Transcribed from the [c1889] edition printed by J. T. Drought.
Dublin:Printed by J. T. Drought, 6,Bachelor’s-walk.
Beloved Brethren,—
For seven years and three months Ilaboured among you. Thousands of you knew me in theConfessional; almost all of you have heard my voice from thepulpit; I have baptized not a few among you. I havelaboured in the four most populous centres in yourdiocese—Sligo, Strokestown, Roscommon, andAthlone—and from the day on which I entered upon my work tothe day of my departure from the diocese, there has never been aword of disagreement between us. I resided but four monthsin the parish of Strokestown, yet, at my departure, my flockpresented me with a purse of sovereigns. Most of you haveread 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 permitme, and I know the question that will naturally be asked by everyone of you. You will say—“Yes, we rememberFather Connellan very well. He preached in our chapel, andwe used to call him ‘the fair-haired priest.’ But wasn’t he drowned in Lough Ree a couple of yearsago? Is it his ghost that is coming among us?”
Well, my clear friends, I am thankful to say I was not drownedin Lough Ree. I left the diocese, put off my clerical garb,and worked on the Press in London for eighteen months. Itwas rather a curious thing for a “fair-haired priest”to do, arid I am going to give you my reasons for the step in asfew words as possible.
p. 4I was notmore than two years a priest when I began to have conscientiousscruples. I shall tell you the causes of these scruples andtroubles, not in the order in which they arose, for that would beimpossible in a short sketch like the present, and if you cannotmaster the difficulties yourselves, you can ask your parishpriest to explain them for you.
1. We have all a great love for St. Patrick, and I usedto read everything I could lay my hands on concerning him when Iwas a Roman Catholic priest. Now, St. Patrick left somewritings in manuscript, and one of these is called “St.Patrick’s Confession.” All agree in believingthis the genuine work of St. Patrick. Now, the followingare the opening words of St. Patrick’sConfession:—“I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and theleast of all the faithful, and most contemptible to very many,had for my father Calpurnius, a deacon, a son of Potitus apresbyter, who dwelt in the village of BannavemTaberniae.” Presbyter, I may tell you, is the oldword for priest, so we find that St. Patrick’s father was adeacon, and his grandfather a priest. If a Roman Catholicdeacon or priest were to marry now, he would at once besuspended; and don’t you think the priests and deaconsliving only three centuries after Christ were more likely to beright than those of the nineteenth century?
Again, in none of the works of St. Patrick is there a singleword about devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the Sacrifice of theMass, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, or the like. St.Patrick always prays to God alone, and Joceline, an early RomanCatholic historian, says of him—“He used to read theBible to the