The New Zealand THURSDAY, MAY 13, 1909. THE ACCESSION OATH

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 19, 13 May 1909, Page 741

The New Zealand THURSDAY, MAY 13, 1909. THE ACCESSION OATH

CABLE message from Sydney in. the daily W/f/wftk pape *' s of Ma y 7 ran as follows: 'A large ilvW meeting of Orangemen passed a resolution Jf^Om' opposing Mr. J. E. Redmond's Bill for the "«=^f» amendment of the .King's Oath on his accesU|ys^|Vs sion and decided to cable a protest to Mr. *vsjln£ Asquith.' The 'relic of barbarism,' for the *&&g*^S* retention of which the Saffron Brethren yf 1^ *\ clamored in Sydney, runneth as follows : 'I, Edward the Seventh, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I do believe that in the Sacrament of. the Lord's Supper there is not any Transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wino into the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever; and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous. And I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words read unto me, as they are commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever, and without any dispensation already granted to. me for this purpose by the Pope or any other authority or person whatsoever, and without thinking that I am or can be acquitted before God or man, or absolved of this declaration or any part thereof, although the Pope or any other person or persons or power whatsoever should dispense with or annul the same, or declare that it was null and void from the beginning.'

This is the ferocious formula with which the Orange brethren would perpetuate a series of falsehoods tinder the sacred sanction of an oath, and brand Catholics with calumnies that were invented in a period of coarse manners, gross ribaldry, and of volcanic religious passion. This oath dates from the year 1688. It was (as Father Bridgett points out in his monograph on the subject) a time when ' the question was not merely of securing a Protestant heir to the throne, but of the suppression of Catholic worship. Some fanatics, 5 adds he, 'would have it suppressed because they judged it idolatrous; some politicians called it idolatrous because they wished it to be suppressed.' From 1673 a substantially similar oath had been used to keep Catholics out of every public position, civil and military. And in one shape or other it was used for the same piirpose within the memory of persons that are still living. O'Connell spurned the oath, in the form taken by members of Parliament, "when, standing at the Bar cf the House of Commons, he declared : 'In this oath I see one assertion as to a matter of fact, which I know to be untrue.

I see a second assertion as to a matter of opinion, which I believe to be untrue. I therefore refuse to take this oath.' So far as Catholic doctrine and practice are concerned, part of the accession oath of British Royalty is untrue, the rest is false. It repeats, in this twentieth century, the coarsest calumnies of the- boisterous j.«o-Popery times of the Revolution in regard to the Real Presence, the ' adoration ' of the Blessed Virgin, the intercession of the Saints. It declares as Superstitious and idolatrous ' doctrines which have been and are accepted by the greatest and subtlest intellects of every age, and which — by a strange irony <i circumstance — are to-day preached and practised more and ever more widely by a large and growing section of the very Church which the accession oath was professedly devised to safeguard against them. In addition to misrepresenting Catholic belief, the accession oath perpetuates the offensive falsehood that the Pope can and. does dispense with the truth and give his sanction to lying and deception.

Calumny is one of the worst forms of persecution. One can understand the Orange fraternity standing for the perpetuation of this, as of other, forms of religious disabilities against Catholics, seeing that there still endures, and finds expression in their ranks, the unrelenting spirit of sectional hate which drove them into frantic rebellion (as we may call it) over Emancipation and Disestablishment. We might address to them the candid words of Artemus Ward : ' Take the advice of a Amerykin sitterzen*. take orf them gownds & don't try to get up a religious fite, which is 40 times wuss nor a prize fite,' over Albert Edard, who wants to receive you all on a ekal footing, not keerin a tinker's cuss what meetin' house you sleep in Sundays. Go home and mind yure bizniss & not make noosences of yourselves.' The kindlier and more common and more enlightened Protestant feeling will deplore not alone the wrong to Catholics, but likewise the humiliation and insult it must be to any ruler, to compel him to inaugurate his reign by singling out for special opprobrium twelve millions out of all his subjects of every creed and color, and to fix upon them the stigma of superstition and idolatry. We may here quote from an article on this subject in our issixe of February 7, 1901: '"A Christian King should most certainly hold gentleness and honor as the brightest of his crown-jewels. Is it, then, treating our King as a gentleman to suspect his word and his oath, to oblige him to multiply phrases that he is not equivocating, nor guilty of evasion, nor dispensed to lie, and the rest ? We tie a conjuror into his chair with knots and doxible knots. Are we thus to tie a King upon his throne? The conjuror will, in any case, give us the slip. And how will twisted and knotted phrases bind a King who is not a man of honor ? Oh, how dignified was the simple coronation oath of our Catholic forefathers, how worthy of a King, and worthy of a great and free and Christian nation ! Dryden used the phrase: 'As kind as King on coronation day.' It was, no doubt, a proverbial expression. But it can never again be used in England until the hateful note of discord introduced at the Revolution is silenced. Catholics and Protestants will bless the man who shall relieve the nation from a burden which is both a folly and a crime." '