Prophets of Woe

New Zealand Tablet, 30 August 1906, Page 10

Prophets of Woe

The early bird catches the early worm. And the early piophet is about in the hope oi catchhvg an early hold on the lobe of the public ear. He periodically put the rattles in the throat of Leo XIII. for twenty years before death came at last to the tough and wiry old Pope fioni the mountains of Carpineto. The prophet of doom got a coffin ready for Pius X. before the rim oi the tiiple crown was warm upon the newly-made Pontiff's brow. And the raven-croak of impending dissolution has been heard in a section of the secular press at shoit intervals ever since. Some weeks ago a cabled message appeared in the New Zealand daily papers to the effect that a ' Mr. Browne of Philadelphia '—a sort of professorial ' Barnes, of New York '—had a private audience with the Pope, and that he found Pius ' suffering from the beginning of nephritis' (kidney disease),, which (it was further alleged) ' was brought about by a serious affection of the liver '. It now appears that no such interview took place. And Dr. Lapponi (the papal physician) wipes ' Mr. Browne, of Philadelphia, 1 off the slate with the following remarks to a repiesentative of the ' Giornale d' ltalia ' : ' You may deny categorically all the notices which certain journals spread, and which, you may remember, were repeated every year, at the beginning of summer, even during the long pontificate of Leo XIII. The absence of real news opens the pathway to fantastic information ; but this constant repetition of the same things does not indeed evidence much richness of imagination in the gentlemen of the press. The Pontiff, 1 repeat^ is very well indeed.'

Another pseudo-prophet has stepped into the field with a crazy interpretation of a dozen honest texts

ripped from th-e Book of Daniel. Pius X. (acoording to the new Daniel come to judgment) is to be positively the last Pope. The same was said of Pius VII. when the First Napoleon carried him away a prisoner to Fontainebloau. But Pius VII. stayed, long enough in France to see the end of Napoleon's power. Th-e same prediction went out on the four winds of heaven when word (lashed over the wires that Pius IX. had shuffled off his mortal coil. And those of our readers that live long enough will hear the forecast restated for other Popes until their ears become deaf to sounds of earth and their eyes drop the shutters till the crack o1o 1 doom. The ' positively last appearance ' of the Pope upon the world's stage will come to pass only when mankind vanishes off our planet, and the heavens shall depart as a scroll rolled up. The Pope dies. The papacy lives ondrinking in perpetual youth from the great Fount of living water above. Those toilsome prophecies merely give expression to a hope and wish. They have a happy knack of ever ganging ag-ley, and furnish a fresh illustration of the truth of Twain's saying- that this sort of pro-phe-cy may be a good line of business, but it is full of risks.