LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the apace.]
IRISH ROMAN CATHOLICS AND AMERICA. (To THE EDITOR OP TILE " SPECTATOR."3
Sta,—I hope that you will allow me, as a citizen of the United States and for thirty years a student of the Irish question, to associate myself with your correspondent, Ernest S. Brown, in support of your editorial "Respondeat Superior" on the sinister influence of the Roman Catholic Church in bringing about the present terrible condition of affairs in Ireland. I limit my remarks to the matter as it concerns the United States. To put it in a nutshell, if by a miracle one could remove all the Irish Roman Catholics from the United States to some other country all agitation there with regard to Sinn Feinism and the independence of Ireland would die out at once. As proof of the soundness of this statement I tabulate a few truthful facts which cannot successfully be refuted.
1. While adherents of the R.C. in the Republio of English, Scotch, Welsh, and loyal Irish descent are a very negligible factor in that Church, probably not more than 5 per cent., the disloyal Sinn Fein Irish completely dominate it. That can be seen by examining the list of bishop; priests, and members of monastic orders in the Roman Catholic Year Book. A very large proportion of the names are unmistakably Irish.
2. All the weekly and monthly publications of the Church without exception have for the last ten years joined in the most infamous and unscrupulous propaganda. Anyone who will examine the files of their leading weekly, corresponding to the Tablet in England, viz., the Jesuit weekly America, will find overwhelming proof of this fact.
3. The last furious campaign for the secession of Ireland began immediately after the Armistice with the Irish Race Convention in Philadelphia. On the platform sat nearly thirty bishops and archbishops of the Church, and the presiding officer was the notorious pro-German. Judge Cohalan, who urged the German Ambassador at Washington to persuade his Government to kill the women and children of Great Britain by bombs from aeroplanes.
4. All five of the secessionist revolutionary societies of the United States, who have tried to separate the English-speaking nations and foment enmity and hatred between them, viz., the Clan-na-Gael, the Ancient Order of Hiberniane, the Friends of Irish Freedom, the Friends of Recognition of the Irish Republic, and the Knights of Columbus all strictly limit their member- ship to Roman Catholics. No Protestant or non-Catholic is eligible for membership.
5. All Roman Catholic educational institutions, from the parochial school for infant children to the Jesuit college for adults, have been engaged in this sinister and untruthful propaganda, while often the most incendiary and misleading books are sold with the approval of the priest in the vestibule of churches during and after the Mass. The Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word in a large city won com- mendation because she had sold, or disposed of in some way, over a thousand copies of a certain book reeking with Sinn Fein falsehoods and unjust hatred of England.
6. All the monastic brotherhoods seem to be engaged in this unchristian work of circulating falsehoods and wickedly pro- moting national hatreds. Of these the Jesuits are the most notable. They have almost a monopoly among Roman Catholic; institutions of the higher education. Massachusetts, of all the States of the Union, is most infested with the virus of Sinn Feinism, and its capital, Boston, is the worst of our cities in that respect. In my opinion, that is due in considerable degree to the only two Jesuit colleges in all New England— Holy Cross College, at Worcester, and Boston College. For a long time the principles of Jefferson Davis, in opposition to those of Abraham Lincoln, have been earnestly implanted in the minds of their students. In my own city—New Haven, Conn.—the chief Roman Catholic church is in the hands of the Dominicans. The rector of the church when Father Flana- gan came there with a fiery speech in support of De Valera and against the Free State acted as his host, invited him to celebrate Mass on Sunday, and displayed the flag of the Irish Republic in front of the parochial residence, which is situated on one of the most beautiful avenues of the city.
The Roman Catholic University at Washington 13 a veritable hotbed of Sinn Feinism, and its President, Bishop Shanohan, has uttered most misleading and violent invectives against the United Kingdom. Of similar character is the new Archbishop of Baltimore, Archbishop Cutler, born in Athlone, recently naturalized as a citizen of the United States, who publicly glories that though he spent his youth and early manhood in Ireland, he never took the oath of allegiance to the United Kingdom while he reaped all the benefits of her citizenship.
If it were necessary I could add other important facts in support of my thesis, but surely these are sufficient in the mind of any fair-minded man to prove the soundness of my
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