Archbishop Carr on Fanatics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 39, 24 September 1903, Page 2

Archbishop Carr on Fanatics

Archbishop • Average fanatics have, like sharks, cold hearts, big gapes, and no brains worth speaking about. Democritus put out his eyes so that he might the better think. But serious thinking is as inconsistent with bigotry as kindly feeling is foreign to its savage nature. It is a keen hunter, and, like the shark, ranges widely and swallows with omnivorous and eager gulp every digestible and indigestible fish, flesh, and putrid sea-carrion that comes its way. Your no-Popery bigot has, in other words, a voracious appetite for stories of the monstrous and impossible, from romances about ' walled-up nuns ' to the coarse brutalities of non-Catholic gaol-birds and fallen women like Maria Monk and Margaret Shepherd. The organised campaigns of vilification, the propangada of the gospel of hate and strife, are commonly headed by half-educated or semi-illiterate clergy of a few minor denominations who owe the Pope a handsome testimonial for his extraordinary usefulness to their calling. Without him their occupation would be gone.

It is fortunate for the public peace that Catholics do not imitate the tactice of their enemies, but exercise self-control and moderation and practise that dignified patience which is described as ' lying to and riding out the gale.' This they did in the United States during the savage and malevolent campaign of the A. P. A. (the American Orangemen) a few years ago. In an article in the ' North American Review ' for June the learned and broadminded Protestant clergyman, Dr. Washington Gladden, wrote as follows in commendation of the bearing of the Catholic body during those trying times :— ' During a recent lamentable recrudescence of Protestant bigotry on this continent, the moderation and wisdom of the Roman Catholic clergy and the Roman Catholic people won the grateful recognition of all good men. If they had not behaved much more like Christians than the zealots who filled the air with baseless lies about them, the land would have been deluged with blood.'

The same statement holds good so far as it relates to the moderation, patience, and spirit of conciliation displayed by the Catholic hierarchy, clergy, and laity of Australia under the furious and unprovoked onslaughts of organised fanatics during the past few years. ' Whilst they (the Catholics),' said the Archbishop of Melbourne in a recent discourse, ' would continue that policy, there

was nothing to prevent them from calling the attention of all fair-minded men to the justice of their cause and to defend themselves against the bitter and calumnious things said against them. These was an organisation in existence the avowed object of which was to exclude Catholics from Parliamentary and municipal life and without doubt a part of its action, if not of its policy, was to exclude them from all positions of emolument. At a recent election held in Melbourne there were several candidates, but only one Catholic, and that Catholic was the onl> one rejected, though, according to popular opinion, he was amongst the best qualified. One of the non - Catholic candidates who was returned, in acknowledgement to his supporters, did not hesitate to stigmatise as unfair the anti-Catholic prejudice to which he attributed the rejections of the Catholic candidate. If that was the system to be pursued against Catholics— if they were to be excluded as far as the operations of the organisation might extend, not only from public positions, but also from positions which might be regarded as the gift of private patronage— it would follow that a deliberate attempt was being made to inflict grievous injury on them in almost every department of public life. Whilst that was being done there were represented before the public imagination the supposed offences or crimes of Catholics, not in this country, but in distant countries, and everything that was calculated to influence sectarian strife was brought forward, with the effect of stimulating the very worst passions of human nature. None of their institutions escaped what he must designate as the malignity of those opposed to them.' Attacks upon ladies— the local Good Shepherd nuns, to wit— constitute a feature of the campaign of those saffron-sashed fanatics, who (said his Grace) are ' made up of a comparatively small sectarian knot.' To them he applied the following scathing words of Newman : ' Therefore, ye Protestant champions, be sure to shoot your game sitting. Keep yourselves under cover. Choose someone who can be struck without striking, whom it is easy to overbear, with whom it is safe to play the bully. Let it be a prelate of advanced age and habits, or some gentle nun, whose profession and habits are pledges that she cannot retaliate. Triumph over the old man and the woman. Open your wide mouth, and collect your rumbling epithets and round your pretentious sentences, and discharge your concentrated malignity on the defenceless. Let it all come down heavily on them to their confusion, and a host of writers in print and by post will follow up the outrage you have commenced.'