Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 14 April 1904, Page 1

Current Topics

Pius at Work

' Whoever fears God,' says Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ' fears to sit at ease.' The description is a happy fit for Pius X., who is eagerly intent upon the comprehensive work of ' restoring all things in Christ.' He recently told a distinguished Swiss Catholic leader that he has no fewer than ten flurther ' MoUi Froprios' rea/dy m his desk, each dealing with soimc fresh reform. Some of these— such as one affecting the duties and tine stipends of the clergy in the Eternal City— are said to be meicly preliminary to a general enactment affecting the clergy of the whole world. A universal catechism is among the many projects that fill tttie busy brain of Pope Pius X lie is about to appoint a commission to wrestle with the difficulties of the question. 4 I'wo,uld like,' sard he recently, ' to aipp,oint a number of primary school teachers. They are the best judges of what is adapted to the intelligence of children, and the best way of appealing to it. An elementary catechism should contain no words or phrases likely to puzzle children. Unfortunately this cannot be said of maiiy of the catechisms now in vogue Some of them are in parts unintelligible even to adults ' A universal catechism was 'decreed by the Vatican Council in 1870 in the days of Pius IX. The idea is likely to materialise during tihe pontificate of Pius X.

Union of Churches

The theory of private ludgment is (nominally at least) the bed-rock principle of the Reformation The facts of history have abundantly proved that it is destructive of any positive religion or any fixed code of morals It leaves every point of doctrine and of morals unfixed, uncertain, nebulous, undefined. And if the principle ueie universally acted upon, there could be no limit to the disintegration which it wo<uld produce. The Reformed denominations try to meet this obviolus difficulty hv limiting: the 'right 1 of private judgment by creeds and articles and confessions of faith. But still the process of splitting-up goes gaily on till it has become a shame and a scaridal to pious and thoughtful members of the Reformed creeds and a stumbßing-block and a laughing-stock to the heathen. ' So lines that from their parallel decline More they proceed, the more they still decline' The present movement for the union of tihe Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregatidnal Churches in New

Zealand is back towards the parallel. It represents the conscious or unconscioois groping for the great unity of doctrine and ecclesiastical rule that Was broken during the religious revolution of the sixteenth century. Last week the Preshytexian Synods were engaged in the consideration of the question of union. OathoJics welcome the movement as possibly representing the gentle impulse of t(he Spirit which, in God's good time, may lead to the dawning of the happy day when * ihere shall be one Fold and one Sheipherd'.'

Illegitimacy

'In our letters on the old and angry controversy about illegitimacy (on pp. 3-4 of this issue) we referred briefly to the Artful Dodger trick of comparing the best cities and districts in one country with the worst in another. Allied to this is the unworthy ruse of treating countries of mixed religion as if they were altogether, or practically altogether, Catholic. Hungary is a case in point. It is commonly set down by CheapJohn disputants as ' a Catholic country,' although its population is well over one-third Protestant. Again : it ought to be sufficiently obvious that Prance ought not to be described, without a word of qualification, as ' a Catholic country.'

•It would be a matter of the greatest ease for a Catholic apologist to make a fine show if he were to pick and choose fancy points of comparison as some of the masked writers recently did in the columns of our D/unedin evening contemporary. He might, for instance, quote Lefftngwell to show that the rate of illegitimacy in Catjholic Fi'nisterre (France) is less than that which prevails in Great Britain : that certain Scottish counties present a rate ' greater than any of the eightynine^ Departments of France, Paris only excepted ' (Leffingwell, ' Illegitimacy, p. 37) ; that several Emghsh counties are in like case ; and he might compare with the clean record of Catholic Quebec St. Mary's sub-district of Marylebone (London), where, in 1890, there were 406 illegitimate to every 1000 births (Leffingwell, p. 150). Or he might compare with the Catholic Rhineland the state of things vouched for by a report presented in 1895 to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland by a committee which it appointed ' to inquire into the religious condition of the people.' We took the following extract from a summary of the committee's report that appeared in the ' Weekly Scotsman ' of Saturday, May 25, 1895 : ' Inquiry this year has been restricted to districts chiefly rural anid agricultural. Chief of the moral blots on the face of the

country is sexual immorality. The statistics from Banflshire and Wigtownshire are still too alarming to admit of any improvement being recorded. In Banffshire from 15 to 16 per cent, of the births are illegitimate, and it is reported that ".sexual immorality has so permeated family life, and is so prevalent in the community that it is difficult to arouse a healthy and vigorous public opinion against it." In Wigtownshire it is 6tated that the evil is widely spread and is increasing- In 1891 the percentage of illegitimacy was 16.9.' We refer to these various returns, not for the purpose of drawing broad conclusions from them as between country and country, but to point out the extreme ease with which Catholic, as well as non-Catholic, controversialists could play this game of tricky and ' odorous comparisons. 1

In discussion, upon this matter, no account seems to us to have yet been taken of one important index to the moral condition of a country : namely, pre-nuptial irregularities, which are said to be frightfully prevalent in some countries— as, for instance, in Great Britain (Lecky, ' European Morals,' 12th cd., vol. 1., p. 144). For the rest we have elsewhere sufficiently pointed out that the hopeless incompleteness of the statistics of illegitimacy also enhances their uselessness for purposes of absolute comparison between country and country.

Lourdes

It was, we think, the ' Danb'ury News ' man who showed the world the high possibilities of unconscious humor which a clerical reporter may develop when an office emergency imposes upon him the unaccustomed duty of describing a prize-fight. The opportunities for blundering, if not for fun, are equally present to a clergyman when he turns himself loose upon a medical subject in the columns of a daily paper. A case in point is furnished by one Rev. Frederick Stubbs, who contributed to a recent issue ol the ' Otago Daily Times ' an article on ' The Influence of the Mind on Health.' Our special interest in the article arises out of the fact that the writer classes the cures of Lourdes with the alleged ones of the Eddies, Dowies, and suchlike ' faith healers. He furthermore conveys to the reader the impression that only ' purely mental ' ailments, or ' diseases caused by or dependent on some mental state ' have been cured at the great Pyrenean shrine of Our Lady.

It is a good thing, even for a clergyman, to acquire the useful habit of looking at both sides of a subiect B,ut the Rev. Frederick Stubbs seems to have made up his mind on the question of the marvels of Lourdes without having taken the saVing precaution of acquiring some 'preliminary knowledge of the sublet His article, so far as this point is concerned, is a painful instance of the prejudice o£ the theorist ' A close scrutiny of ideas in which we disbelieve entirely uill often,' says Knowlson, ' reveal a logical power hitherto unsuspected..' A considerable mass of literature has beeri written round about tine phenomena that take place at Lourdes. We need not heie refei to the works of M. ITenii Lasserre, nor to the volumes of the annals of Lourdes, published by the Fathers of the community there, and containing medically certificated cases of cures wrought at the famous slhrine. The latest and most authoritative work on Lourdes is from the pen of Dr. Boissarie (' Les Grandes Guensons de Lo-urdes,' published in Paris in 1900, and enriched with 165 engravings of remarkable cures, etc ) This is the third work on Lourdes that has issued fiom the pen of Dr. Boissorie His previous books were entitled 'Lourdes : Histoiie Mcdioalc,' and 'Lourdes depuis !8.")8 jusqu' a nos Jours ' Both are scientific investigations of the medical history of Lourdes. They are intended chiefly for physicians, and bristle with details of great numbers of cures. Dr. Boissarie is described as ' a cautious, hard-headed practitioner, with an excellent

knowledge of his profession.' He is chief of the Medldical Bureau of Investigation that was founded at Lour<des in 1884 through the disinterested action of Dr. de Saint Maclou, of the University of Louvain. The Bureau consists of a corps of resident physicians who make it their duty to subject the different cases to a scrupulous examination on the. spot. The idea originated from two infidel physicians, Drs. Dozous and Diday, of Lyons, who, after a prolonged examination, had become convinced that there were at Lourdes not alone fervent piety and great sincerity, but likewise some agency for producing effects that lay beyond the natural control of man.

Since the Bureau of Medical Investigation was founded, numbers of eminent physicians from all parts of Europe have from time to time testified, after scrupulous examination of the facts, to the marvellous nature of the cures wrought by God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes. In the six years preceding 1900, seventy-four professors of medical schools and hospital physicians of Paris were among the registered visitors to the wondrous grotto. In the one year 1897, as many as two hundred and fifty medical experts testified to the genuineness of the cures wrought at the great French shrine. Among them was Dr. Dor, of Lyons. He gave a certificate of complete cure to one of his patients, Vion-Dury, whom he had declared hopelessly blind, and who had, in consequence, obtained a Government pension for total disability. And it is not merely ' mental ailments ' that are cured at the grotto of the Immaculate Conception. Dr. Boissarie gives names, dates, and medical details of the cure of cases of paralysis, deaf-muteness, plague, blindness, open wounds, cancer, advanced consumption, caries of the bone, etc. It should be borne in mind that no cure is credited as miraculous unless it proves to be complete and enduring at the expiration of a year or more. On page 159 of his latest book is the attested case of the sadden closing a<nd complete healing of a large open wound as soon as it came in contact with the water A historic case is that of Francis Macary, the cabinet maker of Lavaur. Macary had enormous varicose veins in his legs, attended with ulceration He' was an infidel and went into the miraculous waters without the expectation of a cure. But his recovery was startling and complete. It filled his physicians (Drs. Segur and Rossignol of Lavaur, and Bernet of Paris) with araa/cment. All three testified to his cure. Two of them declared, moreover, that it was inexplicable by science And it turned the cabinet-maker of Lavaur from an infidel into a Christian. It would be easy to multiply cases But Lourdes and its marvels are not to be ignored or to be explained away by cheap and unfounded comparisons with spurious cures and falsely reputed miracles and the transparent charlatanry of Dowieism and the so-called ' Christian science ' that is neither Christian nor scientific. ' Let the full blaze of scientific light,' says t,he ' Aye Maria,' 'be focused on the spot. The very existence of Lourdes is supernatural, and the cures there of diseases pronounced incurable by medical science testify to an Almighty Power, and bear witness to the divinity of the Catholic religion.'