BALLINA CHRONICLE Ballina, Mayo, Ireland Wednesday, March 27, 1850 PRIESTLY INTOLERANCE Father O'Neill of fighting notoriety is once more before the public in another though no less creditable phase of character. His holy oil, more harmless than his "skull-cracker," has lately been in requisition to secure a safe transit form this world for a poor deluded heretic. The reverend minister, however, is not an exception among his brethren. The desire to gain converts is deeply and universally inculcated in the Romish church. The edict has gone forth. By every means and at every point those who have protested against the errors of that church must be assailed; every advantage must be taken and exulted over as a victory achieved. An end is to be accomplished and that end justifies the means and the means are regulated by the circumstances of the times and the country. Nothing is deemed too trifling to gain and therefore we find the priest hastening whenever he can to the unconscious dying Protestant to perform an useless and unscriptural rite, that he may glory over what he considers to be a successful thrust at the Protestant cause. Frequently have instances come before our notice of emissaries from Rome obtaining access through a servant or other friendly person to the bed side of a Protestant in a dying state unconscious of what was going on, and there use the "holy oil" and then claim the dead as a true convert to the Roman Catholic faith; but never have we heard of a more barefaced and unchristian transaction than that recorded by a correspondent of the Sligo Guardian which we here give as an additional instance of Priestly intolerance and as a cautionary example:- A Police Constable named Greer, a native of Antrim, and a Protestant, was attacked by paralysis during the assizes and placed under Dr. Homan's care, until the night of the 18th inst. when a sudden fit of convulsions deprived him of life. The Rev. Samuel Shone, curate of this parish accompanied the police to the cemetery, and when about performing the burial service, was strangely interrupted by the celebrated fighting priest O'Neill, who followed by a large assemblage of pickpockets and low ruffians, insisted on his right of burying the constable, because, forsooth, on the evening of his death, when inward agony had deprived him of all consciousness, he gave him some holy oil! as a passport to another world, at the instigation of some country girl to whom the deceased had been clandestinely married some time previous. The scene that followed baffles all description. The police officer was asked by the priest with that calm dignity and angelic expression of countenance peculiar to the son of the church, "would he dare to stop him," and the motley group shouted out a savage negative-stones were flung, and a constable had to be sent for Capt. Whelan. During the interim the light-fingered gentry had a rich harvest from the pockets of the few respectable persons present, and the search for handkerchiefs, shouts of "O'Neill for ever," "save the poor peeler from the devil," only equalled the similar scenes now and then enacted in Dingle. While the presiding genius of the affray, "grinned horribly a ghastly smile," as he awaited the decision of the authorities. I cannot tell how it occurred, but brute force was triumphant - a Northern Protestant was consigned to a popish grave, without a single relative near him, and the feeling of his comrades may be learned from the words of one to whom I spoke on the matter. - "Poor Greer, when I was in church with him at the assizes I little thought a priest would bury him." - Further comment is useless. Cathy Joynt Labath Ireland Old News http://www.IrelandOldNews.com/