A DIFFICULTY.

New Zealand Tablet, 30 March 1911, Page 575

A DIFFICULTY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— send you herewith a cutting from last Monday's Christchurch Press, according to which the Very Rev. Father Price, at the Christchurch Cathedral on Sunday, asked the congregation to pray that Almighty God ' might lead him yet further into realms of eternal peace and happiness.' The person of whom the Very Rev. Father was speaking was Mr. George Hart, a Protestant, seme time a pillar of the Temple, and a shining light amongst the Students of Truth, and according to the obituary notice in the Press on the day after Mr. Hart's death, 'an enthusiastic Mason.'

Now, Sir, contrast this with the following. lam the child of a Protestant father. In life he left the religious upbringing of his children absolutely in the bands of my Catholic mother, and identified himself with every movement got up in the interests of the Church. Re was never a Freemason. On his death some little time ago I asked to have him prayed for in the Church, but was told that as my father had died a Protestant public prayers could not be asked for him, although I and my frjends might pray privately for the repose of his soul. At the time I was satisfied with the reply, but the paragraph I enclose makes me ask myself who was right— the Very Rev. Father Price or my parish priest? Both can hardly be right—yet both are priests of the Church whose teaching is the same everywhere'.—l am, etc., Puzzled. March 27.