Ireland piecemeal and in detail, by enactment of Parliament, as large an independence as was possessed by the self-governing Dominions, without the formal and definite renunciation of the right of Parliament to decide the extent to which Ireland should be independent. This of course left the question of principle precisely where it was. But on the question of principle Sinn Fein was adamant, and Nationalist Ireland supported Sinn Fein by an overwhelming majority. The relationship between Sinn Fein and the Hierarchy was more enigmatic and gave rise to much speculation. One view was that Sinn Fein had 'captured' the Hierarchy, another was that the Hierarchy had 'captured' Sinn Fein. Neither view was, of course, correct. Individual bishops may have sympathized (individual priests certainly sympathized in large numbers) with Sinn Fein: but it is certain that quite a large number of priests and bishops did not. While it is true that resistance to Conscription could not logically be justified except upon the principles of Sinn Fein, bishops had the same right to be illogical as members of the Parliamentary Party. Under the stress of the moment, in the desire to save their flocks from the danger that threatened them, they had joined forces with a party which before that they had not approved of and which they were not bound to approve of afterwards. Sinn Fein, at any rate, was under no illusion as to the feelings of some of the Bishops. The curate of Crossna, Father O'Flanagan, had taken a very active part on the side of Sinn Fein in the East Cavan election. Shortly afterwards he was deprived by his bishop, the Most Rev. Dr. Coyne, of all his faculties as a priest, including the right to say Mass. The technical offence for which he was punished in this way was that of having addressed meetings within the boundaries of three parishes in Cavan without first obtaining the permission of the local parish priests. Everybody knew that the real reason for his punishment was not the technical offence but the fact that his speeches had been strongly (and even violently) Sinn Fein. The people of Crossna retorted by shutting up the parish church and refusing to allow Mass to be said in it by anyone else. _Nationality_, in reporting the facts, said of Father O'Flanagan: "He has been condemned to the most harsh judgment that can be meted out to a priest by his bishop and until that wrong has been set right Sinn Fein will stand by Father O'Flanagan"; and practically every Sinn Feiner in Ireland agreed with these words. When bishops seemed (as many of them did) to go out of their way to criticise in pastorals and public letters the policy or the tactics of Sinn Fein, their action was resented and openly, even stringently, criticised in the Sinn Fein papers: but all this was done not only without any trace of anti-clericalism (in the proper sense of the word) but with what sometimes seemed an almost exaggerated deference to the office and sacred functions