Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 24 February 1910, Page 289

Current Topics

Kitchener in Dunedin There has probably never been in any public function in New Zealand a more hopeless exhibition of brainless bungling than that which was displayed in Lord Kitchener’s reception in Dunedin on Thursday and in connection with the arrangements for his review of the cadets on Friday. With regard to the reception, the Mayor, having made sure of a seat for himself and the town clerk in Kitchener’s carriage, seemed to think , that nothing else mattered very much. The Premier and Minister of Defence, members of the Cabinet, and members of the N.Z. Council of Defence, finding no carriages provided and no arrangements made for their place in the scheme of. things, had to give up any idea' of taking part in the proceedings and make their way to • their hotels the best way they could. The tour of the city—from the railway station via Stuart street and Princes street to the Fernhill Clubwas the awfullest apology for a procession that has been seen in Dunedin for many a long day. The proceedings in connection with the review of the cadets on Friday were an even sorrier fiasco. , The most rudimentary ideas of common sense and the fitness of things would, one would imagine, have suggested the absolute necessity of making arrangements for keeping the marching area clear on the occasion. No such arrangement had been made, and in about half an hour the ground had been so completely encroached upon by the crowd that the review had to be ignominiously abandoned. The entire arrangements for the first two, days of Lord Kitchener’s stay were* a sublime exhibition of ‘ how not to do it, and the Dunedin civic authorities are deservedly the laughing-stock •of the whole ■country. As to Kitchener himself, he belied his reputation in at least one respect in that he looked almost uniformly genial and pleasant. He even unbent further, and the papers have rapturously reproduced for us ‘a Kitchener smile.’ It is pleasing to know that the great man is human after all, but we would not advise any easygoing officer or trusting ‘ Tommy ’ to take any chances on the strength of ‘ the Kitchener smile.’ When ‘ the blast of war blows in the ears’ and Kitchener has work to do, the ‘smile’ part of him is very much in the background.. A Hot Spell / One of those unpleasant heat-waves that drop in unexpected and uninvited among the southern colonies of Australia has happened along, and the lives of the sufferers, for the time being, are-described as a pendulum beat between a lemon-squash and shandy gaff. 104.9 has been registered in Melbourne city, says the cable, and 105 degrees in the shade in Adelaide. That is bad enough, but it is nothing to what a thorough-going heat wave can do. At Stawell (Victoria) the thermometer has reached 120 in the shade, and Baron von Mueller, in his Select Extra-Tropical Plants, tells us how a district in the Riverina (New South Wales) once stewed to the tune of 124 in the shade. In Saint-Medard: A Legend of Afric — of Barham’s breezy Ingoldshy Legends is described how the Devil When saints were many, and sins were few, set out one day to see if he could capture some souls, and how at the end of his day’s work he encountered a sort of heat wave along the African shore. He had been North, and he had been South, From Zembla’s shores unto far Peru, Ere he filled the sack s Which he bore on his back Saints were so many, and sins so few. The way was long, and the day was hot; His wings were weary; his hoofs were sore; And scarce could he trail His nerveless tail, As it furrowed the sand on the Red Sea shore; • • The day had been hot, and the way was long Hoof-sore and weary and faint was he; He lowered his sack, And the heat of his hack ' As he leaned on a palm-trunk blasted the tree ! * The fiend— he started out during an Australian heat wave — probably not take nearly' so long to fill his sack as in those holy days of old, but his temperature difficulties would be about the same. We in New Zealand are practically, immune from the real out-and-out heat wave, but "here for the past week or two, the weather has been consistently and unpleasantly hot. As a consequence,

dysentery both among children and adults—and especia’ly in some of our artillery camps—has ‘been very rife,; and' for once the first touch of winter will be almost welcome. A Serious Indictment ; V. We publish elsewhere a full report of . the address—which formed the subject of one or two cables to the daily press-delivered recently by Cardinal Moran on certain aspects of the New South Wales education system, in which he impeaches the system as having been devised in deliberate hostility to the Catholic Church, as ' instilling lessons that are rationalistic and irreligious, as being de facto at the present moment an actively proselytising system, and characterised in its administration by an anti-t-atholic animus so marked and virulent as to be almost incredible to those not actually acquainted with the facts. It is an exceedingly serious indictment,! and, as we had anticipated and as our readers will see for themselves on perusing the address, his Eminence has proved his statements up to the hilt. Particularly damaging was his exposure or the ‘ Supplementary Readers ’ recently introduced into the State schools. From one of these—entitled Books x? r " „ Bairns : Robin Hood and His Merry Men —we give the following extract, which is an absolutely fair specimen of their general tone and trend:— ‘You must’always remember, says this Header, ‘ in reading of Robin Hood, how long ago he lived. When he died it was only about 1230, six and a half centuries ago—long before England had become a Protestant country, when Mass in Latin was said in all the churches instead of the English service of to-day, and the Pope of Rome was head over all the clergy. And when Robin Hood lived the Bishops and abbots were often very rich, and very lazy indeed, they grew richer and richer, and lazier and lazier, till the people had scant respect for them. The monks and friars, too, were, often fat and lazy, if not always rich.' Sometimes they' could hardly read, and they were often believed with good reason to know much more about good wines than about good books, and to spend much more time over their* dinners than oyer their devotions.’ Fancy pabulum of that sort being dished up for young children under what professes to he a national and almost an ‘ideal’ system r , » ' Very effective also was the Cardinal’s statistical comparison, showing the number of Catholic 1 schools, scholars, and religious teachers now in operation, as compared with the numbers in —the year in which the system was introduced which, its author claimed, would bring about the speedy overthrow of the Roman Catholic priesthood.’ The only effect of the long-sustained attack has been that the faith of the people has passed through the crucible, and has come out stronger, and purer, and more ardent than ever. It is the old story. Long ago that arch-persecutor, the Emperor Diocletian, had to admit: The more- I seek to blot out the name of Christ, the more legible it becomes; and whatever of Christ I thought to eradicate takes the deeper root, and rises the higher in the hearts and lives of men.’ To complete the record of attack and counter-attack . there still remains the Cardinal’s reply to the Hon. Mr. Hogue’s undignified and unmannerly deliverance. This will probably come to hand with our next week’s exchanges, and, with the report of the whole tourney before us, we will probably have something further to say on the matter. . A North Island Controversialist , The real, rabid, true-blue, out-and-out anti-Catholio controversialist is. not usually a very particular person. As a rule, he has learnt by long practice to make a very little truth go a very long way and has reduced the cowardly and contemptible art of misquotation to something like a system, A controversialist of this sort, appears to have broken out recently in. the Feilding district. A correspondent in that locality has asked vis to explain—and, as our readers will see, our task is an easy —the following quotation made by an Anglican clergyman in the district to prove that the Catholic Church does not allow an open Bible. ‘The priests know,’ says this clergyman, ‘that the reading of the Bible ■ has caused a great, many Roman Catholics to become Protestants of one denomination or another, and Cardinal Wiseman, who inquired into many cases where people had thus changed, says: ‘-The history in every case is very simple ; v that the individual became possessed of the Word of God, , of the Bible, that he perused this book; that he could not find in it transubstantiation dr auricular confession; that he could not discover in »t one word of purgatory, or the worship-‘of images. He perhaps goes to the priest, and tells him that he cannot find these doctrines in the Bible. His priest argues with him, and endeavors to convince him that he should shut up the .book that is leading him astray. He perseveres, he abandons the communion of the Church of Rome, and be-

comes a Protestant.’ It will be noted that the foregoing clearly and plainly suggests the following ideas;—(l) That Cardinal Wiseman personally ‘ inquired into 5 many cases where Catholics had become Protestants (2) that in the passage cited he is stating the - results ■of his own personal inquiries, and is stating them as an ascertained fact; and (3) that Cardinal Wiseman knows and admits that ‘ the reading of the Bible has caused a great many Roman Catholics to become Protestants,’ and that he is therefore opposed to 1 an open Bible.’ * We have no hesitation in branding this controversial effort as a deliberate and disgraceful misrepresentation of Cardinal Wiseman’s meaning. Every one of the three insinuations above enumerated is absolutely and utterly false. The ; truth is, as' we shall show (1) That Cardinal Wiseman - never‘pretended to have made any ‘ inquiries ’ into the cases referred* to, but only professed to have read such books as had been written by the converts to Protestantism (2) that in.the passage quoted he was giving, not facts known to himself, but merely the alleged history of such ‘ conversions ’ as supplied in the books written by the converts (3) that so far from saying or admitting that the reading of the Bible has caused many Catholics to become Protestants, his whole contentionwhich is developed at length on the very page -from which this clergyman’s extract is taken—is that it was not the reading of the Bible, but a much more fundamental principle, which led the individual to Protestantism; and (4) that instead of being opposed to the reading of the Scriptures by the faithful, in another part of the same volume he shows explicitly and at great length that the Church has constantly and warmly encouraged such reading. * In order .to establish -our first two points it is only necessary to quote the words of Wiseman leading up to the passage partially cited by this reverend garbler. The passage occurs in the first of Wiseman’s Lectures on, the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church, p. 19. We quote from p. 18 the sentences immediately preceding the mutilated extract given by the Feilding clergyman, from which Wiseman’s meaning will be perfectly clear. After referring to the works written by men of talent and erudition who had become converts to the Catholic Church in recent years, he goes on to say: But I have also read similar works >on the other side, purporting to give the grounds upon which several individuals have abandoned the Catholic Church, and become members of some Protestant communion. It is, 'indeed, very seldom that men of any considerable ability, or at all known- to the public for their learning, have written such treatises; but, still, such as they are, they have been, in general, widely disseminated. It has been considered important to throw them, in a cheap form, among the public, and, particularly among the lower orders, that they may see examples of conversion from the Catholic religion... Now, I have read many of these, and have noted that, instead of the rich variety of motives which have brought learned men to the Catholic Church, there is a sad meagreness’of reasoning in them; indeed, that they all, without exception, give me hut one argument. The history in every case is simply this.’ Then follows the passage quoted in garbled form by the North Island controversialist. The italics in the foregoing are ours, and the sentences so marked indicate quite clearly that in what follows Wiseman is quoting in substance; though not in words, the story of these ‘ conversions ’ as given in the converts’ own books. When he says, ‘ The history, in ,every case, is simply this,’ he plainly means ‘the history as given in the bookswritten by themselves —to which I have referred.’ Even the passage cited by our reverend friend— it had been-correctly quoted itself contains sufficient to show that Wiseman was, merely giving the story of . such conversions as ‘ commonly expressed ’ by the converts themselves. We give the passage as it stands in Wiseman’s work, marking by italics the sentences deliberately suppressed by our controversialist ‘ The history, in every case, is simply this: that the individual—by some chance or other, probably through the ministry of some pious person—became possessed of the word of God of the Bible; that he perused this Book that he could not find in it transubstantiation or auricular confession ; that he could not discover in it one word of purgatory, or of worshipping images. He ■ perhaps goes to the priest, and tells him that he cannot find these doctrines in the Bible his priest argues with him, and endeavors to convince him that he should shut up the book that is leading him astray; he perseveres, he abandons the communion of the Church of Rome— that is, as it is commonly expressed, the errors of that Church and becomes a Protestant.’ The italicised words— as it is commonly expressed were deliberately and dishonestly omitted in order to, put into the mouth of an honored dignitary of the Church the cheap and tawdry sentiments of a devotee of Exeter Hall. /

ar rom ‘ knowing that the reading of th® Bible has caused many Catholics to become Protestants,' Wiseman s whole contention is that it Was not reading of the Bible at all that led . such individuals to Protestantism. ' e take up the quotation at the very point where it was s . c * dishonestly dropped by our unscrupulous assailant. After the words ‘ and becomes a Protestant,’ Wiseman coniu lies : ‘Now, in all this, the man was, a Protestant- from the beginning; he started with the principle that whatever I£ L 111 that book cannot be true in religion or an article of faith and that is the principle of Protestantism. He took Protestantism, therefore, for granted before he began to, examine the Catholic doctrine. He -set out with the supposition that whatever is not in the Bible is no part of (jod s truth; he does not find certain things in the Bible': and concludes that, therefore, the religion that holds these is not the true religion of Christ. The ‘ work was done before; it is not an instance of conversion; it is only a case of one who has lately, and perhaps unconsciously to his own mind, had his breast filled with Protestant-principles, coming openly to declare them.’- The man who could lift a passage out of its context and by wilful suppression make it convey a meaning directly opposite to that intended by tne author is absolutely without conscience. We are glad to acknowledge that the Feilding cleric’s action is in marked contrast to the courteous and honorable attitude usually maintained towards us-by our Anglican friends. * y- :r : (4) As to the alleged opposition to l an open Bible,’ Cardinal Wiseman, in the very volume quoted from, devotes a number of pages to an eloquent and brilliant defence of the Catholic Church as having been always ‘ not only foremost in the task of translating the Scriptures, Hut- also in placing it in the hands of the faithful.’ The passage is too long to quote, but those interested will find it on pp. 49-55 of the work referred to. Some pertinent facts in connection with this subject were given in our leading columns of January 27, and the whole question of the Church’s attitude towards the Bible is very ably and admirably dealt with in the Lenten Pastoral just issued by the Bishop of Christchurch and printed in the N.Z. Tablet. In the light of the facts we have- presented and of the material to which we have directed attention, our correspondent will find that the local mischief-maker cuts a very sorry figure indeed. His argument against us -not -merely limps— it has not a leg to stand on.