Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 6, 9 February 1899, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A SCIENTIMC 'oss.

' Everything's got a moral,' said the Duchess to Alice in Wonderland, 'if only you can find it.' The moral of the following story is not far to seek. It was told in the London Times by Canon McColl in the course of a strong controversial letter on the everlasting- subject of Ritualism. ' A friend of mine,' the Canon writes, ' once shared the box seat with the driver of a stage-coach in Yorkshire, and, being a lover of horses, he talked with the coachman about his team, admiring one horse in particular. " Ah," said the coachman, " but that 'oss ain't as good as he looks ; he's a scientific 'oss." "A scientific horse!" exclaimed my friend, "what on earth do you mean by that?" " I means," replied Jehu, "a 'oss as thinks he knows a deal more nor he does."' Your true scientist is ever gifted with the inborn modesty which is about the best setting for either virtue or learning. Newton was one of the most modest of men. So was Cardinal Newman. Justin McCarthy wrote of him : 'He had no scorn for intellectual inferiority in itself ; he despised it only when it gave itself airs.' Conceit is the fume of little minds. Vestris, the great dancer, used to say : ' There are only three great men in Europe — M. de Voltaire, King Frederick of Prussia, and myself.' It reminds one of Pawber'b rooster, that fancied the sun rose to hear him crow. But Yestri^'s conceit was harmless compared with that of the puny pseudo-scientists who reconstruct the Scriptures, and boldly and blatantly set up mere theories or surmises as solidly proven facts, and to whom —in Carl\ It's words— ' the creation ot the world is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumplmg.'

RKUGION IN THE SCHOOL.

Some people are colour-blind. Olhers are colour-ignorant. In the same way, some are fact-blind, some fact-ignorant, and many look the other way so that they may not see a disagreeable fact at all. Mr. James Allen, M.H.R., in speaking at the annual meeting of the Dunedin Anglican Diocesan Schools Union, laid down the broad principle that ' the essential base of a nation is religion.' As a public man he strongly held that the religious teachings of the Sundayschools civilised the young, helped tliem to withstand temptation, brought many under Christian influences that would otherwise — owing to careless homes and our secular school system — be without such training, and placed Parliament and the nation under a lasting debt of gratitude. The first principle laid down by Mr. Allen, duly extended, lies at the very base of the Catholic claims in the matter of education. But the Sunday-school is not everything. Nor is it everywhere. '1 housands of children in the Colony are outside its sphere of influence. Moreover, one half-hour per week is not sufficient to make the spirit of religion and morality what it ought to be, bone of the bone, flesh of the flesh of the school-child. And what shall we say of a system of public instruction which, as far as lies hi its power, excludes from the budding citizen, in his most plastic and most impressionable years, that which, according to Mr. Allen, is ' the essential base of a nation/ and without which (he added) no country can be truly great or prosperous ? There are unpleasant facts in connection with ' our glorious system ' which to Catholics and many Protestants are as vast and plain upon the landscape as the towering heights of Mounts Cook or Egmont. The secularist shuts his eyes fast or looks the other way and sees not so much as an ant-hill. He needs to be turned the other way, have his eyes rubbed with eve-salve, and hib brain-pan examined by an expert. That is all. Catholics have proved the sincerity ot their convictions in this matter. Let even a considerable Lsection of their Protestant fellow-colonists go and do likewise. *The education difficulty would "then speedily right itself. It would then matter very little whether the secularist was tactblind or fact-ignorant or fact-shy.

THE SAMOAN TROUBLE.

The Samoan kettle is still boiling-, but not at the same brisk rate as two weeks ago. The foolish talk about the domination of 35,000 islanders by 5.500 reminds one in a small way of the phrenetic cry ot the A.P.A. Sixty millions of American citi/ens were to be reduced to ' a worse than black slavery 'by the nine or ten millions that were Catholic. From a correspondent we learn the following further facts of interest regarding the pros and cons of the struggle for the crown of Samoa :: — ■ 1 With the Samoans religion does not enter into the question. The great bulk of the people are Protestants, and one with Mataafa, who, as everybody knows, is a Catholic. Some of the chief's closest relatives — even his brothers — are Protestants, whilst several of Malietoa's and Tamasese's family are Catholics. The islands have a total population of about 35,000. Of these 5,500 are Catholics, and 1,500 of these Catholics are followers of Malietoa. Falepouma, a Protestant, and one of the leading men of Samoa, in a letter to the Samoan Herald, deplores the fact that the occasion should have been seized to fan religious prejudices. He points out that the Catholics are in a decided minority, and any fears that may be entertained in this respect are groundless. He explains that he supports Mataafa for the same reasons that influence the almost entire population, " with the exception of tho^e who are for some reason or other under an obligation to side with a certain Protestant mission society." '

A NICKNAME: ' rill. I I'ALIAX MISS, ON.'

Who will write us a history of nicknames? Ihe subject offers a promising field for any book-wjrmish student of what is termed the philosophy of history ; for, until the contrary is proved, I will stoutly maintain against all comers that there is as much ot national character and of local manners and feeling locked up in the nicknames of an age or people as there are in its proverbs. Coarse nicknames are the shadow oi coarse manners. They abound most in the lower depths of society, as sediment falls to the bottom of the watertank. Hven the clarified 'uppah succles ' are never quite free from them. Beau Brummjl had his. So has Chauncey Depew. So have we all. Zimmerman was wrong when he said that nicknames stick for ever. Very clever ones do. But the mass of nicknames, like the mass of men, are not clever. They comj and go and alter their style and cut as fashions do. Take one class only — ecclesiastical nicknames. Dip into Luthei's Table-Talk (unexpurgited edition, if your stoimch is strong), and into the long procession ot publications issued by the Parker Society, and then say, if you can, that the fierce temper and the coarse-grained manners and morals of the Reformation period found not fitting expression in the vile or indecent termb which were Hung at the Pope and the Church of Rome, even irom the sanctified heights ot the pulpit ! Manners have altered mightily during the past 60 or 80 years. Nicknames have altered with them. Many of the fierce terms so long gaily flung at the Catholic Church by learned divines are now being fast confined to houses of ill-repute. Tne old vulgar nicknames struck with the mere brute force of a bludgeon wielded by a gorilla. The aesthetic bric-a-brac pulpiteers of our day need a dainty, engine-turned, hand-polished, filagreed weapon. They will ' pink ' you with it in the fifth rib, with a beatified air and with a m ike-believe that they are looking the other way, that you merely happen to fall on the point accidentally, and owe an apology for your blundering.

' The Italian Mission ' is one of the dainty nicknames that have been substituted for the fierce and filthy epithets that used to be flung with frothing lip and fiery eye and scornful forefinger at the Catholic Church. It is of recent manufacture, and emanated, I think, from the cerebral workshop of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The expression trips with a light lisp oif the lips of languishing young High Church curates, as did ' pickled peas ' from those ot psendo-aisthetic and lackadaisical maidens in the days when Charles Dickens was in his prime. The nickname is a High Church one. It was used

ty ' Anglo-Catholic (the title is confusing) in a letter to the Wellington Times. Whereupon ihe editor promptly blackens the writer's eye with the following back-hander : As our correspondent by the phrase ' Italian Mission ' evidently refers to the Roman Catholic Church, we uanut deprecate the use of language which may give offen ,c and provoke verbal reprisals. It would not conduce to brotherly love ii a member of the so-called Italian Mission' were to refer in a communication to ' tbe Anglican heresy.' i'et the one phrase is quite as accurate and in as go,d taste as the other. Better adhere to reeog-maed nomenclature. The editor confines himself, naturally, to the question of goodtaste. It is one point of view ; there is another and deepei one. • * • The term ' Italian Mission ' is used of the Catholic Church in an evidently depreciatory sense, and partakes of the nature of the many begging-question epithets which form an important part of the stock-in-trade of your fledgeling controversialists who have a weakness for acrobatic dialectics. The term is doubly misleading. In the first place it is manifiestly intended to convey the absurdly false idea that the Catholic Church, like the Anglican, is a merely national * concern ' — and Italian at that — whereas the speakers and the writers who use the foolish nickname know full well that she knows no bounds or bars of mountain, sea, or river; that she is, as her name implies, Catholic, that is, world-wide — the one Church on earth that has been able, down the course of ages, to hold together in the bonds of a marvellous unity, people of every clime and race and colour and tongue. The Church that is Catholic cannot be meidy national, nor can the merely national one be Catholic. The terms exclude each other. In the pre- Reformation days, as the distinguished Protestant historian Professor Maitland admits, ' the English Church was, in the eyes of its own judges [not a merely national Church but] a dependent fragment whose laws had been imposed upon it from without' — that is, from the pulsing centre of unity of the Universal Church. • # * Beneath the expression ' Italian mission ' there lurks likewise a wholly mistaken conception of the Church as founded by Christ, not like the Old Dispensation, for this or that state of people, but tor the whole world. The insular spirit and the false tradition of three centuries find double expression in the belauding of the helplessly broken and tangled national Church, and now in the attempted belittling of the Catholic Church by dubbing her ' Italian.' Let me quote from Anderdon :—: — If she were Italian indeed, then 0 fortnnatos nimium. bona si sua Dorint, Hos Italos ! [Happy beyond measure were those Italians, riid they but know the good things they possets !] But this is to shrink the kingdom of heaven back again to the dimensions of the synagogue. It is darning up the veil of the temple, that was rent in twain from the top throughout, when the handwriting of condemnation againt-t us poor pagans was nailed to our Lord's Cross. For if the Church were not both Universal and One, what would become of its other attribute, of its very existence 1 It would cease to be the Church of our Blessed Saviour's lips. Enough !

THfS SETTLES IT.

It is easy to prophecy when you are sure of your facts. Last week, on solid a pyiori grounds, I lacked the label ' fairy-tale ' to the cable message which stated that at the wedding- of Baron Cederstrom and Madame Patti-Nicolini there was to be ' a double religious ceremony,' in which a Catholic priest and a Lutheran minister were to divide the honours pretty evenly between them. The rumour was set afloat by somebody who was in a state of baptismal innocence as to the discipline of the Catholic Church on mixed marriages. The lines had scarcely gone to pi ess when there reached this office a copy of an authoritative contradiction of the statement cabled to "these shores. The denial was sent by Bishop Mostyn to a newspaper which had given currency to the statement. The following is a sufficient extract from Bishop Mostyn 's letter :—: — •As Bishop of the Catholic diocese in which Madame Patti-Nicolini resides, may I ask you to contradict this statement ? Such double ceremonial, being contrary to the discipline of the Catholic Church, could not be allowed ; and I am authorised by Madame Patti-Nicolini to state that as a matter of fact, at her wedding there will be none other than a Catholic marriage cttemony.'

ONE MAN'S MEAT, ETC.

Omnia sana snnis : to the sound in health all .things are wholesome. The principle is evidently a variant of the good old-timer, Omnia munda inundis. But I doubt if it is of such general application. ' One man's peptonised milk,' said a recent adapter of old saws, ' may be another man's pickled cucumbers.' Aulus Gellius tells us that the ducks of Pontus were endowed with stomachs of such boiler - plate pattern that poisons rather agreed with them. And Mithn-

dates the Great, king of the same region, so surface-hardened his digestive machinery with internal douches of antidotes, that his treacherous courtiers could find nothing strong enough to put it out of order, and he could not poison himself when he tired of life and sought an unbidden entry into the great Beyond. Two to three grains of arsenic (or, more correctly, of arsenious acid) is the fatal dose for a normally constituted adult human being built according to the usual plans and specifications. But the peasant girls, and even the men, ot Carinthia, Salzburg, the Tyrol, and Lower Austria, become, by dint of long practice, capable ot taking as much as six grains of the deadly thing at one dose, and yet feel tolerably comfortable afterwards. | Once the habit is established,' says a writer on the subject, 'it is impossible to give up arsenic eating. Terrible heart - gnawings follow any attempt gradually to stop the practice, and sudden cessation causes death.' Arsenic may, in brief, become as exacting a tyrant as morphia, cocaine, opium, king Jameson, or the new terror of domestic peace, petroleum. * * * A curious story of the effects of inhaling arsenic comes from Philadelphia. It is told in a recent issue of the Dunedin Evening Star, regarding the German barque Zion, which had on board 300 casks of arsenic. ' This part of the cargo,' says the Stay, ' had a remarkable effect on the crew. The fact that arsenic as well as strychnine helps the formation of adipose tissue when taken into the human system in minute particles is well known, and both drugs have become favourite tonics for convalescents. On board the Zion the men slept near the large array of barrels containing the drug. They were stored in the hold, near the forcastle, and partially exposed to the rays of the sun, which streamed in through the open hatch. When only about a week out from port one of the crew mentioned to his messmates that a peculiar and indescribable odour was coming from the casks containing the drug. It was not long after their attention had been draw to it that they all noticed the same thing, and strange to say, noticed it all the more forcibly a week later. Several of the German tars became aware of the fact that they were filling out their clothes to a much greater extent than when they shipped. Many others, as days went by, became abnormally stout, in vast contrast to the former slim appearance which many of them presented before the land was left. One man gained 251 b ; others were affected to a less extent, but the aggregate weight put on by the entire crew was little less than 4001 b. Several of the sailors, who were perfectly well known at Philadelphia, were scacely recognisable on arrival there. The entire sudden taking on of avoirdupois is attributed to vapour, which, generated by the action of the sun on the casks, was inhaled by the seamen as they slept, and acted in precisely the same manner which it does when given as a tonic in a prescription. Captain Hammes, who slept aft in the vessel, entirely removed from the arsenic, did not show any effects of the inhalation.'

TUB TR< TH CAME OUT.

The Waldensian Protestant Church in Verona (Province of Venice, Italy) must be in a bad way. Its pastor has been begging pecuniaiy assistance from abroad to aid him in giving a Christmas treat plus timely gifts — or bribes of bread, etc., to his poor Catholic neighbours. The worthy pastor has taken a leaf out of the book of the Connaught ' soupers,' who, in the agonising days of ' black forty-seven,' gave assistance to the starving only after, and on condition of, a previous act of apostacy on their part. ' The proposed Christmas function at Verona,' the Waldensian pastor wrote, ' presents a splendid opportunity of proclaiming the Gospel to numbers of Romam Catholics who never enter our church on any other occasion.' Truth sometimes oozes out in unexpected places. The Waldensian pastor's naive statement is a strong confession of ihe well-known fact that Protestantism, on its own merits, has nothing in it that appeals even to the poorest of the downtrodden poor in what used to be sunny Italy.

RELIC-WORSHIP,

Despite articles of faith and pulpit thunders, . relic-hunting and relic-worship have frequently assumed acute forms among our separated brethren. Luther's bulky drinking-bowl and breeks are religiously preserved in the house where he died. A tooth of Sir Isaac Newton's sold for a goodly pot of money in the first quarter of the present century. A rib-bone and some hair abstracted long ago from the coffin of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I, have only just been re-committed to mother earth after having long been in the possession of Princess Henry of Battenberg. So says the Times of December 22. And now comes the news that a brisk and profitable trade is being done in the trimmings of Bismarck's hair. One Herr Rohring, of Bergedorf, was the stern old Chancellor's hairdresser from May day of ißg<*till March 23, 1897. Herr Rohring had a keen eye for business — or rather two keen eyes that see far ahead. After each visit this ' artist ' — I cannot just now say whether a hairdresser is an artist or a professor gathered up the unconsidered snippings of the man of blood

and iron, stuffed them into an envelope, and enclosed therewith the letter of the great man's valet requiring his attendance on his master. Thereunto he made haste to add his own declaration of the facts on oath, and deposited the whole for safekeeping with a notary of Reinbeck, who duly attested their receipt and safe-keeping. The stock of relics was placed upon the market recently. Herr Rohring is only a hairdresser, but he knows more about the workings of human nature than a regiment of divines that we all know of.

IRISH CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.

A lively controversy has stormed and eddied around the advocacy of an Irish Catholic University by the London Spectator, from which I quoted recently. The briefest and most thoughtful contribution to the pen-tourney comes from the veteran statesmen, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. He writes : ' Sir, — In enumerating- the reasons for establishing a Catholic University in Ireland {Spectator, December 3; you have omitted the most serious and practical. Young Catholics have to run the race of life with Englishmen and Scotchmen, and they run it at a serious disadvantage for want of the training- and efficiency which a University education supplies. They are retarded in obtaining professions, and afterwards in procuring employment, from this want. It was my fortune to encounter in Australia hundreds, and indeed thousands, of bright, intelligent young Irishmen whose education had not fitted them for any employment beyond that of a clerk, and who in many cases became waiters in hotels, pound-keepers, railway -porters, and, of course, diggers, while better educated, and I will venture to say not better endowed, Scotchmen occupied superior positions. I have never heard any reason for refusing them this right, which a man of honour and integrity ought not to be ashamed to acknowledge. They are not asking anything new or peculiar ; there are two Protestant Universities in Scotland, and one essentially Protestant University for the minority in Ireland. In the name of common sense and common justice, why should there not be one essentially Catholic University for the majority ?'

A NEW NO-POPERY ASSOCIATION.

Bigotry dies hard, has a long agony, and rallies often, even when apparently in articulo mortis. At every temporary revival she is the same fierce, savage, tigrish creature as of old. Happily her claws are ttimmed and her fangs filed down by the temper of our times, and her roamings are restricted by the iron chain of statute law. Still, Ambition's self, though mad, And nursed on human gore, with her compared, I& merciful. The crusade inaugurated in England by that enterprising purveyor of malodorous publications, Kensit, has acted as a powerful tonic to the moribund bigotry whose spark of life was fast being confined to such fag-ends of Anglicanism as are represented by the various associations whose policy is that of Exeter Hall. The latest phase of its activity is represented by the formation of a new society, the members of which are pledged to exclude Catholics from every public position of honour, emolument, and trust in the country, and to do what lies in their power to secure the revival of the savage penal code which was repealed by the Emancipation Act of 1829. ♦ ♦ * The prospectus or pledge of the new association is issued from the office of the Ventilator, 150 Kingsland road, London, N.E. In County Council, Local Board, School Board, Parliamentary, and all other public elections, it pledges electors to vote only for those who ' stand by, maintain, and help to advance the pure Bible Protestantism of the English Reformation, including therein 'The Maintenance of the Principles of the Bill of Rights of 1688, holding fast to the Protestant Succession to the Throne of these Realms ; ' The Undoing of the Damage to Protestantism caused by the Surrender to Roman Catholics under their false and fraudulent Oaths and Promises, by the Passing of the Emancipation Act of 1829, and the Endowment of Popery thereby; ' The Exclusions of Papists, whether Roman or English, from English Seats in Parliament, and from Governmental or Administrative positions under the Crown ; for the simple reason that no Papist can be true to the Interests of a Protestant State inasmuch as his avowded principle^, teachers and teaching is a dead-blank opposition to National Liberty and Prosperity, both Commercial and Moral ; ' Revoking the Maynooth and all similar Money-Grants or Fdkments for the teaching of Popery ; no Money-Grants to ?l*nan Catholic Schools unless earned under public examination and public control ; 'The Refusal, also, to Permit so-called Irish "grievances!" or affairs in Parliament or elsewhere to further jeopardise and hinder much-needed English Legislative Progress and longdelayed National Social Reforms ;

' And the holding in Proper, necessary, and reasonable Control all men, women, and things, the well-known and avowed aim and purpose of whom and which — either personal or relatively, secretly or openly — is the Damage or Subversion of the Protestantism of these Realms ; which has been, is, and still shall be our Defence and Safeguard, so long as it is Honourably Maintained in its Purity, Simplicity, and Strength.'

This is a fine whoop ! And now as to ways and means. The leaflet continues :—: — • And for the better Securing of these my Deliberate Convictions and Purpose I further Pledge myself that henceforth Protestantism shall be the basis of my Politics, and that I will not join myself, or belong to or be influenced by any Political Party while Protestantism is endangered in our Nation, which Party will not undertake its Defence, Maintenance, and Promotion on the lines herein laid down. And further, I will make every effort possible to me both by Moral Suasion and the use of every Constitutional and Legitimate means at my disposal to Persuade and Win my fellow- Voters and Citizens to the endorsement and acceptance of these My Convictions and the voluntarily taking of and subscribing to this My Pledge. ' Seeing that the Success and Prosperity of Protestantism ensures the Benefit and Blessing of all men everywhere, and that Popery everywhere guarantees the very opposite, I Hereby Pledge my determined Opposition to Popery and everything Popish, whether of English Ritualists or of Rome; and I Pray God to Help Me in This My Resolve. ' In Witness Whereof I Hereto Sign my Name— Th is Day of 1 89-. Latet angilis in herba. There was no need of a new association to formulate or carry out this superfine political programme. Minus the bond of secret and illegal oaths, it is point for point the • ticket ' of the Orange Society in England as in Australia and New Zealand. It is couched in the politico-religious slang affected by the ' Sons of William,' and in all probability emanates from the portals of the happily decrepid institution known as the English Grand Lodge. The obscure rulers of that underground associaticn would not dare to boldly sign their names to any appeal to the general public ; for the name of the Orange Society stinks in the nostrils of all educated and loyal Englishmen ever since the stirring days of 1 835- 1 836, when the London Imperial Grand Lodge broke up under the shadow of indelible disgrace, after having corrupted the loyalty of 42 regiments of the line, and kept a quarter of a million of its fanatical followers armed and ready for a revolution which was to have snatched the crown from the Princess (now Queen) Victoria, and placed it on the head of the hoary old reprobate, Imperial Grand Master the Duke of Cumberland. The L.O.L. is given to fishing in turbid waters. It is merely playing its old game of selt-seeking and disloyalty under the hypocritical pretence of zeal for the cause of the Reformation.