It is possible to bring to a single point the reasons which make Irish Unionists so apprehensive as regards the religious difficulty under Home Rule.  Their fears are not concerned with any of the special dogmas of the Roman Church.  But they recognise, as people in England do not, the inevitable tendency of the consistent and immemorial policy of the Church of Rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims.  They know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power.  They know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient.  They know that professions and promises made by individual Roman Catholics and by political leaders, statements which to English ears seem a happy augury of a good time coming, are of no value whatever.  They do not deny that such promises and guarantees express a great deal of good intention, but they know that above the individual, whether he be layman or ecclesiastic, there is a system which moves on, as soon as such movement becomes possible, in utter disregard of his statements.  At the time when Catholic emancipation was in view, high Roman authorities gave the most emphatic guarantees that the position of the then Established Church in Ireland would never be endangered, so far as their Church and people were concerned.  But when the time came, such promises proved absolutely worthless.  Whether the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a good thing or not, is not the question here.  The essential point, for our present purpose, is that the guarantees of individual Roman Catholics, no matter how positively or how confidently stated, are of no account as against the steady age-long policy of the Roman Church.

It is well known to all students that, while other religious bodies have, both in theory and in practice, renounced certain old methods of persuasion, the Roman Church still formally claims the power to control states, to depose princes, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, to extirpate heresy.  She has never accepted the modern doctrine of toleration.  But there are many who think that these ancient claims, though not renounced, are so much out-of-date in the modern world that they mean practically nothing.  Such is the opinion of the average Englishman, and the mild and cultivated form of Romanism which is to be met with usually in England lends colour to the opinion.  In Ireland we know better.

The recent Papal Decree, termed Ne Temere, regulating the solemnisation of marriages, has been enforced in Ireland in a manner which must seem impossible to Englishmen.

According to this Decree, “No marriage is valid which is not contracted in the presence of the (Roman) parish priest of the place, or of the Ordinary, or of a priest deputed by them, and of two witnesses at least.”  This rule is binding on all Roman Catholics.