The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1906 PRINCESS ENA: AN AUCKLAND TIRADE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 13, 29 March 1906, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET

THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1906 PRINCESS ENA : AN AUCKLAND TIRADE

To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace. LEO. XIII, to the N.Z. TABLET

f GOODLY dose of -soothing syrup would probably be about the best prescription to offer to the excited cleric who (as reported by the ' New Zealand Herald ' of March 17) disgraced the Anglican pulpit of St. Mark's, Auckland, with an evil-tempered attack upon ' Princess Ena ' and ' the Church of Rome.' From such a quarter, Catholics were entitled to hope for better things. But in substance and in style, the preacher fell down to the level r f his passing role — a role that requires no more knowledge or brainpower or literary ability than is found upon the streetcorner or the Orange platform. It is easy (according to an old pamphlet of 1618) ' to pray, cr rather prate, by the Spirit, out of a tub, against the King.' And, says Dr. England, ' a person needs no ether qualification to write against the Roman Catholic religion than to be so disposed ; and the abundance of the spirit/ becomes manifest in the vehemence of the phraseology. Littla lattjc-iition need be paid tc facts, circumstances need not be examined, /nor is it always necessary to have regard even to probability itselT. ' The direct at^tack upon the Catholic Church, and the necessarily implied cnslaught on the Supreme Head of his own faith, were marked by wild ' vehemence of phraseology,' and by a lack" of knowledge, of good manners, of justice, and of deliberation in statement that reflect the utmost discredit upon one who professes to be a minister of the Gospel of Christ. * We pass by, for the present, the elegant grimaces which the preacher made at ' the Roman Church,' and the question-bx'ggijng epithets which he applied to its ntual as ' sensuous ' and ' gratifying to the depraved taste of a decadent civilisation.' Here is his reference to the Princess Ena :—: — ' The Reformed Churches. . . . acquiesce with scarcely a protest in the deliHerate, formal, and public renunciation of her faith and her baptism by a Princess of the blood royal, in order to contiact a marriage alliance with the Sovereign of a country that has been conspicuous for religious bigotry, intolerance, cruel and ruthless persecution. There has been no more terrible evidence 1 of the decay of sturdy faith and patriotism in the British people. . . We, with all our boasting, are fain to strengthen ourselves by a treaty with a heathen nation, and an alliance with a nation that has fallen by ignorant superstition.' The preacher (who seems to he on button-holing terms witlh the Almighty) assured his hearers that the marriage and conversion of Princess Ena are ' in conflict with ithe will of God.' The American w'orVd is blessed with the Second Elijah — the ' Prophet ' Dowie. Auckland lias given to us the Second Jeremiah. And he has taken down his harp and prophesied that the ' result ' oil the Spanish m^tch will be ' disaster,' that tho ' disaster \ will be a ' catastrophe,' and that? the) ' catastrophe ' will bo something particularly ' signal and terrible.'! We are not informed whether the coming cataclysm is to German measles, or cholera roorbus, or the seven plagues of Egypt or the crack o' doom. Such portentous predictions are, no doubt, very com-

forting to some minds. They aic a safety valve for the superheated steam of religious and party passion, when it has reached dangerously hign pressure. And they require li title mental horse-power, and are cheap 'and easy— and harmless. Old Mac re's oflice-boy grinds them out annually like the shelling of green peas. In the whole course of this hypocritical agitation, wo have come across no more ill-mannered attack upon the Princess Ena. Her conversion (sa} s this northern apostlo of sweetness and light) is merely a means to a social pnd, to wit : 'a mariiage alliance with the Sovereign ' of Spain. Now, the .Firincess Ena's change of faith is a matter personal to herself— a matter between her conscience and her Creator. And the Catholic Church demanded and received from her, solemn assuiances that she was led into the One Fold by the clear and vindly light of firm and true conviction. Short of clear .and cogent evidence to the contrary, the solemn pledgo mado liy this worthy young scion of a rcyal house must be deemed to be in full harmony with the inmost feeling of her soul. ' Knew thyself,' says the old Greek {warning. Which a 'later poet rendered thus :>— ' r l his ffjmous "'Know thyself," it does but say : " Know thine own business " in another way.' The Auckland Solon would ha\ c been much more profitably occupied in knowing and minding his own business than in assuming towards Ena of Battenberg the role of the Almighty— the Searcher of hearts. With an impertinence and a meddlesome indelicacy -which ill become the cloth ho wears, he intrudes into the prhacy of her heart and conscience , he sits in judgment upon her inmost thoughts and motives. By necessary implication ho, in eflect, declares that she is selling her soul for a diadem, and that she is guilty of coarse-grained worldhness, callous deceit, ,and public hypocrisy. lie rails at ' the Reformed Churches ' for not having scon about preventing this ' alliance.' And (being on hobnobbing terms iwith the Deity) he confidently promises— as .the ' result 'of the Spanish union — ' disaster ' and a nameless ' catastrophe ' of a ' signal and terrible ' kind to the British nation. The pieachcr clearly expected King Edward VII. to play the autocrat and family tyrant, and prevent the Pnncess Ena (his niece) following her womanly affections to a union with her pious and manly young royal lover, and hor conscience intc the Old Faith of her fathers. And King Edward's failure to play tins ignoble role is ' a terrible e\ idence of the decay of sturdy faith ard patriotism ' ! The preacher's ideas of ' sturdy faith and patriotism ' spell, in big letters, tyranny over the individual conscience. Ono scarcely expects so frank an a\o\val of intolerance from ono who professes to damn intolerance to the nether pit But the sweet jewel, consistency, seldom adorns the blows of those who go to the pulpit as Mrs. Brown went to the play— with ' an erratable temperature.' * Princess Ena is, from the religious point of view, marrying above her. She is leawng the turmoil of five hundred conflicting sects for the peace of the Fold that is one and undivided. But who authorised the Auckland assailant of the young royal lady to act the Almighty Searcher and Judge towards her'conscience 7 The reverend preacher of St. Mark's, Auckland, stands by the ' right of private judgment ' in matters of faith. On what 'grounds does he deny that ' right ' to Ena of BattenTiterg ? And why is he not afire at the recollection that the Urother, sisters, and other relatives of King Edward VII. made a ' deliberate, formal, and public renunciation of their faith ' when they jcined the Greek and Lutheran Churches ? Where were his ' sturdy faith and patriotism ' when these things came to pass ? And what ' disasters ' and ' catastrophes "' befell the British nation as the ' result ' of these ' conflicts with the will of God ' ? And on what principle of consistency or common-sense does he, in the same breath, decry religious intolerance and deny religious tolerance td

an English maiden ? We take the liberty of reminding him that angry denunciations of ' religious bigotry, intolerance, cruel and ruthless persecution ' come with a singularly bad grace from one of his cloth .and faith. For wantonness, dnjustijce, and intensity, what were the Spanish civil persecutions (which all Catholics deplore) compared with those which ran their long and evil course in the British dominions ? A relic of legal barbarism, stjtfl iforces British Sovereigns— as a condition ci wearing the crown— to denounce as idolaters the adherents of the oldest and greatest faith in Christendom. And this in the supposed interests of the creed to which our Auckland assailant 'belongs. Spain, at least, was never guilty of .such an outrage on the conscience of a King. Does our Northern critic forget that those whos« feelings are most outraged by the ("presumably furnished) report of his knobkerry sermon, are those Catholics from the Green Isle whose fathers had fcr centuries to bear the bitter b-runt of the worst penal code ever imposed by one Christian people upon another ? Edmund Burke (a coreligionist of his) descrihes it| as follows in a well-known passage :— ' It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.' To none was that ill-considered tirade a mere bitter outrage than to those readers of the ' New Zealand Herald ' report whose memory can recall the dark and evil daya of ' Black 'Forty-seven.' As their eyes witnessed, through the ' Herald,' the war-club falling in St. Mark's on ' intolerance ' and on ' deliberate and formal renunciation of faith,' their memory must have gone back with fierce resentment to the days when men and women of the preacher's faith played the detestable role /of ' soupers ' to the starving and typhus-stricken peasantry of Ireland. And nerves will tingle and pulse throb fast as they recall the cap that was held like the cup of Tantalus to the parched and fevered lips, and tho hot meat-soup that was tendered to the starving and dying poor — >and given only after a ' deliberate and formal renunciation of their faith.. Such abjuration was thankfully accepted. And the living (or dying) anatomies of death were entered with a flourish of trumpets upon the roll/ of ' converts,' even though it was well known that their supposed change of faith was a famine-forced pretence, and a mockery of conscience and of God. Our assailant willnot relish these reminders. Neither do we. We should be sorry if our words should wound the sensibilities of even the least of that vast body of our broad-minded Anglican fellow-colonists who have no sympathy with such rough and uncalled-for and unchristian attacks. But if such blnious retorts are not desired, then let them not be provoked. And, on the Deuteronomic principle, the blame (if any) must rest with him who lit this fire. We have other remarks to make upon the Auckland tirade. But they must remain in cold storage till our next issue.