Rev. Mr. Isitt and Father Hays

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11, 16 March 1905, Page 1

Rev. Mr. Isitt and Father Hays

When Artemus Ward was going; ' all so bold x ' and uninvited an 3 ifnannaunced, 'to see Albert Edward the Prince of Wales, 1 he filled the royal attendant up, toi the chin with l indigent cirprisc' We confess to 'having experience-)! a siomewShat similar shock of astonishment— minus the ' indigence,' bowe\er— on reading the report of remarks! made by the Rev. F. W. Isitt when, on Friday last, he acted as spokesmaß of a deputation of the Now Zealand Alliance to the Methodist Conference in Wellington. 'In the; comtr,so of an address, 1 says the telegoraphed report, l the Key. Mr. Isitt made interesting reference to the approaching visit to New Zealand of the Rev. Father Hays, who will reach the Blu,ff early next moivtih. Mr. Isitt mentioned that it was in consequence of an appeal from Wellington Catholics that the visit was being paid. It had been said that only eight Catholics signed that appeal, but the speaker had been told by some Catholic infoimants that there were 200 signatures on the appeal when it was received by the Rev. Father Hays. There had, however, been nothing done by the signatories towards meeting expertises, and the Alliance undertook to deal with these.'

The element of ' cirpri.se ' to us is this : tfcat, witij} the history of that notorious Wellington address before Mm,, the Rev. Mr. Isitt could have used the utterances with which he is credited in the report quoted above. What purported to be a copy of that address was, in

the first instance, sent to us for publication. In substance it was strongly Prohibitionist ; in style a crude and bombastic barbarism. The name of the sender did •not appear upon it. There was no indication as to whom it was addressed— we subsequently learned that it was intended for Fat/her Hays. It contained no signatures, a!nd concluded with the statement ( anonymously made) that it was ' signed by 200 Catholics.' Thfe third paragraph contained tibe following outrageous calumny l couched in tangled and ungrammatical speech, upon the Catholic's of New Zealand :— ' We are all the more anxiotus for otir fellow-Catholic colonists when we recognise our Catholic proportion of the po/|*ulation is one in se\en, while unfortunately in the and gaol statistics we regret the figures read one in o\ery 2.50 of the drunkards of Nejw Zealand". ' In our issue of October 1, 1903, we .showed that the paragraph just quoted was a bra/en falsehood. The '/police anld gaol statistics ' make no such statement as is there attributed to them. No statistics have ever been published of ' the drunkards of 'New ZeaJianfl.' Only tjliose who, being unable to pay fines or being refused ' the option,' are actually sent to gaol, have Itflieir 1 reli* gious belief stated in the statistical returns. The Registrar-General (as stated by us im our issue of December 10, 1903) takes pains to prevent misconteeptioln on this store, for he has said— -what everybody already knew— that ' it must be remembered that drunkenness is punished more by fine than by im>prisioinment, so that the figures in the gaol tables do not represent the full number of persons punished for that offence.' As a matter of fact, they represent only a small fraction thereof, and the heavy topers that are dragged before the ' beak ' are, in turn, but an insignificant fraction of those that dethrone their ' bosom's lord, ' by ovier-deep potations. Your moneyed drunkard, for instance, can load himself witii drink at home tail he sees blue stars and spotted rattle-snakes. If he tipples unwisely outside, he is escorted home in a cab. The poor man takes in his liquid cargo in the saloon and— especially if he has the lively temperament of the western Cclt — he gets ' run in.' But sio long as a Boisfy ' drunlk,' or a fuddled sot that falls into ty*e hands of the police can compound his folly with & fine, bis religious bellief or disbelief never comes under the Go\aernment statistician's eye.

We were not prepared t?o lightly accept a statement— nnuch less an anonymous one— that two hundred Wellington Catholics sel their Wands, at least knowingly, to that clumsy slander upon their co-religionlsts

throughout New Zealand. Some two months after the copy of the alleged ' Catholic ' address to the anonymous ' Rev. and dear Fathpr ' had reached us, an indir viaual in Wellington (who wrote and signed his letter with the most faultless legibility) sent us a letter demanding instant publication of the mysterious document referred to. A brief and courteous reply declining publication elicited a furiously intemperate and abusive comrniunicaliuji. The addicts wa^ subsequently published in full— including the slanderous paragraph quoted abojve — in the 'Prohibitionist,' -with a bald statement that it had been refused insertion in the. 1 N.Z. Tablet ' In the meantime searching inquiries we*e being conducted on our behalf by a committee of clergy and laity all over Wellington. The furibuna individual referred to aibove stated to us that tihe addresis to Father Hays had been worked by a ' Committee ' Well, tifoe most persistent inquiries in the most likely quarters quite failed to find so much as a trace/ even of the existence of the alleged ' Committee,' much less any information as to the date and mode of its election anil its personnel.

The ' 200 Catholics ' that are alleged to h a ve » signed ' that mysterious document have not e\ en yet "been discovered. We rubbed our eyes when we read the following statements which are attributed to the Rev ; Mr. Ipitt :— 1 It has been said thiat only eight Catholics signed that appeal, but the speaker has been told by some Catholic informants that there were 2(10 signatures on the appeal when it was received by the Rev. Father Hays.' Now, wo Have had more than one comcrsation with the Rev. Mr. Isitt about that curious address (or -'appeal,' as he calls it) to Father ITays We, moreener, sent to his paper (the 'Prohibitionist'), and, quite i(>)rentlv, furai'hed to himself, at his own request, copies of the ' N.Z. Tablet ' dealing with tjiat "Wellington mystery But neither verbally noi in the eorumtns of the ' N.Z Tablet ' did we, at. leasit, evei state that ' only eight Catholics signed that appeal ' What we did wiite was this • ' So far as caroful inquiries went, they elicited that eight practical Cat h olilcs appended their signatures to the address ' Which is ob\ iously quite a different statement from that winch is attributed to the Rev. Mr. Isitt There may, perhaps, have been nine , Mere nray possibly have been a do/cn — even a baker's do7en, if you will But the most diligent inquiries, extending o\ er several weeks, and conducted on our behalf by a number of discreet, energetic, and responsible persons, clerical and lav, failed to make any more than eight ' practical Catholic ' signatories ' materialise.' Thp funding of our coiitmittee of investigation is, obviously, in no wise affected, nor are the mystery and suspicion surrounding the affair one whit diminished by the statement— so 'childlike aJnd bland ' in its way — that there were two hundred names on the ' appeal ' when it reached Father Hays Very possibly. Rut were they (as alleged) ' signdd by 200 Catholics ' of Wellington ? That's the rub. And who were the elnisive two hundred, anyway 9 — for they seem as difficult to discover as the North Pole. In one way and another we have been pressing for tlvs interesting information— not necessarily for publication— for a year and a half. But the pertinent and ticklish question still remains unanswered And why so much mystery and reticence and hanky-panky about an address \vhich ; if genuine, ought to have been public and aho\ ehoard ? An)cl! will those concerned explain how il| is that— as we were in a position to state authoritatively in our issue of October 1, 1903—110 practising Catholic had anything wb.ate.ver to do with drawing up or proCuring signatures for that alleged ' Catholic ' address, which Oas Father Hays himself subsequently declared in our columns) contained such a calumnious reflection on the CaUholics- of New Zealand ?

The sequel of the story only serves to intensify the mystery and suspicion that still enwrap the alleged ' Catholic address 'to Father Hays. After its publication in the ' Prohibitionist,' the eight Catholic signatories referred to above saw (as they declare) for t*he first time the outrageous paragraph quoted by us. They met, arew up a fresh address, and sent it to Father Hays, stating that they had gnen iheii sigrutiues to the previous document, ' thinking that it was a complimentary address ' to him ; that they ' emphatically repudiate and reprobate ' the ' gratuitous sla-ivder ' and the 'calumnious reflection 1 flung at their New Zealand co>religionissts ; and that, so far as they knew, they represented ' all the practical Catholics who signed the address dated December 10, 1902.' This document was published in full in our is-s»ue of October 1, 1903 ; together with a re;,ly from Father Hays, in which he expresvscd hi<s ' gratitude ' to the signatories. The ' Tablet's ' exposures of the alleged ' Catholic ' adidrcss from Wellington were duly forwardea (marked) to Father Hays. Having perused them, the noted temperance crusader sent us, for publication, a letter which appeared in oiur issue of February 11, l!Hl4, and in bhe course of which the Rev. Father said (through his secretary) :— ' Father Ilavs desires me to convey to you, and through you to the Catholics of N. Zealand, his sincere regret that a calumnious statement icflecting on the Catholics of the Colony should ha\e appeared in that address (from Wellington). Furthermore, he is prepared to accept the statement of facts as put forth by the " Tablet." ' Apart from newspaper tumor, we do not know whether Father Hays is coining to New Zealand ; nor have we any information as io the nature of the campaign which it is said he is about to conduct in this country, or as to his arrangements in connection therewith. For, up to the present time the Rev. Father has not communicated on the subject with any Catholic ecclesiastic, TDor (Vo far as we arc aware) with any Catholic layman, in New Zealand. We cannot for a moment assume that he is unacquainted with certain canons and rules of courtesy of Ins CWuuh In the circumstances, therefore — and especially in \ie\v of the facts set forth" abo\e, which were duly placed before the Rev Mr. Isitt — it requires a rather strong act of faith to accept the statement attributed to him, that Father Hays is\isiting New Zealand 'in consequent e of an appeal from Wellington Catholics.' That ' appeal ' (Mr. Isitt says) is the address to Father Hays which is alleged to have bectn ' signed by 200 Catholics ' Well, that addicts is now befoie us. Fiom beginning to end it CONTAINS NO WORD OF ' APPEAL ' OR INVITATION to the good Father. But even if it did, we do not — in \ iew of all the circumstances meniioncd abo\c— see how we could accept the Rev Mr. Isitfs alleged assertion, unless backed by the positne statement of Father Hays. To do so Avafuld, in the circumstances already detailed, be casting an unfair and unmerited reflection upon that noted temperance orator.

Marked copies of the three issues of the 'Tablet' having reference to the Wellington address were sent by us not alone to Father Hays, but to the 'Prohihitionist' and to the prime mover and probable author of that imgram.'matical, mis-spelled, and slanderous document. Further copies were (as stated abo^e) supplied at a recent Sate to the Roy. Mr. Isitt, as editor of the ' Piohibitionist.' But we regrot to find that up to the present time that organ has failed to take any notice of our refutation of the calumny against New Zealand Catholics to which it gave publicity. It is needless to refer here to the vnenviable position in which our articles have placed the author and prime mover of the alleged ' Catholic ' address to Father Hays. But fie, like Brer Rabbit, elected iio ' lay low an' say nuflin'.' His mouth was sewed vp — and that, boo, in circumstances in which the average mian would regard silence as not golden, nor even silvern. But the individual referred to presumably had what he

considered good and sufficient reasons for lying down quietly under our remarks. Marked cop,iep of this issue of the ' Tablet ' will be sent to Mm, to the ,Rev. Mr. Isitt, to the ' Prohibitionist,' and to all others concerned whose addresses we can discover. Our columns are open to them for any temperate reply they may Ueeire to make. Perhaps, even at this late hour of ttie day, they, or some of them, may clear up the mystery that hangs like >a ' lecoicl ' London fog around the undiscovered ' Committee ' and those missing ' 200 Catholics ' of Wellington. AH these must have a local habitation and a name. But if they are lost or mislaid, stolen or strayed, it is nigh time that /those most interested in establishing their living and objective reality should show more charity than carelesis little 80-Peep, and tramp about to find 'em.