' Vain War with Heav'n '

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 26, 28 June 1906, Page 2

' Vain War with Heav'n '

There is no mistaking the diabolical temper and intent of the men who are carrying on the war against icligion in France. It is not a ' jehad 'or fanatical crusade against Catholicism as such, nor against Protestantism as saach. The banded legions of the darklantern lodges arc ' Insatiate to pursue Vain war with heaven ' itself and God. In the course of a preface to a recently published work (' Le Satanisme et la Magic ') the distinguished author, J. K. Huysmans, gives a hideous anthology of the anti-Christian crusade in France. Here are two quotations in point. The first is from a speech delivered by M. de Lanessan on June 18, 1905. ' The danger,' said this political fire-eater, ' is not clericalism, hut God Himself, Who is absolutely infamous.' M. Aristide Briand is another standard-bearer in the war against the Almighty. Said he at Poitiers at the beginning . of the presenrti year : "We have driven God (nous avfoms chasse Dieu) out of the army, the navy, the schools, the hospitals, the mad-houses, the asylums, the lawcourts, the wayside ;■ and now we must kick Him out of the State altogether. He is infamous — even more so than Christ.' Yet in a recent issue of an Australian non-Catholic religious publication (the ' Messenger ' — not. the ' Messenger of the S.H.'>) a Christian clergyman apparently finds solace in the war against religion in France, as in part a pet-off to the rapid expansion of the Catholic Church in Australia ! Italy, America,., and Austria also supply the comfort —of bogus * statistics ' and of. fables that have time

and again had the searchlight turned upon them in our editorial and news columns. . "Rather cold and distant comfort/ says the » Tribune ' ; „' but it is the best he can afford.' In the United States (continues our Melbourne contemporary) the " Messenger," and other- unconvincing preachers of the Roman downfall, try to cheer the spirits of; their readers—depressed by the jpycus swing of the Catholic advance 3 in the Republic— by representing .Catholicism in Australia a£- practically extinct. And so everywhere. The local progress cannot be denied, and must be offset by more or less imaginary decay in far-off foreign- lands. 1 - There are in this connection, as a matter of fact, two distinct NoPopery schools. There are those who hold that * Romanism ' has the death-rattles in its throat and its'coffin at the door. And! there are those who keep vociferating -that it is over-running the earth, that l the reformed religion is in danger,' and that, to save it from impending ruin, the opponents of l the Scarlet Woman ' must urgently band themselves together in leagues ..and unions and • defence ' associations. One is generally safe in discounting estimates that are based either on scare or on pooh-pooh. Both sets of extremists mentioned above distort facts— the pooh-pooh party by what oculists term hour-glass distortion, the others by barreldistortion. Well o/cr a century ago, Doddridge wrote in England :, ' Ihc growth 61 Popery gives a general and just alarm.' Later on, Gibson thought it. necessary to write- his 'Preservation against Popery.' And when ladies began to wear Capuchin cloaks, was not the fashion (as Lecky shows) denounced because it was supposed to teach men • to view the cowl not alone with patience, but? with complacency ' ? And what is the^ cry that we hear on a hundred platforms when the annual access of hysteria seizes the Saffron Sashes in July ? The encroachments 'of ' Rome ' ! « Rome's advance seizes the brethren and shakes them till it shivers) their timbers. And to what end is the nonCatholic religious press packed with warnings against ' Rome ' ? And are the myriad forms of anti-papal book and pamphlet and leaflet literature that come tumbling out of the press, printed and distributed merely for ' divarshun ' ? And why all those expensive * missions to Romanists,' if thet Reformed denominations have ortly to wait a little for the con-verts to drop to them of their own accord, like ripened pippins into open mouths ? Is not all this effort and expenditure a woful waste, on the supposition that ' Rome ' is shrivelling up of her own accord ? And what about the cry as to the widespread decline of dogmatic Christianity, a nd of belief in the Bible as an inspired record, not alone among the laity, but even among the clergy of the Reformed creeds ? And why so many sermons and articles and symposiums among them on that- fe~tile theme : 4 Why people do not go to church ? ' With Catholics this is not a live problem. Are not those forerbodings of. ' Rome's ' downfall dictated, in their last analysis, by the foaling that prompted the tailless fox to wish to see all other foxes without tails ? * ...The writer in the '-Messenger ' belongs to the poohpooh school. Only—he has sense enough not to bang his head against massive facts that are looking right into his •eye-fbsClls-. He is less cautious in regard to facts that are too far off, to bump against him. " A great English statesman gave up his life denouncing the employment of savage Indians against white) men in North America. And -is it not a strange " sort of Christianity that,>in effect, welcomes still more savage atheism as an ally in a crusade against the great faith ot Christendom ? Well, religious envy, like poverty, makes queer bedfellows. It cloaks itself full many- a time under the disguise of zeal for religion. But that is the nature of the vice. It is (according to La Rochefoucauld) the most timid and. shamefaced of all the passions. Few people dare" to avow it. But often?, -times it' glowers between the lines— like the face of a Bill Sites behind his prison-bars. ... '