AN UNSCRUPULOUS CORRESPONDENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 128, 15 October 1875, Page 10

AN UNSCRUPULOUS CORRESPONDENT.

? i *^f 7 Tim *£° { Tues( %> Polished a letter headed— 'Melbourne. From Our Own Correspondent." Iho writer of this is either a thoroughly ignorant man or he is a person whose word cannot be believed. Indeed he aftords evidence in his letter, to our contemporary, that' he is both the one and the other. First, he tells the Duuedin public through the 'Times' that "the Catholic clergy

maintain, with zeal their crusade against the Education Act," . . . that " the laity, if they were left alone, are quite content with the Act, and would wish nothing "better than to take advantage of the benefits it affords." These words, in reference to the laity, are notoriously untrue. The Catholic laity of Victoria have unanimously declared that they are discontented with the Education Act, and have given the most undoubted proofs ol their determination not to take advantage of the benefits it affords, by refusing universally to permit their children to attend Government Schools, and by establishing and maintaining •at very great expense, from their private resources, without any aid from the Government, and in the teeth of the scandalous opposition of the Government, schools of their own, notwithstanding the enormous plunder extorted from them by the Government for the purpose of maintaining in their midst a godless system of education. All this is notorious, and yet this correspondent of the ' Times' has the audacity to write that " the laity, if they were left alone, are quite content with the Act." Again, this writer says :—": — " A Roman Catholic paper, of violent and bigoted character, printed in this city, &c." He refers to the ' Advocate.' All who habitually read this paper know that this description is utterly untrue. The ' Advocate' is the very opposite of violent : its characteristic is mildness, and as a rule its attitude is that of mere ■defence. And a busy time it has of it, refuting the calumnies of the other Melbourne newspapers, and labouring to set them right on Catholic topics. As to bigotry, it is only a correspondent of the ' Daily Times' could accuse it of anything of the kind. The 'Advocate' never attacks any man's religion, never calumniates it, never misrepresents it, never tries to insult it, or its ministers, never falsely attributes odious motives, views, principles, or proceedings to opponents. But this is precisely what the other Melbourne newspapers and Melbourne correspondents usually do in. reference to Catholics. Thirdly, the correspondent of the ' Otago Daily Times' writes to his employers in New Zealand as follows : — "At the public meetings they have held, their clergy have not scrupled to talk about liberty of conscience and individual freedom, with the grossest forgetfulness of the known fact that these principles have been solemnly cursed by Pope Pius IX., find declared to be irreconcilable with the true faith." This is a monstrous Ho. Pius IX. has not cursed liberty of conscience and individual freedom, nor has ho declared them to be irreconcilable with the true faith. This calumny of the Melbourne correspondeut of the ' Otago Daily Times' has been denied and refuted a thousand times; and it cannot be supposed that any one deemed capable of writing for a daily newspap.-r. is ignorant of the fact. At ' this moment such ignorance is impossible. Every newspaper man has read all the literature of the recent controversy provoked by Mr. .Gladstone's Expostulation : and, surely, Dr. Newman's replies have been attentively studied by all. The ' Daily Times ' correspondent must, therefore, have i'cad the subjoined passage from this gifted writer in answer to Mr. Gladstone — viz. : " "When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to Him in thought and deed, of the creature ; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without thought of God at all. They do not even pretend to go by any moral rule, but they demand what they think is an Englishman's prerogative, to be his own. master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one's leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a word against his going to perdition, if he liked it, in his own way. Conscience has rights, because it has duties ; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a law-giver and a judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a license to take up any or no religion, to take up this and that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions, and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self will." And it is this counterfeit called, by some writers, "liberty of conscience," that ?ius IX. has condemned, not real liberty of conscience.