Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 40, 7 December 1905, Page 18

Notes

Church Parades

A recent church parade in Dunedin has given fresh prominence to a wrong idea that has taken up its quarters in the heads of many of our volunteers. And the sooner it is dislodged the better. Many of our volunteer defenders are under the impression that attendance at church parades is compulsory. For their benefit we once more publish, by request, a reply in point that was given some months ago by Col. Webb, of the Defence Department :— • 1. Under existing regulations, any volunteer corps is entitled to an honorary chaplain. lie, like other oflicers is elected by the corps, and may be ot any denomination, but one chaplain only is allowed. '2. No chaplain has authority to order a church parade. If a church parade is ordered under the authority of the OfTicer Commanding the District, or any officer to whom such authority may be delegated, the attendance, at such a parade is optional and cannot be enforced. ' 3. Members of a volunteer corps may attend divine service according to their respective religious denominations, or may absent themselves altogether. There is no restriction or compulsion whatever, neither is preference given to any Church or religious body in New Zealand.' 'No church parade is, therefore, compulsory. And volunteers of our faith should absent themselves from any such parades, unless they are to the Catholic church. There is no body of our defenders whom Col. Webb's instructions affect so intimately as they do the Catholic volunteers.

The Test of Zeal

1 A great capitalist,' says a noted educational writer in the Buffalo (U.S.A.) ' Catholic Union,' ' is praised for giving ten million dollars to education. The Church (in the United States) has given three hundred million dollars for school buildings, and forty millions more to pay the teachers, in building up the parish school system.' In New Zealand (according to the estimate of one of our Prelates) the Catholic body have expended about a million and a half sterling on religious education, without counting the vast sums that have been filched from them for the instruction of the children of other creeds in the public schools. Here is a test of zeal and earnestness which wild horses would not draw the Bible-in-schools party to imitate. Political campaigning is, for the clergy at least, vastly cheaper and more to their taste.

French Domestic Life

Mrs. Betham-Edwards has written a new book, ' Home Life in France.' The book (says the Boston ' S.H. Review ') ' will be an eye-opener to people in this country who form their opinions of French social and domestic life, and the morals and manners of the French, from certain salacious novels which have, unhappily, all too great a vogue here. Mrs. Betham-Edwards says of such novels : " Why should capable, above all, reputed writers, fix upon themes, alike in subject and treatment, so grotesquely untiue to life and so repellant. The plain truth of the matter is, that the average existence, especially middle-class existence, in France is too uneventful, too eminently respectable, for sensational or dramatic handling." '