THE PROTESTANT PRESS AND FATHER HENNEBERY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 262, 10 May 1878, Page 5

THE PROTESTANT PRESS AND FATHER HENNEBERY.

The leading journal of Auckland, the Herald cannot have raised itself much in the estimation of impartial Protestants by the part it took in circulating the slanderous misstatements against Father Heunebery. I cannot but think that Bishop Moran would have done well if he had taken no notice, of the HerakVs paragraphs. To notice such slanders is a sort of humiliation.

Every Catholic worthy of the name, knows what the Church teaches on the subject of marriages. Every Protestant who marries, or intends to mavry, aEoman Catholic knows, ov may know that too. He does not require to go to the columns of a Protestant newspaper for instruction on that point. No Catholic would for a moment believe that any regularly ordained Catholic priest, exercising his functions with the approval of the bishop of the diocese, would utter such impious nonsense as the Herald and others reported to have been spoken by Father" Hennebery. A certain personage they say can quote Scripture in a certain way and for his owu purposes. On the same principle Protestant newspaper reporters and editors, and others, can quote the words of a Catholic priest to serve their own ends. We have seen many adepts at this sort'of thing. Surely the subject of mixed marriages is sufficiently delicate and often embarrasing without adding to the unpleasantness by such a line of policy as the Herald and his coadjutors have adopted. The Herald can have little respect for the feelings of that numerous class of Protestants and Catholics who have contracted a mixed marriage. He and others have tried to damage the Catholic Church or Patter Hennehery at their expense. The evil has been done. No explanation or denial of Father Hennebery can meet it altogether. It will still be widely believed by the Protestant public that all which the Herald has reported to the prejudice of Father Hennebery is Gospel truth. A mixed marriage may be a blessing to the parties on religious grounds, or it may be very much the reverse. The Church warns us that to the Catholic party it is always dangerous, On some occasions it may be impossible to avoid the danger, The Herald and his coadjutors may be overshooting the mark by these slanders against a distinguished Catholic missionary. ■ It has happened in America, and it may happen here, that Protestants of good will have been induced by slanders like these to enquire into the tenets of the Catholic Church. The result has been that they have at last entered into her communion. I could quote the particulars of one remarkable instance of this. I say then to the Herald and others in his live, Goon, gentlemen, multiply your slanders and season them more strongly still to gratify the morbid taste of certain of your Protestant readers. You are thereby likely to do the Church a great good which you are, I am sure, far from intending to do her.

Lord Beaconsfield tells us that so late as 40 years ago when he entered Parliament, the ignorance which pervaded the'public mind in regard to the political history of England was something incredible. We may well say that the ignorance which pervades the public mind at this hour on the real tenets of the Catholic Church is more than astonishing.

Men like the editors of our Protestant newspapers, who set up to be "Leaders of the people" should surely know what these tenets are. They have a most intimate relation to every political and social question. I would have the editor of every Protestant newspaper to make himself fully acquainted withe the tenets of the Catholic Church ere he undertake his office as instructor and leader of the people. The public would also gain if he went through a course of moral philosophy and Christian ethics. Most of them, do not seem to have the most remote idea that they are under any obligation to do as they would be done by. If that were an article of their creed we should not see them acting to us as they now do. Indeed the Protestant ministers are no better in that way. J. Wood.