Biography of a Lie

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10, 9 March 1905, Page 2

Biography of a Lie

We have not an abiding faith either in the journalism that is yellow or in the journalism thmt is ' trueblue.' With both truth is at as groat a discount is were Cuban bonds in 1597. But the lowest depths of journalistic dishonor is, perhaps, torched by certain tatterdemalion no-Popery ' religious ' qrgans that cator for a certain taste in the monstrous and the impossible One of these shameless sheets is the ' Ohristiam Herald ' — which is controlled by an individual ycleped ' Prophet Baxter,' who from time to time announces to c, sarcastic public the urgent imminence of the crack o' doom. Some time ago, in pursuit of its customary no. Popery policy, the ' Christian Herald ' published the following wild and gruesome tale for the benefit of the marines among its subscribers :— • A gentleman travelling in South America \isited a cathedral in the city in whic^ he was .staying, ai>d bocame engrossed in copying some carving in a corner of the edifice. The hour for closing parsed, and when he made fo!r the floor he found it barred for the night. Maying the best of his predicament, he by and bye lay down to sleep. During the night he was a-roused by the opening of a idoor behind ttlve high altar, and saw ttow o priests drag the gagged ard bound form of a nun to a spot where they raised a stone ; then they tossed the nuin into what was evidently a vault below, and then, closing the trap, they went away. Next morning he went and told tne British Consul of the occurrence. The Consul said he could do nothing, apd advised him, if he valiued his life, to leave the place at once.' The pious romancer who invented this Rawhead-and-bloody-blcmes stjory followed the usual custom of such gentry in suppressing names of persons and places and all other details that would facilitate investigation and exposiure. The ' Christian Herald ' wont one step farther in the vile lousiness ; it published a picture showing the two anonymous monks of this fairy-tale from a far-off land throwing the roped-up body of tjhe anonymous mm into the vault of the anonymous cathedral.

The Edinburgh ' Catholic Herald ' them came ityxm the scene. Our valued Scottish contemporary has rendered meritorious service to the cause of truth and decency by the admirable persistence with wihich it exposes no-Popery freaks and ' fakes ' and frauds and bestrews the patih of tihe calumniator wath nails and thorns and bro'en glass. It characterised the story as ' a disgraceful and gross invention, printed for the purpose of selling that gulte- publication,' the ' OluLtian* Herald.' It defied ' Prophet ' Baxter and his colleagues to name the town where th/at ' creepy ' incident is alleged to ha/ye occurred, the person who is stated to have witnessed it, or the name of the British Consul referred to in the story. 'We are prepaied,' said the ' Catholic Herald,' ' to deposit a aura of £100 in the hands of any reputable person, to be paid over to any charitable object we may name, if any evidence can be produced by the " Christian Herald " oi its p-oprietary to prove their story.'

This applicaticn of the journalistic horsewhip brought the ' Christian Herald ' so far to the rightabout that it, in effect, owned up to having not s*> much as a scrap of fact or a rag of evidence in support of the story which it had sent upon its evil lounds. ' Our paragraph, ' it pleaded, ' was quoted from a circumstantial article in the " Protestant Woman," stated to be on unimpeachable authority.' So far good. Tjhe lie was being traced upwards. The remainder of the biography of the slander was told in the first January i i :siue of London ' Truth.' It runs as follows :—

'In March last a paper called " The P'otqstant Woman," the organ of the Women's Protestant Union, publislhed a sensational article under the heading, " The True Story of a Nun." A gentleman whose wife was a slubscmber to the paper happened to read the story, and deeming it incredible, he wrote to the secretary of the Union asking whether there was any evidence of its authenticity. This led to a correspondence whicjh only terminated a week or two ago, and which has now been sent to me for notice. At first the inquirer was told, on the authority ol the author of the sto y, that '' it could be fully substantiated if needful," bmt that the incident it related " occurred some while ago " in South America. More precise details as to the date and place were requested, arul the secretary replied that the author of the stoiy had asLed her informant for the^e particulars. No such pj,rtL'ui,;rs were e\er forthcoming, and it was finally admitted that Ihe lady who wrote the arlule in " The Protestant Woman " heard the sitory fioin a Picsbytenm nnnistei, -who heard it from "some people," who in their tim heard it " from friends (f the man wtio wiline-nscd the deed '.' ' This eyewitness co, ild not l>e traced, and it was exulained that his fi lends would be exceedingly unlikely to give any details, lest they should " embarrass tiheir relations " with their R;oman Catholic neighbors. In fairness to the Presbyterian minister, it should be added that he says that wthen he told the story " qvile casually " he mentioned that he had no guarantee of its truth. 1 Such was the genesis of " The True Story of a Nun " with wihich the members of the Women's Protestant Union were regaled. Most of them probably swallowed it a^s gospel, being ready to believe any e\il of Roman Catholics. Even when he Avas being jnl«erroga. ted as to the evidence in support of the story, tthe secretary of the Union urged that it should be remembered antf pa^vsed on "as a glaring instance of Rome's inhumanity and rruelty " It seems to me that the affair rather deserves to be passed on as a glaring instsn -c of the credulity and uncharitablcnpss of the Protestant bigots who circulated this cock-and-bull .story. '

1 The whole thing,' says the ' Catholic Herald,' ' is a lovely sample of the methods of the no-Popery press. Somdone tells Pomeone else something, and then someone efse prints it in tihe '' Protestant Woman " , the '♦Christian Herald " grabs at the thing, sets it forth as fact, an)i to give the lie the semblance of truth, invents and prints a lurid picture which readers would no doubt swallow as being nhe very delineation of a ghastly deed. . . The facts set forth prove that the antiCatholic newspapers of Great Britain recklessly print any lie ttoat comes their way, sell it for truth, and take nio heed of the consequences. Tfcat is a discreditable and disgraceful practice.' Arid so say all of us.