Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 7 September 1911, Page 1737

Current Topics

Peary and the Pole ‘ Mr. Dooley ’ found it quite easy to believe both Cook and Peary, so long as they refrained from giving proofs. The difficulty of believing them after they have given the grounds on which their claim was based, appears to have presented itself to much more exalted characters than the philosopher of Archey Road. Peary’s book, The Nortlo Pole, has been for some time past under review in the magazines; and the scientific papers are, perhaps, more sceptical than ever as to whether Peary really did reach the Pole. The following quotations, for example, from an editorial review in Nature of May 18 show sufficiently clearly the light in which that high authority views the question. ‘ln spite of the space available there are many omissions of the many things one would most like to know. . . . There is also little in this book to answer the criticism of those who have questioned Peary’s actual attainment of the Pole. . •. Some adequate statement of the evidence that was laid before these distinguished authorities might have been given as one of the appendices, of which there are three. . . . The great increase in his pace after he parted from Captain Bartlett is not explained in the text. . . . It is not easy to follow the story of the last few days of the approach to the Pole. . . . A tabular statement of his marches would have been very useful. The numerous references to the observations taken and the fac-similes of some of the calculations are not convincing.’ A New South Wales jokester, when exhibiting a carriage and pair at the Sydney Show early last year, announced that he had named the horses Cook and ‘Peary,’ because they have the Pole between them.’ And now — all the controversy are left with the haunting suspicion that not even ‘ between them ’ have the enterprising claimants captured the elusive article.

Lying Trade Names The Dublin Industrial Development Association has had abusy yearnot the least fruitful department of its activity being that devoted to the exposure of the slim commercialists, in England and elsewhere, i who try to ‘ commandeer ’ the market for Irish goods by the fraudulent use of Irish trade names. Every week of the year the Association has detected cross-Channel and other firms applying misleading labels and brands to their manufacturesmisleading by reason of the fact that they bear Irish titles, emblems, and designs which are intended to deceive the public into the belief that the articles so branded were made in Ireland. Here are a few samples, which will give some idea of the charmin’ variety of Irish titles under which certain English goods have been masquerading during the year. English-made sheets were sold stamped with an outline map of Ireland, together with the word t Killarney ’ ; English cloth was put on the market as Highbury Donegal tweeds ’; boxes of English-made hairpins were branded ‘ Shamrock ’; brushes made in Bristol were labelled ‘lrish’; cloths made in Leeds were offered variously as ‘ Connaught,’ ‘ Shannon,’ and Erin. ; English-made cycle repair outfits were boomed under the fetching title ‘ Erin-go-bragh ’; Sheffieldmade razors were offered to the public as ‘ Faugh-a-ballagh’ ; sweets made in London were further sweetened by the title ‘ The Shamrock Mixture ’ ; cloth made in Yorkshire was sold as ‘ Avoca ’ and ‘Wicklow’; boots made in Northampton were branded ‘ Shamrock ’; and so on. The result was that, not only were the general public deceived, but considerable quantities of imported manufactures were actually purchased in Ireland by persons who believed they were supporting Irish industries. The extent of the frauds may be gathered from the fact that during the past year the Association succeeded in procuring undertakings to discontinue this practice from twenty-six firms, or an average of one such undertaking per fortnight.

Modernism and Church-going The leaders of Protestantism in England are making a brave attempt to explain and to face the black-looking problem of the churchless massesthe problem of the existence of whole portions of the population of England and Scotland who are as utterly pagan ‘ as the wildest savage roaming the forests of Africa.’ Under the title of Non-Church-going: its Reasons and Remedies, a volume has just been published by Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, in which the views and testimonies of the following eminent and representative men are collated: Sir Oliver Lodge, the Rev. Prebendary Garble, F. Herbert Stead, M.A., the Rev. Professor Stalker, D.D., Willian Ward, the Rev. Frank Ballard, D.D., J. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., the Rev. J. Ernest Rattenbury, Hector Macpherson, the Rev. Thomas Martin, D.D., P. Whitwell Wilson, John W. Gulland, M.P., and the Right Hon. J. Compton-Rickett, M.P. The subject has only an indirect concern for Catholics; for while in large city populations, as e.g., in London, Liverpool, etc., there is a certain amount of leakage amongst Catholics as amongst others, on the whole Catholics have emerged splendidly out of every test of comparative attendance, and in particular, the lament so often heard in relation to Protestant churches the congregations are composed almost exclusively of women -has absolutely no application to the Catholic body. Interesting, however, the testimony of these witnesses certainly is; and in some cases distinctly significant. * In the Introduction to the volume, by Mr, W. Forbes Gray, we are told: ‘lt is difficult to over-esti-mate the gravity of the situation; an appalling number of people never enter a church; only 3 per cent, of working men are directly influenced by the Christian faith.’ _ The reference here is, of course, to the nonCatholic population. The explanations given are many and various; but the two following utterances strike us as . being _ particularly weighty and impressive. The criticism in question is directed not against the weaker kinds of sermonising but against modern Scottish sermons and the better type of modern English sermons, such as are delivered characteristically from the Nonconformist pulpits. ‘ The emphasis upon brotherhood,’ says Sir J. Compton-Rickett, M.P., ‘the ethical teaching which has displaced the theological, the translation of dogma, into poetry and into parable, have taken the taste out of the sermon and robbed the message of its once absorbing interest. The preacher has now become the moralist who counsels, and not the prophet who once denounced, reasoned, and persuaded.’ Mr. Hector Macpherson, speaking with special reference to Scotland, bears precisely similar testimony; ‘The preachers of to-day,’ he says, ‘ especially the younger generation, loosed from their moorings and bereft of compass, are sailing on unknown seas. In other words, they have no arresting message. They are no longer ambassadors. _ In. the sphere of the supernatural they have speculative opinions, surmises, but no certainties. Consequently, modern sermons, as a rule, are ethical rather than theological, intellectual rather than doctrinal. They are conducive to a species of religious Moderatism with an instinctive aversion to Revivalism. Now, where the Pentecostal element is eliminated from sermons, the churches become lethargic. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, and naturally seek fresh fields and pastures new. The Higher Criticism spells Moderatism, which again spells stagnation, and, as In the eighteenth century,' decline of Church influence.’ ‘Let any impartial layman,’ he continues, ‘compare the fundamental points of the Age of Reason with the conclusions of the Higher Critics, and he will be astonished at the resemblance. In both there is the same denial of the infallibility of the Bible, the same insistence on its legendary and unhistorical character; the difference being that while Paine barbs his reasonings with irreverent ridicule, the Higher Critics, after undermining the authority of the Bible, still claim for it a spiritual value. On such a platform it is impossible to deal with the hard-headed sceptical working man. • . . Before the churches can come within measurable distance of fulfilling their great mission they must

have a definite message, resting upon and growing out of a definite creed. Expressed in Catholic phraseology, the criticism uttered by these two representatives amounts to saying that Modernism is obtaining such a hold on the non-Catholic Churches in England and Scotland as to have already left a large proportion of them with scarcely a vestige of definite, dogmatic message to mankind. Protestantism has no Pius X. to smother the heresy at a stroke; and wherever the Modernist mischief is allowed to ravage unchecked, it is the beginning of the end.

The Irish Party and the Education Question The present Minister for Education in England (Mr. Runciman) appears to be unmistakably the square peg in the round hole. On all sides there are expressions of dissatisfaction, and in almost every direction there are calls for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the administration of his department. Apart from the general protest against his autocratic and unsympathetic attitude towards the just complaints and grievances of the local Education bodies he has given special ground of offence to Catholics and Anglicans by his manifest determination to destroy—by means of administrative regulations, not authorised by existing legislationthe denominational character of both Catholic and Anglican secondary schools. In the course of the debate on the Vote for Education, which took place in the House of Commons on July 13, two flagrant instances of this unfair treatment were given. As showing how the Board’s regulations discriminated between undenominational and denominational schools, Mr. Leslie Scott mentioned first the case of the Catholic secondary school at Liscard, in Cheshire. In 1908 there were some six thousand Catholics in the district, and the school was needed by them. When the grant was applied for the Board of Education referred to the recent regulations and asked that the denominational part of the teaching should be dropped. Though the school asked for the assistance -of the Government grant, its claims being supported by the Cheshire County Council, the Board of Education said that it could not give the grant. He submitted that there was no power to make these regulations, and that in any case it was open to the Board to rescind them. The and case referred to by Mr. Scott in which -the right hon. gentleman had connived at a breach of the law related to the Wheelwrights’ Grammar School, near Dewsbury. In 1888 it was converted from an elementary into a secondary school, the majority of the governors being members of the Church of England. In 1898 there was a further scheme, under which the majority 'of the governors did not belong to the Church of England, while under the 1902 Act the county council was directed to consider the educational needs of the district, and that it should not make any difference on religious grounds. The local education authority refused to give a grant as long as the school remained Church of England in its character. The Board of Education was written to by the governors of the schools, asking it to preserve its Church of England character. The Board, however, instead of calling upon the local education authority to do its duty in accordance with the Act, prepared a scheme changing the Church of England character of "the school, which it had possessed for nearly two centuries, and turning it into an undenominational school.

It is satisfactory to note that one of the Irish members has spoken out very strongly against this official tyranny and injustice; and has given the Government a plain warning on behalf of the Irish Party. In the debate above referred to, Mr. Boland protested that ' under the Secondary Schools Regulations as they now existed not a single new secondary school for Catholics in, this country could be recognised by the Board of Education. At the present moment there was only eleven of these schools for boys and thirty-nine for girls, and of these only three were recognised as pupil-teacher centres. Every education authority should have regard for the growth of a community, but under the regulations it was impossible to find a supply of elementary school teachers to man the schools. It was no solution

of the difficulty to be told that their children could go to Council or. non-Catholic schools, for Catholics had made great sacrifices for the Catholic education of their children, as was shown by the fact that during the lastnine years not a single one of their schools had been transferred to the Councils. They were not going to sit down quietly and see steps taken, not by statute but by the regulations of a Board over whom that House had really no control, to destroy the denominational system and to put an end to the growth of a community that was properly equipped with its schools. If the Board of Education crippled their development he could assure the right hon. gentleman that some day he would wake up to the fact that their community felt enormously ■ strongly in the matter. Although in general legislation they on the Nationalist benches had always supported the Government in recent years they might be driven to very strong methods indeed to assert the right of Catholic children to have Catholic schools and Catholic teachers for their upbringing.' That has the right ring about it and in the present state of parties in Parliament, the Nationalists are in a position to press their protest until the Government are forced to give it practical effect.

Protestants and Portuguese Persecution When the Portuguese Republic was first launched, the action of the Revolutionaries was hailed in many, if not in most Protestant quarters with expressions of warm satisfaction and approval. According to Protestant papers, Portugal was ‘ shaking herself free from the yoke of Rome/ was ‘ bursting the fetters of priestcraft/ was at last ‘ throwing off medievalism/ and was ‘ placing herself in line with all the progressive and enlightened nations of the day.’ So long as the tyrannical and grossly unjust governmental persecution appeared to be directed exclusively against the Catholic Church, our Protestant friends viewed it with great equanimitytheir .attitude being suspiciously like that of the old-time publican who, on being asked if he was going to the funeral of a local teetotaller replied, ‘No, I am not going to the funeral, hut 1 approve of it.' Now the tiny handful of Protestants in Portugalless than 5000 all toldare beginning to come in for their turn of persecution; and how loudly and lustily do they protest ! 1 According to Shakespeare

' The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle that Ave tread upon, - In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.' ,

Portuguese Protestantism— we have saidis almost microscopic in its dimensions but apparently in its present ‘ sufferance it finds a pang as great ’ as that of the whole Catholic body in the Republic, *

Here is the story of its wrongs, and how it feels about them, as told in an article in the June Missionary Record of the U.F. (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland. ' A new law,' says the writer, ' G. M. R.', presumably one of the officials of the Protestant mission in Portugal, ' on the separation of, Church and State in Portugal was promulgated on April 21. It is introduced with many fine words. To all it promises freedom of worship, religious equality, liberty of conscience, and so forth! First impressions suggest that an ideal measure is to follow. But the more it is examined the more clearly does it appear that, instead of promoting the cause of religion or improving the present situation, the new law seems intended to root out of the country the profession of Christianity altogether. The author of it, at all events, is reported to have declared at a public meeting in Oporto that he hoped in nine years Portugal would by means of it be de-Christianised. The law in question consists of some two hundred Articles, of which one can only give samples; and we naturally chrose those which most closely affect our own Church "interests in Lisbon and Madeira, in each of which we have a native Protestant congregation as well as a congregation of British people. Writing on April 24, the Rev R M. Lithgow enumerates some of the more salient features of the Separation Decree. " All ministers of any form of faith m Portugal must now get a license from

the. Government before they can legally conduct Divine services, and a heavy fine is imposed for any infraction of this,” For every service at a funeral, too, a special license is required.” “All services held in private houses at which twenty persons attend are held in the same category as those of public worship.” “ Schools carried on by religious' bodies or committees are to be considered in the same way as places of worship, and similarly treated.” These provisions (comments the Missionary Record writer) are bad enough. But still more damaging are those which follow. Consider what it would mean in this country if all evening meetings were forbidden. Yet such prohibition is now part of the public law in Portugal. “All religious; services must take place between sunrise and sunset, which,” says Mr. Lithgow, “at once affects our own evening service, and all our Mission ones save that on Sunday morning.” Again, “ only the freewill offerings of the members attending any place of worship are available as means of its support, and all legacies bequeathed for religious purposes must be considered null and void.” Besides, “all congregations meeting for Divine worship of any form in this country must choose an existing benevolent committee, wholly composed of Portuguese, to which they must give an account of their revenue and expenditure. This board will take one-third of the revenue received and devote it to some benevolent purpose of a public characterpractically our poor rates; so that, instead of supporting the Church, the State is now to derive from it ” the wherewithal to meet some of its own obligations.’ *

But perhaps the most serious part,' continues the Presbyterian paper, is that which threatens the continued tenure of our Church buildings. "All edifices or churches which until now have been used for the public worship of any religion, and which do not belong to the State, are held inalienable without the consent of the Minister of Justice, and may at any time be expropriated for the public utility at their actual value, with reversion to the State of all future benefits, if up to the Ist of July next they continue to he applied to the purposes of public worship.' If in any degree one fails to conform to this obnoxious law in all its requirements, the remedy in the Bands of the Republican Government is a simple one. Your Church buildings are annexed, and all facilities .for religious services are lost. The question one naturally asks is, What can be done to protect the interests of our people in Portugal ? The native Protestant pastors have sought redress, but have obtained none. Though the Republican leaders have hitherto spoken of them as their friends, they offer no suggestion for their relief. They speak as if the measure were aimed at the Roman Catholics, and add that the Protestant cause must be willing to suffer some hardships too.' Catholic writers have over and over again pointed out that the anticlerical campaigns on the Continent are, without exception, directed not only against the Catholic Church but against every form of Christianity. After our Protestant brethren have had a little longer experience of ' the kind of treatment that is at present being meted out to them in Portugal they will, perhaps, begin to believe us.