'The Catholic Vote'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 47, 19 November 1903, Page 18

'The Catholic Vote '

1 The Catholic vote' is one of the Rawhead-and-Blaody-bones effigies which ' our friends the enemy ' dress up from time to time to scare old women of both sexes in these colonies. At the last two general elections in New Zealand it wasi spoken of, by sqftna irresponsible free-lance journalists and by soindry disappointed candidates as a bale of merchandise that was roped up and ready for sale to the highest bidder. Some recent and perfectly innocent remarks by Bishop Doyle, of Lismore, have been twisted into a sort of l declaration ' on the siuliject in a Wellington contemporary. Perhaps it wais through inadvertence that it omitted to publish the prompt correction which the Bisihop had inserted in the • Tweed Advertiser.' ( Your reporter,' said he, • was considerably mixed in his record of the above : " Bishop Doyle advised ladies to record their votes at next elections .j The Catholic vote was a solid one, and the women should exercise the vote accordingly." No, sir, Bishop Doylei said precisely the opposite. .He saiid that in matters of faith Catholics were at one, but on political questions they were at variance—they were as free as the desert air—and could and would vote for the party of their particular and individual choice. Bishop Doyle, moreover, counselled the Bangalow audience to vote for the best candidate, and that they should never ask what the said candidate's religion was—never mind the sect or party to which he belonged—so long as he possessed brains and capacity. I may here state Ihat there has never heen such a thing as a Catholic vote, nor is it likely that tbere ever shall be. Our Catholic people are free to select their own policy, whether Freetrade or Protection, and in such matters they seek no guidance from Bishop or priest.' In New Zealand the Catholic Church does not touch politics. But some of the clerical leaders of creeds that cry anathema maranatha 'at the priest in politics ' are themselves skilled lobbyists and up to the eyebrows in the game. The recent Presbyierian assembly in Dunedin witnessed some instructive samples of flaring party zeal on the part of prominent clerics.