Communications with Rome

Margaret Anne Cusack

An Illustrated History of Ireland

1868

start of chapter | Chapter XXVIII

Communications with Rome were still as frequent and as intimate as they had ever been since Ireland received the faith at the hands of the great Apostle. To be children of Patrick and children of Rome were convertible terms; and the Holy See watched still more tenderly over this portion of the Church while it was suffering and persecuted. Paul V. wrote a special letter to the Irish Catholics, dated from "St. Mark's, 22nd of September, 1606," in which he mourns over their afflictions, commends their marvellous constancy, which he says can only be compared to that of the early Christians, and exhorts them specially to avoid the sin of attending Protestant places of worship—a compliance to which they were strongly tempted, when even one such act might procure exemption, for a time at least, from severe persecution or death.

On another occasion the same Pontiff writes thus: "You glory in that faith by which your fathers procured for their country the distinguished appellation of the Island of Saints. Nor have the sufferings which you have endured been allowed to remain unpublished; your fidelity and Christian fortitude have become the subject of universal admiration; and the praise of your name has long since been loudly celebrated in every portion of the Christian world.[5]

Notes

[5] World.—Dr. Rothe, quoted by Monsignor Moran, p. 251.

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