptance of the Treaty. Instead, however, of forming a constitutional opposition, they have had recourse to methods of violence which include the destruction of life and property." There in a few words is the whole case against de Valera and his friends. Constitutional means were open to them and they took the way of violence. Bishop Fogartv, the chamnion of Sinn. Fein, is clearly a firm supporter of the Free State Government. He says: "The fundamental principle of Irish, national life, the principle on which all could stand with honor, truth, and conscience, the right, namely, of Ireland to choose her own fortune, is being trampled on, not by foreigners, but by ourselves. The national will, the tribunal which all should reverence, is treated with contempt ; and holy Ireland is now threatened with the worst of all tyrannies, the tyranny of crime. Ireland has now practically untrammelled freedom. It is therefore a cruel and grievous sorrow to see the unscrupulous efforts that are now being made, and very largely by those who did andsuflered least in the ' black days,' to . rob the country of its hard-won victory. . . All this war-making on the mother-country, inhuman and barbarous in many of its incidents, all this shooting, burning, and wrecking, letting hell loose on the com-, munity m general demoralisation, is so obviously wicked and wrong that it shocks the moral sense of everyone' not blinded with 'passion." Bishop Coyne says: "Halfcrazed, hysterical women who know not what they want devote a large portion of their time to the circulation of calumnies and misleading statements about the Bishops. They assist in the slaughter of Ireland's bravest sons. They glory in the destruction of the property and in the continued crucifixion of the plain people of the country. And then with brazen effrontery they kneel in prayer to God." Bishop Browne strikes a more hopeful note: "Signs are not wanting that the forces of disruption are weakening, and near to breaking up. Numbers of young men who had been led astray by evil councillors are daily returning to allegiance to their motherland and her Government." •" ■ • * ■- :: :C: --- On the whole the Pastorals paint a terrible picture of the ruin and demoralisation wrought by the handful of defeated men and the' clique of hysterical women who kept their pledge to wade through Irish blood in

order to force their views on the vast majority of- the Irish people. And all that the Bishops say\ is emphasised for us by the dreadful memory of such incidents as the murder of Mrs. and Miss Fitzpatrick, the assassination of the aged Doctor O'Higgins, and the roasting to death of the little crippled boy, Emmett McGarry. There is no escaping the facts it is all due to the abandonment of the constitutional way, which would have led to victory, for the criminal way which leads to : ruin. The hopeful note in Bishop Browne's Pastoral is accentuated by reports in recent Irish papers of , large numbers laying down their arms in various parts of the country. And we dare hope that the June elections will bring a further change for the better. In the, meantime, let us pray: God Save Ireland!