Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 44, 7 August 1891, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

" TOO HOT

Wb are almost tempted to borrow the exolamation of yonng Mr Wilson on perceiving, or believing be perceived, that tbe-man next to him, that is Bir William Ck)rdon Cammiog, was creating.— •" My God, this is too Bot." — It it cool, we admit, bat not quite cool enough for us. We are coolly atked to tot as a berakd of General Booth, and to prod ace in oar columns a programme not only of a tounthe renowned warrior himself is about to make in the colonies bat of the progress to be . alto undertaken here by captains of l«ss wide-spread fame. Have wet then, done anything to deserre a suspicion of infidelity towards the Catholic Church, even where outsiders are concerned T Papers there may be, indjed run under false pretences. The congress of O&tbolio editors bera in America last year, for instance, condemned certain newspapsrs, so-called Catbollo, but which, in fact, were organs of fret-thoueht. We do not know ; — missionary Fathers there might perhaps be found among the heathen who would appoint as a cateohist the bonze, or the tohunga, or the medicine-man, in his unconverted state, and maintain he was calculated to do good servioe. The more ordinary confidence, however, ia that the man appointed to teach anything must himself be versed in the subject he teaches, and it would hardly seem that religion formed an exception to this rule. Our firm conviction ia that to issue as Oatbolio a newspaper whose inspiration was that if a non-Oatholic, an iofiiel, or an atheist would be, on the part of those accountable for it, whoever they mightjbe, an act of treason against the Catholic Church. It could only be oxcnsaHe by the fact that persons so acting looked upon the Catholic Press as contemptible and were determined to fljut it and give a practical proof of its insignificance. But how could any Catholic, in face of the Pope's repeated commendation, be excusable in acting thus? We would inform our Salvationist friends, therefore, that none of us connected with the Tablet fall under the suspicion of infidelity or dishonesty. What we profess we thoroughly believe. It is not for us to call any man to Bit at tne feet of General Booth or any of his officers. Our friends of the Salvation Army must not misunderstand us. We have no sympathy whatever for the religion they preach. We look upon it as an exaggerated snd almost blasphemously grotesque form of error. Indeed, if it b > true as of late openly stated without contradiction in Dunedin, that they forbid Christian baptism, we must necessarily look upon them as blasphemers of a particularly dangerous type. We gave oar support, indeed, to General Booth's proposal for the establishment of colonies, but we did so only from a material point ot view, and as considering that such settlements would tend to relieve the temporal misery of aoD-Oatholic populations. A further recommendation of these settlements to us seemed the belief that, if once relieved from their misery, the pe#ple in question would relinquish the extravagances of ! Salvationists. It can only be a population sunk in extreme misery that seeks alleviation in the excitement referred to. We do not r - therefore, by any means intend to offer th.c right hand of fellowship to General Booth or his captains. They may come and go and hold their meetings and bang their tambourines and thump their drama without oar interference. We shall {observe towards them also our rule of never commenting on them or mentioning them in connection with any of their religious exercises mless in some way or another they bring the Catholic religion or the Catholic Church under notice, And has not the Army actually insulted Catholicism in our own Colony ? It is not very long ago, at least, since an incursion of theirs was reported from the Catholic mission at Jerusalem. As very cool, then, do we take the application made to us. Without i gross betrayal of the duties of a Catholic journalist and a prostitution of the Catholic Press, for which we, at least, will never be accountable, whatever others may do, we could not possibly comply with it. This is plain speaking, we know, but there are times when silence is culpable, and, when, to quote Sir Wilson once more and under somewhat similar circumstances, the position becomes " too hot."

BISHOP LUCK IN GENOA.

Wh sometimes go from home to hear domestic news. Baeb baa been oar experience in reading some recent numbers of oar excellent contemporary the Eeo di Italia sent to na from Genoa. The Bishop of Auckland, we fiad, has been giving conferences and making collections in aid of his Maori missions in the city in question. His Lordship, who, says oar contemporary, speaks Italian admirably, htfc evidently been heard with intense interest, and treated most generously. What, however, we learn with still greater pleasure is the promising condition of the Maori missions in the diocese of A-»ck-land. We bad known, indeed, that missionaries from Mill Hill \J£Pk introduced some years ago by the Bishop to take part in the io. i labours long performed single handed by the late Dr Macdor* 1 )?! j memory of whose devoted career as a missionary remain^ , We had, neverthalesi, heard little as to the work or pxospeTWy • Fathers. Some trifling m ention of them from time to time iv Catholic papers was all that met our eye. We learn from the reports in oar Italian contemporary that considerable headway has bten gained. Were it ouly, in fact, from the confidence and love which at oar contemporary tells us, the Bishop bas won among the Natives a great deal might be expected. He loves them, says oar contemporary, as a good Father, and they perceive that they have in him their natural protector and patron, and as such reward him with a most lively and almost filial affection. The Bishop also, we are told, places strong hopes in the result of an extraordinary event which has taken place, and in which a pagan Maori, who had apparently died and was about to be buried, awoke to life, an 1 related a vision he had had of tha Archangel Gabriel. The Bishop hopes that this will result in the conversion of a whole tribe. But is it not some* what mortifying to fiad recounted ia a foreign paper, and that car* sorily — -an event that mast have deep interest for Catholics in New Zea* land. Surely thjugh we may perhaps ba less worthy of edification, we are Dot lesa in n jed of it th in are 0 itnolics in Geno*. Dr. Lack, our contemporaiy tells ua again, is desponding as to the condition of Europe. His Lordship contrast it With the future of New Zealand, and let us Inpj the good Bishop may prove justified in his happier predictions. He paints a picture of a coining day when Europe will ba once more over-run by barbarians, possibly the Chinese, and when a Bishop inpartibm infideluim will preside a • Genoa, while the C-ttholic faith shines with exceeding brightness in ' New Zerland. But alas, we fear that, whatever may 1m the success of Catholic missionaries among the &lao r i,and indeed we very heartily [ wish them GjJ-spee 1 in their difficult undertaking, the decay of that race ca'inoi now be said. Tne censrn ju9t completed gives their number for the whole colony, as 41,523. The Catholicism of New Zialand ia the future will, therefore, ba as it is to-day, almost exclusively that preva li ig among the Irish settlers and tbair descendants. As to the colonists * f other nations the prevalence among them of secular education predicts but too truly what their religious future muat be, that is, a future of hopeless atheism. Meantime, should Ittly, indee I, be over-run by barbaiiaos, and an exodus of Italian Catholics to New Zealand be the consequence, it would much delight us to m ik^ provision in our office here, f ir the accommodation of oar excellent contemporary, tho Eco di Italia, so that the Italian immigrants might be consoled and guided by its able columns. Nor would our contemporary coma among us uninformed, aa the very interesting article in which he enlarges on tbe topics suggested by Dr. Luck assures us. In conclusion wa are ourselves, also indebted to Dr. Luck, and, as all the sentiments of the good Bishop's heart, are certainly not exhausted by tbe fatherly love he bears towards the Maori race ; he will appreciate our gratitude to him. It is certainly to his presence in Genoa and the interest in New Zealand created there by if, that the New Zealand Tablet owes the very graceful recognition nude at the conclusion of one of the reports of the Bishop's conferences, of its little word of salutation addressed some months ago to ibe Eco di Italia. Wa even go abroad then to le^rn our own indebtedntss to tbe good Bishop of AuckUn 1.

A LOST OPPORTUNITY.

The Pastorahbt=' A-soc ; ation of Queensland has issued a pamphlet on the strike which has just terminated. Tie pamphlet naturally leans Btrongly to the pastoralists 1 side, and a chief part of it is [ taken up with quotations from speeches and other utteranoes ex-

plaining the evil of the princpics on which the strikers proceeded and condemning the manner in which they, or at least a large body Of them, conducted themselves. We do not, however, know that; we ahould be very much inclined to place a strong reliance on the testimony borne, for example, by the Hen W. Brookes, M.L.O. to the kind dealing and admirable disposition < f the station-owners. The Hon W. Brookes, it is true, is a traditional Queensland radical, as the pamphlet states, and we have some personal recollection of the stage ia which his development as such \wg\n. We can quite understand what Mr Brookes means, therefore, when he says, as be candidly confesses, that it is his raime to like to have a ringer in the pie, and we have some idea that, like the excellent little Jack Homer of our nursery days, Mr Brookes knows how to put in his thumb in a manner profitable to himself. Nor do we greatly rely on the argument against unionism quoted from Lord Salisbury. The French Revolution, said bis lordship in effect, has destroyed the guilds, and hence unionism was an abuse which bad been swept away never again to be deliberately set up. It is, nevertheless, as plain as daylight tbat if freedom of contract is to mean anything except the right of the employer to make what conditions be pleases for the labourer, unions or guilds must exist. The whole point, in fact, on which the question* as also dealt with in this pamphlet, turns is freedom of contract and what it means. Definitions, indeed, are given of it — good definitions bnt it is quite possible they are good only so far as they are seen on paper. Mr W. E. Abbott, a rather arbitrary authority who is likewise quoted by tin pamphlet, lays down the situation, for instance, as follows : — " We claim for ourselves precisely the same liberty which we are ready to concede to all other members of the community of which we form a part, the right to manage our own affairs within and subject '.to the limits imposed by the law, and subject to no self-constituted or irresponsible authority outside or above the law." The law, nevertheless allows of the formation of agreements that in trnth involve anytbing rather than freedom of contract. It permits employers to take the utmost advantage of the need of the employee and to make him, while nominally a free man, to all intents and purposes a slave. In all obedience to the law that state of things defined in the Pope's Encyclical has come to pass, in.which, to quote the words of the Holy Father, " a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor n yoke little better than lelavery itself." Whatever, then, may have been the origin or the reason for the strike — and we have no intention of defending it ; — we have nothing certainly for the violence reported as its accompaniment bnt loud disapproval,—it ia evident that the Pastoralists' Association acted unfairly and unwisely in refusing the conference demanded unless freedom of contract had been first granted, Their own pamphlet, in fact, proves that this was the very point to be decided. We all know what freedom of contract means in theory, and as we have said, in this sense the pamphlet gives a good definition or two of it. But, alas, we aUo, or at least a good many of us, know what it mean io practice. The practical meauing, however, is what must be determined and that not only ia Queensland if the question of the day is to be finally settled. Our reading of the pamphlet referred to is tbat notwithstanding all their quotations and all their arguments the Queensland pastoralists have lost an opportunity of placing things in their own colony permanently on a satisfactory footing, and of giving a good example to the world.