OUTRAGES IN IRELAND

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1879

OUTRAGES IN IRELAND.

The pope is in a high state of excitement over the establishment of Protestant churches and Protestant schools in Rome, under the very shadow of the Vatican, and the pope's representatives in Ireland are similarly excited on account of Protestant education in that priest-ridden country. At the last accounts, a trial was in progress at Clifden, County Galway, of Father Rhatigan, a Roman Catholic priest, and nearly forty other persons, two of whom are women, for alleged riots and unlawful assemblies on the 2d, 4th, and 23d of March, at Omey Island, Connemara, where a Protestant missionary school was established. Mr. McNeice, the school master, who was recently violently assaulted and obliged to retire from the place, was brought there under the protection of the police to give evidence. A variety of outrages upon Protestant farmers and others had been practiced, their houses assaulted and their crops destroyed. A policeman testified that an inflammatory altar address was delivered by Father Rhatigan, on Sunday, the 2d of March, and that a riot occurred at Claddaghduff, in which the priest took a prominent part. When the address was over, the congregation left the chapel, and accompanied by the priest proceeded to the house of a Protestant convert named Courcey, hooting and throwing stones. The witness told Father Rhatigan and the crowd to go home and throw no more stones. Father Rhatigan replied, “My people will not be dictated to by you or by any one but myself.” Witness remained about the place for some time after the crowd went home, to protect the Courceys. Constable Sheehan, who on March 23d was severely beaten, and had one of his ribs broken, confirmed this evidence. At Ballinaboy, which is about two miles from Clifden, a mission school was wrecked.

The Dublin Evening Mail gives the following account of these proceedings:—

“Tranquillity prevailed in Connemara until the Roman Catholic curate of Clifden, Rev. Mr. Rhatigan, commenced to visit the schools belonging to the Irish church missions, with the ostensible object of seeing if any Roman Catholic children were being educated in them. The schools are open to all children who choose to attend them. The priest went round the entire children, asked their names, and ordered some of them out of the school. On the school-mistress interfering, he called her a ‘raw’ and ‘an unfortunate wretch.’ On the 28th of February he entered the school, situated on Omey Island, about ten miles from Clifden. This school was established about twenty-five years ago, and being licensed, is also used as a church. Rev. Mr. Rhatigan pursued a somewhat similar course with regard to Omey Island school as he had done previously at Balleek, and on the schoolmaster interfering he was struck twice by a stick which the priest carried. The master then forcibly ejected the priest, who fell upon a rock outside the school-door. The people assembled around the school-house immediately, and made an attack upon the building. Mr. M'Neice (who also acts as a mission Scripture-reader) succeeded in barring the school door, and by placing chairs, etc., against the windows, protected himself from violence. The mob, however, threw stones freely, and having broken mostly all the glass in the windows, they retired. Since this occurrence the Rev. Mr. Rhatigan has, it has been deposed, incited his parishioners by inflammatory addresses from the altar to further violence, and they have acted up to his advice. Further attacks were made upon Mr. M'Neice afterward, and members of his family. Two hundred panes of glass were broken in the church of Reenvyle, which is many miles from the scene of the Omey Island outrage.”

This is the spirit of Romanism wherever it has had rule. But the days of its power have gone, and in Rome, France, and Ireland, as in other parts of the world, priestly tyranny will soon be a thing of the past. It dies hard, but die it must.—Christian Statesman.