Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 6, 6 February 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

Catholic Education — The highest scores of" successful candidates at the recent Junior Civil Service examinations have been published. George W. Albtertson, a pupil of the Christian Brothers' School, stands at the head of the successful candidates; sent up by all the boys' " schools in Dunedin. A Ride for Life In Australia, the settler sometimes passes through strenuous experiences-^per varips casus, per tot discrimina rerum— what time the bush-fires rage and ter- ' pests of flam© tear through the forest. On Black Thursday, when almost all Victoria was on fire, many lives were lost, numbers saved themselves from the pursuing flames by taking refuge in river, creek, lagoon, or water-foole, and the ashes of that historic conflagration fell thick upon the decjis of ships that were sixty miles out at sea. Even a few years ago some « close things ' were recorded by the Australian secular press in their descriptions of bush-fires in Victoria and New South Wales. The Melbourne ' Ar^s ', in a recent issue, (tells of a ride for life near Mount Gamfoier (South Australia), tnat, for dramatic personal incident, easily ' gives points ' to the historic rides of ' Fighting Phil » Sheridan and Paul Revere. In the present case, the rider was helping to fight the flames of ambush fire on the Mount Schank Estate. Suddenly, he ' found himself in front of a wall of fire, and unable to get back to safety. He jumiped on the back of a horse, and galloped away, . surrounded by the flames. The fire and sparks singed horse and rider as he rode madly. With the fire upon him he traversed about four miles to Benara. on.cc his horse fell to its knees, and the rider thought he was lost, but the maddened animai recovered itself, and continued the wild race. The wind dropping a little, lessened the onrush of ti^e flames, and man and horse eventually raced into safety. Both were exhausted, and in a pitiable state from burns when they got away from the fire.' One who witnesses, especially by night, the aweson*e power &fid grandeur of an Australian forest-fire, will amply realise the truth of the old proverbial saying, that flame, though a good servant, is a bad master. Prophecies of Woe Rabelais tells of some peculiar people who tickle themselves in order to laugh. And which of, us does not know some of the simple souls that scare the wits out of themselves in July and November by tricking out the Pope in horns and tail and cloven hoof — after the fashion of the yokel who frightened himself out of his seven senses with a dandle set in a hollowed turnip ? Last week an amateur weather-prophet in the neighborhood of Wellington ga,ve himself and others\ sundry spasms of fright by a prediction of woe that was ultimately based indeed- upon a well ascertained fact— but rested directly upon a wholly illegitimate inference from that fact. The; fact was this : that on February 2 i(last Sunday) the earth was a nearer neighbor to the moon than it had been for many years back. The inference too hastily drawn therefore,, was this : 'tfliait • tMs proxinidfLy of our placet to iits S'aijellite would result in ' exceptional disturbances ' — including earthquakes and tidal waves, with an alternative of hurricanes, deluges of rain, and other such unpleasantnesses in the air above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters beneath the earth. The critical period however, passed. And up_ to the moment at which W these lines are being rolled oft the press, the surface of New Zealand is as undemonstrative as a doormat, and the air that stirs above gives but a gentle torque to yon rattling windmill, and breathes so softly that it flecKs not witn foam ' the blue deep's serene '. From ths scientific point of view, it appears, too, that t> ore-

Is no necessary connection between the moon*'s closest approach' to the earth, and earthquakes, tidal waves, - and such-Hike - manifestations of seismic energy. The moon, says Mr. Stevenson, F.R.A.S., ' has been qpita as near on former occasions without all these disasters resulting '. * It is, however, hardly fair to club an- amateur weather-prophet for a hasty deduction, when even so eminent a scientist as * Mr. Piazzi Smyth, the Astro-nomer-Royal of Scotland, more ..than once launched out into hasty prophecy and made many ' Believe in his foreseeing Of things before they were in being. By a series of fantastic assumptions he came to the conclusion that ' the Pyramid of (rhizeh (Egypt) was. a sort of stone revelation of God, and that it pointed to 1881 as the year of the crack o' doom. Then people - began to quote ths hoax concocted some forty years ago and' known as ' Mother Shipton's prophecy ' — we give it in part :— |i ' Carriages without horses shall go, And accidents fill the world with woe ;. . Around tne world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye. . . Iron in the waters shall float As easy as a wooden boat. . . Tne world to an end shall- come In eighteen hundred and eighty-one '. Numbers of people were solidly scared. The Rev. Dr. Koseby, of the Marrickville Congregational Church (New South Wales), states that ' the religious world of New Zealand ', where .he resided at the time (1881), • was in something like a panic ' over the Scottish Astronomer-Royal 's< fantastic interpretation of the pyramid. ' And ', he adds, ' I preached a sermon in 1881, at the request of many Dunedin residents, to allay the serious apprehension which existed in the;sister Colony in that year '. Well, 1881 passed. And this grey old world has been wagging serenely along ever since. In one of « Bab's ' Ballads, ' A Miserable Wretch ' sings to the terrestrial globe :— ♦ Roll on, thou ball, roll on ! Tnrougli painless ieaims of Space KoII on ! What though I'm in a sorry case ? \vnat tnougn I cannot meet my bills ? What though I suffer toothache's ills ? Wnat though 1 swallow countless pills -? . Never you mind ! Koll on ! ' And of course, it rolled. The idea might, perhaps, have been better expressed in other terms. But, after all, the fate of the earth, or of this or that section ofit, is not quite our business. We are not its rulers. Suffice it for us to work our work here below— to do our three-fold duty— and leave the- rest in the hands of Him Who rules both wave and land. 1 When my heart beats too fast, I think of Thee, And of the leisure of Thy long Eternity.' His days are long, and man's knowledge short. And in the sense under consideration here there is truth in the poet's words.: ' Gcjd's in His heaven, all's right in the world \ ~. , , i i « A Missionary Tale ' As our readers know, we have not an abiding faith in ' missionary talcs.' Neither, for that matter, have two such widely known Protestant authorities on the foreign mission-field as th? Rev. H. Hensley Henson and Dr. Needham Cust— the latlef of whom wrote with an • experience of fifty years on the foreign missions. - The pinnacla of distrust (es the Rev. Mr. Henson pointed .out, and as our experi n.e of 'missionary tales ' testifies, so far as it has gone) is reached when the narra-

tor is placed ia the extremely delicate position of ' recorder of his own ' experiences ' in connection with a campaign, r to rake in Lnds for a money-raising and sal-ary-paying organisation. In such circumstances . truth -and charity are often in V/ad case. And the narratorbent on shocking or surprising an audience that' is generally credulous, and often greedy for sensation— usually betrays a generous confid.nce in the gullibility of his haaru-s. In 1885, for instance, a ' missionary tale ' reported that no copy of the Sacred Scriptures could be procured at any book-store in Paris, except those under Protestant auspices. At that moment there were hundred of copies of the whole Bible or of the New Testament part cf it, in the hands of students of St. Sulpice alcne— one of these students being the writer r of these lines. And th ; e greater part of them had been purchased frorm the publishing houses and booWtores of G-aume, Roger et Chernov i/,, and others— several of whom printed and brought out the cories of the Sacred Scriptures which they sold over thoir counters. There seems to te periods of revival in ' missionary tales ' as in the fashion-cuts of hats -and fir clows and s'-irts and b'loures. Quite recently the Parisian Bible-story emerged again, with a few m important features altered. It was copied ii.to an Ota^o contemporary and thus went once more upon ,i!s rounds. It may, perhaps, be sufficient to slate h-re that the story was deemed ' good ' enough by its narrator to be told in America. A Campaign of Calumny In the days when Mr. Parnell was agitating for the abohUon of Hogging in the army, a military officer stood as a candidate for an English county electorate. In answer to a question, he defended the use ol the ' cat ' on the epidermis of Tommy and Sandy and Paddy Atkins. ' There is ', he contended, «no necessary, disgrace in. being flogged. Why, I was once floggod myself, and it was for telling the truth ' ' And it cured 'cc, naw doubt ', said the rustic elector who had put the question. The Socialist., Radical, and Freemason press, in Italy seem to have gone through some experience that has cured them of truth-telling, so far as Catholic ecclesiastical persons and institutions are concerned. We have from time to time had occasion to refer to the persistent campaign of calumny —always serious, often coarse and brutal— which, for many years past, they have been carrying on against the Church in Italy. Sometimes, in 'careless .moments, they have committed the error of mentioning individuals that have a local habitation and a name. In such cases, the action of the law-courts has generally served to administer a deterrent which drove the slanderers back to the safer paths of vague and general denunciations, or of concocting or circulating evil tales about persons or places that were nonexistent. These are the sort of calumnies described in ' Hudibras ', 'That spring, like fern, that insect weed, Equivocally, without seed., And have no possible foundation But merely in th' imagination '. A melancholy circumstance in connection, with this atheistic campaign of foul defamation of Christian rnenf and women -is this : that for • years past it h^s been used by a vociferous English, missionary agent for the purpose of extracting coins from credulous people in Great Britain for the support of his barren efforts at proselytis/m in the north of Italy.

The ' Glasgow Observer ' of December 14 gives on the authority of an Italian paper, a number "of cases in which the. innocence of the slandered has been, established by courts holding regular inquiry. The list .(which does not claim to be complete) runs as follows : ' ;

' 1.- Varazze.-iSalesian College. Fathers absolutely exonerated ; the accusers to be perjurers ; College re-opened amidst rejoicing., '2. Alassio.— Salesian College. Inquiry reveals nothing at all. ' 3. Venice.— Accusation by Socialist journai«Rgainst friar and nun. The -friar ne^er existed at all, the nun died some time ago. ' 4. San Martvno.— Priest accused by Socialist paper. Tihe supposed victims declare their evidence was all lies ; bribed' by that paper. ,Result, action against the paper. - '5. Trani.— Sisters accused of cruelty. Mothers of the children declare their children are perfectly happy under the Sisters. • 6. Home- Institute charged with 'immorality ; was not ecclesiastical at all, but lay. ■ '""7. Bolzanet to.— Skeleton of a " newly-born " disVo ered' under old convent. Newly-bo.n, yes— but that of a, dog. " i 1 ' '8. Sampierdarcna!— Priest arrested, but .released again.; charges false^ ' 9. Fossano.— Salesian,' College* closed for two days on eh r-es ; bi.t opened a-ain at once. Charges were fictitious. <. -■ • 10. Colle Salvetti.— Salesia'ns again charged, ".but again completely acquitted. ' 11. Ferrara accused of cruelty ; but again absolutely acquitwd. - ■ ' " '12. Palermo.— Friars accused bring law case against Socialist paper, with full proof of their innocence. M 3. Genoa.— Socialist paper made to apologise and declare false its accusation against a priest. '14. Genoa.— Socialist paper tells of flight of a nun. Turns out that she had' gone by permission of Superior to visit her old mother in sickness. ' 15. Rome.— Friars accused. Result of inquest establishes their coimplete innocence, and praise given to their labors. ' 16. Qotrone.— Sisters accused of cruelty. Enquiry made ; the children all perfectly well and happy.' * The l Glasgow Observer ' of December 21 appends the following six additional cases to its list. 'Of course', it adds, ' there would be r.o end to the matter if we continued to relate all the cases exploded in the same way, because they are of weekly occurrence ' :— '17. Pistoia.— Socialist journal brings accusations against Franciscans. Pro\ ed false, and friars bring action for damages. ' 18. Naples.— Socialist paper accuses friars of unlawful operations in their Infirmary- Friars have' no Infirmary, and never operated on anybody any time anywhere, and therefore bring libel action,. i 19. /Adria^.— Anti-clericals howl out about a Sister running off with a doctor. Fact, of course, was the Superioress, (over 70 years of age) went off to Ferrara, to make a Ketreat. ' 20. Rome.—" Asino " . makes filthy accusations against missionary of fc>acred Heart .in Rome. Proved to be lies.' - .'SAsino " has to retract, and pay all expenses.. ' £l . Modena.— Two priests accused by the anticlericals of cruelty. Absolutely acquitted. ' 22. Ancona.— Charge made by ••boy in a house of correction against Superior. Finally admits that he did it out of revenge for a punishment .he had received for organising a rebellion. Local Council decline to make, inspection of the house, as unnecessary. 1 ''ThesV,; ke it understood, ' says the c Observer, 1 ( are mer. ly specimens of the kind of vindication of the cl rgv-that is taking places all over Italy in all cpneeivabl3 manner of cases.' J Stories- against convents, ecclesiastics, and ecclesiastical' ' institutions coming ■ from , anticlerical sources in France or Ttaly are to be taken— if at all— not with a grain, .but. with a bushel, of salt.