Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 4, 24 January 1907, Page 9

Current Topics

That Endless Chain Prayer

The pagan Roman* of old had a saying to the effect that even the gods strive in vain against the jolthead amd " the fool. One would have thought that the fulminations of the Church — re-echoed from time to time in the pulpit and in H.he columns of this pape^r— would have sufficed to put an end here to the piece of arrant folly that goes by the name o£ the ' endless dhain prayer '. Yet we have before us a copy of tills" wretched parody on prayer, dated January 16, written in'a dainty femv nine hand, and adorned with the following silly story :—: —

' This prayer was . sent by Bishop Lawrence, recommending it to be sent and written to nine persons. One' person 1 who paid no heed to , it met with an accident. He who will re-wribe this prayer for nine days, commencing the day it is received, and send one each day to nine persons, will on or after the ninth day experience some great joy.. A,t the Holy Breast in Jerusalem it was said that he who v'ill write this passage will be delivered from every calamity. Do not break the chain.

The devil " tries to taint every pious practice, even that of prayer, with base notions. • Instructed Catho--lies do not need to have the fantastical absurdity of the above-quoted story pointed out to them. They will promptly consign the ' endless chain prayer ' to the fire or the dust-bin. As for the others, there are some to whom press-amd pulpit will alike appeal in vain, and who (in Thackeray's words) can no more seethe folly of the •' chain ' than they can see their own ears. - The strait waistcoat seems to be about the only argument left against this peculiar and persistent ."phase of unhinged intellect.

Pluto Politicians

The party that has been inoculat'lng Victorian politics with the virus of sectarian passion believe— or rather pretend to believe— that the age of miracles is rt,ot dci* I. The hiack-coated, white-choke red leadrr^ apparently hold that any ruse, however unworthy, is permissible in love, politics, or war. Hence they devised t'lwi story of the impending domination of four-fifths of the population of Victoria by the remaining fifth , and they asked their dupes to believe that a movement to effect this has bee^ for long years in operation — carried on by the poorer fifth, without organisation, without literature, without meetings, without officers, without recowls ! A first-class miracle, in good sooth !We are aware of the serene depths of' gobemoucherie which the mental plummet of the smaller clerical, canaille can sound. But we cannot think so meanly of the collective^ -intelligence of the real leaders of political sectarianism in Victoria as to suppose that they personally believe in the objective terrors of the bugbear which "they have tricked out to sca-e the more ignorant class " ol ' Protestant electors. Children, savages, and simple- ' minded folk generally have a dread of masks that are anade (after the fashion of" those of the Pacific Islanders) sufficiently grotesque and* terrible looking. Even in these enlightened countries, the schoolmaster' has by no means succeeded in expelling all the ignorance. There always remains a substratum of free and independent electors who are in statu pupdllari— in a state of political infancy, and peculiarly susceptible to Hhe. terrors of Mask .and Effigy, of horsehair-and-paint, of hollowed-turnip T aud-tallow-candle. And has not conscious political cunning in every age sought to snatch a passing advantage —after the fashion of Pluto in the • Infernal Marriage '— by putting the majority in awe of the supremacy of the minority? 'Trust. me', said Pluto, ' I am a profound politician '.

The ' Church Commonwealth ' (an Australian Anglican organ)' administers^ the following editorial flailing to the ' profound politicians ', lay and clerical, who in

the recent Federal campaign called in as their ally the rod idevil \of sectarian bitterness and" strife': ' The Federal elections are^ over, and we are enjoying" comparative peace aften the storm. We have little to be proud of in the recent elections. The~:trail of the ser-

pent was .over them. Everywhere the narrow, sectarian issue was raised.. Mr. - George Reid appealed- to all Christians as such to support him in Mew South Wales, . and Dr. Dill Macky seconded his call. By " Christian " these two gentlemen meant evidently " Non-Ro-mans." The result of their appeal was the loss of four seats to Mr. Reid. In Victoria the ' (Anglican) ' Archbishop of Melbourne astonished everyone by "issuing on the eve of Christmas what aopeared to be an appeal for a strong Protestant Electors' Committee to run candidates for the forthcoming State elections. His Grace's venture into the sea of politics has- naturally produced much vigorous comment. We can- only express our deep regret that he should have deemed it necessary to take such a s,tep. It is fraught with utmost mischief for the peace and happiness of Victoria. ' .

' Bigotry ', said O'Connell on -a memorable occasion, ' has no head and cannot think, no heart and cannot feel. When she moves it is in wrath, when she pauses it is amidst ruin ; her prayers are curses, her God is a demon, her Communion is death '. Yet 'this is the_ thing that thie Political Parson has injected into the public life of Victoria, in order to- turn Catholics into a race of helots in the land which they have done so much to build up. What would' happen if some malevolent enemy were to introduce rabies or rinderpest or cholera morbus into the Australian Commonwealth ? The long arm of the law would grope through the land till it found him, dragged him before the tribunal of justice, and placed him, like Judas, 'in locum suum \ But viler and more ruinous by far are the criminals who scatter the germs of sectarian hate and religious strife - among a peaceful people. This class of traitors to their country's highest interests are not, unfortunately, amenable to the jurisdiction of judge .or public prosecutor. The sword of the law no more touches them than did Aeneas's blade wound the impalpable ghosts that flitted around him. Yet the track of ruin and- desolation that they leave is wider and longer than that of . the

-northern or. the African- or the Eastern pest, for its malign influence may extend^ (as in Ulster) from age to age. And the- end of it no man can foresee. The sodden • drunk ' and the village bully aa;e seized and .hold in the grip of the law and shaken till their eye-" teeth fall. The bigger criminals in broadcloth and gaiters, and the raucous politicians whose tools they are, have no public accuser, no judge and jury, to do justice upon them except the power which a healthy puWic opinion may create. Victoria and New South • Wales now stand' in urgent need of a public opinion that „ shall save them from the devastating curse of a worse - than Mahomedan rage that lies so heavily upon the . Irish Ulster and upon its offshoot, the Canadian Ulster of Ontario. " The Reformation and Education ' It should not be forgotten ', said the Anglican Primate (Dr. Nevill) at "last week's General Synod in . Dunedfn, ' that the principle of State education is quite -modern,, and is, so to speak-, not native to the soil of an old country like England. -Educational in-

stitutions were both founded and managed by the Church and that from the highest to the lowest grades. This is well known as regards the universities and grammar schools, but it is not s so well known that till recently the keeper.: even of a tiame school~"in a village was licensed to her work by the bishop of the diocese, and this because all knowledge was regarded as .sacred and looking back to God. The destruction of the "monasteries had also been the removal of the teaching institutions which had sufficed for the simple instruction _of

the poorer people. Then began the increase of the population, consequent! upon -the cessation of -devastating wars, and the upgrowth of industries, but not only was there no systematic effort on behalf of education, but on the contrary there was a strong prejudice against it-. The Cromwellian preachers" had spread throughout the country the gross idea that piety flourished most where ignorance was deepest, and tti'at '•" the Spirit " . could 'hardly co-exist with any 'degree of learning. As usual, igmcrancd and vice went hand in hand, and there _is probably no period in the histoiy of. England in which licentiousness was so open and so general. Many private letters and rjecords of public utterances are still in existence to prove this. I am aware thatlt is usual to charge all this to the wickedness of the Court of Charles 11., but the truer account is that the horrible wickedness of that Court was rendered possible by the prevalent tone and conduct of the people. The State made no effort to educate the people, though it did put forth an enactment against ' Prophaneness and Debauchery." The Church was only just beginning towards the end of the seventeenth century to recover from an almost total overthrow, which .sent such men as Bishop K<en and Jeremy Taylor to eke out an existence as pri-

vate tutors. "■

At the outbreak of the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century, art and literature were advancing with long and eager strides. The Renaissance, the invention of printing, the manufacture of paper, the rolling iback of the Turkish power, and the discovery ofi America l\ad given a notable impulse to intellectual and commercial progress. One' of the first results of the Reformation was the suppression- and confiscation of the monasteries, which were the common-schools of . the middle ages. 'To the universities,' as Froude admits, ' the Reformation brought desolation '. ' Missals-, says the same writer (' History of England ', vol. v., eh. v.) ' were chopped in pieces with hatchets, college libraries plundered and burned. The divinity schools were planted with cabbages, and the Oxford laundresses dried clothes in the school of art '. During the reign of "Edward VI., says the noted non-Catholic historian Green (' History of the English People ', book vi, eh. i, p. 3(>7) ' divinity ceased to be taught in the universities ; students had fallen oft in numbers ; libraries were scattered and burned ; and the intellectual impulse had died away '. Classical learning, says the same non-Catholic writer ("England of Shakespeare !,■ book vi, eh. viij ' all but perished at the universities in the storm of the Reformation, nor did it revive here till the close of Elizabeth's reign '.

In Ills ' Short Studies ' (\ol. i, p. 48), Froudc says : ' A greater man' than either Macaulay or Buckle — the German poet Goethe— says of Luiher that he threw back the intellectual progress of mankind for centuries '. The Cromwellian preachers were not the only ones who deeded learning. So did the; Puritans generally. So, too, did those industrious library-burners, the Anabaptists ; ■while Calvinism warred against poetry as the work of the devil, and all -Jhe Reformation period began with a crusade against art. The literature of the time was (says Desmond) mostly of the controversial' order ; " ami this, not scholarly or valuable, but fashioned after the pattern set by Luther— rotigh, violent, disputatious, -bad-tempered. . . For nearly fifty years (1520-70) England produced no literature of notable value, aivd in Germany the sterility and blight in letters lasted for two hundred years after Luther. Not until the time of Leibnitz did Germany begin to repossess a literature.' The printing of books was regulated by a vexatious and restrictive penal code of unexampled severity. In what are called by injudicious panegyrists ' the spacious days of Good Queen Boss,' the press was muzzled in the manner described hereunder by the great Anglican historian Strype : •In

1559,- by the Queen's injunction, no one might print any book or p,aper whatever, unless the same" was licensed by" the royal council or by the ordinary. By a decree of the Star Chamber no one was to print under the penalty of a year's imprisonment, except in London and in either of the two No one was to print any book, matter, or thing whatever,- until- it shall have been seen and allowed by- the Archbishop of Canterbury or the . Bishop of London* ; and every one selling books printed^ contrary to, this, regulation is to suffer three months'- imprisonment.'

The Anglican Primate cannot be accused of overstating the ' strong prejudice against learning.' that marked the Reformation period.