Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 26, 23 October 1896, Page 1

Current Topics

A T nO ME AND ABROAD.

__ Students of O'Connell's life are aware that he o'CONNELL's was a deeply religious man and that throughout RULE OF life, his public career, while discharging the responsible duties of a great political leader he always found time to faithfully and fervently practise the sacred duties of holy religion. During the last two or three years of his life the religious tendencies predominated and he more than once expressed a desire to enter some religious Order. The following transcript of O'Connell's rule of life was made by his daughter. The original was found among the papers of the great emancipator after his decease in 1847 :—(1): — (1) To avoid any wilful occasion of temptation. (2) To appeal to God, and to invoke the Blessed Virgin and the saints in all real temptations. (3) To recite the acts of Faith, Hope and Charity every day. (4) To repeat as often as may be, a shorter form, (n) To recite daily at least, and as often as may be, a fervent Act of Contrition. ((!) To begin every day with an unlimited offering of myself to my crucified Redeemer, and to conjure Him by all His infinite merits and divine charity, to take me under His direction and control in all things. (7) To meditate for at least half an hour every day if possible — longer if God pleases. (S) "We fly to thy patronage" and St. Bernard's prayer to the Virgin as often as may be convenient — daily. (t>) To pray daily to God ana the saints for a happy death. (10) To avoid carefully small faults and venial sins — even the smallest. (11) To aim at pleasing God in all my daily actions, and to be influenced by the love of God in all. rather than by hope or fear. What a change would come over New Zealand politics if our legislators, actual and prospective, were to take the high standard that O'Connell took to regulate their lives. And what an increase of true piety would there be in our churches if every Catholic young man were to adopt the rule of life laid down by O'Connell. A Protestant correspondent of the Duilij Chronicle CATHOLIC V. having <ij>ropo.\ of the Catholic procession through PROTESTANT the streets of London, written in praise of ProtesTOLERATIOX. tant toleration and denouncing Catholics for intolerance. " A lover of liberty and truth " writes in reply : — I may be permitted to refer your correspondent to the Salvation Army for information born of experience as to the relative proportions of Catholic and Protestant intolerance. I would suggest that the Army authorities be asked in which country freedom of worship has been more ungrudgingly accorded to them, in Catholic Belgium or Protestant Switzerland, particularly Calvinistic Geneva ' Many have read of the imprisonment and fines of which the Swiss Salvationists have been the victims, but few appear to be aware of the freedom enjoyed by the Helgian contingent. With regard to Spain, the methods employed by the Protestant missionaries probably account for a great deal of the "intolerance" of which they complain. Mr. Labouchere was at some pains last year to expose in his paper the attempt of one of these " missions " to enli>t English sympathy by the circulation of a slander against the Catholics of Barcelona, which, to the knowledge of the missionaries, had been absolutely disproved years before. Mr. Mallock, in the following extract from •' I* life worth living ? " no doubt voices the conclusion to which many Englishmen have arrived, and which accounts for the remarkable sympathy lately accorded to Catholic street processions :: — •• There is probably no point about which the general world is so misinformed and ignorant as the sober but boundless charity ot what it calls the anathematising church. It is the simple statement of a fact. Never was there a religious body, except the Roman, that laid the intense stress she does on all her dogmatic teachings, and yet had the justice that comes of sympathy for those that cannot receive them. She condemns no goodness, she condemns e\en no earnest worship, though it be outside her pale. The holy and humble men of heart, who do not know her. or who in good faith reject her.

she commits with confidence to G oil's uncovenanted mercies, and these she knows are infinite." A roy A I. Commission has just reported that thp A ll.\i:i> I'Acr. spoliation of Ireland by the English Goverment has been going on at the rate of two millions and three quarter* per annum for at least fifty years, and thin report was adopted by a ten to three majority. This is what Mr. Stead has to say on this humiliating disco\ery . — We are rich. Ireland is poor ; we are strong. Ireland is weak : we have imposed upon her our system of taxation, with the result that we have compelled her to pay. not one-twentieth of the Imperial revenue, Avhich is all that could fairly be claimed from her. having regard to'her wealth and taxable resources, but one-seventh, the difference between these two fractions amounting to no less than two and three-quarter millions per annum. If this has been persisted in for half a century, it would mean that we have extorted from our poorer Irish fellowsubjects a sum of 100 millions sterling more than they in justice ought to have been asked to pay. There is no getting over that. It is as hideous as a nightmare to us now that we have discovered it ; but in face of this who can marvel that the Irish should feel that England was more of a vampire draining their life-blood than an elder brother upon whose strength and wealth they could confidently rely to supplement their -weakness and poverty. The ill-success which has for so long attended the thi; roi'i: and love-making efforts of the Prince of Naples was the imunce of itself sufficient to cause a certain amount of or XAri,i:x. interest in the announcement that he had been at last successful in obtaining the hand of the Princess Helen of Montenegro. It is well known that he had sought over all Europe for a bride and had wooed nearly half-a-dozen Catholic princesses, but loyalty to the Holy Father in every case prevented them from taking up the invidious position which the Queen of Italy would necessarily occupy while the present strained relations between Church and State in Italy continue to exist. The Prince of Naples is, oi course, a Catholic and will be called to rule over a Catholic people so that it was eminently desirable that the future Queen of Italy should profess the same faith. Thus the firmness ot the Catholic princesses referred to, left the Prince in an awkward predicament and it certainly seemed as if he had done the best possible under these discouraging circumstances in securing the hand of the Princess Helen. At present the Princess belongs to the Greek Church, but she is quite willing to make the necessary change and w ill seek admission to the Catholic Church. E\en now. however, the Prince's trouble* are not at an end. The marriage was fixed to take place in November, but his Holiness the Pope has declined to give permission for the celebration ot the marriage in any of the Roman basilicas, nor will he permit any cardinals, bishops or priests to assist at the ceremony. The Prince is. according to the very be.st authority, a Freemason, and he has been educated in and thoroughly imbued with principles that are altogether at variance with those of our holy faith. Under these circumstances it could hardly be expected that the Church would give her benediction to the marriage and the decision of the Holy Father marks his strong disapproval ot the whole affair. On the whole the royal lover has had rather a bad time, but it should prove a salutary discipline for him and by the time he has passed through all his reverses he will probably find himself entertaining a feeling of respect tor the power of the Papacy to which he has long been a stranger. The Pope in a letter to the Bishop of Padua on odds AND the occasion of the assembling of the congress on i:nds. social studies says: "Such are the disasters with which civil society is assailed everywhere nowadays that to apply a remedy it is fitting to work not only by action but also by learning and teaching. In fact, it by denial of divine and human laws not a few men pervert every principle, that blind perturbation of their minds is really to be attributed to their intellectual errors and unbridled liberty ot thought and speech.

Precis -\y for this re.wm \vu on the one hand have always favoured with our approval those Catholic so-jieties which by preference promote action and on the other with every good will ami favour we have likewise encouraged associations devoted to the study of social doctrine." A Lilvrd Catholic— The lite William Vox. formerly of Oak1' igh. Victoria. irontlonvm. who dienl on June 2 5 last. 1-jtt a numlvi of bequests to the Church and to eh iritable institutions. Testatoi by his will bequeathed £50 to the parish pne-t in charge of tlu' Catholic Church. Oakleigh. tor Masses for the repose ot his «oul and the soul ot his late wife. He directed his trustees to expend a sum not exceeding t2nn on the erecti >n ot a suitable monument over his jrrave. and to pay £lo(i to several Catholic institutions and orders- • He directed his trustees to sell his real estate, retain C2<i tor the burial of his sister, and attar the pecuniary legacies had been piid. to apply the residue to the erection in Dublin of a statue ot •• anj Irish patriot, either living or dead." at their discretion. Hy his first codicil, however, he revoked this provision a* to the erection ot a statue, and in lieu thereof made the following additional bequests : —The liquidation of the debt in the Roman Catholic Church. Caulfield, t Kid ; to the liquidation ot the debt on the Lorretto Convent. Albert Paik. CMH). The bequest to be applied to the liquidation of the debt on the Catholic Church. Caulfiold. is increased by a further codicil to £200. and a bequest ot .C2(in is to be applied to the liquidation of the debt on the Catholic Church. Oakleigh. After other pecuniary legacies have been paid the residue is to be dcv oted to St. Vincent do Paul"s Orphanage tor Boys, South Melbourne. The value of the real estate is. estimated at .C^.VjM. and the personalty at £:*2(n. The death of poor Crouch, the almost lorgotte>n composer of " Kathleen Mavourneon." at Baltimore, in the eighty-ninth year ot his ago. brings to mind a pathetic incident which occurred at one of Mile. Titiens" concerts in the Opera Hou-e. at New York in Is7(i. The famous singer, as an encore, sang " Kathleen Mavourneen "—" — the only time sh e did s 0 while in the States. 'Die song excited a fur, in ot applause, and on Mile. Tietens leaving the stage she was informed tli.it a man. suppose 1 to be a lunatic, was fighting his way over the barriers from the pit to the stage, determined, so he said, to speak to the singer. The pnma donna told the authorities to let him come to her. On entering, the man buist into tears, sobbing out " Oh. Mile. Titieiis. I never b< fore heard my -oim a« you have just sung it." " Your song." was the astonished reply, "why. jou are not Crouch, surely '" • I am." rejoined Uu- composer. e\en then an old man . -and 1 lell I must thank you myse 11 for singing it. ' It was indeed the unlucky Crouch, who had -ciaped together the price of a pit seat, little dreaming that his own now world-famou-tong would be the ino-t rapturously applauded Hem oi the night.