Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 6 March 1913, Page 21

Current Topics

Work for the Church At the Dunedin meeting for the inauguration of the Catholic Federation one of the speakers made the point that for strengthening the faith of the laity and getting them personally interested in the Church's well-being there is no better method than that of giving them some definite work to do for the Church. An instructive illustration of the stagnating effect of having nothing to do, and of the need for adopting the plan suggested, is furnished by a recent incident recorded in one of our London contemporaries. 'We recently invited one of our contributors to write on the subject of "Work for the Church,"' writes the Universe. 'The reply we received was somewhat disconcerting. In the opinion of our contributor, the subject would arouse hardly any interest, because "the great majority have no inclination to work." If this be true, to any extent, it is a grave indictment against Catholic men and women. On one occasion we were told by a Catholic friend that if work was to be done there was the priest to do it, and he added, ' What is the use of erecting defence works around an already impregnable city?" ' * ' This is a unique excuse/ comments our contemporary, ' for religious laziness and apathy, but it is obviously a shallow one. Work for the Church is work for the Master. It is a command, and, although it is perfectly true that the City of God cannot be destroyed, it is by human agency that it is preserved and strengthened and extended. It is equally true that if all Christians, without exception, lapsed into infidelity and emulated mankind before the Flood, the visible Church on earth would disappear, and with it the race of men. God works through and by man. He foresees that there will always be a chosen few who will work for God. Thus, the Church will never die, but what of those who fail to do their part in the work of preservation?' The « Outlook ' and Bishop Cleary We publish elsewhere in this issue a letter by Bishop Cleary which appears in the current number of the Presbyterian Outlook, and which was written in reply to serious misrepresentations which were made in the editorial columns of that paper regarding his Lordship's attitude and that of the Catholic Church on the Bible-in-schools question. The answer made by the Outlook to Bishop Cleary's communication is remarkable for its total and absolute irrelevance. We give it herewith: Our only comment,' says our contemporary, ' is to place in juxtaposition with the Bishop's deliverance two statements which have recently appeared in the public press. The first is contained in a cable from London, which states: ".The Roman Catholics at Glossop, led by Canon Harkins, threaten to refuse to pay the rates unless Westward 110 is withdrawn from the public schools. Monsignor Robert Benson supports the agitation." ' The other item is an extract from an interview with the Hon. A. H. Barlow, who was for six year Minister of Education in Queensland, and who was in charge of the Bill for granting a referendum on the Bible-in-schools question. The only portions of the interview having any reference to the Catholic position are the following: ' There are very few withdrawals so far as I know by the Roman Catholics in large centres. In small places where they have no schools of their own the conscience clause seems to satisfy them. . . . But is there no claim for endowment? Of course there is. The Roman Catholics, as always hitherto, are pressing for that; but this is nothing new. They were doing that during the 33 years we were without religious teaching in the schools on the ground that the schools had no religion. They now object because the schools ha.ve religion.' No comment "f an" kind is made bv our contemporary 011 the subject matter of either of these two items. We are not rich in this world's goods, but we are willing to offer a prize of reasonable dimensions to any one who can discover and explain what earthly connection there is between the two items above

quoted and the three specific points in Bishop Cleary's letter to which they are supposed to be a reply. The only explanation would seem to be that our contemporary felt that, for appearance's sake, he must say something, but was determined to say as little as possible so as to draw no further fire in his direction. • Westward Ho ' Let us take, however, the two items as thus baldly given by the Outlook, and see whetherapart from their total irrelevancy to the issues in connection with which they have been advanced— is anything at all in them. First, as to Westward Ho. We admit to the full Kingsley's brilliant literary gifts and grace; but his mind, as was evidenced in his controversy with Newman, was saturated with anti-Catholic, and especially with Jesuit, prejudices. The Jesuits were, indeed, with Kingsley a perfect obsession. A curious illustration of his anti-Jesuit prejudice is found in the Life and Letters of Sir C. J. F. Bunbury, vol. iii., p. 22 (1895), where the following statement is made:' ' Kingsley thinks that the ruin of France under this last Empire was brought about by the priests, and especially the Jesuits, working on the Emperor, through the Empress, over whom they had gained absolute power. He has no doubt that the Emperor was urged on to the German War by the Jesuits.' * It is obvious that a man could not possibly write fairly and dispassionately on a subject in regard to which he had such deeply rooted prepossessions; and Kingsley's virulent hatred of Jesuitism, and even of Catholicism itself, finds constant expression in the brilliant but unfair and inaccurate pages of Westward Ho. The work has done an immense amount of harm amongst the young—and not only amongst the young, as the following incident will show. A few years ago a well-known South London clergyman, preaching in a city pulpit, referred.to the Jesuits in the West Indies as being in the habit of baptising the children of the natives and then killing them. The secretary of the Catholic Truth Society wrote to ask his authority for so alarming a statement. He at once received a courteous in which the writer expressed regret for having said anything to which exception could be taken, and cited as his authority Westward 110 !. The passage on which the pulpiteer had relied was no doubt the following: ' One, catching the pretty babe out of my arms, calls for water and a priest (for they had their shavelings with them), and no sooner was it christened than, catching the babe by the heels, he dashed out its brainsoh ! gentlemen, gentlemen !against the ground, as if it had been a kitten and so did they to several more innocents that night, after they had christened them; saying it was best for them to go to heaven while they were still sure thereof.' (Chap, vii.) * * This statement does not refer specifically to the Jesuits; but in the following passage a similar horrible calumny is definitely asserted against the missionaries: ' He was an Indian ... [who] had been stolen as a boy by some Spaniards, who had gone down (as was the fashion of the Jesuits even as late as 1790) for the pious purpose of converting the savages by the simple process of catching, baptising, and making servants of those whom they could carry off, and murdering those who resisted their gentle method of salvation.' (Chap, xxi.) Again we read: '. . . Those muchboasted Jesuit missions in which (as many of them as existed anywhere but on paper) military tyranny was superadded to monastic, and the Gospel preached with fire and sword, almost as shamelessly as by the first Conquistadores.' (Chap. xxv). Father Parsons and Father Campionthe latter an English Jesuit Martyr whose memory is revered by Catholics, and who was declared by Sir William Cecil to be one of the diamonds ot England '—are described as 'scoundrelly hypocrites,' 'blustering bullies,' 'a couple of rogues,' 'gentlemen in no sense in which the word is applied in this book ' ; the teaching of the Jesuits was 'base and vulgar,' (Chap, iv.), and its result on Eustace Leigh (whom

' his father had sent to be made a liar of at Rheinis') is thus described: ' Eustace is a man no longer; he is become a thing, a tool, a Jesuit; which goes only where it is sent, and does good or evil indifferently a 3 it is . bid: which, by an act of mora! suicide, has lost its soul in the hope of saving it; without a will, a conscience, a responsibility (as it fancies), to God or man, but only to "The Society,"' (Chap, xxii.) This sort of thing runs right through the book. In view of the extracts .we have quoted — which might be multiplied almost indefinitely-it is reasonable and natural that Catholic ratepayers should strongly object to paying their money to assist in the circulation of such a work, and especially to assist in its circulation amongst their own Catholic children in the schools. * An ingenious but unconvincing plea for the retention of the book is put forward by the usually thoughtful and fair-minded writer who contributes the ' On the "Watch Tower ' notes to the Dunedin Evening Star. ' It is as useless/ writes ' Ariel,' ' for Catholics to deny the existence of the Inquisition and its horrors among the bigoted Spaniards as it is for the English to deny the piracies of Drake and some of their other heroes. English admirals are no longer pirates, and Spanish gentlemen and Spanish clergy are no longer heartless persecutors. Why, then, let it pass, and thank God that times have changed.' An entirely desirable and proper attitude, and one that might fairly be asked for from all intelligent adults. But the Glossop case is concerned with children; and it would be quite unreasonable to expect boys and girls to be able to read a book like Westward Ho in this attitude of philosophic detachment and calm. To the child the printed page is gospel truth, and the characters in a storyespecially in a well-written storyare to him unquestioningly real. Kingsley himself draws no distinction in the story— for example, in the gross caricature, above quoted, of the typical Jesuit—between past times and present nor could the child reader be expected to do so. Very different from the plausible plea of 'Ariel ' is the defence of the Glossop authorities which is embodied in the sapient comment of a Tapanui editor. After printing the cable referring to Canon Harkins's protest, the editor of that well-known literary authority, the Tapanui Courier, went out of his way to remark within parentheses : ' The objectors are rather late in the day, as Westward 11 o has now become a classic in the English language.' It ought to be obvious even to our Tapanui wiseacre that a book may be a classic from a literary point of view, and yet, for one reason or another, be entirely unsuitable to be placed in the hands of children. Rabelais and the Decameron, and many of the works of Fielding and Smollet and Sterne, are by many authorities regarded as classics; yet none but a hopelessly muddled individual would therefore argue that they are desirable reading for children. In this, as in other matters, it makes all the difference whose ox is gored. ' After all,' as Josh Billings remarks, ' a bile is not such a very painful thingespecially if it is on the other follow.' If the shoe were, on the other foot, and a violently anti-Pro-testant book were being foisted on both Catholic and Protestant school-children, our Protestant friends would not be long in correctly appreciating the situation. The Barlow Interview Let us now revert.to the second item advanced by the Outlook as an alleged reply to Bishop deary's communication— the interview with ex-Minister Barlow, who was in charge of the Queensland Bill for granting, a referendum on the Bible-in-schools question. The greater portion of the interview consists of an expression of the ex-Minister's satisfaction at the success which he considers has attended the Queensland system, and need not be taken very seriously. Parents are notoriously partial to their own offspring; and it was only to be expected that the ex-Minister should have nothing but praise for a system .he himself had sponsored.. It is not by biassed testimony of that sort that the public of New Zealand are likely to be guided. His

statement that 'there are very few withdrawals so far as I know by the Roman Catholics in large centres/ though "meant as praise, is, from the Catholic point of view, a damning piece of evidence against the system. It means that a greater or less'number of Catholic children are either actually being, or are on the sure way to being, proselytised from the faith of their fathers; and affords authoritative confirmation of Bishop Cleary's emphatic statements under this head. The ex-Minister's further statement that Catholics in the past pressed for State aid ' on the ground that the schools had no religion,' and that they now object because the schools have religion,' is one of those superficially smart sayings which may ' go down ' with the unthinking, but which will carry no weight with intelligent people. It is not merely a misrepresentation or half truth— is, in plain English, a lie. Catholics have not objected, and do not object, ' because the schools have religion.' They object because they have it by wrong methods and under unjust conditions.' They do not recognise the competency of the State to set up as a teacher of religion, on the ground, amongst, others, that if it bo granted the right to teach a particular kind of religion to-day it may take to itself the right to teach quite another kind of religion—or irreligion— They object to State teachers being —without the option of a conscience clause give religious instruction contrary to their own religious beliefs—or no beliefsand to the faith and discipline of their own Church. And they protest most of all against the gross injustice of a system which provides religious instruction— the public expense suitable to one set of consciences in the community, but which refuses to make suitable provision also for the consciences of the remaining body of taxpayers. Catholics ask, not that religion shall be excluded from the schools, but that, in regard to religion and non-religion in education, the consciences of the different bodies of taxpayers shall be accorded equal treatment before the law. That is something very different from the Barlow version of the Catholic attitude; and it is because that attitude is essentially just and reasonable that the partisans of a purely sectional solution of the education problem are driven to smart and unscrupulous misstatements of the kind we have been discussing. Our Prescriptive Title According to a recent cable from Delhi, ' a storm has been raised in the Roman Catholic community throughout India over an official circular prohibiting the use of the word "Catholic" in documents as synonymous with "Roman Catholics." The reason is that the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to universal catholicity is disputed by other churches.' The cable has given an opportunity to press writers who are theologically inclined to enlighten the public as to the exact signification of these ecclesiastical terms, and a» to the appositeness or otherwiseand mostly, according to them, ' otherwise ' —of the term ' Catholic ' to those who are in communion with the See of Rome. It will be time enough, we think, to go fully into the question when we have before us, from our Indian files, the exact particulars of this reported and extraordinary Governmental action. For the present, it will be sufficient to point out that within certain obvious limits—such as that names should not be manifestly or intentionally offensive, and that one religious body should not appropriate a name already adopted by another religious religious bodies should be allowed to call themselves by whatever name they have formally and officially chosen for themselves. In the case under discussion there is no question, so far as we understand, of asking other people to accept or to employ the designation adopted by the particular Church concerned. The object of the prohibition is to prevent Catholics themselves from employing the title which, through good report and evil report, in honor and in dishonor, they have borne right down the centuries. If that be the purpose of the ' official circular,' the vice-regal action is certainly intolerable; and representations should assuredly be made to the Imperial authorities on the question. If it be argued against the principle

we have above laid down it is, in fact, argued by ' Civis' in the Otago Daily Times — other religious bodies do not acknowledge our claim to catholicity, the answer is that as regards the right to use the title Catholic we are the party in possession. It is ours by immemorial prescription. If the Protestant bodies wished to share in the title they should have adopted it, in some shape or form, in their official designation, as was done, for example, by the now moribund body known as 'Old Catholics.' They might,. if they had chosen, have called themselves 'Reformed Catholics,' or some such name; but in the earlier years of their history they would have none of any such title. And now that the world is swinging back to Catholic views and principles, to attempt to filch the title from thi party in possession and even to prevent Catholics them • selves from employing it, is a piece of manifest injustice. In any case, the quest-ion of ecclesiastical names is x matter in which laws and governments— in so far as may be absolutely necessary for statistical purposes—have no call to interfere. Let the churches—within limits, as above indicated their own titlesand in the struggle for existence it may be safely left to the fittest to survive. As a pendant to" his remarks on the subject, 'Civis' recounts an incident related by 'Farmer's Wife'—a sort of literary Mrs. Harris, per medium of whom ' Civis ' from time to time introduces some pointed and well-written observations on current topics. The story has little to do with the title ' Catholic/ but it has a very real connection with the religion connoted by the term. We give it as we find it in 'Passing Notes.' 'lf I, "Civis," would see the works of St. Francis of Assisi done to-day, she bids me take a trip (in my motor car) to Anderson's Bay. "I went last time I was in Dunedin and noticed one nun, I would say in her prime. I asked some one when I went out why she, Sister M., was shaking so. She had been nursing a cancer case; the patient had died a short time before and it had been a great strain on her. Anyone can mind babies (as at Karitane?) but to nurse old people without any earthly reward takes the true love of God." Even so,' adds 'Civis,' ' I sit admonished, and will lay to heart the lesson.'