THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1902. ENDURING CHARITY. The New Zealand TABLET

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 4, 23 January 1902, Page 16

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1902. ENDURING CHARITY.

The New Zealand TABLET

' To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ivays of Truth and Peace.' Leo XIII. to the N.Z. Tablet.

(mw^P MALLPOX has set its hot and deadly grip upon ssfgv n< portion of Boston as well as of London. In -f^^^\ the Massachusetts capital the outbreak has £^^gS#, evoked, on the part of a Catholic Sisterhood, £$$%<[; one of those acts of chanty which, in the words of the author of the Imitation, make m^y its possessors truly great. The Superior of the Sisters of Charity at the Carney Hospital offered, in the following letter, the free services of the Sisters as nurses at the detention hospital : — Carney Hospital. The Hon. T. N. Hart, Mayor of Boston. Dear Sir,— Pardon the liberty I take in addressing these lines to you, but charity for the poor citizens of Boston afflicted with the dread disease, small-pox, prompts me to offer you our assistance in this trying ordeal. Our Sisters will gladly go to the detention hospital and assist in nursing the poor victims free of expense. Three of them are immunes and trained nurses. Should you wish to accept this offer we are yours to command. Mofct respectfully yours, Sister Gonzaga. The Mayor replied to this charitable and public-spirited offer in the following terms :—: — Dear Madam,— Your announcement that the Sisters of Charity are ready to serve the city free of charge, in nursing small-pox patients, is very highly appreciated, In behalf of the city I thank yourself and the Sisters of Charity for this generous offer, prompted by the spirit of faith, fortitude, and sacrifice. Should the city require the hplp you offer, our Board of Health will communicate with you. With great respect, Thomas. X. Hart, Mayor. * All this eager and practieil devotion for the stricken and the afflicted is bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the noble regiments that constitute the Church's great army of charity. It is but one of the thousand varied phases of that divinely given virtue — Chief among the ' b!e-s d three' — ■ that ' never falleth away.' Keble, himself a Protestant, sums up in brief poetic phrase in his Christian Year its broad and ever broadening grasp, and tells how in silence Steals on soft Cbaiity, Tempering her gifts, that seem so free, By time and place, Till not a woe the bleak world see, But finds her grace. Catholic charity his searched out every varied phase of human suffer. ng. It is ever prompt, ready, and eag> r. The wearers of the white roincttc or gimp and of the black soutane were, so to speak, in their native atmosphere when attending the wounded at Gravelotte or Chickamauga or Mafeking, or in the plague-stricken quarters of Bombay, as they are at this hour in serving the victims of that ' oldest and most human of all diseases,' leprosy, in Japan, Burraah, India, the Seychelles, Colombia, and the lone island of death, Molokai. And through and over all their work there is the abiding charity of Christ wuich • beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.' * A bulky and edifying volume might be written of the noble but unconscious heroism displayed by Catholic priests and Sisters in the recurrent scourges of small-pox and Asiatic cholera that have from time to time swept over civilised countries during the past century or more. Boston is by no means the first place in the United States which has had practical evidence of the high courage and

whole-souled devotion of Catholic nuns on behalf of those who were abandoned even by their nearest relatives in the trying days of pestilence. New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, witnessed and admired the heroic charity of Catholic Sisterhoods in the days when the Asiatic scourge swept the poorer quarters of those cities. Daring the Civil War rumors spread abroad and nagged from a score of puipits that the officers at Camp Douglas— where a great bo,dy of Confederate prisoners of war were detained — were encouraging a ' propaganda of Popery' among the men of the South. The Protestant clergy of Chicago appointed a delegate to visit the Camp and report upon what he saw. He came, but did not see. The adjutant courteously invited him to visit the small-pox hospital, where the ' propaganda of Popery ' was supposed to be going on. The invitation was declined with considerable heartiness. ' Every preacher in Chicago,' said the adjutant to him, ' has done exactly the same thing, and if the Confederates are being perverted to Romanism, it is because Roman priests come and pervert them. If a priest will imperil his life to bring the consolations of the Church to the dying, he must believe what he preaches.' * A great number of conversions to the O!d Faith likewise resulted from the touching evidences of Catholic charity displayed during the epidemic of Asiatic cholera which raged with such fearful virulence throughout Europe and America in 1831-1837 and 1846-63. One devoted Protestant clergyman in Dublin stood by the stricken members of his flock in 1832. The remainder fled, and Archbishop "Whately declared, in his letter of May 4 of that year, that the principles of his Church did not impose upon them the obligation of risking their lives in attendance on the sick. History sometimes repeats itself : in 1542 Calvin and his clergy refused to attend the victims of the plague in Geneva. The priests and Jie Sisters, however, in Dublin and Cork in 1832 were continually in the hospitals or in the homes of the stricken poor, and many non-Catholics, witnessing their unceasing attendance upon the victims of the pestilence, petitioned to be received into the one Fold of Christ. In France in 1850, the clergy received the public thanks cf the Ministry for their magnificent devotion to the victims of the cholera, and a medal of honor was, by official decree, awarded to two hundred Sisters of twenty different communities who had greatly distinguished themselves by their labors during the prevalence of the scourge. Two of the Sisters also received the decoration of the LegLon of Honor. The sublime in heroism was also reached by the clergy and nuns when the Asiatic pestilence crept into Egypt, Cayenne, the Canaries, Tunis (where the Bey decorated the monks), Ceylon, Western Tonquin (where twelve priests, six clerics, twelve catechists, and thirty-seven Sisters met their death in 1850 while ministering to the bodily and spiritual wants of the cholera patients), Quebec, and Liverpool (where some ten priests sacrificed their lives for their stricken fellow-men). The outbreaks of 1865-75, 1884-85, and 1892 also elicited in France, Italy, Spain and Hamburg splendid examples of that spirit of Oa-holic charity which ' never falleth away.' Some two years ago, when the small-pox pest settled down and got to work at Valencia, in Venezuela, Father Beguetti and a devoted band of Salesian Sisters interned themselves within the walls of the Lazaretto to minister to the sick and dying. 'Iheir patient and toilsome work dragged on through seven pestilential months. Then the plague disappeared. Their work was done, and they stepped out for the first time beyond the walls of their enclosure to return to the ordinary pursuits of their sacred calling. The civil officers, the clergy, and the whole population of Valencia turned out to do them honor. Even Lecky admits that the Church wrought a revolution indeed in the old pagan ideals when she regarded the poor as the representatives of Christ, and made the love of Him, and the love of man for His sake, the principle of charity. * For the first time in the history of mankind,' says he, ' it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity.' The glorious infusion of the gifts of the first Pentecost day, is with us still.