Nailing 'Em

New Zealand Tablet, 2 August 1906, Page 23

Nailing 'Em

We are firm believers in the wisdom and justice of making the path of the calumniator hard— strewing it (metaphorically, of course) with thorns and tacks and broken glass. Hence we regard as a just retribution the unpleasant predicament in which a Hawke's Bay resident finds himself for having spun the following crude but vicious calumny at a recent Orange celebration in Napier :—: — ' A certain Catholic woman of Hastings attended a ' special " service in a non-Catholic Church, and for having so acted the priest compelled her to get on the ground and remain thee on her bare knees for a n hour or more.' It is scarcely necessary to say that the individual who disseminated (not, we assume, concocted) this meanly improbable story was a clergyman. 'Twas ever thus. The worst calumnies, the most frantic appeals t o racial and religions passion, do not, generally speaking, come from the lay, but from the clerical, leaders of the Grange fraternity. Dean Smyth, the pastor of Hastings, got promptly upon tfie slanderer's trail, nis first* letter to the Napier ' Daily Telegraph ' drew from the orator of ' the glorious twelfth' the pitiful admission that, when speaking, he did n ot know where the alleged occurrence had taken place, but that, at any r.ite, it apparently was not Hastings'. Here we have a refreshingly frank avowal of the principle that there is no need to investigate or verify stories that seem to tell against ' Rome.' It reminds us of a dictum laid down by Mr. Snowball (solicitor to the Grand Lodge) in the course of a letter published some years ago in the ' Riponshire Advocate ' (Victoria)', to the effect that an Orange speaker should not be called uron to prove statements made against the Roman Catholic Cihufch 'on so important an occasion as the twelfth of July ' ! * The shameful avowal mentioned above was followed by a fresh demand from Dean Smyth for the name of ' the woman in the case,' the name of the priest, and the name of the parish or district where the incident is alleged to have taken place. Of course these will not be given. They cannot be given ; for the whole story is stamped all over with the broadarrow of fraud. But, incidentally, it will serve to make clerical enthusiasts about Hawke's Bay a little more cautious-even in July. The anrtfaor or disseminator of that ill-constructed fable ought to have gone farther afield— to Mexico, for instance, or, 'better still to Kamchatka. For the « N.Z. Tablet ' has shown that, for the in-quiring Catholic journalist, it is not so far a cry to Mexico, or to Bolivia, or to the wilds of Sardinia, or even to the far hinterlands of the Gifcn Chaco, in the Argentine Republic. The as-

siduous repetition of such exposures would, even in the short run (as our own experience goes to- show), trephine lessons of caution into the brain-cases even of an association that is by nature and profession a slanderer. In the meantime we commend to tho£e over-eager enthusiasts in Hawke's Bay the weighty and appropriate words that were addressed by Archdeacon Bartlett to an assembly of Orangemen in Goulburn on the last anniversary of ' the glorious, pious, and immortal memory.' 'It is,' said that Anglican dignitary, 'so easy to find fault ; it is so easy to denounce a Church to which we do not belong. But is there not a 'better and nobler course ? Do you work for your faith as Romans do for theirs ? Are you as loyal, as self-sacrificing, a s enthusiastic as they are ? Show us by your loyal adherence to principles that you love, and are prepared to work for, your Church with the same noble self-sacrifice that Roman Catholics practise towards their Church.'