MONSIGNOR PERSICO'S MISSION.
[To ram Roma Or THE SYZCILT013."]
Silt —Upon Monsignor Persico's report to the Pope, and the Pope's consequent action or inaction, I believe the general feeling of the mass of English people towards Romanism will depend for some time to come. For many years we have thankfully seen a decline of hostility towards Roman Catholics. The celebration of November 5th has been dying out, and Roman Catholics have been enabled, free from all disability, to dwell in friendship with fellow-citizens of different creeds. This is as it should be.
But when it has filtered down into the average Englishman that some Bishops and the majority of priests—Roman Catholic —in Ireland have inoited to contempt for the Eighth and Sixth Commandments, and have met with no rebuke from his Holiness the Pope, no other conviction can be arrived at but that the Roman Catholic Church, for the sake of expediency, will allow Irish priests to play fast and loose with the moral code,—a thing which it would never dream of conniving at either in London or New York.
No such excuse as the possibility of losing influence can justify such action, and I cannot but foresee a tension of feeling in England about it full of danger to the happy concord which has been growing now for so long. It would not need much effort to fan into a flame the spark of mischief which is struck by the attitude of the Irish priesthood. I do not believe for a moment that the English Roman Catholic priesthood shares it.
We are grieved to see an old historic Church—which, with all her faults, has a magnificent record, and whose earlier life is our own as much as here—sinking, in one part even, to the low level of political partisanship, allying herself with men who commit crimes from which it is the Church's primary duty to rescue them. We expect better things of her, and trust ere long to see them. Better a man or a nation be poor with probity, than well-to-do with wrong-doing.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Church Rectory, December 19th. THOS. F. COLLINS.
Previous page
