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New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 287, 1 November 1878, Page 9

Very Rev. Father Sokix, Superior-General of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, who has lately returned from an eight, month's sojourn in Rome and France attending to the affairs of his Congregation, gives a very bad report of tlio Paris Exposition, which he had occasion to visit. He states that some of the art worts exhibited there are so shockingly indecent that no Christian can visit the Exposition without indignation. Contrary to cujlom, these obscene works are not confined to a special quarter, or to the galleries of art, but are interspersed throughout the Exposition buildings, so that tliey cannot be avoided. So glaringly indelicate are they that he forbade tbe members of his Order in Paris to visit the Expo-ition. and shortly afterwards a mandate from the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris laid a similar injunction upon the clergy of the diocese at large. When, common decency is outraged in such a manner as at the Paris Exposition every up-right person should cry down the infamy ; it is, in fact, their privilege, their duty to do so, as they are as free to condemn what is worthy of censure as to praise what is meritorious. In other matters there may be a via media, but where Christian modesty is concerned there is none, and it is one's duty to avoid whatever has a tendency to sully purity of mind or heart, without regard for what the world may say Eiicharivs, the official organ of the diocese of Troves, in Germany, proposes the following as a remedy for Communism, which is now widely spreading in Germany. It may apply equally well to other countries. The remedy comes in the shape of a legislative enactment as follows : To all priests, duly commissioned by their lawful Bishops as also to the Jesuits and all kindred congregations, the freest and most untrammelled exercise of their sacred functions is to be granted within the limits of the German Empire. Popular missions shall he given in all the parishes of the Empire, irrespective of religious belief, within the next three years. All " Tingel Tangels" (indecent variety shows, accompanied with obscene songs) are to be closed at once by the police. The authors and publishers of obscene pictures books and pamphlets should be punished with imprisonment of not less than five years' duration. Any newspaper publishing advertisements tending to propagate immorality is to be suppressed at once. Who dares to preach open unbelief in public meetings, to blaspheme the name of God and to scoff at Christianity, shall be liable to imprisonment for two years. The following ladies, members of French Sisterhoods, have been nominated members of a French Order of Knighthood : — Mile. Dussoulliet, called in religion Sister St. Helena, Superioress of the Hospital of Jouarre. Mile. Chagny, in {religion Sister Barbara Superioress of the Hospital de la Grave, Toulouse. Mine. Massin, in religion Sister Jane Clara, Superioress of the Daughters of Charity, Compiegne. Sister Pen-in, whose heroic devotion to the victims of the great floods at Toulouse in 1875 is well remembered. Mme. Lefevre, in religion Sister Onesime, Superioress of the Sisters of St. Joseph dc Cluny at La Martinignc.