Catholic Ireland and Protestant England

New Zealand Tablet, 1 December 1921, Page 19

Catholic Ireland and Protestant England

ELOQUENT DISCOURSE BY BISHOP MacSHERRY. In the course of siis sermon in Drogheda, recently, on the occasion of the enshrining of the relics of Blessed Oliver Plunket, his Lordship, Bishop Mac Sherry, Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern Districts of the Cape of Good Hope, said: —• ■ Holy Church, dear brethren, in • her great public celebrations wishes to remind us of some great truth, or inculcate some practical lesson. It seems to me that one outstanding lesson may be learned from to-day's function, and it is that we owe a debt of gratitude to those who, under God, have handed down to us the priceless heritage of our Holy Faith. Our country's greatest glories have ever during our long history been associated with our religion—Malachy of, the "collar of gold" dies wearing the habit of the monks; Brian at Clontarf holds up the Crucifix before the army; O'Neill and O'Donnell-die and are buried in Rome; O'Connell bequeaths his heart to Rome. Ten generations of our forefathers preferred exile, confiscation, and (like the Blessed Oliver) often death itself rather than deny their faith. How many 'gruesome tales could be told, even in this town and district, of oppression, relentless cruelty, massacre, fury of persecution under the sanguinary . edicts of Henry, of Elizabeth", and Cromwell. Contrast the state A of religion in Ireland and England then and now. Then Ireland was almost like the corpse on the dissecting table — and lying helpless at the foot of her conqueror. Her nobles banished or —her people starving—her religion proscribedthe law did not assume the existence of a Papist— bishops mostly in prison or exile, those that remained hunted fugitives, not having anywhere to lay their heads. To-day never did Ireland's faith shine with a brighter lustre —magnificent churches cover the land, and are filled to over-flowing with devout congregations. And Ireland's sons are spreading the faith over all these vast regions overseas that either once owned England's sway like the United States of America, or do own it still. Nineteen years ago I had my last audience .with Leo XIII. On that occasion three bishops were received in succession by his Holiness —the first being Cardinal Moran, Archbishop of Sydney, the second Archbishop Riordan, of San Francisco, the third myself from Porth Elizabeth, on the Indian Ocean, at the southern extremity of tjlie dark Continent of Africa. What an idea of the world-wide dispersion of our race is evoked by the simple mention of these localities, presided over by Irish pastors of Irish flocks, though separated by such vast spaces from the mother-land and from each other. Truly may we say with the Psalmist —"Their sound hath gone forth in all the earth, and their words into the ends of the world." And truly now as ever "the blood, of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church." Never in all her sad history was the Catholicity so flourishing in Ireland at home, or in the greater Ireland overseas as it is in our own day. And the same is true of the Universal Church, with its three hundred millions of believers united under its visible head on earth, enjoying the protection of her Divine Founder Who is with her, and will be with her "all days even unto the consummation of the world." And, oh, the contrast between the condition of Protestantism at the death of our. martyr and its present state. Then ijfc was seated in pride of place and power, in possession of the magnificent cathedrals erected in Catholic days wealthy, arrogant, and intolerant, hating and despising and ever persecuting the few remaining ; adherents of the old Church. The Protestant judge who presided over Blessed Oliver's trial addressing him, said: "The botton of your treason was your setting up your false religion, than which there is not anything more displeasing to God, or more pernicious to mankind in the world —a religion that is ten times worse than all the heathenish superstitions, the most, dishonorable and derogatory to God." i : These ; words of that intolerant and unjust judge, epitomise the sentiments of the haughty self-satisfied ; i Protestant of that epoch. His was the true religion, freed at the glorious reformation from the contaminations

of Popery, and destined to diffuse the light of pure Gospel Truth throughout the worlda light' that was never to be extinguished. ' But let us see what is the position of Protestantism to-day. Why, its rapid disintegration is one of the phenomena of our age. Of the 200 or more sects into which it is split up, not one teaches the same doctrine for 30 years in succession. Not one of them that does not bewail year by year an immense falling off in membership. England is no longer a Christian country. Not one-third of its population ever enters a place of worship. Protestantism and its resulting Rationalism has snatched from the poor the only comfort left in misery, from the rich the only curb of their passions. Two day's ago I stood a.t Tyburn, in the heart of » fashionable London, watching for a moment the flow of that ceasless traffic, the roar of which is heard all day long and most of the night. From North, South, East, and West of that vast Metropolis, the most populous city in the world after New York, there passed and repassed swiftly gliding vehicles filled with richly-attired people, all engaged in worship of Mammon or pleasure. Newsboys sold papers; I bought one. Its contents reflected the thoughts of these people; What were these contents? Reports of races, regattas, prize fights, sports of all kinds, alternating with accounts of strikes, of millions unemployed and starving, of disgusting divorce cases and filthy crimes of all kinds. Of real news there was but little, and that mostly unreliable and likely to be contradicted next day. Truly, I said to myself, this people is dancing on a volcano. The words, "Happy, Christian England," are a mockery. The late Cardinal Manning, before his consecration, made a retreat at the Passionist Monastery at Highgate, overlooking London. Some notes he then made have been published, amongst them the following:—"When I look down upon London from this garden I know that there are before me nearly three millions of men, of whom only 200,000 are nominally in the faith; that hundreds of thousands are living and dying without Baptism in all the sins of the flesh and spirit, in all that Nineveh and the Cities of the Plain and Imperial Rome ever committed; that it is the capital of the most anti-Catholic power of the nominally Christian world, and the head of its anti-Catholic spirit; that in a moment it might be set afire with fury against the Catholic and Roman Church. I confess I feel wo are ' walking on the waters.' " Since that great and gifted Englishman who knew his countrymen so well, penned these words, the population he referred to has more than doubled, and the conditions he depicted so faithfully have become ten times worse. What a picture, my dear brethern, of spiritual and moral conditions after four centuries of Protestantism! And if we turn to Germany, the cradle of the Reformation, what do we find? That about three per cent, of the people of Berlin go Ito any church it is the most immoral city in Europe, and that before the war about 30,000 of its population annually gave formal and official notice that they renounced membership of any church. If our Irish people have escaped all this appalling spiritual ruin and moral rottenness we owe it under God to the prayers of St. Patrick and the faith he brought to our shores, and to those who, like Blessed Oliver, transmitted that faith to us, and sacrificed their lives in so doing.