Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 2 September 1909, Page 20

Notes

A Mixed-up Song A "Wellington correspondent sends us the words of a still popular song, ' Queen of the Earth,' and asks us to exppund its meaning. We ' give it up.' There is no meaning in it that we can discover — just a" tangled snarl of mixed metaphors about some unstated ' she ' that simultaneously ' weaves ' ladders and does other even more remarkable things, without. any apparent end or aim: Beaumarchais says, in the work of his which is best known by its sub-title, Manage de Figaro : 'Cc gui ne vaut pa& la peine d'etre dit, on le chantc J — people sing whatsit isn't worth their while saying in ordinary speech. The song submitted to us seems to be a case in point. Matrimonial Agencies » The Victorian Government is ' out against ' those ' challenges to crime ' (as Sir John Madden designates them) — namely, the matrimonial agencies. For a generation successive administrations have winked at the grave, abuses arising out of the secret, hasty, and irregular unions peipetrated by those marriage-shops — many of them ' Lucifer matches ' which were not ' made in heaven,' but in ' the house t'other side of the way.' A measure is now, before the State Parliament, and its passing-.into law would mend, v by ending, one of the grave scandals of life in the Victorian metropolis. Anglican ' High Mass ' The . flattery of imitation is at times carried very far indeed by the High Church party a"mong our Anglican friends. ' Tlius, the ' Ecclesiastical Intelligence ' in the London Times of- July 16 contains the following: 'The Bishop of Chichester dedicated the Chapel of the Convent of the Holy Cross, ITayward's Heath, yesterday in the presence of a large gathering. At the dedication" festival in the morning there was " Solemn High Mass,'.' at which the Rev. A. H. C. Cocks, vicar of St. Bartholomew, Brighton, preached.' Curious' thatf'such things should take place in * the bosom of an Establishment which officially pronounces 'Sacrifices of Masses' ' blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits ' ! Father Tyrrell - .-. . A . lengthy and detailed statement made by the Very Rev. Father F. Xavier, Prior of Storrington, and pastor of the place where Father Tyrrell, ex-Jesuit, passed away, appears on pages 130-131 of the London Tablet of July 24. The Prior's statement (which is much too long to reproduce in our columns) throws doubt upon the cabled statement to the effect that, on his deathbed, the late ex-Father expressed a wish -to receive the last Sacraments, but on

condition' that he should not be required to retract the Modernist errors which led to his severance from -the sacred - ministry and from the Catholic 'Church. The Prior of Storrington declines to accept the assertion in regard to the refusal to retract. We express no opinion as to the Prior's doubts beyond saying that they are inferences, and not based on positive grounds. No man can say -what thoughts passed through the mind of the dying man before he passed away. But the position in regard to the disciplinary act of denial of Catholic burial to him was perfectly clear. It is stated as follows in the London Tablet of June 24, p. 125 : 'In view of the adverse comment' occasioned by the refusal of the Bishop of Southwark to allow the late Father Tyrrell to be buried with Catholic rites, wo are officially asked to state that no one -of his friends in attendance at his deathbed could give the Bishop an- assurance th%t Father Tyrrell had made any retractation, either written or verbal or by signs, during the whole of hU last illness. As the case of. Father Tyrrell was specially reserved to the Holy See, a retractation was necessary as a- j condition of Catholic burial.' ' . . j The Duke of Norfolk A recent cable message regarding the censuring of the Duke of Norfolk by the House of -Commons, was a puzzle to New Zealand readers. • Our' English files to hand this week lift the mystification out of the incident. The Liverpool Catholic Times- says : ' The action taken in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon, when it was resolved, oil the motion of Mr. Dillon, that as it had been represented that the Duke of Norfolk had infringed the privileges of the House by concerning himself in the , election of a member for tho High Peak Division of Derbyshire, the Committee of Privileges inquire into the alleged breach of privilege, was doubtless prompted by the suggestion of the Liberal papers that though the Duke interfered ostensibly in the interests of the Catholic schools, his real motive was of a partisan character. It cannot, however, be disputed thit the cause of the. Catholic schools always occupies a foremost place in the Duke of Norfolk's thoughts. At the same time, it is undeniable that the letter was a violation of the sessional order forbidding peers to interfere in elections. Mr. Balfour admitted that technically it was an infraction of the privileges of the House of Commons. But he urged that others had on various occasions oifended more seriously than the Duke of Norfolk without having been taken to task. That is so, and Mr. Balfour was correct in saying that the Committees can do little or nothing, whatever- the decision at which it arrives. But the case -is likely i v raise the question whether the sessional order should be ■ made more stringent by definite modification or altogether abolished.' Ethics of Anonymous Attack A plain cross (not crucifix) was recently introduced into St. Stephen's Anglican Church at Ashburton^ Thereupon a whirlwind of vehement protest caught the church and the vicar in its swirl. A meeting of parishioners was called, and by 56 votes to 32 the cross was retained. The discussion then erupted into the Ashburton Guardiaiv- and crept down its columns at a high temperature. With its merits >r demerits we do not deal. Its sole interest to us lies in the happy sequel to a furious letter in which a masked man, under the pretence of debating the issue, said (among .other vitriolic rubbish) that ' playful Italian priests set poor Kossuth in an iron chair and" roasted him till he would kiss the cross.' This brought Dean O'Donnell upon the scene. 'It will be,' wrote he, ' news to most students of history that Italians — whether priests or laymen— enjoyed such autocratic powers in Austria or Hungary at any time during Kossuth' s career. Considering that Kossuth lived to the age of ninety-two years, the roasting endured by him at the hands of the scoundrelly " Italian priests " cannot be said to have shortened his life. Passing strange it seems, too, that Kossuth, a free man, should have left England in 1859, where priests of any nationality — even Anglican priests — were few and far between, and should have elected to pass the years between that date and 1894 in Italy among the bloodthirsty "Italian priests"! A demand for proof of tb.e Kossuth-roasting myth disclosed (as might be expected) the fact that there was no ra"g or scrap of evidence whatsoever to sustain it. The story was simply one of those bits of crude controversial-hysteria that serve anonymous accusers instead of history. * Dean O'Donnell took occasion, from his exposure of the Kossuth fabrication, to read a lecture on the ethics of anonymous attack. We dealt at length with the subject in t 1 c course of a recent correspondence in the Southland Times (Invercargill). Incidentally we showed that both the legal and social presumption, backed by the lessons of a longdrawn human experience, must ever be — until evidence to

the contrary -is forthcoming — be against the Honesty. and> good faith of the masked accuser. We therefore perused l , with special interest Dean O'Donnell's brief and trenchant' remarks upon the same general theme. ' Do. you think,*' he asks the. Guardian editor,. ' it consonant with' the traditions- of the best journalism to allow a' nameless thing to 1 fling dishonoring taunts and accusations at a considerable 1 body of your readers and subscribers and advertisers? Add! tli6s_e accusations so obviously false that at least every mari' with any pretence to literary culture should recognise their spurious quality at a glance! And worst of all" to allow this nameless thing to add insult to injury by calmly telling your injured readers: " Oh, if -you didn't do what particular piece, of villainy, lam sure you did as bad. It. was. some other patriot they put in the chair." J.liaveread betimes in your leading columns a statement of very high ideals both in' public and' private life. Begin to put these ideals i n practice in the conduct of your journal, and then perhaps your readers will begin to believe that they count with you for something more than gas or £s d. If you printed about me personally what you have allowed "Jeremiah" to say about Catholics as a body, the Courts >would soon settle the matter between us; tut unfortunately the Courts don't trouble when it is a whole "community that is libelled. It is well, however, to remeniber that communities "have weapons at command which even editors cannot afford to despise.' •• ' \ To these remarks the Guardian makes in parfthe following handsome editorial reply:- '-Granted that the unhistoric statement, in the first instance, and the malicious suggestion in the second, might have been or ' even should have been struck. out in the exercise of editorial discrimination and right, the failure to- do so might be due to varioas explicable or even excusable causes — absence, extreme pressure of work, exhaustion, temporary illness, or even simple failure -to see the points in all their bearings at the decisive moment. Anyway, in view of the fact that the writings of " Jeremiah " are not the work of this journal, that nothing akin to .such writing ever has appeared, ever could- appear, or ever will appear in the paper's own columns under its present editorship, we are quite willing to appeal from Dean O'Donnell as a dashing letter-writer to Dean O'Donnell, as a deliberative judge, sitting in equity and deciding on the evidence, with the assistance of any jury draAvn from his own parishioners. We .think we have sufficient knowledge of history, we think we have sufficient ' sense of justice to recognise — and we know that we k ever have in actual writing in these " columns and elsewhere invariably recognised — that great non-Protestant Catholic Church which dates back for nearly two thousand years, as an institution which for fully fifteen centuries stood. alone ■ in- the world as a stronghold, at once militant and sheltering, for learning, humanity, religi'on,~aiid righteousness, and which is still the mother of salvation to .millions upon millions of human souls.-- We hardly -think, therefore, that an isolated instance of unpremedftatively permitting the publicatioii of the puerile misstatements of, a fugitive anonymous . correspondent should be regarded as seriously prejudicial to the character of this journal, or to that of its editor — not more so, in fact, than it need be considered as a menace to the stability of the great historic Roman Catholic Church itself. A wasp or fly may "dart itself against the wall . f St. -Peter's, but the petty incident hardly shakes that mighty edifice to its foundations.' 'It is,' said Dean O'Donnell in a- parting letter to .the editor (August 2(5), ' the barest justice, I think, to- say that, whatever may have been the measure of your fault (if .any), you' have made more than ample amends, and that in the handsomest way. I can hardly regret the' incident just closed, seeing that it has given occasion for a noble display of true Christian and gentlemanly generosity.' Which moved the editor to add the following graceful footnote," which is creditable alike to his heart and* mind : 'In expressing regret for. the misprint referred to in Dean O'Donnell's postscript, we should ljke to say — and say,. too, without a shade of- mental reservation — that the Dean's graceful and cordial note proves "that the "noble display of true' Christian and gentlemanly generosity" is assuredly not confined to our side of the brief controversy, which now ends in endless goodwill.'