Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1, 2 January 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

The New Year The best: of God's gifts, to our readers during the new year— ' good measure,- " and pressed dpwn, and together-, and running' over'." '

How Troubles Grow * Tried, soured,'- or despondent house-mothers would do well to remember, for the dawning of the new' year— and all through the year— that troubles, like babies, grow with nursing. But with this difference : they grow much faster, and at last, ride the "necks -of their hapless nurses after the fashion of Sindbad's Old Man of the Sea. i ■ , , , . .

•Piled Up Calumny' * t John Foster Fraser is well known through the English-speaking world for his capacity' for compressing, a country within the covers of a "book. His ' Canada as It Is '„ ' The Real Siberia ', and ' America at JWpvk ' ~ give remarkable evidence cf his power to seize ' the features of a country and a people and to leave them, so to speak, ~ • , "•" • Photographically lined - ,- ." ■ On the tablets of the mind ' of the reader. Mr. Fraser has lately "been scanning the • Black North ' of Ireland. He has made ifie acquaintance of the saffron or Orange side- of Belfast- life, andT it has .made him very sick. He has taken the world into his confidence, and given it his impressions through the columns of the > Sunday Chronicle ' of November 10, in the course- of an article headed -Belfast the Bigoted '. Here is «his impression of a familiar, scene of Belfast life which he witnessed— namely, the spectacle of a wild No-Popery orator ' sanctifying '. the Lord's Day by haranguing a mob at the Custom* House steps •— , ' This was a Protestant meeting. lam a Protestant. But the gjovv of shame ran through my veins 1 as I listened to this religious bully. I listened to him for an hour. Never once did the fellow say a kind thing, utter a chazitafcle thought, give the slightest, indication that he knew what the teachings of Christ were. Holding the Bible in one hand, he poured out foul vituperation of everybody connected with the Roman Catholic Church. He flung horrible accusations, and then, with a taunt, he shouted : " What do you think of that, you Papists ? " WitlT lurid Coloring he repeated the crimes charged against the Chutch of Rome. There was no " forgive your enemies " about him.; he sneered, challenged, jeered, piled un calumny.' - The oaih-bound brother's hatred of "Popery '• glows like the white heat cf an electric furnace. His detestation of Ritualishi runs at times to temperatures almost as high. It "touched its highest point during the anti-Ritualist riots that stormed around St. Clement's Anglican church, Belfast, in 1899. The ' peaceful calm of the Sabbath morn ' was punctured week after week by an ungodly din which out-Kensited Kensit's . most emphatic bouts of rowdyism on the other side of the Irish Sea. It demanded the presence of large, "bodies of stalwart policemen to prevent wrecking and bloodshed. One Sunday morning there was a lull during the recitation of the Apostles' Creed. One of the Sandy Row ' lambs ', who had gone thither to ' protest ' against Ritualism,- was listening with all. his Midas' ears. Suddenly he indiguanitly ' exclaimed in a loud voice to his neighbor in' the same front seat : ' D'ye hear that ? " Born of tihe Virgin Mary ! " There's' Popery for you ! ' •. • - , Many of our nan-Catholic friends in New Zealand subscribe generously for the support of missions to the heathen. May .we venture ' to suggest the urgent need of a few Christian missionaries to the heathen. preachers

of .Belfast, and to the heathen mobs that hear andi applaud : them ?■ - ~ * „-.-'"' ■ '

Lord; Kelvin ,; --'•, . _,v ' . The late Lord Kelvin— elarum et-veuerabile nomen— was a scientist of .the' first- order. England has honored herself in consigning- the -remain's of this great man' to' a grave in .-Westminster/ Abbey, ,the Valhalla of her mighty dead. There he rests in the commonwealth of the immortals ,who_ towered above the, dead flat of, the quiet mediocrity of - their contemporaries. St.. Paul's is,, as a resting place "of immortals, a rival to Westminster Abbey, but in. a mild and apologetic wwar.} r . There still hangs -a halo around the old Catholic Abbey that holds the -bones of- England's sovereigns : - and notables. And the cost of interment there is much greater -than- in^ St. Paul's. In St. Paul's no fee is charged for a burial, and only £10 for the right "to erect a monument. The burial fees at the Abbey vary, according -to thp social position and other" circumstances of the deceased," from £91 4s 8d to £110 4s Bd. We are unable to state . the fee for a recumbent figure or a modest mural tablet, - such as- that which perpetuates the memory of ' Rare Ben Jonson ' in the Poet's Corner. -But - thY right * to erect a bust is purchased for ' £200— one-third" of which goes . to the . jiund for the maintenance of the building, one-third to the dean, canons ,.^verger, etc., and the remainder to • the choir 'in lieu of scarves.', * < - Some years ago, in the course of a " letter to the ' Times, 'on the Ritualist- controversy, -Canon McCcll told! the following story : ' A friend of mine once shared the box seat with the driver of a stage-coach in Yorkshire, and being a lqver of horses, he talked with the coachman about his team, admiring one horse in particular. ♦' Ah," said the coachman, " b(ut that 'oss ain't as goiad as he looks, he's a scientific 'oss." " A scientific horse !" exclaimed- my friend, " what on earth do you" mean. by -that ?v? v " I means," replied Jehu, " a 'oss as things he knows a ! deal more nor" he-does '." The application of this story to our present subject is not hard to find. Lord Kef \ in was n<3ne of your ' scientific 'oss.' investigators— none .of your imaginative and dogmatic ones who ' think "they know, a "deal more nor they do,' who proclaim the-'shifting theories of the hour as the established- truths of whor take->surmises for facts, and to whom (in Carlyle's words) the creation of the world is little more than the cooking of a dumpling. Like Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Pasteur,- and other great scientists, the more deeply Lord Kelvin penetrated into the mysteries* ooff f Nature, the more clearly he saw therein' the finger- of* "God arid the evidence of a creative Power and a directing, Intelligence. He saw in it the clear manifestation of an ' ever-acting Creator and Ruler.' In. words which were amended by him in the ' Nineteenth Century and After ' for June, 1903, he said : ' I cannot say that with- regard^ to the origin c f life, science neither affirms nor - denies creative power. Science positively affirms creating an d s directing power, which she compels us to accept as an article of belief.'

Two i Wisdoms ' - ' TewL bring up a child in the way he should go ', says Billings, ' travel "that way yourself. ' The" man ',' says the ' S."H. Review ' (Boston), ' who' turns his' home_ into a hell need not be surprised if his children should develop into "devils '.

Anti=Treating We have before _our mind's eye the" fate that overtook a._little .knot of youths of kindred soul "who many years ago. foregathered weekly to look upon the " wine when it was jced. - Each was 'as good as- his neighbor- ; so the -festive glass circled as each ' shouted ' in) turn^till most of them had (4n the Genial Showman's phrase) ' consirterbul licker koncealed- about, their persons-, and some, perhaps, vhad passed 'under theafflu-

ence of the intpxicatin bole '. Some time ago chance enabled us to pick up the thread of their • late.r history. It is soon told. One. lone brand, was plucked from the, « burning ; * ' . •--•; } .*• ' . "Drink and the devil had done, for. the rest-rrj -0 .- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum ! ' r They were the victims, not of a ..natural or inherited, but of a_ cultivated,- thirst — cultivated through the medium of _ the foolish treating (or, as it is called, in colonial speech, ' shouting ') habit, that has been well described by one of our magistrates as ' the^-curse of the country '. > We have many a time recorded with much satisfaction the rapid spread of the anti-treating movement, which was inaugurated a few - years ago by > valued clerical friends -of ours - in' lreland', and;'- which -^rapidly spread its ' beneficent influence"' thVpughout* 1 the. land." The, good example has met. with the fla.ttery of imitation beyond >the Atlantic- An anti-treating league on similar lines was -launched at all the churches in Detroit • a"' few ** weeks ago. In the 1 cathedral; Father ' McMenamin, a strong temperance advocate, spoke in part as follows :— '- " , - '.While it may not be considered wrong by a young man to tafce a drink occasionally; the .treating, habit is almost, sure- to make a druntoardoif hinii. Take,' Cor" instance, the example of five young men .- entering a saloon together. The first orders. drinks for all. „Then the second has to treat, then the third,, the fourth, and the fifth, until by the time those young men leave, they are pretty cure-to be quite under the influence of al-_ cohol. How absurd it would be- for those sarnie five men to go into a restaurant together; _ if each one of. them had to treat to roast beef. It is the samething. What is the sense in taking five drinks just because each of the five men thinks it incumbent upon him to "treat"?' It is as difficult' to defend or palliate the treating habit as the practice of duelling. It took a long pull and a strong pull and a pull all together by pulpit, press, and stage, to strangle duelling in English-speak-ing countries. Better sense and a better civilisation will, we trust, place the treating custom in good time in the hands of the social undertaker.

The Old >Varfare Your skilled field-marshal or commander-in-chief takes advantage of every hill and fold and roll in the - battle-field, and of every weapon that the science of his time can place in the hands of his troops. In his war against truth, the Father of Lies is not less skilled.' in strategy. He gives a twist to' the science or pseudoscience of .the hour, and takes advantage of the' fads, ( the weaknesses, the vices, and ithe --fashions of thought or talk or feeling of the time. And so the mode of his warfare varies from age to age. Thus it-is that (as the Cardinal- Archbishop of Sydney said in a recent discourse) / • from age to age the Holy See exhorts the faithful to for any trial that may await the Church. In the ages of martyrdom the faithful were summoned to meet all the terrors of persecution rather than sacrifice the smallest particle of faith. They responded to the summons with the greatest heroism. So, too, -when the pagan invasion threatened "to overwhelm Europe with barbarism, we find the faithful, assembled around 'the standard of the Cross, and- the crusaders went forth to repel the incursions of the inva-" ders. -At present great efforts are being made to spread error by means of pamphlets and works which are almost free of expense. They inoculate the poison of error on/ every side. Hence, the appeal of the Holy See to the faithful to disseminate truth and the lessons of Catholic wisdom.' '

Pushed toi their , logical conclusion, the Modernist errors condemned by the Pope would lead to-agnosti-_ cism and irreligion. Its spirit, and tendency (as Monsignor Baudrillart said recently at the re-opening of the

Catholic Institute in Paris) .is to make man. dependent on noboVly but himself— in. other words, to make him ' a God ■ unto, himself. By a rapid series of steps (adds he fn effect) it goes down, the Avernian slope, sacrificing, first - the doctrinal authority of the Church, next, the Bible, then natural religion," finally lahdinfe in agnosticism, which saps the bases of the moral order, until (to use Renan's- expression),' men are asked to live • on the shadow -of a shadow, and on the odor that remains when the vase - has been broken and - its contents spilled \ But '^ the -eternal _y ears of God' are on the sid© 'of truth.- Catholics, too, -realise the force and meanr ing of the divine promises. -And from them, at. least, there never can go up the cry that once echoed through England : ' The Church -in danger ! ' - A Five-Year. Parliament j -jThe British . Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr-. .-■ -As- ' quith) -: favors .-a- five-year -ParlLment— '-or- poss-i.ly. a' shorter term, -as ; democratic ideas- .advance.'. 1 As ■ regards ■ -the • triennial - Parliaments that pre- * Vail'- Ma these countries, "we are- nl/t. so' very 1 sure * that they represent the last word of ■ administrative wisdom - and convenience/- The three-year^-Parliament has a tendency to -act -somewhat alcnj the 1 follpwing lines : A year of sparring-, a year of .work, ! and a^' year of electioneering. ■ The quadrennial "(four-year) Parliament would give (two years of serious work out of four; the quinquennial- (five-year) Legislature three years out of%ve. Add to this the reduced cost in election expenses, the fewer spasms' of political turmoil, arid the better opportunities "" that would be afforded to legislators and the public of observing the results of a particular course of legislation. These are some of the ' pros.' Our young men might, perhaps,,, make a .note of fas as a subject of debate for their next' sessions.

The Cable Fiend There are brows on which 'Shame is ashamed to sit.' _ "-* Among them, we trow, is the face of the c b}oc ' cable agency that exports' Catholic, news from Paris. Frequent exposure of their methods seems in no way to diminish the industry with which they garble, ' adapt,' ' fake,' and lie: Indeed, -the blush— the self-accusing tint of shame— never seems to rest upon their brazen brow. " Ever since the" war upon religion in "France assumed an acute form, every cable message from Paris in regard to- church-mat-ters" is, like Hood's over-old oyster, open to grave apriori suspicion— and this because of the long series ol proven lapses^ from the straight path of truth. \- >-- .One of" the latest exploits of the cable-rigger at the Paris end of the sub-marine wire was, a few days ago, treated by an incautious Northern contemporary as simple truth and ' honor-- bright ' in the course of a more or, less argumentative discussion on Modernism. Repe.ating the substance of a cable-message" sent from Paris on October 31, that appeared in oitr daily papers on the first and second of November, our contemporary stated that Monsignor Lacroix, ' the .celebra-ted-bishop of Tarenitaise;'- resigned his office. ' asa ..protest against the iPjope's Encyclical on Modernism.' -The basis of truth in this story is just this : that' 'Bishop Lacroix resigned^"" „_"*' ' ./ "„, ./ . ' The rest is;' all/ but. leather or pruncllo '— a sheer, ami shameless - fabrication. Dr. - -Lacroix- is' mado • celebrated ' for an obvious purpose. That simple, aimost unl<wiown, bishop of, an obscure mountain See would smile at the designation. And the full and* true and final statement of the causes that led to his resignation'was before the French" public three^ays before the sending' of the. malevolent catle-message quoted^ as to its substance, above. Thus, the Paris ' Temps ' of October 28 published the full text, of his letter of resignation. • Rome,' 'La Vera Roma,' and other papers have also

dealt with the .matter. Briefly stated, the causes that led to. Bishop Lacroix's- resignation were age, approaching -blindness, and -declining health, - which rendered him incapable of the great physical ejxertion /vO^ssary. .for, the administration, of his mountainous and rig-orously cold" diocese. Only that and nothing more. His re-signatio'h"-. was accepted in"" the usual way. And that is, in s.ub- - stance, the whole story. *• ' • " ' The -' whole incident gives a fresh emphasis to the "1 need of a live Catholic news bureau, su-.h'as has teen ■ advocated by us from time to time for many »ears part." It gives likewise a point to the following, remarks in a: recent issue of the ' Rosary Magazine ' : « Unfortunately there are not a few Catholic families whose entire reading matter is supplied by the secular press. They are strangers, alike to Catholic , paper "and- magazine, snl consequently . are out of touch with current .Catholic thought- and events and .are misinformed generally * : - on,. things -Catholic, accepting- unquestionably as Catholic "news" the most absurd reports and speculations.concerning the Church and her world-wide interests and policies. Truly, such Catholics are proper sub jects -, of commiseration— and their name,- alas, is legion. 1:-.-, ■• • :-.-,