A Well-merited Castigation

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 18, 6 May 1909, Page 692

A Well-merited Castigation

Dr. Henry S. Lunn, writing in the London Daily News from Harrow-on-Hill, in reference to the Rev. Joseph Hocking's bigoted attack on the Catholic Church at the Free Church Congress, says : —

'As the person responsible for introducing the Rev. Joseph Hocking to the higher ecclesiastics of Rome, Cardinal Merry del Val and others, I wish to express my indignation and disgust at the speech which he gave at the Free Church Congress yesterday. I feel the more free to do so because, as one of the appointed speakers for the Free Church Congress held at Bristol some few years since, _ I read a paper on the same subject of Romanism and the press, in which I urged the Free Churchmen to emulate the zeal of Rome in securing the adequate treatment of their religious life in the columns of the English press.

' In 1595, as President of the Grindelwald Conference, I was requested to convey to Rome an address, in reply to the Papal Bull, "Ad Anglos," on the question of reunion, signed by a number of dignitaries of the Established Church, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, President of the Free Church Congress; the Rev. Charles Berry, ex-President of the Free Church Congress; the Chairman of the Congregational Union ; the President of the Baptist Union-; Dr. Munro Gibson, ex-Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of England, and other influential Protestants. I was received with the greatest courtesy by Cardinal Rampolla, the then Secretary of State, Monsignor (now Cardinal) Merry del Val, and others.

' Mr. Hocking, knowing these facts, and being then a friend of mine, came to me some few years later, and asked me to give him introductions to these ecclesiastics, which I did. The same courteous hospitality with which I had been welcomed was shown to Mr. Hocking on my introduction.

' Father Whitmee, the rector of San Silvestro in Capite, set apart one of the younger Roman clergy to act as Mr. Hocking' s~ cicerone during his stay in Rome. Mr. Hocking informed me that every opportunity was given him for seeing, as far as a Protestant can, the inside of Roman life.

' To my horrified amazement, after his return to England, he published the ' first of his sensational ' Scarlet Woman ' novels, and seemed entirely undisturbed by the fact that he had, as I think, broken every canon orV hospitality and friendship in, first of all; using my introduction to obtain this knowledge, and then, having obtained it where he had been ■ received as a friend, using such knowledge to vilify and traduce his hosts in Rome. ' That one who has bee^n guilty of such conduct should charge Liberal members of Parliament with treachery to • Nonconformity is indeed an irony."