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Updated: May 13, 2025
One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states.
Now, it seems clear to me, that the Whigs might easily have procured and maintained a majority among the clergy, and perhaps in the universities, if they had not too much encouraged or connived at this intemperance of speech and virulence of pen, in the worst and most prostitute of their party; among whom there has been for some years past such a perpetual clamour against the ambition, the implacable temper, and the covetousness of the priesthood: Such a cant of High Church, and persecution, and being priest-ridden; so many reproaches about narrow principles, or terms of communion: Then such scandalous reflections on the universities, for infecting the youth of the nation with arbitrary and Jacobite principles, that it was natural for those, who had the care of religion and education, to apprehend some general design of altering the constitution of both.
It is clear enough, then, that, from the beginning, the Irish were not only "priest-ridden," but also very attached to "monkish superstitions." Yet we could not form a complete idea of that attachment were we to limit ourselves to an enumeration of the buildings actually erected, supposing such an enumeration possible at this time.
If I were then to tell him, that in that city of some hundred and seventy thousand souls, there were ten thousand persons in holy orders, and between three and four hundred churches, of which nearly half had convents and schools attached; if I were to add, that taking in novices, scholars, choristers, servitors, beadles, and whole tribes of clerical attendants, there were probably not far short of forty thousand persons, who in some form or other lived upon and by the church, that is, in plainer words, doing no labour themselves, lived on the labour of others, he, I think, would answer then, that a city so priest-infested, priest- ruled and priest-ridden, would be much such a city as he had seen with me; such a city as Rome is now.
Priest-ridden as Suffolk was, the Suffolk Chronicle was the leading paper of the county, and had a large circulation, and, let me add, did good service in its day.
For, strange to say, the modern Spaniards at least those who come to the Philippines are as little superstitious or priest-ridden as the people of any nation in Europe. Probably this is a symptom of their return to a more moderate degree of faith than they used to evince prior to the French Revolution, which has altered the tone of opinion and manners throughout the world.
But I have been abroad, and know better than to be priest-ridden." "Sir, if it be true that any of my cloth, or, it might be more decently said, of my calling, interfere with men's private affairs, for the gratification either of idle curiosity, or for worse motives, you cannot have learned a better lesson abroad than to contemn such practices.
Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant one.
When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world.
I saw the poor, and the degraded, and the racked, and the priest-ridden, tillers and peoplers of the soil, which made the substance beneath the glittering and false surface, the body of that vast empire, of which I had hitherto beheld only the face, and THAT darkly, and for the most part covered by a mask!
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