Most religions - the Roman Catholic is by no means the only one - if carried to their extreme logical conclusions, as they unfortunately were a few hundred years ago, would produce extremely awkward consequences both for their own followers and for those outside their pale.

In the interval, however, the common-sense of mankind has been at work, and gradually a sort of working arrangement has been evolved, by which those parts of a religious theory which are impracticable are quietly dropped or suppressed, just as numerous ancient statutes are never enforced because they have become obsolete, though still technically the law of the land.

When Parliament can find the time, it occasionally repeals some of these obsolete and unworkable statutes, but as it is part of the convention of a religion that it is always right and entirely right, it cannot afford to act like Parliament, which spends most of its time in attempting to correct its own mistakes, since it is not allowed to admit that it has ever made any.

Consequently a little rummaging in the historical lumber-room of the other side will always supply abundant material to any politico-religious leader who finds it convenient to create a panic. I quite admit that the theoretical claims of the Church of Rome are very great, and merely enquire where at the present day it is able to give effect to them, even where practically the whole population are members of its communion. I search the map of Europe in vain. Certainly not in France, where the Government is strongly anti-clerical. Not in Italy, the Catholic people of which have in recent times deprived the Pope of his temporal power, and between the government of which and the Vatican there is a standing feud. Not in Portugal, where the relations between the Government and the Church are even more strained than in France or Italy.

Even Spain, which prides itself on being the most Catholic country in Europe, there is complete liberty of conscience. Why should it be assumed that in Ireland alone all the progress of the last three hundred years will count for nothing, and that Irish Protestants will suddenly find themselves, when the Home Rule Bill becomes law, caught up and dumped down in the middle of the sixteenth century? Especially when their co-religionists in the South and West, who might be expected to be there already, assure them there is nothing to be frightened about.

It may interest those of my readers who are Presbyterians to learn that the theoretical position of their own Church is held by a competent observer to be just as hostile to present day ideas of civil liberty as is that of the Church of Rome. I would invite attention to the following extract from Mr Andrew Lang's essay on the 'Mystery of the Kirks' in his 'Historical Mysteries', Nelson's edition. If the fact that Mr Andrew Lang (1) was not a Presbyterian, and was not particularly sympathetic towards Presbyterians, is held to destroy the value of his criticism, the same objection will apply to most of the Protestant criticism of the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church. He writes:-

"Now, the fact is that the Church of Scotland has been, since August, 1560, a Kirk established by law (or by what was said to be a legal Parliament), yet had never, perhaps, for an hour attained its own full ideal relation to the State; had never been granted its entire claims, but only so much or so little of these as the political situation compelled the State to concede, or enabled it to withdraw....

"The position was stated thus, in 1851, by an Act of Declaration of the Free Kirk's Assembly: 'She holds still, and through God's grace ever will hold, that it is the duty of civil rulers to recognise the truth of God according to His word, to promote and support the Kingdom of Christ without assuming any jurisdiction in it, or any power over it...'

"The State, in fact, if we may speak carnally, ought to pay the piper, but must not presume to call the tune....

"Knox's ideas, as far as he ever reasoned them out, reposed on this impregnable rock, namely that Calvinism, as held by himself, was an absolutely certain thing in every detail. If the State, or 'the civil magistrate', as he put the case, entirely agreed with Knox, then Knox was delighted that the State should regulate religion. The magistrate was to put down Catholicism, and other aberrations from the truth as it was in John Knox, with every available engine of the law, corporal punishment, prison, exile, and death. If the State was ready and willing to do all this, then the State was to be implicitly obeyed in matters of religion, and the power in its hands was God-given; in fact, the State was the secular aspect of the Church. Looking at the State in this ideal aspect, Knox writes about the obedience due to the magistrate in matters religious, after the manner of what, in this country, would be called the fiercest 'Erastianism'. The State 'rules the roast'(sic) in all matters of religion and may do what Laud and Charles I perished in attempting, may alter forms of worship -always provided that the State absolutely agrees with the Kirk.

"Thus, under Edward VI, Knox would have desired the secular power in England, the civil magistrate, to forbid people to kneel at the celebration of the Sacrament. That was entirely within the competence of the State, simply and solely because Knox desired that people should not kneel. But when, long after Knox's death, the civil magistrate insisted, in Scotland, that people should kneel, the upholders of Knox's ideas denied that the magistrate (James VI) had any right to issue such an order, and they refused to obey while remaining within the established Church.....

"Thus we see that the State was to be obeyed in matters of religion, when the State did the bidding of the Kirk, and not otherwise......

"The idea of Knox is that in a Catholic State the ruler is not to be obeyed in religious matters by the true believers; sometimes Knox wrote that the Catholic ruler ought to be met by 'passive resistance'; sometimes that he ought to be shot at sight. He stated these diverse doctrines in the course of eighteen months. In a Protestant country the Catholics must obey the Protestant ruler, or take their chances of prison, exile, fire, and death. The Protestant ruler, in a Protestant State, is to be obeyed in spiritual matters by Protestants, just as far as the Kirk may happen to approve of his proceedings, or even further, in practice, if there is no chance of successful resistance....."

But even Knox, living in the sixteenth century, did not allow his theories to run away with his commonsense or his natural feelings on the subject of right and wrong. In this connection I would invite attention to a further extract from Mr Andrew Lang:-

"Knox knew the difference between the ideal and the practical. It was the ideal that all non-convertible Catholics 'should die the death.' But the ideal was never made real; the State was not prepared to oblige the Kirk in this matter. It was the ideal that any of 'the brethren,' conscious of a vocation, and seeing a good opportunity, should treat an impenitent Catholic ruler as Jehu treated Jezebel. But if any brother had consulted Knox as to the propriety of assassinating Queen Mary, in 1561-67, he would have found out his mistake, and probably have descended the Reformer's stairs much more rapidly than he mounted them."

Is it unreasonable to suppose that Irish Catholics in the twentieth century will draw a similar distinction between the ideal and the practical?

The Church of England, owing to the nature of its relation to the State, and its being hedged in on almost every side by Act of Parliament, is usually more moderate in her claims, but even she, I shall point out later on, has on some subjects adopted an attitude which, whether right or wrong, shows that the difficulties represented as being likely to arise in consequence of the claims of the Roman Catholic Church are of a general, not of a special nature, and may arise in connection with any Church, and under any system of government.

It is also assumed quite unnecessarily and in most cases erroneously, that when the claims of a person's religion and country come in conflict, it will be the country which will suffer. This was the basis of the laws excluding Roman Catholics from public employment, because the Pope claimed a power of releasing subjects from their allegiance, and hence it was argued Catholics must be bad subjects.

The logic was excellent but for the fact that the assumptions were wrong, and the policy embodied in these Acts is now universally admitted to have been an unwise one, and has been thrown overboard by everybody.

Lord Howard of Effingham, who commanded the English fleet sent against the Spanish Armada, which sailed against England with the Pope's special blessing, was a Catholic. All throughout the centuries, until within the last 60 or 70 years when the Pope lost his temporal power, kings and princes were fighting against him temporally while professing obedience to him spiritually, and I cannot recollect any instance where their subjects refused to follow them.

Catholic soldiers fought for King William, and some Protestants for King James, including the head of the house of Abercorn of that day, and so topsy-turvy was the state of things at that time, as compared with the simplicity they have assumed since in popular imagination, that the sympathies of the Pope were actually on William's side, and the Catholic Court of Austria had prayers said for the success of his expedition.

Coming to quite recent times, in 1881 the Pope issued a rescript condemning a public subscription then being raised for Mr Parnell, and which at the time stood at £8,000. By the end of the year it had reached £37,000, hardly all of the balance of which can have been contributed by Protestants.

General Sir William Butler was a Catholic, but he took part in the Red River expedition, which suppressed a rising of Canadian Catholics. Nor when he was in South Africa did the difference in religion between himself and the Boers imbue him with prejudice against them, and if his advice had been listened to, instead of that of persons more nearly approaching them in religion, Consols would probably be somewhat higher than they are at present.

Who have been the Irish leaders during the last two hundred years? Except O'Connell, who is pretty well forgotten (2), practically all the principal ones have been Protestants. Is the regard for the memory of Grattan, or Lord Edward Fitzgerald, or Wolfe Tone, or Henry Joy M'Cracken, or Robert Emmet, or John Mitchel, or, any of the others who worked or died for Ireland any less on account of the fact that they differed in religion from the majority of the people of the country they tried to serve?

What regiments distinguished themselves most in the Boer war, and have always done more than their share of whatever fighting was to be done anywhere in the British dominions? They are recruited from the "hereditary enemies" about whom we hear so much in Ulster.

In view of the many great services of the Irish to the Empire abroad, they might be given credit for a little patriotism at home, provided they have a country in which they can take a legitimate pride, and not one in which the surest road to the highest positions in the State is to refer to them on every possible occasion in the most insulting language that political rancour can suggest.

Arrangements Elsewhere

Where this is not the case, I wish to ask them as little as possible to take anything on trust, and so propose to give extracts from authorities when practicable. I shall, therefore, insert here a number of quotations from a work of recognised rank, 'A Political History of Contemporary Europe, by C Seignobos (3), of the University of Paris, English translation, second edition, London, 1904, which will show the position of some of the principal Catholic countries of Europe in regard to religious liberty. Describing the settlement following the Restoration of 1814, he writes:-

"The two great Catholic monarchs preserved State control of the Church and religious liberty. Austria preserved Josephism with toleration; France the Napoleonic Concordat with equality of creeds. They restored neither compulsory unity of faith, nor independence of the Church; France did not even restore the religious orders nor the Church domains that the Revolution had destroyed...

"In Germany, the Church of the times before the Revolution was not restored; not only the ecclesiastical principalities, but the convents, remained suppressed. The plan of a single regulation for the whole Confederation fell through. A new Church with new districts was established by special agreement between the Pope and the government of each state. Bavaria alone gave to this agreement the form of a Concordat (1817); it recognised in the Church the 'rights and privileges which appertain to it by divine order and canon law', but the Concordat was promulgated with an edict similar to Napoleon's organic articles, which, in spite of the protest of the Pope, guaranteed religious liberty. In the other German States, the Church was organised by a series of Papal bulls concerted with the governments. Everywhere the government preserved its power over the Church, and even continued, as in the eighteenth century, to interfere in the regulating of details in purely Church matters, liturgy, festivals, and pilgrimages...

"The Restoration re-established only an impoverished and subordinated Church." (Seignobos p690)

The Italian attitude on the subject is described as follows:--

"The Italian Government has adopted, since Cavour's time, the motto of the Catholic Liberals: a free Church in a free State. It tried to introduce the Belgian system in Italy. On the one hand, it suppressed all that remained of the old compulsory Church authority, Church courts, tithes (1866), and established full religious liberty; later it adopted civil marriage; it suppressed the majority of the convents, and secularised the Church estates, replacing them with salaries for the secular clergy. On the other hand, it abolished the former subjection of the Church to the State, leaving the Pope free to appoint bishops, and reserved to the clergy their honorary privileges. But, as the Pope refused to negotiate, this organisation, though established in fact, remained unrecognised by the Church...

"The occupation of Rome in September, 1870, greatly aggravated the conflict. The Government, by the law of guarantees, promised to let the Pope enjoy the personal situation of a sovereign in his palace of the Vatican, to grant him an annual compensation for his lost revenues.... But Pius IX., declaring himself morally a prisoner, refused to negotiate... The conflict became a chronic one, and has not yet ceased." (p708)

The principles of civil and religious liberty have, up until recently, made less progress in Spain than in any other Catholic country in Europe. Nevertheless, even there non-Catholic religions are very far from being proscribed or persecuted, and the relations of Church and State have not always been harmonious:

"In Spain, the conflict was violent after the revolution of 1868; for the first time in Spain unity of faith was officially abolished; the Constitution of 1869 proclaimed the public liberty of non-Catholic beliefs; then the clergy having opposed the government, the Cortes established civil marriage. Pius IX openly sided with Don Carlos, the legitimate King, and the breach was complete between the Holy See and the Spanish Government until the restoration of 1874. The Pope consented to recognise the government of Alphonso XII; but he did not secure the complete restoration of unity of faith, and protested against the Constitution of 1876, which granted toleration of private worship for non-Catholic." (p709)

Elsewhere Seignobos writes that in Spain:--

"The Cortes, finally elected in January 1876, and composed of ministerial deputies, voted the Constitution, including Article I: 'The Apostolic Catholic religion of Rome is the national religion; the nation assumes the obligation of supporting religion and its servants. No one is to be disturbed on account of his religious opinions nor for the form of his worship, provided he does not violate the respect due to Christian morality.'..."(p316)

Austria preserved Josephism up till 1848. In that year this system was abandoned, and the ecclesiastical authority became paramount; in 1867, however, a new Constitution was established which guaranteed complete religious liberty. Various laws were passed asserting the control of the State over the Church, and the Pope attempted in vain to annul them by means of his apostolic authority. According to Seignobos:--

"The Austria government maintained its laws, affirming the right of the lay power to modify by its own sole authority even a regulation made in common with the Church authority....

"...The conflict continued in the..laws of 1873, and Austria returned to the system of Joseph II, but without restoring the old forms of State guardianship. The Church found itself in much the same position there as in France, except that it retained its control of marriage and records of population...."(p708)

The whole situation has been put in a nutshell by the Protestant historian, Lecky, where he says, vide his "Clerical Influences", (4) as republished by Maunsell and Co, Dublin, 1911, page 24. This essay was written in 1861, but the state of things described still exists, and is being carefully kept alive in the interests of class ascendancy:-

"Unfortunately, however, there exists in Ireland a topic that effectually prevents discontent from languishing, or the sentiments of the two nations from coalescing. Sectarian animosity has completely taken the place of purely political feeling, and paralyses all the energies of the people. This is indeed the master curse of Ireland --the canker that corrodes all that is noble and patriotic in the country, and, we maintain, the direct and inevitable consequence of the Union. Much has been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly discernible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national feeling is the only effective check to sectarian passions. Nothing can be more clear than that the logical consequences of many of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in every land, where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic politicians are both independent and patriotic..."

We are living in the twentieth century and not in the sixteenth. The religious fears of Irish Protestants form the driving force in their opposition to Home Rule for Ireland. If there were no religious difficulty practically every Protestant would be a Home Ruler. Protestants are told that their civil and religious liberty will be endangered if Ireland obtains Home Rule. Surely it is impossible to hold that opinion unless the real state of affairs in the South and West of Ireland is ignored, and the whole development of political life in the last three centuries in every country of Europe is deliberately put out of sight.

One of the objects of this work is to make it no longer possible to ignore these factors and to show the fallacy of the argument that Home Rule and Rome Rule are identical.

On the other hand, many competent observers are of the opinion that the state of things is just the other way about, that it is the artificial nature of the political system which causes the Roman Catholic Church to have so much influence in Ireland, and that with the grant of Home Rule Irishmen will emancipate themselves from excessive ecclesiastical control in the same way as the other Catholic nations of Europe have done.

This view would seem to be shared by the authorities of the Church itself whose enthusiasm for Home Rule seems to vary inversely with their rank, while the attitude of the Pope can hardly be described even as one of benevolent neutrality, and he has sometimes been actively hostile to the movement.

The 'Ne Temere' Decree

Let me state at once that I strongly disapprove of it, and shall welcome the day, if ever it arrives, when a British Ministry can secure its withdrawal (it has not been enforced in Germany), but that day will not be brought any nearer by the presence of 103 rather than 42 Irish members at Westminster, most of whom are hardly to be expected to support a Government in the exercise of any pressure directed towards this object.

In regard to this, as in regard to many other things, the present system is directly injurious to Protestant interests. While, however, I consider it a matter for regret that the decree has been promulgated, I would point out that it in no way indicates a double dose of original sin on the part of Irish Catholics, and that it is as unreasonable to blame them for it as it would be to hold me responsible for the last resolution of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church on the subject of Home Rule. They cannot always control their ecclesiastical superiors any more than I can. I would also point out that it does not affect Protestants except in the case of mixed marriages performed otherwise than in a Catholic Church, the number of which is extremely limited.

While I regret the attitude the Roman Catholic Church has adopted in this matter, as it has furnished a new element of bitterness in my native country when the old animosities were dying out, I am forced to admit that it is difficult to see how she could adopt any other. According to her theory marriage is a sacrament, and can only therefore be administered by one of her own priests.

It follows that a marriage not so performed is from the religious point of view no marriage at all, and consequently one of the parties to it who is a Roman Catholic cannot be admitted to the privileges of the Church as long as he or she is living in what is technically a state of sin. If the Church has the right of formulating her own terms for admission to her communion, it is difficult to find any flaw in this position, though it may work extreme hardship in individual cases.

This is by no means the only case in which hardship is likely to arise where people marry into surroundings different from those to which they have been accustomed without considering all the contingencies that are liable to arise. The position of the wife in a marriage in disregard of the Ne Temere decree is absolutely unassailable in civil law if the necessary formalities have been complied with; and her case is much less unfortunate than that, say, of a British girl who marries a Frenchman in Britain and finds that in France it is invalid because he did not take the consent of his parents, or one who marries an Indian and finds he has two or three wives already, or is entitled under his personal law to take two or three more should he feel inclined to do so.

Though the Church of England does not regard marriage as a sacrament, it is noteworthy that some of her ecclesiastical authorities are adopting a position exactly similar to the Roman Catholic one in regard to certain classes of marriage, such as the re-marriage of divorced persons and marriage with a deceased wife's sister.

The following extract from the Daily Mail of June 17th last, will show that it is not the Roman Catholic Church only that does not always see eye to eye with the legislature, and that Protestants as well as Catholics can get into trouble with the spiritual authorities for exercising their civil rights in a manner the Church, or a particular Bishop of it, does not approve:--

"Sacredness of Marriage: Throughout the diocese of Chichester the following pronouncement on the subject of marriage, passed by the Diocesan Synod and promulgated by the Bishop (Dr. Ridgway) has been made in every church:

'That, inasmuch as there is a growing divergence between the marriage law of the State, which legislates from the standpoint of human expediency for its citizens, and the marriage law of the Church, which regards marriage as a God-made relation and legislates for its members only, it is the duty of the Church:

1. To resist all encroachments on the sacredness of marriage as a danger to the foundations of society;
2. To refuse to solemnise marriages in church for those who desire to be married in disobedience to the marriage law of the Church;
3. To subject those of her Communion who have contracted marriages contrary to the Church's law to such discipline as the Bishop shall determine to be just and salutary.'.."

Why do not the political Protestants so anxious about ecclesiastical aggression begin by taking measures to check it in the case of their own Church? The principle at stake is the same, and owing to the connection of the Church of England with the State, it is much easier to find a means of raising the question in regard to it, and of forcing the position taken up to be abandoned if invalid.

As a matter of fact, in adopting the attitude she has done the Church of Rome is only following the example of the Church of Ireland, and the spectacle of Presbyterian clergymen joining with their Episcopalian brethren in denouncing an attitude which it has required an Act of Parliament to restrain the latter from adopting towards them, must afford considerable gratification to the cynical philosopher.

If it is possible for anything to give them a sense of political and historical perspective, I would commend to their attention the following extract from 'A Champion of the Faith: Rev Henry Cooke, DD, LLD, his Life and Work,' by Rev W T Latimer, BA, the well-known authority on the history of the Irish Presbyterian Church:-

"The Armagh Consistorial Court decided, in 1840, that a marriage between a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian, performed by a Presbyterian minister, was illegal. In 1841 a man convicted of bigamy appealed against the verdict of the jury on the ground of the marriage having been celebrated by a Presbyterian minister, although between a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian. In the Queen's Bench, three of the judges were for liberating the prisoner, an two for his condemnation. The question was carried to the House of Lords. Here the Law Lords were equally divided, which caused the decision of the inferior Court to be upheld and the marriage to be pronounced invalid. This decision caused great alarm among the Presbyterians of Ulster. Public meetings were held. An address by Dr. Goudy, of Strabane, was printed, and widely circulated. In February, 1842, Government gave notice of introducing a Bill to legalise all marriages of this kind, which had been already solemnized. But, as the Bill was merely retrospective, Dr Cooke convened a special meeting of Assembly, by which it was condemned. Presbyterians were now thoroughly aroused to contend for their rights. Many meetings were held; intense excitement prevailed, and at last Government gave way. In 1844, another Bill was passed, which granted Presbyterians all that they demanded, so that marriages celebrated by clergymen of our Church are legal, if one of the parties united be a Presbyterian..."

Another decree, that entitled Motu Proprio, has excited some attention, but I shall not waste time in discussing it, since it does not affect Protestants at all, and even in regard to Catholics it has been held by one of their own Bishops, Dr O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe, that in Ireland it has been suspended by the operation of custom.

With regard to both decrees I need only add that whatever hardships they involve are quite independent of whether Home Rule is passed or not, and it is difficult to see how it will make any great difference to the working of them.

Notes and References to Ch 3

2. O'Connell forgotten? Perhaps this reflects the Trinity College environment of 1906-13, from which JJ had not yet fully emerged. (In the printed edition, I gave here the date '1914' which was incorrect; at the time I wrote it I thought that 1914 was the publication date. I subsequently discovered that in fact it had been published, and reviewed, in 1913, in time for the Ballymoney Liberal Home Rule rally.)

3. Charles Seignobos 'Histoire Politique de l'Europe Contemporaine' (Coulommiers, Paris, 1897) was translated and published in London in 1901; there was a popular edition in 1915, and a re-issue in 1939, so it was a work of some standing and durability.

4. W E H Lecky's 'Clerical Influences' was a short essay written in 1862, when he was 23; he was later dismissive of it as crude and exaggerated. It was however resurrected and re-published in 1911, in the context of the Home Rule movement, with an introduction by Francis Cruise O'Brien and W E H Lloyd in which they ranked it among Lecky's best works, the central argument being that ill-feeling between Catholics and Protestants was a direct consequence of the Act of Union. The youthful Lecky makes the case, based on experience abroad, that a national parliament would turn the attention of all sects towards national needs, rather than being preoccupied diversely with London and Rome.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1998