RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 839, 30 March 1888, Page 7

RELIGIOUS.

A ROMAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY FOR WASHINGTON.

A large number of Roman Catholic prelates of the United States met at Baltimore, Cardinal Gibbons presiding, and decided to locate the proposed new Catholic University of America at Wasnington. Various plans were discussed, and it was found that 8,000,000 dols. would be necessary to build the University, and provide it with proper endowments, A sum of 700,000 dols. has already been obtained. The theological department will bo first opened, under the charge of the Order of St. Sulpice. Work began last autumn. Bishop Keene was elected the first rector.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA.

Tho Roman Catholics of the north-west appear to be making a carefully planned ■war upon the public school system, and they are meeting with enough success in isolated cases to arouse general interest in the question. In one district of the town of Barton, Wis., the Catholics rallied in force at the annual meeting last year, and carried a resolution that no public school should bo maintained during the year, and none was held. This year the contest was renewed, but the Catholics took advantage of the new law giving women the right to vote at school elections to bring out all their women, and carried the same resolution again. At Melrose, Minn., the Catholic priests engineered a movement to shorten the school 'year of the public schools in order to compel children to at. tend a parochial school. Throughout Stearns County, Minn., the Roman catechism is said to be taught openly in the public schools, and either the opening or the closing hours of the session are devoted to religious instructions given by the priest, all this being in direct violation of the State Constitution, and especially of an amendment adopted in 1877 to meet this very condition. Most of this work has been done so quietly as not to attraot wide attention, but the gyjdencee of a detejrjnined assault upon the

public school system are now so clear that its friends are becoming aroused to tho necessity of action.—New York Nation.

One of the most successful missionaries in Oroomlah is a blind Armenian from Harpool, Turkey. He knows the Bible thoroughly, and riding ou a miserable little donkey, which is led by a one-eyed deaf man, he goes boldly from village, to village preaohing the Gospel. His blindness protects him, and tho people crowd to soo the wonder—a bliud man roading.

A religious custom is annually practised in portions of the Eoclesiastioal Province of Quebec. During octavo succeeding All-Souls’ day the farmers offer a certain portion of the produce of their farai3 at auction at the door of the parish church, and the proceeds are devoted to tho celebration of masses for the souls in Purgatory.

The Bishops of Lichfield and Salisbury have been holding conferences with Bishops Reinkers, of Germany, and Hertzog, of Switzerland, and other old Catholics, and it is said that the results are such * an agreement of views touching the constitution and creeds of their respective churches, as to render it probable that there may soon bo intercommunion between old Catholics and Anglicans.’