NOTICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 11, 8 July 1887, Page 6

N O T I C E.

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and fidelity of the Irish priests in Ireland tban I do. I know their worth and their learning, but I know, too, that ithey can gather, by reading or otherwise, only ver/ scant and imperfect knowledge of the religious situation, and the dreadful assaults that are made upon the faith of tbe simplp Irisn people in distant lands like New Zealand. One must be here and see for himself to understand the trials, temptations, heartburnings, and struggles, that are daily endured by thousands of Catholics to Keep from being extinguished amidst the mists and clouds of heterodoxy and infidelity that torch of holy faith which they bi ought burning brightly from Ireland. As in America and Vustraiia, so also in New Zealand the mass of our Catholic people are " nx'les of Erin." The vast majority of tbem are the sons and daughters of the small farmer and tbe labourer. They !eft their horaes without wealth and with only the rudimeats of knowledge. They are merged in the different nationalities scattered through, tbis vast country, where Catholics are in a miserable minority. We are here not a nation but isolated individuals. In country parts the young men are labourers and shepherds. In the towns the girls are the slaves of English, Scotch, and colonial mistresses. The greater number of these young men and women have come from the country districts of Ireland. Educated in national schools, many of them received only that minimum of religious instruction sufficient for adnvssion to tbe sacraments. Beyond this they have little knowledge of the groundwork of their faith. In Ireland the priests as a rule preach every Sunday, but their discourses, beautiful no doubt as tbey are, nevertheless, are, I venture to say, more exhortory and paraphrastical, than didactic and catechetical. This is glorious for the old land, while the people remain at home, but is does not do for here. Landing on these shores, our young men and women have a simple, lively faith, but a faith founded on a weak substratu m of knowledge. It is practical but not theoretical. The belief is there, but the why and tbe wherefore are not. Here, working amongst Protestants, stifled with vice aad inhaling an atmosphere tainted with unbolief, they a^e asked a reason for this article of their faith, and for that, and most of them are unable to give any, or at besi, but a feeble reply. Nay, very often they have only a vague, sometimes,, an incorrect knowledge of what they precisely do believe ; but this faith they were prepared, when entering the emigrant ships, to resign only with their lives. The grace of God was still abiding in iheir }oung hearts when they left their homes of innocence w ; th a fatner's blessing and a mother's tearful entreaties. They had little suspicion of the character of the enemies or tbe nature of the dangers that awaited them, They came armed with the sword of faith but had not on the breastplate of knowledge, and soon the poisoned arrows of unbelief find entrance to their innocent hearts. Tne grace of God, it is true, c\ erisbed and increased in the beginning by frequent recourse to the sacraments, shields them for a time, but when the intellect at first emb.irrased, then discomfited, is led astray, the demon of perversity, indifference and finally unbelief, takes possession of the heart. They are confronted on these shores by two classes of people — one who feel no sympathy with their national feeling and instincts — the other, the avowed enemies of all Christianity. The staunch Presbyterian, the gloomy Wealeyan, and tbe loyal, honest Church of England Protestant meet them with objections against " popish superstition ; " the professed Atheist and the disciples of the freethought lecturer challenge them with proofs against every dogma of Christian belief. To face such an array of enemies there is need of great moral courage, much prudence, and deep-rooted convictions. Moral courage the Irish race at home and abroad may fairly boaet of ; prudence we have nut in very great measure, and religious convictions with a large proportion of our unfortunate emigrants are more the result, I think, of wbat I will call training than of religiouß education. They have imbibed their beliefs with their mother's milk. Born in the bosom of a Catholic land, associated in early life with Catholic companions, taught in Catholic schools, they had little to tax their faith or call into requisition that necessity for a knowledge of the groundwork of their beliefs so necessary in a foreign land. When such emigrants, young men and young women, in their daily toil, and toil they must, come in contact with those whose morals are corrupt, whose hearts are poisoned with a hatred of Catholicity, and whose minds are stored with a specious reasoning against it, the religious antagonism is very unequal indeed. On the one side you have an unsophisticated, innocent, guileless heart, and an untutored intellect ; on the other an astute eelfish unbeliever, or what in the case is sometimes worse, a vain, tenacious Bible-reader armed with weapons against Catholic doctrine, forged by the perverse ingenuity of minds more logical and deeply read even than the assailant's own. Human nature is human nature, and in a conflict like this the consequences as known to missionary priests are much to be dreaded. Our people are thus questioned and embarrassed oftentimes for an answer. If they decline to give any, they will be told they believe without, or against reason, that their faith is a pile of superstitions founded on ignorance and sustained by the influence of priestcraft. Should they be imperfectly instructed in the groundwork of their faith while attempting to give a rational account of their beliefs and practices, the probability is, they will expose themselves to ridicule and their Church to greater contempt. Not unfrequantly, indeed, does it happen that, in circumstances like these, a mind hitherto artless, full of simplicity and trust, will be led to think more seriously, and through thinking to doubt or question the wisdom of believing what till lately it had not thought of examining, and which when put before it, dressed in a false costume by an unbelieving caviller, seems to it, in the light of its rust'c logic and scant instruction, absolutely inexplicable or altogether untrue. Here lies the dange* to many an Irish emigrant having no scientific knowledge of the groundwork of his holy faith when leaving the old land. Here is the rock upon which many a soul is shipwrecked and lost. I would respectfully suggest to the priests in Ireland to forewarn the people against these dangers and to equip them to meet their opponents by regular serial courses of catechetical instructions. While they live at home breathing an atmosphere of purity and innocence, surrounded by their priests, having every opportunity of approaching the sacraments as often as they wish, a homely exhorta-

tion, a pathetic effusion, which may touch the heart while it leaves the intellect barren, will pilot them smoothly over a peaceful life to a happy death. But when they have left far behind the calm skies of holy Ireland, and have " to rough " against the billows of unbelief that are fast flooding this country ; when they have to meet the sneer of the bitter sectarian with his inherited prejudices ; when they have to work with corrupted and captious men in stations and sheep-rung twenty and thirty miles away from the nearest church or priest ; when they can hear Mass only once in two or three months, and can approach the sacraments not so often ; when unfortunately they find their temporal interests clash too frequently with their spiritual, then those discourses of other days which moved the heart and generated short-lived sympathies, vanish into oblivion or are remembered only ai hollow-sounding and unsubstantial vanities. No longer will an implicit uninformed faith be found sufficient amid the practical indifferentism which now surrounds them. Absence from Sunday's Mass, neglect of approaching the sacraments of confession or communion, want of due reverence for the priestly authority, fill which in other days would suffase the countenance with shame, or merit the disapprobation of others, will here be a temptation to gain popular applause or a coin to purchase the patronage of those whose will it is their temporal welfare to serve. But the evil does not stop here ; it is not linked merely with the individual him* self. His firm adherence to the faith or his practioal renunciation of it becomes an inheritance which is sure to descend to his offspring. If virtues flow from parent to child, much more do vicious inclinations. We have in this country two classes of Catholic parents, the agriculturists and farm-labourers, and those who reside in tbe towns. In nearly all the districts the country families live far apart, being outnumbered by those of other denominations to a great proportion. Tbe priests are few and far between. They reside only in the principal towns. Struggling against immense odds, they find it impossible from the revenues of their parishes to maintain more than one, at the most two, Catholic schools in every mission. (To be concluded in our nemt .)