Irish Church

“ The Church is very rich in Ireland. If Ireland is the poorest country in the world, the Irish Church is richer than any other. All the money in Ireland goes into religion. There is only one other trade that can compete with it. Heaven may be for the laity, but this world is certainly for the clergy. ”

“ I do appeal to the moral strength which will be given to the Irish Church, in its future conflict, by its continuing in harmony with the general religious tone of the majority of educated and religious-minded Churchmen in England, especially of that landed class, with whom in particular the lay leaders of Irish Church opinion are likely to come in contact. The Churchmanship of this class is undoubtedly one of moderation. Their type of worship is a system of decorous solemnity. They are, as a body, ready for improvement, and quick to appreciate it when calmly presented ”

“ Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1369) .—Thirty years after the Catholic Emancipation Act, the English government took another great step in the direction of religious equality, by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland.
The Irish have always and steadily refused to accept the religion which their English conquerors have somehow felt constrained to force upon them. The vast majority of the people are to-day and ever have been Catholics ”

“ The ancient faith of these islands, overwhelmed in the waters of tribulation, seemed hidden in the hearts of the Irish people, saddened by persecution and sufferings of every kind.
But the day has come for pouring forth this water on nations. By their sufferings, the Irish race, driven into many lands, mingles with the progeny of its oppressors. The sun of God's grace, which seems under a cloud, is now shining forth, and a great [pg 081] fire is enkindled and is spreading its light and its heat far and near. The Church of God is everywhere showing itself again in its pristine beauty. ”

“ It is a question of considerable difficulty to determine how far the ancient Irish Church succeeded in making its influence felt on the people in general. The monastic form, while in one way a source of strength, because it joined men together in a holy brotherhood, yet was in another way a source of weakness, since it left those who were outside bereft to some extent of that leaven of goodness which the presence of even a few earnest and good men would have given them. ”

“ No Protestant Church will perhaps ever be the Church of Ireland, as one powerful communion with a touch of the old arrogance claims to be; yet Protestantism may add something to the national piety and progress, nay, she may be another bulwark to the Christian faith in days of strain and stress, if she can exhibit to a naturally religious people a tangible proof of the possibility of uniting the Apostolic creed with the intellectual demands of modern progress, and in this way help to save the youth of Ireland from a desolating materialism. ”

“ Christianity therefore found moral and spiritual ideas of a highly developed order in pagan Ireland, and it did not hesitate to adopt whatever in the literature of the country illustrated its own teachings, and not only were these stories of visits to the other world full of suggestions as to ways of enforcing Christian doctrine, but the Irish church and men of Irish birth were the most active in spreading the faith in the early centuries of its conquest of western Europe. ”

“ I lament and I resent the wrongs and the misfortunes of the Irish Church, and I feel how natural it is that, while she is under the influence of such feelings, the community, acting by its Synods, might be inclined to courses of action from which it would shrink in more peaceful and prosperous times. ”

“ The members of the Irish Church have undoubtedly the right to claim for themselves that intimate knowledge of their own position and requirements which renders them in the last resort—now that their political connection with the Established Church of England has been rent—sole judges of the wisdom, not less than of the lawfulness of their own proceedings, as far as they affect the internal constitution of their community. ”

“ It was in recognition of his success that he obtained the unique honour of being the first Irishman resident in Ireland who was canonized by the Pope. If the Irish Church was already subject to Rome, the whole biography is inexplicable. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the Broad Church come out victors, the Low Church would, in course of time, find itself drawn into an understanding, confessed or acknowledged, with its older antagonist in favour of the principle of specific doctrine, which would bode no good to a latitudinised Irish Church. ”

“ While the English and the Irish Prayer Books remain the same, they need no deeper reason for sympathising with and aiding the Irish Church. Once introduce a difference, and you have thrown upon them to seek why they should continue to sympathise, and upon the Irish Church to meet that search with adequate arguments.
As a member of the Church of England, I have always in England raised my voice in favour of moderate opinions, and opened my ears to tolerant counsels. ”

“ As one equal to another, the English invites the Irish Church at this crisis to rely, not upon her sister's patronage, but upon her sympathy, and not to multiply her own difficulties by assuming burdens which England may not feel herself competent to take part in bearing. ”

“ We have so often spoken of the monastic institutions of the Irish Church, that one might readily fall into the mistake of supposing that we have here nothing more than the mere bringing in of a new order of monks, who were to take their place side by side with those already in the country. ”

“ The religion which thus sprang out of the heart of a people and penetrated every part of their national life, shone with a radiant spiritual fervour. The prayers and hymns that survive from the early church are inspired by an exalted devotion, a profound and original piety, which won the veneration of every people who came into touch with the people of Ireland. ”

“ But leaving our divinity school need not mean that you give up the idea of taking Holy Orders. I have a very high opinion of your abilities, Conneally—so high that I should not like the Church to lose your services. At the same time, you are not at present the kind of man whom I could possibly recommend to any Irish Bishop. Your Nationalist principles are an absolute bar to your working in the Church of Ireland.’
‘I wonder, sir, how you can call our Church the Church of Ireland, and in the same breath say that there is no room for a Nationalist in her. ”

“ A Catholic, as everybody knows, cannot be made sheriff; cannot be in parliament; cannot be a director of the Irish Bank; cannot fill the great departments of the law, the army, and the navy; is cut off from all the high objects of human ambition, and treated as a marked and degraded person.
The common admission now is that the Catholics are to the Protestants in Ireland as about four to one, of which Protestants not more than one half belong to the Church of Ireland. ”

“ In South Africa, the work of preaching and teaching and ruling the church is largely the work of Irish-born men. In the great Republic of the West the three cardinal-archbishops at the head of the Catholic Church have the distinctively Irish names of Gibbons and Farley and O'Connell; and in every diocese throughout the United States the proportion of priests of Irish birth or descent is large.
Nor must the poorer Irish be forgotten. How much does the Catholic Church, both in Ireland and in America, owe to the generosity of Irish-American laborers and servant girls! ”

“ This remarkable growth of the church here during the last thirty years must be attributed to various causes, by far the most important of which is beyond all doubt the vast immigration from Ireland; to which, indeed, we must also chiefly ascribe the progress of the church during this century in all other countries throughout the world in which the English language is spoken. No other people could have done for the Catholic [Pg 449] faith in the United States what the Irish people have done. ”

“ Religion is a live thing in Ireland, and the Roman Catholic churches are always filled to overflowing at every service with as many men as women, which is unusual in other countries. In Ireland the situation seems to be different, and the congregations are invariably composed about equally of the two sexes. The Church of Ireland is comparatively weak in numbers, and has more houses of worship than it needs, having inherited many of them from the confiscation edicts of the English kings. ”

“ Perhaps the greatest interest of all will be felt by those who, rejoicing in the liberty of a reformed faith and an emancipated Church, will see in Ireland the last of the Western Churches to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. When all other parts of Western Europe had already for centuries acknowledged his sway, Ireland was still independent. ”

“ It is manifest that the Irish Church cannot draw a precedent for altering that which it already holds in common with England, from the history of the gradual drawing together of the originally independent Episcopal Churches of England and of Scotland, particularly when it recollects, till a very late date, the ministers of the former could not by Act of Parliament lend their pulpits to those of the latter ”

“ The writer, though avowing himself a Protestant, and declaring that under no circumstances whatever would he be induced to believe in miracles, has shown, with equal candour and attractiveness, what the Catholic Church is, and what it can do, when free and unfettered. He shows it to be the truest and best friend of humanity; he shows it to care most tenderly for the poor and the afflicted; and he shows, above all, how the despised, exiled Irish are its best and truest supports ”

“ No good Catholic who values the sacraments, and respects the precepts of his church, could possibly join the treasonable brotherhoods denounced by the Catholic priest from the altar, by the bishops in pastorals, and by the pope himself. There are, however, too many Irish Catholics whose obedience to their church is partial, or but nominal. Perhaps these men first learnt in Irish national schools the lesson that religion, like every thing else, has its appointed time and place ”

“ Father Lynch, the curate, told me that it was necessary to have two masses and sometimes three on Sunday to accommodate them all, and some of them come eleven and even twelve miles, most of them on foot, to attend worship. Here, as everywhere in Ireland, religion is the first and most important thing in life, and the church is the gateway to happiness and Heaven. There is also a Protestant church, much smaller, but not insignificant, which stands upon an opposite hill, surrounded by a graveyard, in which there are some venerable tombs. ”

“ Now it seems plain that the present Church-establishment in Ireland is contrary to reason and justice, in so far as the Church of a very small minority of the people there takes for itself all the Church-property of the Irish people. And one would think, that property, assigned for the purpose of providing for a people's religious worship when that worship was one, the State should, when that worship is split into several forms, apportion between those several forms. ”

“ Nor will those who are acquainted with Irish society in the past reject as improbable the statement of Giraldus that the clergy, though greatly distinguished by their chastity and fervent devotion to divine service, were apt to spend their evenings in drinking somewhat deeply. But even to this he is careful to add, there were found honourable exceptions. The important fact to be remembered is that, if Ireland had once been a centre of Christianity, a bright star in a heathen age, its church had deteriorated, not advanced, amidst the ceaseless and murderous strife of native rule. ”

“ The monks and barbarians combined produced a new world which we call Christendom.
Germany also owes much to the missionaries of the ancient Irish church. In the olden time Ireland was called the "island of saints and sages;" as her people in our days receive from us the honorable title of "martyr-nation of the west," for their inflexible fidelity to their faith during three centuries of shameless and brutal persecution. "No one but God in heaven knows the number of the saints whose dust is mingled with Irish soil," wrote one of the oldest Irish writers, the biographer of St. ”

“ The Irish were not evangelized until the fifth century, and the tribes of Germany and the northern parts of the Continent remained in heathenism for some centuries later. Both of these facts have to be kept in mind when we come to study the history of Christianity in Ireland.
The particular time at which a Church was founded must necessarily influence its future to a great extent, particularly when, as in Ireland, the country is more or less isolated from the rest of the world, and is scarcely, if at all, influenced by the intellectual and spiritual movements in other lands. ”

“ The Irish people—be it said to their glory—have from the beginning of their conversion to Christianity kept the pure light of Catholic faith unsullied by any admixture of heresy, and have remained firm in their obedience to the divine authority of the [Pg 537] holy church, in spite of the tyranny, of the bitterest persecution of its enemies, and all their efforts of bribery or any worldly inducements which they might hold out. ”