CHRISTCHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 41, 3 February 1888, Page 3

CHRISTCHURCH.

(From our own Correspondent.)

I was very much surprised to hear that at eleven o'clock Mass last Sunday week Father Le Menant took exception to some remarks contained in my last letter to the Tablet. I should regret exceedingly to, in any way, cause the smallest annoyance to Father Le Menant. In common with all his parishioners I have the greatest admiration and respect for Father Le Menant as an able and learned gentleman and a most earnest, devout, and energetic priest. Father Le Menant is an indefatigable missionary, an ornament to religion, and a highly-valued and faithful member of his Order. To know him either privately or in connection with his sacred office is to love him. But why a generous-minded man, such as I have always supposed Father Le Menant to be, should take exception to the context of my last letter is to me utterly incomprehensible. He ex plained that his allusions to " party spirit " to which I referred did not mean the love of Irish people for their native land but referred to certain feelings which are supposed to exist in some quarters in regard to recent ecclesiastical appointments in New Zealand. That is precisely the subject to which I supposed Father Le Menant did allude. However the matter may present itself to some minds it certainly seems to me that my own definition of the " party spirit " to which Father Le Menant referred and Father Le Menant's definition of it amount to very much the same thing. The sentiments which Father Le Menant deprecates are most certainly the outcome of the refusal of Irish people to meanly acquiesce in their own national extinction. If Father Le Menant professes to laud the existence of patriotic feelings among Irish people he cannot consistently quarrel with the natural result of these feelings. I have not the slightest doubt but that Father Le Menant meant every word of his generous outbreak of love for Ireland, and I am pleased at having called forth the expression of his aTdent attachment to our country, bnt I am afraid that he is incapable of entering into an Irishman's feelings in regard to the power that has so long crushed the life and soul out of Ireland and scattered its people to the four corners of the earth. Only an Irishman who has suffered with bis country and felt his heart throb with indignation at the cruel injustice of the oppressor can do that. If Father Le Menant, in coolly reviewing the matter, would for Ireland read Alsace, and were himself an Alsatian, and for England read Germany, and then suppose that the Catholics of New Zealand were Alsatians, to whom German prelates, at the instigation of Germany, were being sent, perhaps he would not find it so very difficult to understand why the feeling which so much irritates him should exist. I imagine he would not, under the circumstances, Bee in the affectionate interest of his country's enemy, no matter how suavely their interest might be expressed, a desire to encourage in the hearts of the exiled Alsatians a burning love for France and for the conquered Rhine province. If Father Le Menant would look at the matter through the spectacles which I bave suggested, perhaps he too would see. as Irish people do, no reeult of mere chance in the late appointment, but rather the effect of a deep and sinister design on the part of the ancient enemy which even across the sea and in this new land seeks to forward its long cherished plan— the national extinction of Ireland. Almost daily fresh evidence comes to light confirmatory of the fact that at the present time the whole power of England, represented by the Dnke of Norfolk, is moving heaven and earth to win from the Pope some kind of condemnation of the national movement in Ireland. This condemnation is sought in order

2?L«r'i whe . nn * r , ccd omßdawn begins to shine upon the Irish land, when at length the prize for which through centuries of oppression «Ll iSS * Pe ° ple ha J e Btriven i 8 well ni S h won < within sight of the goal of success they may be robbed of their reward. And for l» SL *Z Om l 77 e il . are t0 be grateful and are expected «) mss the hand that would deal out annihilation to our Triton S°?! 8f Wh S t makes this latest form of Bn gtok intrigue all the crueller is the reflection that the Irish people nave not been persecuted and despised simply because they were born on Irish ground, but because of their creed, Had they, like other lands, been unfaithful to their God and to Rome, they had lone ago been free. Had Ireland in the past forsaken the faith of St. Patrick, she would not be fighting for Home Rule to-day : the proapenty of the renegade had long B ince been hers. But the faith of Ireland has never wavered ; she has been a beacon light in this JJatnolic world through epochs of religious darkness, when the faith nad almost died in every other land. Is it not the very refinement ot demoniacal cruelty to endeavour to make that long-preserved Mdehty to Rome and the religion of the Apostles the means by which to silence her national aspirations to-day, and to compel her people to abandon their dearest hope? Without fear of contradiction Ido hold that the dearest earthly hope of an Irish man who deserves the name is and ought to be, to see the country he loves as he loves his life raised to the status which she has a right to enjoy : that of being the equal instead of.the inferior|of every land in Europe. And, believe me, when an Irishman abandons that hope and becomes content with national serfdom, the Catholic creed will not long survive in tis heart, for it follows as the night the day that the Catholic Irishman who is a traitor to his country will soon prove false to his creed. Therefore, again I say, for the sake of the faith so long cherished in the holy fanes of Ireland, and for the sake of the land we love, I hope that the national spirit will never die in the Irish people, and that the machinations of England when directed towards the eradication of this spirit in the Irish race, whether at Home or in the colonies, will signally fail. Another point in my last letter to which Father Le Menant took objection was in regard to a suggestion which I made re the celebration of St. Patrick's Day. I must say that I was more than surprised at the nature of Father Le Men ant's objections upon this head. The inference which he left to be drawn from his remarks was a very unfair and a very serious one He objected very strongly to my suggestion that Irishmen of all •reeds should fraternise upon St. Patrick's Day, and so far misunderstood the very plain meaning of very plain language as to compare ttie sentiment contained in the paragraph to which I refer to the sentiments professed by Socialists, who declare we will have patriotism and no religion. With all due deference to Father Le Menant whom, as I said before I profoundly respect, I must in justice to myself most emphatically deny that the paragraph in question can possibly be said by any fair-minded person to bear the interpretation wfach Father Le Menant saw fit to put upon it. If I were inclined which I am not any more than the rev. gentleman himself, to preach the doctrines of the French Commune, I should not have the audacity to attempt to do so through the medium of a paper like the Dunedin TABLET, a paper which is devoted to the Catholic religion and the Irish cause, and is under the supervision of, in my opinion, the ablest Catholic ecclesiastic that ever left Ireland and that adorns the Catholic Church in the colonies to-day. History, too, would have taught me that I would be sowing the seed of religious revolution upon barren soil, for never yet among the children of Ireland have the atheistical doctrines born and bred in continental lands, found a congenial home Father Le Menant suggested that the patron saint of Ireland would behold with horror the spectacle of Irish Catholics joining hands with their compatriots of a different creed. I cannot believe this, and Ido not believe it. If Father Le Menant's views were true we would be compelled to become the veriest ingrates upon the face of the earth. We would deserve no means of aid or sympathy in our struggle for justice could we thus basely repudiate the debt of gratitude which we owe to some of the bravest, most disinterested, and truest hearted men who ever sacrificed life, liberty, home, fortune, and talents in the Irish cause. I, for one, should grasp the hand of the Irish Protestant as the hand of the Irish Catholic, providing only that the former had Riven equal proofs of love and devotion to his country. In doing so I should not feel either that I was in the smallest degree false to the doctrines taught by Him to whom our children daily pray to teach them how to love their Irish land. On the threshold of the prison cell shall we pause to ask the languishing occupaat, whose only crime is that he loved his country, what is his creed before we take the hand that has grown thin and wasted for Ireland's sake ? Is our debt of gratitude to Charles Stuart Parnell and William Bwart Gladstone one whit less— nay, is it not more ?— because they do not worship at Catholic altars. To men like these, the pale emaciated prisoner wearing hid heart out in an English prison, and clad in the garb of a vile malefactor because he will not relinquish the hope to which the bravest hearts in Ireland have clung for centuries, to this martyr for liberty to the Irish patriots and the English statesmen, must we refuse the grasp of friendship and the gratitude born of great services done us because we are of one creed and they are of another ? Yet such is the meaning of Father Le Menant's objection, if it means anything I do not believe that the Catholic religion commands anything of the kind. The Catholic religion engenders charity, and commandsgratitude ; it nurtures and draws out our best feelings, and would never demand as a sacrifice to petty prejudice the noblest feelings of the human heart. Our history in the past years has been " Disunited, Therefore blighted." The power that has ruled us has " hounded our passions to make us their prey. It is that this history may be reversed among us in the Colony, and that when freedom comes, as come at last it must, to the old home m the Atlantic, we in New Zealand may not have forgotten the race from which we sprung— may not have proved degenerate children of Ireland— but may be still found faithful to her traditions, which means being true to our country and true to our God, that I again hope that the Irish people of Christchurch will

upon St. Patrick s Day meet upon the broad platform of nationality and renew their memories of Home. English colonists rejoice and hold ©elebrations, at which national sentiments are expressed, upon the Queen s Birthday and upon that of her eldest son. la your city the memory of Scotland and the love of its lochs and hills are kept alive m the hearts of Scotch residents upon the annual celebration of the birthday of Robert Burns. Are we the only people in the colony to let our national memories die, to " keep quiet" hide our heads, deny our country, and slink out of sight 1 In the name of manhood and independence of spirit, surely not. The arrangements for the reception of Dr. Grimes, who is to arrive here on Thursday evening, are very complete. The Bishop is a m .i a *^ ttelton by the members of the Reception Committee and at the Chnstchurch station by the Hibernian and other societies. Addresses are to be presented to him upon his arrival at the church by the clergy, laity, the Hibernian and Literary societies. Admission will IT 6 ?* vIu I V 011 J lhnrßdayl hnrßday evenin g an( i to the church on Sunday will be by ticket. The money received at the doors will go towards defraying the expenses of the reception. The illuminated address i is to be presented by the laity to the Bishop is a very beautiful and artistic sample of the illuminator's art. It is, in fact, perfection in its way. On Sunday Archbishop Redwood is expected to deliver the address, and Dr. Grimes in the evening. The Bishop and the coming guests are to be entertained by the Hibernian Society at some kind of social gathering in St. Aloysius' schoolroom, nf „ L i 6i 6 r ? ce P tion programme is, I believe, the presentation ?w • a f dd i? 8S ■» Archbishop Kedwood by the laity. I should imagine mat, it this address is to bear Irish signatures, the wording of it would be a matter requiring some delicacy and much fertility of The principal of the Marist Brothers has arrived in Ohristchurch , and is to make arrangements for the Brothers, who are expected to open the boys' school in a fortnight.