Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 375, 25 June 1880, Page 1

Current Topics

AI HOME AND ABROAD.

' A CHECK TO THE "PROTESTANT tradition."

Thk* £is nothing into which the great " Protestant tradi 'ai" has entered more intimately than au explanation of the condition of Ireland. The Protestant world, religious and irreligious, Christian and Infidel in every degree, for we may class Christian and Deist alike under the common heading " Protestant," since both alike join m their continual and uproarious protest against the Church, are loud and constant in their claim that the misfortunes of Ireland are all due to the Catholicism of her people. Catholicism accounts for all ; to it is due the execrable government of a Protestant power that has done nothing, and suffered nothing to be done, to provide against the recurrence of bad seasons, such as an uncertain climate alway has caused and will cause ; that has on the contrary ruthlessly hindered by the strong hand every branch of industry undertaken by the people for their benefit, and forced them to live by agriculture only ; that has visited them with centuries of crushing penal laws, under which, had they not been supported by a nature exceptionally fine, every manly aspiration, every honest and independent thought, must have been extinguished amongst them for ever ; that compelled them to be ignorant ; that, when it had relaxed its iron grasp a little, and boasted its magnanimity in setting them free) still left them given over to the power of an alien class, which looks upon them only as the means of providing it with revenue to be spent for the most part out of their country, and does not scruple at any rigour, or relent at any cruelty in its usage of them. That the people of Ireland exist at all to-day, that they dare lift up their heads and proclaim themselves men, we hold to be a mark of most excellent manhood, of an energy seldom to be found in the history of the world, and we ascribe their existence as an additional glory to the Catholic Church, that has enabled them to support their terrible tiial of ages, and still to feel within them the spring of youth, the capability of & noble national life. — Yes 1 and to resolve that they will enter upon it at last, or perish in the attempt. Nevertheless the great " Protestant tradition " will have it that they have been debased by their Catholicism. But. if there is one thing which we may count as an advantage with respect to the present state of Ireland, it is the fact that it has done much to render the employment of the great " Protestant tradition " for the use to which we especially allude more difficult. Unprejudiced men have gone there from other countries this year ,* have examined into affairs for themselves, and have given a result of their inquiries entirely favourable to the Catholic people. They have discovered what they have endured, and seen what they have still to contend with, and, in consequence, they have readily bestowed their sympathy, and in some instances their admiration upon them. When it deals with Ireland now, therefore, the great " Protestant tradition " will have &iich testimony to encounter. It cannot here any longer lie calmly over the heads of indignant and astonished Catholics — Catholics clearly refuting all its arguments, and proving all its assertions false. It must lie right in the teeth of honest, independent Protestants also, and although, we doubt not, it is impudent and audacious enough to undertake, even this, it will lose its credit thereby and eventually become weakened. Take for example the evidence given by Mr. James Eedpath, the correspondent sent by the New York Tribune to Ireland, and judge whether we are not justified in our opinions. The gentleman in question is by birth a Scotchman and by education a Presbyterian, but, nevertheless, he contradicts the tradition of his creed and speaks with all the native candour and good feeling of his country uncorrupted by a false belief or no belief. He says, " I was brought up to believe in Scotland and England when I was a boy, at the time of the famine of '48, that the Irish were poor because they were lazy and Catholics. But I got rid of that notion in America, ' How is it,' I asked the Orangeman, ' that you fellows with your different race and different religion dont get along any better, man for man, in America than the Irish Catholics as soon as both of you have a fair field and no favours ?

I have seen the Irish in almost every State of the Union, and I have noticed that it is not the Irish Protestant or the Irish Catholic that succeeds, it is the man with the best education and most industry — it is not a question of belief at all. When I saw that I had to believo that the old theory I bad been taught was faulty somehow.' The man asked me what I attributed the difference to 1 I told him land tenwe : in Ulster they had tenant-right, and in the Catholic provinces of the West the tenants had had no rights that the landlords felt bound to respect..' So much, then, for the superiority of the Protestant North, a matter, so far as it exists, entirely the result of special consideration bestowed upon a Protestant people. Mr. Bedpathi further on, continues as follows, *' The two traits that are not pleasant in the eyes of Americans in the character of the Irish in America are their clannishness and their entire willingness to make a row. But one sees here that but for these traits the Irish race would have been crushed generations ago. It is not political tyranny only that they have been obliged to endure, and the insulting domination of an alien creed, but the despotism of the lords of the soil — the most merciless, the most arbitrary, the most degrading system of irresponsible rule that exists in any country professing to be free. Every landlord is a local Plantagenet, without the fear of the nobility that softened the rigour of the royal rule in pre-Cromwelliau times ; for the landlord is the noble, and the Crown supports his exactions. If the Irish Catholics had not been quarrelsome and clannish — if they had not always been ready with a knock-down blow and had not hung together, they would have been all knocked down or hanged separately." This is the temporal view of the matter, but there is a spiritual vi«w also, and a higher one than this, to be taken of it. Their religion was the true bond of union amongst the Catholic Irish, and that from which they derived their great power of endurance, and ths hope that cheered their days of deepest gloom. ' Their active resistance was, and could be, of slight' account, their passive resistance was heroic, and they owed it to the Church.

THAT " TBADITION " AGAIN. '

Apropos of the "Protestant Tradition," also, we find the following passage in a volume of criticism which we have just -onie across. " Energy, devotion to the fact,' 'self-government, tolerance, a disbelief in minute apparatus for the improvement of human character, au indifference to extarnals in comparison with that which is of the invisible life, and a resolution to judge all things from a purely human standpoint, these grow upon us as habits of thought and feeling, as long as Shakspere remains an influence with us in the building tip of character. Such habits of thought and feeling are those which belong more especially to the Protestant ideal of manhood." Most of this plainly springs from the " Protestant Tradition." Where iv the history of the world has our critic learned that energy is no part of the Catholic standard of manhood ? It was Catholic energy that conquered the primal empire of Paganism ; it was Catholic energy that subdued encroaching barbarism. Catholic energy cleared Europe of its wildernesses and dense forests, and covered it with cities. It gave the crown of England to William the Conqueror. It conquered at Crecy and Poictiers, and at Agincourt, of which England boasts to the present day. It nerved the arms of Wallace and Bruce to drive the English out of Scotland. In France it reached the culmination of sublime energy in Joan of Arc. What it accomplished in St. Dominic let the destruction of revived Manicheeism remind us. The remotest countries of the earth, no less than the most civilized, inform us of how great it was in, St. Ignatius. In the Crusades it checked the growth of the Mohammedan power ; broke it at Lepanto, and finally saved Europe from it under the walls of Vienn.a. It recovered Spain from the dominion of the Moors ; it discovered America ; it first dared the perils of thi voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, and made the circuit of the earth by sea. Catholic energy has accomplished all this and much more than this : it is a foolish claim to claim energy as distinctively Protestant. " Devotion to the fact " is the next characteristic on the list, but f( devotion to the fact " is proved by the successful fruits of energy ; it must have contributed its due share to all the deeds we have recorded. Then comes "self-government," and " self-government " also, as a rule, accompanies those who accomplish great things, and more especially those who lead others to their accomplishment

Then "tolerance," but if by tolerance be meant indifference to the spread of error, we acknowledge it is not Catholic ; of the broad spirit of toleration that is Catholic, however, we gave an example last week in our quotations from a writer who was treating of Dante. The next clause we find is this : " A disbelief in minute apparatus for the improvement of human character ;" but, is not man, alas 1 the " infinitely little ?" "An indifference to externals in comparison with that which is of the invisible life." Here we have indeed the "Protestant Tradition" in all its nakedness. There is no such indifference in Catholicism ; the contrary is the veritable fact. Where is this indifference seen in us, in our ceremonies ? — Only by those who grossly misunderstand them. In our religious Orders ? — By the blind alone. In our lives?— That may well be, as to most of us, whose lives are so imperfect and full of faults, so complete a veil of the doctrines we are taught, believe, and profess to follow. " A resolution to judge all things from a purely human standpoint." This is a vain anal foolish resolution, and we willingly decline to claim it. But is there not some slight confusion in the mind of this writer ? How can they who are indifferent to externals, and attentive only to the invisible life, consistently consent, nevertheless, to judge all things from a " purely human standpoint ?" If, then, as this critic implies, we are to judge of Shakspere's religion by the character his writings tend to form, and our critic's decision be just, we should say, what otherwise most probably seems true, that Shakspere was in belief partly Catholic, partly Protestant. Catholic by attraction to the beauty of the grand old creed his unfortunate country had just forsaken, and by the greatness of his mind ; Protestant by the crippling influences of the faithless times, and the fetters of Elizabeth's tyranny.

SUMMOKING THE BLOODHOUNDS,

The second step of preparation for the approaching drama of persecution in France has been announced to us. The news comes by cable and informs us that the President of the Council of Ministers has proposed a plenary amnesty to the Communist prisoners. The initial scenes of the tragedy we have for some time expected have been brought upon that blood-stained stage Paris, then, the first has been gone through with, the second is now in course of action, and, no doubt, the whole terrific play will follow on with the rapid motion so much admired in great dramas, and with horror enough in its events to surfeit the most blood-thirsty spectators. On the 29th of March the official journal announced the intention of government to proceed to extremities against the unrecognised orders. That was the first scene, and it contained a good deal that was startling too, were it only that by it a direct insult was offered to the senate that had deliberately rejected the notable "seventh clause." They have struck their blow, says the Unirers, the Republic is about to apply, under the pretence that they are laws existing, the ukases issued by La Pompadour, by the Convention, and by Cassarism. Let us note the union marked by this newspaper. Infamy, murder and tyranny, these it is that have joined hands under the reigu of this enlightened, this freedomgiving Republic, the glass of Freethought, of " science," of all that boasts itself progressive and excessively noble. These ukases referred to have been availed of, then, for the expulsion of the Jesuits and the other unauthorised religious associations. The time of the secular clergy has not yet arrived. M. Grevy, continues the Univers, for the appointment of that, wilrprobably await the Ministry of M. Cl6menc'.'au or M. Blanqui. — But let us have uo doubt whatever the time is approaching for this, if, indeed, these gentlemen do not assume some higher office than that of the mere Ministry. Dictatorship of the cleaver is more to their taste, and it certainly will be in their power before long to enter upon its enjoyment. The Univers goes on to say :"It is not for the first time the Jesuits have been arbitrarily smitten, under pretence of right, lawfulness, or of political or even religious interests, "bat no such measure has ever borne so much the stamp of duplicity* Their accusers, especially Messrs de Freycinet and Lepere, have not hidden from themselves the wickedness of their decree. They know and acknowledge in the bottom of their hearts that they are striking excellent professors devoted to the service of youth and to their country, good men in the highest sense of the word and holy priests. And they know that what they are doing ia not, as they impudently affirm, in answer to the national feeling, but to satisfy traders on tho popular folly, fanatic imbecile", and all the revolutionary tag-rag." The Ministers, however, are but contemptible slaves If they give up men they cannot fail to honour, continues the journalist from whom we quote, it is because they dare not refuse lest they should fall from power. They dub as ' Power,' the slavery which obliges them to execute the commands and pander to the hatred of a Gambetta, a Barodet, a Bonnet-Duverdier, of the electors of Messrs. Horelacque, Humbert, and Blanqui ! It is pretended in excuse by some of their friends, he tells us, that they are acting under necessity to hinder a worse evil. Put this is not even an illusion ; it is a lie. They understand very well that they are paving the way for other persecutions. They are taking the first step, those who are urging them on wUll proceed further on the path they have made smooth

for them. They have warned Catholics that the Eepublic is their enemy and their warning is accepted. " But the Eeligious Orders will not tamely submit to this injustice. The Univers on their part promises a vigorous resistance to the Government : "It knows, he says the sentiments of the bishops, and cannot deceive itself as to those c{ the secular clergy ; it will soon know, since it is simple enough to doubt on the subject, that no religious congregation, in order to obtain its provisional protection, will renounce the guarantees that every French citizen, religious or not, holds from the law." Is it as an additional precaution against the making good of their rights by the Orders in question that the communists are without exception 'to be released ? But let these return and renew their youth in the approaching carnage ; it will recompense their sufferings borne in the cause of patriotism and Freefchought.

SHADOWS CAS' BEFOBE.

The lions of the Revolution, moreover, hare already been preceeded by its jackals. Freethought, has not alone been busy in France, free speech, and free action have as usual, accompanied it, and in consequence, as usual also, we find several outrages offered to religion reported. At Nerac a procession formed of fathers and mothers with their children, held during a Lenten mission given there, was mobbed by a band of infuriated people who howled the Marseillaise. At Tours a venerable priest walking by daylight in the street is knocked down by a young ruffian wearing a red cap who threatens and swears at him because he is a priest. During a sermon in the Church of Saint-Gervais near Paris a mob of Communists outside hoot and shout to disturb the congregation, and when the preacher, accompanied by the parish priest and two gentlemen of the place comes out, attack him and them, and are only beaten off with difficulty by some of the Catholic people. In Paris the boys of a lay-school assault the vehicle sent by a certain convent of nuns to convey to school their little girls, and smash its windows in with stones, induced to do so by some one whom they refuse to name. A priest travelling by rail from Paris to Bordeaux is insulted grievously by five soldiers who rage at him for the whole journey, telling him the time is at hand for them to cut his thioat and those of all his brotherhood, and at length maddened by his patience they threaten to fling him from the window of the carriage. Everything, in fact, admonishes us that " progress" is advancing rapidly in France. Our Communists will find everything to their mind when they return ; their brethren of the secret societies have worked faithfully during their absence.

THEY SHOW THEIE TEETH.

Ouk friends the Freemasons, too, are highly delighted with the action of the French Government Their lodge at Dunkerque has addressed a letter of sympathy to M. Jules Ferry of which the following is a translation :—": — " The undersigned address to you their most lively sympathy for the courage and devotion to the national cause of which you have given a proof in the contest you have so energetically sustained against the Jesuits. They hope the Government will not falter in the path upon which it has entered and that it will as soon as possible apply all existing laws against the unauthorised congregations." How full of liberality and of a universal philanthropy are our Masonic friends ! We find, by the way, from a paragraph in a contemporary, that some notable Freemason has declared that if the time ever comes when the Bible Bhall be banished from those places of various degree in which it now holds an honoured position it will find a refuge on a "Masonic altar" and a devotee in an " honest upright Mason." There is, however, a seeming variance here from the decision of M. A. Montagu, who addressing from Paris in '79. " The illustrious brethren who are in the East," thus assures them : " Scientific revelation is the only true one which reason can accept as the guide of man's intellectual and moral progress." We may, however, naturally expect to find seeming differences of opinion in an association of which a great body are the dupes and tools of the fully-initiated members, and work with their eyes blindfolded.

THE CBIMES OF THE JESUIT FATHERS.

Nevertheless a more grateful memory might have been expected to have attended on the offices performed by the clergy in France, and to have defended them from all this fury, more especially amongst soldiers. The Uhivers, for example, gives us a sketch of the part performed during the war of 1870-71 by the Jesuits in their College of Sainte-Croix, at Le Mans. It is to the following effect :— During the course of the war 1265 men were cured there, and 65 died, tended by all the care charity could bestow upon them. On the eve of the battle of Le Mans small-pox broke out, and some 2000 men were attacked by it. The bishop communicated with the provincial of the Jesuits, and was answered that priests should not fail for the work required. " Make use of all those in our house," he said, " I send you four, and if they die others will take their place." In the barracks, under the >. are of the Mission were 1700 patients stretched on straw with a blanket only to cover them, and without pillow or mattress. Amongst these the Jesuits came every morniuj; to spend hours ; and when they re

turned to their college, there also they found like sufferers to whom one wing of the house had been given up, and on whom they expended the remnants of their strength. Whilst come of the fathers took care of the sick, and some were dying by their side, others received the soldiers on the march, of whom 22,000 were successively succoured here, both in body and soul. The laboui sof the Jesuits counted for something in the success of General Charette's troops at Patay and D'Auvours. They did not spare themselves there either. The father prefect bad his head laid open by a sabre stroke from a Prussian officer during the heat of battle. Abbe Fougueray fell ttfjrced by three balls, and what the Jesuits of Sainte-Croix were to tLo' troops on the evenings of these days the troops themselves can tell. It is to them they owe the safety of their flags hidden by one of the fathers beneath his soutane'during the thick of the fight. Some days before, for less than this, the Prussians had seized the curd of a Tillage close by, and made him run the gauntlet of their ranks until he fell dead beneath their blows. Vicomte Jaubert, who would have defended him, was dragged at a horse's tail, and so maltreated that he also died of it. The fathers during all this time, the depth of winter too, had no fires in their rooms, had cut off one-half of the allowance for their dinner, and knew not one day whether they would have bread for the next, but the wounded men never were permitted to want, and when at night long military trains arrived the fathers gave up their beds and slept under a tent-canvas. This> which took place at Le Mans, was not a solitary case. The other Jesuits' Colleges served also as ambulances for the wounded. The College of Saint-Clement received more than 600, and twenty-four fathers or brothers fell ill in turn of small-pox, typhus, or dysentery. Four died, victims of their zeal and charity. Vaugirard and Sainte-Genevieve received 200 wounded ; 616 sick or wounded were received at Saint-Michel de Laval ; 271 'at Saint-Acheul and Montieres. Every wheie besides, at Poitiers, Dole S»int-Etienne, Bordeaux, Mongre, the Jesuits received and sheltered soldiers. It was thus these religious conducted themselves, whom they wish to proscribe, and whom they cover with anathemas and calumnies. Th e day is come, then, when patriotism, devotion, and charity form a title to hatred and persecution. — The world, however, is mad upon this point, the world of religious Protestantism and Freethoughl, and since Freethought is more advanced than religious Protestantism, its rage is more frantic, its madness more violent and terrible to see. It can only be satisfied with blood, and to that things are surely coming,'however the talk of the twaddlers who hang on ite outskirt 8 may prattle of mildness and universal philanthropy.

A GLAKCE AS " KING LEAB.'

As a play of Bhakspeare's must always be a current topic, we shall make no apolegy for inserting here a few thoughts that have suggested themselves to us concerning one of them. In his criticism, then, of Shakspeare, Professor Dowden says : — " Our imagination can hardly find a place for Sbakspeare in any part of the Middle Ages." And again, he says : " The Elizabethan drama gives us the stuff of life itself." And, quoting Mazzini : " The human being is not defined by its most prominent faculty, nor life by its most potent manifestation. The beings themselves, life itself, are brought before us on the scene, and that with a reality, truth, and perfection, the highest ever attained by man." But since life itself is there, the voices of the Middle Ages are to be found plentifully illustrated by the phenomena of these plays ; and this was to have been expected by those who hold that the men of the Middle Ages thought profoundly, and well understood man, his end, and his surroundings. Take, for example, the fulfilment we find in " King Lear " of the warning given by one of the holiest voices that has reached us from those ages. "If thou fling away one cross," said Thomas a Kempis, "without doubt thou wilt find another, and perhaps a heavier."' Lear felt the burden of his cross : the cares of empire seemed to have grown heavy upon his declining years, and with the impetuous seKindulgence of his nature, he cast them from him only to take up the crushing weight that drove him from his senses. " Know, that we have divided In three, our kingdom : and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age ; Conferring them on younger strengths while we Unburthen'd crawl toward death." Such was the intention with which he entered upon the weird and j/^rrible career whose description knows no equal in poetry. For that t^s unequalled we hold, and, in proof, we may offer this alone, that those who move in it take their place amongst the heroes ; it tells of heroic life, heroic wickedness and passion. It surpasses the Greek tragedies ia attaining to this without the support of legend or religious beliefs, and by the bare magnitude of expression. We can hardly fancy mere flesh and blood producing the horrors of * King Lear." But did Shakspeare intentionally illustrate the truth, of Thomas a Kempis's warning, or desire to teach us such a lesson already taught by the teachers of the Middle Ages ? As to this we refrain from any decision ; we shall but say that the warning that it is a duty to bear the cross to the end, seems again explicitly

announced in the play, that is, by Edgar, when he rebukes his father's despair : — " What, in ill thoughts again ? Men must endure Their going hence, even as -their coming hither ; Ripeness is all." But Lear has sought to cast his native burthen from his shoulders, and in its place has found the thunder-cloud to bear. That it must often be so was a lesson taught in the Middle Ages, and life bears out the truth of the leßson. If " life itself " then be brought before us by Shakepeare, we may well find this lesson there also, whether the poet meant or did not mean that we should be led by it to the practice of patience and resignation. Professor Dowden tells us there is no place to be found for Shakspeare in the Middle Ages, but again we find a voice from the Middle Ages telling us that which Shakspeare shows us in the life he sets before us. Lear is crushed beneath a terrible weight, and he comes out for a little purified ; his pride is purged away, his unendurence of contradiction is gone, his high words are heard no more. Instead we hear him say, "lam a very foolish fond old man." And again :—: — " You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget ana forgive : lam old ana fooliBh." " Quellc cariatide ; d'ett Vhomme courle" cries Victor Hugo of him. But the images of just such men have come down to us from the Middle Ages ; men bent and doubled together, reduced to the condition of caryatides, their breasts approached to their knees by reason of the weight piled upon them, Dante found expiating their pride upon the Mount of Purgatory. It fills with distress even those who see the inanimate likeness of such suffering, he tells us, but these true sufferers go on their way uncomplaining. Their tearful patience only seems to say, " Pik nonposso," — verily they can bear no more. The Middle Ages, then, have again handed down to us something of that which Shakspeare sets forth in the life he shows us, the purifying influences, the humbling effect of the great weight of adversity. But no extended scope for the practice of humility followed King Lear's tempestuous agony ; a little clearing of the clouds is all we find and then fresh affliction. We have barely time to mark the broken spirit's issue into a more peaceful life, when it is again overtaken by the whirlwind, and the end comes in thick darkness. And, in passing, let us mark the consistency of the man who in his phrenzy has mocked the rage of the storm, contrasting it with his daughters' harshness, and thus finding it not unkind, and who now complains of life that has failed his child while it is abundant all around him in inferior things — " Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all ?" There is a unity in this philosophy that is very admirable, an acknowledgment also, it seems to us, of man's right to empire, or exceptional consideration, which to-day, we find, begins to be questioned. But there is a fitness in Lear's death beyond that of its artistic excellence as crowning the awful tragedy of this play, and of carrying out by its circumstances the inexorable doom pronounced, instead of the " unburthened " decline he had elected for himself. Even though he had been fostered by the love of Cordelia continuing to live, his life must still have been that of one stretched upon the -rack. The intensity of his love for his children had received too deep a wound ever to recover from it. He could not steel his heart against the memory of the past by recalling only the insults and injuries heaped upon him. He must ever see the vision of the hands he loved wielding the weapon of his torture, and that for him would render tranquility of life impossible. It was wounded love rather than wounded pride that drove him mad. When his children turned against him it seemed that the whole world had joined in their hatred. It was not the great elements only that united against him their " high engendered battles :" the meanest things also had their part in his agony. There is no fuller, no more pathetic passage in the play, than that in which we learn how thoroughly the iron had entered into his soul, how thoroughly he felt himself forsaken :—: — " The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and sweet-heart, sco they baric at me." There is certainly a complete fitness in the death of Lear, whether otherwise its lesson, if lesson it have, be clear or obscure.

The Union, Count de Chambord's organ, Le Monde'Jhe organ of the Papal Nuncio, and ZSUnivers, Ultramontane, declare the Catholics will vigorously resist the enforcement of the decrees. La Pays, Cassagnac's paper, says the -decrees are only a preliminary to the re-establishment of the guillotine for political adversaries L' Ordre and Liberte, also Bonapartist, admit the legality of the decrees. Pope Leo XIII. is even more simple in his diet than his predecessor. His breakfast consists of coffee and milk and two little rolls ; his dinner of vegetable soup, boiled beef, a dish of stewed or roast meat, fruit, and half a bottle of wine ; his supper of bread soup, called in Eome " pappa." A basket of pears or apples is an acceptable present to him. Considering that it is the " party of moral ideas " and eminent respectability, it is singular that the republican leaders all wear such free and easy names as "Jim" Blame, "Bill" Kemble, "Don" Cameron, " Billy " Chandler, " Bob " Ingersoll, and all the other baj> room-like cognomens. — Pilot.