Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 22, 3 June 1909, Page 863

Notes

Sir Robert Stout's Slander -"'

Elsewhere in our columns of this issue appears an account of a Hawera discussion that has circled around Sir Robert Stout's recent slander on religious schools. Tho reader will see how the learned local pastor, the Very Rev. Father Power, has got Sir Robert's defenders up a tree.

The Angelus

Tho Rev. W. G. Dixon, the well-known Auckland Presbyterian clergyman, gives, in the Dunedin Outlook of May 29, an interesting account of a recent visit made by him to the scene of his former labors at Warrnambool, Victoria. Describing a walk through the fine streets of that handsome and rising city, he says in part : ' One's progress is slow, so many are the salutations and kindly hand-grips from all sorts of people, not least the Roman Catholic Irish, who are much in evidence in the town and district, and who have a Keltic glow and thrill in their voices, that is very grateful. The bell of St. Joseph's rings the familiar Gloria [the writer means the Angelus, or Angel's salutation to the Blessed Virgin, and its accompanying prayers] at noon, three times three, and then a more continuous peal. How often I have heard it, and lieard it with reverence, for, spite of all mistakes, it was keeping time for Christ ! '

• Why Men Don't Go to Church '

Our non-Catholic Christian friends all over the world liave long been anxiously trying to read the riddle-ma-ree, Why men don't go to church. The Rev. Dr. Salmond, of the Otago University, finds the answer to the riddle in ' the unsettled state of theological opinion.' It was,' added he (as reported a few days ago in the Dunedin Evening Star), ' the unconscious, or semi-conscious, or fully-conscious, disbelief in dogmatic creeds which was tho origin of the troubles. This was the cause of the bad attendance at church, and there would never be better until they got a dogmatic creed of such a kind that people would not only assent to it, but assent with enthusiasm. Until such a thing existed matters would be no better, but even worse.' A solution of the riddle, on someAvhat analogous but more clearly defined lines, was announced a few weeks ago by the Rev. Dr. Pritchett, of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Pritchett contends for a celibate clergy, as in the Catholic Church. He said in part, as reported in the Milwaukee Catholic Citizen: ' Much has been said in lecent years of the decay of churches, and the weakening of church ties, particularly among Protestants. Many explanations, have been given of this tendency. No doubt many factors have a share in the result which we see. Among these one of the most evident is the inefficiency of the ministry, due in the main .to low standards of admission. In the Protestant Churches, where the power of authority has largely passed by, the work of the Church depends on the quality of the religious leadership of its preachers. The efficiency of this leadership is low. In the small towns one finds the same conditions as exist among lawyers and physicians. Four or five ministers eke out a living where one or two at most could do the . work efficiently. Like the doctors of their villages, these men concern themselves with chronic cases and specific remedies, while the great problems of the moral health of their 'communities go untouched. The old Mother Church has pursued a more far-sighted policy in this matter than the majority of her daughters. She - requires of all her priests a long and severe training. However one" may criticise . the kind of education which they receive, or the large factor of loyalty to the ecclesiastical organisation which forms part of it, the wisdom of the requirement is unquestionable. To it is due in very large measure -the enormous moral power of , the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the world, particularly among the great masses of working-people in the citie3, where Protestantism has been so markedly ineffective,

partly, at least, because of defects that an adequate modern education would go far towaVd remedying. . . It is impossible to estimate how much the cause of religious progress is delayed by the fact that a great proportion of the men who assume, as representatives of the Christian denominations, to take the place of religious leaders, are unprepared for such leadership, are untrained in the fundamentals of theology, in the elements of learning, in knowledge of mankind, in the interpretation of life from the religious rather than from the denominational standpoint. Meagre as are the salaries paid, they are in many cases equal to the service rendered. In this situation the public is profoundly interested.'

Science and Romance

Catholics are tolerably familiar with the class of controversialists who, after having perused a No-Popery tract or two, set up forthwith as ' experts ' in Catholic theology and canon law, and proceed to contradict and browbeat and bully in those matters, men who have devoted their lives to the study thereof. They remind one of the budding essayist who wrote a paper on Chinese metaphysics, by reading up an encyclopedia article under C for China, and another article under M for Metaphysics, and then combining the two. The Grey River Argus of May 27 contains a letter on evolution and the Biblical story of the creation, - composed upon somewhat similar lines. It is marked by all the crude dogmatism and the second-hand ' quotations/ and the swarming fallacies which one usually finds in such letters to the press, when penned by those who have the very little knowledge which is a dangerous thing. To"sueh x off-hand and uninstructed writers, every passing theory is a demonstrated fact of science; there are no such things as transcendentals ; physical science overlays the domain of metaphysics (they don't usually know anything about metaphysics) ; the deepest questions of the origiu of matter and of life are settled in a trice by rattling off (and usually mis-applying) a little string of names, and by bits and snippets of alleged ' quotations ' given at second-hand or third hand or tenth hand and accepted with a faith that is simple and childlike. To them, assertion is proof, and the louder it' is, the better the proof. And (to use Carlyle's mocking phrase) the creation of a universe is no more a mystery to them than the cooking of an apple-dumpling. They seem to forget that the new anti-theistic theories that they espouse leave a lot of slack "hanging out, and provide mysteries for their faith, compared with which a divine creation is' as clear as crystal. And they have no idea of the magnificent way in which (as Dr. Pritchard, F.R.S. — to cite only one of many — has shown in his Nature and Revelation) the general development of scientific knowledge is friendly to the faith of Christians. It only remains to add that the writer's panegyric of Haeckel comes at a singularly inopportune moment, in view of the recent exposures (reproduced in our columns) of the manner in which that apostle of the new materialism ' faked ' his ' facts ' and drawings to suit his theories.