'A Tilt at Rome'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 14 November 1907, Page 9

'A Tilt at Rome'

In 1868, the Anglican Bishop Wilberforce was addressing a great.meeting in St. James's Hall, London, on the proposed disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland. Among his audience was an excited and somewhat ' illivated ' Orange brother, gaily caparisoned in the saffron- symbol of his order. He kept interrupting the Bishop with" raucous and frequent shouts of ' Speak up ! ' 'I am already speaking up ', replied Dr. Wilberforce at last, in his dulcet tone of retaliation; ' I always speak 'up, and I'decline to speal: down -to the level of the ill-irannered person in the gallery \

In these countries we occasionally — though, happily, rather rarely — come across the non-Catholic clergyman who does not always ' speak up ', nor look up, nor lead up his" people along the upward paths. A diminishing congregation, or the sudden or gradual realisation of a lost or lessening hold upon them, brings him sharply up at last. And then he runs the risk of 'talking down to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery '. A ' tilt at Rome ' (as Dr. Needham Cust calls— it), some pulpit sensationalism, some small man's cheap onslaught upon a great man or institution — some poodle's attack upon a lion — some No-Popery whoop from an Orange platform in mid-July or early November— these things may, indeed, serve to attract passing, tenants to the empty benches, and throw the limelight upon one who best adorns a decent obscurity. But at what a cost ! For, good masters, among the things that throw most discredit on religion— that make the judicious to grieve, and the- ungodly to revile— is the preaching of the Koran of sectarian bitterness by a clergyman, with the usual plentiful ' lack of the objective truth, the justice, the sweet charity, the good manners,

and the deliberation in statement which are commonly supposed to beseem the character of a minister of the Gospel of Christ. , The remarks made in the last preceding sentence apply to an Orange discourse preached at Hastings last week. As regards its contents,, the following remarks will suffice— et amplius : (l)It was spoken by a reverend enthusiast who recently, spun,- as authentic and - ' honor-toright ' history, the 'Ali-Babia story of Pope Joan, with which we dealt in .a recent issue. (2) The discourse is of the usual Orange type— this is ' the most unkindest ' thing we can say regarding it ; but truth compels us to be thus unkind.' The preacher contrived— with same- difficulty, we hope— to ' speak down ' to the level of his audience, and treated them to the customary lodge rorrance about the ' shut and locked Bible ', the hopeless- chuckleheadedness- of Papists and Papist nations— and especially -of Irish Papists, and so on. There is a strange lack of originality and of literary quality • about these Orange sermons. One seems to be, substantially, a plagiarism, from another. You have the same old ' properties ', the same old Guy Fawkes Pope, the same old stuffed Papist with the horns and tail and cloven hoof, the same old hysteria labelled ' history '— « the same old toon ', as Fred. McCabe used to say, with the same old ' worryations '. And (3) finally, we are serenely asked to open our mouths and shut our eyes and swallow the crowning romance of all— that the true-blue Orangeman is filled to the chin with ' charity towards all men, especially towards his less enlightened Roman Catholic neighbors, for whom he prays always ' ! It would be a form of journalistic sacrilege to comment on this.