Cardinal Logue condemns policy of Irish republic
Armagh, 30 November 1917 - The Irish republic was a dream with no hope of realisation. That’s the view of Cardinal Logue as expressed in an address read out at masses held throughout the Archdiocese of Armagh last week.
Cardinal Logue stated forthrightly that the establishment of an Irish republic ‘either by an appeal to the potentates of Europe seated at a Peace Conference or an appeal to force by hurling an unarmed people against an empire which has five millions of men under arms...would be ludicrous if it were not so mischievous and fraught with such danger, when cleverly used as an incentive to fire the imagination of an ardent, generous, patriotic people’.
The position of the Catholic clergy in relation to the rise of Sinn Féin has been a matter of some public comment throughout this year, not least in the course of the party’s various successful campaigns.
However, Cardinal Logue’s comments pour cold water on the idea that the Catholic church is fully in step with the separatists.
On the very day that the Cardinal was offering his critique of Sinn Féin’s policy, another member of the clergy, Fr David Bolger, a parish priest in Ballymurn, Co. Wexford, was denouncing Sinn Féin supporters for being ‘hot headed and unbalanced youths’.
Fr Bolger was speaking at a meeting of the United Irish League where he warned that should any of these unruly elements attempt to scupper the work of the Irish Convention in delivering a scheme of self-government for Ireland in favour of maintaining an atmosphere of violence and bloodshed, they deserved to be dealt with as ‘traitors and enemies of their country’.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
