Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 14, 7 April 1904, Page 1

Current Topics

Non-sectarian

There is no mistaking the spirit of the associations that axe leading the movement for the introduction of ' notn-sectanan ' Protestant Bible teaching into the State schools of Victoria and New Zealand. Whir Professor Rentoul (Presbyterian) terms ' the intense sectarian atmosphere which surrounds it,' is, by itself, a sufficient indication. The official organ of the movement in Victoria gave marked prominence, in its very first issue, to violent selected matter which declared that the new Bible instruction would break up 'the pagaJi s}stem ' of the Church of Rome in these colonies. And now foith steps a writer in Ihe ' Adelaide Advertiser ' with the seiene suggestion that the opponents of the Protestantising of the public schools should 'emigrate to some foreign country w here the Piote.sta.nt Bible is not the foundation of national life ' The principal draim— and terror— of the 'enfant terrible 'is his perennial capacity for lettine; family cats out of the bag at awkward and unexpected moments The ' enfant s terribles ' of the Biblc-in-schools Leagues seive the same useful purpose as the rattle of the erotahis they wain people of the sort of intoleiant seetatianism which 1 these associations would force upon the public schools under the deceptne title of ' non-sectarian ' xeligious institution

If the, clergy of our Bible-in-srhools League and simiLu organisations elsewhere arc in earnest a bou 1 deploring the uodlcssness of our public schools, then emotions should take the normal path of disihaigf* They should themscUcs set to woilc at the duty of i<^ligious lnstuution which they ha\ c so long and flagrantly neghnted, and not -waste time and energy in scheming to get it done b\ the paid sei\ants of the State. We lune said all this befoie ]\lorc work and less of idle sentiment would he in order here. ' There is,' says James in Ins ' Pinu lplcs of Psychology,' no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, hut who nc\ei does a manly concrete deed Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France to follow nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he srtnds his oWn children to the Foundling Hospital, is a classic example ' That is just what is the matter with the clerical leaders and members of the Bible-in-schools League. They decline to give the milk of religious in-

striiction to their own spiritual children, and clamor to send tjhem to the Foundling Hospital of the public school for training, by paid school officials, in the way they should walk to reach eternal life. Rousseau has not lived in vain.

The Cable=demon

The following cable message appeared in last Saturday's daily papers — ' The Pope has appointed a commission of Cardinals to co-ordinate and modernise the principles of the canon law He is 'disposed to abolish perpetual vows in the Cii>c of monks and nuns ' The first putt of Whs cable message is ancient history. The second pait is cable-fiction up to date. The Canon Law of the Church is contained in a series of authoritatne collections, some of which date back over six centuries. There arc five of such collections : (1) the Jn\e books of ancient Decretals of Gregory IX. (ratified and published by him in 1231) ; (2) the Sext (that is, sixth) book of Decietals, which was added by Boniface VIII m 1298 ; (3) the Clementines, compiled under Clement V (fourteenth century) ; (1) the ' Extrayaganles ' of John XXII. , and (5) the ' Extravagantes ' Common. These form what is called the ' Corpus Juris Keelesia.stici ' or Canon Law of the Church. To these has been added the later or ' modern law.' It consists of the canons of the General Councils from that of Vienne (1310) to that of the Vatican in 1870, and the decisions of Roman Congiegations and of the tribunal of the Rota, the rules of the Roman Chancery, and the Concordats or treaties between the Holy See and various States for the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs within their borders. Almost immediately after ascending the papal throne, Pope Pius X. decided to co-ordinate the Canon Law of the Church in a manner akin to that which has been done for New Zealand statute law by Mr. Fitchett, and for Victorian statute law by Mr. Louis Ilorwit/. The statement that Pius X. ' is disposed to abolish perpetual vows m the case of monks and nuns ' may be accepted without hesitation as one more of the scandalously frequent indications which show that, where Vatican, news is concerned, truth is to the cable-demon stranger than fiction. A weel< or two ago he credited Ptlus X. with the intention of shortly issruing a Bull of excommunication against France ! Of course that is an absurdity. An excommunication is a spiritual penalty that touches an individual. There is no

siuch. tfriiDg as excommunicating a nation. The ill-con-ditiofned fellow may have had some notion of an interdict floating like a haze in his mind. An interdict may apply to a particular church, parish, diocese, or jouiitry. ,It is defined by Ferraris as ' an ecclesiastical censure by whidh persons are debarred from the rise o f certain sacraments, from all the divine unices, and fiom Christian burial.' Pius X. is not likely to add, by the infliction of so dread a penalty, to the grave disabilities undci wihuh t/hc Vaithful/ children of tihe Church in France are suffering from the savage persecution which is being inflicted upon them by the enemies of all religion. And the cable-rigger is not just the one who is likely to be deeply in the inner 1 counsels of Pius \. ' No creature,' says Pope, ' smarts so little as a fool ' The remark is a glove-fit for the wight that ' stands unshiook ' and brazen-faced and unashamed under the la.sh of repeated exposure. ' Who shames a scribbler ? Break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew . Destroy his fib or sophistry in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again.'

White Savages

Henry VIII. had a ' pretty wit ' of his own. It showed itself chiefly in the number and variety of the executions that marked his reign Poisoning was, in his reign, punished by a penalty which is described as follows in Wriothesley's Chronicle 'This yeare (1532) the 17th of March, was txnled in Smithfeild one Margaret Davie, a mayden, which had poysoned 3 householder.' Till the close of the following (the seventeenth) century, women in England who sent their husbands prematurely to the Better Land (or elsewhere) were adtridged guilty of petty treason and were bjurtied alive. Milder manners and juster ideas ol *lhe nature and purpose of legal punishments ha\e, happily,, irelietvcd our statuite-'boo'ks of those fierce lelus of a hygone day. But events take place from time to time which show that the fierce spirit of sa\.vj;e punishment sometimes remains in our populations long after it has been exorcised from the judicial chamber.

One of the disquieting features of the animosity that exists between the white and the coloied population in the United States is the illegal re\ival In ' Judge Lynch ' of the penalty of burning alive In this matter it is the white savage that has set the example of brutality to the ' inferior iace ' The ' San Francisco Monitor 'of February 13 has tdie fc J lo v. i 112; editorial paragraph in point — ' Quito a lull in lynching circles at the South h<is been obsencd during the last few months Some pei sons were even beginning to speculate on tiieeaih disappearance of the " habit," taking tins lact as a 1m; lof computation A spirited little affair at Dodds\uU\ Miss , last Sunday slums- that it is too soon to buiW on the vanishment of this purely American institution A negro man and wife weie burned at the stake m the most a'pjpioved fashion by a mob of a thousand citi'ens The coVple were charged with t,he brut?l niiuiclei < f a white plantei, and were only eapturexi aftei an exciting chase of se\eial da\s with horses and bloodhounds through the canebrakes of the region No time w.ss lost, howo\er, when the culprits weie taken The ingoing alne was accomplished with both neatness < i rd i'ispatuh Incident ally, some half a do/en other lu< l.le-^s negroes who resembled the fugitives lost then 'i\cs m the pursuit It has been said, ond apparent U with some show of plausibility, as the rr.cnf km cd incident indicates, that " all coons look alil-c " to the \otaiies of Judge Lynch.' There is apparently some foundation ( f truth m Lecky's assertion, that, but for the 1 rcmendoi's pow m of modern law, we should see a ie\nal <,[ the bloodstained contest^ of the Coliseum

Boycottinjj Catholics

Tfhreaten a monopolist with the loss of his mono prtly, and you make a martyr. It matters little whe-

thtfr it >is a blood-sticking trust that seizes one of the necessaries of life and picks the pockets of the poor, or a creed or faction ttet has got exclusive or almost exclusive possession of the loaves and fishes of State appointments. The. centre of tiheir nervous system,, the thing that with them stands for a sc/ul, as m tihe\ weft and warp of t\heir pursestrings. Cut their monopoly down by the worth of a bawbee, aaid they howl as if bUetclicd upon the rack. This is wibat the ascend en cy party are doing in Ireland juist now. The members of the favored creed are in the customary state of monopolist martyrdom o>ver the fact that at last— three-quarters of a centtury after the passing of the Emancipation Act— Catholics are being allowed to compete with them on equal terms for positions in some of the great railway corporations of the country. There are signs of a gradual break-up in the traditional boycott and ostracism of Catholics by those who halve helti for so long a churlish and almost complete m|on:opoly of power and place and pelf in a country in which they have always been a small minority.

Here are two random instances of the rrnamier in whiqh the traditional boycott against Catholics operates in Ireland. Dungaainon is a typical Ulster town, with the custonrary scandalous ' jerrymandering ' of the ward system — as practised in Derry and elsewhere — in siuioh a fainciful arid unnatural way as to leave tjhe Catholic majority of the place no effective representation in its councils. 'It appears,' says the Belfast ' Irish News,' ' that at the last census the population of I>ungaiyiion was 3936, Catholics totting up 2000 of this number. The urban council consists of 21 members, 7 of whiom are Catholics, the majority being composed of Protestants, Presbyterians, etc. The chairman of the Boiard is a Protestant, the vice-chairman is a Protestant)* tjhe town clerk is a Protestant, the medical officer of health is a Presbyterian, the tiown surveyor is a} Meth,odist, the sub-sanitary officer is a Protestant, the water inspector is a Protestant, the factory inspector is a Protestant, and the rate-collector is a Presbyterian. There is but one solitary Catholic in the employment of the council, and it is neetiT.ess to say that he is a, fin 11 prhate in the scavenging department ' (For the information of our readers we may state that in Ireland ' Protestant ' means ' Anglican ').

Another flagrant instance of boycotting Catholics is famished by the tabulated returns recently published by the ' Leader ' (if January 30 in re/erence to a great private coipoiation, the Prowntcial Bank Its detailed statement of staff and .salaries shows that all the five principal posts are filled by Protestants, four of whom aie .Scotch and one Irish On the managerial staff ILeie aie .">2 Protestants and two Catholics, the former averaging £121 per annum, and the latter £255 The accountants and tellers number 75 Protestants and eight Catholics, Avhoso salaries are fan ly equal , and on the clMical staff there aie 178 Piotcstanis and 19 Catholics, the former averaging £101 1.3s (id per annum ,> gainst the latter's £85 10s Another table gives the ( ist; iKution of Catholic and Protestant officials among the branches The Protestajnti largely predominate, cen in places w here the business is mainly Catholic in 31 branches the staff is entirely Protect a,nt In 16 important branches named by our enterprising contem- ; orary, no CaUiohc, as far as can be ascertained, has e\ er been employed. ' Until recently, many other branches weie in the same position ' Enni*-, which is pi actually altogether Catholic, has had bait one Catholic (Ink m 1!) years and has none at present, In Catholic T lnienck the piesent Catholic clerk is the first 'known iii 'i the history of the branch, though there are Ae}\t Piotestant clerks, a Protestant manager, two Protestant tellers, and a Protestant accountant In both 1 hicos the business is mainly Catholic And ' these instances,' we are told, ' are typical of numerous others ' Mr Gladstone knew his Ireland well when (as recorded in Morley's life of the great statesman) he wrote : ' I

t cannot Twit think that, in bringing the subject of Irish tolerance before the Almighty Father, we ought to have some regard to the fact that down to the present day, as between the two religions, tihe offence has been m the proportion ofj perhaps a hundred to one on the Protestawt side and t<he suffering by it on the Roman side. At the present hour, I am pained to express my belief that there is far more of intolerance in action from so-called Protestants against Roman Catholics than from Roman Catholics against Protestants'.'