CLOSING OF THE CATHOLIC CHAPEL AT KNOCKREA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2680, 14 September 1889, Page 5 (Supplement)

CLOSING OF THE CATHOLIC CHAPEL AT KNOCKREA.

The Catholic chapel at Knocltrca, Limerick, wo leanied by cablegram last June, was closed by the mandate of tho Bishop, but we have only by this mail obtained the particulars leading to this punishment of a parish. The following portion of a letter from tlie Catholic Bishop of Limcrick cxplaius the circumstances of tho case"Dear Father Halpin,—lt is a great sorrow to me to have to tiike so extreme a step as to interdict your parish and close the church, but after the fullest and most auxious deliberation, I sue no other possible course. Before adopting it, as you are aware, I have tried every means that I could think of toavoid the necessity of harsh measures. For weeks and months past I have waited patiently in the hope that the religious spirit of the people would itself relieve me of so painful a necessity. I sent my Vicar-General, who was personally known to them as their former parish pi who put before them ill the most forciblr, and at the same time fatherly, language, the evils of their conduct and its consequences ; at my request you have gone about from house to house for weeks, trying by remonstrances and by persuasion to work upon them individually ; and linally, 011 the last few Sundays they had been formally warned of the measure which I should take if they persevered in in their action. Now, as all these efl'urts have failed, 1 must take the step within my power to prevent God's house and God's worship being made the instrument of a wicked and irreligious combination for tho attainments of its ends. Boycotting has been condemned by the Supreme Head of the Church, and is sinful anywhere, l>nt if there never were a deeisirjii by competent authorities on the point, tho common sense and religious instruction of a Catholic people ought to teach them the outrageous impropriety of fighting out in God's house, and in the presence of the awful Sacrifice of the Mass, their quarrels about land, or politics, or any other secular interest. But as they do not seem to see this, I should be false to my duty ir I allowed them the opportunities of pond-t----ing in conduct so sacrilegious. I am aware that for some of them at least there is the extenuation that they act under the influence of sheer terror. The following is a copy of a notice served on some of your parishioners :—' Take warning. If you enter the grabber's gallery you do so at vour peril. Take this notice, or by Heavens you will suffer. By order.' Theso are t.hi methods by which your pari-h is being disturbed, but, however it is brought abjut, I cannot tolerate the use of God's house for political or secular purposes. As long as lam bishop of this diocese, by God's help I, and I alone, shall determine who shall or who shall not be excluded from the house of God, and I am not prepared to abdicate that duty to any set of men." All honour to the Catholic Bishop of Limerick, and if there were more like him, politics and religion wuuld not bo so apparently hand in ha ml wherever there is an Irish community. The trouble at Knoekea arose through a man of the name of Ryan being boycotted from some cause or another, and as that did not drive him oil' his land, the boycotters cut down his |iew in the church and issued the notice quoted above in the Bishop's letter. The ell'ect of tho mandate is that neither Sacrament nor Mass can be administered in the parish, with tho exception of baptism and extreme uuction, In the ease of death the priests cannot attend at the grave, and women eumot bo churched. When the Bishop closed the Church lie was not aware thai the sacred building had bfen entered and the pew cut down. Edward Thomas O'lJwyor is this Bishop of J.im>'riek, who has so fearlessly obeyed the commands of I lis Holiness the Pope, iu the matter of suppressing boycotting.