The Bogey of an ' Organised' Catholic Vote.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 1

The Bogey of an ' Organised' Catholic Vote.

To vi the most noteworthy feature of Mr. Kirton's remarks was that they are so entirely sensible and so entirely true with regard to the state of things in this Colony as well as in his own. This bug-bear of an ' organised ' Catholic vote is being continually resurrected, especially when a Parliamentary election is pending, by interested individuals to promote their own personal or party ends. Even as we write, a contemptible attempt is being made in Dunedin by a would-be politician to raise the same old bogey and secure his own political advancement by rousing the demon of bigotry and sectarianism in the next Parliamentary contest. In a sort of hysterical hotch-potch addressed to the Otago Daily Times this political ' reject' has the following : —' The Romish priesthood is the only religious organisation in the Colony which intrudes religion into politics, and they determine and have organised their religious block vote, and order the Catholic secular vote to be given to this or that person solely for the distinct furtherance of their religious objects.' So far as our readers are concerned it is quite unnecessary that we should contradict this utterly groundless and unwarranted assertion. There may be some, everi many, outsiders who imagine that the Catholic Church is one gigantic political organisation, that at every election the candidates are, somehow and somewhere, all sorted, classified, and duly labelled; that somebody in some mysterious way conveys instructions to the rank and file of the Catholic body ; and that thereupon the Catholic voters to a man vote according to the directions received. There may be, we say, outsiders who imagine that this is the case, but Catholics themselves know well that it is not so, and that no political organisation of any kind exists within the Church. There is a certain amount of cohesion, it is true—sometimes more sometimes less—about the Catholic vote, but that is due not to the iron hand of the priest

or bishop, but to the binding power which a common injustice and a common grievance inevitably exert. In any community if a law presses unfairly and unjustly upon any one class the natural effect is at once to make that class relatively solid and united, and to incline them, without organisation of any kind, to vote for the man who undertakes to get them redress. Thus, if a law were enacted for example—as is sometimes threatened —imposing a tax on bachelors, the immediate effect would be to weld the bachelors into one body and induce them, without any organisation of any kind, to vote for those candidates, and for those only, who were in favor of abolishing the objectionable tax. That is precisely the position in which Catholics are placed. They labor under a common disability, and have a common grievance, and their own self-interest and sense of justice and fair play are enough—without any priestly pressure or official organisation— to make them ready to vote for the man who promises them relief.