Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 12, 24 March 1904, Page 19

Notes

Sectarian Politics

Mr. J. Watson is the leader of the Federal Labor Party in the Commonwealth House of Representatives He is one of the men that stand for clean politics and healthy issues, and none was better fitted than he to scorch the hide of Mr. Reid with the branding-iron of a manly protest against the latter' s resort to the uncivilised weapon of sectaiian passion at the last general election. The mantle of Sir Henry Parkes has falCen upon tihe shoulders of Mr. Reid. The Rev. Dill L Macky is an apt lieutenant for such a chief. And people may well ask themselves, with Mr. Watson, ' what can be thought of a man who, regarding sectarianism in the same aspect as fire and pestilence, yet did nothing to prevent it, and actually fanned the flames into increased vigor ?'

A Gallant Soldier

General Longstrcet— ' Old Pete,' as the soldiers affectionately called him— was one of the hardest fighters on the Confederate side in the great American Civil War of the sixties The well-scarred veteran declared himself ' always ready to fall asleep at the sound of taps ' Well, the sound has come, the bugles have blown the ' last post ' over his grave m Georgia, and he is at rest He was one of the great number of officers of the American army who— like Stone, Rosecrans, Newton, Hunt, Stanly, and so many otherswere led into the Catholic Church chiefly through witnessing the magnificent devotion of the Catholic Sisters to the sick and wounded during that long and deadly struggle between North and South Peace to the gallant warnoi's soul ■

The Veto

Austria o'ervaulted its purpose when, at the Conclave for the election oi a successor to the \enerable old Pontiff, Leo XIII , it sent a veto against Cardinal Rampolla \ustna, France and Spain had long claimed a limited mcasuie of interference— to the extent of vetoiirg one Cardinal each— in t l ho election of the successor of St Peter Bui the Austrian Minister evidently did not know what manner of Pope he had to deal with in Pius X He submitted the -whole question to a committee of Cardinals ' After two hours' deliberation,' says the Rome correspondent of the New York ' Freeman,' ' the Cardinals presented a memorial to the Holy Father in which they declared that the veto was an abuse m its origin, in its exercise, m its principle, in its lesults It was tolerated in othertimes as the only means of avoiding the evil which could be wrought on the Church by the Governments of the countries in which she had most at stake, but at the present time, when all governments professed pure secularism, and when the spirit of religion seemed to be completely absent from the councils of the three powers in question, the veto was an intolerable anachronism The Cardinals concluded by asking the Holy Father to put an end for ever to the usurpation Pius X lost no time in complying with a petition which appealed directly to his resolution "to restore all things in Christ," and at once drew up a document in which sentence of excommunication is pronounced ipso facto against anybody, no matter what his dignity, who presumes to act as the intermediary of any power in

proposing a veto against any Cardinal during a Conclave. The Holy Father at the same time declares that the veto has never become a right, and that no attention will be paid to it in the future.'