Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 8, 24 June 1898, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A non-catholic correspondent has been ' worritJOUKNALISTtc ing' over us. He is of opinion that the great decency. principle of the ' freedom of the Press 'is sufficient justification for the publication of vile abuse of any body of people — especially of ' Romanists.' Well, we are satisfied to believe in and act upon the Golden Rule. As regards the ' freedom of the Press :' in the right understanding of the word ' freedom ' we shall ever defend the proper freedom of the Press as of the subjectBut we are not ia favour of free lying, free slander-monging, nor free literary filth from the shambles or the sty. Freedom is one thing. License is another. The honest man seeks the one ; the other kind the other. When one takes a stand on a question of principle A it is pleasant to see men who differ with him in final word creed and politics range themselves like brothersOL approval, in-arms by his side. Some time ago we had to take such a stand on behalf of the Catholic body of Xew Zealand. We have already quoted extracts to show that all the great Australian dailies — even those that are habitually hostile to vs — endorsed our action to the fullest extent. The latest echo of approval comes from a source which adds a special value to its words. The Melbourne Southern C'ruts is the organ of the Presbyterian body in Victoria. In one of its recent numb rs it states decisively that the Catholic boly in Xew Zealand have solid grounds for complaint against Lord Ranfurly. ' Lord Ranfurly.' says the Southern Crow, 'is her Majesty's representative in Xew Zealand, and the head of a com nimity which includes all varieties of religious belief. He plainly ought not officially to say a word which would declare his bias against or for anyone of them. The Roman Catholic papers are screaming angrily against Lord Ranfurly on account of his recent utterance, and while we cannot approve of much of the language they employ, yet we think they have reasonable cause for complaint. Lord Gortnanston, the Governor of Tasmania, is an earnest Roman Catholic. Suppose he received a deputation from, say, the members of the Society of Jesus, and express I offijially his disapproval of "the errors introduced into the Christian religion by Luther at the Ref rmation !" All good Protestants would be justly indignant at such an utterance by her Majesty's representative. And on the authority of the Golden Rule, we must wish for our Roman Catholic friends the same consideration we demand for ourselves. Lord Ranfurly, however, is still young as a Governor ; he will, no doubt, learn his lesson.'

The following good story is told by ' Flaneur ' in THE latest the Sydney Frrrman. It, will be perused with SHERLOCK amused interest by our readers :—: — HOLMES. Connected with the '98 Celebration in Ireland a story is told which shows that the smart English police officials are still as eager to jump at any tales of treason told against Irishmen as a gudgeon ia to spring at a fly, A post-card was sent from Ireland to Mr. William O'Brien, ex-M.P., a week before the eventful day, and on it was written the suspicious line — ' The pikes are ready.' Some keen-nosed official in the London post office scented danger to the Empire at once on seeing this card, and, with joyful visions of future honours and reward, he hurried it off to the great Detective Department in Scotland Yard, the re»ult being that the whole establishment was set in motion, and the cleverest men it contained were told off to seize the pikes and all connected with them. The result of their investigation was a considerable ' take-down ' for the Sherlock Holmes party, for it turned out that Mr. O'Brien had merely given a Dublin jeweller an order for a large number of appropriate I( J8 brooches ; the central idea of the trinkets being a re-

presentation of a pike. When the jeweller hail finished the order he sent his terse post-card along-, and now, instead of reaping his anticipated rich reward, the patriotic party who scntod danger has to keep clear of the detectives for fear they might football him rouud Hyde Park, or duok him in the dirtiest portion of the Thames. There are two difficulties ahead of the Catholia PUT TO the journalist who is placed face to face with what is, test. happily, unknown in Xew Zealand outside of Dunedin — systematic vilification of the Catholic Church and body. Occasional controversy, conducted ia gentlemanly fashion, is a great means of good. Perpetual controversyeven in the face of perpetual vilification — has the same exasperating effect as long-drawn guerrilla warfare. It defeats its chief purpose. The other difficulty is this : that the ' lovvd fellows of the baser sort 1 who furnish this sort of garbage are just the kind that a respectable journalist could not cross swords with without losing his self-respect and social status, and inviting a fresh outpouring of noPopery sewage. Hence the undesirability of dealing in the secular Press with the rag-tag-and-bobtail of controversialists. And hence, too, no answer has ever been made through th» secular organs to many of the wild statements of the creature who runs the no-Popery columns in the Dunedin Lcinmg Star. * r w Attacks on the consoling practice of confession were sure to come, sooner or later. We are told— on the authority of nobody knows who and of a book that nobody can find, that that sacred practice is corrupting. The slanderer is wise as the serpent. Were he to make the same charge against an individual C itholic as he does against the whole 2.->o,oo<>,oo<), he would speedily find himself in the dock and under lock and key in gaol. If such were the tendency of that sacred rite, those who practised it mosfc would be the mosc degraded wretches that crawl upon this planet s namely, the Pope ; the clergy ; the orders of men and women who sold themselves into slavery to redeem the slave ; the millions of religious of both sexes who gave their lives without fee or reward to the service of the sick, the orphans, the foundlings, the stricken old — to every form of human ill ; the Sisters of Charity who died upon the battle-field ; and the nuns and brothers who have hanished themselves for ever from civilised life and comforts to nurse the lepers and die with them, as Father Damien and so many others did. On the principles enunciated by the literary scavenger of the J.'n-ning Star, these would be the very scum of creation. We need not ask which have displayed the true spirit of Christianity : the Church's long bead-roll of spotless purity and heroic charity, or the nameless scribe who yells foul epithets upon them and forgets that the God of Truth ever forbade people to bear false witness against their neighbour. • * * Happily, we are able to put the foul insinuation to the test. There is probably no country in the world where more frequent use is made of the confessional than in Ireland. On the scavenger's theory, there should be no country in the world where the majority of the people are more morally degraded. This question has been forced upou our notice. We will take, for instance, the statistics of illegitimacy. They are, according to Leff ing well, a good test of the morality of people living in the same country, under the same laws and customs, and with the same methods of collecting statistics. He gives us the following figures rega-d ing the people who go and those who do not go to confession in Ireland :—: — Non-Catholic Rate of Illegitimacy Province. Population. per 1000 births. Census 1880. lo years— lß7l-1880. Connaught ... r, per cent. ... 7 Munster ... (> „ ... 17 Leinster ... HrH r ... 22 Ulster ... r>2 „ ... 40 The following figures for the counties of Ulster are more instructive still. They are compiled from the statistics of 1891 and the Registrar-General s report :—: —

In the first five counties thj people who go to confession predominate. In the remaining four non-Catholics aie in the majority. Here is the table summing up the figures we have gi\en — Rate of Illegitimacy. The fi\e Catholic counties of Ulster ... I '.> per cent. Ihe four non-Catholic countn's ol Ulster .. I<N „ ,i, i ? -■# The last report of the Ilogi-trar-Gencral proves that the same results still continue. In last November, the Manchester (,'i/nrdian, a non-Catholic paper, says of the then recently published report that ' in the birth statistics, the proportion of illegitimate births (in Ireland) is exceedingly small, and the Protestant parts of the country compare unfavourably wit h the Roman Catholic. So far as the ratio of illegitimate births is to be taken as a test of morality, Ireland is. with the exception ot Greece, the most moral country in Europe.' The celebrated Piesbyterian clergyman, Dr. Watson (better known by his pen-name, 'Jin MacLaren") said to an American interviewer that, among the admirable qualities of the Irish people 'is that moral parity which is one of the glories ot the Catholic Church in Ireland." So much by the way. We shall be able to give furth >r and stronger evidence, in point during the course of the articles on confession be^un in our issne of this week.

Tiikki: is a man in Dunedin who writes letter •> OOXVTA r sometimes to the papers. lie signs himself Inspection. '.I. Smith' — probably John Smith. We have he. ml tli.it nainj before. We have, in tact, met the great John Smith by the thousand, from the Baltic to the Bluff, and in a thousand different Lice*, and eh iracters — i glorified Mick McQmid Tin- Djjiielm ,l.>/>/> h/mi // r of the great man poses as a convent msp-ction enthusiast. He wants the Dunedin electors to ask the city member- if they will support a Bill for the public inspection of convents ' the same as all other institutions.' Likewise, he volunteers the inform itnm th.it a petition for this purpose was signed tiy .m,>, 000 womtn in the United Kingdom. This array ot bonnets looks v( cv formidable inlued. But when our budding conwut-insp>><jtor finds a B irkis who is willin' among the electors of Duncdm. he would do well to .supply him with information on the following points — * « f 1. Who are tli e 'Coment Inquiiy Society ' that ran this big petition ' Its sccuiaiy we Lnuw-im irdi\idnal named Abbott Its president «•; k,:uw. His name is Colo'ill Sandys. (Jsy the way is he a demandant if 11 at Ilrgade Maj< r !-andys -who, in 17.18 made hisFu'\ol a place of tciture that •was filled day and night with the shrieks oi his \icUiijs '). I\,es the Society consist of Abbott and Sandys ,' If net, why did the secretary decline to give the representative of the Glasgow Ilixtlil the name of a single other officer or member .' Is the Society a fraud .'i 2. Again : How weie the signatures of this petition obtained ? The secretary assured the representathe of the Glasgow IL raid that the lists were sent to very few Episcopalian clergy, that 'the majority of the signatories w ere Nonconformists, and that the names were obtained frequently at the church doors. How's this.' And is it a fact that the list is swelled by the addition of the names of thousand-, of children and of son.c iallcu women .' * t i .'<. Barkis will also need to be coached in other matters. The reasons alleged in the petition lor convent inspection were (") that nuns are kept in ' hopeless inipiisonment ' in convents against their will. (/') that ' a sy-tem of terrible torture exists in English convents'; ('•) that interments take placv at night in 'the pmate burial' ground of the Nottmg Hill Consent. («)• As to the first statement, the secretaiy. though strongly pressed, could not allege one single instance --not e\en one — in point. {/>). The charge of torture led to Hgn.il e\ idence oi Mr. Abbott's fitness to head such a inn\ciiiciil l\ir proof in point he referred the representathe of the lit nil, l to a tiicnd whom (he said) he had known for yeira — Mr. Sreelo. Racquet Court, Fleet Street, London. Mr. Steele was not a member of the Sncit'ty. On being applied to he declared that he * sho'ildn t know Mr. Abbott from the man in the moon !' There is an Ananias here. Perhaps John Smith will explain which it is. As to the proofs of torture, Mr. Steele declared that he knew nothing at all about them, nor could he name any person who did. And the genial secretary granted that he had never seen them either.

('•)• The midnight burial myth met with an untimely and inglorious death. The versatile Mr. Abbot gave a county councillor as the authority for the story. Then he admitted that this statement was not true. Next he mentioned a draper — one Mr. Mayes — who lived opposite the convent, as an eye-witness. The most diligent inquiry at Notting Hill, says the interviewer, ' failed to elicit the whereabouts of Mayes the draper.' The story of the ' private cemetery ' at Xotting 11,11 convent elicited the fact that there is no burial- i ground within its precincts, and that nobody is interred there. Dr. Turnbull (Ladbrook Grove)— a Protestant— has been physician to the convent since IS'W. He spoke of it and its inmates in terms of the highest praise. With regard to the burials at night, he says : 'That is ridiculous. They are- all buried in Kensal Greta. I always rector the deaths in the ordinary way.' Dr. Robinson, another Protestant physician, bears out every word uttered by Dr. Turnbull. It may interest John Smith and Co. to know that Ministers have, in effect, kicked the petition out of doors. The women or children or — the other kind — who signed — or are said to have signed — this foolish and lying petition would have been better occupied trying to stem the growing tide of vice around them than in interfering with the private concerns of ladies who choose to put themselves out of the marriage-market for the purpose of devoting their lives, without fee or earthly reward, to the cause of education and charity. John Smith ought to have started his agitation two centuries back. There is too much electric light about now for schemes like that of the so-called Convent Inspection Society.

God's flowers bloom in every soil. But the most A niTER badly unlikely soil that such a blossom ever opened its bitten. petals on was that on which stands the residence of Mr. Johnston of Ballykilbeg (M.P. for South Belfast), whoso daughter was recently received into the Catholic Church. Mr. Johnston was firmly convinced in his heart of henrfs that the Pope is the Man of Sin, that the Catholic Church is the Mistress of Abominations, and that liberalminded Protestants are Jesuits in disguise. We confess to a sort of feeling of respect for the magnificent proportions — the measureless height and depth and width — of Mr. Johnston's bigotry. Mr. Johnston would not, on principle, tolerate any ' truckling ' with the Scarlet Woman. As far back as IS.">7 he published a novel entitled Xu/kf-shade (reprinted in IS'), 1 }). Its theme was the good old legend of Jesuits in disguise — in the Church of England, of course. The plot is the old familiar one of the No-Popery 'shilling shocker' or "penny dreadful' — Jesuits acting as Anglican clergymen, domestic servants, etc. But the novel ends happily — ' Jesuits baffled, and priests and nuns and all,' while the principal ' Jesuit nnposter cast off his di-guise, and ceased to play the not uncommon but disreputable part of an apparent union with a Protestant Church, while he was really a member of the Church of Rome.' ■*■ * iMr. William Johnston is an Orangeman by conviction, and has been for long years Deputy Grand-Master of Ireland. He sprung into fame among the brethren by his march to Bangor, July 12, 1807 — contrary to proclamation and Act of Parliament — at the head of a large body of Orangemen, who carried sixty-seven flags, and were provided with arms and ammunition, ' in case the worst came to the worst.' For this defianc e of law and order he was sentenced to a months imprisonment at the Down Assizes, February 2.5, 18(18. He at once became the ideal of the lodges at Ulster. His portrait found an honoured place in every ' brother's ' home, along with that of the hero of the Boyne ; and, at the next elections, he was returned to Parliarment. He never makes a speech in Parliament or takes an active part in discussion unless the subject under consideration relates to Catholic interests. Then he uses all the energy and eloquence which he possesses in denunciation of the Pope, the Church, and everything they represent. He i«, in effect, the living head — the Pope — of the Orange faction in Ireland, f * i Evil days have fallen on the Grand Obi Man of the lodges. His favourite and highly -accomplished daughter, Miss Ada Johnstone, was received into the Catholic Church by the Rev. J. F. MeCauley, CO., in St. Patrick's Memorial Church, Downpatrick. Miss Johnston had been attending the Catholic services for some time previously, and her conversion was not unexpected We do not know what led the young lady's filtering footsteps to the Inhum df th" unity of Catholic truth. Pcrlup-.it vr:is the reading of her father's wild Xo-Popury novel. Xi : j/tt\/iui/ . Her surroundings were to the last degree unpromising. The ways of grace are won lerful, and oftentimes very .nysterious. A notorious American tcin il ■ ' lecturer ' once led to a conversion. When the screaming female orator was holding forth at Hastings (England) some years ago, a lady rose to her feet and said : ' I ask your permission to thank you for your lectures. Two years ago I was a Protestant, but, thanks to you, lam now a Catholic of Catholics. I hold in my hand a Bible. Ifc was given me by a priest of the Church of

Roma, with an earnest desire that I should study it. I have simply to stab) these fact*, and I do, from the bottom of my heart, thank you f.>r your Jo tures.' Sampson to jk honey from the lion's mouth. But it was God's work, and oiu that does not occur every day.

Javan Donegal Mona^hdii Fermanagh ... Tyrone Londonderry... Down Antrim Population. 1 1 1.M17 1 s-ls -l •_'(»,; 71.170 171.101 1 i:>.2vi 1 >> do;) 2i-7. )'.)."> IJs.ILN Per cent. Per rent. ('nth. Non-Cain, so ,s i;i 2 T »".-*.» 2 i 1 7.i 2 2'l .v, ! lie. :>i-i; ivi i'i-i, -,:; i [ i -> :, -, :. .ii;:{ i..i 7 2 I I. 7.V 1 Xn. lllc^. 1)0 1.(0 l.vt n:< 2-.1 ."((lO Per cent. l]l(><r. 2 h :( i 4-1 7-1 7-1 ( .l 0 !>•! 10- "> 13-0