Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 23, 4 June 1903, Page 1

Current Topics

Rain-making

Doctors have played many and various parts in the drama of life. But the role of rain-maker is, we think, new to the profession among peoples of Caucasian stock, although it is a well-established function of "medicinemen among the dusky tribes of Central and South Africa and the ' Noble Bed Man ' of North America. In drought-parched countries efforts have been made to refresh the thirsty earth by sending up charges of dynamite on kites nnd exploding them at high altitudes. But the results have been by no means satisfactory. And now (as stated elsewhere in our columns) a Melbourne doctor steps forth as a cloud-compelling Jupiter and claims the power of opening the cataracts of heaven by sending into the atmosphere a few columns of a new gas, the composition of which he keeps a dark scoot* And he and his backers claim that, whether the wind blow east or west, "whether it blow north or south, whether the sky be blue or grey, he can make the rain fall upon the Just and the unjust alike. It is stated that ho has time and again given bush-land and open country n. refreshing shower bath — none of your niggardly lowr pressure sprinklings, too, but the 6ort of tropical downpour that would go to the heart of the opium-eating I)e Quincey, who could tolerate dripping clouds only when they rained cats and dogs. The Melbourne medico's method of rain-making has at least the slender merit of novelty. That alone would secure it a goodly eharo of public attention at a moment t\hen the country is Just reMiving from the effects of one of the deadliest droughts in all its history. 'When the first winnowing-machine was invented in Scotland, in 1737, a number of pious Puritans regarded it as a sinful evasion of the Divine will to creato an artificial wind — an argument which, by the way, told with equal force against the \illage blacksmith's "bellows. If Providence has placed it within man's power to bring down rain artificially, the success of such experiments is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But alack ! If the Melbourne medico is reported aright, his ' explanations ' of the rationale of his method not alone fail to explain, but they bring to, our mind uneasy reminiscences of the defunct Kiely motor, and suggest that rain-making schemes still remain a weary disappointment, like the toil ' Of dropping bucketß into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.'

A Mighty Growth

The American Government i» — to use Kinglake's phrase — ' odiously statistical ' in some things. But it has thus far developed no curiosity to sort out its subjects according to their religious beliefs. Hence there are, unfortunately, no official religious statistics for the

United States based on an actual count of heads But year by year estimates or approximations of religious status are published. Some of these— as published, for instance in Hoffman's a nd Sadlier's Directories-are more or less incomplete parochial and diocesan returns Others are the work of skilled official and non-official statisticians and are based upon the census returns. T o the last mentioned class belong the figures published a few weeks ago in— of all places— the columns of the London ' Daily News ' as evidence of the advance of the Catholic Church in tho land of the Stars and Stripes.

Thirteen years ago there appeared in the ' Missionary lleview ' (a Protestant publication) a notable article of a fejinalar kind in which a non-Catholic writer (Dr Ellenwood) recorded the rapid growth of the Catholic Chinch in the American Republic. He described the ' Romanism ' of the great Republic as ' a strong-stran-ded, hard-twisted agency which no one can ignore.' According to the figures of the ' Daily Netws,' Catholics are moio numerous than the combined membership of all other creeds in no fewer than fourteen States of the Union, including several of the Eastern States that were long the strongholds and head-centres of American Puritanism. Thus, in New Mexico, Catholics arc 96 pen cent, of all professing Christians ; in Montana 85 per cent. ; in Arizona 74 per cent ; in Nevada 72 per cent. ; in Massachusetts 71 per cent. : in Rhode IsUind, 69 Jp}er cent. ; in Louisiana 65 per cent. ; in New York State (with 2,174,300 Catholics) 58 per cent. ; in California 55 per cent. ; in Colorado 54 per cent. ; in Connecticut 53 per cent. ; in Minnesota 53 per cent. ; and in Michigan 51 per cent. The total Catholic population of these fourteen States is set down at 5,253,300. The ' Daily News ' also gives the interesting information that in the 125 largest cities of tho Union, having an aggregate population of 14,110,000 souls, there are no fewer than 3,644,000 Catholics— a number which exceeds the combined membership of all tho Protestant denominations resident therein. No other religious body approaches the Catholics in numerical strength in tho United States. And the Church there is fast advancing to the fulfilment of the prophecy published in the ' Edinburgh Review ' for April, 1890, that it is ' ono of the most powci ful and most democratic religious communities which the world has ever seen, and one which is fated to leave a lasting mark on the history of Christendom.'

The Nancy Case

Some of our readers are still ' onaisy in their minda ' over the resMlt of the appeal by the middle-aged ' orphan,' Marie Lecoanet, in her case aeainst the Good Shepherd nuns who till lately conducted a Home for fallen women and incorrigible girls at Nancy, France. The Lecoanet woman became an inmate of the institution in 1871, left in 1877, returned again some months

later, and finally severed her connection with it in 1889 In the Court of Appeal she got a verdict of £400 as a solatium for ' moral and material injuries ' alleged to bave been sustained by her in the Home through overwork and under-feeding. Even while the case was still pending, the affair was exploited in an altogether misleading and sensational Way by the French gutter-press. These, in turn, found a ready echo among the two notoriously anti-Catholic London dailies, the ' Chronicle' and the ' News.' From these the evil tale was taken— usually in the shape of more or less exaggerated summaries — by the secular press of Australasia. And the story circled the earth, gathering volume like a snowball as it sped along its course. * The real facts of the case are sufficiently set forth in our issue of April 16, to which inquiring readers are hereby referred. But letters of inquiry received during the past few days and further references to the affair in the columns of some of our secular contemporaries lead us to make the following remarks in point :—: — (1) It will take more strenuous explanation than has been given to account for the return of the Lecoanet woman, of her own free will, from the home of hex sister to a convent where she now alleges that she had been overworked, and underfed. (2) She left the Home in 1889, and it was not till 1901 (twelve years later) that she decided to take an action in the civil courts against the nuns. (3) A still more significant fact is this : She took action at a time when the frantic political agitation of the anarchist-socialist and anti-clerical factions against the Good Shepherd and other Associations was in the height of its fury ; when fallen women and other lewd creatures of the baser sort were being raked out of the slums of Paris to ' testify ' against institutes of Catholic charity ; and when the most discreditable efforts were being made to discover or create a pretext for the suppression of all religious communities in France. (4) In 1898 the Good Shepherd nuns of Nancy received from the State authorities a silver medal (gilt) and a written official expression of gratitude for the valuable services rendered by them to fallen women and undisciplined girls from the foundation of their Home in 1835. On October 24 of the following > car— when the campaign against the institutes of charity had begun to wag its noisy and mendacious tongue — a O(n eminent inspector was sent on a surprise visit to the Good Shepherd Home in Nancy. He reported that the an angementa of the place could not have been ' more fu\oiable to the health of the pupils,' and that ' it would bo impossible to obtain elsewhere,' for the class of inmates that are gathered together in such Homes, ' n more favorable union of mental and moral conditions than they enjoy at this establishment ' Anothei inspector was sent shortly afterwards He co,rroboiated all that the first had said. A third inquny followed It was conducted by the commissary of police at Nancy, and fully bore out the declarations contained in the lepoits of the two inspectors. And in the Chamber of Deputies on November 30, 1899, the management of the Nancy Home was defended against the attacks of the socialist deputy Fourniere by the Fiotestant French I'ieniiei, M Waldeck-Rousseam. The Procurator-General also, in his official capacity, exonerated the Good Shepheid nuns ot Nancy from the charges that had been levelled against them by the anarchist-socialist and aivt i-clei ical gang(s) Wordly wisdom is by no means a uimeisal henlooni of religious houses — especially of women A letter addressed by them to the Paris ' Unncrs,' and dated March 16, shows that the Nancy community were not as wise in their generation as their opponents They ielied, with a faith that was simple and childlil-e, on thenstrong 'sense of right,' and the repot ts of the \aiious official investigations into their management, and on the complete failure of the Lecoanet woman's case m the Court of Fhst Instance. While poweiful and well-organ-ised enemies were eager and acti\e against them, they appear to have serenely neglected many of the most oidinary efforts to have their case placed, befoie either the lower or the higher couits, in its full and pi opei light (6) In all the circumstances, it must bo deemed a iemarkable tribute to the Good Shepherd nuns ol Nancy that, amidst of all the insane fury of the official persecution and proscription of themsel\es and the religious Orders, they received a favorable judgment fiom the Court of First Instance, in a country where the jueUciaiv is at the beck and call of the political faction that hap-

pens for the moment to be on horseback. Politics, like pitch, defile the judicial ermine. And French officialism, high and low, has to take its politics and its religion— or rather its hostility to all religion— along with its place and pay, from the dominant party. A religious appearing before a State tribunal in Franco would, generally speaking, be in the position described in the familiar Irish saying, of being tried by the devil with the court held in hell. Ireland also furnishes a melancholy instance of the grave scandals that arise from the appointment of political partisans — chiefly because they are political partisans— to the judicial bench, and of the gross miscarriages of justice that are constantly occurring through the open, shameless, and deliberate use of the system of jury-packing as a weapon of party warfare. And if in the green wood of the relatively clean British public life they can do these things, what shall be done in the dry and rotten tree of the French politics of to-day ? (7) The witnesses in favor of the Good Shepherd nuns were few, but they are described as unexceptionable and ' most worthy of credit.' Those who were arraigned against them belonged chiefly or altogether to the category of fallen women or irreformable girls — a class whose statements are received, to say the least, with great caution and reserve in courts of justice in English-speak-ing countries. The trouble between the convent and Bishop Turinaz originated in 1893. A newly-appointed chaplain, in his tresh and untried zeal, received as Holy Writ the distressful stories of some insubordinate (or alleged insubordinate) inmates of the Home. The Bishop had an undoubted zeal for the well-being of those hapless women. He espoused their cause as set forth by the chaplain. Questions of jurisdiction soon arose between him and the religious in charge of the Home. These were decided against the Bishop by the Holy See in 1894. The accusations of overwork, etc., were not deemed to have been sustained by him in Rome. In this, as in most contentions, there were probably faults on both sides. The action of Bishop Turinaz remedied some minor grievances which really did exist. But it seems as if ho and the chaplain, in their desire to do good, sometimes lent an o\er-credulous car to tales of woe th.it ' had no foundation But only in th' imagination.' (8) The facts and considerations which we have here set forth are plain upon the surface of the Nancy case. They vie necessaiy to its proper understanding. And \et they are kept severely out of sight and out of mind liv the \ery papeis that a few yoai s ago raved and frothed o\er the case against Captain Dre.vius. It matters a pood deal, alter all, whose ox is gored.