SHYLOCK'S POLICY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 149, 10 March 1876, Page 10

SHYLOCK'S POLICY.

'■ I'll not be made a soft and dull-ey'd fool To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and jield To Chiistian intercej>sors."

Shylock would have his pound of flesh ; and there are some at the present d iy who are trying, after their manner, to carry out a like policy with him. They are bent upon the destruction of the Catholic Church : they are determined that she shall give up to them that, which, they believe, she cannot surrender and live. They would stifle her out cf-hand if they dared, but as they are not, as yet at least, prepared for a violent onslaught, with the consequences, known and unknown, which it would entail, thoy have hit upon a plan by which, they think, their object may be accomplished without confusion, or the alarm which an open attack would occasion, it may be even amongst the less hardened of their own partisans. Do we not know them ? and being ' forewarned ' are we not ' forearmed 'as well ? Be the pretence what it may, the object is certain, it is the total destruction of the Catholic Church. We have but too good grounds to fear that this hope lurks even in the minds of many, who are not openly known as our determined enemies. The late Archbishop Whately was not looked upon by any means as one of the most violent of the opponents of the Church : l>y many members of the communion over which he presided, he was considered to be far too liberal in his opinions. He was rough and out-spoken in his manner, and would have been one of the last men in the world whom any one could have supposed capable of deceit. Yet it has transpired since his death, that his chief object in supporting the national system of education in Ireland lay in his belief, that through it a deadly blow would be aimed at the faith of the Irish people ; and he even stooped to dissimulation, wh'ch must have been contrary to all the instincts of his nature, iv order the more fully to accomplish this end. What, then, have we to expect from those who now advocate secular education and, negatively sit least, endeavor to impose it upon Catholics ? They are Shy locks seeking the life of the Church, and hoping that their object will surely be obtained, if they can tear away her members from her. Their plau is laid with the deepest cunning ; it may be that they will prohibit iv their schools the inculcation of the grosser calumnies, which have been, from time to time, invented and promulgated to the prejudice of the Catholic faith ; but they will subject the susceptible minds of children to the influence of teaching wLich is brimming over with an anti-Catholic spirit ; and the covert sneer, the sly inuendo, or the pretence of ignoring the subject, as if it were beneath contempt, may,

perhaps, be looked upon as even more dapgerous in tendency, than loud condemnation which might provoke resistance and awaken inquiry. They well know that "as the twig is bent the trfe will grow," and their whole system is admirably chosen to incline the minds of the children educated in it towards a course which will lead them away from the Church and from God. The Shylocks of to-day are mistaken. They cannot destroy the Church : she is no mere mortal to perish by the loss of here and there a member ; but woe to that which is cut off from her, and woe to those who, through apathy or interest, fall in with the designs of her enemies, and surrender their children to a training that will separate them from her, , and rob them of their most preciou ', heritage — the Catholic faith.