Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 38, 18 September 1902, Page 24

Catholic World

GENERAL.

ENGLAND.— The Only Example. The Byzantine Campanile of Westminster Cathedral is the only example cf its kind extant, that of St, Mark's, Venice, having collapsed. Westminster Cathedral. The altar of the new Catholic Cathedral afc Westminster will be a solid block of rough-hewn Cornwall granite weighing 20 tons, and the over-arohing canopy will be supported by eight ODyx columns 15 feet high. Death of Lord Gerard. The ' Catholio Times ' announces the death, of Lord Gerard, which oocuired on July 30. Lord Gerard had been ill for some little time, and his family were recently summoned to Eattwell Park, Ashford, where his Lordship died. William Cansfield Gerard, second baron, was born in 1851, and wai therefore in his fifty-first year. The deceased peer succeeded his father in 1887. Ten yearH previously he had married Mary, the daughter of Mr Henry B. Milner. He waa educated at Oscott College, and served in South Africa (1899-1900) as A.D 0. to Sir Redvers Buller, being mentioned in despatches. He held the D.S.O. Lord Gerard was the premier Catholic baronet ; but though he claimed lineage from Otho, a great lord of Alfred's time, he was only the second baron. Every charitable movement had his support. He is succeeded by the Hon. Frederick Gerard, who was born in 1883. Leeds Cathedral. Leeds (suys the 'Catholic Times') is to have a new Cathedral of which the Catholic population will be proud, for the cost of the cacrfcd edifice is to be £78,000. But they may be yet prouder of a monument they have alieadj erected, not in stone, but in the shape of good-will from all th« inhabitants of the town. The attendance at the ceremony of laying the foundation of the Cathedral, which was performed by the Right Rev. Dr. Brindle, Bishop of Nottingham, could not well Lave been more representative of pubic bodies, embracing members of all Christian denominations. In the assemblage were the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and councillors, and representatives of the magistrates, the School Board, and the Board of Guardians. The presence of so many Protestants of prominent position cannot fail to excite a feeling of genuine gratitude in the breasts of the Catholics, not only rf Leeds, but of all England. It will not, of course, be understood as conveying any approval of distinctive Catholio doctrines, but it will be accepted for what it was — a proof of real fraternal esteem. Designed by Mr J. H. Eastwood, of Westminster, the Cathedral, with presbytery and schools, will cost about £78,000. Of this sum, £30,000 hap been paid for the site. The Corporation has given £76,000 for the existing Cathedral and its adjoining buildings at the head of Park Row, where an important street improvement is to be carried out, chiefly to remedy the dangerous curve at that point in the eleotric tramway •ervice of the city. Towards the &'2OOO yet required to defray the cost of the new buildings a donation of £100 has been made by the Duke of Norfolk. The body of the martyr, St. Urban, is to be deposited under the high altar, having been removed a short time ago from a Cistercian convent in the suburbs cf Rome. A Catholic Settlement. In ». pecluded valley in Flintshire, near Holywell, ia situated the famouß Catholio settlement of Pantasaph. including a huge monastery, church, and convent. Fifty years ago the monks, who belong to the Franciscan Capuchin Order, first settled at this peaceful spot, and now they are arranging to celebrate their jubilee and at the same time to open a fine new novitiate, built at a cost of several thousands of pounds. The monastic church contains the bones of one of the early martyrs, taken from the catacombs of Rome, and presented

by Pope Pius IX. to the late Lord Denbigh, whose remains repose in a vault under the church choir. FRANCE.— ExiIes. A considerable number of nuns are arrir* ing in England, Germany, Spain, and Belgium as a result of the closing of the religious schools and convents in France. Punished. Colonel de St. Remy, who was acquitted by court-martial of a charge of disobeying his general in refusing to expel nuns in Brittany, bnt sentenced to nominal imprisonment for disobeying the nquisition of the civil authorities, has been removed from the French army list by the Minister for War. Outside the Law. The French Government would fain destroy personal liberty in the case of those who have been members of religious Orders, but fortunately the French Courts are not all inclined to bid farewell to justice at the behest of M. Combes. Six priests who belonged to dissolved Jesuit Communities were prosecuted at Rheims and Troyes and found guilty simply because they had heard confessions, preached, and celebrated Mass. They appealed, and the appeal has just been decided by the Paris Court in their favor. In giving judgment, the Court pointed out how unwarrantable were the inferences of the prosecution in the anxiety to convict the accused. It had been held that the priests by hearing oonfessiona and saying Mass had proved that they were still bound to their Order by the bondß of membership, but these acts constituted no such proof. The power to perform them came not from the Order, but in virtue of ordination to the priesthood, and faculties were granted by the diocesan authorities. In effect the decision of the Court is a reminder to the Government that they have been going outside the law, which does not give them the right to interfere with the individual priest in the exercise of his sacerdotal functions. ROME. An Important Document. I am informed (writes a Rome correspondent) that the Holy Father will shortly publish an important document having reference to the present very serious state of affairs in Frauee. This document will take the form of an Encyclical add res ed to the French Episcopate, and will l»y down the rules and maxims to be followed by the clergy in their defensive campaign against the French Government. The Holy Father is especially anxious for Catholics to understand that his sentiments of cordial friendship and benevolence towards France herself have not undergone the slightest change, but that, in view of the illiberal and unjust attitude taken up by the <ombes Ministry, the Holy See considers itself bound to defend the persecuted clergy and protest publicly against such odioua persecution. The Pope's Health. A Rome correspondent writing under date July 23 says -.—The Sovereign Pontiff is in the enjoyment of excellent health, and spends several hours every afternoon in the Vatican Gardens, walking or driving along the shady ilex alleys. He occasionally lunches in the pavilion of Leo IV. Cause of Beatification. His Eminence Cardinal Moran told a correspondent whilst in Rome that the Cause of Beatification of the Venerable Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, has been set up anew. Cardinal Vincenro Vannutelli is still Ponente ; Monsignor Murphy, the Rector of the Irish College, has become Procurator, and a new advocate has been appointed in the person of Signor Marini. UNITED STATES. In two decades the late Archbishop Feehan, of Chicago, confirmed about 200,000 persons, ordained 250 priests, laid the corner-stones of 80 ohurches, and dedicated over 100 churches. A Failure. A few misguided people in Manila — the foreign colony being no doubt strongly represented among them — gave out that on Sunday, July 27, there would be an anti-

friar demonstration in the capital of the Philippines, which would be certainly one of the most elaborate affairs of its kind ever attempted, either at home or abroad Timorous or sinsation-loving cable men in Manila (says an American exchange) deaoribed in touohing language what was likely to occur when the thousands upon thousands of people alleged to be opposed to the friars began to demonstrate. But Sunday has passed, and Manila still stands. It is not burned to the ground. The earth hai not run with the blood of any friars. There was no procession. The demonstrators—just a few— got together in a hall, •aid things, passed resolutions and quietly dispersed. The anti-friar demonstration •imply was a failure ; and this is another proof that this anti-friar sentiment exists largely in the imagination of newspaper correspondents, Protestant missionaries, and other suoh observers. The Philippines. The Boston Herald, a Becular newspaper, in oommenting on the report of the United States' Commissioner of Eduoation, which contains an< interesting summary of the sohool work whioh has been long in progresi in the Philippines, says :— ' We should guard ourselves against an egotistical, not to ■ay a Pharisaical, notion that we are carrying the bread of knowledge to a people who have hitherto sat in darkness. There are other sohool systems than that of Massachusetts, and they are not utterly foolish and useless. Some persons and some newspapers appear to think that the Filipinos are a people as destitute of knowledge and religion as the people of some other South Bea islands whom we discovered in a condition of barbarism, and have had the honor of enlightening and regenerating them to the verge of extinction. The Filipinos are, in the main, a very decent folk and fairly intelligent. They have had ■ohools of more or less worth for centuries and have profited by them. The weight of evidence concerning them, both that published by competent observers before we ever thought of them as subjects of this nation, and that of the more intelligent and candid of our own observers, oivil and military, Bince we began to concern ourselves about them, is that they are a peaceably inclined people, that they are literate, probably more so than the people of several European nations, that they are earnestly religion?, and that they are uncommonly free from social vioes, suoh as drunkenness arjd gross immorality, that work havoc in nations professing a higher civilisation.' Opposing Socialism. Bishop Quigley, of Buffalo, recently threw down the gauntlet to socialism and anarohism when he issued a letter to the pastors of the German churches, calling upon them to combat teachings whioh he declared were aimed both at Christianity and organised society. The Bishop haa now inaugurated a movement which looks to a thorough organisation of Catholics for the express purpose of combating the spread of socialism. When seen regarding the matter the Bißhop said : ' The spread of socialistic principles among the workingmen has convinced the clergy and thinking men among the laity that the time has come for an organisation under the auspicea of the Church for the insistence upon the settlement of social questions according to Christian principles. A portion of the clergy and laity of the diocese of Buffalo is already organised along these lines, and it has been suggested that it will be an easy matter to extend the existing organisation to all the parishes ef the diocese.' The Church in New York. In a statistical article published in a New York non-Oatholic religious paper we find the following : — ' The Catholic Church is growing in numbers, however, not only on account of immigration, but because it stays by every neighborhood in which it has oommenced work. On the east side of Manhattan, from the Battery to the Harlem river, its property amounts to 13,023,000 dollars, while in the same area protestantism, in all its forms, has nearly 1,000,000 dollars leas investment. As a consequence only 43 per cent, of the population

of Manhattan's east stele are communicant members of the Protestant churches, when the proportion on the west side is twice as high, and along Fifth a venae six times as high Throughout Greater New York the Catholic Church claims 954 603 persons, and the Protestant communicant membership is 332,546. Of the entire population of New York at the time of the federal census — viz., 3,437,202 persons, the federation of churches estimates that 1,206,955 were practical or hereditary Catholics, 598,012 Hebrews, the balance actual or potential Proteptanto. making a potential Protestant population of 1,632,335 persons. The actual Protestant communicants of the city represent about 1,000,000 persons, henco the missionary population of New York, which is Protestant in affiliation, must be over 600,000 persons, and it is the reclamation of these lapsed people that Protestantism, federated, has its duty and opportunity for the next decade.'

Monastery Destroyed. The large Trappist monastery in the Lauren tian mountains, to the north of Montreal, has been destroyed by fire. The First of Her Nation. Ceferina Yancuohe, 20 years of age, daughter of the cacique of Marzanares, who received the veil recently as a member of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, is the first Indian girl of Patagonia who has entered a religious Order,