Page:Life and death of the Irish parliament.djvu/8

8 ever made by Rome to their notions of ecclesiastical celibacy. And yet the slightest difference on a comparatively immaterial point is noticed. A small deviation from the Gallican Liturgy is spoken of, in reference to Columbanus in France; the rather bold tone he assumes in addressing the Pontiff on the "Three Chapters" does not escape censure. The learned Virgilius, an Irishman, brings trouble about his ears, because, in hinting the sphericity of the Earth, his notions did not square with those of his archbishop, Boniface. Never, as I said, was the least suspicion whispered against the purity of doctrine and practice of the Irish missionaries on clerical celibacy. It is a well known fact that St. Augustine in the conversion of England availed himself of the services of the Irish. Now, I put it to any man of common sense, would such be the case if the Irish Church did not agree with the centre of unity on such an important point of discipline as ecclesiastical celibacy? Certainly not. He would no more have done so than a missionary now from All Hallows or the Propaganda would beg the cooperation of the Archbishop of Canterbury or Dr. Colenso. Why, the Catholic Church allows the most public veneration, allows Offices and Masses in honour of those saints, the fathers of the Irish Church—to Saints Columba, Kevin, Canice, who were born before St. Patrick was well cold in his grave. And need I tell my reader that such honours would not be allowed, that they would not be put forth as bright examples for the imitation of the faithful, if they had offered any opposition to Rome on a point of discipline, the breach of which incurred, as a matter of course, the penalty of the heaviest excommunication. Even the calumniator, Gerald Barry, had to acknowledge that the Irish clergy were famed for chastity. Even the English archbishops, Lanfranc and Anselm, in writing to the Danish bishops of Waterford and Dublin and Limerick—as the latter put