Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 50, 15 December 1904, Page 1

Current Topics

The gilted authoress continues : ' " Why— why ? " I cried in mdigmation, when I first .learned of, this. Because there is no more to give ; the Church" "is iii the straits of holy poverty.. The class who, especially in France, used to contribute so generously to mission work has bean obliged to devote those moneys to voluivtary spools srnce the name of God has been eradicated from all the public ones ; antt missionary work would be paralysed if the priests coul-d not hve— like paupers: /doar, kliM, clean, holy -papers, btit just that. I have heard it sud that the sum spent by different sects of Protestants m Japan equals that which the Holy Father lias at ins disposal for missionary work throughout the worm 1 do not know how true this may be; but watiuhmg the two systems at work, close beside me,' I ha\e oonie to the conclusion that in these matters money is ut secondary value— of next to no valAie— as compare*! witih prayer, self-sacrifice, and the heaventuuojlit discipline of a holy life. It is impossible for the most harMetncd scofler t»o make the acqiiaintance of one of our priests or Sisters of Charity here without feel l'n g that Hie i,s in the piesonce of a p,owcr for good. As I hoard one man say . " Well, people don't do this kind ot thing to amuse themselves ! Ton my sou], the pooi chaps desene to succeed." '

AtrrsSLy^ tine 4 Oliver Cromwell ' of Mr. $aimieT R."Gartiiner,, t)he emioaent Englislh Prqteetaint hi/s-fcoriafo, would Sbtow that the Protector— who was described in Dunedin as a champion of religious liberty — was a vindictive tyrant ajud persecutor. He piously declared that he would nlot mdddle with any man's conscience. ' But,' siaid he in reply to the Irish Catholic bishops' declaration at Cloßim&cnoise, ' if by liberty of conscience yiou mean a liberty tto exercise the Mass ... I s-hall not, where I have the power, and the Lor.d is pleased to bless me, suffer the exercise of the Mass, where I can take notice of it.' The callous massacres committed by Cromwell duritag his Irish campaigns niiust for evei hang like a millstjone around the neck of his reputation as a aioldier amid statesman. T«he Irisih Pnotestant historian of the Civil W.ars (in., 21) says, for instalnce, that ' though quarter had been promised by his officers (at Drogheda), Cromwell refused to ratify the agreement and oddered tlhe garrison to be put to the sword.' Unarmed men, wfoman, and children foil a prey to the fury of Crom■v^ell'S Soldiery, and Leland (a.nothier Jriah Protostlant historiajn, and Prebendary of St. Patrick's, Dublin) tells liow ' Jjor five days tliis hideous execution was continued with every circumstance of horror.' Green, in his ' History of tlhe English People,' states that this was merely * tlhe first of a series of awful massiacres.' The barbaiqus anjd pnomis<c'uous slaughter of unarmed men, women, and ohiljdrOn in Wexford was another of the ' crowning meUcies ' for which the sanguinary hypocrite thanked the Lor*d. Donegal, Monaghan, Kilkenny, Galway, D ( ublijn, Kildjare, Tipiperary, CJare, and other countries were also slta*ne(d with non-combatant blo*ad sheid by the onder of Cijomwell or 'his fanatical officers and bedewed with the tears of the thousands who were torn from home and kindred and consigned to a far more dreadft.il fate— to the savage toil, the lash-tortture, 1/he forcod .perversion 'or martyrdom tihat awaited them in tine physical hell-of-tihe-Jtiamped of Barbadioes slavery.

"oTics""as 'bul-sMe the pale of tiijuth, justice," or common decency of treatment They snuffl^ ,€fd nosing like unclean animals 'aiqiiOng th£ £\tiarHl''i tisp-til\s f and mijddenheaps of no-Popery rubbish for sjhrieky or salacious tales about tlhe ' abominations of Rome.' Ajb a rulebut not invariably— they contrive, by the siup.pressilon of names and otner particulars, to keep put of tihe gri,p of the law of libel ; and the proven falsehood of an evil tale never extracts from them sio miuch as ia. syll'&ble of explanation or withdrawal. The anti-religious and socialist press of France supplies them with a good deal of journalistic asiafoettda ; but we gravely sHis'pect' tihat they sometimes— like Giovanni in ' Aridon Massitcr '—fib occasionally on their owji account by iusti-nfct, iji order to keep their hands in.

Some time ago those snapjers-up of no-Popery tit'bi)Ls made a fine buzz about a ' painful yarn ' that was spun to a French court by a female creature that answers to tlhe name Leddanseu'rs. Briefly ti)ld, the story runneth thus : Tihe Carmelite nuns kidnapped this good woman's little daughter, forced her, under all sorts of nameless terrors, to become a nun, concealed her address from the sorrowing and distracted mother, and kept the pqor ohild irt close confinement. Such, in summary terms, was the woman's tale. The French atheist newspapers and their ' religious ' echoes in England and Australia accepted the ex-parte tale as tr*ue in every particular, broke out into profiuse an«d noisy headings, and poured cataracts of boiling abuse upon the jiuns — whitle the case was still snb-judjuce. The story was reproduced in the Saturday's brimstone columns of two New Zealand daily papers— but, we are glad to say, withoait t<he whoops a,nd shrieks and epileptic fits of the atheistic and ' Christian ' organs from wMah it was copied. In due course the oase cairne | before the French courts. Those specimens of journalistic ' honor-bright ' and ' British fair-play ' were then affiordeti an opportunity of marking how plaip a tale did put them down. The plain f,acts, devoid of arabesque ornaments, are these : The distracted mother is an incorrigible criminal. When she told her story to the court she had just completed a sentence ol ten years' penal seiH r itu4e. Her ' litfUe daughter,' who is twenty-seven years old, stood upon tihe witness-stand and declared that, in order to avoid associating herself with the shame of an irreclaimable criminal's life, she entered a religious house and remained alnd still remains there of her own free will. The case thereupon suddenly collapsed. That was some time ago. The judicial decision was a dire blow to the French atheist newspapers a-nd their xJhglishsjpeaking religious allies. So tar as we are aware, not one of the latter has ventured to tell the sequel of the sensational tale which they placed before their readers with .such a fine flare. They clearly hold, witfi Dr. Martin Lrtit,he-, that the end justifies the means. ,' Against tjhe Papacy,' said he, ' I deem all things lawful.' Plain Christian folk, however, fail to see how the cause of the Hod of truth can be advanced by tihe art of Ananias or by buttressing up proven calumnies.

By thjD ' Omra-h," which moored at Port Melbourne an Wednesday morning, 30th ult. (says the ' Advovate ') tiie Keiv. M. J. Hayes, from the famous foreign missionary Qollptee of All Hallows, Dublin, was a passenger for tine Archdiocese of Melbourne. The Rev. J. C. Meagher (diiocese of M.aitland, N.S.W.) ; the Revs. E. Bergim, J. Bower anid J. Kelly, who are from St. Kerin's College, Kilkenny, Ireland, and are proceeding to the diocese' of Wellington, New Zealand, were also passengers by the mail steamer.

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