Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6, 8 February 1900, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD

A distinguished American General said contingents : some time ago that in periods of international

some crises women are usually the strongest suggestions, enthusiasts for a resort to lead and steel.

But there is one woman up Ashburton way who has not got the war-fever in her blood to any great extent. According to the Ashburton Mail, the local Mayor received the following missive from her last week among a mass of correspondence relating to the Canterbury Troop : ' Do not put my husband's name down for the third contingent ; he has a house full of little ones, and, if he goes, he must take them with him. He is in his fifty-fourth year, had his leg broken when drunk, cannot read without specs, and had his head sewn up. He gets fellows to tell and write lies for him. Please do not accept his name ; he gets cramp, and only is making a fool of himself.' But if one woman in Canterbury succeeded in keeping her husband out of the way of Boer bullets and ' bully beef/ another in the same province succeeded in recovering the long-lost lord of her bosom in quite a romantic way. In the Christchurch Press the story runneth thus : ' A husband left his wife, and omitted to make adequate provision for her ordinary comfort during his absence. All efforts to trace him were in vain. But one day the injured wife rushed into a detective's office flourishing an issue of the Press containing a long list of shilling subscriptions. She did not address endearing terms to the unsuccessful detectives, as she impatiently pointed out her wicked husband's name among the contributors. His patriotism proved his undoing. The police were at once on his track, and the shilling he gave to the third contingent paved his way to Lyttelton. He is now safe under lock and key, and bemoaning, perhaps, the luckless coin which has temporarily consigned him to durance vile.

' The Flaneur,' of the Sydney Freeman, has this other bright piece of correspondence on contingents : ' Mr. ColonnaClose, barrister-in-law, whose ears are not inconveniently short, writes thus to Wednesday's Daily Telegraph : " Sir, — There are about 570 solicitors and 153 barristers upon the rolls in Sydney — a sufficient number, with law clerks, to constitute a regiment. No more opportune moment than the present for its practical inception, etc."' Whereupon 'The Flaneur' makes the following sarcastic comment : ' A regiment of lawyers! If not, why not? The members of the six-and-eightpence fraternity are not experts in warfare, but they are very devils to charge. Then again, how useful they would be to either British or Boers in drawing up a bill of costs when the war is finished ? '

We may state that during the siege of Paris by the Germans in 1870-1871 the chief trades and professions within the city established regiments or battalions oi their own. The lawyers donned the uniform in great numbers, and joined the artillery. The first shot they fired they burst a big gun. Even amid the accidents of war and siege the lawyers of the gay capital betrayed their weakness for heavy charges.

In New South Wales it is suggested that the lawyers should go to the front. In Western Australia still more radical ideas prevail : they would make cannon fodder of the law-makers. The Kalgoorlie Sun recently published the following petition, which bore about 50 signatures: — 'To C. J. Moran, Esq , M.L.C. — Sir, — We, the undersigned, electors of the East Coolgardie goldfields, in view of the generous offer made by Mr. Conolly, M.L.A., to join the Australian contingent for the Transvaal, hereby respectfully request that you, as our representative, will do likewise. We firmly believe that a knowledge of your valour and our sincere wish would warrant English officers sending you early to the front of

battle ; and assure you that during your absence from legislative duties our interests will in no wise be adversely affected. The favour herein solicited is the only one we, your constituents, are likely ever to ask, and should you grant the boon your return will be watched with unspeakable anxiety.'

The good old motto, • The more dirt the less some points hurt,' is easily verified when due steps are to taken to bring before the public the evil remember, character and antecedents of the mud-

slingers. This we have enabled every Catholic in New Zealand to do by the publication of our twin pamphlets on the unfortunate Slattery pair. Meantime, while the campaign of vilification is following its evil course in the Colony, we nol J with pleasure the following pertinent facts :— (1) The sham x-monk' Keohler — referred to on p. sof our pamphlet, Joseph Jlattery — has reached his seventyeighth year, and, with one foot standing by the brink of the grave, has formally 'owned up' and renounced the evil profession with which his name has been for so long notoriously associated. Some time ago (as we learn from the Baltimore American) he renounced the Baptist ministry, of which he had been for many years so dubious an adornment. This was at the close of a term of imprisonment in the Buffalo penitentiary. The unfortunate old fellow sought Father Lanigan (then administrator of the diocese), confessed that he had never been a monk nor even a Catholic, retracted his statements against the Church, and made an affidavit accordingly, which, by arrangement, was duly published. He applied for admission into the Catholic Church, and was supposed to have gone into retirement in Canada to do penance and fit himselt for the step he was about to take. He was received into the Church— a dubious convert, pet haps — by Father Geary, of St. Paul's Church, Reading, Pa. By him the repentant sham monk was sent to the Home of the Aged, conducted by the Little Sisters of the Poor, Valley and Preston streets, Baltimore. ' The poor old fellow (says Church Progress) is an object for pity and prayer. He has long since lost the power ot harming anyone but himself. For him the sands of life will soon run out, and he will have to render an account to that Supreme Judge before whom ex-priests, A. P. Apes, and Rome-hating ministers will have to appear.' Whatever may be the hona fides of the unfortunate old fellow's conversion, he has begun the good work too late to feel, in Keble's words, ' Such calm old age as conscience pure And self-commanding hearts ensure ; Waiting their summons to the sky, Content to live, but not afraid to die.'

(2) Almost simultaneously came the news that when the bubonic plague was discovered in Adelaide, and when it became known that the victim was a Catholic, the Jesuit Fathers, the Passionists, and the secular clergy offered themselves in a body to attend the suiferer. The happy man selected for the dangerous duty was Father Nugent, a secular priest. He proceeded forthwith to Torrens Island, and there he remains cut off from the world in strict quarantine, sea-locked within a little Molokai, until the medical authorities give him permission to return once more to the mainland to the lesser risks of his ordinary duties. We have traced the history of some thirty or forty real and sham ex-priests. Most ot them have, like Joseph Slattery, been ' retired ' to the compulsory seclusionof prison-cells. But in no instance has one of the tribe departed from the sordid mission of money-getting in order to devote himself to the plague-stricken or the leper or the incurable. (3; Again : We learn from the last American mail that three Sisters of St. Francis have left Syracuse, N.Y., and cut themselves off forever from civilised life and its comforts for the purpose of devoting themselves wholly — as Father Damien did — to the service of the leper on that lone island of death, Molokai. (4) We have already published the statement of a correspondent of the Times, who paid such a glowing eulogy to the reckless courage of the nuns within the beleaguered lines of Mafeking ; how ' these heroic Sisters,' as he terms them,

not alone care for the sick and wounded, but, with shells falling around and through their convent, 'refuse to leave their post,' and ' take their share in the hard work, making and distributing coffee and tea to the neighbouring redans. Tneir gallant conduct has set a magnificent example to the town.' A South African paper recently to hand conveys an equally eulogistic appreciation of the Catholic Sisters at Ladysmith and Johannesburg. And while they — without fee or reward — face disease and death among the British soldiers at Mafeking and Kimberley and famine among the British orphans and aged poor under their care at Johannesburg, a roving impostor flings foul and unmentionable charges at them and their kind in New Zealand at ' front seats one shilling, back seats sixpence.' We do not hear of the Slatterys or Jacob Plimmer, or S. J. Abbott, or any of the members of the Convent Inquiry Society, or any of the tribe of 'ex-priests ' and vagrant ' exnuns ' going to the front to serve the sick and wounded. The Edinburgh Catholic Herald has the following lines in point, suggested by a well-known ballad of Kipling's :—: —

' COALS OF 1 IRE.'

' When you've done defaming convents and compiling lying Tracts, When you've done defending Britain with your mouth, Will you turn your kind attention to some uncongenial facts, And " explain " those noble Sisters in the South ? * Call them poor deluded creatures, call them dupes and slaves of Rome, And preach that quiet cloisters be invaded — 'Tis more natural for " Jacobs " to stay slandering at home Than to face the pain and peril just as they did. ' Old nun — young nun — all heroines sublime;

There amid the shot and shell without a trace of fear ; Each striving thus to do her best for kindred — yours and mme — Off with hats at the Sisters' name, and cheer, cheer, cheer ! '

Sometime ago the roving impostor and gaol-bid, Margaret Shepherd, was raving and racing against convents and nuns by the Northern Lakes in the United States at so much per head of those who came to listen to her evil-smelling talk. The editor of the Duluth Microcosm, who describes himself as ' a Protestant of the most avowed type, thus lashed the unclean creature: — 'My knowledge of priests, convents, and such things is very limited, but I do know that the land is filled with Catholic churches, schools, hospitals, benevolent and charitable institutions that radiate with a constant love and good feeling towards all mankind, that there is not a Protestant or heathen re\olving beneath the stars who could suffer, sicken, or die within the reach ot any one ot these institutions and cry in vain for help. When lam told that these same Sisters of Mercy who go upon the shdi-nven fields of battle or into the plague-stricken districts ot the tropics to care tor the dead and succour the wounded, sick or dying, are a sinsoaked association of bad women, then it is I feel like exhausting some accomplished ox-driver's vocabulary in the feeble expression of my opinions and emotions. Moreover, the average man of to-day is a fair judge of human nature and usually knows a good woman when he sees her, and the real honest man is very scarce in this world who can look 111 the face of a Sister of Mercy without feeling compelled to take oft his hat. Unless he is a brainless bat-like bigot he can't get away from it. It is the one thing from which no honest, manly heart can escape.'

' I don't intend to have anything to leaveHE died lam going to die a poor man.' Thus spoke poor. the pious and talented Bishop de Goesbriand, of Burlington (U.S.A.), some time ago. And he kept his word. Dr. de Goesbriand was the senior bishop of the United States. Eighty-three years ago he was born at Berdolas, in Brittany. His father was the Marquis de Goesbriand. The bishop's private fortune was known to amount to about a million dollars, and the knowing ones predicted mighty windfalls for the diocese in the bishop's will. But he left no will. His fortune consisted of two dollars and twelve cents which were found in his writing desk at the Providence Orphan Asylum which he had himself founded, and where he died, enrolled among the orphans. The rest of his vast fortune went to institutes of charity, to churches, and to the poor. The death of this holy old bishop recalls to mind the passing of Monsignor Fitzpatrick, the builder of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne. He died just ten years ago, leaving behind him the sum of tenpence and a suit or two of battered clothes. Such men live and die near God and — in Dickens's words — can thank Him for that ' old, old fashion, Death,' and, above all, for that older fashion yet that lies beyond it — of Immortality.

From some questions that have reached us the new within the past few days, it seems that the century. discussion as to the date of the beginning of the twentieth century is by no means at an end. But neither, for that matter, is the old-time dispute as to the rotundity of the earth. Less than two years ago an inspired idiot wrote an indignant book— which we have been at much pains to read — to prove by reason, Scripture, and experience, that the earth is not round but as Hat as any pancake. In ' Bab's' words,

' He argued left, he argued right, He also argued round about him. 1

He ridiculed, he danced upon, he tossed in a blanket the usual arguments in favour of the rotundity of the earth, and all this with a sustained outburst of magnificently indignant conviction which, in one instance at least, to our personal knowledge, h,ts succeeded in shaking the cherished convictions of one m.in's lifetime. But science has settled the beginning of the centuries as it has disposed of the question of the earth's shape, and in a year or two the laboured essays which sought to start the twentieth century on January i, 1900, will take their place among the ranks of Insane or Eccentric Literature, side by side with the puzzle-headed volumes on the flatness of the earth, the squaring of the circle, perpetual motion, and the identification of the Pope with the Scarlet Woman of Revelations. The Catholic Church is the author of the Reformed Calendar that is now in use in every civilised country in the world with the exception of Russia. And even Russia ha-, taken measures for its early adoption. And in the Universal Decree of November 13,1899, promulgating the Holy Year, the Congregation of Rites decides the question of the new century in the following words : — ' Since,* moreover, at midnight of the last day of December of the coming year [1900] the present century will come to an end and a new one begin, it is very appropriate that thanks be given to God by some pious and solemn ceremony for the benefits received during the course of the present century, and owing to the urgent necessities of the times that greater favours be implored in order to begin auspiciously the new era.' Permission has been given by the Holy Father, with ' the prudent consent ot the Ordinary of every place,' to usher in the dawn of the new century with the celebration of a midnight Mass and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. In the early days of the faith the more solemn festivals were preceded by vigils, which the faithful kept in the churches, spending the night there in fasting and prayer. We have a survival of this custom in the ' watching ' which still takes place in many churches on Christmas night. But the midnight Mass at Christmas was an altogether special privilege. The midnight Mass on December 31, 1900, will be a still more extraordinary privilege, tor it has had no known precedent in all the history ot the Church.

Out of the lion's mouth comcth (sometimes) 'iin, Liii'ROi honey. And from so hostile a source as the holds agnostic, ISIr. Mallock, recently came hi^h thk kly. appreciation of ' the unique capacity of [the Church of) Rome for defending the Christian faith, and, without being false to any of its present principles, turning modern science into its principal witness and support.' To Mr. Mallock the Catholic Church is a wondrously constructed puzzle-machine which excites his unbounded admiration, a. vast conundrum which he • gives up 'in despair. Some day, let us hope, he will look at it from the inside. In the meantime, we find on the other side of the Atl intic, a singular confirmation of his views on the attitude of the Church towards science. It is contained in the Apologia of Dr. de Costa, the distinguished American Episcopalian preacher, who was recently received into the Catholic Church. In the course of his exposition of the reason which induced him to throw in his lot with the Old Church which ' holds the key to the mental, moral, and spiritual problems of the age,' he refers as follows to the unwavering stand which she has taken in defence of Holy Scriptures :—: —

•We are told, by way of illustration, th rt t the Church sees various subjects in a new light, notably that ot astronomy ; that serious and now recognised mistakes have been made in interpretations of particular sayings of Christ. The case ot Galileo is adduced. It is doubtless true that after Christianity actually prevailed, the Emperor Julian confessed, " Thou hast conquered, O Galilean " ; and, in this connection, we are told that the Church now confesses, " Thou hast conquered, O Galileo." The Church, however, . . . makes no confession of the kind, indeed makes no confession at all If Galileo conquered anything it was not the Church. He did not hold the views falsely attributed to him, and nis argument from tides and magnetism is now declared "all moonshine." A slight examination shows that his hypothesis was pure hypothesis, while an important part is rejected to-day. The weight of argument lay with Ptolemy. On the evidence submitted, the congregation was right, and the case of Galileo affords no ground for the encouragement of " higher criticism." '

It is fortunate for the cause of Christianity in the France that the numerical strength of the church Church's enemies there is not in proportion to in their wind-power. A few weeks ago three France. motions affecting the relations between the

Church and State in that country were debated in the Chamber of Deputies. The first called for the complete disseverance of Chuich and State. The Government set their faces hard against the proposal, and it was kicked downstairs by 328 votes to 12S. A motion b> a Socialist d^puL} to with hold the appropriation for the Ministry of Public Woiship was (figuratively, ot course) thrown out of the window by votes to a paltry 89. Then the Premier brought forward his motion to re-allow the stipends ot bishops and clergy that had been cut off by the shears of the Budget Commission. I his was carried by 322 voices against 194. Another of the many signs of the growing activity of the Church's life in the country is the work done by her clergy and laity for the foreign missions. The Association for the Propagation of the Faith began among a few women factory hands at Lyons in 1816. Its total receipts for the year 1898 amounted to £268,035. Of this sum France contributed no less than £"163,088. And this is but one phase of her thousand and one activities which are engaged in sending ' moral conquerors ' yet ' harbingers of peace ' to the pagan on the mission-field. Cardinal Mathieu was well supported by facts when he said some time ago at S. Sabina in Rome, in reply to some noisy Pharisees who had been piously thanking God in the newspapers that they were not as the French people : ' France is worth far more than the reputation she is daily making for herself by her polemics and her continual agitation leads to suppose. We must not judge her by the surface, As the depths of the ocean conceal inexhaustible treasures of life, so she holds in reserve an extraordinary amount of good sense, of capability for work, and of active and generous piety. This gives her a place apart among Christian nations. Which other country maintains an army of more than 40,000 priests ; which presents to the eyes of angels an ornament of more than 1,000,000 nuns; which spends yearly several million francs for the propagation of the Faith, which sends missionaries to spread the Gospel from the Black Continent to the Polar regions, and this often at the expense of their lives ? In the face of all this it seems to me that the French people have a right to say that they are not abandoned by God. To give full expression to my thoughts on this subject, I must say that 1 think the French people have a right to reply to the Pharisees who are now holding them up to the contempt of Europe. Before accusing us, go and do even as well as we have done, and let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone at us.'