Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 31 March 1910, Page 489

Current Topics

Our Editor on Tour ... Judging from communications received in Dunedin during the past week, the Rev. Dr. Cleary has been meetmg with much encouragement and success thus far in his tour through South America. ‘Although,’ says our valued contemporary,' the Buenos Aires Southern Cross, ‘ it is his first visit to South America, Dr. Cleary does not come quite as a stranger. His credentials in the shape of work well done for Faith and Fatherland arrived before him. Moreover, he speaks and writes Spanish, as well as Italian and other languages, and he felt “at home” the first day he set foot on our shores.’ Dr. Cleary holds, as already announced by us, a commission from the Australian Catholifc Truth Society to establish in such principal centres as he deems well, with the aid and advice of local archbishops and bishops, agencies to which reference can be promptly made for correct information in connection with the doubtful or calumnious stories affecting Catholic persons which appear from time to time in the columns of the secular press. . He is likewise authorised to link , up with the Australian Catholic Truth Society, for this purpose, organisations on similar- lines that exist elsewhere. An agency is arranged for in Montevideo, and in Buenos Aires and Santiago the project has been taken up with the greatest enthusiasm, and ideal men appointed to the work—learned ecclesiastics connected with the administration of active daily papers, and therefore in a specially favorable position to secure, through their correspondents all over Argentina and Chile, prompt, accurate, and detailed information regarding such questions of fact as they may be called upon to investigate. , The Pueblo (daily) of Buenos Aires, Los Principios (the chief daily paper. of Cordoba), La Union (a very live and ably edited daily of Santiago, the capital of Chile), and other papers, daily and weekly, have devoted much attention to the Rev. Dr. Cleary and to this movement for a world-wide agency of Catholic truth against the campaign of anti-Catholic fiction. By this means our editor and his mission have been made known and welcome everywhere. Among the warmest supporters of the movement, and of its still greater extension, is the present brilliant Papal Internunzio at Santiago (Chile), a former college companion of Dr. Cleary. Our readers will likewise be gratified to learn that the kindness extended to our editor by the ecclesiastical authorities everywhere has likewise been shown in a marked degree by the Ministries of State in Argentina and Chile—in the shape of extended interviews and of voluminous information of all kinds regarding the commercial, industrial, and educational life of the two countries through which he had passed when the last mails left from South America. Dr. Cleary was then about to enter upon his long and toilsome trip through theTTugged mountains and high, cold tablelands of Bolivia. A Warning to Brides Now that Lent is over there will be the usual arrears of accumulated wedding contracts to be wiped off, and a pleasant prospect it is alike for priests and people. ‘ Next to a baptism,’ says the priest in a recent story, ‘there’s nothing I like so well, as a happy wedding.’ Brides, will be well advised, however, to take warning by the misadventures of others, and see to it that the small fry of the family are kept in the background, else will they get for themselves shame and confusion of face. ‘Who gave the bride away?’ asked a friend of the family after a recent wedding in America. ‘ Her little brother,’ said the best man. ‘ He stood up right in the middle of the ceremony, and yelled, Hurrah, Fanny, you’ve got him at last I’ * Sometimes it is the little sister who is the innocent disturber of the wedding day felicity, as in the following scene at a wedding breakfast. Company are all seated about the table. A pause in the general conversation. Happy husband to his wife’s six-year-old sister at the other end of the room, ‘Well, Julie, you have a new brother now.’ Julie: ‘Yes, but mother said to papa the other day that she was afraid you would never amount to much, but that it seemed to be Sarah’s last chance.’ Intense silence for a moment, followed by a rapid play of knives and forks. ' • Not Wanted We referred last week to the troubles which the unhappy .Slatterys were encountering in their painful pilgrimage through the United States. From recent Home files we are glad to learn that in England also the ‘ ex-

thatthe? f f pe . nun ’ have ceased to be a ‘ draw » W the fihrar’i-pf fact ’/ P. er . fect drug in the market. Some thn declining to admit to their shelves ? llblishe( ? Miss Moult-the latest but sirrmlv + i lot because it contains anything startling t UP V° Show * liat the y have no sympathy with Z lection atta . Bks on «« religioL fafth of f tle comm umty. The ‘escaped nun’ lecservices 4h F ri?®b* r? “ worse-there is so little demand for her services that her occupation is practically gone. ■ .- ■ * , 5 Ar,. c ° U / d fr * end Edith oGorman— otherwise known as Mrs. Auffray—in particular has happened on eWh^^ panied y by S ‘ reme^ er f’ this accoml Si tef„ satl T rh ? t done her little 'T 1 ?® our It appears to'baVe ofthe Profit J?°?P however, f„ r to-day. in tie columns m S her dhotfst.-.Mt Christians of England and Scotland will and cities n her time of trial by inviting her to the towns Tn d tbe 1 pLJ I dom to give her much-needed lectures.’ +n Su 1 r £l estan Observer she has a still more pitiful tale to tell. She writes to the editor saying that unless she can obtain considerable financial assistance ‘she will before summer comes, be in danger of having her home sold up, where she has resided for twenty-two years.’ It is of course, very sad, and the thought of the happy home weeks sf°fi 8n UP i 1S + Particularly harrowing; but a few LTd thtktT may lead Editl ‘ *° do ,. a iittie An Air-ship Controversy .. An interesting fight has been entered upon in America W e +bp P i rof Sor r J * J -l ? lon . tmei X of Santa Clara College, the leading Jesuit institution of California and the well-known Wright Brothers, to settle who is entitled to the honor—and, incidentally, to the profits— being the first and _ original bird-man.’ The claim is that Montgomery, the Catholic professor, and not the Wrights is tW°+WW • m ,. en f or of . ti e heavier-than-air machine, and that the Wrights have infringed on the professor’s patent. Amongst the witnesses who are to be called in support of Professor Montgomery’s claim is Mr. Victor Lougheed a ugh authority on the history of aeronautics, and author of the work entitled Auto Vehicles of the Air. Lougheed nntp eXP rS ! d him 1 1 i as r follows 011 the question in dispute.— The so-called Vright patents and all aeroplanes now in use are direct infringements on Montgomery’s patent. In 1893 Montgomery absolutely described g the suecessful machine of to-day, and was then prepared to do all that is being done to-day. Twenty-five years ago Montgomery made the first flight ever made in an aeroplane, and in 1885, a year later, he evolved the parabolic curved "mg which is the sole support of all aeroplanes now in use. The Wright patent calls for a flat surface wing, but neither Wilbur Wright nor - his brother Orville, nor any other person, has ever used a flat surface wing to-support their machine in the air.’ The Professor himself has defined his position in these terms: — The Wright airships are' infringements of ray patents. A large number of Eastern capitalists have interested themselves in my work with airships, and I shall protect my rights against the efforts of the Wright Brothers. I am prepared to prove that the Wrights have no right to the use of the machines they are using. This matter must and will be settled finally, no matter what action is necessary.’ The issues at stake-are very important and far-reaching, and the case may yet turn out to be an international affair. »-> . ' e In the meantime the controversy has drawn attention to the extent to which Catholic colleges and universities are leaders in this, the latest and certainly not least fascinating of thd sciences. We have before now referred to English and Continental Catholic aviators, and the San Francisco Monitor furnishes us with the following summary of what American Catholic institutions are doing:— Many of our institutions of learning devote time and money to the study and perfection of aviation. - Paulhan, the champion bird-man, is himself a practical Catholic and graduate of Catholic schools. Montgomery, the claimant for honors as the original bird-man, is not only a Catholic and a - graduate of Catholic schools, but a teacher as well in one of this country’s best known religious institutions. For years the Catholic University of America has maintained a department of aeronautics, and now Professor Zahra, formerly of that institution, has published one of the standard

works on the science of air navigation. Notre Dame University ■ has ■, formally y established a department of . • aeronautics. Others of our leading colleges and universities are equally devoted to this most modern of all sciences.’ :f Protestant Pastors and Confessions • It is more than fifty years ago since Newman, in ' his Lectures on the- Present Position of English Catholics, selected .the institution of the confessional as being, next to the Blessed Sacrament, the most heavenly idea in the whole range of the Church’s ministry to souls. ‘ How many are the .souls in distress, anxiety, or loneliness, he wrote, / whose one heed is to find a -being to whom they can pour out their feelings unheard by. the world! Tell them out they ... must ; , they cannot i tell . them out to . those whom they see every hour. They want to tell them and not to tell them ; and they want to tell them -out, yet be as if they were not told ; they .wish to tell ..them to- one who is strong enough to bear them, yet not too. strong to despise them ; they wish to : tell them to one who can at once advise and can sympathise with them; they wish to relieve: themselves of a load, to gain a solace, to receive the assurance that there is one who thinks of them, and one to whom in thought they can recur, to whom they: can ; betake themselves, if necessary, - from time ' to time, : while they are in the world. How many a Protestant’s heart would leap at the news of such . a benefit, putting, aside all distinct ideas of a sacramental ordinance, or of a grant of pardon and the conveyance of grace 1. If there , is a heavenly idea in the Catholic Church, looking at it simply as an idea, surely next after, the Blessed Sacrament, Confession is such. And such is it ever found in fact—the very act of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign • of the Cross hanging, so to say, over the head bowed . low, and the words of peace and blessing. O, what a soothing charm is there, which the world can neither give nor take away! 0, what piercing, heart-subduing tranquillity, provoking tears of joy, is poured almost substantially and physically upon the soul, the oil of gladness, ,as Scripture calls it, when the penitent at length rises, his God reconciled to him, his sins rolled away for ever) This is Confession as it is in fact.’ . ... ... * z" j' There are well-marked signs that various sections of our' separated brethren -are veering round towards something closely resembling Newman’s view of this once muchdenounced institution. At a meeting which was held recently by members of the Boston clergy,’ says the Catholic Herald, ‘ there was informal discussion of the tendency of the Protestant Church to re-establish the confessional which has ever been a feature of the Catholic Church.’ According to our contemporary, the advantage of the sin-sick soul being able to unburden: itself was one. of the points brought out, and the tendency alleged of > the recently-started Emmanuel movement toward the confessional was commented on. Our contemporary prints three striking utterances made at this meeting by eminent men representing widely differing sections of Protestantism. The first is that of the Rev. Dr. William H. van Allen, rector of the Episcopal Church, Boston, who, in the course of his remarks, observed : * The Church has always heard confessions and given absolution, and, like, her sister Church, the Roman Catholic, this Emmanuel movement has restored the power of the confessional, not through any argument, from the past, but solely resting upon the needs of the human soul; this movement has made it evident that much peace and contentment can be given ; through .this agency.’ The Rev. Dr. Lyman Powell, who read a paper on ‘ Old and New Methods of Healing,’ said: This movement will put a different phase upon the confessional in the Roman Catholic Church, that is no longer to be "overlooked, but can be made the means,’ and is being used under another form , to show its efficiency in meeting : the requirements of the troubled and anxious life. The minister must have his office hours to-day like the physician. He must meet human souls in' the quiet and, confer with them. He must give them, through prayer , and spiritual means, the help of these conferences. ... What is it but under, another shape the need of the'confessional? The Roman Church has had its special and helpful influence, through this effective way of comforting and aiding many , a soul.’ Dr. Frederick A. Bisbee, a prominent Universalist, took up the tendency of the so-called Emmanuel movement toward a re-establishment of the confessional. He said : * I have been thinking of this i subject much and , long. For all Christians this ; movement means something. It is the most natural-outcome that this will bring the human soul and • the physician of souls closer together, and. by the use of spiritual means import comfort and peace of mind. This idea of establishing a daily conference with people who are in trouble, and in a room provided for that purpose, in order to give them spiritual advice is becoming popular with many churches. This much can be said: that the Catholics have , had con-

:fessions- from time immemorial, and after all, when you sift this movement down to its lowest terms, what is it but an establishment of a - modified confessional in the Episcopal Church - ■ ;.y ■ Crime France y. ' „ Worse even- than the material floods which have recently wrought such havoc in France is the dark tide ■of criminality which continues to rise in that : unhappy county- The Apaches,’ observes the Paris correspondent of the 1 all Mall Gazette, ‘ have got on our nerves— without reason, be it said. Evidently there is something rotten in • the State of Denmark.’ A painful feature of the crime epidemic is the appalling number of atrocities committed by mere' youths. ‘Young folk,’ says the Catholic Times, vho have only left school" devise fiendish atrocities and appear-to be completely devoid of the moral sense. Quite recently two lads were arrested on the charge of having murdered nearly all the members of a household. • Two youthful soldiers are custody ' for the brutal and callous murder of a lady in a train. Three lads, the eldest barely twenty, have assassinated an elderly : concierge.; A young bandit , took it into his - head to make an attack on the Paris police. He secured a knife and a revolver, and when the guardians of the law‘ tried to seize him they foufid that his arms were covered with .-spiked bracelets which tore their hands, so that he was able for a considerable time to defy them and to shoot one of their number dead. France is reeking with bloodthirsty lawlessness of this sort.’ *■. , . , The cause of the phenomenon is not far to seek; and in a strinking letter to the English Catholic Union Gazette printed also in French in the London Tablet —a Paris resident unhesitatingly names as the source of this dark stream of criminality godless teachingthe diminution or the suppression of religious influences in education. . He maintains that taking in.review the whole of the past century it will be found that the number of crimes has risen or fallen according as religious education has been hindered or favored, and in support of his thesis he brings forward the following facts of history: —l. Before 1830, and especially before the Revolution, th direction .of public > teaching in France , was confided to the Church-—then criminality was low. 2. The Revolution of 1830 took public education out of the hands of the Church, and confided it to a very jecular Minister of Instruction. This was a first laicisation, and the first powerful impulse to criminality. 3.. In 1850 the Falloux law, for 25 years, restored partially , to the Church the direction of education; and during these 25 years criminality diminished. ... However, the diminution made itself fully felt only a few years after the law began to take effect, about 1855. 4. In 1876 began the reign of the bloc, when secular education was enforced wholesale. The Church as banished not only from the direction of education, but also from all connection with the school. Since 1876 criminality has made enormous strides. From 250,000 it increased to 556,000. ... ’ * Here are the precise facts and figures in tabular form: r- Number of Years.' Crimes. ■ . ’ • .. 1831-35—113,000 ) ~ ' r , , •~. ." , . . 1836-40—144 000 / -Management of public instruction . is 1841-45 169*000 I withdrawn from the Church and handed 1846-50 ( over to seculars. 1851-55—280,000) Criminality increases rapidly. (The. Falloux .daw re-establishes the religious management, and criminality decreases. - - ' ; - ■ V 10fll cK 070 nnn ) The Empire hinders the Church’s action i -nIIo«q nnn f' in the schools. Slight increase of crim--1866-/0 283,000 J . inality. * The Falloux is amended in favor of the Church. Criminality decreases very considerably. - 1876-80372,000 ) ’ . ; 1881-85—422,000/ Anti-religious and secular movement ad--1886-90—461,0001 vances rapidly and continuously. " 1891-95 —521,000 I Criminality makes fearful and continuous 1896-00514,000 1 progress. : % * 1901-05—556,000 j ’.V The foregoing figures are taken by the writer from tables contained in a recent work on * Capital Punishment ; in France During the 19th ’.published by. a medical legist, professor in the University of Lyons, so that if not actually , official they are at least authoritative. “ It lis evident that in the present awful harvest of crime a France is but reaping what she has sown. She has sown the wind :f ; she reaps, and will continue to reap, the whirlwind.