Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3, 30 January 1908, Page 21

Notes

Those. Divinity Degrees For same- years past, State divinity degrees -.have been among, the hardy 'annuals of debate - at the meetings of the New Zealand University Senate; The proposal has met with varying fortunes at the hands the Senate, ib.ut has received , scant courtesy '"pn "the floor of our Legislature." At last- Tuesday's mee'i;i~n'g ; of the Senate a motion, was put jthat the Senate express regret at the failure to establish a degree in ■ divinity. It was solidly defeated— only seven votes being" cast for it, and thirteen 'against." This will, we trust, be, the last of a preposterous and unworkable proposal to get the Government' to don the white 'choker', create -a State brajid of 'divinity:, and make it -the „subject. subject of official tests : and official rewards and . punishments.'; Our Heat Wave ' • -j = Our neighbors across the Tasman Sea lent." our South Island last week a section of the heat-wave ' /fcha,t','had been toasting them for some time. It shed • some o ''of its glow in its , passage, across the cool waters, of the South Pacific, but enough was left to- raise; the a-tnio-sphere in the shade to 99.9 degrees # Fahrenheit air;As^hburton, and 101 degrees at Windsor. - 'W^heh'^the ther- * mometer mounted into the r'ineties, Sydney Smith "expressed - a wish, that he could doff his jtlesh' aridVsit^in his "bones; And Rossiter Johnson,' in hjs». -^poe'm, ' Ninety-nine "in the Shade ', thus relieved' his 'parboiled feelings :— . . . """' t••-\ : • \' 0 for a lodge in a garden, of .cucumbers ! . . - -^ O for an .iceberg or two a I ! •' r< ',-''" O for a vale that^at midday- the" dew cumbers'T Q for ,a pleasure' trip up -to the Tole ! ' • Had he felt ,the fiery blast of an Australian heatwave at- -125 -in the shade, he .might have put something like ' beef ' into his poetic- longings. BuV we in the land of clear streams and gentle temperatures have little .reason to cry out " when- we get a> reduced dose of the fierce heats " that come at times— happily not often — uipon our friends bu ' t'other side '. ' A New Inquisition -r In a recent work, ' A Prophet in Babjlon ', a reverend Protestant evangelist, Dr. W. J. Dawsbn, inter- , prets as- best he can the drift of the materialistic and indifferentjs't' spirit ofc our- time. • His remedy is ' a

League -of Universal Service, whose emjbAem^is the cross, whose motto is the union of "alL^who- lave iri the. ser-" vice of all who suffer'. It -reads, in effect, like -a plea for the extension of the spirit and -methods of .- our Catholic charitable Orders among the Reformed denominations. He has another remedy for ' the hapless clergy who are driven, out of their pastorates '.for noother reason than that they, for righteousness' .sake, put themselves into opposition against the rich , men Of their churches '. ' The individual minister ', says he,- ' is 1 3io.t strong enough to fight the battle alone. There-, fore we must help him. I propose to re-establish the - Inquisition. . . The Inquisition was an excellent thing, ' if it had only been properly conducted. My Inquisition will be conducted on strictly modern principles. I can get on q,uite well without tortures and burnings ; publicity will ser\e my purpose.' The Catholic Suicide Bureau 'The Salvation Army,' says * Extension,' 'has of late been widely advertising the fact, that it has estab1 shed anti-suicide bureaus in all the; large cities. The results so far attained seem io be .eminently satisfactory. These bureaus are nob a new thing' in Christianity. The Catholic Church, in fact, has had a .bureau of this kind in every church in the world, and .their institution dates bad* to apostolic .days. Every confessional is, in a certain sense, an anti-suicide bureau. There the priest listens to the troubles of >his penitents an3 many a grief has been assuaged, • all unknown to the world. It has not received all the advertising it des.rved, as priests as a class arc -poor advertisers .of their spiritual wares. The l^st confessional has been sadly missed among our Protestant brethren. THe attempt cf the Salvation Aimy to reintroduce it is ..only another evidence of th3 fact that time vindicates every Catholic principle.' . i A tribute to the personal, domestic, and social ad- . vantages of confession was lately given by the .well known temperance worker, Frances E. .Willard : ' I am a Protestant, but there is no blinLing this fact : The Catholics are, in this country and in Ireland, ahead of us in social purity. You can take a Protestant family into a London slum and) put them into a dirty .room on the right-hawdf top cf the stairs, and then put a Catholic family on the other side of the stairs, and you will find after two, three, or four years .half ,of -;the , girls "of the Protestant family have gone to the. b ( ad, and- every member of the Catholic family hav.e retained their virtue. I was astonished when I went' to Ireland by the contrast between that country and our own. I heard from Protestant and .Catholic, Unionist and'- H,ome Ruler alike^. that, although they may be packed tager ther, you will find that they are the most virtuous peas,;.ntr'y in the world. How is that ? I tell you it is because the priests have preached sedulously and" inculcated in the confessional and in families .the 'duties' of parents to .children, and the duty of young , people -to each other. In this matter the result is, i say" frankly, ' a ■ moral miracle before which we Protestants have reason to bow our heads in shame.'