THE EX-PRIEST CAMPAIGN IN NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3, 18 January 1900, Page 3

THE EX-PRIEST CAMPAIGN IN NEW ZEALAND.

SLATTERY AND HIS BOGUS 'EX-NUN' IN AUCKLAND

SLATTERY'S CAREER.

The Catholic body of New Zealand are doomed to go through a third agony of coarse public abuse and vilification. Some years ago the campaigns of insult were conduced by Edith • >'Gorman ai.d Chiuiquy. Now it in £x-priibt Ji.bcph Slattery and his female com panion, a bogus 'ex-nun,' who have descended upon our shores On Monday evening, as v\e learn Ly telcgiain, they inaugurated their evil work in Auckland. They are now bu-ily engaged, as far as lies in their power, in exciting sectarian passion and making it a source of revenue in this new and prosperous country whore people of every creed are willing to live in mutual good-will towards each Other and to work together in harmony for the common weal. It was the distinguished Anglican Archbishop Whateley who said that in religious controversy insult and mockery are as cowardly as the slaughter of women and children in war. The great Protestant churchman declared, moreover, that it was the duty of the State to protect law-abiding citizens from the grosser forms of outrage upon their religious sentiments. Much has been effected in the present century to soften the old-time asperities of religious controversy and to unite people of all creeds in the bonds of good fellowship for the public weal. But side by Bide with this growth of friendly feeling there has risen up a small but noiny and malodorous class of professional purveyors of lewd anti Catholic ribaldry— ' ex-priests ' and 'ex-nuns,' mo&tly of the bogus variety — whose evil trade is to revive or intensify sectarian enmity, to cater for a certain itching for pruriency, and to turn both into a means of lining their pockets with chinking coins of the realm. This oampaign is oarried on by means of calumnious 'lectures' which are an outrage upon common decency and upon the cherished religious sentiments of every Catholic mind. It is helped on by the ciroulation of a class of ' literature ' which a leading English newspaper condemned as ' a mass of disgusting obscenity, scandalously untrue and viciously impure.' Such gross forms of attack are opposed to the principles of natural morality that are known and practised by even a decent pagan. Language of strong invective against New Zealand Catholics would be intelligible to us if we had outraged justice and decorum in onslaughts upon the faith and the religious sentiments of our Protestant fellow-citizens. But in this we have not offended. Neither in this Colony nor elsewhere does any Catholic priest or layman make a living, after the Slattery fashion, by lectures ' to men only' and ' to women only' in coarse vilification of the members of another creed. If a Catholic priest so far forgot the decencies of life and the laws of charity and justice as to descend to this mode of controversy for any purpose, he would promptly find himself under ecclesiastical censure.* A Catholic layman guilty of such proceedings would be denounced from pulpit and altar. And neither would find a Catholic audience to listen to their evil tale.f The Gospel of Assafoetida. Catholic theology expressly recognises the respect which is due to the honesty and bona fides of the religious convictions of those who do not belong to our fold. We have no objection to arguments against our beliefs and religious practices, so long as they are put forward in a reasoning, candid, and inoffensive spirit. When this is done, we meet them in the same spirit, inoffensively and with good feeling. But the trade of this class of ' lecturers ' is one of open, coarse, and aggressive lying for filthy lucre. The staple of their attacks is infamous calumnies against the Catholic priesthood, gross and indecent attacks on the virtue of Catholic womanhood, and charges of wholesale and phenomenal immorality, infanticide, etc, against those pure and high-minded women who leave the world and its joys and embrace the religious life to educate the little ones, to minister to the orphan, the poor, the leper, the abandoned, and to the sick and wounded soldier where bullets fly and shells burst — as many of them are now doing at Kimberley and Mafekin>- and Ladysmith — and all this without fee or reward of any kind save wh.it they hope to receive from God alone. The chief attraction in the 'lectures' of 'ex-priests' and 'ex-nuns' is their pruriency or ob«cenity. The circulars of the ' lecturers ' ono and all are couched in terms which are expressly and purposely so worded as to excite impure curiosity with the promise of indecent • revelations.' % The idea is strengthened by the catchy expedient of lectures 'to men only ' and 'to women only.' It is carried out still further in the flood of infamous pamphlets, the sale of which adds to the revenue of the apostles of filth. It is on the prurient and the impure that the crusade thrives best. An idea of the scandalous nature of this part of the campaign may be gathered from tbe fact that the circulation of such literature was stopped last year by order of an Edinburgh court, and that lliordan (alias Ruthven), and Joseph Slattery (who is now doing the devil's work of arousing sectarian passion in New Zealand at so much per night) were both sentenced to terms of imprisonment for its circulation in the United States, where the law-courts are supposed not to be over-squeamish in such matters.

*An Australian Catholic bishop— wo behe\ eit was the bishop of Lismore—recently declared in a letter to the local press that he would in such a case, immediately visit the offending cleric with ecclesiastic .1 censures t When Sister Mary Agnes. 0.5.8..' wrote her Gunnery Life in the Church of England in 1890 both s,hc and her book were boycotted by the Catholic body. X London Truth, in November, 18U8, had the tollowing regarding a notorious bogus ' ex-priest ' and gaol-bird who rivalled Slattery's outrageous utterances in Great Britain, and who, like Slattery. is also a Baptist minister- ' I have before me one ot the handbills of his lectures at Southampton which are obviously worded in such a way as to appeal to the most prurient taste* and instincts, and any person of average intelligence would see in these handbills that the man is a thorough blackguard. Protestantism seems to be very unfortunate in enlisting the services of champions of this character'

The itinerant 'ex-priest' and ' ex-nun' are usually careful to limit themselves to broaa and general charges of wickedness and immorality against the Catholic body. Did they single oat speciao living 1 individuals, with their real names— and not merely supply fictitious names, as Slattery's wife does— they would speedily find themselves in the errip of the law. Their charges rest directly or in their final resort on their own unsupported assertions or assumptions. This fact at once raises the question of the personal character and credibility of the accusers. But they are singularly shy of inquiry into the facts of their past career. And with good reason. For in every instance in which — whether by the action of the police ur uiheiwists — (lie facLi of lliih hiatory have come to light, their antecedents have been such as to hopelessly damage tbeui us witnesses either in their ovvu favour or against auy other ptr»on or corporate body— and leant of all against those whom they havo a strong pecuniary interest in vilifying. A New Gallery of Gods. 1. They are almost invariably obscure individuals from remote villages and little-known places in distant lands. The only 'credentials' which they usually possess a-< to critical periods of their past career are the good which they affirm of themselves and the evil which they ascribe to others. We find among them no leader of men, uo brilliant mind, no one prominent either for piety or for talent. Men of recognised ability, and, at the same time, of bitter anti-Catholic feeling, have from time to time severed themselves of their own accord, or been severed by ecclesiastical sentence, from the communion of the Catholic Church Among them were such men as Blanco White, Reinkens, Loyson, Doliinger. They searched the Church, as one author puts it, ' like a horse-fly on the look for sores.' They knew her and her theology far more intimately than Slattery. And they did not spare her wherever they discovered what they fancied was a vulnerable spot. But not one of them ever prostituted his talents by abandoning honest and clean controversy for the coarse and brutal calumnies that form the stock-in-trade of the ' ex-priest ' and the ' ex-nun ' business that la now in full operation in New Zealand. 2. Another striking feature in the alliance of bigotry with pruriency is the enormous — we might cay overwhelming — percentage of the alleged ' ex-priests ' and ' ex-nuns ' who are not and have never been Catholics. This is easily accounted for. There's money in the business, and plenty of it. An affidavit of Slattery's nephew, John Slattery, states that the ' ex-priest ' made £800 in three weeks by his Melbourne ' lectures.' Chiniquy is said to have taken £30,000 out of Australia. In fact, the profits of the business were for some years so great that the ' profession ' became uncomfortably overcrowded, until the congestion was relieved by the action of the police and criminal courts and the pamphlets of the Catholic Truth Society. The capital necessary for embarking in it is merely a filthy tale that may be concocted direct from a lewd imagination, or at second-hand from the lying pages of the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. From Achitli to Slattery and hia female companion there has been little or no originality in the style of fiction that finds favour with the prurient-minded supporters of this Zolaesque class of low romancists. It is simply Maria Monk* with variations. 3. Another peculiarity of this strange profession is this : that the ' ex-priest ' — whether real or bogus — is invariably accompanied by the usual female companion, who almost as invariably poses as an 1 ex-nun.' (There is at present no genuine ex-nun on the lecturing platform — Ellen Golding and Edith Gorman having been compelled to retire into obscurity owing to the exposure of the facts of their career by the Catholic Truth Society). The 'ex-nun' — whether real or fictitious — has been, in every instance that we know of, accompanied by a husband or by a ' protector 'of the male Bex. The Morning Star, a non-Catholic paper, had the following comment on a genuine ex-priest who lectured at Fort Wayne (U.S.A.) towards the close of 1893 : ' Odd as it may appear, every time a priest becomes converted and renounces Catholicism, he promply plunges into the deep sea of matrimony. Just as soon as the animal in a priest begins to overbalance the spiritual, he at once becomes deeply impressed with the fallacy of his religion, and converts himself into a Protestant, and then hunts up a wife. The wife is usually an "escaped nun" or something of the kind.' Here we have, from an American non-Catholic editor, a variant on the sarcastic comment of Erasmus oh ' converts ' of this class : ' Two things are they in search of —cash and a wife.' 4. We have referred to the marked unwillingness of these itinerant lecturers to court a frank and fair inquiry into the facts of their past history. This unwillingness is quite intelligible to anybody who has taken the trouble, as we have, to watch and note their records whenever obtainable. As a result of inquiries extending over several years we have succeeded in tracing the careers of some thirty or more gross ' ex-priest ' slander-mongers. The greater part of them were not priests, a big percentage of them were not even Catholics. Such of them as were priests were, without a single exception, driven forth, as Slattery was, from the sacred ministry for oonduct unworthy of their high and holy calling. We have failed to find amongst this whole class of coarse 'lecturers' one man of unblemished character. With one or two possible exceptions every one of them — whether real or fictitious ex-priests — ' is known to the police ' and has made the acquaintance of a prison cell. It would be impossible m this rapid sketch to give even the briefest summary of the notorious facts of the lives of those unhappy men as told in the columns of the daily press and in the records of the police and criminal courts of England,

•* Mana Honk is the great text-book of Mr». Slattery. The story was attributed to, but not written by, a poor, halt-witted non-Catholio fallen woman named Maria Monk. This poor ortature was for a time an inmate ot a refuge tor 'soiled doves,' and spent most of her career— where she also ended it— behind the iron doors of a Canadian gaol. A complete exposure of th« Maria Monk fraud will bo found in The True Story of Maria Monk ("Catholic Truth Society, ldj, mainly a reprint of an article in the Dublin Revun oi May, 1836.

Sootland, Ireland,ithe United States, Australia, &c. But the following random name-list from a long catalogue of ' ex-priests ' before us will serve to convey a fair idea of a class that for the last half century have been making a dishonourable livelihood by arousing and trading on sectarian passioa and corrupting the minds of youth with pamphlets which, in the words of Newman, ' cannot have been intended for any other purpose than to afford merriment in the haunts of vice and profligaoy ' :—: — ' Ex-priest ' Koehler was sent to gaol for larceny at Buffalo on March 13, 1895. A few weeks previously he had served a term in the Erie County Penitentiary for obtaining money under false pretences. ' Ex-priest ' Kiordau was sentenced" to 12 months' imprisonment for swindling at the Erie County Sessions on April 25, 1893. ' Ex-priest ' McNamara received 12 mouths' iuipii->onnient on another charge ' Ex-prieet ' Thorp was imprisoned in Wyoming for bigamy. ' Ex-priest ' Chiniquy was deposed for intemperance on September 20, 1851, and again (by the Bishop of Chicago) on November 20, 1856. He was also expelled by the Presbyterian Synod, in 18fi2, 'for fraud and gross swindling.' Another 'expriest' — an A.P.A. lecturer with half-a-dozen aliases — acquired a very unenviable notoriety at Wisconsin a few months ago, and finally eloped with a farmer's wife. An American contemporary tells us that, previous to this, ' one of his lectures in Canada was so indecent and obsce&a that he had to fly across the border into the United States to escape arrest.' Achilli, not to put too fine a point upon the matter, was a common blackguard. Another member of the fraternity was 'up' for the theft of clothing in Dublin in October, 1895. ' Er -priest ' Joseph Slattery (now in New Zealand) was, by his own confession, as we shall see, sentenced to imprisonment in America for selling indecent literature. Another, Don Paolo Miraglia, was, in last August, condemned at Piacenza to five months' imprisonment and a fine equal to £15. 'Ex-priest' Hicks served several long terms of imprisonment in Texas, and is described as a 'forger, evangelist, A.P.A. lecturer, and all-round scoundrel.' ' Ex-monk ' Wiridows was, says London Truth of March 30, 1899, sentenced to 10 years' penal servitude for a crime which involved ' a piece of as revolting immorality as it would be possible to conceive.' Other prominent members of the ' ex-priest ' fraternity were the American pick-pocket Lawrence, the swindler Rudolph, and many other criminals or adventurers to whom it would be tedious to refer in detail. We do not pretend to know how Riordan, Bluett, Koehler, Hicks, and many other such succeeded, like Slattery, in joining and remaining in the Baptist ministry. But the fact remains that both the downright adventurers and the genuine priests who are compelled to leave the Catholic ministry through bad conduct, generally make their way, now-a-days, either directly or by degrees, to those minor denominations in which sectarian prejudice is strong and the level of clerical education low. As a rule they shun the larger Churches — those which include considerable sections of the educated olaat-es and which are generally ministered to by a scholarly and broadminded clergy. Wo have no doubt that this unhappy class of itinerant revilers wonli be as ready to lecture for Rome as readily as they lecture againpt her — if there was money in it. They have shown themselves to be alike strangers to shame and impervious to exposure, Here in New Zealand Buch adventureie are, happily, lictle known. In America. however, their evil record so stinks in the public nostril that so far back as the close of IS'Jj their priucipal c nplnyers — the A.P.A. (the Orange organisation of the Unitf d States)— found it necessary to discard them in the following official circular from the supreme council of the Association :—: — ' Whereas ex-priests a~d ex-nuns were going around (he country lecturing or purporting to he lecturing under the auspices of the A P.A , therefore be it resolved that we will not tolerate any such work as this; and, furthermore, be it resolved that whenever an expriest or ex-nun is lecturing, or claims to be lecturing, under the auspices of the A P.A., that we denounce them and show thorn up. And I would especially warn the presidents of the various councils not to engage or employ any ex-priest or ex -nun to lecture for the A.P.A., as they do the Order more harm than good ' * Slattery and his Orange Friends. Ia England an association known as the Protestant Alliance ! has taken many of these itinerant professional slanderers under its wing. But their chief dependence is upon the Orange Society. There is a stringent rule in this Society against admitting to memberbhip any one ' who is or has at anytime been a Papist.' The grand lodges, however — including that of New Zealand — make an exception in favour of professionals of the type we r<fer to. Thiir attacks on the Catholic body are, apparently, sufficient ' testimonials of good character.' They admitted to membtrship Koehler. Riordan, {alias Luthven), MeNamara, Chiniquy, Widdows, and the whole horde of such swindlers and adventurers as came within their reach, and furnished them with audiences and special funds, f unshamed by the repeated exposures aud the frequently successful criminal prosecutions which followed the career of many of those unhappy men in England, Scotland, and the United States. Expriest Joseph Slattery (now • lecturing ' in New Zealand with a bogus ' ex-nun ') is also a member of the Orange Association. So we learn from one of its ' accredited organs,' the Victorian Standard of March 30, 1899. It sajs (p. 9) that 'the reverend gentlemau is a member of the Loyal Orange Institution, and cines hither [to Australia] witu official letters of recommendation from Bro Touchstone, Grand [Secretary of the Loyal Orange Institution of England.'

* In the United States (hiiyh the Boston 1'ilot), the trade of the A.P.A. lecturers was thai "i>l stunng up strife among American labouring men of one religion against labouring men ol another religion.' 'Brvanism' scotched tho A I' A. conspiracy by solidifying the labour element. When Bryan was n«ruinit< d tor President and the A I.a. collapsed in ignominy, v notorious but genuine ex-pnest lectuier and gaol-turd is said to ha\u remarked : 'It this tlnug keeps on, it is goin? to play hell with my tnide.' t For an instaneo ol the raising ol special tunds see the \irto>t,ot Standard ot June 2, 1885. This paper described itself in lU ls-ue ol Apul :>U 18U7, as 'the accredited organ ot the [Orange] institution m Victoria.'

The same paper of August 31, as well as one of Slattery's pamphlets, show that he has recommendations from one James Ray, whodescribes himself as ' Supreme Grand Master ' of the Orangemen of America. A later issue of the same despicable news-sheet — that of June 30, 1899 — contains (p. 13) a communication from Dunedin which giveß ub to understand that the Orange body had written to Slattery inviting 1 him to come for ' a New Zealand tour.' Yet another issue of the same vile monthly explains the motive of the invitation to Slattery. It is to this effect : that Orangeism is making no headway in this Colony, and that to galvanise it into activity ' a little more opposition,' writes the New Zealand correspondent of the Orange organ, 'is needed.' And that opposition, it is plainly hoped, will be aroused by the coarse, vehement, and brutal attacks of Slattery and his wife on the character of the Catholic priesthood, on the virtue of the Catholic womanhood, and on every religious sentiment that Catholics hold dear. His most prurient charges refer to alleged immorality in the confessional. He dares not commit himself to specifio charges against living individuals by name. Such a coarße would afford the public the opportunity of seeing his veracity tested in a law-court. He prefers broad and general accusations which, translated into ordinary speech, simply come to this, that Catholic men habitually connive, under the cloak of religion, at immorality on the part of their wives, sisters, and daughters. In the same way he charges priests in a wholesale manner with the foulest crimes. Here again his caution does not desert him. If he accuned any living specifio priest with immorality his career of slander would meet with a very sudden termination in the lawcourts. We know that it is hard for Catholics to bear up patiently under an infamous and cowardly crusade of this kind. We exhort them, however, to possess- their soulb in patience, and to remember that the sympathies of every respectable Protestant in the Colony ia with them. Adventurers of the Slattery type, like the Orangemen, like ' a little opposition ' of the physical order. But to attack them in this way is to help their work by giving them a plausible excuse for posing as martyrs to ' freedom of speech.' Let no Catholic, then, assist them to become notorious except with that only form of notoriety which they will not court — the free and systematic circulation of this and such-like exposures of the true facts of their career alike to the general public and to the frequenters of their lectures.' Sunbeams from Cucumbers. You may hope to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. But you must not expect truth from those wandering pets of Ananias who make a dishonourable livelihood by maligning the Catholic body. Slattery and his so-called ' Sister Mary Elizabeth ' are bold, if not skilful, fibsters. We shall give a thorough exposure of the career of the female impostor in our next issue. As for Slattery : it would be maniftstly impossible, in the brief compass of a newspaper article, to even touch upon th-s seething mass of malignant falsehood contained in his various lectures and pamphlets. Nor is it necessary. For Slattery is not even a plausible liar. There ia, so to speak, a total lack of aerial perspective in his mad ' pictures.' The colours are too uniformly black and too heavily iinpastoed. In other words, the sheer monstrosity of his tales is their beet j refutati >n. He lies bravely. But he lies so clumsily and inconsistently that, as the reader is already aware, he oversteps the hound-, of art in lyin/, and becomes not so much a relatively clever I)e Ri.ujjemont as a broad and vulgar Munchausen. The staple of his monstrous charges is bald, unsupported statement. They rest upon his own assertion and assumption, and on that alone. Fortunately we have abundant means of testing his reliability as a witness. Ami this we shall do by reference to a few of the many vital matters in which he has proved himself a willing, if clumsy, perverter of sacred truth. For obvious reasons we select some facts of his personal career of which he would have been a competent, if he had only been a truthful, witness. (1) In one of his lectures delivered at the Baptist Church, Brunswick, Melbourne, on Thursday, May 23, 1899, he said: 'I thank God I was never under the influence of liquor during the whole of my life. I have been during the whole of my life an absolute and complete teetotaller.' * ~ (2) In his semi-illiterate and ungrammatical Complete Refutation of Popish Lies he says (p. 7) : 'I was never under the influence of intoxicating drink in my life.' (3) In his lectures and in the fifth chapter of what we may by courtesy call his book, f he tells us that his whole and sole reason for leaving the exercise of his miuistry in the archdiocese of Dublin (to which he belonged) was an alleged discovery made by him that the Catholic doctrine of intention was untenable. % (4) Again : he denied in the columns of the Christian Scotsman, towards the close of 1897, and in his Complete Refutation (p. 4) that he was imprisoned in America for belling indecent publications.

** Verbatim report m the Victorian Standard, the Orange organ of Victoria, Maj 31. 1«(W, page 9. 3rd col f .Secrets of Romish I'ntits Exposed — a tissue of raging falsehood and rampant fallacy. It purports to have been written by Slattery and is dedicated to his wile. Tho Complete Refutation also purports to be, and probably was, written by him, as it contains many Hibornicisms, slips in grammar, And crude remarks such as might naturally be looked for in an Irishman of limited education. It wis printed at kunderland in 1898. The other was printed in America in 18DJ, and is in style and expression so different from tho Complete Refutation that it cannot be, as it stands, the work of the saint writer. % Slattery misstates this doctrine, and then proceeds to elaborately refute his misatatement. Slattery either does not know Catholic theology on this point or he deliberately misrepresents it. For the general reader tne best popular exposition ot the subject is The Doctrine of intention, by the Rev. Sydne> V. S-mith, S.J., published by the Catholic Truth Society (pp. 16,1 d, obtainable from all Catholic booksellers). That valuable little pamphlet meets and easily dispose* of the shallow fallacies of Slattery. He ekeß out hiH evident lack of real education vrith a boundless eftruntery, and falls in with the class who, ia the words ot a brilliant American magazine writer, 'd nt know a syllogism from a haystack, yet who glibly dispute the scholaily reasonings of those who, like Newman and Browning, devoted their transcendent talentb and thoir whole lues to theology.'

We purposely select these statements of Slattery for the following chief reasons :—: — (a) Because they are plain questions of fact that admit of being tested even in New Zealand. If Slattery i<* — as he emphatically is — a wholly unrealiable witness as to the fai ts of his own career, his evidence is obviously even more tainted when directed against a body of people the vilification of whom he is coining into chinking drachmas. (<t>) Because the official and authoritative disproof of these statements has been notoriously before the world for many years past, both in pamphlet form and in the columns of the newspaper press of America, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Australia. (tf) Because our communications with the countries named regarding the career of the Slatterys has confirmed us in our belief that in each and all of these matters Slattery has — to put the matter in plain Anglo-Saxon — deliberately lied. (d) Because, in addition to being tests of personal veracity, the published and notorious refutation of these four statements affect so profoundly his character and reputation as a minister of the Gospel as to disentitle him to all claims either to credence or to respect. (c) Because, though repeatedly and publicly challenged thereto, in the United States, England, Scotland, and Australia — in the Catholic and the Protestant and the secular Press, and by public placard and by registered letter— he has not deemed it prudent to appeal to the protection of any court to establish his innocence of charges arising out of the refutation of his statements which seriously effect his character both as a clergyman and a citizen. What these oharges are we shall presently see. 'Give him the Pledge!' We •hall first deal with his statements (1) and (2) that he has been all bis life a total abstainer, and that he has never been under the influence of intoxicating drinks. These statements and their refutation call to mind the well-known story of Father Healy, of Bray, who was once a fellow priest of Slattery's during the few years that the latter officiated in, or ' hung on by,' the diocese of Dublin. Father Healy was about to enter a railway carriage at Killiney station when he observed that it was nearly filled by Anglican clergymen, with some of whom he was on terms of close friendship. Among them was Lord Plunkett, the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He noticed that Father Healy hesitated ' Oh, come in, Father Healy,' said Lord Plunkett, ' come in ! I want to ask you a question. A gentleman of your cloth has come over to us, and I want to know what we should give him.' ' I think,' replied Father Healy, quietly, 'that you should give him the pledge.' Joseph Slattery — a native of Limerick — wag ordained for the archdiocese of Dublin on May 24, ISBO. Within three years after his ordination he had become a victim to intemperance, and was at last, after many warnings, removed from the ministry by Archbishop Walsh. His history in the archdiocese of Dublin is briefly told in the following correspondence between him and the late Cardinal MacCabe. The first part of both these letters is holographic — i.e., entirely in Cardinal MacCabe's handwriting. Under the Cardinal's signature in each letter Slattery has, in hia own handwriting, written and duly signed his acceptance of the conditions imposed on him, and thus personally given the lie direct to the statements subsequently made in his lectures to the effect that he had been all his life a total abstainer. The correspondence between Cardinal MaoCabe and Slattery runs as follows :—: — ' 1 Rutland Square E., ' Dublin, Bth November, 1883. 1 Dear Father Slattery, — I send you by this post an appointment to the curacy of Morne. You receive faculties now on the express understanding that you are a total abstainer. Your faculties will continue aa long as you keep the pledge ; they will terminate the moment it is violated under any pretext or advice. If you wish to accept your appointment and faculties on these conditions, write your acceptance underneath and return the letter to me. — I remain, yours, etc., 'E. Card. MacCabe.' ' I most willingly and thankfully accept my appointment. Wishing you many long and happy years over us.— l remain, your most obedient servant, ' Joseph Slatteby.' ' 4 Rutland-square, E., ' Dublin, 17th January, 1885. 'Dear Fr. Slattery,— T am greatly pained by finding myself compelled to remove you again. Little more than twelve months have passed since you were sent to Morne, on the express understanding that you were bound by the Total Abstinence Pledge, and that by the violation of that pledge you ipso facto lose the faculties of thediocese. I have before me my letter sending you to morne, in which you express your assent to the condition I required from you. ' There is, I am sorry to say, too much reason to fear that you have not kept your promise, and consequently that you are administering Sacraments sacrilegiously. • Your conduct, moreover, is giving a good deal of dissatisfaction ; however, I will give you one other chance, but it will be the last. 'With this letter you will receive your appointment to the curacy of Eilbride and Barndarrig. That appointment is made on the following conditions :—: — ■£ ' Ist. That you take the pledge from Canon Brady, the V.F. of your district, from whom I expect a certificate of the fact. ' 2nd. That the violation of that pledge in any shape or form without a written permission from the Ordinary of the diocese brings with it ipso facto suspension.

'3rd. That this suspension is absolutely reserved to myself personally. • If you are willing to submit to these terms, write your acceptance underneath and return this letter to me immediately. — Faithfully yours, ' E. Card. MaC'abe.' ' I accept the appointment on these conditions with many thanks. 'JOSEPH Slattery.' AcwHng to the Liverpool Cotltnlic Timr* of January 6, 1899, the original correspondence between Cardinal MacCabe and Plattery was, in reply to a challenge by the latter, sent by Archbishop Walsh, through the Bishop of Newport, to Mr F. W. Lewis, of the St. Teilo's Society, for inspection by the employers of the ex-priest the Welsh National Protestant League. We may state that we have been for some time past in correspondence with the distinguished prelate who now so worthily wears the mitre of the archiepiscopal See of Dublin, and shall at the proper time produce and duly prove the correspondence between his eminent predecessor and the unhappy man who is now stirring up and profiting by sectarian rancour in a country where people of every Christian creed have hitherto lived in harmony. Cardinal MacCabe's leniency was, however, wasted, and his successor, .Archbishop Walsh, was compelled, in the interests of religion, to dispense with Slattery's services. The ex-priest -went beneath the surface of things for a time. In 1887 he came to the surface again. He was then a student at the Theological Seminary in Colgate University at Hamilton, N.Y., having been sent thither at the expense of the Baptist Education Society. Here, according to a New York paper of March 2, 1895, in a brief sketch of his career, he posed as an ex-priest who had renounced the Church of Rome from ' conscientious scruples,' and a paper published at the University stated — presumably on Slattery's authority — that he had been educated at Maynooth. Father J. V. McDonnell, a Catholic priest resident at Hamilton, thereupon furnished Archbishop Walsh with these statements and requested him to give the real facts of Slattery's career. The Archbishop sent him the following reply :—: — ' Archbishop's House, Dublin, 'May 22, 1889. ' My Dear Father McDonnell,— You or any other person, ecclesiastic or layman, will be perfectly safe in challenging inquiry aa to the antecedents of unfortunate Father Slattery. In Cardinal MacCabe's time he broke down very badly from intemperance. About a fortnight before the Cardinal's death he received an appointment on condition of binding himself in a most stringent way to the total abstinence pledge. There was a distinct written intimation— the original of which I hold — that this was to be the last chance. ' Well, he broke down again. I thought it right, even after all this, to give him one chance more — of course with the intimation that it would be the last, fo far aa I was concerned. He broke down again, and I was unable to have anything more to do with him. ... I may add that he was not educated at Maynooth. ' Sincerely yours, ' William J. Walsh, ' Archbishop of Dublin.' This letter was sent to Dr. Dodge, President of Colgate, by Father McDonnell. * Towards the close of 1897 it was republished in England. Slattery thereupon fell back upon the ready expedient so frequently resorted to by Edith O'Gorman : he threw doubts upon the authenticity of Archbishop Walsh's letter. This ruse often succeeds for a time, for communication with the writers of original documents is sometimes slow, often costly, and the game of bluff plus a few days' delay generally enables itinerant slandermongers to get away to places where the atmosphere is less oppressive. In the present instance, however, the respite was but brief. Dean Lynch (now of St. Winifred's, Hulme, Manchester) was upon the tracks of Slattery and his female companion. A. letter from him to Archbishop Walsh elicited the following reply :—: — ' Archbishop's House, Dublin, ' December 13, 1897. 'Dear Father Lynch,— The letter dated May 22, 1889, and addressed to Father McDonnell, which bad been published in so many American and now in so many English newspapers, was undoubtedly written by me. ' That it refers to the lecturer now in England there can be no doubt, for only one priest of the name of Slattery has left this diocese under any circumstances within living memory, and the one who left was the unfortunate victim of drink about whom I wrote to Father McDonnell. In my letter to Father McDonnell I referred to a letter written to this unfortunate man by Cardinal M'Cabe. This letter, of course, has been preserved, with other documentary evidence, including some in Father Slattsry's handwriting. But what further evidence can be required ? The case is a lamentable one, absolutely without parallel in my experience. ' I remain, dear Father Lynch, ' Faithfully yours, ' William J. Walsh, 'Archbishop of Dublin.' A fair Challenge. We may close this part of an unpleasant subject — which only Slattery's present crusade could have compelled us to touch upon— by reference to the latest of the many challenges issued to him and his wife during the past few years. We refer to the challenge issued by Mr. Joseph Winter, of the Advocate, Melbourne, and published in various papers (including the Presbyterian organ, the Southern Cross in June, 1899) during Slattery's stay in Melbourne. That challenge is now before us. Mr. Winter published in his newspaper and in pamphlet form the following two charges : 'To make the

issue plain : lt-t. I charge Mr. Slattery with being an unfrocked priest, and that his faculties were withdrawn from him for intemperance. 2nd. I assert that the woman known as the Escaped Nun was never a nun in St. Joseph Convent, Poor Clares, in Cavan, Ireland, in the year 1888 or a few years after, as stated ny her.' Mr. Winter called upon Slattery to proceed against him for libel and offer, d to ' prove the charge* contained in the pamphlet up to the hilt.' ' As an inducement,' he continues, 'to Mr. Mattery, I will deposit £100 with some responsible pprflnn, say the M^yor of Melbourne, provided Mr. Slattery deposits a similar amount; if Mr. Slattery obtains a verdict, my deposit would go to him : and if I obtain a verdict, hia £100 be given, not to me, but to the Melbourne Hospital. I will place a second £100 against a like amount from him, if be can prove in a law court that his companion, whom he calls the Escaped Nun, wan ever a nun in St. Joseph's Convent of Poor Clares, Cavan, Ireland, in the year stated by her. Should he fail to prove this, his £100 be given to St. Vincent's Hospital. This ia a challenge which any honest man ought to accept.' But Slattery did not accept it. On the contrary, he publicly declined to do so. The public can judge the reason why. We may state that the challenge is open still, should the doughty ex-priest take heart of grace to meet it. His ' Conversion.' The letters of Cardinal MacCabe and Archbishop Walsh sufficiently explain the ' conversion ' of Joseph Slattery. He did not. as stated in his book (p 60) and in his lectures, leave the ministry of the Catholic Church of his own accord. He was driven out of it. There are broken down clergy in every denomination. So long as human nature is frail, and so long ac there are some who enter the priesthood not called, as Aaron was — not by the door, but over the wall — so long will it be necessary to inflict the censures of the Church upon priests here and there who fall far below the high standard of their holy calling. It is one of the highest testimonials to the Catholic Church that she casts out from her ministry men like McXamara and Slattery, and prevents fellows of the type of the bogus 'ex-priests' Riordan (alias Ruthven) and Xobbs (alias Widdows) from ever attaining to the priesthood. As for Slattery. his 'conversion' wa^ determined by the fact of his dismissal from the ranks of the Irish Catholic clergy. His own account of his 'conversion ' is self -contradictory, does not hang together, and is not worth a moment 'u consideration in the face of the evidence referred to above. Thus, in a lecture of his published by the Chrntian Scotsman of July 3. \H\)l* he gives an eluborate account of his diffi. oulties, tells how he submitted them to his brother priests, then to his bishop, and finally to a conference of thirty or forty priests. In his lecture at the Baptist Church. Brunswick, Melbourne,f he omits all reference to the bishop, and reduces the conference of priests from forty to thirteen ! In his Stcrtta of Romish Prusti (p. (!()) he represents himself as having, while yet ministering in the Catholic Church, ' lost iaith in what [he] wa.s doing.' But he kept on 'doing' it all the same, until, 'after mature thought and deliberation, [he] gave up Rome.' We are in a way glad that the two archbishops' letters save us the mortification ol believing that any priest would be guilty of exercising the awful my-teries of a religion in which he had ' lost faith.' He then proceeds to tell us that utter he had • stepped out from Rome ' he was 'on the verge of inndility." Then, according to one account, he was converted through having a very familiar text of the Bible explained to him by one who is \ a^uely referred to as ' a Captain Johnson, of the British army." in his mendacious book or pamphlet (p. <il) the gallant warrior who does the expounding of the Scriptures appear*, under an altos — after the manner of • ex-priests' Nobbs and Riordan and "Father Leo ' — and is (again somewhat vaguely) referre 1 to as ■ Captain Thompson, of Dublin." A plausible fibster needs a good memory, a constructive faculty, a sense of -proportion, and a nice perception of probabilities. Slattery is manifestly deficient in all of these. As a result, e\en a superficially critical examination of his pamphlets would condemn them, on internal evidence alone, as wholly untrustworthy and misleading. Tales for the Marines. Slattery's insane tales of Catholic depravity are manifestly not intended for educated people who read and think. His appeal is made exclusively for that gullible portion of the community that ib attracted by garish monstrosities and blood-curdling horrors, behind which there lies the hope or promise of prurient 'revelations.' Such people lack the critical faculty. They have an insatiable hunger and thirst for the monstrous, the gory, and the impossible. Like the Queen in Through thr Looltnuj Glas<t, by assiduous practice they become at last capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. For another class the prurient would, apart from its truth or falsehood, be manifestly the chief attraction. Mr. Labouchere. a non-Catholic and editor of Truth, hits off as follows the drift of the Slattery combination . • It must be perfectly obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the world that these lectures are delivered simply for the purpose of putting money into the lecturer's pocket, and that to gain his end the lecturer is appealing to pruriency and indecency under the guise of religion.' Mr. Adams, Chairman of the Hoard of Stewards of one of the Methodist churches of Savannah, wrote a leiter dated March 9, 18iC>, to the Xttxhnlh Atlrorutr. the official organ of the Methodist Church South (U.S A.I, denouncing Slattery "h lectures and handbills l!e says : •J do not hesitate to i-ay that I cannot understand how a Christian or a gentleman, or a decent man. could have been, as .-slattery was, the author of these handbills. Catholics were caturally and properly v< ry much exaspt rated, and it seems to me that all fair-minded people ought to have been indignant.' The Church 7 mnx, an Anglican organ, in a recent article, deplores

* Reprinted from the- /lotion Citi:<'n. t Reported verb itim in the I ictor wn Standaid ol May 'H IW.

the outbreak of fanatical feeling, and says that it is ' directly responsible for calling out a flool of obscene literature, letters, and postcards, which of themselves would disgrace any cause.* The wellknown charges of Truth (it continues) have never been answered, and, therefore, judgment must go by default, but also it should be recollected that the offence is still being committed. The subject of the confessional has given occasion to a number of prurient-minded people to evolve imaginary charges out of their own dirty minds. When they have ventured on a specific charge, they have been met at once and their falsehoods exposed, but still they go on stumping the country and bringing general charges, apparently because they are too cowardly to bring specific ones and too prurient to abstain altogether. It is useless to tell them that confession is used as a means of grace with much prayer for strength and guidance, for we enter here into an atmosphere to which they are strangers. We can only conclude that they say what they do, knowing what they i themselves would be likely to do w r ere they confessors.' Slattery in Gaol. Slattery has contributed one vile sample to this ' flood of obscene literature.' The specimen before us was published and sold by him in America. This led to his imprisonment for selling indecent literature. When this was made known in Great Britain, Slattery, in his Complete Rifutation (p. 4), and in the Christian Scotsman (a paper of Orange tendency), and elsewhere, indfgnantly denied having been imprisoned for this offence. Dean Lynch promptly cabled as follows to the Bishop of Pittsburg :—: — 'Bishop, 31 S) Grant street, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. ' Was Slattery, lecturing apostate priest, imprisoned for selling indecent literature? — Lynch, Roman Catholic Presbytery, St. Wilfrid's, Manchester.' He received the following reply :—: — ' Lynch, Roman Catholic Presbytery, St. Wilfrid's, Manchester, England. • Yes. — Bishop, Pittsburg.' Will it be believed ? Within two months after his denial (says the Herald, Edinburgh) he was selling the self-same book in Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, until the police stopped him in the last-mentioned place, and on the fly-leaf of the book he declared • ' This is the book for selling which I was imprisoned in America ! ' And in his lectures in Australia, as reported in the Victorian Standard, he not alone admits the truth of what he had previously denied, but apparently glories in the fact that he was imprisoned for the sale of an indecent pamphlet! In a lecture at the Temperance Hall. Melbourne. J une 1 4,1 899, he paid the following indignant tribute to the respectability of the printers and publishers of that city : ' Rome is hanging over the people with a threatening cloud. For instance. Sands and McDougall would not print my book. Robertson would not handle any of my books. Gordon and Gotch tried it, but ran out of the field quickly. What are you coming to? f Persons who debase the minds of youth by the indiscrimate circulation of lewd or prurient ribaldry deserve the vigorous words used by Carlyle when he described Swinburne and his school as • persons immersed in the filth of a cesspool, eagerly endeavouring 1 to add to its foulness by their personal contributions.' Zolaism will not die out so long as the typical 'ex-priest' and ■ ex-nun ' survive. [For a further exposure of the careers of Slattery and his wife see next week's issue. Orders for extra copies should reach this office as early as possible on Monday morning]