LENTEN PASTORAL

New Zealand Tablet, 3 February 1910, Page 171

LENTEN PASTORAL

ARCHDIOCESE OF WELLINGTON / ——— The following Lenten Pastoral has been issued by his Grace the Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan: Dearly Beloved Brethren and Dear Children in Jesus . Christ, — In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read these inspired words: Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever (Heb. xiii., 8). This is our and your profession of faith voicing your deep conviction and earnest devotion. ‘ Jesus Christ yesterday I’ For nineteen centuries mankind has had Christ for its Saviour and King; He has swayed the destinies of the Catholic world; He has framed its civilisation; He has inspired its grandest achievements and furnished its greatest happiness. And the same for ever!’ In the future not less than in the past men require a Saviour and King, to be their perennial source of light and guidance, courage and comfort, to be to them ‘ the way, the truth, and the life.’ Now, who but Christ shall dare to claim the allegiance of mankind? Were there need to prove to you that claim of Jesus to such world-wide allegiance, appeal could be made to the history of 1900 years. Throughout that long period Christ, with His teaching and His work, has stood before the world challenging all men to see and judge. It is safe to say that the verdict of 1900 years deserves and _ requires acceptance. For the great test is time — in all things excludes pretence and falsehoodtime proves origins and causes by —time lays bare the human in man’s work and the Divine in God’s. In regard to Christ’s teaching and work what is the verdict of ages? None on earth equal to Jesus; none comes so near to the all-perfect King of Heaven, Jesus is the ‘Son of Man,’ the noblest scion of humanity, the consummate model of perfection. Such is the verdict of ages, not only from the worshippers of His Divinity like ourselves and the 'world-wide body of true Christians, but from writers who have shorn Him of the splendor of His miracles and prophecies, and brought Him down to the lowest level which the cold fancy of unbelief could conceive without flagrant violation of the clearest canons of historic certainty. Unrelenting assailants of His Godhead, they have done their worst to sink Him to the lowest possible plane. When we seek Him where they have left Him we still find Him standing on the summit of human greatness and goodness. - . . , • . , . Strauss says: ‘ Christ must remain for us the highest that we can know in relation to religion, as that one without whose presence in the mind no perfect piety is possible.’ John Stuart Mill writes; ‘Religion cannot be said to have made 1 a bad choice in pitching on this man (Christ) as the ideal representative and guide of humanity nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract to the concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.’ Essays on lifMQion. p. 254). Again, these are Renan’s words at the end of his Life of Jesus: ‘But whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; His legend will call forth tears without end, His sufferings will melt hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.’ And Harnack, making Goethes words his own, says: ‘ Let intellectual and spiritual culture progress, and the human mind expand, as much as it will, beyond the grandeur and the moral elevation of Christianity, as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels, the human mind will not advance.’ Again, he says: No criticism has altered the main lineaments of the personality of Christ and the true fount of His sayings. Our judgment of Him rests on His personality and His words, as admitted beyond all controversy by severest hypercriticism. Our Christ towers above all who preceded and followed Him, immeasurably higher than the loftiest Alp - neak above the hills at its base. Christ is sinless. Nor SS this he said of any other human hero. The other heroes of humanity— sages, teachers, and bene-

factors— invariably tarnished the lustre of their virtues - To!." 16 e 7s ei i? es ot l° bhquit y and moral weakness. Not matVditninl?* H l m specially beloved and most intimate disciple wrote: In Him there is no sin.’ And He Himself challenged His enemies with the words: Which of you will convince Me of sin?’ He was all zeal for God’s reign upon earth • His mind ever rapt in the thought of His Eternal Father His soul ever, bent on doin| His Fathei s will. Tender and merciful to all men. He passed doing good, helping the needy, comforting the afflicted, instructing the ignorant, recalling the sinner to pardon and holiness. Particularly gracious was He to the-lowly and the outcast, whom other men readily shun. In endlessly varied circumstances, among all classes of society, now praised and honored beyond the sons of men, now calumniated and persecuted as the vilest of mankind, humble, yet self-*respecting ; patient, yet powerful,; magnanimous to the sinner, yet zealous for God’s rights and justice. In Pilate’s hall and on Calvary’s mountin that frightful ordeal— heroic His fortitude, how celestial His sweetness! Forbearing and merciful even to His bitterest enemies, He exclaims from the Cross: ‘ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Always and everywhere the unalloyed fragrance of purest innocence and subhmest virtue—the radiance of Heaven shed upon earth as never before nor since. He proclaimed to the world that He came bearing a message from God. For many thousand years hapless humanity had been groping in clouds of dense darkness, ever crying out in its agony for answers to the eternal questionings of the soul: Whence do I come? Whither am I going? What am I to my Creator, and what is He to me? Must the sinner lose hope for ever? Is mercy an attribute of the Supreme Lawgiver of the world? Multitudinous answers had been given, but how fluctuating and dubious, how mutually contradictory, how powerless to impart either hope or comfort so that distressed humanity had sunk in the despair of ignorance! Plato, the best product of heathenism, was constrained to declare that a God was needed to teach men. Even the religion of the Hebrews, pure and undefiled as far as it went, spoke only with vagueness and obscurity on matters most vital to peace of mind and heart. Besides, it was a local religion uninfluential on the great family of mankind; it confessed its incompleteness and insufficiency by its age-long search of a Messiah to be given to Israel. Christ came at last and spoke to men, and lo! they -were amazed, and in their wonder exclaimed: Never did man speak as this man speaks.’ A new teacher had come on earth radiating around Him the light of God’s countenance and the sweetness of His love. ‘ When you pray, say, “ Our Father who art in Heaven.” ’ At once men were exalted into sonship with their Creator, and through this divine sonship every man is a brother. of his fellow. Entranced with the clear and definite announcement of a life beyond the grave, earth ceases to be a dismal exile, and sparkles with hope even under the dire rod of affliction. The sinner is cheered by the good tidings that the burden of his iniquities is borne by Christ Himself, and that true contrition of heart ensures forgiveness. For Christ came to save and redeem. The world’s great need was a Saviour to redeem it from sin. No religion devoid of a plan of redemption could ever satisfy mankind; and Christ brought to men a plan of redemption most merciful to them and yet most just to the holiness and sovereignty or God. Christ’s principles of life, perfectly embodied in His own life, formed an ideal code for the purification and elevation of our race. What sublime inspiration in the Sermon on the Mount What sublime inspiration in every page of the Gospel story! Surely no man ever spoke as Christ spoke, never was there a teacher of souls on : a par with Jesus of Nazareth. The four Gospels picture Christ as He lived and spoke, and the Christ of the Gospels evidences their historical truth. Had the writers not seen and . heard Christ they never would, in their highest flights,, have conceived the ideal prophet whom they portray. ‘Who,’ says John Stuart Mill, ‘ among His disciples was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee: as certainly not St. Paul . . still less the early Christian writers in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source.’ (Essays on Religion, p. 253). Is there aught in Christ’s teaching-to make Him unworthy of the title of the envoy of God to men. If ever God designed to send an envoy with mission to speak in His name, could one be sent fitter than Jesus to mamfest God’s love and truth to the world? ere God ever to robe Himself in human nature and come down upon earth, could He have lived more divinely than did Jesus the prophet of Galilee? . , , ~ -.4,1 + And now, since Jesus is the best and the wisest that the world has ever seen, and since He claimed for Himself a divine mission, declaring Himself one with the Father, the Father’s only Begotten Son, must we not believe His words and bow before Him as Lord and Master? If Jesus is not what He claimed to be, we are constrained to admit that the Supreme moral Sovereign of the world allowed error and deception to mask themselves under the semblance of religion and truth, that the person ill

whom they were embodied was able to impose Himself upon men as the best, the holiest, the highest of mankind. Either Jesus is what He claimed to be, Teacher, Redeemer, God’s messenger, God made man, or in high Heaven there reigns no just, no omnipotent God. Now pass to the work done by Christ. Its vast field is the world, and its measure of time is 1900 years. Surely He has had time enough to show what He came to do; and men' have had time enough to judge Him by His work. Nineteen centuries ago a force utterly new in kind and intensity entered our intellectual and moral world, thence never to depart. That force was Christ. Its manifestations are the marvels wrought in- the name of the Christian religion. In a remote and despised province of the Roman Empire, lowly Judea, Christ spent three brief . years of ministry, during which He chose a dozen obscure Hebrews, mostly ignorant fishermen, and charged them to continue His work after He Himself had died on an infamous gibbet. Such were the visible means which He adopted to establish a religion which was to embrace the vast Roman Empire nay, empires far beyond the range of the Roman eagles, the entire world. And what a religion! ‘ Unto Jews a stumbling-block, unto Gentiles foolishness,’ a religion in radical opposition to all existent religions and known philosophies, waging war on passion and pride, drawing upon itself the most sanguinary persecution from lawless mobs and despotic Caesars." How high and mighty the purpose, how contemptible the means to be employed I And yet what was the result? The religion of Christ crucified battled with the religions of Judea and Rome, with the philosophies of Athens and Alexandria, with the armed ; power of the Empire, with the fanaticism of pagan worship and with the vindictiveness of popular vice and, astounding marvel, it gained the victory over all the forces leagued against it! Three centuries of struggle ensued, and then came the day when, at the Milvian Bridge, the Cross became the ensign of Constantine’s legions, and was raised in triumph on the Capitoline hill. Other struggles brought other victories. Innumerable hordes of barbarians swept like a deluge over the Roman Empire, wasting cities and plains, destroying its power and its time-honored institutions. Everything sank in the tide save Christ and His Cross. Christ survived, and in due course of time Vandals and Goths, Franks and Lombards became His disciples and worked with Him to bring into life and form modern Christendom and modern civilisation. And meanwhile equally wonderful changes were wrought in individual souls and in society at large. Between the world before Christ and the world created by Him through His Church what an immeasurable abyss The Synagogue, with its narrow localism, made way for the spiritual religion of the fatherhood of God, which convoked all tribes and nations into brotherhood and caused God’s love for man and man’s love for God to inspire and dominate human conduct. The base errors and sensual morals of paganism were replaced by the purest conception of God and of the human soul, and by the luxuriant crop of every exalted virtue. Then the individual conscience woke from a lethargic dream and realised that righteousness is a personal duty required to be discharged because it is the intimation of God’s will. Then came the exaltation of soul yearning for union with God by loving Him and laying hold of Him as ideal and pattern. Then came purity fair as , the lily, then came a moral beauty unheard of, undreamt of before. Then came humility trembling in fear of vain glory and ambition, but lion-hearted at the call of duty. Then came the sweetest, the most unselfish charity for the suffering and the poor, viewed as the representatives of Christ Himself. New virtues sprang up and new words to express them, old words assumed a new meaning; and a state of soul a sanctity and nearness to the Divine—utterly unknown to the best and most virtuous of Greece and Rome, became the endowment of multitudes of men and women. In fact, human nature was transfigured into the very likeness of God’s own life and holiness. And the purification and elevation of the individual led to a moral revolution in the family and civil society. The Christian law of the unity and indissolubility of the marriage contract brought security to the family; the wife found her prototype in the Queen of the household of Nazareth, and rose into equal dignity with her husband; the child also was robed in the sacredness of Mary’s Son, and rested secure in the love and respect of mother and father. Again, civil society was revolutionised to the core. It acknowledged the dignity of human nature and the obligation of charity and justice to all men. We see an instance of the change which had come over the world, when St. Paul bade Philemon to receive even as his brother the slave Onesimus, and when St. Lawrence, the deacon, exhibited the blind and the maimed as the choicest treasures of the Church. As society became Christianised, the poor and the afflicted were sheltered, the toiler won respect, and the slave was freed. The religion of Christ, with its teachings in regard to human dignity and human rights and its untiring efforts to free conscience from outward control, loosened in the long run the iron grasp of state despotism over subjects, overthrew the ownership of the many by the few, opened. the way to the spread of popular liberties, imposed upon civil government, as its legitimate purpose, the greater good of the greater number, and developed in the world all those principles of human dignity and human

equality, of unselfishness, of beneficence and mercy, of charity and ju§tice which constitute Christian civilisation and impart to Christian nations their manifest .moral and social superiority over the nations which have stood out-' side the circle of Christ’s influence. : We have noted the glaring disproportion between the; visible means at the disposal of Christianity and its mighty : achievements. What, then, was the real life-giving force, of Christianity? The apparent means being inadequate,:, there must have been at the back of them an invisible and. more potent —the true and sufficient cause of the effects that followed. That force was the personality of. Christ, it was the grace and power given by Christ. It was the personality of Christ—not His personality as reflected in the New t Testament or recalled by the tradition of past centuries— the personality of Christ ever living and acting, age after age, just as it lived and acted upon the Apostles and Disciples in Galilee and Judea.. At . no time was the Christian religion a mere congeries of doctrines and precepts, a mere external organism of ministry and discipleship. Doctrine and preqept, of course, were there, so was organism, but their value came from their connection with Christ and an emanation from His love and grace. This is the singular and characteristic feature of Christianity. The results obtained by non-Christian schools of philosophy or religion were proportioned to the intrinsic value of their doctrines and precepts. As regards the founders of such schools, whatever personal power they ever wielded was buried with their ashes, it never survived their presence on earth. How different the case of Christ! His, presence was ever-living, it laid hold of souls, it drew them to Him and lifted them with Him to the skies. To Christ doctrines and precepts owed their efficacy; only.to Christ were assent and obedience given. The history of the Christian religion is an unbroken history of love —ardent passionate lovemoving and impelling to utter sacrifice of self. From Paid to Ignatius, to Thomas and Theresa, it was the anguish of love that created Christian saints and heroes. ‘ I judge not myself to know anything among you,’ said St, Paul, ‘but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' The martyr Ignatius prayed that he might be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts in the Roman amphitheatre,; in order to be made the wheaten flour of Christ. ‘ Nothing for me but Thyself!’ exclaimed St. Thomas. Let me < die if I do not suffer for Thee,’ was the cry of St. Theresa. And so with all the saints —confessors, virgins, countless hosts of heroes, and heroines. But love passionate: and l effective is given only to a living and ever-present lover; Jesus rising from the dead on Easter morning knew death no more; He lived and wrought in the souls of men. ■ £ The grace and power of the Saviour constantly flowed upon souls from the ever-living Christ, and became the: active force in Christianity. All Christ’s willing followers, receive a supernatural strength which enables them to; perform wondrous works of virtue, quite impossible to mere flesh and blood, far beyond the reach of unaided humanity. That supernatural strength is called by Christian faith grace. It is what St. Paul craved in his battle with passion and sin: ‘ Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord.’ It is what we are taught to ask for in our daily prayer: ‘ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver _us from evil.’ Those who charge Christianity with excessive claims on our weakness ignore divine grace, which is never denied to the prayerful and earnest seeker. Supernatural grace is an abiding fact in the Christian world, and explains its marvellous moral achievements. Christianity is sometimes taunted with the fact that, after 1900 years’ existence, it sways only a portion of the globe, and that Christians often fall lamentably short in; practice of the principles of the Gospel. You must remember that man is a free agent he can accept or reject Christ’s most pressing invitations. Christ’s usual procedure is not by sudden revolutions, but rather by the institution of germinal principles which time and human co-operation carry to perfection. The point at issue, therefore, is not what Christ has not done, but what He- has done, what in due conditions He is able and ready to do again. Now, this is what He.has done: wherever men set rno obstacles He uplifted their moral and religious life ■to an elevation never before attained or attempted and, even when men did interpose obstacles, He vastly lessened the sum total of moral evil in the world; so that, when all things are said, the greatest force for goodness and truth that ever entered and ruled mankind is manifestly the Christian' religion. Behold Christ’s credentials are they not amply sufficient? Shall men dare to say that; the Christ of Palestine is a myth and His religion a dreamt Mankind does not rise to celestial heights on - myths, and dreams are not the stuff which framed the world of Chris-; tendom. Do not the achievements .of Christ befit .a divine agent? Are they not a sheer impossibility except through the agency of divine power? And since Christianity and all its works pre-suppose and proceed from the belief,-: in Christ as a divine envoynay, as Incarnate God— are bound to confess His Divinity, unless we consent to; believe that the best, the purest, the most ; godlike and 'efficient power for the i religious .and moral regeneration, of mankind ever seen or felt on earth was one long . enduring falsehood to mock men in the name of truth and progress,. We must confess the Divinity of Christ or else resign our belief that a moral power reigns in the universe. ; .

‘ Jesus Christ yesterday ’ : and if yesterday, why not to-day, and to-morrow ? To-day as in the past man needs truth and salvation. The past belongs to Jesus: why not the present and the future?/, Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life.’ To whom shall we go? Surely not to any other teachers of religion or morals who have risen in bygone ages. Time has exploded their ■ claims. Have the sages of Greece and Rome been able to " survive ? Only in their names which few pronounce, and in the historic page which i fewer read. Even Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, was only the temporary leader of one people. As for Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed, who still count many millions of adherents in the East, surely no sensible Christian would attempt to feed his soul upon the Pantheism and the Nirvana of India’s prophet ; or upon the mere moral teachings, vague and low-toned, of the Chinese philosopher in wdiose creed there is hardly a mention of God or of a future life; or upon the fatalism and sensualism which form the very soul of Mohammed’s Koran. To whom, then, shall we go if not to Jesus? But contemporary unbelief demurs to this course. ‘ Go,’ it says, ‘ to no masters of past times, nor to Jesus Himself; in these times we need no teacher, no Saviour; to-day science is master and guide; science unlocks all necessary knowledge, and affords a secure and sufficient foundation for morality. Before the rise, of science, a teacher was needed, and Jesus was rightly welcomed by humanity, but now no place is left for Him in the world of men, in the march of human enlightenment and progress; His, reign is over.’ Accordingly, the would-be religion of to-day and tomorrow is science. The new religion sets up its priests, a Comte, a Spencer, a Huxley, a Harrison, and such like it marches out its troops of devoted followed; nay, in some places it has its ritual and its sacraments. Now, my dear Brethren, it is undoubted that science, within its own legitimate sphere, deserves and obtains all praise from the Catholic Church, and many of the most eminent scientistsfor instance, such men as the late Pasteur—are devout Catholics. And no, wonder, for science is organised knowledge, the knowledge of the phenomena and laws of nature. But there its function ends; those who venture further cannot do so in the name of sciepce. Science is not religion, and never can take religion’s place, On the awful soul-racking questions which ever fret the human mind science maintains an absolute and dismal silence; religion alone can give the coveted and adequate answers. ‘ Whence come we: whither go we ?’ What answer does the scientist Tindall give? The question, he says, dies without an answer without an echo— the shores of the unknown. ‘ Let us follow matter to its utmost bounds . . . having exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, the real mystery still looms beyond us.’ And this will ever loom beyond the range of science. Again, Spencer, speaking in the name of science, finds only an infinite eternal energy, of which the ‘ unknown ’ and the ‘ unknowable ’ must be predicated. The search for cause, first or final,’ Comte assures us, is something utterly inaccessible and meaningless.’ Think only of matter, and see all things in it,’ is the advice of Haeckel. So runs science, so speaks science in presence of the great problems which reason and conscience refuse to deem insoluble. Some years ago science promised to remove all mystery from the universe; but science has dismally failed to keep its promise, and in this respect, as Brunetiere first proclaimed, ‘ Science is bankrupt.’ Furthermore, science affords no rational basis for morality, no sufficient motive or sanction for, right-doing. What does morality mean? It means the suppression and control of the lower, the animal t appetites in man and their subjection to a higher life ; morality aims at establishing the reign of . righteousness, and, for that purpose, demands that interest and pleasure be sacrificed without regret or hesitation upon the altar of duty. So strong are man’s passions, so violent in . their protest against all restraint, that they will have their way, unless it be shown beyond all doubt that the satisfaction which they crave is clearly prohibited, and unless powerful motives are urged why the wrong must be shunned and the right followed. If you have only science, to what will you appeal? To invoke the unknown,’ and the ‘unknowable ’ of Spencer would be —as Harrison remarks to invoke a mere everlasting no.’ For an ‘ unknown ’ and ‘ unknowable ’ are to ordinary men and women practically nothing. Will you appealwith Harrison and Comte —‘ to the , great being, humanity,’■ whose general and ultimate welfare is, best served by self-denial and the virtue of the individual? But what cares the individual quivering under violent temptation for the mass of humanity of which he knows only a few samples? And — come to the crucial point—what is humanity’s worth? Spencer calls it a t * bubble,’ a ‘ dull, leaden-Hued thing,’ and Sir James Stephen ‘ a stupid, half-beast of a creature.’ Will you appeal to the individual’s own good, which is ultimately found in righteousness? But the hapless main in the stress of fierce and prolonged temptation will scorn to overlook a certain present for the sake of an uncertain and shadowy future. If you follow Haeckel and 1 think only of matter,’ you are in a worse plight; for then you come under the iron law of determinism which denies free will in man; each one is morally good or bad just as he is physically tall or short, and all effort to resist appetite is equally futile and absurd. Therefore, my dear Brethren, morality is secure

only in a world where reigns an ever-present living Avenger or evil, and a Rewarder of good. Morality is secure only when based on a religion which is. pure and elevated in its teachings, as is the religion of Jesus Christ. To Jesus, t~n J et t ll ® men , of to-day, and of to-morrow, turn trustfully for light and strength. The needs and ills of humani y are ever existent. Material conditions may change and are constantly changing— no age more than in our own. steam and electricity may have annihilated distance, may have made earth’s treasures tributary to our industry, and increased a hundredfold our sway over nature. But with all this the mind within us ceases not its questionings and the heart in us still quivers beneath the wild storm of passion. If material progress has brought any change in us, it is to, make the mind more fretful and earnest in its inquiries and the battle of virtue more fierce 10-day, more than ever, humanity needs Christ and His Church, His teachings, His grace, and His Sacraments. lortunately Christ remains. My words ,? says shall not pass away, and behold lam with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’ Let us therefore, cling to Jesus, let us cherish and practise the holy faith which He has given us. Then shall we purify and sanctify both private and public life. Houses of commerce, forgers of industry, railroads and steamers and airships may increase physical comfort and-material wealth but are powerless to bring moral health. Secular schools' colleges, libraries spread knowledge of nature and its laws’ of men and their doings, but they fail to subdue passion and root out vice and sin. Armies and navies enable nations to conquer; they will not beget self-restraint, honesty, charity, the cementing principles of the family and of the social organism, the vital elements of liberty and social order. The barriers against barbarism, the mainstays of family and of nation are sound morals, and sound morals are obtained only by a belief in and by dependence on a living God, by faith and trust in the everlasting Christ. In short, religion true religionelevates, enlarges, and ennobles man; whereas unbelieving science lowers, dwarfs, and degrades him. We love science, we would wish to see Catholics tower up everywhere pre-eminent in all departments of science, but we love and promote science such as God approves, science in harmony with faith; because faith and science are two daughters of one Father, Godthey lend each other a helping hand until they both melt away in the intuitive vision of infinite truth, goodness, and beauty. Let us cherish our holy faith as our priceless inheritance; let us learn its teachings and practise them in the eyes of our fellow-men, in order to draw them into a participation of our light. Let us secure the defence and promote the spread of our religion by an enlightened and generous support of a good press; and in this connection we earnestly exhort every Catholic family in the archdiocese to take the Nexo Zealand Tablet, and regularly pay for it. Also let Catholic parents be most careful to exclude from their homes all bad or tainted publications whatever form they may take. Let us above all hand down that faith intact to our posterity, and, as the best and only complete way of doing so, let us multiply and generously support our Catholic schools. In this greatest and most urgent work of zeal in our day neither clergy nor people must be allowed to flag. Much, no doubt, has been done in the past, more has to be done in the present and the future. If any of you have been indifferent or lukewarm in this great cause, let them rouse themselves and come forward, even in the eleventh hour, to do their duty in an enterprise upon which the real welfare, spiritual and temporal, of the rising generation depends. Nor are we less earnest in our exhortation to you to foster and promote our many other Catholic works, such as Catholic sodalities and clubs for the young, the Hibernian Society, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, our charitable institutions and orphanages, particularly the Boys’ Orphanage at Stoke; and in general all our Catholic enterprises, including, of course, our new Cathedral, which, when the proper time has come, will be commenced ; meanwhile, as you will be glad to learn, an income of over £IOOO per annum is coming in from interest on the funds already in hand, and from rent on Cathedral property. Lastly, we ask your fervent and constant prayers for all our diocesan undertakings, and, with particular emphasis, we desire you to pray for the success of the next great Australasian Catholic Congress to be held after five years in this metropolis. The holding of this great gathering in Wellington is - an honor which the Catholic body in the Dominion heartily appreciates, and we feel confident that all parties concerned will in due time, by the contribution of papers and by their general co-operation, do their utmost to secure an unqualified success. , In conclusion, may your pleadings with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the powerful intercession of His Immaculate Mother and her Spouse, St. Joseph, obtain for all of us the grace we need to work out our salvation and receive the crown of glory in the realms of everlasting bliss ! The grace and blessing of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.—Amen. ~ „ ’ , .„ . Given at Wellington on this the 2nd day of February, A.D. 1910, Tn-oATkinxc! FRANCIS, Archbishop of Wellington-.