CATHOLIC NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 39, 3 July 1891, Page 27

CATHOLIC NEWS.

(Prom the Liverpool Catholic Times.) Thb Hon. H. Merrier, Premier of Quebec, has been created a Oonnt <>y the Holy Father. A Ffdach Catholic Company has been formed to collect a fund o bj offjred to tho Holy Father for the repair of the damage done •.o St. Peter's and tha Vatican by the recent explosion. We have to recjrd the death of Rev. William Burke, C.58.8., at -liraerick, at tie house of the Redemptoriste, on Wednesday night, lay 13. This sad intelligence will be received by the people of itancheste • *»r.d throughout Lancashire with deep regret. Cdrditim Lavigerie will shortly leave Africa and visit Borne and i'am in orier to coufer with the Holy Father and the French authorities with refereacj to the progress of his aati-9lavery enterprise. The Bishop of , Birmingham, Right Rev. Dr Ilsley, has received a communication from Rome in reference to the cause for the beatification of Father Dominic, the Passion.st, who received Cardinal Newman into the Catholic Church, and wuo bad as the chief object cf his Ufa the conversion of England and the other northern nationß. Sir Andrew Stewart, ex-Ohief Justice of the superior Court for the Province of Quebec, his been received into the Church, and confirmed by Cardinal Tascliereau. The conversion is also announced of Messrs Rueton Maury Ludlow, of Si Louis, Missouri, and Jamea Benson Werner, of AUentown, Pennsylvania, B piscopal theological students, and of the Rev. C. B. Dawson, Anglican curate of All Hal. lows, Southwark . Mr Dawson was received into the Church by the Rsv. Luke Rivington. Miss Theiese Bcannell, of Cork, and Mdlle. Therese Drisch, of Aix-la-Chapelle, were on Thursday, thi 30th April, received into the Order of Dominican Religieuses at Lubbeck, near Louvain, Belgium. Miss Scannell has two Bisters in religion— one in London, and the other at Sydn-y, New Sou h Wales. An anti-slavery confess has just been holding meetings in Brussels. It was attended by the Rev Father Cambier, a Belgian missionary in the Congo S ate, who eaid that he did not believe in the employment of force alone for the suppression of the slave trade. E ,eh State having possessions in Africa should do its beat to suppress slavery in them. Ihare is no truth whatever in the report that some friction had been caused between the Holy See and the French Government on account of the Pope refusing to raise certain French prelates to the pulpit at the request of the Fiench President or Ministry. No such request was made, and there has therefore been no refusal and uo cause for " strained relations" between Paris and the Vatican. Archbishop Kenrick, of St Louis, Mj., United States, will celehratehis Episcopal GjJien J ibil-e in November next. The venerable prolate, sayi ihj Buffalo Catholic Union, and Times, is the connectlug link between the poor missionary Chu-ch of sixty years Ago, with its few scattered Bishops and priests, and the present happy and fruitful mother who numbers as her chillrea nearly ten millions. Mgr. de C mrmont, Vicar- Apostolic of Zanzibar, lately said Mass at an altar erected ou Mmicu Kilmanjaro, the highest peak in Southern Africa. The altar was erected at a height of 9,000 feet ; 5,000 feet higher the missionaries have cut a colossal cross in the mountain side, wnich will be viable for miles. The mission station at Kilimanjaro is also one of the armed posts of the anti-sh.very crusade. Tue accounts of the Society for the Propagation of the faith for 189J have just been issued. The contributions of the faithful last jear show a lar^e increase on those of 1889, and are the highest yet recorded since the foundation of the society. The following are the figur s :— IB9O, 7,072,811 francs, or £282 912 ; 1889, 6,541,918 franca, or £2tH,Gi>4 ; increase in 1890, 530,893 francs, or £21,258. Among ail the countries wh.ch contribute to the fund France comes first. Speaking at the Rjyal Academy Banquet on Saturday night, May 2 id, the Cbancelbr of the Exchequer paid an eloquent tribute to the horcic work in the service of humanity which 13 being performed by some of the members and institutions of the Catholic Chuich in our day. '• ihe Saint Elizabeths of to-day," he said, 1 still feed the hungry ; Saint Elizabeths still throw themselves in the pathr. of sin, and into the pestilential dens of sickness and of cr'me. Father Damiens in this day seek the refuge where lepers congregate, and with souls as high as those which were in the breasts of mirtyrscf old, they lay down their lives in a sacred cause." Cap'ain Juubert i an African explorer not less biave and daring t.'.an the late Gejeral Gordon. The Captain is in charge ot the C -Umu posts on Lake Tansranika, and Cardinal Lavigerie in a letter trom 13 bkra, Mates with enthusiasm the many heroic deeds he has accomplished in ordor : j maintain the Catholic missions in the position w „eh they rvcuj.y. An expedition, bearing arms and ammunition and acconnunied by a number of C.tholic missionaries, is now <n tho way to hn iclief, having saileJ from Hamburgh a few days ago. At Zanzibar it will be reinforced by one hundred men, and it will then proceed to Joubert'a post at Mpala. It will in the course uf some little time open up a new station at Mtowa, and thus endeavonr to extend the work of evangelisation which Joubert has done so much to promote.

The Bishop of Salford's reference to Sunday School work in his letter to Mr Britten has drawn forth from " An Bx-Head-master," who has had over thirty years' experience of such work, a communiat to as in which be boldly says, " The Sunday School has, as a a meagre attendance, and will so continue until those in authority take its life to heart and mike it what it should be." The improvements " Ex- Head-master " suggests are :—l.: — 1. That no teachers of a day-school be expected to bo prestnt, as the knowledge of their presence is a safe preventive of day-scholars attending ; they get quite enough of them through the week. 2. Not more than half-an-hour in school, and another half-hour in church for singing and Benediction. 3. Nice easy Scripture stories, or other ecuy books of religious tendency.—" There is," our correspondent says, " a wonderful lack of readable books for children, the authors or compilers of those in use having no knowledge of a child's vocabulary, and their, good intention being spoiled by a verbiage that at once loses interest for the child, who pats to one side what be cannot clearly follow." A straw will show bow the wind blows ; and a phrase employed by an Anglican paper in speaking of the late Archbishop of York suggests questions which we imagine onr High Church friends would find it very hard, or quite impossible, to answer. " The late Primate,'* says our contemporary, " gave us Catholics some very hard knocks." Clearly, then, the late Primate cannot have been a Catholic himself —or at least ho must have been oae without knowing it. Then, nho are the Catholics of the Church of England ? Is the Bishop of Liverpool, who boasts that he is a Protestant, and is about to aid a secular court in deciding the caee of a brother Bishop — is he a Catholic ? The members of the Synod of the Irish Church, who have just made a formal declaration against sacramental confession —are they Catholics? The members of the Church Association who the other day applauded the protest that they would have no ecclesiastical law, and shouted " Down with the Bishops 1 " — are they Catholics ? It is trifling with words to say fiat they ar.\ Hut if they are not, the Church of England is, even on the Anglican theory, a composite body, some of whose Bishops, clergy and laity are Catholics, while a very large number of them are not. Can anyone seriously suppose that to belong to such a body is to be in the Catho Ho fold ? Apart from the remote Catholic origin of that great seat of learning, the University of Oxford has a special interest for us as a centre of a mjvamsnt which brought intT th s Ci'ho ie Chuich som e of its most distinguished alumni. Another movement is now going on within its walls which brings it still more into touch and sympathy with the living present, a movement to promote the study of social qustions on a broadly human basis. Although not a religious movement like Tractarianism, it tends in th«t direction ; for no great political or sreial question cm be studied to its depths without coming into contact with the religion ide-*. Oie who has taken no small part in promoting the rcnvemmt has contributed a paper on the subject to the current number of the Lyceum. There have been already in existence at Oxford a Social ticitnee Club, a Christian Social Union, and a Guild of St. Matthew, the latter being avowedly socialistic, though from a merely sentimental point of view. The new school of thought is antagonist to the generil principles on which political economy is b\9ei. Its programma is elaborated, in an essay the joint proluctioi of two members of Merton College, who pertinnntly ask " What care the thousands of miserable beings, suffering from the anomalies of our social system, for the symmetry of scholastic explanations of them ? " Wha f Oxford and other places want is reaUty, earnestness, ginuinenes?, study for the sake of trath and not for the sake of brilliancy or autho Uy among the igncrant, Dr. Woodlock, Bishop of Ardagh, in a Pastoral just issued saya : — " In the past, ruin was brought on Ireland more than once by the betrayal of her sons and by dissensions amongst her children and friends. The sad, sad story is being repeated. Oae of the moat powerful agencies which the enemies of Catholic Ireland have made use of in the past for the ruin of your caase has been Secret Societies, Bibbonism, Whiteboyism, Fenianism, Invincibles, etc. The Catholic Church has never ceased to condemn with all the weight of her dfvinely-received authority tbis hateful brood, which, like a plague of locusts, has devastated the land from time to time Now we have reason to believe that at thia moment the most strenuous efforts are being made to spread the curse of secret societies amongst our people, and especially amonest our Catholic you'h, nnder the plea of advancing our country's cause ; often, under the pretext of encouraging innocent and invigorating sports, young men are cajoled into giving their names and contributions to those organisations which religion and good sanse alike condemn. One would have thought that the saJ experience of the past would have taught ow not le youth a lesson. The name of the informer who sells his briber's blood for money is hateful amongst our people. Assuredly the emissaries of secret societies should be equally hateful wretches, who, by pretending sympathy with our cause, and often by the hypocritical practices of religion, insinuate themselves into the good graces of unsuspecting youth, oorrupt them and, having made them children of hell twofold more than themselves, sell their blood."