RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 6, 9 February 1899, Page 31

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

In a late issue of the f'ntholic Times there is a caustic sub-leader on an incident, which took place in England quite recently. Here is how our contemporary deals with the matter :—ln: — In the 'Dark Ages,' somewhere about the year twelve hundred, in a remote district of Spain, where the people were frightfully ignorant andipriest-ridden, a poor man who differed in creed from those around him sought to put, np a stonrt over his mother's grave bearing an inscription expressive of his Christian sentiments. Will it be believed the bfirbirism and infoleranoe and inhumanity of those Spanish Papists of the Dark Ages was such that, though the man and all the members of his denomination contributed their share to the local rates and taxes, the local corporate body refused to permit the erection of the stone until they were alarmed by the fear of legal action and legal expenses 1 Good reader, let us not libel Catholics, the so-called Dark Ages, and the Spaniards of the year 1200. Catholics and Spaniards would be incapable of such conduct in any age. The incident took place neither in Spain nor about the year 1200, but in 18U8 and in Protestant England, great, glorious, and free. The actors were Father lleilly, of Leighton Buzzard, and the Leighton Buzzard Burial Board. The rev. gentleman and his father wished to raise a stone to the memory of Mrs. Reilly who died in October last year, and they caused to be inscribed upon it the usual Catholic appeal to pray for the soul of the departed, with St. Ambrose's words, ' We have loved her in life ; let us not forget her after death.' The Burial Board, as we have intimated, objected, delayed the erection of the stone for weeks, and only gave way through fear of litigation. Well may Father Reilly assert, as he does in a letter to the local Tress that the Spirit of the Test Act, the Corporation Act, and the Five Mile Act still survives.