Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 5, 30 January 1902, Page 1

Current Topics

A Puzzle-headed Project. ' Men are men ; the best sometimes forget.' People have laughed for several generations at Goldsmith s superbly foolish project of going to Germany to teach the people English, without knowing a word of the language of the Fatherland. Uncle Sam, with all his knowing ways, has perpetrated a like folly, but on a scale suited to the land that ' licks creation ' and claims the ownership of some odd thousands of assorted things that are asserted to be the biggest of their kind on earth. Some time ago he sent a cargo of several hundred pedagogues of assorted sexes to teach the young Filipino idea how to shoot. Like so many Goldsmiths, none of these knew anything of any of the various languages of the people whom they were to lead into the gentle paths of erudition. A goodly number of the picnickers ' commuted matrimony' as soon as possible after touching the soil ot Minila. And now the authorities are in a quandary to decide what they are to do with the useless and unpiofilablc consignment of teichers with which they have been saddled. Says a letter from Manila : ' Without the commissary privileges, their salary of 75d0l a month doesn't even keep them in food. They cannot speak Spanish, and never will learn to understand fagalog. The general impression is that it would be cheaper for Uncle Sam to transport the Filipinos to the United States to learn the language there, than to attempt the schoolma'atn scheme.' * Well, even the long-headed Uncle Sam might well take to heart the friendly advice of Burns, which, if it could be followed, Wad frae mony a blander free us, And foolish, notion. At any rate, the story of the cargo of American teachers for the Philippines would form a capital addition for David Macrae's Book of Blunders. But in the whole of the topsyturvey campaign against the Filipinos, a capacity for blundering seems to be the requisite most desired in a leader — as when Dogberry said to the greatest beetlehead among the watchmen : ' You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch ; therefore bear you the " lantern.' Anti-Consumption Crusade. A knowledge of the causation of tuberculosis and of the triple remedy for this dreaded scourge — open air, abundant feeding, and regulated exercise — was won after longer waiting and more heart-breaking failures than Palissy's historic discovery of the glaze upon our meat-dishes and dinner-plates. But the crusade against th^ wretched and prolific parasite has set in in downright earnest. Several city councils in New Zealand and Australia have passed by-laws against the filthy habitof expectorating in the streets — this being a chief means of propagating the disease, as the dried sputa of patients liberate myriads of the death-dealing germs. Pliny in his Natural History represents human expectorations as being more deadly to snakes than boiling water. Those of one consumptive patient may not be specially terrible to snakes, but they are in-

comparably more dangerous to the human family than all the boiling springs and geysers of Iceland and Whakarewarewa. Where cancer and other fell diseases slay their thousands, tuberculosis slays its tens of thousands. It is, in fact, the ardrigh or high-king of all the ills that flesh is heir to. In New Zealand it slays every year 98 persons in every 100,000 of the living population, coffins one person in every ten that fall into the undertaker's hands, and is increasing at a faster rate than the population. In Scotland the mortality is 170 per ioo.ooo, in England 130 per 100,000, and in Ireland over 250 per 100,000. During the five years ending 1891 the urban population of France was scourged with the disease to an extent which produced an annual death-rate of 397 for every 100,000 living inhabitants. Austria's figures (tor town and country) during the same period reached 372, Prussia followed with 290, and next in order— in the descending scale— came Ireland, Scotland, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and Holland. * France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States are taking the most active part in the crusade against tuberculosis. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast are also making earnest efforts to grapple with the problem of consumptive patients whose needs are many and whose shekels are few. There are two State-subsidised consumptive sanatoria in Victoria. But thus far progressive New Zealand has lolled and lazed in the rear of the movement instead of taking its place in the firing-line of this particular department in the war against tuberculosis. We are, however, within measureable distance of witnessing the erection of State sanatoria on the model (let us hope) of those splendidly equipped institutions which are maintained in Switzerland and Germany for the treatment of those whose purses are light and whose lungs or throats are invaded or pitted by the bacillus of tuberculosis. The lively little controversy that is still nagging and jarring in some of the southern papers regarding the suitability of Naseby as a site for a sanatorium is an indication of the public interest in the matter. By the necessities of their occupations and their domestic and pecuniary circumstances, the poor are the most numerous and helpless victims of that microscopic king of terrors, the tubercular bacillus. Life is as dear to them as to the rich. And if, in a country with a fast-decreasing birth-rate, even a moderate proportion of our tuberculous subjects were turned into self-supporting citizens and enabled to provide for the maintenance of those dependent on them, a few handfuls of shekels should not be allowed to stand in the way of doing the work and doing it well. Forbidden Societies. From subscribers with nag-ging consciences or a thirst for knowledge, and resident in two different provinces, comes a simultaneous request for a statement as to the attitude of the Catholic Church regarding secret and forbidden societies. Certain benefit and other societies are mentioned and the lawfulness of Catholics becoming and remaining members of them is apparently the subject of some heart questionings.

Secrecy as practised by the Freemasons, the Orange Society, and such-like oath-bound" associations, furnishes by itself alone, and a priori, grounds of distrust. We not unnaturally suspect the ultimate object of associations when their

operations — like those of a large class of criminals — must be conducted under a cloak of darkness or secrecy. The prophet Isaias says : 'Woe to them that are deep of heart, whose works are in the dark, and who say : " Who seeth us, and who knoweth us ?" ' The Saviour of the world spoke words so clear upon the same subject that one might suppose them to have been specially directed against the dark-lantern associations of a later day. ' Everyone,' said He, ' that doeth evil hateth the light, that his works may not be reproved.' Moreover, to use the words of a high authority, the oath exacted by such societies ' is in itself a violation of the natural law, which forbids us to abdicate the freedom of our will in favor of an unknown and self-constituted authority, and to bind ourselves irrevocably to the propagation of tenets, or to the blind execution of orders, about which we are in utter ignorance at the time, and are therefore unable to determine whether they are consistent or not with our moral obligations to ourselves, our neighbor, and our God.'

AH such associations are contrary to the law of God, of which the Church is the guardian and expounder. She — and she alone of all the creeds that bear the Christian name— has ever been faithful to her trust. And yet, despite her wellknown attitude upon the subject, there are Catholics who need to be reminded that membership of such associations as are referred to above debars them from the Sacraments, and that Freemasonry and its allied societies was, in a special manner, condemned by Popes Pius VII., Leo XII., and Pius IX. These condemnations were renewed in the encyclical, Humanum Genus, issued by the present venerable and illustrious Pontiff. The censures promulgated against such associations in the Constitution Apostolicce Sedis of Pius IX. are in full force and form part of the disciplinary enactments of the Church in these Colonies.

A sharp and practical distinction is to be made between (1) societies that are condemned by the Church under pain of what is technically termed a 'censure,' and (2) those that are condemned without a censure and simply on the ground that they are dangerous or pernicious. (1) Those only are condemned under censure that set themselves to plot and plan against the Church or the civil authority, ' whether they do this openly or whether they exact, or not, an oath of secrecy from their members^' The Anarchists, the Carbonari, the Freemasons, and all their allied associations come under the ' censure 'of the Church. Any Catholic joining them or aiding in their designs thereby incurs the censure of excommunication, or, in other words, is, from the moment of doing so, cut off from the communion of the faithful.

(2) The case is different with societies that are condemned and forbidden only as dangerous or pernicious, and not under pain of censure as well. This perniciousness is said to be ' intrinsic ' to some societies, and arises from the fact that they employ non-Catholic rituals and religious ceremonies at their meetings, funerals, etc., or that they exact a secret from their adherents, or that dangers to faith or morals are associated with membership of them. Generally speaking, it is not lawful for Catholics to become or remain members of such associations, whether benefit or otherwise. But a Catholic is, nevertheless, not bound to resign membership when the following four conditions are present : (a) When he is in good faith ; (b) when there is no scandal to others ; (.c) when resignation of membership would entail serious temporal loss ; and {d) when there is no danger of loss of faith — especially if death is near. Judgment as to the verification of these four conditions should, in each individual case, be passed by the higher ecclesiastical authorities. Catholics ought not to take part in the proceedings of non-Catholic benefit societies at which rituals are used or religious exercises are performed, and it is their bounden duty to avoid these when the chaplain is a clergyman of some non-Catholic denomination, to which the society is, as it were, a sort of annex. No priest may assist at the funeral of a Catholic if the burial service of any non-Catholic benefit or other society has been or is to be read over the remains, or if the members of any secret organisation attend in their regalia. In general terms, we may regard a society as forbidden by the Church if it exacts of members such a form of secrecy that their proceedings may not be made known even to the ecclesiastical authorities, or if it requires a promise or oath of absolute and blind obedience. Some of these associations, as already stated, fall under the positive censure of the Church, and membership of them subjects a Catholic to excommunication. But even where the Church imposes no such penalty, confessors are bound to refuse the Sacraments to Catholics who have joined associations of the kind mentioned in the second last sentence until they have either actually withdrawn from membership or at least promised immediate resignation.

That Looting Charge Again. A recent debate in the French Chamber of Deputies — marked by the usual savage anti-clerical animus against the

Catholic body — has revived, in a West Coast paper, the charge of looting that was laid some time ago against Bishop Favier, the man whom the London Times refers to as ' the venerable head of the French missions in China and the hero of the marvellous defence of the Pei-tang.' The Times characterises the nagging and untruthful charges against the saintly old Bishop as ' a sordid controversy- But for people who like that sort of thing, it is just the sort of thing they like, and it naturally finds exceptional favor with the crape-masked anonymities that fling dirt from behind a wash-tub in the columns of one of our West Coast contemporaries. * Now, like John Littlejohn, when we come across a coin that is spurious, we love right well to nail it to the counter. But we wish with all our heart that the great mass of our readers had acquired — as many of them have acquired — the laudable habit of preserving the files of the N.Z. Tablet for reference. If this were done, our readers would have ready at hand the means of nailing a tolerably wide range of calumnies as soon as they arise, and we should be less frequently invited to thresh old straw over again — to restate refutations that have already appeared in our columns, sometimes of recent or comparatively recent date. * We have already dealt adequately with the charge wbich would turn Pekin's famous Bishop into a sneak thief. Sufficient fresh evidence in reference to this and to the question of indemnities has, however, been recently brought to light to justify us in recurring to the |subject once more. The Chinese readily accepted the claims put forward by the Powers, ' France,' said Bishop Favier, • exercising a general protectorate over Catholics missions, the sum necessary to indemnify the missions (but not the individual Christians) was included in the French demand. On the advice of the French Minister we had an understanding with the mandarins of the vicariate, and in all the towns pillaged or burnt the losses were appraised jointly by missionaries and mandarins. By all the best dispositions were shown, and we soon came to an agreement, the tenor of which I^just submitted to the approval of the authorities. Missions and individual Christians are to receive about two-thirds of their total losses. We yielded as much as was necessary to make negotiations easy. The Viceroy offered me large sums in compensation for the massacre of missionaries. I would not hear of such a bargain, and refused everything, saying that the lives of missionaries could not be paid for in gold. For those massacres a moral reparation will be asked.' * In the course of the same letter Bishop Favier refers as follows to the charge of looting : ' All we were obliged to take immediately after the siege to keep our Christians from starvation was carefully noted down. I handed the list to the French Minister, and the sum it represents will be deducted from the indemnity, as I pledged myself it would. We ourselves indemnified certain private citizens and dealers, our neighbors, and even paid the full price for all houses burned around the Pei-tang during the siege. The owners, mostly pagans, did not expect this, and expressed their sincere gratitude. I thought it wise to assume this large expense, and thus keep up the reputation the mission always had and preserve the cordial relations with our neighbors.' • Finally,' said he, * I had a large poster placed at the gates of our residence inviting all pagans who suffered some wrong at the hands of Christians to come and receive compensation. Several presented themselves and received immediately what was promised. There is now no claim standing against the mission.' In an interview with a reporter of the Paris Figaro, the Procurator-General of the French Lazarits explained that all the foodstuffs taken by the Catholic missionaries from the Government stores after the fearful siege of the Pei-tang Cathedral to save the famished people from death by starvation ' has been cut out of the indemnity. The mission,' he added, ' has paid for all the property burned round Pei-tang during the siege. The pagan people, who did not expect that, came en masse to th.ank the missionaries.' The good old Bishop Favier sold his own magnificent collection of porcelains to purchase bread for his starving flock, and we learn that since the siege there has been a marked movement of conversion, 1400 adults having been baptised and over 4000 having expressed their intention of becoming Christians. The story published in this Colony that a cheque for 60,000 francs was given to the mission by a private soldier is emphatically denied. The whole story of the missionary cheques resolves itself into a simple banking transaction entered into for the convenience of the French military authorities and with the assent of t^e French Government. And the most emphatic disproval of the charge of looting levelled against the Catholic missionaries comes from the Rev. Dr. Ament, an American Protestant clergyman — himself a self-confessed looter. And thus the whole frippery falls to the ground.

We have to thank Messrs R. J. Stark and Co , booksellers, Duuedin, for a wall calendar.