Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 30 July 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

Early Church History of New Zealand We shall be glad to receive notes, jottings, or memoranda of any kind tending to throw light upon the pioneering days of the history of the Catholic Church in any part of New ZealandThese will-be forwarded to our contributor who is dealing with the subject, in the hope of placing in permanent form the unrecorded facts of the Church's pioneering struggles before the memory of them has become blurred or gone beyond recall. The utmost care will be taken of manuscript records, old letters or newspapers, and other such returnable matter, which will be safely returned" in due course. Woman's Power ' A land is what its women make its men.' This was one of the happy remarks that Cardinal Logue made in an address at the beautiful Catholic ladies' college of St. Angela at New Rochelle. Ruskin somewhere says that the man who clothes a truth in happy phrase does more real good for humanity than does he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. The phrase quoted at the head of this paragraph is one of the happiest we have ever come across in regard to the potent influence of woman. It deserves to be placed among the aphoristic treasures ' of the English tongue. In his • Idea of an University ' In his ' Idea of an University,' Newman says of a class of seafaring men that they ' find themselves now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions ; "they are in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South ; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar or on the Andes ; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation ; nothing has a history or promise.' Poles apart from that very common type of traveller was Cardinal Logue when on his recent tour in America. His acuteness of observation took in everything, and his active mind was ever making, so to speak, marginal notes on the text which eye and ear supplied him. ' What has impressed me most?' asked he, repeating a query that was put to him during his farewell conversation on the great Republic. ' Let me see. Yes, I can answer that. Its youth and strength — its youth and strength, shown in the works of its hands, in its arts, its commerce, and, best of all, in the living Church. The virile, healthy state of the Catholic Church in America will be the happiest memory I „will bear away with me.' Coming Home The ' kindly light ' that led Newman Home, ' amid the circling gloom ' of hundreds of contending creeds, is doing the same kind service for many clergymen of the Protestant Episcopalian Church in the United States. For many years past, a sort of quiet counterpart of the historic Oxford Movement has been leading an ever-increasing number of them, year by year, into the One Fold. Some weeks ago, seven clergymen (including the well-known Dr. McGarvey and three assistants attached to St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church, Philadelphia) were received into the Catholic faith in that city. Others, making the total up to fifteen, are said to be ..on their way to ' Rome.' And the cry is, still they come ! The Catholic Paper The ' Catholic Times ' appeals, to all whom it concerns, to cultivate the Catholic newspaper and ' make an effort to create among our people the habit of reading Catholic journals. The latter,' it adds, 'is the most important point of all. The creation of that habit is an object worthy of our most eloquent and learned preachers and speakers, and the absence of it is a decided weakness in our position, a flaw in our armor.' 'To sustain good newspapers,' says the Bishop of Cambrai (France), ' is, obviously and before .everything, to buy . them and to read them ; to pay ungrudgingly and even cheerfufly the cost of their support ; and especially to do this in the manner that will be of the greatest benefit to them. So do not buy these excellent '■^v journals in an intermittent fashion, as your affairs give you more or less leisure to read them, or the events published arc more or less interesting ; but be to them a friend faithful and devoted', on whom they can rely for each and every day. Be their subscribers, and their disinterested subscribers.'

A Turkish Constitution Japan has its Constitution ; China is groping towards one ; . Persia is just now busy knocking its brand-new tine about pretty considerably. And, according to a cable message in last Saturday's papers, the Sultan' of Turkey has just decreed a new Constitution for his dominions. He was (according to the cables) convinced of the necessity of this course by the cogent argument of an organised mutiny by an unpaid soldiery who held (with Carboni Raffaello, of the Eureka Stockade) that ' Moral persuasion is all a humbug, The best kind of suasion's a lick in the lug, 1 But at Stamboul, as at St. Petersburg, there may be a chasm fixed for a time between the promise and the realisation of a Constitution. Absolutisms generally dispute every inch of ground, fight hard, and often die kicking. The idea of a Constitution — at least, one making a reasonable approach to Western ideas of a Constitution — must be repellent* to one who, like the Sultan, was brought up on the precepts of the Koran, the laws of the Multeka, and the ' cahon nameh ' or % wisdoms ' of Solyman the Magnificent. And of the heads that in West or East wear the uneasy burden of a crown, that of ' the Sick Man ' is best, filled with arts of procrastination. Besides (as Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar hath it) by putting off till to-morrow what he doesn't want to do to-day, he may get a chance of putting it off until the next day, too. And the dizzy pace at which a new Constitution has been tearing around in Persia, among his fellow-Orientals, will hardly tend towards precipitancy, on the part of the Sultan, in giving one headway in his dominions east or west of the Bosphorus. In the meantime, he may find an opportunity of lopping the tall poppies. Heads may fall in good Oriental form in Stamboul, and the cables may some day make an announcement akin in significance to that historic one which told that ' order now reigns in Warsaw.' * The story runneth, that a Carson City merchant failed in business, called a meeting of his creditors, showed that he had no assets, but promised that he would pay every cent he owed them — ultimately. 'What do you mean by "ultimately"?' asked one inquisitive creditor. ' I mean darned ultimately,' was the reply. The Turkish Constitution will, no doubt, come ultimately — perhaps only ' darned ultimately.' But we rather think that, like the new Russian and Persian ones, it will have what Hood might call a humpy, lumpy, bumpy road to travel — perhaps a red-stained one, too — before the hopes of the reformers end in realisation. Charitable Aid A majority at a meeting of the Otago Charitable Aid Board has been 'at it again.' A reasonable and respectful request by the Anglican Primate and others in person for an allowance for inmates of their Orphanage was met with a measure of marked and most regrettable discourtesy to his Lordship, and by an absolute or equivalent statement of the following guiding principles : (i) That the children in question are the property of the State ; (2) that the Charitable Aid Board are. their guardians ; and (3) that capitation grants by the Board for such children are to be determined, not on the basis of their indigence, but are to be conditional upon their attendance at State schools. * It would be interesting to know on what grounds the Board took up these direct or implied positions mentioned above. Both the Dunedin daily papers dealt with the matter in an eminently clear and fair-minded and level-headed way with what the ' Evening Star ' characterised as ' the astounding doctrine — a doctrine that even conservative England would not uphold — " no State school no food."' The first proposition stated above needs no comment — at least, in a State that is neither callously Spartan nor extremely Socialistic. As to the second, 'it is, indeed,' says the ' Otago Daily Times,' ' expressly enacted that the guardianship of the children in the Orphanage is vested in the manager. There is, of course, no guardianship created in like manner by law in the respective managers of the orphanages that are not officially " approved." But it is not to be disputed- that these managers are in the strictest sense the actual guardians of the children committed to their care.' Again, it has been repeatedly pointed xrnt that the matter of the education of the children is not at all the concern of the Charitable Aid Boards, . but of the Education Department. And neither, it, nor the State generally by any enactment, requires that all children must attend the public schools, being ' satisfied ' (as our morning con-

temporary remarks) ' so long as children between certain specified ages receive efficient and regular instruction in some •school or other. ' . . When this is' remembered, it is -surely an act of effrontery on the part of the Charitable Aid Board to declare that it will- not contribute to the support of children in these

private orphanages unless they attend a' State school. The view that is taken by the State itself on the subject of educa.tion sufficiently indicates that the .Board has wholly misconceived its duty.' . ,

* We emphasise the' point,' says the ' Evening Star,' ' that it is not the education of the orphan that is- made the conditio sine qua non of charitable aid, but " attendance at the State schools." The objecting" members dare not affirm that the orphans and indigent ones are not being educated, because, as a matter of fact, they, are receiving the best of all educations — that which is adaptable and suitable to each individual child's special and. particular needs/ The ' Times ! makes a happy, reductio ad absurdum of the new policy of the Board by pushing, it to its. logical issue. In the first place, the Board should — on their new principle of. 'no State school, no food '■ — decline to contribute towards the support of mentally deficient children whose affliction makes it entirely undesirable that they should be sent to the public schools, to be, made, perhaps, ' the butt or even the plaything of hundreds of other children.' And, in the second place t the fact of many children being under the school age should, on the -same principle, 'operate as a reason why the. Board should not contribute to their support.' 'It would,' adds one contemporary, ' be absurd to suppose that the circumstance of either the affliction or the babyhood of the children should weigh against their indigence in the mind of the Board. Yet, if the principle to which the Board attaches so much importance is to- be observed in the letter, the aid granted in respect of the children in the orphanages will be confined to those who are of school age and are attending a State school. And if it is not to be observed in the letter, what becomes of the principle?'

We trust that the Board will, on reconsideration, abandon this amazing proposal for penalising freedom of teaching and religious education. In the meantime, we hope that the Primate will not let the matter rest where it stands, and that (as our morning contemporary urges) he will ' persist until the entirely reasonable request he has made is granted, as we are convinced it eventually will be.'