The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1929 A WISE BISHOP

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 842, 10 December 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1929 A WISE BISHOP

THERE is neither creed nor spiked barrier of prejudice when a great man passes by to “where all that mighty heart is lying still.” This is particularly true of the late Dr. Cleary whose death in the seventieth year of his ardent life and the forty-fifth of high ordained work arrests and holds the best sentiment of his community and country. “The world passeth away, and the desire of it; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” So it is now with the wise prelate who has gone from his sphere of memorable influence. Obedience to the Divine will was the whole duty of Auckland’s yevered Roman Catholic Bishop, and those outside his Church will be among the first to say with perfect sincerity that he never faltered in dutiful service. He gave all his strength to the devotional cause which was promoted and enriched by his fine intellect, vivid teaching, and purposeful enthusiasm. One of the most precious memories which the Rt. Rev. Dr. Henry W. Cleary has left as an inspirational example to all men is the record of his alert activity and intense spiritual purpose. As an eager servant and soldier of the Holy Spirit, he served and fought well because he was first and all the time master of himself. This was the secret of his distinctive success in commanding from the centre of his aims and activities the constant respect of observers around the wide circumference of the influences of his work. If a clear, unprejudiced vision of the merit of Dr. Cleary’s life work be sought, there will be revealed the paradoxical truth that he was single-minded in purpose because of his breadth of mind in principle. It was his outstanding gift to have the rare ability to show that true religion is consistent with everyday life. Though he practised a rigorous austerity as his own choice of the best manner of living, he was not of that stern, intolerant, religious class which denies easier life to other men with but little love of severe discipline. As to religion, however, there need be no speaking about rights and wrongs, or about differences and difficulties. It is the man at whom we all must look back and obtain for keeping as a memory a true estimate of his merit and valuable work. There was a rare, almost a twinkling geniality of temperament behind his philosophy which, often enough, but never too often, found expression in militant controversy. After all, Henry Cleary was a good Irishman, whose inherent love of an intellectual fight was as an anvil from which hard hitters, in the heat of battle, could raise flying sparks. But he was a fair fighter, though relentless in determination to gain a victory, if fairness gave him any opportunity at all to win it. And there never was any rust on his sword. Such wounds as he inflicted upon combatants did not fester. Moreover, friendliness after triumph or defeat made for a quick healing. “Yes,” he would say, in recalling with a quiet chuckle of delight some clash with an adversary in the days when his own tongue was supple as a whip, and his pen more penetrating than a rapier’s point, “we are old enemies—and old friends.” Now that “the bloom of eternity” is upon a familiar face, people of all creeds will render homage to Dr. Cleary’s memory as a sincere expression of that noble sentiment which has been described so well long years ago as “the last kindness to death.” The people of this City and province will remember him best and almost wholly for his arduous work as the Bishop of Auckland. Beyond the boundaries of his See, however, tens of thousands of New Zealanders who take nothing more than an observant interest in the Roman Catholic Church, will revere his memory because of its association with his splendid work in a wider field of service as an indomitable fighter, not in a provocative sense at all, but as a crusader for the highest interests of his felloe-men. As a journalist with ability to think in several languages and to write in the purest English, he had no rivals in this country. Those outside the pale of the Roman Catholic Church may qualify the value of his illuminating journalism by contending that it was practised primarily for his own people, but any qualification like that would be merely churlish prejudice and unnecessary discord. His wisdom as a writer, and his wide knowledge of books and men were such as to stimulate readers who never had crossed and never will cross the threshold of his House of God. The beauty of wisdom is beautiful in all doctrines and, as already said, there is no creed when greatness compels appreciation and intellectual affection. Good Catholics will have their own memories of a beloved leader, and they may he permitted in deep sorrow to express their great loss. Others, just as earnest in their beliefs and equally sincere in their regrets will recall him as “a happy, beaming old man at his work ' there” earning the tranquil reward that abideth for ever.