The Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, 8 May 1913, Page 55

The Catholic World

CANADA ■ DEAF MUTE NUNS. . : According to the Sacred Heart Review there is a convent of deaf mute nuns in Montreal, Canada. No fewer than twenty of the Sisters are deaf mutes, graduates of the deaf mute school there, and the Sisters now carry on the work of teaching deaf mute children in that great Catholic city. The community was founded twenty-five years ago and has flourished remarkably, even though the number of those upon whom it can draw to recruit its rank is small. Their numbers are being constantly swelled by, new additions, the latest one being a girl from St. Louis, Mo. FRANCE RETURN OF THE RELIGIOUS. Apparently the craze for secularising the hospitals in France has stopped, and a recovery has set . in, largely owing to the wishes of medical men and patients. The nuns who had been excluded from nursing in the hospitals have been restored to their old work in many parts of France, including Cherbourg, Toulouse, Annecy, Avignon, Rouen, Glamescyy and Grenoble. It is intended to move for the return of the nuns to the hos-. pitals in Paris. RUSSIA AN ARBITRARY ACTION. The arbitrary action of the Russian police in confiscating the altar in the private oratory of the French Sisters in St. Petersburg, and deciding on a fine of 500 roubles as a penalty for the nuns, has naturally called forth the indignation of the French colony (remarks the Catholic Times). The Sisters may have been wrong in not obtaining official permission, but as their oratory has been in existence some years without interference, it seems rather late in the day to make an attack on these devoted women. The French are an influential colony in St. Petersburg, and support two churches, a hospital, a convent, schools, and a home for the infirm. The fine has not been exacted; indeed, the Sisters have not the means to pay it. We suspect that here lies the secret of the scandal. Fifty pounds would have been a nice little sum, just before the ‘fetes,’ for the coffers of the police, had they been able to obtain it. To have sold the belongings of the school would, have been the only alternative, an expedient often put into practice with the peasants; but even Russian police hesitated to act in this manner in the case of the French Sisters. Discretion is said to be the better part of valour. The closing of the Uniate church, for which Imperial permission was given, is .another example of official intolerance and of the petty persecution by the hierarchy of Russian functionaries who, though apparently obsequious and polite and quick in learning the wishes of their august ruler, the best part of the time impose their own. SCOTLAND NEW ABBOT OF FORT AUGUSTUS. On March 13 the community of the Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus, in compliance with an injunction of the Apostolic See, assembled for the canonical election of an Abbot. A requisite majority of votes was obtained, at the first scrutiny, by the Very Rev. Dom Oswald Hunter-Blair, who has held the office of Prior since July, 1912. Dom Oswald was declared duly elected, and immediately thereafter confirmed in office and installed by the Abbot of Ampleforth, acting ais delegate for the Abbot President of the English Congregation. The community proceeded from the chapter house to the church chanting the ‘ Te Deum,’ and the new Abbot, seated before the high altar, received the homage of the brethren, each one kneeling

and kissing his hand. The Right Rev. Abbot Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, Bart., 0.5.8., the eldest son -of the late Sir Edward Hunter Blair, of Dunskey, was born in 1853, and succeeded to the title as fifth baronet in 1906. Educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford (where he took his M.A. degree), he became a convert in 1875, being received into the Church at Rome., _ From 1876-8 he was a Privy Chamberlain of the Sword and Cloak to Popes Pius IX. and Leo XIII. Entering the Benedictine Order in 1878, he took" '-the habit in the same year, was professed in 1880, ordained in 1886, and was rector of Fort Augustus Abbey School from 1890 to 1895. In 1899 he established,-and became licensed master of, Hunter-Blair’s Hall, Oxford, the Benedictine house for students of the Order at that University., The new Abbot, amongst his other unresting activities in the Catholic cause, is the translator and editor of Bellesheim’s History of the Catholic Church in Scotland and of The. Rule of Our Most Roly Father St. Benedict, and is the author of A Royal and a Christian Soul, Jerusalem of To-day, and Catholics at the Rational Universities. Besides important and frequent contributions to periodical literature, the learned Abbot has written more than seventy articles for the Catholic Encyclopaedia. SPAIN RELATIONS WITH THE HOLY SEE. Taken from any point of view the opening given by the Spanish Premier to his relations with the Church in Spain can scarcely be considered calculated to bear out the promises made by the Ambassador when presenting his credentials to the Holy Father a few weeks ago. A royal decree calling upon ecclesiastics to give military service, a declaration from the Premier that the teaching of Catechism in the elementary schools is not a ‘ mixed ’ question, and a general air of shuffling in his attitude towards the Holy See tend to make the hopes of an amicable arrangement between Rome and Madrid not quite rosy (says a Rome correspondent). But the apprehension entertained six months ago in ecclesiastical circles in Rome that the Catholics of Spain were losing the magnificent system of organisation which made them such a formidable force in the eye& of the enemies of the Church has disappeared. If nothing save the demonstration of forty thousand ladies of Madrid at the residence of the Marchioness San Felice against the abolition of religious instruction in the schools were mentioned to prove the strong spirit that animates Catholic Spain, this, of itself, would be quite sufficient to do so. It is of interest to know that the Osservatore Romano has established a Press service, by means of which Rome is kept perfectly conversant with the trend of events in Spain and the utterances, of her political leaders of all parties. GENERAL CONTINENTAL CATHOLICS. Superficial, one-sided, prejudiced judgments' by British Protestant tourists on the doctrines and practices of . Continental Catholics were so common some few years ago that false impressions about the peoples of the Continent were pretty general throughout Great Britain (remarks the Catholic Times). They are now being removed. For some time past a more earnest desire to do' justice to foreign Catholics has prevailed, and an excellent illustration of the new spirit is the Christian Commonwealth interview with the Pastor of the City Temple, to which we briefly referred in our last issue. It is clear that Mr. Campbell went abroad without taking insular prejudices with him. In judging he was eager to be fair. Witness his remarks on the Spaniards: ‘ Religion is a very real thing to these people. They have the habit of worship, a sort of habitual religious temper, which makes them extraordinarily indifferent to the facts of everyday life. . . They seem to bo looking always at' the unseen : it is at least very real to them, more real, I am afraid, than it is to many of us, and they do not apparently feel the need for the material comforts and conveniences of a more advanced civilisation—or what we call ‘ ad-

vanced." ' •. Again, take his testimony as to France: .'•From what I saw and from the inquiries I made I drew the conclusion ,that there is a sort of reaction going on against the irreligion of a generation ago. There is something like a ; real revival of religion taking place. jS I do not mean, of course, a revival in the ordinary evangelical sense of the word, but a genuine quickening of interest in religion, an increased passion and vitality and power in religion; and there is also more attention to the observances of worship. It is frequently said that men do not attend 'the churches in the Latin countries. That was not my experience during my tour.' The information given by Mr. Campbell will, let us hope, clear away not a few prejudices from the minds of British Protestants.

CHANGED CONDITIONS. . His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, speaking on leakages from the Church at the annual meeting of the Catholic Women’s League in Leeds, said In 1850, when the first Catholic Archbishop to take his title from Westminster came to England, there was a. great Protestant outburst. Wiseman in his eloquent defence of his position pointed out. that the people of a few slums were the only flock he claimed. This would be absolutely untrue to-day. Then in 1865 Henry Edward Manning drew attention to the fact that all our children who came under the Poor Laws were lost because they had to be placed in Protestant institutions. Manning altered that ; and now, if children were lost in that way, it was not through want of effort on the part of the Church. Twenty-five years afterwards Cardinal Vaughan, then Bishop of Salford, awakened Catholic England to realise the enormous number of children lost to the Faith through being accepted by non-Catholic institutions. By. his generous acts he gave new life to the old Catholic agencies, and made new ones.