The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1907. A WAR ON WOMEN

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 7, 14 February 1907, Page 21

The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1907. A WAR ON WOMEN

-♦■ , - - EARLY twelve months ago" the .London 1 Telegraph ', a secular daily paper, wrote editorially as follows -of "the Catholic Church :— "It is one' of the strangest characteristics of the Church of Rome that she alone among the denominations has "discovered" the secret of to herself with hooks of steel .men and > women from every rank. of society and every grade of culture. Whatever their worldly position, .whatever their degree of intellectual development, her, power over t/hem is a real and binding one. It is only those with some personal knowledge of her adherents- who have any idea of the diversity of individual conviction, which,attains -repose* under the apparently rigid :and unbending system by which her authority is exercised \ Many- of - her converts (said the same journal) are i from the affluent and highly .educated classes, and not a. few of the. most cultured sceptics turn to her. at. j last in their despair and become her zealous supporters '. . . * Another and beautiful outstanding feature of the Church of Christ' is her wealth of charitable activity. It is as wide as the great field of human .suffering and wqe. Its energising zeal is ever blossoming - into . new ways and means of alleviating suffering and reclaiming - the fallen, and to these great works of mercy the Church has also ' grappled with hooks of steel men- and women from every rank of society and every -grade of culture. Envy, like death,, loves a shining' mark. And it is in the nature- of .things that the Church should be from ■ time to time assailed in her works of charity, In Prance it produced the coarsest calumnies from the enemies of all religion, bent upon finding a plausible pretext- for the spoliation and proscription that has in part . run its 'course* It was -fitting that the highest ;< and most -exacting charity— that _of reclaiming fallen women— should be made the target of the vilest slander. It was so in France. It is so in Australia, where- for several years past an organised campaign of Orange calumny has been (directed against < the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, whose work for the wayward' of their sex,- as in New Zealand, leaves the tongue of panegyric stanimertng ' for lack of words. In France the campaign of vilification was carried on by the. lineal descendants of those who placed a brazen member of- the demi-monde upon the

high altar of Notre Dame,. and" worshipped her as the Goddess of Reason. , And, with unintended appropriateness, those who in Melbourne and Sydney have joined hands with the French atheists, in the warfare' against holy and' devoted women, are the members of an organi-

sation who in 1902 took to their hearts an unreformed and unrepentant .Delilah /Margaret Shepherd), placed her" onra pedestal of honor, and went dancing and sinking around their" new goddess of the Cyprian sisterhood. Envy

' Hates that excellence it cannot reach \

From such a source as that just mentioned above, one ' does not expect much or any appreciation of ' Swoet Saint Charity * tiuat goes .« in profundis '—into- . t-he depths and seeks, like the Good Shepherd Himself, to save that which was lost. The braided captains of this chivalrous campaign against women are worthy of their cause. They are sundry preachers of small back-street conventicles in Victoria and New South Wales to whom self-advertisement is broadband- butter, or more butter to their bread, and whose "advertising methods are those of the fair-green contortionist and the mountebank.

From time to ,time our news and editorial columns have detailed the overwhelming official and other exposures that (have persistently dogged the- anti-convent stories concocted by the screeching brotherhood beyond the water. Yet, undeterred by repeated humiliation and failure, the ' yellow ' brigade returns to the charge. Their stories are like the branches of Virgil's inexhaustible tree— pluck away ontT in the morning ; -another is in its place before evening :— 1 Uno avulso, non deficit alter Aureus, et simili frondescit virga metallo '.

The latest calumny was the oft-refuted one of sweating at the Abbotsford, Magdalen Home. It is scarcely necessary to say that the accusation was flung by a clergyman— one, too, whom previous official exposures ought to have taught lessons of prudence in speech. In the present instance, Mr. F. Short (a non-Catholic), Inspector of Charities, was deputed by the Premier to pay a surprise visit to the Home and report upon . the charges levelled against it. The report was brief and pointed : there was nothing to sustain the charges. But as the official hand plucks off one calumny, another begins to sprout. The tongues of interested and organised calumniators know no holiday. And, like the termagant in Sheridan's play, they have a free tongue and a bold invention.