DR. BAKEWELL AND ROMAN CATHOLIC LOYALTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11582, 21 February 1901, Page 3

DR. BAKEWELL AND ROMAN CATHOLIC LOYALTY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Having read Dr. Bakewell's letter in your issue of Saturday last, I wish, with your kind permission, to offer a few obser- | rations thereon. The doctor takes to task a certain correspondent who signs himself | "Justitia" for quoting the text of the I British Sovereign's Coronation oath, and he , boldly denies that either Queen Victoria or | any other British Sovereign later than G-edtge 111. took the alleged oath. It is I quite unnecessary now to refute the doctor's ! sweeping denial, since, by a curious and j timely coincidence, the same issue of your ' newspaper which contained the doctor's letj ter published also the latest cable news from I Home announcing that His Majesty I King Edward VII. 1 had jus*- taken I that same disgraceful oath in which j 10 or 11 millions of bis _ Christian Catholic subjects are stigmatised as | superstitious and idolatrous. I wonder will the doctor still maintain that Queen Vic- { toria never took the barbarous oath in quesj tion. In plain, solemn, serious truth it is no trifling matter for us Roman Catholics to find ourselves singled out from the 400 millions of His Majesty's subjects as the only people amongst the big family of nations ) who bow to the British Crown —the only people upon whom it is deemed expedient to heap mendacious insolence, and that too on such a solemn and memorable occasion as that of the King's accession to his throne. Seeing that the same iniquity was perpetrated at the accession of the late Queen, is it any wonder that Catholics felt that the severest possible strain had been put upon their loyalty ? Yet by a miracle, worked through the Catholic faith, the Catholics have been conspicuously loyal in spite of the damning insolence of _ the ! Crown. Catholics have been at all times drilled up in loyalty by their clergy, more especially in unfortunate Ireland, where there has not been for many generations any other incentive to loyalty, but the sheer force of the Carbolic religion; while there have been always countless temptations to disloyalty, not the least of which has been the atrocious oath referred to. I suppose after the scandal of this oath lias had time to evaporate in some degree, the Catholic clergy will go on again, as they have hitherto done, preaching to their people the doctrine of St. Paul to the Romans on the question of loyalty. Let me assure you that it was such teaching as this that compelled the loyalty of Catholic Ireland on many a trying occasion. Yet see how in the beginning of the 20th century the Catholic clergy and people, and their faith, which is much dearer to them than life itself, are treated by the Crown, for which they have fought and bled and died for centuries. I repeat it: Tho loyalty of the Catholic Irish is a miracle operated by their Catholic faith, and if they are not utter rebels it is no fault of the _ Crown. Perhaps some time a day of retribution may come, when the long-standing accounts may be balanced; but that i? in the hands of a just God. According to Dr. Bakewell, our new King rules over 400.000,000 of subjects, of whom a,bout 70,000,000 are Protestants, 10,000,000 Roman Catholics, and the other 320,000,000 are presumably Mohammedans, Buddhists, paga-is, idolaters, and other nondescript psychological curiosities. Now the doctor, with a logic quite unworthy of his high education, argues from the preponderance of Protestants over Catholics that the Protestant majority have a perfect right to insist upon tho King being a Protestant, and that, too, because of an unreasonable fear of Catholicity which ho alleges to exist in the minds of non-Catholics. To put it briefly, we are told the Protestants are justified in forcing the King's conscience, and compelling _ him to be a Protestant, whether he likes it or not, simply because the Protestants are in the majority, and they have, in times gone by, put themselves to a great deal of trouble and expense in obtaining power to enslave the King's soul, and to make him barter his liberty of conscience for the luxury of w ®. ar " ing a croWn. As to the argument founded upon the Protestant majority, it yanis ws into thin air when we remember that _F e Protestants are in reality only a very rig minority of the King's subjects—being _ y 70,000,000, as against 330,000,000 of non-Pro-testants. Sir, if the King's rehg.on must be that of the majority. I ear " £ can be neither Protestant Cathol c nor Christian of any our, but just a iVlutiam me dan or a Buddhist, or an idolater, or a pagan of some sort, for these sorts of people constitute the vast majority of his subjects. Again, if the Protestants of former times

have gone to a groat deal of expense and trouble in doing a manifest wrong by forcing the King's conscience and degrading their monarch into the condition of a gor-geously-robed puppet, instead of a king who could call his soul his own, are the enlightened Protestant Christians of the present day justified in perpetuating the enslavoment and degradation of tie King's person, because their less-enlightened, but more bigoted, forefathers have set them the evil example. _ The doctor tells us quite coolly that " King Edward is the safeguard of the religious freedom of 390.000,000 out of the 400,000,000, not one of whom would feel safe under a Roman Catholic monarch." Well, sir, for strong-nerved, audacious impudence, this beats anything I have seen in print for years. The statement is so absurd and go libellous against the majority of the 390,000,000 that it is hardly worthy of a won! of refutation. In the first place, I should be far from libelling the 70 millions of Protestants, by branding them all with such fierce bigotry as to say that not one of them would feel safe under a Roman Catholic monarch. Is it not pausing strange, too, that while there are many millions of real, actual, and openly professed idolaters in the British Empire, yet none of these are referred to as idolaters in the King's oath; while the Catholics, who are at least as far removed from idolatry as the Protestants themselves, are the onlv people among the 400.000.000 who are marked out for" that most opprobrious and mendacious designation? Being merely a neophyte. Dr. Bakewell should not assume the solf-apnointed role of teacher to those who are divinely appointed to teach him and all others within the Church's pale. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Catholic religion should suffice to inform him of the plainest of all plain facts in connection with our religion, namely, that the magisterium. or teaching authority of the Church comes from the head downwards to the members, not from the members upward, as is the case generally in Protestantism. We Catholics receive the teachings of Jesus Christ, through His vicar, the Roman Pontiff, and the bishops and others appointed by him to instruct us; but we pay no heed to selfappointed teachers, who go straight against the Divine order always maintained in the Church, by presuming to teach the divinelyappointed teacher. This is what Dr. Bakewell has lately presumed to do. He flaunts his contempt for Catholic discipline in the public prints with a view, no doubt, of inflicting some pain upon the Catholic bishop * and people of Auckland—pain arising from the supposed fear of losing a "distinguished convert."

Well, sir, lie lias ma do a hi mistake. Catholics so seldom receive any favours from men of the doctor's kind that they have reason to lie grateful, oven for small moreies, and the doctor may rest assured that the . Catholics enjoyed a genuine relief iii being rid of him even for the one day on which he went to St. Matthew's.— am, etc., An Irish Blackthorn. [We have had to curtail the letter of out correspondent considerably.—