Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 20, 16 May 1907, Page 22

Notes

The Catholic Sunday 'Is it true,' asks an anxious correspondent, 'as positively asserted to me, that the Catholics' Sunday is over at twelve o'clock, or when they have returned from Mass ?' Reply : (1) Till the eleventh or twelfth century Catholics, following a Jewish principle, reckoned Sunday from evening to evening— they hegan the sanctification of the 'day on Saturday evening and ended it on Sunday evening. But for many centuries Sunday has been reckoned from, midnight to midnight. (2) The Church imposes upon all who are not legitimately excused the two following obligations : (a) to observe the Sunday by devoutly assisting at Mass ; and (b) with a view to the better and fuller consecration of that-day, to rest thereon from ordinary weekday servile labor. The first of these two obligations may or may not be satisfied at twelve o'clock ; the second obligation is bind* ing from midnight to midnight on all who are not lawfully exempt. By the present discipline of the Church, a Catholic fulfils the bare letter — the minimum requirements'— of the first-mentioned obligation if he assists at Low Mass. But the spirit of the law (as every instructed Catholic knows) requires more than this: ' If,' says a writer on this subject, lhe absents himself from sermons ; if, above all, he" does not. use the opportunity the day of rest affords for increased prayer, for reading good books, for instructing his family, and the like, he will in many cases sin against his own soul. He can hardly fail to do so unless he be like the perfect Christian of whom Origen speaks (" C. Cels.," viii, 22, 23) with whom every day is a spiritual feast. A man is in a bad way if he makes a practice of hearing a Low Mass, and spending tne -rest of the Sunday in frivolous recreation.' Pacts of Catholic doctrine and practice often slip from the memory as a live eel slips through the hands of the angler. And among our readers, there are perhaps some who may be profitably reminded of siioh forgotten points of catechism as have been briefly touched upon in the preceding paragraph. Our Own Congo People of normal human feeling will welcome the day when the angel with the trumpet sings :— ' Forever more, forever more, The reign of violence is o'er ! r It seems to be far from o'er for the hapless Australian! black. The report of Royal Conumissioner Dr. Roth on the treatment of the West Australian black by rough white settlers and police was calculated to give people under the British flag something to worry about o' nights besides the alleged wickedness of foreigners upon the Congo. And now, when Dr. Roth and his report seemed to be dropping into placid oblivion, comes a staribMng letter from the Catholic Bishop of Perth— a warm friend of the aborigines'— to the secular press of Western Australia. Its contents are summarised as follows in a Press Association messaige td the daily papers of New Zealand :— ~~ ' Bishop Gibney, in a letter to the press,- severely criticises the treatment of the aboriginals in West Australia. He says His object is to draw attention to the lethargy of the authorities in preventing abuses exposed two years sugp. He points out that owing to the land being taken from them and the small amount allowed

for their maintenance the aborigines wee driven to acts of depredation. An arrest follows, and then commence barbarous practices, exposed often, but in spite of everything permitted to form part of a system that has everything to condemn it. - Nothing is being done to remove the tarnish on the name of the State. The natural supplies of food having disappeared, if they kill a sheep to save themselves from starvation they must go to prison. If they go into the territory of other blacks they are speared. They are arrested indiscriminately, and often chained one to another and to the necks of the police horses. They seldom escape conviction. Many do not know for what offence they are imprisoned for years, and kept in chains day and night. Most of them do not live lo.rwr after arrest. Treatment! of this description to dumb animals would he counted as gross cruelty, yet as regards the natives it is claimed to be what the law demands.' The black man's burden is a heavy one. Bu>t in the Catholic Church throughout Western Australia he has from the first found his best and most constant friend, protector, and benefactor.