Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 44, 31 October 1901, Page 1

Current Topics

Presbyterian Union. On this day ( Thursday) takes place in Dunedin the union between the Northern and Southern Presbyterian Churches of New Zealand. Catholics look with a friendly interest on the movement towards unity which has been brought to a successful issue here, and which has been for some time stirring the spirit of our separated brethren of various creeds throughout the English-speaking world. The movement — to which we wish God specd — marks the revolt of right reason and Christian feeling against the woful multiplications and divisions which have ever been the bane of the Reformed creeds, and which are the natural and predicted outcome of the principle of private judgment. The immediate result of the amalgamation of many of the non-Catholic denominations will be to diminish, in a measure, those unhappy divisions of the Christian name which have led to the injury of true religion, exposed Christ's work to the mockery of the infidel and the scorn ot the pagan, and seriously hampered the spread of the Gospel among those who, in the foreign mission-field, sit in datkness and the shadow of death. Ihe ultimate result may be the acquisition, by our separated brethren, ot the true conception of the nature of the Church founded on earth by the Saviour of mankind. It must be a body : 'One body and one spirit,' as the Apostle puts it. And it is not an unorganised body, like a ton of Tunaru shingle, which has nothing more than accidental cohesion, and can be shovelled into a do/en heaps and back again into one without any substantial alteration in the condition of its constituent parts ; but an organised body, having 'a perpetual communion or inteidependence between the paits, by virtue of which the whole becomes, morally, one being, instead of a number ot independent atoms.' In other words, it is a living organised body of men, continued from age to age till the end of time, God's constituted witness to the world, the teacher and the shepherd of His people.

McKinley's Slayer. In all probability we in New Zealand shall shortly be favored with the idle legend that gained currency a few weeks ago in some American papers to the eftect that Czolgosz, who assassinated the late Mr McKinley, was m 1875 studying for the priesthood in St. I-ranci-*' Seminary, Milwaukee, but that he was dismissed at the close of the ycai.as it was noticed that his weedy and wobbly mind had tasted ot The insane root That takes the reabon prisoner. We can account for the omission of this tit-bit of information from the teltgraphic intelligence of the New Zealand and Australian daily papers by the tact that the arch-Ananias of the cables has his office not in New Voik but in London. But it may yet come lumbering along in the letters of correspondents, or — more likely still, since it is ' religious ' news — it may be served up with a dash of cayenne pepper in the Saturday's brimstone columns ot some of our secular contemporaries.

Our esteemed contemporary, the Milwaukee Catholic Citizen, pounced upon the story as soon as it appeared and tore it

to ribbons. The authorities of St. Francis' Seminary in that city show that the report was ridiculous. Czolgosz is twentyeight y ears old and the statement that, he attended the Seminary in 1875 would make him proceed with his ecclesiastical studies at the rather immature age of two years. This story can give points to ' Bab's ' tale of the Precocious Baby that was the offspring of An elderly person — a prophet by trade — With his quips and tips On withered old lips, Who married a young and a beautiful maid. 'She was only eighteen and as fair as could be'; he was 'seventy — seventy-three'; and the child of their love ' turned out a horribly fast little cad.' For when he was born he astonished all by, With their ' Law, dear me ' ' ' Did ever you see V He'd a pipe in his mouth and a glass in his eye, A hat all awry An octagon tie — And a miniature — miniature £la«s in his eye. He prumblpd at wearing a frouk aud a cap, With his • Oh, dear, oh ' ' And his ' Hang it, '00 know 1' And he turned up his nose at his excellent pap — ' My friend, it's a tap Dat is not worf a rap. 1 (Now this was remarkably excellent pap). * So much for the gilded romance of Czolgosz's studies for the ecclesiastical life. His real story is briefly told. He was born in Detroit in 1S7 3. We do not know that he was ever, at any period of his career, a Catholic. He never frequented a ' Catholic school. His whole education, such as it is, was received in the godless public schools of Detroit. After his school-days he was a professing infidel. At least four years ago, in Cleveland, he was a declared anarchist — one of those strange products of ' the wonderful century' who strike, not to slay the mere human units William McKinley orSadi Carnot.but >o destroy from the face of the earth all authority, whether it is n presented by the Church or by the State. That is, in brief, C/olgos/s story. And there's no romance in that.

Woman's Rights. ' Whatever rights,' says the Catholic Record, ' woman has to-day, she owes to Catholicity. The Church has defended her, and safeguarded her education, morally and intellectually, thioughout the centuries; and to-day, when the disintegrating sects are loth, through social and pecuniary reasons, to grapple with the divorce evil, the Church is at the hearthstone protecting it from the defiling touch of legalised lust. The historian Von Muller says that if the Popes could hold up no other merit than that which they gained by protecting monogamy against the brutal lusts of those in power notwithstanding bribes, threats, and persecution, that alone would render them immortal for all future ages.'

The Education Difficulty. The word ' denominationalism ' is to a considerable class of our fellow-colonists what the flowing scarlet mantle of the

chulo is to an infuriated Andalusial bull in a Spanish plaza de ioros. Just for this reason politicians and journalists that are not over-burdened with scruples play upon the term on occasion, with all their might, like a West African beating his tom-tom or the silversmiths of Euphesus drowning St. Paul's voice with the inconsequent yell : • Great is Diana of the Ephesians! The nature of the Catholic claims ought, heaven knows, to be sufficiently well known by this time to politicians and newspaper men who are occasionally awake. Yet Cardinal Moran found ii necessary, some Lime ago, to correct current misrepresentations on the subject for the fiftieth time. ' I look to the future,' said he to an Age correspondent, 'in regard to the education question. I entirely avoid looking to the past. In the future I hope to see a national system of education for all Australia. I would wish that it be carried out by the Federal Government, but on non-political lines. The one great aim should be to make the education of Australian youth worthy of Australia, and conformable to the wishes of the people of the Commonwealth. I would not desire to see religion enforced on those who did not want it, but the wishes of those who desire to have religion as an accessory to education should be respected in any great system of national education. It is so in Prussia, one of the" most advanced nations of modern times. It is also the case in England, Scotland, and other countries. They speak about me being anxious to go back to the old system, but I entirely object to that. I consider that a Board of intelligent men would be able to devise a national system that would meet the wishes of all parties without encroaching on the liberties of any.'

Record of Progress. Shakespeare has it that the good men do is oft interred with their bones. But the simple story of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith furnishes a happy instance of the way in which the good that people do frequently lives after them. In 1822 a few pious Frenchwomen laid the foundation of this great missionary organisation. They prayed and wrought and passed away, but their action upon the foreign mission-field has been unceasing to this hour. A recent issue of the Society's Annals contains the following statistics of the progress of the work under its care since the >ear 1522 :

A Great Catholic Family. The Russells have been rooted in the County of Down, Ireland, for seven centuries. But so, perhaps, have others been who are unknown to fame. And greatness — as Disraeli points out in Conmgsby — ' no longer depends on rentals • the world is too rich ; nor on pedigrees : the world is too knowing.' Four of the children of the long-defunct Arthur Russell, of Newry, acquired a measure of real greatness in life that depends neither on ' bav\btes ' nor on blue Norman blood and seldom falls to the lot of one set of brothers and sisu rs. One of them was Dr. Russell, President of Maynooth College— one of the most scholarly, accomplished, and courtly men of his time. Another was Mother Mary Baptist Russell, the pioneer of the Sisters of Mercy in California. A third wis Lord Russell cf Killowen, the first Catholic Lord Chief Justice of England since the Reformation. The fourth and only surviving member of the illustrious quaternion is Father Matthew Russell, SJ. He is noted for his literary and poetic gifts, and his touching little metrical prayer, ' My La«t Rondeau' was the last piece that was read to the late Mr. Gladstone just before the great statesman's soul took wing. It will well bear quoting :—: — My Hying hour, how near art thou .' Or near or far, my head I bow Betore God b ordinance supreme ; Hut, ah ! how priceless then will seem Each moment rashly squandered now ! Tt ach me, for Thou canst teach me, how These fleeting instmts to endow With worth that may my pa*t redeem, My dying: hour ! My barque, that late with buoyant prow. The sunny waves did gaily plough. Now, through the suiisc/h lVnn.r gleam, Drifts dimly shoreward in a dream, I feel the land breeze on my brow, My dying hour .' Small-pox Nurses. Father M.UU ew R instil has just brought out a life of his sister, Mother Ma y B ipi st Oi.e of the most interesting

chapters in the new biography records how the distinguished nun and her little band— eight all told— went to San Francisco in the rude, raw, and lawless days after the gold mines had 'broken out on the Pacific Slope. They were beginning to get rooted in their new surroundings when, one day in September, 1855, a ship crept in through the Golden Gate bearing among other things, a goodly cargo of cholera germs which fastened upon the inhabitants, decimated them faster than a storm of falling shells, and scared people out of their senses. I he noble little band of Sisters nursed the patients with a tenderness and skill that won the admiration of San Francisco and led to their official installation in the hospital. Small-pox had its innings later on. It took San Francisco in its grip in 1869. Outside the Catholic body the clergy fled from the danger of infection as in Dublin and Liverpool when the cholera scourge broke out there just over 50 years ago. Again the Sisters — now in increased numbers— volunteered to take charge of the sufferers. A non-Catholic paper wrote at the tune : ' It was almost with a feeling of shame for Protestantism that we saw, the other day, when continual complaints of maladministration and neglect at the Variola Hospital in this city seemed to be without remedy, none of our religious denominations save the Catholic Church had any organisation which could furnish intelligent help— competent, kind female nurses to enter that home of misery and take charge of its ministrations to the crowd of suffering humanity it contains. Those devoted bisters of Mercy willingly presented themselves, and entered on a mission of charity from which others shrink in dismay and affright. . . . Their fearless and self-sacrificing love is an honor to their Church and to their Order.'

Queer Blunders. Chesterfield will have it that a man of fashion never laughs: he only smiles— which peculiarity, by the way he shares with the Arab and the heathen Chinee. But we are not a man of fashion, and we have laughed, and laughed long and heartily,,over the glowing blunders which Mr. Britten, Secretary of the Catholic Truth Society, has collected into a volume of respectable bulk from the pages of Protestant fiction. The blunders refer, of course, to matters of Catholic doctrine and practice, the knowledge of which— as Dogberry said of writing— comes ' by nature ' to all our separated t rethren that are controversially inclined. We are familiar with the work of the pretty numerous New Zealand reporter who makes a priest 'perlorma Mass' and 'give a benediction' or ' pronounce a benediction.' Some two or three years ago a Dunedin paper made a priest celebrate ' evening Mass,' and in last July a clergyman in the same southern city publicly defined ' the consecration ' as ' the change produced in the elements by tlie words pronounced over them by the priest' ! He likewise defined 'the oblation ' as ' the offering of the transubstantiated elements as a sacrifice well-pleasing to God ' ' These blunders are mirth-producers in a sedate and sober way. But Mr. Britten has been of lateeulling some diaphragm-shaking samples from the realms of journalistic literature. He cites, for instance, a Protestant maga/me thnt, in 1597, published a story in which a young couple, supposed to be bewitched, said 'four Massts and partook of several ' consecrated wafers.' Another writer, Mr. Charles Wtnbley, declared in the New Review for September, 1896, that it was ' the amiable custom of Henry VIII. to say five Masses in a day.'

' It would be a charitable act,' says Mr. Britten, ' if S om c benevolent Catholic would supply every newspaper office in th c kingdom with a copy of the penny Simple Dictionary wwhi n Father Charles Bowden compiled tor the Catholic Trut n Society, although, if it were used, we should be deprived o* the harmless merriment which Protestant reporters afford. We should no longer read how the Cardinal wore on his head a cappa magna; how a priest carried the Vatican to a dying parishioner, and wore a baldacchino ; how a curate was detected practising the most unblushing celibacy; we should hear no more of the habits or thurifers, who seem to have an overweening attraction for the reporter. It was, I believe, the Daily Telegraph which suspended two from the roof ; the English Churchman noticed a bevy of them ljing disused in the vestry ; and the Standard saw a thunfer and crucifix carried by the acolytes. Some day I hope to compile a Directorium or Rituale Protestanticunt, derived entirely from Protestant works. It will be a bulky volume, and will contain information of a startling and novel kind— for example, two items as to baptism from the works of a Mrs. Julia McNair Wright, " strictly based on facts ; no statement is made that cannot be justified by actual history." In one (entitled Priest and Nun), a nun administers baptism by " signing the cross on the child, saying the Aye at each point " ; in the other (Almost a Nun), a child aged tour was led up to the priest, " but when the morsel of the holy wafer was put into her mouth she violently spat it out." I must give one more, from a work by a clerg)man of the Cliuich of England: " Kneeling by the bedside, and making the sign 01 the cross, he chanted in a monotonous tone, Baptizo te in nomine Domini ,et

Ftlii t €l Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Then making the sign of the cross on her forehead he emptied the contents of the cup on Maria's head." ' This is assuredly a curious and wonderful form and method for baptism.

The amazing ignorance which even intelligent Protestants, and especially those who are controversially disposed, display regarding the common facts of Catholic teachingand practice is one of those things which ' no fella can understand.' Five decades ago Newman said — and his words have a melancholy measure of applicability even at this hour : ' In this inquisitive age — when the Alps are covered, and seas fathomed, and mines ransacked, and sands silted, and rocks crackfd into specimens, and beasts caught and catalogued — as little is known by Englishmen of the religious sentiments, the religious motives, the religious ideas of 200,000,000 of Christians, passing to and fro among them and around them as if — I will not say they were Tartars or Patagonians — but as if they inhabited the moon. Verily, were the Catholic Church in the moon, England would gaze on her with more patience, and delineate her wilh more accuracy, than England does now.'

Mißßiors Ri-tbops Mipiioi ariefi ... Kiuive prie.sls ■Vminanes Students \dult baptisuiH 3aihohc population 1X22. :n It 2")(t 1,000 370.000 18(10. 22 '21 ] i 100 S.O(H) .").";() 000 IC M »0. :n l l.v.t ()!!> 41 2,i:t{ Hs.ll'2 1 2.">4,0t»,s