THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION UPON SECULAR LIFE IN IRELAND.
In the preceding chapter I attempted to estimate the influence of our
political leaders as a potential and as an actual force. I come now to
the second great influence upon the thought and action of the Irish
people, the influence of religion, especially the power exercised by the
priests and by the unrivalled organisation of the Roman Catholic Church.
I do not share the pessimism which sees in this potent influence nothing
but the shackles of mediævalism restraining its adherents from falling
into line with the progress of the age. I shall, indeed, have to admit
much of what is charged against the clerical leaders of popular thought
in Ireland, but I shall be able to show, I hope, that these leaders are
largely the product of a situation which they themselves did not create,
and that not only are they as susceptible as are the political leaders
to the influences of progressive movements, but that they can be more
readily induced to take part in their promotion. In no other country in
the world, probably, is religion so dominant an element in the daily
life of the people as in Ireland, and certainly nowhere else has the
minister of religion so wide and undisputed an authority. It is obvious,
therefore, that, however foreign such a theme may _prima facie_ appear
to the scope and aim of the present volume, I have no choice but to
analyse frankly and as fully as my personal experience justifies, what I
conceive to be the true nature, the salutary limits, and the actual
scope of clerical influence in this country.
But before I can discuss what I may call the religious situation, there
is one fundamental question--a question which will appear somewhat
strange to anyone not in touch with Irish life--which I must, with a
view to a general agreement on essentials, submit to some of my
co-religionists. In all seriousness I would ask, whether in their
opinion the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is to be tolerated. If the
answer be in the negative, I can only reply that any efforts to stamp
out the Roman Catholic faith would fail as they did in the past; and the
practical minds among those I am now addressing must admit that in
toleration alone is to be found the solution of that part of the Irish
difficulty which is due to sectarian animosities.
This brings us face to face with the question, What is religious
toleration--I do not mean as a pious sentiment which we are all
conscious of ourselves possessing in a truer sense than that in which it
is possessed by others, but rather toleration as an essential of the
liberty which we Protestants enjoy under the British Constitution, and
boast that all other creeds equally enjoy? Perhaps I had better state
simply how I answer this question in my own mind. Toleration by the
Irish minority, in regard to the religious faith and ecclesiastical
system of the Irish majority, implies that we admit the right of Rome to
say what Roman Catholics shall believe and what outward forms they shall
observe, and that they shall not suffer before the State for these
beliefs and observances. I do not think exception can be taken to the
statement that toleration in this narrow sense cannot be refused
consistently with the fundamental principles of British government.
Now, however, comes a less obvious, but, as I think, no less essential
condition of toleration in the sense above indicated. The Roman Catholic
Hierarchy claim the right to exercise such supervision and control over
the education of their flock as will enable them to safe-guard faith and
morals as preached and practised by their Church. I concede this second
claim as a necessary corollary of the first. Having lived most of my
life among Roman Catholics--two branches of my own family belonging to
that religion--I am aware that this control is an essential part of the
whole fabric of Roman Catholicism. Whether the basis of authority upon
which that system is founded be in its origin divine or human is beside
the point. If we profess to tolerate the faith and religious system of
the majority of our countrymen we must at least concede the conditions
essential to the maintenance of both the one and the other, unless our
tolerance is to be a sham.
So far all liberal-minded Protestants, who know what Roman Catholicism
is, will be with me; and for the main purposes of the argument contained
in this chapter it is not necessary to interpret toleration in any wider
sense than that which I have indicated. Many Protestants, among whom I
am one, do, it is true, make a further concession to the claim of our
Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. We would give them in Ireland
facilities for higher education which we would not give them in England,
and we would advocate liberal endowment by the State to this end. But
this attitude is, I admit, based upon something more than tolerance, and
those who would withhold this concession need not be accused of bigotry
or intolerance for so doing. They may be, and often are, actuated by the
most liberal motives, by a perfectly legitimate conception of
educational principles, or by other considerations which are neither of
a narrow nor sectarian character.
I need hardly say that in criticising religious systems and their
ministers I have not the faintest intention of entering on the
discussion of doctrinal issues. I am, of course, here concerned with
only those aspects of the religious situation which bear directly on
secular life. I am endeavouring, it must be remembered, to arrive at a
comprehensive and accurate appreciation of the chief influences which
mould the character, guide the thought, and, therefore, direct the
action of the Irish people as citizens of this world and of their own
country. From this standpoint let us try to make a dispassionate survey
of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in Ireland, and see wherein
their votaries fulfil, or fail to fulfil, their mission in advancing our
common civilisation. Let us examine, in a word, not merely the direct
influence which the creed of each of the two sections of Irishmen
produces on the industrial character of its adherents, but also its
indirect effects upon the mutual relations and regard for each other of
Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Protestantism has its stronghold in the great industrial centres of the
North and among the Presbyterian farmers of five or six Ulster counties.
These communities, it is significant to note, have developed the
essentially strenuous qualities which, no doubt, they brought from
England and Scotland. In city life their thrift, industry, and
enterprise, unsurpassed in the United Kingdom, have built up a
world-wide commerce. In rural life they have drawn the largest yield
from relatively infertile soil. Such, in brief, is the achievement of
Ulster Protestantism in the realm of industry. It is a story of which,
when a united Ireland becomes more than a dream, all Irishmen will be
proud.
But there is, unhappily, another side to the picture. This industrial
life, otherwise so worthily cultivated, is disturbed by manifestations
of religious bigotry which sadly tarnish the glory of the really heroic
deeds they are intended to commemorate. It is impossible for any close
observer of these deplorable exhibitions to avoid the conclusion that
the embers of the old fires are too often fanned by men who are
actuated by motives, which, when not other than religious, are certainly
based upon an unworthy conception of religion. I am quite aware that it
is only a small and decreasing minority of my co-religionists who are
open to the charge of intolerance, and that the geographical limits of
the July orgy are now strictly circumscribed. But this bigotry is so
notorious, as for instance in the exclusion of Roman Catholics from many
responsible positions, that it unquestionably reacts most unfavourably
upon the general relations between the two creeds throughout the whole
of Ireland. The existence of such a spirit of suspicion and hatred, from
whatever motive it emanates, is bound to retard our progress as a people
towards the development of a healthy and balanced national life.
Many causes have recently contributed to the unhappy continuance of
sectarian animosities in Ireland. The Ritualistic movement and the
struggle over the Education Bill in England, the renewed controversy on
the University Question in Ireland, instances of bigotry towards
Protestants displayed by County, District, and Urban Councils in the
three southern provinces of Ireland, the formation of the Catholic
Association, the question of the form of the King's oath, and, more
remotely, the protest against clericalism in such Roman Catholic
countries as France and Austria, have one and all helped to keep alive
the flame of anti-Roman feeling among Irish Protestants.[16]
There are, happily, other influences now at work in a contrary
direction. Among the industrial leaders a better spirit prevails. A
well-known Ulster manufacturer told me recently that only a few years
ago, when an applicant for employment appeared at certain Northern
factories, which my friend named, the first question always put was,
'Are you a Protestant or Roman Catholic?' Now, he said, it is not what a
man believes, but what he can do, which is considered when engaging
workers. And outside the cities there are most gratifying signs of
better relations between the two creeds. We are on the eve of the
creation of a peasant proprietary, involving the rehabilitation of rural
life, and one essential condition of the successful inauguration of the
new agrarian order is the elimination of anything approaching to
sectarian bitterness in communities which will require every advantage
derivable from joint deliberation and common effort to enable them to
hold their own against foreign competition. I recall a trivial but
significant incident in the course of my Irish work which left a deep
impression on my mind. After attending a meeting of farmers in a very
backward district in the extreme west of Mayo, I arrived one winter's
evening at the Roman Catholic priest's house. Before the meeting I had
been promised a cup of tea, which, after a long, cold drive, was more
than acceptable. When I presented myself at the priest's house, what was
my astonishment at finding the Protestant clergyman presiding over a
steaming urn and a plate of home-made cakes, having been requested to do
the honours by his fellow-minister, who had been called away to a sick
bed. A cycle of homilies on the virtue of tolerance could add nothing to
the simple lesson which these two clergymen gave to the adherents of
both their creeds. I felt as I went on my way that night that I had had
a glimpse into the kind of future for Ireland towards which my
fellow-workers are striving.
It is, however, with the religion of the majority of the Irish people
and with its influence upon the industrial character of its adherents
that I am chiefly concerned. Roman Catholicism strikes an outsider as
being in some of its tendencies non-economic, if not actually
anti-economic. These tendencies have, of course, much fuller play when
they act on a people whose education has (through no fault of their own)
been retarded or stunted. The fact is not in dispute, but the difficulty
arises when we come to apportion the blame between ignorance on the part
of the people and a somewhat one-sided religious zeal on the part of
large numbers of their clergy. I do not seek to do so with any precision
here. I am simply adverting to what has appeared to me, in the course of
my experience in Ireland, to be a defect in the industrial character of
Roman Catholics which, however caused, seems to me to have been
intensified by their religion. The reliance of that religion on
authority, its repression of individuality, and its complete shifting of
what I may call the moral centre of gravity to a future existence--to
mention no other characteristics--appear to me calculated, unless
supplemented by other influences, to check the growth of the qualities
of initiative and self-reliance, especially amongst a people whose lack
of education unfits them for resisting the influence of what may present
itself to such minds as a kind of fatalism with resignation as its
paramount virtue.
It is true that one cannot expect of any church or religion, as a
condition of its acceptance, that it will furnish an economic theory;
and it is also true that Roman Catholicism has, at different periods of
history, advantageously affected economic conditions, even if it did not
act from distinctively economic motives--for example, by its direct
influence in the suppression of slavery[17] and its creation of the
mediæval craft guilds. It may, too, be admitted that during the Middle
Ages, when Roman Catholicism was freer than now to manifest its
influence in many directions, owing to its practically unchallenged
supremacy, it favoured, when it did not originate, many forms of sound
economic activity, and was, to say the least, abreast of the time in its
conception of the working of economic causes. But from the time when
the Reformation, by its demand for what we Protestants conceive to be a
simpler Christianity, drove Roman Catholicism back, if I may use the
expression, on its first line of defence, and constrained it to look to
its distinctively spiritual heritage, down to the present day, it has
seemed to stand strangely aloof from any contact with industrial and
economic issues. When we consider that in this period Adam Smith lived
and died, the industrial revolution was effected, and the world-market
opened, it is not surprising that we do not find Roman Catholic
countries in the van of economic progress, or even the Roman Catholic
element in Protestant countries, as a rule, abreast of their
fellow-countrymen. It would, however, be an error to ignore some notable
exceptions to this generalisation. In Belgium, in France, in parts of
Germany and Austria, and in the north of Italy economic thought is
making headway amongst Roman Catholics, and the solution of social
problems is being advanced by Roman Catholic laymen and clergymen. Even
in these countries, however, much remains to be done. The revolution in
the industrial order, and its consequences, such as the concentration of
immense populations within restricted areas, have brought with them
social and moral evils that must be met with new weapons. In the
interests of religion itself, principles first expounded to a Syrian
community with the most elementary physical needs and the simplest of
avocations, have to be taught in their application to the conditions of
the most complex social organisation and economic life. Taking people
as we find them, it may be said with truth that their lives must be
wholesome before they can be holy, and while a voluntary asceticism may
have its justification, it behoves a Church to see that its members,
while fully acknowledging the claims of another life, should develop the
qualities which make for well-being in this life. In fact, I believe
that the influence of Christianity upon social progress will be best
maintained by co-ordinating these spiritual and economic ideals in a
philosophy of life broader and truer than any to which the nations have
yet attained.
What I have just been saying with regard to Roman Catholicism generally,
in relation to economic doctrines and industrial progress, applies, of
course, with a hundred fold pertinence to the case of Ireland. Between
the enactment of the first Penal Laws and the date of Roman Catholic
Emancipation, Irish Roman Catholics were, to put it mildly, afforded
scant opportunity, in their own country, of developing economic virtues
or achieving industrial success. Ruthlessly deprived of education, are
they to be blamed if they did not use the newly acquired facilities to
the best advantage? With their religion looked on as the badge of legal
and social inferiority, was it any wonder that priests and people alike,
while clinging with unexampled fidelity to their creed, remained
altogether cut off from the current of material prosperity? Excluded, as
they were, not merely from social and political privileges, but from the
most ordinary civil rights, denied altogether the right of ownership of
real property, and restricted in the possession of personalty, is it
any wonder that they are not to-day in the van of industrial and
commercial progress? Nay, more, was it to have been expected that the
character of a people so persecuted and ostracised should have come out
of the ordeal of centuries with its adaptability and elasticity
unimpaired? That would have been impossible. Those who are intimate with
the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, and at the same time familiar with
their history, will recognise in their character and mental outlook many
an inheritance of that epoch of serfdom. I speak, of course, of the
mass, for I am not unmindful of many exceptions to this generalisation.
But I must now pass on to a more definite consideration of the present
action and attitude of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy towards the
economic, educational, and other issues discussed in this book. The
reasons which render such a consideration necessary are obvious. Even if
we include Ulster, three quarters of the Irish people are Roman
Catholics, while, excluding the Northern province, quite nine-tenths of
the population belong to that religion. Again, the three thousand
clergymen of that denomination exercise an influence over their flocks
not merely in regard to religious matters, but in almost every phase of
their lives and conduct, which is, in its extent and character, quite
unique, even, I should say, amongst Roman Catholic communities. To a
Protestant, this authority seems to be carried very far beyond what the
legitimate influence of any clergy over the lay members of their
congregation should be. We are, however, dealing with a national life
explicable only by reference to a very exceptional and gloomy history of
religious persecution. What I may call the secular shortcomings of the
Roman Catholics in Ireland cannot be fairly judged except as the results
of a series of enactments by which they were successively denied almost
all means of succeeding as citizens of this world.
From such study as I have been able to give to the history of their
Church, I have come to the conclusion that the immense power of the
Irish Roman Catholic clergy has been singularly little abused. I think
it must be admitted that they have not exhibited in any marked degree
bigotry towards Protestants. They have not put obstacles in the way of
the Roman Catholic majority choosing Protestants for political leaders,
and it is significant that refugees, such as the Palatines, from
Catholic persecutions in Europe, found at different times a home amongst
the Roman Catholic people of Ireland. My own experience, too, if I may
again refer to that, distinctly proves that it is no disadvantage to a
man to be a Protestant in Irish political life, and that where
opposition is shown to him by Roman Catholics it is almost invariably on
political, social, or agrarian, but not on religious grounds.
A charge of another kind has of late been often brought against the
Roman Catholic clergy, which has a direct bearing upon the economic
aspect of this question. Although, as I read Irish history, the Roman
Catholic priesthood have, in the main, used their authority with
personal disinterestedness, if not always with prudence or discretion,
their undoubted zeal for religion has, on occasion, assumed forms which
enlightened Roman Catholics, including high dignitaries of that Church,
think unjustifiable on economic grounds, and discourage even from a
religious standpoint. Excessive and extravagant church-building in the
heart and at the expense of poor communities is a recent and notorious
example of this misdirected zeal. It has been, I believe, too often
forgotten that the best monument of any clergyman's influence and
earnestness must always be found in the moral character and the
spiritual fibre of his flock, and not in the marbles and mosaics of a
gaudy edifice. And without doubt a good many motives which have but a
remote connection with religion are, unfortunately, at work in the
church-building movement. It may, however, to some extent, be regarded
as an extreme re-action from the penal times, when the hunted _soggarth_
had to celebrate the Mass in cabins and caves on the mountain side--a
re-action the converse of which was witnessed in Protestant England when
Puritanism rose up against Anglicanism in the seventeenth century. This
expenditure, however, has been incurred; and, no one, I take it, would
advocate the demolition of existing religious edifices on the ground
that their erection had been unduly costly! The moral is for the present
and the future, and applies not merely to economy in new buildings, but
also in the decoration of existing churches.[18]
But it is not alone extravagant church building which in a country so
backward as Ireland, shocks the economic sense. The multiplication--in
inverse ratio to a declining population--of costly and elaborate
monastic and conventual institutions, involving what in the aggregate
must be an enormous annual expenditure for maintenance, is difficult to
reconcile with the known conditions of the country. Most of these
institutions, it is true, carry on educational work, often, as in the
case of the Christian Brothers and some colleges and convents, of an
excellent kind. Many of them render great services to the poor, and
especially to the sick poor. But, none the less, it seems to me, their
growth in number and size is anomalous. I cannot believe that so large
an addition to the 'unproductive' classes is economically sound, and I
have no doubt at all that the competition with lay teachers of celibates
'living in community' is excessive and educationally injurious. Strongly
as I hold the importance of religion in education, I personally do not
think that teachers who have renounced the world and withdrawn from
contact with its stress and strain are the best moulders of the
characters of youths who will have to come into direct conflict with the
trials and temptations of life. But here again we must accept the
situation and work with the instruments ready to hand. The practical and
statesmanlike action for all those concerned is to endeavour to render
these institutions as efficient educational agencies as may be possible.
They owe their existence largely to the gaps in the educational system
of this country which religious and political strife have produced and
maintained, and they deserve the utmost credit for endeavouring to
supply missing steps in our educational ladder.[19] If they now fully
respond to the spirit of the new movements and meet the demand for
technical education by the employment of the most approved methods and
equipment, and by the thorough training on sound lines of their staffs,
it is impossible that their influence on the young generation should not
be as salutary as it will be wide-reaching.
But, after all, these criticisms are, for the purposes of my argument,
of minor relevance and importance. The real matter in which the direct
and personal responsibility of the Roman Catholic clergy seems to me to
be involved, is the character and _morale_ of the people of this
country. No reader of this book will accuse me of attaching too little
weight to the influence of historical causes on the present state,
social, economic and political, of Ireland, but even when I have given
full consideration to all such influences I still think that, with their
unquestioned authority in religion, and their almost equally undisputed
influence in education, the Roman Catholic clergy cannot be exonerated
from some responsibility in regard to Irish character as we find it
to-day. Are they, I would ask, satisfied with that character? I cannot
think so. The impartial observer will, I fear, find amongst a majority
of our people a striking absence of self-reliance and moral courage; an
entire lack of serious thought on public questions; a listlessness and
apathy in regard to economic improvement which amount to a form of
fatalism; and, in backward districts, a survival of superstition, which
saps all strength of will and purpose--and all this, too, amongst a
people singularly gifted by nature with good qualities of mind and
heart.
Nor can the Roman Catholic clergy altogether console themselves with the
thought that religious faith, even when free from superstition, is
strong in the breasts of the people. So long, no doubt, as Irish Roman
Catholics remain at home, in a country of sharply defined religious
classes, and with a social environment and a public opinion so
preponderatingly stamped with their creed, open defections from Roman
Catholicism are rare. But we have only to look at the extent of the
'leakage' from Roman Catholicism amongst the Irish emigrants in the
United States and in Great Britain, to realise how largely emotional and
formal must be the religion of those who lapse so quickly in a
non-Catholic atmosphere.[20]
It is not, of course, to the causes of the defections from a creed to
which I do not subscribe that my criticism is directed. I refer to the
matter only in order to emphasise the large share of responsibility
which belongs to the Roman Catholic clergy for what I strongly believe
to be the chief part in the work of national regeneration, the part
compared with which all legislative, administrative, educational or
industrial achievements are of minor importance. Holding, as I do, that
the building of character is the condition precedent to material, social
and intellectual advancement, indeed to all national progress, I may,
perhaps, as a lay citizen, more properly criticise, from this point of
view, what I conceive to be the great defect in the methods of clerical
influence. For this purpose no better illustration could be afforded
than a brief analysis of the results of the efforts made by the Roman
Catholic clergy to inculcate temperance.
Among temperance advocates--the most earnest of all reformers--the Roman
Catholic clergy have an honourable record. An Irish priest was the
greatest, and, for a brief spell, the most successful temperance apostle
of the last century, and statistics, it is only fair to say, show that
we Irish drink rather less than people in other parts of the United
Kingdom. But the real question is whether we more often drink to
intoxication, and police statistics as well as common experience seem to
disclose that we do. Many a temperate man drinks more in his life than
many a village drunkard. Again, the test of the average consumption of
man, woman and child is somewhat misleading, especially in Ireland
where, owing to the excessive emigration of adults, there is a
disproportionately large number of very young and old. Moreover, we
Irish drink more in proportion to our means than the English, Scotch,
and Welsh, whose consumption is absolutely larger. Anyone who attempts
to deal practically with the problems of industrial development in
Ireland realises what a terribly depressing influence the drink evil
exercises upon the industrial capacity of the people. 'Ireland sober is
Ireland free,' is nearer the truth, than much that is thought and most
of what is said about liberty in this country.
Now, the drink habit in Ireland differs from that of the other parts of
the United Kingdom. The Irishman is, in my belief, physiologically less
subject to the craving for alcohol than the Englishman, a fact which is
partially attributable, I should say, to the less animal dietary to
which he is accustomed. By far the greater proportion of the drinking
which retards our progress is of a festive character. It takes place at
fairs and markets, sometimes, even yet, at 'wakes,' those ghastly
parodies on the blessed consolation of religion in bereavement. It is
intensified by the almost universal sale of liquor in the country shops
'for consumption on the premises,' an evil the demoralising effects of
which are an hundredfold greater than those of the 'grocer's licences'
which temperance reformers so strenuously denounce. It is an evil in
defence of which nothing can be said, but it has somehow escaped the
effective censure of the Church.
The indiscriminate granting of licences in Ireland, which has resulted
in the provision of liquor shops in a proportion to the population
larger than is found in any other country, is in itself due mainly to
the moral cowardice of magistrates, who do not care to incur local
unpopularity by refusing licences for which there is no pretence of any
need beyond that of the applicant and his relatives. Not long ago the
magistrates of Ireland met in Dublin in order to inaugurate common
action in dealing with this scandal. Appropriate resolutions were
passed, and much good has already resulted from the meeting, but had the
unvarnished truth been admissible, the first and indeed the only
necessary resolution should have run, "Resolved that in future we be
collectively as brave as we have been individually timid, and that we
take heart of grace and carry away from this meeting sufficient strength
to do, in the exercise of our functions as the licensing authority, what
we have always known to be our plain duty to our country and our God."
No such resolution was proposed, for though patriotism is becoming real
in Ireland, it is not yet very robust.
I do not think it unfair to insist upon the large responsibility of the
clergy for the state of public opinion in this matter, to which the few
facts I have cited bear testimony. But I attribute their failure to deal
with a moral evil of which they are fully cognisant to the fact that
they do not recognise the chief defect in the character of the people,
and to a misunderstanding of the means by which that character can be
strengthened. There are, however, exceptions to this general statement.
It is of happy augury for the future of Ireland that many of the clergy
are now leading a temperance movement which shows a real knowledge of
the _causa causans_ of Irish intemperance. The Anti-Treating League, as
it is called, administers a novel pledge which must have been conceived
in a very understanding mind. Those enlisted undertake neither to treat
nor to be treated. They may drink, so far as the pledge is concerned, as
much as they like; but they must drink at their own expense; and others
must not drink at their expense. The good nature and sociability of
Irishmen, too often the mere result of inability to say 'no,' need not
be sacrificed. But even if they were, the loss of these social graces
would be far more than compensated by a self-respect and seriousness of
life out of which something permanent might be built. Still, even this
League makes no direct appeal to character, and so acts rather as a cure
for than as a preventive of our moral weakness.
The methods by which clerical influence is wielded in the inculcation of
chastity may be criticised from exactly the same standpoint as that from
which I have found it necessary to deal with the question of temperance.
Here the success of the Irish priesthood is, considering the conditions
of peasant life, and the fire of the Celtic temperament, absolutely
unique. No one can deny that almost the entire credit of this moral
achievement belongs to the Roman Catholic clergy. It may be said that
the practice of a virtue, even if the motive be of an emotional kind,
becomes a habit, and that habit proverbially develops into a second
nature. With this view of moral evolution I am in entire accord; but I
would ask whether the evolution has not reached a stage where a gradual
relaxation of the disciplinary measures by which chastity is insured
might be safely allowed without any danger of lowering the high standard
of continence which is general in Ireland and which of course it is of
supreme importance to maintain.
There are, however, many parishes where in this matter the strictest
discipline is rigorously enforced Amusements, not necessarily or even
often vicious, are objected to as being fraught with dangers which would
never occur to any but the rigidly ascetic or the puritanical mind. In
many parishes the Sunday cyclist will observe the strange phenomenon of
a normally light-hearted peasantry marshalled in male and female groups
along the road, eyeing one another in dull wonderment across the
forbidden space through the long summer day. This kind of discipline,
unless when really necessary, is open to the objection that it
eliminates from the education of life, especially during the formative
years, an essential of culture--the mutual understanding of the sexes.
The evil of grafting upon secular life a quasi-monasticism which, not
being voluntary, has no real effect upon the character, may perhaps
involve moral consequences little dreamed of by the spiritual guardians
of the people. A study of the pathology of the emotions might throw
doubt upon the safety of enforced asceticism when unaccompanied by the
training which the Church wisely prescribes for those who take the vow
of celibacy. But of my own knowledge I can speak only of another aspect
of the effect upon our national life of the restrictions to which I
refer. No Irishmen are more sincerely desirous of staying the tide of
emigration than the Roman Catholic clergy, and while, wisely as I think,
they do not dream of a wealthy Ireland, they earnestly work for the
physical and material as well as the spiritual well-being of their
flocks. And yet no man can get into the confidence of the emigrating
classes without being told by them that the exodus is largely due to a
feeling that the clergy are, no doubt from an excellent motive, taking
joy--innocent joy--from the social side of the home life.
To go more fully into these subjects might carry me beyond the proper
limits of lay criticism. But, clearly, large questions of clerical
training must suggest themselves to those to whom their discussion
properly belongs--whether, for example, there is not in the instances
which I have cited evidence of a failure to understand that mere
authority in the regions of moral conduct cannot have any abiding
effect, except in the rarest combination of circumstances, and with a
very primitive people. Do not many of these clergy ignore the vast
difference between the ephemeral nature of moral compulsion and the
enduring force of a real moral training?
I have dealt with the exercise of clerical influence in these matters as
being, at any rate in relation to the subject matter of this book, far
more important than the evil commonly described as "The Priest in
Politics." That evil is, in my opinion, greatly misrepresented. The
cases of priests who take an improper part in politics are cited without
reference to the vastly greater number who take no part at all, except
when genuinely assured that a definite moral issue is at stake. I also
have in my mind the question of how we should have fared if the control
of the different Irish agitations had been confined to laymen, and if
the clergy had not consistently condemned secret associations. But
whatever may be said in defence of the priest in politics in the past,
there are the strongest grounds for deprecating a continuance of their
political activity in the future. As I gauge the several forces now
operating in Ireland, I am convinced that if an anti-clerical movement
similar to that which other Roman Catholic countries have witnessed,
were to succeed in discrediting the priesthood and lowering them in
public estimation, it would be followed by a moral, social, and
political degradation which would blight, or at least postpone, our
hopes of a national regeneration. From this point of view I hold that
those clergymen who are predominantly politicians endanger the moral
influence which it is their solemn duty to uphold. I believe however,
that the over-active part hitherto taken in politics by the priests is
largely the outcome of the way in which Roman Catholics were treated in
the past, and that this undesirable feature in Irish life will yield,
and is already yielding to the removal of the evils to which it owed its
origin and in some measure its justification.[21]
One has only to turn to the spirit and temper of such representative
Roman Catholics as Archbishop Healy and Dr. Kelly, Bishop of Ross--to
their words and to their deeds--in order to catch the inspiration of a
new movement amongst our Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at once
religious and patriotic. And if my optimism ever wavers, I have but to
think of the noble work that many priests are to my own knowledge
doing, often in remote and obscure parishes, in the teeth of innumerable
obstacles. I call to mind at such times, as pioneers in a great
awakening, men like the eminent Jesuit, Father Thomas Finlay, Father
Hegarty of Erris, Father O'Donovan of Loughrea, and many others--men
with whom I have worked and taken counsel, and who represent, I believe,
an ever increasing number of their fellow priests.[22]
My position, then, towards the influence of the Roman Catholic
clergy--and this influence is a matter of vital importance to the
understanding of Irish problems--- may now be clearly defined. While
recognising to the full that large numbers of the Irish Roman Catholic
clergy have in the past exercised undue influence in purely political
questions, and, in many other matters, social, educational, and
economic, have not, as I see things, been on the side of progress, I
hold that their influence is now, more than ever before, essential for
improving the condition of the most backward section of the population.
Therefore I feel it to be both the duty and the strong interest of my
Protestant fellow-countrymen to think much less of the religious
differences which divide them from Roman Catholics, and much more of
their common citizenship and their common cause. I also hold with equal
strength and sincerity to the belief, which I have already expressed,
that the shortcomings of the Roman Catholic clergy are largely to be
accounted for, not by any innate tendency on their part towards
obscurantism, but by the sad history of Ireland in the past. I would
appeal to those of my co-religionists who think otherwise to suspend
their judgment for a time. That Roman Catholicism is firmly established
in Ireland is a fact of the situation which they must admit, and as this
involves the continued powerful influence of the priesthood upon the
character of the people, it is surely good policy by liberality and fair
dealing, especially in the matter of education, to turn this influence
towards the upbuilding of our national life.
To sum up the influence of religion and religious controversy in
Ireland, as it presents itself from the only standpoint from which I
have approached the matter in this chapter, namely, that of material,
social, and intellectual progress, I find that while the Protestants
have given, and continue to give, a fine example of thrift and industry
to the rest of the nation, the attitude of a section of them towards the
majority of their fellow-countrymen has been a bigoted and unintelligent
one. On the other hand, I have learned from practical experience amongst
the Roman Catholic people of Ireland that, while more free from bigotry,
in the sense in which that word is usually applied, they are apathetic,
thriftless, and almost non-industrial, and that they especially require
the exercise of strengthening influences on their moral fibre. I have
dealt with their shortcomings at much greater length than with those of
Protestants, because they have much more bearing on the subject matter
of this book. North and South have each virtues which the other lacks;
each has much to learn from the other; but the home of the strictly
civic virtues and efficiencies is in Protestant Ireland. The work of the
future in Ireland will be to break down in social intercourse the
barriers of creed as well as those of race, politics, and class, and
thus to promote the fruitful contact of North and South, and the
concentration of both on the welfare of their common country. In the
case of those of us, of whatever religious belief, who look to a future
for our country commensurate with the promise of her undeveloped
resources both of intellect and soil, it is of the essence of our hope
that the qualities which are in great measure accountable for the actual
economic and educational backwardness of so many of our
fellow-countrymen, and for the intolerance of too many who are not
backward in either respect, are not purely racial or sectarian, but are
the transitory growth of days and deeds which we must all try to forget
if our work for Ireland is to endure.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] The reproach which is brought upon Irish Christianity mainly by the
extravagances of a section of my co-religionists, to which I have been
obliged to refer, came home to me not long ago in a very forcible way. I
happened to remark to a friend that it was a disgrace to Christianity
that Mussulman soldiery were employed at the Holy Sepulchre to keep the
peace between the Latin and Greek Christians. He reminded me that the
prosperous and progressive municipality of Belfast, with a population
eminently industrious, and predominantly Protestant, has to be policed
by an Imperial force in order to restrain two sections of Irish
Christians from assaulting each other in the name of religion.
[17] '_Pro salute animae meae_' was, I am reminded, the consideration
usually expressed in the old charters of manumission.
[18] One of the unfortunate effects of this passion for building costly
churches is the importation of quantities of foreign art-work in the
shape of woodcarvings, stained glass, mosaics, and metal work. To good
foreign art, indeed, one could not, within certain limits, object. It
might prove a valuable example and stimulus. But the articles which have
actually been imported, in the impulse to get everything finished as
soon as possible, generally consist of the stock pieces produced in a
spirit of mere commercialism in the workshops of Continental firms which
make it their business to cater for a public who do not know the
difference between good art and bad. Much of the decoration of
ecclesiastical buildings, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, might
fittingly be postponed until religion in Ireland has got into closer
relation with the native artistic sense and industrial spirit now
beginning to seek creative expression.
[19] The following extract from a statement of the Most Rev. Dr. O'Dea,
the newly elected Bishop of Clonfert, is pertinent:--'There is another
cause also--i.e. in addition to the absence of university education for
Roman Catholic laymen--which has hindered the employment of the laity in
the past. Till very recently, the secondary Catholic schools received no
assistance whatever from the State, and their endowment from private
sources was utterly inadequate to supply suitable remuneration for lay
teachers. It is evident that a celibate clergy _can_ live on a lower
wage than the laity, and they are now charged with having monopolized
the schools, because they chose to work for a minimum allowance rather
than suffer the country to remain without any secondary education
whatever. Two causes, then, operated in the past, and in a large measure
still operate, to exclude the laity from the secondary schools,--first,
these schools were so poverty-stricken that they could not afford to pay
lay teachers at such a rate as would attract them to the teaching
profession, and, next, the Catholic laity as a body were uneducated,
and, therefore, unfit to teach in the schools.'--_Maynooth and the
University Question_, p. 109 (footnote).
[20] See, _inter alia_, an article "Ireland and America," by Rev. Mr.
Shinnors, O.M., in the _Irish Ecclesiastical Record_, February, 1902.
'Has the Church,' asks Father Shinnors, 'increased her membership in the
ratio that the population of the United States has increased? No. There
are many converts, but there are many more apostates. Large numbers
lapse into indifferentism and irreligion. There should be in America
about 20,000,000 Catholics; there are scarcely 10,000,000. There are
reasons to fear that the great majority of the apostates are of Irish
extraction, and not a few of them of Irish birth.'
[21] This view seems to be taken by the most influential spokesmen of
the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. See Evidence, _Royal Commission on
University Education in Ireland_, vol. iii., p. 238, Questions 8702-6.
[22] I may mention that of the co-operative societies organised by the
Irish Agricultural Organisation Society there are no fewer than 331
societies of which the local priests are the Chairmen, while to my own
knowledge during the summer and autumn of 1902, as many as 50,000
persons from all parts of Ireland were personally conducted over the
exhibit of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction at
the Cork Exhibition by their local clergy. The educational purpose of
these visits is explained in Chap. x. Again, in a great number of cases
the village libraries which have been recently started in Ireland with
the assistance of the Department (the books consisting largely of
industrial, economic, and technical works on agriculture), have been
organised and assisted by the Roman Catholic clergy.