The Cardinal and his Critics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4, 25 January 1906, Page 2

The Cardinal and his Critics

The two ' great dailies ' of Sydney pass the days swinging like clumsy pendulums between epilepsy and hysteria, with more or less lucid intervals of tolerably even duration in the mliddle. They have lately been throwing a charming variety of fits. These, as usual, were easily brought on. Some questions were put to Cardinal Moran by the Melbourne ' Age ' in reference to the agitation got up by the parochial party in New South Wales in connection with the Federal Capital. In reply, the Cardinal spoke like the true patriot. He deplored the spirit of provincialism that marked the action of some people in Sydney. Pie pleaded in effect, for broader and more statesmanlike viiews, and urged the citizens of the Commonwealth to be Australians first and ' Walers,' Victorians, and the rest afterwards. When this was published, the two big Sydney dailies ' went off.' They had more than once invited sundry non-Catholic clerical politicians to air their views on State and Federal questions. Time and again they had made themselves the sounding-boards of dancing dervishes who perambulated the country setting creed at the throat of creed in the interests of a political party in the State. But when a Prince of the Catholic Church opens his mouth in temperate speech on a matter of Federal interest, he is screeched at as a trespasser upon the domain of party politics, and journalistic ' hell and broken bottles ' are let loose to warn him to keep off that grass. Now it so happens that Cardinal Moran is the very man whom the Sydney dailies lauded when he took a leading part in the Federal movement. In State politics he is no party man. Says the Sydney ' Freeman ' :— 1 We defy anybody in good faith to point to a single instance in. which the Cardinal has shown a tendency to interfere with the party politics of this State ; indeed, it would be difficult to say how far he favors or opposes the Carruthers Government ; and who, amid all the clash of fiscal battle, has yet ascertained from his public utterances whether his Eminence is a Freetrader or a Protectionist ? But there is one thing the Cardinal has made no attempt to conceal, that with him provincialism takes second place to Australia ; and that he should in his capadity as an Australian citizen say, or decline to say, a wonl upon a Federal subject which is in everybody's mouth, is surely a matter which concerns himself.'

As to Mr. Carruthers, the Cardinal (despite the statements published in some of our New Zealand daiJies) made no reflection upon him as Stato Premier-. 1 He is,' said his Eminence to an ' Age ' representative, ' just as good a Premier as any we have had in the last twenty years, so far as I am able to judge.' ' The whole thing,' says the Sydney 'Freeman,' 'is a hollow sham— this talk of injustice to New South Wales.' Cardinal Moran correctly diagnosed the true inwardness of the situation when he said to the ' Age ' interviewer : ' I think there is a great deal of provincialism in trying to assert the interests of any particular city— either Melbourne or Sydney, or any other.' The difference between the Cardinal and his two Sydney critics is this : He deprecates, and they maintain, petty local jealousies and periwinkle-brained parochialism against the broader interests of a United Australia.