Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 41, 13 October 1904, Page 18

Notes

The Catholic Congress The attention of our readers is directed to the notification regarding the Catholic Congress which appears on the second and third pager? of this issue. Those that desire to secure the great Memorial Volume containing the papers to be read at the Congress should apply without delay to the Secretaries of their respective dioceses, enclosing membership fee of 10s fid. Enclosures for Rev. H. W. Cleary (Secretary for H\e Dioceso of Dunodin) should be in Box 98, Dunedin, not later uian Saturday of this week. For a week after that date money orders, payable at General Post Office, Melbourne, may be addressed to him at the Sacred Heart Presbytery, St. Kilda West, Melbourne. A Novel * Gamble* Here is how a regular correspondent of the Melbourne ' Age ' describes a novelty in lotteries that took place in the pretty town of Colae, \ lctoria '•— At a fancy fair on Saturday in the TMetsliodisi Church, held under the auspices of the Young Women's Guild, a novel lottery pri/.e was introduced. A large wedding cake, which was sold indices, ccntaihed a piefe of pa -oilmen t entitling the lrelder to be married free at the hands of the Rev. P. Hansen during his term in Colac. There was a great domain d for slh csi of the cake, until the parchment was reached. It was obtained by a young lady.' We commend this paragraph to the earnest attention of an enthusiastic cleric of Oamaru who recently threw a series of fits in Christthurch over- bazaars for Catholic purposes. ( Our « Rogues* Gallery ' Hera is a paragraph- from our bright and valued American contemporary, the ' Aye Maria ' : ' The "New Zealand Tablet," which is one of the ablest and most enterprising of our foreign contemporaries, has rendered an important service by compiling a volume— it is a bulky one— of the prison records and otlher biographical notices of the so-called ex-priests and ex-nuns that roam over the Australian colonies seeking whom they may entertain and impose upon. The statement that " by far the greater number of them were never, at any period of their lives, Catholics" will be no surprise to persons who have come into Contact with such worthies. As a rule they betray an unfamiliarity with Catholic doctrines and life which of itself shows thorn to bo rank impostors.' »• Our ' Rogues' CJallery,' to which the ' Aye ' refers, is a private compilation of ours and has run into rather unwieldly bulk. It contains records of the careers of some odd scores of ' exes ' of both sexes, the vastly greater part of whom are gaol birds and ajid im-postor s. Only a few of them have, th/us far, inflicted their malodorous presence upon Australasia. We are glad to be able to state that our ' Rogues' Gallery ' has from time to time done good service in exposing the antecedents of sundry disreputable creatures who havt been trying to furn a dishonest penny by doing the devil's work of pouring out prurient and indecent noPot>ery calumny at ' front seats one shilling, back seats sixpence.'

The Church] Mr lriciitf) 'i;li ;l ?/s, \ \:^)(\ The ' Catholic Times ' summarises as follows from the ' Guar-di-an ' (Anglican,) some striking testimony tb the success with which Catholic; missionaries abroad conduct tiheir schools : ' The writer quotes from tjite official statistics that the Catholic population of India is 22 per cent, of the whole European and, Burasiftn population of the united provinces of India, as shown by the census of 1901. Yet 40>per cent, of their chiLdren were being educated in Catholic schools. Which sjurely in itself speiaks 1 most eloquently for tJhe zeal ' and efficiency of the missionary system of ejriuca.tion. Nor does the Mriter quarrel with this inference. InHeed he »ays : " The Roman Catholic system of education is most excellent, and demands a considerable amount of self-sacrifice, which we have not been prepared to give." He gpes on to remark that the fees in Catfcolic schools as compared witfh those charged iti Church of Ehgland schools in India, are only half ; and he coticlutfes that poor parents 1 , anxious to secure ap intellectual .training for their children, not unnaturally underestimate the importance of the religious training which is gilven along with it. But this merely proves the wisid.om of tlie Catholic mission system, which, by e*v,oikLng a spirit of self-saCrifice in its 1 missionaries, can .«<, provide a cheaper education than would otherwise be possible.' Mr. Stoddard's Reappearance Somfc 'time ago the ' Overladd Monthly ' reported the deatlh of tlhe brilliant American Catholic writer whose oontiributi/ons to the ' Aye Maria ' have been for nearly a generation a source of perennial joy to a wide circle of readers. But the learned and versatile author was notl 'dead. He had merely been on a long and painful pilgrimage that led him almost to the gate of Heath. He came back to the land of the sdund-in-flesfa with the following gem of graceful thought and feeling for the writer of his panegyric in the ' Overland ' :— ' Dear Friend, whose name I know not ' — 'In tine Eastern number of tlie " Overland Mbnthly " you have strewn the flowers of rhetoric upon my ryot unpremeditated grave. How can I thank you for a kirtdnees I—a1 — a loving kindness — the breath of which is as fragrant as the odor of sanctity ? I was ihdeed 'dead, but am alive a?am ! In a spirit of tranquility, the memory of which shall sweeten every hour of the new life I ha^e entered upon, I received the Last Sacraments of the Chkirch. Do you know how one feels under .iuch ciraumstoaiices 7 I feel as if I had been the unworthy recipient of sbme Order of Celestial Merit. ' The perspective of my past is glorified— l had almost said sanctified— but I am painfully conscious of the cotispictaooiE anticlimax in the foreground. Anticlimaxes are fateful anil hateful, , ycl this anticlimax I .must wrestle with etven unto the end. It may be, it must i>be, that being; spared I am spared for a purpose. In tlhis hope I seek ounaotei/tion, for I have unwittingly undone what) was so prettily done for me. My anticipated taJving-of! Was heralded to slow music ; ain'd had I not misted my cue, niy exit should have heen the neatest act in all my life's drama. ' I kfeow not what use you can make of this letter, unless you make it pitblio in order that my readers may know trtiat I am I— and not another posing as the gjiost of my oIH self ; and that I am yours, faithfully, affectionately and gratefully, ' Charles Warren Stoddard.' .