force of a real moral training?

I have dealt with the exercise of clerical influence in these matters as
being, at any rate in relation to the subject matter of this book, far
more important than the evil commonly described as "The Priest in
Politics." That evil is, in my opinion, greatly misrepresented. The
cases of priests who take an improper part in politics are cited without
reference to the vastly greater number who take no part at all, except
when genuinely assured that a definite moral issue is at stake. I also
have in my mind the question of how we should have fared if the control
of the different Irish agitations had been confined to laymen, and if
the clergy had not consistently condemned secret associations. But
whatever may be said in defence of the priest in politics in the past,
there are the strongest grounds for deprecating a continuance of their
political activity in the future. As I gauge the several forces now
operating in Ireland, I am convinced that if an anti-clerical movement
similar to that which other Roman Catholic countries have witnessed,
were to succeed in discrediting the priesthood and lowering them in
public estimation, it would be followed by a moral, social, and
political degradation which would blight, or at least postpone, our
hopes of a national regeneration. From this point of view I hold that
those clergymen who are predominantly politicians endanger the moral
influence which it is their solemn duty to uphold. I believe however,
that the over-active part hitherto taken in politics by the priests is
largely the outcome of the way in which Roman Catholics were treated in
the past, and that this undesirable feature in Irish life will yield,
and is already yielding to the removal of the evils to which it owed its
origin and in some measure its justification.[21]

One has only to turn to the spirit and temper of such representative
Roman Catholics as Archbishop Healy and Dr. Kelly, Bishop of Ross--to
their words and to their deeds--in order to catch the inspiration of a
new movement amongst our Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at once
religious and patriotic. And if my optimism ever wavers, I have but to
think of the noble work that many priests are to my own knowledge
doing, often in remote and obscure parishes, in the teeth of innumerable
obstacles. I call to mind at such times, as pioneers in a great
awakening, men like the eminent Jesuit, Father Thomas Finlay, Father
Hegarty of