PRESS AND PUBLIC

New Zealand Tablet, 13 June 1912, Page 43

PRESS AND PUBLIC

The Catholic public (says John Ayscough in the London Universe) lias lately shown signs of expecting a literature and press free from delect and all to itself. its novelists must not strain at wit, but must be as funny as Dickens, and equally moving without ever wallowing in pathos or growing maudlin. They must show a complete grasp ox life, like Thackeray's, but without hinting at anything in the lives of men that has no business to be there. They must produce works of fiction that may freely be read in convent boarding-schools, but of a quality that will force men of a world not Catholic to read them, that so the Catholic presentment of the things may reach outside. They are therefore not to be goody-goody, but the whiteness of holiness must by no means be thrown into relief by any contrast with anything darker than pale grey lofty standard, not, perhaps, to be obtained, as you may obtain a new fish-kettle, by ordering it at the stores or from the nearest ironmonger. At a matter of fact, however, the standard actually reached by English writers belonging to the Church has been for some time a high one. At the present moment they may claim a position not merely proportionally good, but high even without the proviso of relative numbers considered.

Dr. Barry, Canon Sheehan, Monsignor Benson, and Mrs. Wilfrid Ward are certainly not inferior to any English novelist now writing; and Canon Barry's contributions to literature are not '""confined to fiction. Francis Thomson, dying, left no poet greater than himself in England alive and still writing poetry; and at the present moment Lord Alfred Douglas and Mrs. Meynell are the best poets England has living. Abbot Gasquet, the Kev. H. K. Mann, and Monsignor Ward are the best historians now writing in English; and in the neighbour field of serious biography Mr. Wilfrid Ward and Mr. Snead-Cox are ahead of all competitors. Of living essayists, none certainly surpasses Mr. Hildaire Belloc in brillance and originality. If we come to periodical literature it may fairly be said that the Dublin Review is the best of the quarterlies, and no shilling monthly maintains a higher level of interest, excellence, and literary distinction than the Month.

Then there is the 'Press.' This also must be a branch of literature, or the mission entrusted to it can never be seriously, carried out. In the non-Catholic press there are papers that by no stretch of courtesy could be ranked as falling within any definition of literature; all printed words, indeed, are composed of letters, but they have nothing else to do with letters. The Tablet is a literary organ of very high standing; not now equalled in consistent excellence nor in importance by weekly reviews that were once names to conjure them. The Catholic Times appeals to, a large public, not, in all its ramifications, so literary; but, besides its popular features, it also is distinguished by the generous weekly provision of a mass of very considerable and very able literary matter. In this place it does not behove me to speak of the Universe, but this may be said: Whatever degree of excellence it may have attained so far, it aims at bringing itself higher, concerning which something must presently be enforced. The Catholic public, like the general public, is formed of various groups or sections— these democratic days we must not say of classes— to these diverse groups the different Catholic newspapers appeal, so that they have never regarded each other as rivals. The diversions are not precisely political. Some Catholic reviews, magazines,. and newspapers may probably circulate chiefly in quarters where Conservatives are not held in derision others among those who are most sanguine as to the benefits promised by Liberal Governments, but it has never been the way with the Catholic Press in England to attach to itself this or that political label. And this is altogether to its credit, and much to its advantage—even politically. No Liberal administration -can count on the blind obedience of any English Catholic newspaper—let it put forward an Education Bill obnoxious to Catholic feeling and try nor

can a Conservative Government be sure that any English Catholic review will whisper soft nothings in its ear on all occasions.

This attitude of our press has been its strong point. Let us maintain it.

In some quarters lately I have noted with regret a disposition to assume that every good Catholic must be a good Democrat. Against any such assumption, little as I like politics of any color, I take leave to protest. In matters that are really only political the Church leaves us a free hand. There are, of course, questions that claim to be merely political in which there is strictly involved some deeper question of faith or morals. In those we are not free, for the Church has never professed to leave her children free to believe what is mischievous and false, nor to behave without reference to God's commandments and her own. In matters of political significance only she holds herself unbound, and does not bind us, neither must we try to bind one another. Democracy may be the thing now; it certainly was not the thing always, and the Church was there all the time. Christendom was almost wholly feudal once, and the Church made the best of it. The world may be entirely democratic soon, and the Church will make the best of that, too. The old heathen empire crumbled and passed, and slowly out of its ruins arose the feudal Christendom. Feudalism passed, modern Europe emerging, her mouth full of promises of freedom. The world may keep them, and all be one democracy, but the world itself will pass, and, before it passes, something else may grow out of the ruins of democracy, just as democracy itself arose out of the ruins of monarchy. The Church stands, as she has always stood, watchful, not aloof, but uncompromised, a finger on her lip, blessing where she can, expostulating when she must. The Church has had from the beginning a side that democrats love to call democratic. She has never existed for any class ; she belongs to all alike who belong to her. Her sympathy has been always for those most in need of it, and there have been times when that sympathy has called for the reproof of the mighty. All that she has to give is for poor and rich alike. And her highest places are open to the lowest. But her organisation is anything rather than democratic ; it is not based on assumptions of equality. Her rule is for the people—not this section or that, highest or even lowest— has never been, and never can be, by the people. Her constitution reflects that of heaven, and, though one hears God called by many odd names nowadays, I have not yet heard Him described as President of the Celestial Republic. Whatever happens to the Government of the world, that of the Church will always be a Vice-Royalty, the remainder in time of Eternal Sovereignty. The voice that speaks from the seven hills beside the yellow river has sent its sound into all lands insisting on the Apostolate of the Press, and every Catholic ear is listening. But the message cannot, in the nature of things, be to the Christian press alone: it implies the correspondence of the Christian public A duty is never, like the leaning Tower of Pisa, all on one side. Political nostrums change and fail, but the law of demand and supply will work in spite of us. Forced feeding is not possible outside prisons, and readers are at large The Apostolate of the Catholic press depends not on the Catholic press alone, but on the reasonable co-operation of the Catholic public. And that is precisely what the Catholic public does not seem alert to comprehend A press, however solidly good, cannot maintain itself m vogue by its own weight. Writers presuppose readers. That the Catholic writers are there we believe is proved. Let the Catholic readers keep them going. The Pope's wise and solemn reminder of an imperious duty is to the public on which every press must depend, as it is to those by whom the Catholic press must be provided.