The New Zealand Tablet

New Zealand Tablet, 29 October 1908, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet

THUKSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908. IWANTED :SCATHOLIC EMANCIPATION

THER passions besides ambition o'ervault themselves at times. ' Religious passion, fdr instance, overshoots its purpose when its expression is such as to' shock the public sense of religious decency and decorum. Like the. Australian war-boomerang, it returns arid wounds its owner; or it acts like the recoil of McFingal's muskets," which " ' So contrive it

As" oft to miss the mark they drive at," And, though well -aimed at duck and plover, . Bear wide, and kick their owners over.' Such has been the upshot of the raucous clamor- and the frenzied threats of .the' iixtre'mcr section of Protestant opinion in England in regard to' the public procession of the .Blessed Sacrament ..which- was - to., have been the crowning event of the recent Eucharistic Congress in London, The Home authorities, were . caught by the old military' ruse, mistook- strength \>f luog for " strehgth'o'f ' numbers'; ahdfntimafed to Archbishop Bourne a desire ' to tHe-Eucharistic* feature of the procession which" they" had-' previously-" iappfbvcd; The Archbishop's" bearing was marked 'throughout J by-a tactfulness and charity and spirit of peace • that" made a luminous' 1 contrast with the dark and angry passions _ '•'"of the'-'opponeftts of "the procession, their threats of violence, and the coarsely abusiye speech in which -'tlicy referred to the great central , act .of CatKqlic^ worship. . ■ , #: v

A procession took place, as arranged, through the quiet streets thaf-surfound the noble Byzantine pile of Westminster

Cathedral. Though shorn of its central glory, it was neverthe-

less a right noble religious pageant. Throughout, the splendor ' of the religious ceremonial associated with'" the Eucharistic Congress, the personnel that assisted at it from the ends of the earth, and the immense and world-wide- interest that it excited, combined to make the proceedings of that great gathering the most historic incident that has happened in the Catholic Church in Great Britain since that country Was riven from the unity of the Faith during the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century. The clamor that was raised in connection with the Eucharistic procession played a notable ' part in lifting the function to the pinnacle of public interest and importance, and in thus unintentionally furthering the object of the Congress to an extent that must have far exceeded the original hopes of its promoters. In the "first place, the Congress gave, in picturesque and tangible form, evidence of the progress of the Catholic faith in England. In' the second place, it brought Catholic faith and practice — especially in connection with the Holy Eucharist— before the' British Protestant public in a way that was eminently calculated to stir the fancy and to' move to inquiry the minds of devout non-Catholics. This phase of the Congress was, of course, greatly aided by the manner in which, ever since the Oxford Movement, the minds of English Protestants have been gradually familiarised with Catholic teachings and devotions, through the agency of the High Church se.ction of the Anglican creed. But attention was undoubtedly very strongly focussed upon the Church's Eucharistic teaching, and inquiry specially stimulated, by the vociferous methods by which the ' yellow ' and other extreme sections of the Protestant public sought to cast obloquy upon the doctrine of the Real Presence and to mar, as far as might be, the processional expression of Catholic devotion thereto. In the third place, the opposition — and especially the deplorable form that it took — served to emphasise still further the vast (we had almost said revolutionary) ~ change that has taken place .in British Protestant opinion in regard to the Catholic Church since the wild and whirling days " of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill of 1851. This change of heart manifested itself in several principal ways — in the enormous space devoted to the proceedings of the Congress by the daily papers and the illustrated weekly press ; in the intense interest with which the Congress was viewed throughout Great Britain ; in the vast and overwhelmingly non-Catholic crowds that surged and swayed around the neighborhood of Westminster Cathedral and witnessed with friendly and respectful interest the grand religious pageant of the procession ; in the' cordiality which" the press and public men extended to the first Papal Legate that visited England since the days of, Queen Mary; 'and — last but by no means least significant sign, of the times — the great body of public feeling that stands at the back of the demand made by a number of the leading newspapers of the country for the repeal of the remaining legal disabilities of Catholics which still dishonor the British statute-book. The bitter pressure for the exercise of dead-letter statutes against the Catholic faith in England greatly served, no-"tloubt, to -strengthen the demand for the discarding of the last rags and tatters of the penal code.,

The bitterest disability under which the Faith of Old England suffers is, iindoubtedly, that ' relic of barbarism,' the accession oath, which still remains a stain upon the statute-book. That infamous law forces each new Sovereign -to take oath before Parliament that he believes Catholic worship to be ' superstitious ' and ' idolatrous. ' The Catholic faith,'.. and that "alone out of all the thousand creeds within the Empire's wide domains, is singled out for this crowning outrage ; and/the shameful formula is accompanied by every circumstance of personal insult to the Sovereign, who is forced to multiply phrases and protests and asseverations that he is" not committing perjury, or licensed by the Pope to feign an oath or disregard it: As Lord Llandaff said in the course of a Congress paper, this outrageous formula (which we recently printed in . full) ' was first introduced in a statute of the reign of Charles 11., passed' at the time of the frenzy of the Popish Plot. Every British Sovereign, from Queen Anne to his Majesty Edward VII,, has been obliged to repeat a formula which—owed its originate the perjuries of an impostor and the delusion of a nation. In no other civilised country, Protestant or Catholic, was it thought necessary to put into the mouth of the Sovereign or President a controversial utterance of thrs kind, or" to search his- conscience -by a religious test. The reasons which explained, if they did not excuse, the imposition of the declaration have long ceased to exist.'

In addition to this studied insult to the faith of not less than 12,000,000 of the King's subjects, Catholics labor under

sundry other disabilities- in Great Britain and Ireland. Here is one, from the 26th section ol the Catholic Emancipation Act : ' If any Roman Catholic ecclesiastic shall exercise anyjof the rites or ceremonies of the Roman Catholic religion, or wear the habits of his Order, save within the usual places of worship of the Roman Catholic religion, or in private houses, such ecclesiastic or other person shall forfeit for every such offence the sum of

This was the section on which the clamorous extremists relied to prevent the Eucharistic procession. But be it noted : (1) There is no legal' definition as^to what constitutes 'rites or ceremonies ' — if it be restricted (as is" the papal decree on music) to liturgical worship, then a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, such as^.was contemplated at the Eucharistic Congress, would not fall within the meaning of the section. And, on

the other hand, it might be made, by a too rigorous interpretation, to penalise by fine or imprisonment the private recitation of the Rosary by two persons in a public place. (2) The same remarks apply in a measure to the words, ' the habits of -his Order ' — which might be made to mean anything from Mass vestments to the ordinary priest's black coat and Roman collar. (3) Catholic ecclesiastics are, in every case, amenable to _ this clause of the Emancipation Act only by the permission of the Attorney-General. And (4) This clause of the Act has been long obsolete, as is also the clause requiring, on pain of imprisonment and deportation, the registration .of members of certain religious Orders. Thus, a few years ago, the High Court treated as obsolete the latter clause when the Protestant Alliance (which took such a prominent part in the anti-Eucharistic agitation) applied for a mandamus against the Magistrate at Marlborough Street for refusing to grant a summons against the Jesuits at Farm Street for not being registered in accordance with the" provisions* of the Act. And the former clause was treated in like manner when, within the past year or two (as a legal writer points out in the Westminster Gazette), ' the colors of the Irish Guards' were publicly blessed by a Catholic priest in full canonicals, in the presence of the King, on Horse Guards' Parade. ' Moreover (as we, have already pointed out in our editorial columns), public processions of the Blessed 1 Sacrament have been, during the past fifty-four years, carried out without offence or hindrance or suspicion of illegality in many parts of Gre"af Britain, and even in the heart of London itself. The Eucharistic procession in London was expressly arranged for jvith tho Home authorities. And (says the London Tablet of September - 19) ' in 1893 the Protestant Alliance raised an objection to a Catholic procession which was announced to ""take place in Chorlton; The Home Secretary of the time scouted the objection, and .said roundly that her Majesty's Government did ".not intend to take action." - That' Home Secretary was Mr. Asquith ' — who yielded to the clamorous pressure of the same organisation in September, 1908. The right of public religious procession was established by the High Court in the cases brought against' the Salvation Army a few years ago. And' there seems no reason why a Catholic priest or bishop may not, in all the" circumstances, wear the insignia of his office in a public procession as well as a captain of the Salvation Army or a Grand or SemiGrand of a Freemason lodge. As Archbishop Bourne said to Mr. Asquith : ' The Acts and Declarations to which the Protestant societies have now called attention have never been invoiced within my memory. They are universally regarded as a dead letter, and they are equally., applicable- to many acts which' I and my colleagues perform publicly, and intend to perform publicly over and 1 over again throughout the year.' " ' In dealing with this plea,' remarks the London ' Tablet, ' that the procession was at any rate against the letter _of the law, it is not without - interest to note that 1 it is precisely -the people - who ■ are protesting against Catholic illegalities now who were effusively slobbering over the Passive Resisters a-year.ago.' "

, At Metz a German Protestant Government secured ..for the members of the Eucharistic. Congress of 1907 a liberty of -worship which was denied to them in London in 1908. British troops in Egypt form guards of honor at certain Mahomedan festivals.. And Mr. Sydney Whitman published in the Westminster Gazette the two following further instances of- tolerance" of public wo&ship, the one from an almost wholly Protestant State, the other from the realm of, ' the unspeakable Turk '•: ' The kingdom of Saxony contains over 4,200,000 inhabitants, of which nearly four millions are Protestant's. There are less than 200,000 Roman Catholics in the country ; yet one of the regular pageants of the year in the, capital, Dresden, is the public. Roman Catholic procession on the day of Corpus Christi. The officiating Roman Qatholic Bishop walks under a baldechin, the corner poles of which are held by Saxon officers in full parade uniform. And as

there are seldom four Roman" Catholic officers at one and the same time on active service in the town, and thus available, Protestant officers are now and then called -upon to perform this duty. It is needless to add, since most of. your readers are probably aware of the fsjet, that in that essentially Protestant country — indeed, the very cradle of Protestantism — the reigning family has long been Roman Catholic. In Turkey the priests of every recognised religion are permitted to celebrate their respective high festivals in public. In Constantinople, for instance, the authorities provide Mussulman officers and soldiers to act as an escort of honor for the occasion.' Both in their London correspondence and in their editorial columns, some of the foremost New Zealand newspapers have voiced the demand for complete equality of treatment for Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland. And the action of the Protestant Alliance has, no doubt, done much to hasten the arrival of the day when Catholic Emancipation shall be a full and complete reality to our coreligionists in the United Kingdom. Not for the first time, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the lion's mouth, honey.