: Rev. T. Connellan to his dearly beloved brethren the Roman Catholics of the diocese of Elphin by Connellan Thomas - Catholic Church Controversial literature; Catholic ex-priests Ireland

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CULM ROCK.

THE OLD STONE HOUSE.

Culm Rock was a wild place. You might search the coast for miles and not find another bit of nature so bare and rent and ragged as this. So fiercely had the storms driven over it, so wildly had the wind and waves beat, that the few cedars which once flourished as its only bit of greenness were long ago dead, and now held up only bleached and ragged hands. Jutting out into the sea, the surf rolled and thundered along its jagged shore of rock and sand, and was never silent. It would have been an island but for the narrow strips of sand, heaped high and ridgelike, which bound it to the main land; and this slender bridge, it often seemed, would be torn away by the ravenous sea which gnawed and engulfed great tracts at once, and yet heaped it higher and broader in the next storm. Beyond, on the firm and unyielding land, the pine woods stood up, vast, dim, and silent, stretching away into the interior. So, with the great dark barrier of forest behind and the waste of shining sea in front, Culm Rock seemed shut out from all the rest of the world. True, sails flitted along the horizon, and the smoke of foreign-bound steamers trailed against the sky, giving token of the great world's life and stir; and there were Skipper Ben and the "White Gull" who touched at the little wharf at Culm every week; but for these, the people--for there were people who dwelt here--might have lived in another sphere for aught they knew or were conscious of what was transpiring in the wonderful land which lay beyond the stretch of sea, and between which and themselves the "White Gull" was the only means of communication.

Do you wonder that people could spend their lives here, die, and never have seen the world without? There were only a dozen houses,--poor, racked, weather-beaten things, nestled on a bit of sand on a far corner of Culm,--inhabited by fishermen and their families. They were rough, hardy folk, but ignorant, and with only ambition enough to get their living out of the great sea, and a poor and scanty enough living at that. Skipper Ben brought them molasses and calicoes down in the "White Gull," and took their fish in exchange; and if he told them a bit of news from the great city and the greater world, it was all very well. If he failed to do this, it was all very well too.

Back of the fisher huts, the rocks rose high and dark, and quite hid the pine woods and the isthmus of yellow sand, and everything that could make Culm at all cheery or pleasant. This eminence was Wind Cliff, and served as a landmark for all the sailors whose path lay along the coast. Around this the gulls were alway flitting and screaming, and their nests were everywhere in the crevices of the rocks. Bald and gray it rose, scarred and rent with storms and age, and so steep as to be almost inaccessible. It fronted the north-west, and from its sharp tip the rock sloped south to the sea, and held in one of its great hollows down by the shore a house--such a house as you would not have looked for at Culm--with walls of stone and tall, ancient chimneys and deep-set windows, like eyes looking forever at the sea.

It was so dark and weather-beaten that at first sight you might almost fancy it to be but some quaint, odd shape which the rocks had taken, by dint of the stress of winds and waves beating upon them for long ages. But a house it was, and made by human hands, and human beings dwelt in it. At night the red light from its windows streamed out upon the water, and in many a dark and tempestuous watch had Skipper Ben guided the "White Gull" into port through the friendly gleaming of this beacon. For a long period of years the old house had stood empty and tenantless, the windows and doors broken and gone, the wind sweeping through and the rain beating in, and everything but the stout walls and chimneys a ruin. The superstitious fishermen would not inhabit it, and told tales of smugglers and pirates who made it their haunt, with other fanciful stories which always seem to linger about the sea, and in which there was not the faintest shadow of truth. Desolate and neglected, it stood there year after year, till, one day, Skipper Ben brought down carpenters and masons on the "White Gull," and straightway they went at work upon the old house. Doors went up, windows went in, a piazza pushed itself out towards the sea-front, and there was great bustle and activity about it for weeks. Then the laborers went away, and when the skipper came again, he brought, instead of groceries and store-cloth, a great quantity of furniture, the like of which the poor people at Culm Rock had never seen, and with the furniture came the master of the new house--a sorrowful, bowed man--and his housekeeper, a thin, wrinkled negro woman.

Then the smoke curled out of the great stone chimneys once more, the light streamed from the windows at night, and the fishermen and sailors rejoiced that at last the old house had found a tenant and no longer yawned bare and empty. The "White Gull" came more than once with a cargo for the master of the stone house, who, the skipper told the Culm folk, "was a mighty rich man, but the down-heartedest chap he'd ever cast eyes on. Why, man, he just sot lookin' over the rail the best part o' the way down, with his eyes in the water, and said no more nor a stone. What ye think? Now lookee here, men, let me give ye a bit o' advice. Don't ye go to pesterin' him with yer talk and yer questions; fur he's diff'rent make 'an I be, an' 'twon't do. Let him alone, an' keep yer own side o' the Rock."

The skipper's word was looked upon with respect by all the fish-folk, and they heeded his advice. So, in consequence, the owner of the stone mansion was undisturbed, and lived in the greatest seclusion. He never came within the limits of the little village, and whenever he was seen, it was only as pacing slowly along the shore. He passed the fishermen as they were hanging up their seines in the sun without heeding them, or acknowledging their respectful bows. The old black housekeeper came down to the village sometimes after fish or gulls' eggs, but went her way without satisfying the eager questions with which the women plied her. So one year passed away, then a second, and the master of the stone house was still as much a mystery to the poor fishers as ever. He rarely walked upon the sand, gave them not a look if ever they chanced to meet, and living, apparently, for no one but himself, took not the slightest interest in their welfare, cared naught for wreck or disaster on the shore, and seemed always stern and sorrowful.

No company ever came down on the "White Gull" to visit this strange and silent man, and he had no friends, apparently. Skipper Ben brought stores for him occasionally, and sometimes a letter; but this last event was a rare one, and the man seemed to have little more communication with the great world out of which he had come than did the humble Culm fishermen. With winds and storms, the third year rolled around, and the master of the old house was still as much of a recluse as ever; but the Culm people had ceased to regard him with any interest, and the man led a most solitary life, hardly seeing a human being, other than his housekeeper, from month to month. Do you wonder what could make him so stern and sad? Here is his story:--

He wondered how he could have kept it veiled and hidden so long. He wondered if those three years h; 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" . St. Jerome holds the same opinion. But the Church of Rome says Christ gave Peter the keys . No doubt; and Peter admitted the Jews by the doors of the Church , and afterwards the Gentiles . He also gave him power to bind and loose, and bestowed exactly the same power on the other Apostles . 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" . 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,

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