Father Maturin and the Church

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 3, 21 January 1904, Page 5

Father Maturin and the Church

The silly reports about Father Maturin's dissatisfaction' with the Church which were afloat during the summer and early autumn seem to have travelled as far as America, where they were repeated with becoming gravity by the ' Episcopalian' Church Times 'of Milwaukee, Wis. Father Maturin took the trouble to write a disclaimer to this paper, which, however, declined to print his explanation. His letter was therefore published by the ' Catholic Times • of Philadelphia, and was in the following terms :— To the Editor of the ' Church Times,' Milwaukee, Wis. Sir,— l have just been sent a copy of the ' Church Times,' dated July, 1903, ana" my attention has been called to a short notice of myself. In this notice, consisting of a little more than eighteen lines, there are three statements about myself which are quite untrue. 1. You say :' It is interesting to be told thaty Father Maturin is by no means happy oVer his change of residence.' If by ' change of residence ' you mean my reception into the Catholic Church, this is absolutely untrue. I find in the Catholic Church everything- which my heart desired and failed to get in the Church of England. 2 ' The Eternal City seemed to depress Maturin.' On the contrary, the devotion and mode of worship in Rome has always seemed to me the ideal of devotion. This is a matter of fact, though why it should be of any interest to the public, or of any importance whether it did or not, I fail to see. 3. 'To an American clergyman of the Anglican communion he wrote that he had no doubt whatever of his Anglican orders.' This statement is absolutely false. Before I became a Catholic I was entirely convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was the one and only Church of Christ on earth, and I never fou»d-the slightest difficulty in accepting her judgment upon Anglican orders, nor have I been ever able to conceive how any man could become a Roman Catholic who could hesitate to accept her judgment upon such a question. I should not have taken aify public notice of your remarks, but that I have been informed by several people that such things as the above had been said on many occasions with a view to holding people back who have been unsettled in the English Church. To resort to such methods without being assured of the truth of the statements made seems to me most unfair and dishonorable. For the last six years I have never had a doubt, nor has the question of the claims of. .the Anglican Church ever crossed my mind as a practical one. I am serenely happy and wholly at peace in my mind, and the questions which disturbed me for years have passed from my mind altogether" I must ask you in justice to print this letter in your paper, as I am sure you would not wish to be the means of propagating an untruth. — Truly yours, B. W. MATURIN.