IRREPRESSIBLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 25, 8 April 1892, Page 15

IRREPRESSIBLE.

TO THK EDITOR N.Z TABLET.

Sib,— l have read with much pleasure and purprise in your last week's issue your sub-leader headed " lirepreasible," as it contain* a story that I have told hundreds of times to my Catholic frierds. I mean the story of a Protestant cle)gyman who visited in 1835 a Catholic cathedral at Brussels, wher ha says he found at the entrance of the sacred edifice a notice-boaid whereon was a catalogue of sins and the prices for their remist-ion. Now this is a Btory which for 57 years has been dinned into Protestant minds, and th> usands have swallowed for goepel-truth, and it spems to be still current. Curious enough I was at Thielt in Bdgium at the time of the " Popish aggression " when every fcul thiog was raked up— and the story in quesi ion among the rest— and published to inflame Er ghsh people against the Catholic Church. One d .y. while »twoikata carpenters bench, a priest with whom I was indeed intimUec me to me with a copy in his hand cf the Brusstls Courier. H- read to me in the French language an account, with which he wjs tot a little amused, of some writing oa a no 1 ice-board Baid to be at the entrance of the Cathedral of St GuJule at Brussels. The account had recently been published in an Knglish newspaper, and afterwards translated into the Belgian Courier. But the editor of the latter paper, knowing the story to be totally false, and yet unwilling to term Bimply ita author a downright liar as he certainly w^, determined to visit the Cathedral of St Gudnle and see what the English clergyman had really notice! there. We^l, the editor went, and what were the writing and figures on the board about? Why, co'hing at all about pardoning sins great or soull, but the writing and the figures gave s 'me information about chairs — nothing else. For in all Oatho'ic cathedrals and churches in Belgium there are no fixed seats, but chairs are used instead. A penny is charged for the use, during divine service, of a chair of the best description, a half-penny for a second-clas-s chair, and one farthing for the most humble sort of chair. Besides, on par icular occasions, the prices of the chairs vary, and some aged person, man or woman, has usually eh »rge of the chairs as a livelihood. During my sojourn in Belgium, whenever I went to church, I paid the usual fee for the use of tha chair and took it into what part of the church I pleased. This was the usual custom. But the writing on the notice-board at St Gudule was in the Flemish language, and as the coinage is different, it is far more than probable that the learned English clergyman understood neither the writing thereon, nor the sums of money that the figures represented. — I am, etc., Thomas Milneb. Silwyfl Street, Adding on. [Dr Newman gives the same explanUn n. — Ku. is, 2. Tablkt.]