DIOCESE OF AUCKLAND.

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

DIOCESE OF AUCKLAND.

(From our own correspondent.) February 1. Our schools open next Monday. The Very Rev. Dean O Reilly urged with great force la^t Sunday the absolute necessity of parents pending their children to Catholic schools. On Tuesday last at Panmure Solemn High Mass was celebrated in memory of thf> Into revered Morn-i'/nor McDonald by the Very Rev. Dean O'Reilly, Rev. Father Buckley being deacon, Rev. Father Jelp "uh-denron Rev Father Pnrton master of ceremonies. The parishioners in large numbers and several friends from Auckland attended Mass. Several prominent citizens have consented to speak at the public meeting in St. James's Hall on February 2.] to further the establishment by the Sisters of Mercy of a Convalescent Home. Several anonymous letters denouncing the scheme as sectarian have appeared in the local Press. The ex-town clerk. Mr. P. A. Phillips, who is a member of the Jewish congregation, warmly champions the proposed institution and the good nuns who voluntarily impose the great task upon themselves. At the Matriculation examination of the New Zealand University Mr. Maurice O'D. Lavery, from the Marist Brothers' High School, Auckland, was one of the successful candidates. He belongs to Charleston, on the West Coast, and for the last three years has studied with the Brothers. Mr. Lavery i~ well known in the Hibernian Society, and is a typical young Irish-Colonial and Catholic. The Brothers and he have been warmly congratulated upon the success earned.

The Auckland Education Board at its meeting last week received a letter from the Very Rev. Dr. Egan, hon. secretary of the Catholic Diocesan Education Board, requesting that the Board's Inspectors examine our schools. A majority present favoured the request, but in deference to the opinion of several members present, who wanted information as to the number of schools to be examined, the question was deferred until the next Board meeting. It is safe to predict that at last our persistent efforts for State school inspection are about to be rewarded with success. The day following the Board meeting the Herald in a leader btrongly and eloquently pleaded in this respect for our schools.

The Slatterys have come and gone, and speaking from a financial point, which is their maximum and minimum principle. their prurient harangues have been complete* failures. Their audiences in the Foresters' Hall were composed of two classes the Orangemen and those in quest of sensation. The latter after the first night's show had had enough, and the faithful and the few — the crusty old bigots of the ' iron nuts and paving stone order ' — were all that remained to pay up their shillings. The extra *>d for front seats was docked after two trials. The Slatterys were lonely in the midst of multitudes, and but for the posters and dodgers scattered broadcast in the city and suburbs their polluted presence would never have been known. Save by the handful above referred to the Slatterys were by the citizens of all creeds and classes shunned. The Tablet, the Ohierrrr, and the pamphlets of the Catholic Truth Society did their work very effectually. At a meeting of the Foresters it was decided to instruct their hall-ke?per that he was not on any account to re-let their hall to Slattery or his agent. At an Orange picnic held outside of the city last Monday Slattery addressed them and extolled the ' Society ' and its great necessity, and above all urged young men to join it as it was essentially an order for them. Succe°s now awaits the Society.