Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 11 August 1910, Page 1259

Current Topics

The Modernists .Apropos of our recent note on 'The Church and Modernism,' in which we placed the Modernists in essentially the same category as the Pantheists and Rationalists, an esteemed clerical correspondent sends us the following interesting confirmation of this view, found in the last edition (1909) of Harnack's well-known Eistory of Dogmas. On p. 47 of the volume Harnack says: —' The Modernists have not yet produced any great work in the domain of the history of dogmas. ... In the meantime, the Pope shows them clearly that they are not Catholics, and that is his right. • They belong to us, notwithstanding all their resistance.' A Dirty Game In the eighteenth chapter of his Vanity Fair Thackeray says: One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object in order to be consistent.' As everyone knows, part of the settled policy of the leaders among our friends of the Orange, fraternity is to endeavor to excite their rude rank and file — all others whom they can influence the highest possible pitch of hatred against things and persons Catholic; and in their efforts to compass this object they furnish a telling illustration of the truth of the caustic remark of the great satirist. One of the favorite methods is by the dissemination— in a secret manner—of the very lowest class of No-Popery ' literature '—leaflets, tracts, sham ' oaths,' bogus ' encyclicals,' ' awful disclosures,' etc. — all marked by a style as crude as it is fierce, and all aimed expressly at nourishing and intensifying the fiery fanaticism of the lower orders of Orangemen. The lodges in Victoria have long been famous' by merit raised to that bad eminencefor their activity in this senseless, or, rather, criminal, propaganda; and it appears that they are now extending their attention to New Zealand. There has been sent to us, by an Otago priest, a leafletbearing the imprint of a Melbourne printer—which had been posted to one of his parishioners by an Orange resident in that centre of sweetness and light—salubrious Caver sham. It contains a copy of an alleged ' Fenian Oath,' of the alleged ' Obligations of a Ribbon man,' and sundry extracts from alleged 1 Encyclicals of Popes.' Were it not that there is a serious side to this propaganda, the document could be read by Catholics only with a hearty laugh. The swearer of this mighty ' oath' is so terrifically gory! He is made to swear to fight until I die, wading in fields of the red gore of the Saxon tyrants and murderers '; he ' shall root out every vestige of the accursed blood of the Heretics, Adulterers, and murderers of Henry VIII . f . . and shall wade in the blood of all Orangemen and Heretics.' Scotland, also, is to be devastated, with more ' wading ' and more ' ber-lud '! 'Scotland, too,' says this purple. ' oath,' 'having given aid and succor to the beasts, we shall leave her in her gore.' The alleged 'obligations' of a Ribbonman are. equally sanguinary. By virtue of the oath I have taken,' runs this Orange figment, 'I will think it no sin to kill and massacre a Protestant whenever opportunity serves.' Tacked on to these two 'oaths' are alleged extracts from Encyclicals, the object of them all being to make it appear that the Church of Rome is the sworn enemy of the Bible, of popular education, of freedom, and of progress, and that she is by nature and necessity a persecutor.

It is unnecessary to say that this alleged ‘ Fenian Oath ’ is entirely bogus, and bears no resemblance whatever to the genuine Fenian oath, which is given in A. M. Sullivan’s New Ireland. The extracts from Encyclicals are either pure fabrications, or are so distorted and mistranslated as to make them in effect, if not in form, sheer forgeries. As we have said, one’s natural impulse is to see the ridiculous side of this gory nonsense, and to regard the matter as a joke. But the circulation of such venomous stuff has more than its humorous side. Mopsa says in the Winter's Tale: ‘I love a ballad in print, a’ life, for then we are sure they are true.’ The superstition of the printed page still lives. It is strongest among the lower orders, the less educated and more gullible classes of the community, such as constitute the great bulk of the membership of the Orange lodges. In all matters regarding the general wickedness and - perversity of Catholics the swallowing capacity of the lodges- is well nigh incredible; and the inevitable effect of the perusal of such printed stuff as we have been discussing is to create and foster an almost ineradicable prejudice and bitter hatred in the hearts of Orangemen against their Catholic neighbors. The varlet, therefore, who disseminates such trash is an enemy to the peace and well-being of the community. We : have the name of the . sender . of the particular missive in, question and we are making inquiries’

as to the extent to which the practice of posting this pernicious rubbish obtains. In the meantime we may mention—for the good of this gentleman's health— there is now being circulated among members of Parliament what is probably the most comprehensive Indecent Publications Bill- ever drafted-that its definition of 'an indecent document covers every form of document that is 'of an immoral or mischievous tendency '-and that every person commits an offence and is liable to a fine of £IOO or imprisonment for three months who .< knowingly sends or causes to' be sent or attempts to send through the post a document of this sort. If the Bill becomes law—as it assuredly will—the Cavershani propagandist, and others of his ilk, are likely to strike trouble. J About a Rifle Range m As a comment on the allegations of Catholic intolerance just referred to, and as an illuminating illustration of the lieighborhness and sweet reasonableness of the Orange b r e * hre "', *** follin account of an offer and what came ol it will be found interesting. Our report is taken in part from that appearing in a recent issue of the Wellington Evening Post.:—' A special meeting of the Petone District -High School Committee was held last evening. The chairman explained that the meeting was the outcome of a letter received from the Loyal Orange Lodge protesting against the erection or a miniature rifle range on the Roman Catholic School grounds for the use of the public school cadets. Mr.. Cairns said it was the intention of Father Maples to establish a rifle range on this ground for his school, and he had generously offered tile use of the range for the State schools It was not the idea to force the range upon the public schools. The offer had been made in a neighborly way Mr. Abraliall (a member of the sub-committee previously set up to consider the establishment of a rifle range for the public schools) said that it was on the grounds of expense that the sub-committee did not go on with the idea. Rev. A. Thomson declared that Major McDonald was responsible for placing the school committee and Father Maples in an invidious position. On the motion of Mr Cairns it was resolved to take into consideration the erec--011 » miniature rifle range for the use of the Petone District High School. A letter is to be forwarded to Major McDonald informing him that the committee ' intended to establish a .rifle range on its own ground. The secretary was instructed to advise the Loyal; Orange Lodge that the matter had been dealt with, and that the decision of the committee was to be forwarded to Major McDonald.' So that— the instigation of the L.O.L.—rather than accept the neighborly, offer of a Catholic priest, the State school boys are to go without a range in the meantime, and are to trust to getting one of their own in the dim future bo much for Orange tolerance and broadmindedness! A Good Riddance + i w? Thursday last the cable brought the welcome news that the King's Declaration introducing a new and inoffensive Accession Oath and abolishing for ever the old disgraceful and insulting reference to Catholic doctrine and worship—had received the Royal assent and become the law or the land. We had intended—at the request of a correspondent—to deal with a certain feeble and rickety defence of the old formula, which has been put forward of late—in some cases by those who ought to be heartily ashamed to be guilty of such small-mindedness. It took the form of a contention that the old Declaration was justified as a sort of 'tit for tat for certain expressions of abjuration contained in the profession of faith made by all converts on their reception into the Catholic Church, the usual example given being that of Princess Ena. The question or the Declaration having now been finally settled, however any detailed discussion would be devoid of interest We content ourselves, therefore, with pointing out that between the words of abjuration referred to and the old Declaration there is absolutely no parallel; that in the former no individuals are referred to, no doctrines are named or singled out, and there is no application to any specific religious body; that the profession of faith is made in private- and that in its true form and plain meaning, while it can never ol course be pleasant reading for those whose faith is thus formally abjured, it is certainly not insulting. As Chesterton aptly says, apropos of these belated Protestant attempts to get up a 'tu quoque' retort against Catholics >< It is not Christianity/it is hot even Catholicism, that the Declaration violates. There is one thing, and one thing onlv that the Declaration Liberalism. A man cannot be a Liberal and force the King to renounce the Mass any more than he can be a Liberal and force the Prime Minis ter to renounce the Homoousion. - It is a purely theological test for a purely political officer; and therefore all Liberals must be against it root and branch. That the Pope should thunder theoretically against the first Protestants is no parallel to the Royal Declaration. •,. If a man could not be Postmaster-General without swearing he hated Luther

loathed Calvin, and cursed John Knox — would be a parallel to the Royal Declaration. Whether Rome is herself a persecutor is to a Liberal utterly irrelevant. The theory of persecuting the persecutor would end logically in eating the King of the Cannibal Islands. That Rome is a gory tyrant and a ruthless intriguer, that she threatens liberty and patriotism, all these are quite honest arguments— being a Tory. , To a Liberal they are utterly impertinent. Islam has massacred millions of Christians; Jews are charged with international intrigue; Agnosticism is to many a mere nightmare. But if you say that a Jew or a Moslem or an Agnostic must not be a barristerthen you are not a Liberal. I think Calvinism has been a greater curse than leprosy. But if I say that no Calvinist shall be a Lord of the Admiralty —then I am not a Liberal. The total abolition of the Declaration would not be a concession to Romanism. It would simply be a triumph to Radicalism, the completion of the consistent emancipation of the whole nineteenth century. The Roman Catholics, as such, are quite rightly content with some compromise; they only want to live among heretics secure from special insult. They are not bound by their creed to do more than soften the Declaration. But Liberals are bound by their creed to sweep it utterly away.' ft They have not swept it utterly away, but they have at least swept away the ' incubus of bigotry' which made it so obnoxious to Catholics. The new form of Declaration runs as follows: I solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and. declare that I am a faithful member of the Protestant Reformed Church, and will, according to the true intent of the enactments securing the Protestant succession, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my power and according to law.' ' Catholics and Protestants alike,' said Father Bridgett, writing some years ago on the subject of the oath, ' will bless the man who shall relieve the nation from a burden which is both a folly and a crime.' Thanks are assuredly due to Mr. Asquith for the tact and courage he has displayed, but the men who are entitled to the chief credit for relieving the nation of this burden are Mr. John Redmond and his party, who, by the service they have rendered in this matter, have placed the Catholics of the Empire under an everlasting debt of gratitude to them. Grateful recognition must also certainly be made of the splendid spirit of reasonableness and fairmindedness displayed everywhere by the daily press, their solid and whole-hearted support Of • the reform making the Government's task a com- ' paratively easy one. The result is gratifying in a twofold —gratifying in itself as effecting the removal of an ' old and galling grievance and gratifying, in the second place, as furnishing indirect but striking evidence of the growth of the Church's influence and prestige. An « Appeal to History' An Anglican Archdeacon has been recently disporting himself in the columns of a Marlborough paper in an endeavor to revive the ancient and musty legend that the Catholic Church is opposed to the circulation and multiplication of copies of the Bible. The subject has been so often and so fully threshed out in these columns that any lengthy discussion of the question would be wearisome to the generality of our readers. We reply, therefore, to the Archdeacon's latest utterance —a letter in the MaribofoUgh Express in the briefest • possible way. The notion that the Catholic' Church forbids the reading of the Bible is, in the words of the Quarterly Review (October, 1879), 'not simply a mistakeit is ; one of the most ludicrous and grotesque blunders.' When Protestants bring forward various ecclesiastical enactments prohibiting the general use of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, it will be found, on examination, that these regulations relate, not to the Scriptures in themselves, but to translations which the Church, for one reason or another, considers defective and liable to lead to error rather than to a fuller knowledge of the truth. Suchas we shall show—is the case in all the instances of prohibition cited by Archdeacon Grace. His letter, like all Gaul, may be divided into three parts. In the first may be grouped the paragraphs which he has lettered (a), (b), (c), and (e). The first two of these refer to the Councils of Toulouse and Tarragona, which forbade the reading of the vernacular translations made by the Albigenses. The Albigenses taught that the visible world was created by an evil God, who was also the author of the Old Testament — which they consequently rejectedand they quoted Rom. v., 20, to prove this. They also asserted that the body of Christ was not real, and that sins committed after Baptism could not be forgiven. To support these errors they made a new translation of the Bible, and explained it in their own sense (Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. ix.). It was this corrupt translation which the Councils referred to forbade to be read. If Archdeacon Grace did not know these things

he ought not to write on such a subject without making himself fully acquainted with the facts; if he did know the facts, his action in suppressing and misrepresenting them is unpardonable. Paragraphs (c) and (e) of the Archdeacon’s letter refer to the condemnation of Coverdale and Grafton’s Bible and Tyndale’s New Testament. , These translations were so notoriously corrupt as to cause a general outcry against them, even among learned Protestants, as well as amongst Catholics. It is affirmed,’ says Disraeli, speaking of these translations, ‘ that one Bible swarmed with 6000 faults. Indeed, from another source we discover that Sterne, a solid scholar, was . the, first who summed up the 3600 faults that were in our printed Bibles of London ’ Curiosities of Literature, p. 430). Of Tyndale’s New Testament, the Rev. J. H. Blunt—a recognised Anglican authoritysays: ‘ In some editions of Tyndale’s New Testament there is what must be regarded as a wilful omission of the gravest possible character, for it appears in several editions, and has no shadow of justification in the Greek or Latin of the passage. . . Such an error was quite enough justification for the suppression of Tyndale’s translation ’ (History of the Reformation of the Church of England, vol. 1., p. 514, note). Thus out of the mouth of the ‘ Archdeacon’s own authorities is the suppression of this translation justified.

The paragraphs lettered (f), (g), and (h) refer to Papal condemnations of Protestant Bible Societies, or of opposition to their particular versions of the Scriptures. It is perfectly true that several of the Popes have warned Catholics against the Protestant Bible Societies, which distribute for* sions of the —versions which, in the judgment Of the' Church, are either defective or corrupt— the avowed purpose of perverting simple Catholics. We have high Anglican authority for the assertion that it is opposition to the Catholic Church that gives these heterogeneous bodies an element of unity. 'We firmly, believe,' says the Rev. E. L. Blenkinsopp, 'that the idea that the dissemination of the Bible in various languages is the great power to meet the claims of the Catholic Church, and to overcome them, goes a long way in preserving amity among the members of that society, and in preventing them from disagreeing among themselves' (Studies in Modern Problems Catholic and Protestant, p. 5). In view of these facts, and of the unhallowed uses to which the sacred volume has been so often turned through indiscriminate circulation among the heathen, it is only surprising that any rational being could have thought it possible for the Holy See to assume any other attitude towards such proceedings. The only remaining paragraph of the Archdeacon's communication, that lettered (d), refers to the action of the Council of Trent: in requiring the laity to apply to their confessor or parish priest before using or possessing themselves of copies of the Bible. Here there is admittedly no question of condemnation or prohibition, but a mere temporary regulation, adopted as a precautionary measure at a time when the new principle of unfettered private judgment had just been launched upon the world and was being carried to the wildest extremes. The regulation has long since been withdrawn; and to-day the Holy Scriptures are sold without restraint by every Catholic bookseller, and the penny editions of the Gospels, brought out by the Catholic Truth Society, are selling by the hundred thousand. Thus, out of the eight instances cited by Archdeacon Grace—in his somewhat ostentatious appeal to history'—to prove that the Catholic Church has done its utmost to prevent . the free circulation of . the Scriptures,' only one refers to what the Church regards as the authentic Scriptures, and in that case there was neither condemnation nor prohibition; while the remaining seven, without exception, refer not to the Bible as Bible, but to what the Church regards as imperfect and misleading translations. Had the Archdeacon shown himself a man of candor, and frankly mentioned that the prohibitions . he cited referred only to special translations, no one would have been misled, and readers of the Express would have seen at a glance how utterly pointless his whole letter was. The truth is that up till the thirteenth century —when certain heresies arose and corrupt versions of the Scriptures were brought out— a single prohibition had ever been issued against the popular reading of the Bible; and when since that time the Church has condemned particular versions she has done so, not because they were translations of the Bible into a spoken language, but because they were not translations of God's Word.