CARDINAL MACCABE ON THE DYNAMITE OUTRAGES

Dunstan Times, Issue 1166, 4 July 1884, Page 3

CARDINAL MACCABE ON THE DYNAMITE OUTRAGES

Cardinal Maccabe, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, continues to avail himself of every seasonable opportunity to denounce political violenoe in every shape and form. On Sunday, May 5, the Cardinal addressed a pastoral letter to his clergy, in which, after referring to freemasonry, he remarks

“Butother secret societies, which in their final development are • ruinous to morals, and, conaequens’.y, if intrinsically dangerous to faith, hav-', unhappily, au unholy attraction for large numbers of our fellow countrymen. Patriotism is held out as an allurement to decy our people into those dangerous and condemned associations. When once entrapped, the unfortunate victims of deception lose all individual liberty, which may be recovered, hut only by the risk of death, .and if not recovered, leaves them at the mercy of the unprincipled informer, who probably became an associate that be might have victims _to betray. Exert all your ir.fluence. dear fathers, to counteract the promoters of these associations, which worn great mi-chief lo the unhappy country they, pretend to serve, and which lead to the extinction of religion in the hearts of all those who join them. It is greatly to be deplored that the propagation of the iniquitous system is powerfully aided by the influence of magazines and newspapers which find their way from other countries into Ireland. The writers of these vile productions imagine that our people are prepared to employ means, tru y diabolical for the attainment of ends purely political. We have before us, as we write, one of these periodicals, which unblushingly lays down the horrid doctrine that our battles for. the attainment of certain political and social and other reforms may be—nay, ought to be—sought by the assassin’s knife or the lurking conspirator’s explosives. We, very rev. fathers, know how utterly repulsive to the manly feeling of.races, and how indignantly repudiated by our Catholic in stincts, are such abominable doctrines. But we also know that in the unhappy fallen condition, poor human na'ure is easily pulled down from its noblest elevation to the lowest depths of infamy. Irishman are no exception to this rule of universal corruption ; and St. Paul’s teaching that ‘ evil commun cations corrupt good manners’ is just as appl cable to us as to the Corinthians, to whom it was addressed ”