Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 16 October 1913, Page 21

Current Topics

Bigotry and Church Attendance At the large and representative Congress of the Australian Anglican Church held recently at Brisbane, Mr. L. V. Biggs, of the Melbourne Age, who is a prominent member of the Social Questions Committee of the Melbourne Anglican Synod, contributed an important paper on ‘Australian Conditions as they affect Church Attendance. Endeavouring to arrive at particularly Australian causes for the decline of church attendance, Mr. Biggs first enumerated some general causes; and then, under the heading of ‘Special Australian Causes,’ he included the following : ‘ The failure of the Church in some dioceses to dissociate her people from the suicidal “Orange v. Green” feud.’ ‘No Church,’ said the writer, 1 can be expected to introduce into her services and official organisations a local flavor or national elements which may seem to dissociate them from the Catholic Church; but we have gone to the extreme of Anglican insularity.’ This is significant as showing that whatever members of the clergy may think on the matter capable and thoughtful laymen recognise that ill-considered attacks on ‘ Romanism ’ only serve to alienate the people from the Churches which indulge in them. Mr. Biggs’s statement may also be taken to have more or less definite relation to a recent extraordinary controversial outburst on the part of the Anglican Bishop of Bathurst. That dignitary, it will be remembered, took occasion some short time ago to make a very objectionable and offensive attack on ‘ Papalists ’ and ‘ Papalism,’ when he was answered and ignominiously routed by the Very Rev. M. J. O’Reilly, G.M., the learned and gifted President of St. Stanislaus College, And the only thanks which the Anglican prelate gets from his own co-religionists is to be told by a prominent layman that this sort of action is one of the things which is retarding the progress and destroying the effectiveness of his Church. It is to be hoped that the Bishop of Bathurst, who was present at the Congress, duly noted the point. The ‘ N.Z. Tablet’ Something over a year ago it was decided, after much consideration, to reduce the price of the N.Z. Tablet by practically 50 per cent, so as to bring it well within the reach of the vast majority of our Catholic people. The change was made with some trepidation as such a step always involves an element of risk, all the more so from the fact that once taken it is practically irrevocable. It is an easy matter to reduce the price of a paper; but it is virtually impossible, once the reduction has been made, to ever successfully increase the price again. It was difficult to forecast exactly to what extent the subscribers’ list would be increased by the reduction in the price of the paper; but it was considered that the utmost that could safely be allowed —at least during the first yearwas an increase of 50 per cent, in the then circulation. The Tablet year ends on September 30; and it is now possible for us to take stock and see how matters stand. On going into the figures we are able to make the highly satisfactory announcement that since Ist October last the circulation of the paper has increased by slightly more than 100 per cent. — other words that our subscribers’ list has rather more than doubled itself during the year. This is a deeply gratifying result; and we can only express, to clergy and people, our warm appreciation of the enthusiastic and loyal support which the paper has received. Writing a year ago on the then proposed reduction we said: The reduction of the price of the Tablet from 6d to 3d is a great act of faith on the part of those responsible for it—faith in the paper, faith in the staff, and faith, above all, in the Catholic people of New Zealand.’ So far that faith has been, amply justified, in a manner far exceeding our most sanguine anticipations. Naturally this large increase in the number of papers to be printed and handled necessi-

tates an increase in our expenditure increase. not only, in our staff, but, what is still more urgent and important if the future working of the paper is to be placed on a permanently satisfactory basis, an increase in office accommodation and the installation of a larger and still more up-to-date ' printing equipment. It is probable that the erection of new premises and the introduction of a printing machine capable of more rapidly overtaking the heavy increase in the issue of the paper will be taken in hand in the not. distant future. Meanwhile we sincerely thank our readers for the splendid support which they have accorded to the paper, and bespeak the same enthusiastic loyalty in the year to come. The Government and Home Rule Three points are made dear in Mr. Winston Churchill’s important speech at Dundee which appears elsewhere in our columns, and which, according to the cable, is regarded as an official statement of the Government’s. attitude towards ‘Ulster’: (1) That the Government are fully seized of the" fact that the real source and centre of the organised opposition to Home Rule is to be found not in Ireland, but in England, and that the ultra-Tory leaders who are engineering the movement are fighting, not for the good of Ireland, but to smash the Parliament Act and to thwart and nullify the Liberal legislation which has reduced the Lords to comparative impotency. They really care little or nothing about the government of Ireland ; but they care a very great deal about the government of England and about their deprivation of the position of power and ascendancy which they have held so long. Consequently, as Mr. Winston Churchill puts it, ‘ their last substitute for a party majority is a civil and religious war in Ulster, accompanied by the mutiny of the army and the boycott of the Territorials.’ (2) That the Government are determined not to yield an inch to intimidation or coercion, but are fully prepared, come what may, to see the Home Rule proposals through. * The Government,’ said Mr. Churchill, intended to stand firm against a bully’s veto more arbitrary than the veto of the Crown, which was abolished 300 years ago. The elections of 1910 gave the Government the fullest authority, and it was intended to act on that mandate.’ (3) That if Sir Edward Carson chooses to abandon his wickedly stupid and stupidly wicked intransigeant attitude —that Home Rule is to be resisted even though twenty general elections ratified the measure —and to make any advance towards conference or conciliation a settlement by consent is not only possible, but, in Mr. Churchill’s opinion, even extremely probable. On this point, until the lines of the suggested settlement have been definitely indicated, it is not possible at this distance to express any opinion. In all probability the friendly overtures will be rejected, and the effect of Mr. Churchill’s speech will be to throw the whole onus of that; rejection upon Sir Edward Carson and his party. Perhaps the most important sentence in the whole of the long cable about Mr. Churchill’s speech was the simple statement that ‘ Mr. Churchill had a great reception at Dundee.’ In view of Unionist activity throughout the country that statement, coupled with the result of the recent Chesterfield by-election, is deeply significant as showing that the Government is not losing ground, and that the bulk of the constituencies are still sound and solid on the Liberal programme and on Home Rule. ~ An Orange * Loyalist * Orangemenat least those of the * Ulster ’ brand —style themselves ‘ loyal ’ on the lucus a non lucendo principle, or on the same principle that the trembling coward Bob Acres called himself ‘Fighting Bob.’ Many of our readers can recall the angry outcry of the brethren against Queen Victoria during the Disestablishment agitation in Ireland in 1868 and 1869. Prominent Orangemen warned her that if she dared to exercise her constitutional right of signing the Disestablishment Bill she would have ‘no longer a claim to the throne.’ And the great watchword of the

brethren—the invention of the Rev. ‘ Flaming 5 Flana- | gan—was this: that if the Disestablishment. Bill received the Royal assent they would ‘ kick the Queen’s crown into the Boyne.’ . . • * A similar exhibition of Orange ‘ loyalty ’ has just been given by a writer in the Northern Constitution of Coleraine, who puts into plain if somewhat incoherent English the ideas which the heads of his party seek to convey by more ambiguous and roundabout means. In £ An Open Letter to. the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P.’, this amiable and ingenuous soul thus exposes the real purport and significance of the Unionist challenge to the King; ‘You are going to request King George to sign your rotten Home Rule Bill because you are a traitor; but I am going to write and see King George in person at Buckingham Palace and tell him “if yon sign the. Home Ride Hill you will lose your Crown and Empire ’ That is a bad look out for King George ; but the Coleraine man means every word of it. ‘ Can King George,’ he continues, ‘ sign the Home Rule Bill? Let him'do so and his Empire shall perish as true as God rules heaven. . .. . Therefore, let King George sign the Home Rule Billhe is no longer my King. You are advising King George to cut his own throat, and your name shall be despised •and hared in all the best parts of Protestant Ireland. We can defy the*very Throne before you can conquer us. . . . The day you arrest Sir Edward Carson, Ulster and Ireland is on fire, and a fire you shall never quench, and a fire that King George will be sorry for all his reign.’ * Our loyalist has become a trifle muddled here; if King George is to ‘ lose his Crown and Empire ’ the day ‘ he signs the Home Rule Bill,’ it is not easy to see how he is going to be sorry for it ‘ all his reign.’ But passing by this little inconsistency we come upon a further modest and impressive instalment of Orange 1 loyalty ’; ‘ We Loyalists are the best, not only in Ireland, but the best of the British Empire. We defy you : we despise your Government; we treat your rule as absolute humbug: and we shall face your army in the fields of Ulster and make you sorry you ever were Prime Minister of England.’ Then comes the final challenge and peroration: ‘ Now arrest me if you wish. You can easily find me. Take warning, Prime Minister Asquith, you are on the brink of Hades. You are going to destroy Ireland to suit the Popish priests. You are going to have civil war in Ireland, and cover the fields of Ireland with blood. We have 500,000 Orangemen ready for you. I am ready also to defy you and your Rome Rule Bill to the point of the sword, and glorious to leave my blood on the Ulster fields to let all future generations know that Asquith was a traitor.’ The latest cables only told us of 170,000 men ready to do ‘General’ Carson’s bidding; and here they have already grown to half a million ! Evidently it is, as we have said, a case of Falstaff’s rogues in buckram over again. But after this all the world will know the length and breadth and height and depth of Orange ‘ loyalty. Catholic Missionaries in China ’ < What a splendid volume could be compiled of Protestant tributes to Catholic missionaries! It is, as a matter of fact, very largely by such tributes that the ..work of the Catholic missionary it ever does get publicity at all—is really made known to the world. Some years ago, the well known Anglican clerygman, the Rev. Canon Hensley Henson, writing in the National Review , said, that the reports of non-Catholic missionaries are generally ‘ the advertisements of a money-raising society, and they are addressed to constituents—the rank and file of the denominations—who are as greedy of sensation as they are credulous of prodigies.’ The Catholic missionary adopts a different plan. ‘His work,’ says a C.T.S. pamphlet, ‘ is carried on quietly and unobtrusively. There are no drawing-room meetings in which their successes are recorded. There are no leaflets distributed by them

over the country containing pictures . of - flourishing mission stations. There arc no Exeter Hall gatherings, to which they exhibit promising converts. If the results of their labors gain publicity, it is, as it were, by accident. We will illustrate our meaning by a few examples. A Protestant of generous sympathies visited a Leper Island of Hawaii. He brought home accounts of the self-devotion of a hitherto obscure missionary .priest; and all England became acquainted with the heroic life of Father Damien. The late Archbishop Benson on one occasion thrilled his audience with an account of the heroism of 23 youths of tender age, who, , when persecution broke out in Uganda, preferred suffering, a cruel death— of being roastedalive—to renouncing .the Christian faith. He did not mentionprobably he did not know—that 18 of these 23 noble youths were Catholic converts.’ * To take but a single country, Father Wolferstan, in The Catholic Church in China , gives a number of testimonials from the pens of English travellers to the lives of self-sacrifice led by our missionaries in far Cathay. We select two or three, of the most notable tributes. Mrs. J. F. Bishop, F.R.G.S., a scholarly Protestant lady, who, before, her. death in 1904, had built five hospitals and an orphanage in the East, bears the following significant witness in her interesting book, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond : ‘ Whenever I have met with Roman missionaries i have found them living either like Bishop Benjamin and Bishop Meitel of Souel, and like the Sisters in Souel, Pekin, Ichang, and elsewhere, in bare, whitewashed rooms, with just enough tables and chairs for use, or in the dirt, noise, and unutterable discomfort of native houses of the lower class, personally attending on the sick, and in China, Chinese in life, dress, style, and ways, rarely speaking their own language, knowing the ins and outs of the districts in which they live, their peculiarities of trade and their political and social condition. Lonely men, having broken with friends and all home ties for the furtherance of Christianity, they live lives of isolation and self-sacrifice, forget all but the people by whom they are surrounded, identify themselves with their interests, and have no expectation but That of living and dying among them.’. Another r distinguished traveller, Captain (now Sir Francis) Younghusband bears the same impressive testimony. Travelling in Manchuria in 1886, Captain Younghusband made the acquaintance of two French missionary priests. ‘We recognised immediately,’ he writes, ‘ that we were not only with good but with real , men. What they possessed was ,no weak sentimentality or flashy enthusiasm, but solid human worth. Far away from their friends, from all civilisation, they lived and worked and died; two indeed out of three we met have died since we left. When they left France they left’it for good they had no hope of return; they went for their whole lives.’ Their abode he described as ‘ a plain little house, almost bare inside, and with stiff simple furniture.’ It might be supposed,’ he went on, that these missionaries would be dull, stern, perhaps morbid men. But they were precisely the contrary. They had a fund of simple joviality, and were hearty and full of spirits. They spoke now and then with a sigh of “La Belle France,” but they were evidently happy in their lives and devoted to their work.’ And of Catholic missionary work in this same Manchuria Mr. James was able to say in 1888: ‘ The\ example set by the priests is very fine. They live' lives of the greatest self-denial and austerity, their rooms cold and bare of comforts as the entrance-hall of a workhouse, and their food simple and plain. They never dream of taking leave and enjoying themselves amongst their friends at home for a year. ’ They are exiles for the whole of their lives. They have indeed forsaken houses, and brethren and sisters, and father and mother, and lands for Jesus’ name’s sake, but they rely -on His promise that they shall receive an hundred fold and shall inherit everlasting life.’

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