XII — The Religious Difficulty Under Home Rule
(i) The Church View
By the Rt. Rev. C. F. D’Arcy, Bishop of Down
Irish Unionists are determined in their opposition to Home Rule by many considerations. But deepest of all is the conviction that, on the establishment of a separate legislature and executive for Ireland, the religious difficulty, which is ever with us here, would be increased enormously. Occasionally, in English newspapers and in Irish political speeches, there occur phrases which imply that the Protestant ascendency, as it was called, still exists in Ireland. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is not merely false: it is impossible. Even in Belfast, as a recent controversy proved, Roman Catholics get their full share of whatever is to be had. There are no Roman Catholic disabilities. The majority has every means of making its power felt. At the present moment, the most impossible of all things in Ireland is that Roman Catholics, as such, should be oppressed or unfairly treated.
It used to be imagined that when this happy condition was attained there would be no more religious disagreement in Ireland. But events have shown the exact opposite to be the case. There never was a time when there was in the minds of Irish Protestants so deep a dread of Roman aggression, and so firm a conviction that the object of that aggression is the complete subjection of this country to Roman domination. Recalling very distinctly the events and discussions of 1886 and 1893, when Home Rule for Ireland seemed so near accomplishment under Mr. Gladstone’s leadership, the writer has no hesitation in saying that the dread of Roman tyranny is now far more vivid and, as a motive, far more urgent than it was at those epochs. Protestants are now convinced, as never before, that Home Rule must mean Rome Rule, and that, should it be forced upon them, in spite of all their efforts, they will be face to face with a struggle for liberty and conscience such as this land has not witnessed since the year 1690. That such should be the conviction of one-fourth of the people of Ireland, and that fourth by far the most energetic portion of its inhabitants, is a fact which politicians may well lay to heart.
Approaching this subject as one whose duties give him the spiritual oversight of more than 200,000 of the Protestants of Ireland—members of the Church of Ireland, and who has had twenty-seven years of experience as a clergyman in Ireland, both in the north and in the south, the writer may venture to speak with some confidence as to the mind of the people among whom he has worked for so long. In doing so, he feels at liberty to say that he is one who has always avoided religious controversy, and who has ever made it his endeavour to be tolerant and considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. He has a deep regard for his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and recognises to the full their many excellent qualities and the sincerity of their religion.
It is possible to bring to a single point the reasons which make Irish Unionists so apprehensive as regards the religious difficulty under Home Rule. Their fears are not concerned with any of the special dogmas of the Roman Church. But they recognise, as people in England do not, the inevitable tendency of the consistent and immemorial policy of the Church of Rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims. They know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power. They know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient. They know that professions and promises made by individual Roman Catholics and by political leaders, statements which to English ears seem a happy augury of a good time coming, are of no value whatever. They do not deny that such promises and guarantees express a great deal of good intention, but they know that above the individual, whether he be layman or ecclesiastic, there is a system which moves on, as soon as such movement becomes possible, in utter disregard of his statements. At the time when Catholic emancipation was in view, high Roman authorities gave the most emphatic guarantees that the position of the then Established Church in Ireland would never be endangered, so far as their Church and people were concerned. But when the time came, such promises proved absolutely worthless. Whether the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a good thing or not, is not the question here. The essential point, for our present purpose, is that the guarantees of individual Roman Catholics, no matter how positively or how confidently stated, are of no account as against the steady age-long policy of the Roman Church.
It is well known to all students that, while other religious bodies have, both in theory and in practice, renounced certain old methods of persuasion, the Roman Church still formally claims the power to control states, to depose princes, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, to extirpate heresy. She has never accepted the modern doctrine of toleration. But there are many who think that these ancient claims, though not renounced, are so much out-of-date in the modern world that they mean practically nothing. Such is the opinion of the average Englishman, and the mild and cultivated form of Romanism which is to be met with usually in England lends colour to the opinion. In Ireland we know better.
The recent Papal Decree, termed Ne Temere, regulating the solemnisation of marriages, has been enforced in Ireland in a manner which must seem impossible to Englishmen.
According to this Decree, “No marriage is valid which is not contracted in the presence of the (Roman) parish priest of the place, or of the Ordinary, or of a priest deputed by them, and of two witnesses at least.” This rule is binding on all Roman Catholics.
It is easy to see what hardship and wrong must follow the observance of this rule in the case of mixed marriages.
As a result, it is now the case that, in Ireland, marriages which the law of the land declares to be valid are declared null and void by the Church of Rome, and the children of them are pronounced illegitimate. Nor is this a mere academic opinion: such is the power of the Roman Church in this country that she is able to enforce her laws without deference to the authority of the State.
The celebrated McCann case is the most notable illustration. Even in the Protestant city of Belfast we have seen a faithful wife deserted and her children spirited away from her, in obedience to this cruel decree. And we have seen an executive afraid to do its duty, because Rome had spoken and justified the outrage. Those who know intimately what is happening here are aware of case after case in which husband or wife is living in daily terror of similar interference, and also know that Protestants married to Roman Catholics, and living in the districts where the latter are in overwhelming majority, often find it impossible to stand against the odium arising from a bigoted and hostile public opinion. Nor does such interference stop here. Only a few weeks ago the kidnapping of a young wife by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics was prevented only by the brave and prompt action of her husband. In this case a sworn deposition, made in the presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made. Let none imagine the Ne Temere question is extinct in Ireland. It is at this moment a burning question. Under Home Rule it would create a conflagration. And surely there is reason for the indignation of Protestants. Here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human relations, public and private; and this, not for the maintenance of any moral principle, but to secure obedience to a disciplinary regulation which is regarded as of so little moral value that it is not enforced in any country in which the Government is strong enough to protect its subjects.
As if to define with perfect clearness, in the face of the modern world, the traditional claim of the Roman See, there has issued from the Vatican, within the last few weeks, a Decree which sets the Roman clergy above the law of the land. This ordinance, which is issued motu proprio by the Pope, is the re-enactment and more exact definition of an old law. It lays down the rule that whoever, without permission from any ecclesiastical authority, summons any ecclesiastical persons to a lay tribunal and compels them to attend publicly such a court, incurs instant excommunication. The excommunication is automatic, and absolution from it is specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This fact adds enormously to the terror of it, especially among a people like the Irish Roman Catholics. Great discussion has taken place as to the countries in which this Decree is in force. No one was surprised to hear that Germany was exempt. Archbishop Walsh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, in an elaborate discussion, gives the opinion that the Decree is abrogated under British law by the custom of the country, which has in the past rendered impossible the observance of the strict ecclesiastical rule in this matter, but is careful to add that this is only his opinion as a canonist, and is subject to the decision of the Holy See. When this plea is examined, it is found to mean simply this, that the law is not strictly observed in case of necessity. That this is the meaning of Archbishop Walsh’s plea is proved by a quotation which he makes from Pope Benedict XIV. The principle laid down by Pope Benedict is that when it became impossible to resist the encroachment of adverse customs, the Popes shut their eyes to what was going on, and tolerated what they had no power to prevent. It is exactly the principle of toleration as a temporary expedient. The re-enactment of the law by the present Pope means surely, if it means anything, that such toleration is to cease wherever and whenever the law can be enforced. But, be it observed, this necessity is entirely dependent on the strength of the authority which administers the civil law. The moment the civil authority grows weak in its assertion of its supremacy, the plea of necessity fails, and the ecclesiastical law must be enforced. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is exactly what would happen under Home Rule. Here is the crowning proof of the truth that, above all the well-intentioned persons who give assurances of the peace and goodwill that would flourish under Home Rule, there is a power which would bring all their good intentions to nothing.
But what of the Church of Ireland under Home Rule? Formerly the Established Church of the country, and as such occupying a position of special privilege, she still enjoys something of the traditional consideration which belonged to that position, and is more than ever conscious of her unbroken ecclesiastical descent from the Ancient Church of Ireland. Her adherents number 575,000, of whom 366,000 are in Ulster. As part of her heritage she holds nearly all the ancient ecclesiastical sites and the more important of the ancient buildings which still survive. These possessions, thus inherited from an immemorial past, were secured to her by the Act of Disestablishment. For the rest, the endowments which she enjoys at the present time have been created since 1870 by the self-denial and generosity of her clergy and laity. Under British law, her position is secure. But would she be secure under Home Rule? Those of her advisers who have most right to speak with authority are convinced that she would not. The Bishop of Ossory, in an able and very moderate statement made at the meeting of the Synod of that Diocese, last September, showed that both the principal churches and the endowments now held by the Church of Ireland have been claimed repeatedly by prominent representatives of the Church of Rome. It is stated that the Church sites and buildings belong to the Roman Communion in Ireland because, on Roman Catholic principles, that communion truly represents the ancient Irish Church, and no lapse of time can invalidate the Church’s title; and that the endowments belong to the same communion because they “represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days, which were, in their turn, the alienated possessions of the Roman Church” (see Bishop of Ossory’s Synod Address, p. 7). As regards this last statement, it must be noted that the only sense in which it can be truly said that the endowments represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days is that the foundation of the new financial system was laid by the generosity of the clergy in office at the time. They entrusted to the Representative Body of the Church the capitalised value of the life-interests secured to them by the Act. The money was their private property, and their action one which involved great self-denial, for they gave up the security offered by the State. The money was so calculated that the whole should be exhausted when all payments were made. By good management, however, it yielded considerable profit, and meanwhile formed a foundation on which to build. It was, however, in no sense an endowment given by the State, nor was it a fund on which any but the legal owners (i.e. the clergy of the time) had a justifiable claim.
The Bishop of Ossory’s statement excited much discussion, but, though many Roman Catholic apologists endeavoured to laugh away his fears as groundless, not one denied the validity of his argument. The fact that, as he showed, the Church of Ireland holds her churches by exactly the same title as that by which the English Church holds Westminster Abbey, and that, for the Irish Church, there is the additional security of the Act of 1869, count for nothing in the eye of Roman Canon Law.
In an Ireland ruled by a Parliament of which the vast majority would be Roman Catholics, devout and sincere, representing constituencies peopled by devout and sincere persons who believe that the laws of the Vatican are the laws of God, with a clergy lifted above the civil law by the operation of the recent Motu Proprio Decree, an Ireland in which even the school catechisms (see the “Christian Brothers’ Catechism,” quoted by the Bishop of Ossory, op. cit. p. 8) teach that an alien Church unlawfully excludes “the Catholics” from their own churches, how long would it be before a movement, burning with holy zeal and pious indignation, against the usurpers, would sweep away every barrier and drive out “the heretics” from the ancient shrines?
Irish Churchmen who know their country are aware that even the most stringent guarantees would be worthless in such a case, as they proved worthless in the Act of Union, and at the time of Catholic emancipation.
Some English Liberals imagine that Home Rule would be followed by an uprising of popular independence which would destroy the power of the Roman Church in Ireland. Let those who think this consider that the more independent spirits among the Irish Roman Catholics go to America, and let them further consider what has happened in the Province of Quebec in Canada. The immense strength of the bonds—religious, social, and educational—by which the mass of the people in the South and West of Ireland are held in the grip of the Roman ecclesiastical system, and the power which would be exerted by the central authority of that system by means of the recent decrees, make it certain that clerical domination would, from the outset, be the ruling principle of an Irish Parliament.
There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who form the Church to which the writer belongs than that they should be enabled to live at peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. They dread Home Rule, because they know that, instead of peace, it would bring a sword, and plunge their country once again into all the horrors of civil and religious strife.