Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 11, 14 March 1901, Page 1

Current Topics.

The brethren of the Invercargill Orange lodge are, like the musical porker in the ballad of The Whistling Thief, * onaisy in their minds.' So much, at least, we gather from a brief paragraph in the local News. They are deeply concerned at the fact that Catholics— who, by the way, make such admittedly trusty officials— are to be found in various branches of the public service. The oath-bound intolerants profess, of course, to suspect that an ' unfair proportion ' of those unspeakable ' Papists ' are in the employment of the State. But, taking the matter on the double count of relative numbers, and more particularly of average salary, we hold that the discrimination, if any, is against Catholics. For Orangemen, however, it is an intolerable ' unfairness ' for any Catholic to be appointed to any position in State or Municipality, whether it be that of premier or banister cleaner, mayor, dustman, or street sweeper.

The objection of the members of this underground association to Catholics holding any position in the State is illustrated by a recent secret circular issued by the Queensland Grand Lodge, which instructs the secretaries of all private lodges throughout the Colony in the following terms (the small capitals are in the original) : ' Let us know of every appointment of a Roman Catholic to any public position, etc., in your town or district, so that the information can be circulated amongst the lodges.' It is not necessary for us, in view of the past and notorious action of the Orange Society, to point out the purpose of this disgraceful instruction. Many of our readers may remember the details of the shocking conspiracy hatched in a Melbourne Orange Lodge over five years ago for the purpose of driving Catholics from the public service in Victoria. Some of the facts of this scandalous affair were brought to light by the Melbourne Post Office Inquiry Board of 1896, and were published in the minutes of evidence of its report, which lies open before us. At the ceremony of initiation of a ' brother ' to the first Orange degree, and during the blasphemous and semi-indecent tomfooleries which accompany his elevation to the ' two-and-a-half ' or ' royal arch purple,' the members of this dark-lantern fraternity swear on bare or bended knees to never, in any circumstances, vote for a ' Papist ' at parliamentary or municipal elections ; they bind themselves to support with their vote and interest ' Orange and Protestant candidates only, and in no wise refrain from voting, remember our motto : "He who is not with us is against us.' " The candidate at the same time gets the sharp reminder : ' Your neglecting to fulfil these conditions will render you liable to expulsion.' Protestants would do well to ponder the significant motto just quoted above. It is not sufficiently well known that by virtue of their secret ' Rules for Elections ' — which are before us as we write — every Orangeman, at both municipal and parliamentary elections, is bound, even against his conscientious convictions, to cast his vote and use his interest for an Orange candidate, of no matter how disreputable character, in preference to a non-Orange Protestant, of no matter how high respectability and fitness. Briefly, the Orange Society is, in effect, an organised boycott against decent Protestants as well

ORANGEMEN AND CATHOLIC PUBLIC SERVANTS.

as against the ' Papist ' enemy against whom the brethren bound themselves at one period of their career by the following sanguinary oath : ' I, A.8., do swear that I will be true to Kin? and Government, and that I will exterminate the Catholics of Ireland, as far as lies in my power.'

* # * In Belfast, Derry, Portadown, and, generally, at every time and place at which Orangemen have held the upper hand, they have waged a ruthless war against Catholics and never knowingly permitted a member of the hated creed to hold any position of public trust, honor, or emolument. They still live and feed upon the evil memories of the year 1690, and swear on initiation to ' ever hold sacred the name of our glorious deliverer, William the Third, Prince of Orange.' Their worship of the little Dutchman is based on the fact that, in rampant violation of the provisions of the Treaty of Limerick, he placed the heels of the Protestant ascendency party upon the necks of the Irish people and inaugurated the infamous penal code against Catholics, of which Edmund Burke said : ' It was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.' One of the laws passed in the Dutchman's reign has a direct bearing on the resolution of the little menagerie of intolerants at Invercargill, and illustrates the whole policy of the Orange organisation from its foundation in 1795 down to the present hour. It was passed in the seventh year ot William 111, and provided that no Catholic could hold any office whatsoever, civil or military, under the Crown. By the same Act this patron saint of the lodges provided that no Catholic could be governor, head, or fellow of any university ; or barrister-at-law, attorney, or clerk in Chancery ; or professor of law, medicine, or any other science. Three years later another Williamite Act imposed a fine of £100 on any Catholic who would daie to act as solicitor in any court in the kingdom after March 1, 1698. The fine was recoverable by any common informer. By this same Act, even if a Catholic barrister renounced his faith by taking an Oath of Abjuration of Popery, he was not permitted to practise unless he educated his children in the Protestant faith. The spirit of those penal laws lives on to the present hour within the guarded portals of the Orange Lodge. Till the reign of William IV. Orangemen bound themselves by oath to 'support and defend the present King, George the Third, his heirs and successors ' — but only ' so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendency ' and the persecution of their Catholic fellowcountrymen. 'He who serves queens may expect backsheesh. 1 So says Darkush is Disraeli's Tancred. And the Orangemen ot those days made no secret of the upset price which they put upon their expressly conditional loyalty. They defined Protestant ascendency to mean : ' A Protestant King in Ireland ; a Protestant Parliament ; a Protestant hierarchy ; Protestant electors and Government; the benches of Justice, the army and the revenue, through all their branches and details, Protestant ; and this supported by a connection with the Protestant realm of Great Britain.' Briefly, the Orange fraternity promised loyalty to the throne only on condition of a guarantee of strict and perpetual monopoly of place, power, and pelf for

themselves and their co-religionists, and the permanent persecution and degradation of Catholics and Dissenters, who formed five-sixths of the population of the country. To this hour the wholesale exclusion of Catholics from every public employment is a favorite theme with the brethren and a frequent subject of comment in the noisome columns of the blackguardly monthly publication which claims to be the ' accredited organ ' of the lodges in these colonies and which some time ago denounced the Catholic Emancipation Act as ' a fatal ctror.'

IOOLISH UISShNTLRS.

Dissenters are now the chief, and almost trie only, support ot the Orange lodges in these colonies. The good folk have either little knowledge or short memories. They either know not or forget that Dissenters were for a long period almost as rigidly excluded from membership of the lodges as were the unspeakable ' Papists.' At a time when Irish Catholic Members ot Parliament were straining every nerve to remove the last shackles of religious disabilities from ' Roman ' and Dissenter alike, Irish and English Orangemen were offering violent and turbulent opposition to every Bill which was intended to promote the cause of civil and religious liberty — from Reform to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. In IS2S, and again in 1832, that great ruling headcentre of Orangeism, the Imperial Grand Lodge of London, made heated attacks on measures which were intended for the relief of some of the special grievances which had so long lain heavily upon Dissenters. Even at a much later date — during the agitation on the Burials Bill (Ireland) — the Orange Member for Tyrone not merely voted against the Presbyterians being free to inter their dead in the sepulchres of their fathers, but even went so far as to publicly advocate the burial of all Ulster Presbyterians at low water mark '

B \D PUBLIC SEK\ \M s,

At many and various periods during the nineteenth century, Orangemen were officially declared — by reason of their disloyalty, turbulence, and frenetic bias — to be unfit to hold the commission of the peace and other positions of honor and trust under the Bristibh crown. Many such official announcements will be found in our work entitled The Orange Society. A memorable instance in point was furnished by th<- Knglisb Parliamentary Committee appointed in 1535 to inquire into Orangeism in Great Britain and the Colonies. In the course of their report to the Hou-.e they declared that the influence of those oath-bound fanatics was 'baneful and unchristian,' that it was necessary 'to protect the country from all such associations,' and that the suppression of the Orange organi-ation w,i,, in the public iutertM, ' imperatively neces-,'iiv.' 'Your Committee,' s lid they', ' anxiously desirou-. of <-pnntr the United Kingdom and the Colonies ot the I'jnpiru lived f; un the 1) tin iul and unchristian influence cl the Oi m^c icti. -., leLommend the early attention of the Ilou-^e to i it important subject, with a view to the immediate removal horn otiice of all public servants who shall continue, or become, members of any Orange lodge, or of any other association bound together in a similar manner.'

This was accordingly done. On February 25, 1836, the King (William IV.), at the request of the House of Commons, called upon all ' loyal subjects ' to aid him in the measures he proposed to take ' for the effectual discouragement of Orange lodges,' and a few weeks later, on March 15, 1830, a Treasury Minute on the subject was issued to all the Depaitments of the Civil Set vice in the British Isles. Having quoted the words of the King's message to the House, it continues as follows: 'It lias become the duty of my Loids to use every proper means to carry into effect his Majesty's most gracious message. His Majesty has been pleased to express his reliance on the fidelity of his loyal subjects to support him in his determination. My Lords entertain no doubt of the result of this appeal to his Majesty's subjects in general ; but they consider that it has specially become the duty of all who serve, in whatever capacity, under the Crown, to act in immediate accordance with his Majesty's most gracious intention. They desire, therefore, that a communication should be made to the respective Boards and Heads of Departments under their control (transmitting to them a copy of the Minute), and that they should be directed without delay to make it known to all persons acting in any capacity in their respective Departments. My Lords further desire tint they should inform their officers that it is the express direction of this Board that every party who is now a member of an Orange lodge, or any particular society excluding persons of a chll'.rcnt religious faith, using secret signs and symbols, and acting by means ot associated branches, should immediately withdraw from such society; and that no person in the Set vice shall here itler become in any way a member of or connected with such a society. And if it hereafter become known to this Board that any public servant under their control shall, aftei this w-irning, either continue or become a member ot such society, my Lords will feel it their duty, without hesitation, to dismiss him fi om the Service. Inform them

further that my Lords rely on their carrying the intentions of his Majesty and the directions of this Board zealously and impartially into effect.' We have lately given details of the great armed conspiracy winch led to the suppression of Orangeism in Great Britain and Irehnd and the Briti^M colonies— a conspiracy whose object was to prevent the acceJ^ sion of the Princess (late Oucen) Victoria and to place the crown of England upon the head of their Imperial Grand Master, the coarse and brutal old roue, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland.

lIULLET-PROOt CLOTH.

Thkke is a fashion in literature, music, and even in war, as there is in bonnets and skirts. And each, in its way, displays a marked tendency towards the revival of modes that are dead and gone. Magazine rifles, quick-firing artillery, and smokeless powder have made frontal attacks on entrenched positions practically impossible nowadays, and military men have for some time been seriously considering the desirability of equalising matters somewhat by reintroducing the shield as an adjunct to modern warfare. Various patterns have been devised by Maxim, Boynton, and others. The suggested protectors of Mr. Thomas Atkins's epidermis bears, however, little resemblance in its details to the old cowhide or timber or iron or bossed bronze bucklers which the warriors of long, long ago used to clang with spear or sword when going into battle in order to scare the fight out of their opponents. The new shield, as proposed, is a small structure made of a special kind of steel plate loopholed for rifle fire, and placed on the ground in front of each of the men who are attacking an entrenched position.

A few years ago, when Maxim, of automatic gun fame, had just brought out his particular pattern of protective shield, the newspapers were teeming with accounts of Father Casimir Zeglen's invention of bullet-proof cloth. Here was, indeed, a chance of reviving under strictly modern conditions, the protective armor of the middle ages — • The burgonet, the beaver, buffe, the collar, curates, and The poldrons, grangard, vambraces, gauntlets for either hand The taitthes, cushies, and the graves, staff, pensell, baiees, all The greene knight had tilted with, that held her love in thrall. Father Zeglen was resident in Chicago. Private and public tests of his new and mysterious defensive fabric were made, and the most extravagant claims of its inventor were completely justified by the result. There was a fortune in store for Father Casimir. His bullet-proof cloth was desperately needed, first in the Spanish-American, and later on in the South African, war. But just when he had his hand on tame and fortune. Father Casimir and his textile armor suddenly went beneath the surface of thing-, and inquiring military valiants were left to twist the wax out of the tips of their moustaches in angry disappointment.

But the inventive Polish priest has risen to the surface again. And he has had sundry bullets fired at his chest with as much sang-froid and as little material damage as that prince of modern conjurers, Robert Houdin, when, at the request of the French Government, he gave to a crowd of disaftected Arab chiefs in Algiers an exhibition of his own (and incidentally of his countrymen's) invulnerability — to skilfully palmed ' bullets ' that were made of black-lead and rammed into impalpable powder in the false barrel of a ' fake ' pistol. But the weapons used upon Father Zeglen were American army revolvers. And the bullets were of the kind that speedily dissolve the partnership between soul and body, provided only that— like a famous nostrum of our time — they 'touch the right spot.' Father Zeglen's reappearance on the world's stage is described as follows by the Montreal True Witness from the reports of several of its contemporaries : ' Father Casimir Zeglen, of St. Stanislaus' Church, Chicago, is the inventor of a bullet-proof cloth. He brought a vest of this material up to the top floor of the City Hall to show it to the police chiefs who were meeting in national convention in the offices of the identification bureau. Some of the chiefs were sceptical as to whether the cloth would really stop a bullet, and so Father Zeglen gave them a practical demonstration. Policeman Antonio Depka fired a bullet point blank at Father Zeglen in the City Hall, Chicago, last week. The report of the policeman's revolver caused a sensation about the big building, but neither the explosion nor the bullet disturbed Father Zeglen. The bullet hit him full in the breast, but fell to the floor flat and harmless. Chief Kipley saw the shooting, but he only laughed. The father leaned over and picked up the bullet. " This vest," said Chief Kipley, speaking for Father Zeglen, " was invented here in Chicago by this clergyman. It will stop any kind of bullet you fire against it." '

' REftUIEMS ' FOR THE LATJ QUEEN.

Falsehood often comes on the wings of lightning- over the electric wire, while truth lags behind in the hold of a twelve-knot mailboat or of a lumbering ocean tramp. One of the Munchausens who furnish these colonies with such peculiar views of Catholic happenings informed

the southern world — perhaps on no better authority than that of the Daily Mail — that the Pope had celebrated Mass for the soul of the late Queen and ordered services for her in the churches of Rome. The aged and venerable Pope was, says the Catholic Times, deeply grieved at the announcement of her death and spoke touchingly of her admirable qualities and the universal esteem she enjoyed. But the same paper has the following paragraph in the latest issue to hand : — ' The letter which his Eminence Cardinal Vaughan has sent from Rome, has dispelled the Houbts raised by the evidently misleading telegrams of the Central News and the Daily Mad as to whether public tcquicm services were to be helrt by Catholics for the deceased sovereign. No exceptional course is to be adopted. The same rule is to be followed on this occasion as is observed in the case of all others who, in passing away, are not in visible communion with the Church. There will be no public prayers by Catholics, and this, as Cardinal Vaughan observes, is not only in conformity with Catholic custom, but also with the proprieties due to the deceased, for it would not be fitting that we should claim her as a member of our denomination, which we would be doing were we to perform in her behalf rites that are exclusively applicable to deceased Catholics. But if there are those whe believe that one has died in communion with the soul of the Church, though not in external communion with it, they are at liberty to offer prayers and good works privately for the soul of the departed. Of course, in respect to the purely civil and social mourning and the civil honors in memory of the Queen, Catholics have the same freedom of action as all other citizens.'

PRIEST AND SOLDIBR.

War, pestilence, the trials of the foreign mission field — these are the occasions in which the value of a celibate clergy is so evident that the man who runs may read the lesson. The celibate has no regrets — no one tugging at his coat-tails. The typical married clergyman — whatever his personal bravery and goodness of heart — has wife and little ones barring the path to the exercise of that heroic charity which faces all, risks, all, defies all, with a heavenly rapture of selfsacrifice. The splendid heroism of the priest came out in South Africa and at Santiago as it did at Liverpool in 1848, at Madras during the bubonic plague, at New Orleans in its periodical visitations of yellow fever, and in that lone island of death, Molokai of the Lepers. Another breezy instance of cheerful courage and high devotion to duty is recorded as follows by Mr. T. P. O'Connor in the latest issue of M.A.P. to hand : ' Many are the stories that are being told about 1-ather O'Leary, attached as Catholic chaplain to the first Canadian contingent in South Africa. The following, which I take from that sparkling little paper the Outlook, is particularly good, and show what a remarkable man F"ather O'Leary proved himself under the stress of campaigning. " Seek cover, Father, seek cover," the troopers, themselves entrenched, would call again and again to him as he marched here and there amtd the bullets, encouraging the men in action. But all the reply they could get was : ' Faith, I'm all right, boys ; the bullets don t come my way.' And he certainly had a remarkable record of escapes. After one engagement, in which the Canadians suffered severely, he was to be seen going from wounded man to wounded man, giving the last consolation of religion to each." But (says T. P.) with all his belief in his luck Father O'Leary was laid low and he has his tales to tell of hospital life.'

The story told in the columns of M.A.P. recalls to our minds the testimony given during the Spanish-American war by a Protestant soldier, Joseph Prauke, of Company C, Sixth Regulars, as he lay wounded in the Bellevue Hospital, New York. 'If it had not been for the Catholic chaplains in the Santiago campaign,' said he, ' many more of our men would have lost their lives. I have seen them pick up wounded men in their arms and carry them out of the firing lines while the bullets whizzed all around them. Then they bound the wounds and gave the sufferers food and drink. I did not see chaplains of any other denomination on the firing line.'

Tuaeicura, the wonderful cough remedy— sold by all chemists and grooera. — # % Wanted, about 50 clerka to help read testimonials re Tussicura. Sole manufacturer, S. J. Evans, 2s 6d. — mm * m Mtb. Donald Mac Donald, wife of the well-known Australian war correspondent, last month rode from Launceston to Hobart — a distance of 110 miles — in 12 hours, notwithstanding' a strong head wind the whole journey. Mrs. Mac Donald its a well-known Melbourne cyclist and journalist, and has, we believe, covered more country with the aid of her Dunlop-shod cycle than any other cyclist in Australia. — m * „ We have received from the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company, Christohurch, their annual booklet, All About Dunlop Tyret, which is produced in an artistic style that reflects much credit on the firm. Aa the title implies, the publication is devoted to matters pertaining to pneumatic tyree — cycle, vehicle, and motor — and it is contended that after a study of the contents the veriest novice would be able to manipulate and repair a Dunlop tyre.—*',