CHRISTCHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 381, 6 August 1880, Page 15

CHRISTCHURCH.

(From our own Correspondent.)

August 2, Christ's College playground seemingly is the arena for pistol practice occasionally. There are so many subjects taught the young ideas now-a-day that to shoot is not so surprising after all. Progress is the order of the day, and why should not young students learn how to shoot by taking an occasional visitor to the public gardens to be a target. If what is recorded in locals be true, the locality of this educational institution is dangerous, as reports of firearms are frequently heard Beemingly fired from the vicinity of the college, and stray bullets are becoming somewhat numerous in the public gardens. Mr. Eineen, formerly assistant in the Catholic Boys' School, has been appointed master of the Catholic School, Lawrence. Mr. Dineen makes the fourth assistant who has received complete charge of schools after leaving here. His friends no doubt will be glad to know of his advancement, though those of them in Chriatehurch all regret his leaving, as his affability, forbearance, and good disposition, made him a general favourite. I think it is the intention of Rev. Father Ginaty to establish a high school for boys, in order to complete their education, and so prevent their going under Protestant teachers. It is an institution badly wanted here. At the Catholic Church on Sunday last the Rev. Father Ginaty, previous to his sermon on " Matrimony in general, but mixed marriages in particular," adverted to the convent new school. It appears it was his intention, had funds permitted, to erect a large and substantial building capable of supplying not only present wants but those of the future, and it is a great pity that he is not in a position to do so. Had he been able to carry out his plans the Catholics of Christchurch would have a convent school second to none in New Zealand, as may be fairly expected from the grand presbytery lately built by him and of which we all feel so proud. He has resolved then, it would appear, to erect a building commensurate with his means, and what the faithful contribute. From the passing outline he gave of what he has done in the parish since his advent to it, viz. : The enlargement and seating of the present church, the purchasing of the fine organ, the erection of three schools and the presbytery, and other minor matters too numerous to detail it would seem that he has not received anything like an equivalent amount from his people. He told those who promised subscriptions for either of the above that they were in justice bound to pay them, and that now as he had resolved to erect the Girls' School he hoped those who had promised subscriptions would be good enough to pay them, or at least to call and explain. His reasons for not publishing the names of subscribers was the paucity of those who had paid compared to those who promised, but he meant shortly to enter more extensively into this matter. On Friday, the 13th inst., the f arty hours' adoration, preyiou* to the Festival of The Assumption, which falls on Sunday, will commence in the Catholic Church, Barbadoes street. The Most Blessed Sacrament will be exposed during this time for the adoration of the faithful. On the Feast itself there will be a procession round the interior of the church, in which all the confraternities in the parish will take part. , „ „ . , L „ It may not be out of place to remind holders of tickets for the lottery, in aid of the new convent, that it is to come off towards the end of present month. Now that the Rev. Father Ginaty is coming to the rescue of the little girls, and is about erecting a school which, at all events, will shelter them from the weather if it does not afford all the comforts intended, it is to be hoped that the people -will not forget that the nuns too want shelter, and that they will wait upon the Rev. Mother Prioress as early as possible with their promised subscriptions and ticket money. t Painting the Lily.— Mr. Stringer, a young and popular solicitor, said the other day at the Resident Magistrate's Court of a certain Michatl Murphy, that " to attempt to characterise such an unprincipled scoundrel as a swindler would be merely endeavouring to paint the lily." Murphy is, I assure you, a very old chum of the colonies, though I find his father was once a Catholic, who, during the famine years, succumbed to the baits of the Bible readers or tract distributors so common then in the west, and of whom the world has heard so much. The boy Mike is one of the pro3elytiser's pupils, and an apt one by all accounts. Oh, if those in authority could only see the folly of trying to apostatise Catholics, or the mischief attempted against society by those stiff-necked hypocrites called tract distributors. Let Protestants and others rest assured that the apostate Catholic cannot be trusted, and that society has no greater enemy. He has already sold his soul (and he knows it), and during the rest of his career, he studies nothing but lucre and self-aggrandiaement, aa is evinced by the newspaper reports of this pervert Murphy,