The Free Church Panic

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 19, 13 May 1909, Page 729

The Free Church Panic

Emotion yoked to fear usually plays sad antics before high heaven. But seldom in the later history of England has. it performed such risky high-kicking, and such bumpy ground-tumbling, and such all-round fantastic capers «s were gone through a few weeks ago by usually grave and reverend seigniors of the Free Church Congress in London. The Rev. Joseph Hocking — he" of the No-Popery novels — called the tune and beat the time and led the fearsome revels. ' Tear has many eyes,' says Cervantes. And the bulging orbits of the Rev. Mr. Hocking and most of his fellow ' Frees ' saw on every hand — in the press, in the pulpits, in the convents all over the land — myriad spectres of ' Romish aggression, ' and of ' Romish conquest ' of Great Britain, that scared them for the time being out of their sober seven senses. There were ' wisions about,' and the tumult and the uproar raised by the majority of the brethren mark a notch in the annals of religious assemblies. Emotion, well-regulated and in due control, is a powerful agent for good; out of bounds, it. is the torrent that bursts its dam and floods the valley, leaving ruin along its track. The pagan Greeks of old understood all this, when they represented the god Pan as suddenly appearing among a group of artless travellers, and with his human body and goatish horns and beard and legs, scaring them out of their wits — or, as our modern word has it, giving them a - panic fear. The Rev. Joseph Hocking, on the occasion here referred to, tricked out the scarecrow or spectre of the No-Popery Pan which — with its horns and qloven hoof — caused so comical a panic at the recent Free Church Congress on March 10. ' ' « In our last issue we published some of the comments that appeared in the London press on the Free Church Carnival. One of the best, as well as the kindliest, cf these appeared in the Daily News, from the pen of the brilliant and gentle-minded Catholic author, Gilbert Keith Chesterton. ' Dr. Horton and Mr. Hocking,' he writes, ' seem to have two main accusations against the modern Press. The first is that the facts about Catholicism ara mentioned; the second is that the facts about Catholicism are not mentioned. Touching the first of these charges, there is surely nothing that needs explanation. That Catholicism should be often mentioned is as natural as that America should be often mentioned; it is a very large thing. What would Dr. Horton say of me if I complained th.at the United States, with extraordinary cunning, got itself alluded to in many magazines, encyclopaedias, and atlases? He would reply that a man talking freely can hardly help, mentioning America. Neither can he help mentioning Europe. And Catholicism simply means Europe for one thousand years and half Europe for nearly two thousand. Such an institution could . not hide if it wanted to ; it is like recommending social effacement to an elephant. You do not talk about the Matterhorn cleverly thrusting itself into prominence. - You do not say that the Eiffel Tower has been very successful in getting itself admitted into most photographic views of Paris. If Rome bulks large in newspapers (which has- not. been

proved), it is not because of Rome's cunning and perfidy, nor because of Rome's courage and wisdom. It is because Rome (both pagan and Christian) must bulk large in the mind of any intelligent man. The second count is not gossip about the Catholics, but silence about them ; the alleged suppression of " anything unfavorable to Catholicism." Though not the most commercial of men, I am worldliness itself compared to Dr. Horton, and I will give him upon this point the plain answer out of "Fleet Street. If it is true that London editors and sub-editors are by this time somewhat shy of printing anti-Catholic scares, it is for the quite practical reason that they so often turn out to be untrue. The truth is quite the reverse of the present accusation. It is not that some fact is found against Catholicism, but is not published. It ,is that it v is published ,and is then found not to be a fact. This has been the history of a hundred exposers of Romish evil, of the dirty half-wit Maria Monlc, of the fugitive profligate Achilli, and numberless others. So when Dr. Horton says sternly to the practical sub-editor, n You have not had enough anti-Popery revelations m your paper," the practical sub-editor laughs, and says. " Thank you, we have had quite enough." ' * ' The business of monk-hunting and of nun-ragging,' says Mr. Chesterton in the same communication, 'is of curiously evil omen for English democracy : for it was actually out of such a craze against convents that the tyranny of our" English landlords arose. We read ou^ history and ask in wonder: "How did it ever happen that a few adventurers named Russell and Howard and Cavendish got and kept this colossal monopoly of earth and wheat and water, which has hardly a parallel in the world?" There is now no solid English historian who will hesitate about the answer. The reason was that Mr. Joseph Hocking was then a great power in the land, and that the great landlords went thoroughly through the Englishman's pockets while ceaselessly adjuring him to keep his eye on Rome. The same game will be played now if we turn from defending ourselves against the great plutocrats to defending ourselves against a few nuns.' The storm at the Free Church Congress serves as a fresh illustration of the n sobering truth that came at last to so strong an opponent of the Catholic Church as Canon Kingsley. It found expression in the first volume of his Miscellanies. He there declared : 'We have attacked Rome too often on -shallow grounds, and, finding our arguments weak, have found it necessary to overstate them. . We have dealt in exaggerations, in special pleadings, in vile and reckless imputations of motive, in suppression of all palliating facts. We have outraged the common feelings of humanity by remaining blind to the virtues of noble and holy men, because they were Papists, as if a good deed was not good in Italy as well as in England. . . And we have our reward; we have fared like the old woman who would not tell the children what a well was, for fear they should fall into one. We see educated and pious Englishmen joining the Romish communion simply from ignorance of Rome, and liave no talisman wherewith to disenchant them. Our medicines produce no effect on them, and all we can do is, like quacks, increase the dose. Of course, if ten boxes of Morrison's pills have killed a man, it only proves that he ought to have taken twelve of them. ' We are jesting, but, as an Ulster Orangeman would say, "it is in good Protestant "earnest." '