Transcribed from the [c1889] edition printed by J. T. Drought by David
Price.





                            REV. T. CONNELLAN,
                                  TO HIS
                         Dearly Beloved Brethren,
                           THE ROMAN CATHOLICS
                                  OF THE
                            DIOCESE OF ELPHIN.


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          Dublin: Printed by J. T. DROUGHT, 6, Bachelor’s-walk.

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A LETTER,
ETC.


BELOVED BRETHREN,—

FOR seven years and three months I laboured among you.  Thousands of you
knew me in the Confessional; almost all of you have heard my voice from
the pulpit; I have baptized not a few among you.  I have laboured in the
four most populous centres in your diocese—Sligo, Strokestown, Roscommon,
and Athlone—and from the day on which I entered upon my work to the day
of my departure from the diocese, there has never been a word of
disagreement between us.  I resided but four months in the parish of
Strokestown, yet, at my departure, my flock presented me with a purse of
sovereigns.  Most of you have read the comments in the local journals
when I left the diocese, and I leave them to speak for themselves.

I am returning to live and die among you if you will permit me, and I
know the question that will naturally be asked by every one of you.  You
will say—“Yes, we remember Father Connellan very well.  He preached in
our chapel, and we used to call him ‘the fair-haired priest.’  But wasn’t
he drowned in Lough Ree a couple of years ago?  Is it his ghost that is
coming among us?”

Well, my clear friends, I am thankful to say I was not drowned in Lough
Ree.  I left the diocese, put off my clerical garb, and worked on the
Press in London for eighteen months.  It was rather a curious thing for a
“fair-haired priest” to do, arid I am going to give you my reasons for
the step in as few words as possible.

I was not more than two years a priest when I began to have conscientious
scruples.  I shall tell you the causes of these scruples and troubles,
not in the order in which they arose, for that would be impossible in a
short sketch like the present, and if you cannot master the difficulties
yourselves, you can ask your parish priest to explain them for you.

1.  We have all a great love for St. Patrick, and I used to read
everything I could lay my hands on concerning him when I was a Roman
Catholic priest.  Now, St. Patrick left some writings in manuscript, and
one of these is called “St. Patrick’s Confession.”  All agree in
believing this the genuine work of St. Patrick.  Now, the following are
the opening words of St. Patrick’s Confession:—“I, Patrick, a sinner, the
rudest and the least of all the faithful, and most contemptible to very
many, had for my father Calpurnius, a deacon, a son of Potitus a
presbyter, who dwelt in the village of Bannavem Taberniae.”  Presbyter, I
may tell you, is the old word for priest, so we find that St. Patrick’s
father was a deacon, and his grandfather a priest.  If a Roman Catholic
deacon or priest were to marry now, he would at once be suspended; and
don’t you think the priests and deacons living only three centuries after
Christ were more likely to be right than those of the nineteenth century?

Again, in none of the works of St. Patrick is there a single word about
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the Sacrifice of the Mass, Purgatory,
Invocation of Saints, or the like.  St. Patrick always prays to God
alone, and Joceline, an early Roman Catholic historian, says of him—“He
used to read the Bible to the people, and explain it to them for days and
nights together.”

Lastly, you have always believed, and so did I for nearly thirty years,
that St. Patrick planted the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland in the
fifth century.  We know that every part of the Island became Christian,
and that Ireland was called “the Island of Saints.”  But if St. Patrick
planted the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland in the fifth century, is
it not very curious that in the Bull given by Adrian IV. to Henry the
Second, in which he permits Henry to conquer Ireland, the Pope expressly
states he does it “in order to widen the bounds of the Church.”  The Pope
handed over Ireland to Henry the Second on condition “that he would take
care that a penny should be annually paid from every house in Ireland to
St. Peter,” and his Holiness expressly states that his object is “to
widen the bounds of the Church.”  Now, Christianity had been spread into
every corner of “the Island of Saints” for seven centuries, and yet the
Pope wants to “widen the boundaries of the Church” by introducing _his_
religion into Ireland.  What does it mean?  Well, I give you the facts
from Dr. Lanigan, a Roman Catholic historian (vol. iv., 164), and leave
you to draw your own conclusion.

2.  When I was a Roman Catholic priest, one of my chief duties was to
hear confessions.  It is not a pleasant duty, I can assure you, but it
was always a pleasure to me to work for the good-natured Irish peasantry.
Well, the chief argument in support of Confession is taken from the 20th
chapter of St. John’s Gospel and the 23rd verse—“Whose sins you shall
forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they
are retained.”  Now, to understand the point of my argument, you must
read in your Douay Testament from verse 19.  Then turn back to the 24th
chapter of St. Luke, and commence at the 33rd verse.  Both Evangelists
narrate exactly the same incident; for in both he said, “Peace be to
you,” and “He showed them His hands and His side.”  But what do we find?
In St. John, verse 19, we find that it was the “Disciples,” not the
eleven Apostles only, who “were gathered together for fear of the Jews.”
In St. Luke, verse 33, we find that it was “the eleven” “and those that
were with them” whom Jesus addressed.  Thence it follows that not alone
did Jesus give to the eleven Apostles the power of forgiving sins, but He
gave it to “those who were with them”—to the whole company of the
“Disciples,” and among that company there were certainly some women.
Therefore Christ gave power to women to remit sins in the Confessional.
It follows as a necessary consequence; and I hope you will ask one of
your priests to solve the difficulty for you.  My friends, you will find
nowhere in the New Testament a record of any of the Apostles having
remitted sins in the Confessional.  They remitted them, no doubt, by
preaching the Gospel of Christ.  They bound and loosed, as you may see
(Acts xv. 28, 29); but there is no record of their having set up the
Confessional.  In the 16th chapter of the Acts, when the terrified keeper
of the prison fell down at the feet of Paul and Silas, saying, “Masters,
what must I do that I may be saved?” we do not read that Paul took out
his stole, and asked him to make his confession.  On the contrary, he
said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
Indeed, it can be conclusively proved from history that private
confession was introduced by Leo I. in the fifth century.  Public
confession always existed.  St. James inculcates it (chap. v. 16), where
he says, “Confess therefore your sins one to another,” showing that the
priest is just as much bound to confess his sins to you as you are to the
priest.

3.  All Roman Catholics try, where they can, to go to Mass every Sunday
and holiday, and they believe that Jesus Christ is really and
substantially present in the Host.  They believe they receive Him in the
Holy Communion also: and many of you are yet living, I have no doubt, to
whom I carried the Holy Communion when you were sick.  Now, the carnal
presence of Christ in the Eucharist is tried to be proved from the sixth
chapter of St. John and from the words of institution.  The words in the
sixth chapter of St. John must have been spoken at least thirteen months
before the Last Supper, as may be seen by a reference to John vi. 4 and
John xii. 1.  The Church of Rome says Christ’s words, both in the Sixth
of John, and at the Last Supper, must be taken literally.  Very well.  In
the 54th verse of the sixth chapter of St. John, Christ says, “Except ye
eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have
life in you.”  Therefore all who do not receive the Holy Communion must
perish, and baptized infants, for example, are eternally damned, I say
the conclusion is inevitable, if the doctrine of the Church of Rome be
true.  But the same Church of Rome holds that baptized infants, when they
die go straight to God.  Again, in the 55th verse, Christ says, “He that
eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life: and I will
raise him up in the last day.”  Therefore all communicants are saved.  In
fact, you are landed in absurdities to no end unless you take Christ’s
own interpretation in the 64th verse, “The words that I have spoken to
you are spirit and life.”  Jesus gives the key also in the 35th verse,
where He said, “He that cometh to me shall not hunger; and he that
believeth in me, shall never thirst.”  It is by believing in Jesus, and
coming to Him, that we are to have eternal life.  But the Roman Catholic
Church attempts to prove the carnal presence of Christ in the Eucharist
from the words of institution also: “This is My body, this is My blood.”
She says nothing can be clearer than these words, and that, unless Christ
intended to leave His real Body and Blood, He would have been guilty of
deception.  Well, when Jacob, in Genesis xlix. 9, said, “Juda is a lion’s
whelp,” his words were very plain; but do you think any of his hearers
believed Juda to be really a lion’s whelp?  When we read in the 118th
Psalm (verse 105), “Thy word is a lamp to my feet,” do we think God’s
Word really a material lamp?  When we read in John (x. 9), “I am the
door,” do we believe Christ to be really a door?  Not at all.  Holy
Scripture is full of figurative language, and Christ constantly used it.
Besides, in Luke (xxii. 19) we read, “Do this for a commemoration of me,”
and in 1 Cor. xi. 26 we read, “For as often as you shall eat this bread,
and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord, until He
come.”  So the Lord’s Supper was to be a memorial, a commemoration of
Christ.  But we do not keep a memento of a person, no matter how dear,
who is bodily present.  It is only when the friend is really departing
that he leaves a memorial.  Jesus, in John (xiv. 2, 3), says, “I go to
prepare a place for you.  I will come again, and will take you to myself,
that where I am, you also may be.”  Why did not Christ say, “Do not be
troubled.  I am leaving myself in the Eucharist.  You can handle me, feed
on me.  I shall be a thousand times more intimately connected with you
than ever before.”  He says nothing of the kind, however.  Nor does St.
Peter in his famous sermon (Acts iii. 20) at Solomon’s porch; but he
says, “When the times of refreshment shall come, He shall send Jesus
Christ, whom heaven indeed must receive until the times of the
restitution of all things.”

4.  I should be sorry to weary you, and so the last point I shall discuss
here is the alleged primacy of jurisdiction given by Christ to St. Peter,
and through him to the Pope.  The chief text upon which the Roman
Catholic Church relies in this matter is Matt. xvi. 18—“And I say to
thee, That thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  In a note in the Douay
Testament we are told that Christ’s words were the same as if He said in
English, “Thou art a rock, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”
But it is very remarkable that the Evangelist uses the word Petros for
Peter, and Petra for the rock.  Now Petros means a stone, while Petra
means a rock; so that the words of Christ would really signify “thou art
a stone, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”  If Christ intended
to found His Church upon Peter, He surely would have said, “Thou art
Peter, and upon _thee_ I will build my Church.”  But He really does say,
thou art Peter (that is a stone), and upon this rock (Petra) I will build
my Church.  Peter certainly was a stone in the edifice equally with the
other Apostles, for St. John in the Apocalypse (xxi. 14) tells us that
the wall of the new Jerusalem “had twelve foundations, and in them the
names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.”  St. Augustine distinctly
states that Christ is the rock—“Because I am Petra, a rock, thou art
Petrus, Peter; for Petra, the rock, is not from Petrus, Peter; but
Petrus, Peter, is from Petra the rock.  And upon this rock I will build
my Church; not upon Peter, whom thou art, but upon the rock whom thou
hast confessed” (tom, v., 1097).  St. Jerome holds the same opinion.  But
the Church of Rome says Christ gave Peter the keys (Matt. xvi. 19).  No
doubt; and Peter admitted the Jews by the doors of the Church (Acts ii.
41), and afterwards the Gentiles (Acts x.).  He also gave him power to
bind and loose, and bestowed exactly the same power on the other Apostles
(Matt. xviii. 18).  But even if Christ had conferred upon Peter this
extraordinary power, it would not follow that it has been transmitted to
the Pope.  They tell us that St. Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.  But
what authority have we for such a statement?  Only a shadowy tradition.
St. Peter is said to have founded the Church of Antioch, and has written
an Epistle from Babylon.  Why should not the bishops of Antioch or
Babylon have as good a right to call themselves successors to St. Peter
as the bishops of Rome?  The Roman Catholic Church says Peter was bishop
of Rome for twenty-five years, and was put to death the same year with
St. Paul.  Well, the Acts of the Apostles take us down to A.D. 66, and it
is most extraordinary they never mention Peter in connection with the See
of Rome.  Even more extraordinary, if possible, is the fact that,
although St. Paul resided two whole years at Rome, and wrote several
Epistles therefrom, he never once mentions Peter’s name.  In his second
Epistle to Timothy, written, as the Douay Testament tells us, “not long
before his martyrdom,” he says: “Only Luke is with me.”  Nay, when he was
before Nero, at his first examination, not a friend stood by to comfort
him.  “At my first answer, no man stood with me, but all forsook me; may
it not be laid to their charge.”  Where was Peter?  The Church of Rome
says he had been residing at Rome twenty-five years then.  Was St. Paul
totally ignorant of his presence there?

I do not propose to touch upon any more points of controversy just now,
but from what I have written, you will gather that it would have been
dishonourable and wicked of me to remain in the Church of Rome.  Of
course the proper thing for me to do was to write to my bishop, and
resign into his hands the charge he had given me seven years previously.
But you know how a poor Irish priest, who retires from his ministry for
conscientious motives, is reviled and persecuted.  Then, my parents were
living.  I dare say some of you know them, and if you do, you are aware
that they are devout Roman Catholics, and are respected and esteemed by
their acquaintances.  They doated upon me, and I knew they would much
prefer to weep over my dead body than mourn over what to them would be my
fall.  I gave them the easier alternative.  On Tuesday, the 20th of
September, 1887, I said Mass in St. Peter’s, Athlone, as usual; had a
talk with my old parish priest, Dr. Coffey, about schools, after
breakfast, and then left, as I suppose for ever.  I sent a suit of
secular clothes to my boat, pulled up to Lough Ree, and, having left my
lay suit on the bank, undressed in the boat and swam ashore.  I thank God
that from that moment I have had, what I had not tasted for years
previously, perfect peace.  I got a position as sub-editor on a London
newspaper, and for eighteen months gave myself to deep and constant study
in the British Museum.  I began to feel that it was God’s will I should
return to Ireland, and tell my dearly-loved countrymen of all that Christ
has done for me.  He has accepted me.  I, a poor sinner, believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ, cast myself upon Him, and know that “I have peace with
God, being justified by faith.”  God spared not His own Son.  “He made
Him to be sin for us,” therefore for me.  “We were reconciled to God by
the death of His Son.”  This blessed acceptance has flooded my very soul
with spiritual joy and gratitude, and as the perennial fountain spreads
its waters over the surrounding meadows, so, my friends, do I long to
impart to others the riches with which Christ has endowed me.  I have
nothing to say, except what Paul said to his own countrymen after his
conversion: “But this I confess to thee, that according to the sect which
they call heresy, so I serve the Father and my God, believing all things
which are written in the law and the prophets” (Acts xxiv. 14).  I have
written nothing that I have not grounded upon God’s Word.  Christ bids us
“Search the Scriptures.”  I hope to meet you all again, and to prove to
you from God’s book, admitted by your own Church to be inspired, that I
have followed God’s guidance.  Your priest may denounce me, but I am
quite willing to discuss the matter with him, and accept you, his own
flock, as the judges.  Meanwhile, may God bless you all, and may you
“grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ.”

                          Your obedient Servant,

                                                         THOMAS CONNELLAN,

Late Roman Catholic Curate, St. Peter’s, Athlone.