OUR LETTER FROM FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 20 November 1913, Page 23

OUR LETTER FROM FRANCE

Paris, October 1. An Old Heresy Closing its Doors. After an existence of more than 1400 years one of the old heresies of the East is likely to close its doors one of these days. One of the most strenuous opponents of Nestorius, the heretical Archbishop of Constantinople (A.D. 431), was Eutyches, abbot of a monastery in, the city. But in his zeal he went too far. Nestorius taught that in our Lord Jesus Christ there are two natures and two persons. The Catholic Church has always taught the doctrine of one person and two natures —the divine and the human. Eutyches taught that in Him are one person and one nature, the human nature being somehow mysteriously absorbed into the divine. Eutyches was by no means a clever man. Church historians all describe him as ' dull but obstinate.' But when condemned by the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon he possessed cunning enough to succeed in getting a Court party on his side. Henry VIII., Louis XIV., and Joseph 11. were not the first kings to dabble in theology. The Emperors of Constantinople of those far away days gave them the lead. Elizabeth of England was' not the first royal lady to undertake the guidance of the Church. The Empresses Eudocia and Theodora of the days of Eutyches gave her the example. But it has always been a sad time for religion when kings and queens and laymen essayed to play the part of Popes and Doctors of the Church. Christendom would have been spared much aberration and persecution, many disorders and many tears, had those lay persons confined themselves to their own sphere. Under the protection of emperors and empresses the heresy of Eutyches—called Monophysitism or one-nature-ismspread all over Asia Minor, Egypt, Abyssinia, Syria, Mesopotamia, even to Persia and India. So it was a mighty heresy in its day. But like all heresieslike Protestantism for instance—chianism soon subdivided into many sects and consequently lost coherence and influence. Towards the middle of the sixth century a monk named Jacob Baradai began an energetic revival of Eutychianism. He was active and did all in his power to bring the divided parties throughout Syria and Mesopotamia under one ecclesiastical government, and so establish them on a solid basis. His organisationunder the name Jacobiteshas since lived on in those countries. To-day it bids fair to disappear for ever. Some months ago it was announced that the Jacobite Patriarch, His Beatitude Abdullmessih, had sent on his declaration of submission to the Pope. Later the conversion of two archbishops Mgr. Halluli and Mgr. David—reported. Now news comes that Mgr. Efrem and several priests of Abdin, called Djabel-el-Tour, have declared themselves ready to pass over to the Catholic Church. The people of a whole district near Abdin have been received into the Church, and 33 villages near the town of Seert in Mesopotamia have asked for Catholic priests. News also comes that the Jacobite Christians of Malabar in India are moving in the same .direction. The Univers observes:—'lf, as it is natural to suppose, the faithful will follow their pastors, an error over 1400 years old will soon come to an end and 100,000 Christians will re-enter the fold of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius X. recently sent his blessing to the Patriarch and the archbishops. After all, he has some consolations in life. Bernadette Soubirous Declared Venerable. For a considerable time the usual inquiries as to the sanctity and miracles of Bernadette Soubirous, the

French girl to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared in the grotto of Lourdes in 1858, have been carried on by the ecclesiastical authorities. Bernadette Soubirous was born of poor parents at Lourdes in 1844. There was little remarkable in her child life beyond her gentleness and piety. On T?oKvnovv 11 1858 as Bernadette and her sister were out gathering dry brushwood on the banks of the river 'Gave, this little girl saw the first of those radiant Visions which have since attracted to Lourdes millions and millions of pilgrims from all parts of the world. The Visionseighteen of them came to an end on July 16, 1858, the feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel. Alarmed at the appearance of any witness to the supernatural, the local anti-Christian combinations set to work. For eight years the life of Bernadette was made miserable by irreligious police, magistrates, lodges, and atheistic doctors. Indeed, a sanhedrin of these pedantic medicine-men insisted on examining her to prove her insane; but they were forced to. tell the truth and pronounce the girl of perfect equilibrium in brain and temperament. In 1866, Bernadette, now 22 years of age, left Lourdes and entered the convent of the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction at Nevers. To love, pray, work, suffer, be silent and simple, and move about like an obscure shadow was her life for twelve years in the convent. At her burial in 1878 in the little convent chapel of St. Joseph on the convent grounds, her Sisters intoned, instead of the usual ' De Profundis,' a jubilant Magnificat. Last August the process of Bernadette's beatification reached the stage in which the subject is declared 'Venerable.' On August 13, the Pope gave his 'placet to the- request of the Cardinals of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and little Bernadette shall, till she is beatified, be known as the Venerable Marie Bernard—her name in religion. This honor to Bernadette is a cause of joy to the whole Catholic world, to France her dear motherland, to Lourdes her birthplace and the scene of her supernatural visions and to Nevers, which guards her tomb, and has been most active in the cause of her beatification. Catholic Holland : Two Sides to the Medal. ' There is no country in Europe in which the Catholic population seems so well organised as in Holland. There you have diocesan unions and district unions all over the land they work for the promotion of all the interests of religion and they watch over politicians and over politics where politics touch religion. , There you have associations of the professions—doctors, lawyers, engineers, students. You have associations of the several tradescarpenters, masons, painters, and so on. The middle classes of citizens have associations in each diocese. There are strong temperance and totalabstinence societies. Even the soldiers are not forgotten ; associations for their moral and religious welfare exist in all the garrison towns. Religious confraternities are, of course, numerous. The Catholic parliamentary party wields much influence in both Houses. In the late parliament you had 17 Catholic members out of the 50 who make up the "Upper House, and 26 out of the 100 in the Lower House. A third of the Cabinet Ministers were Catholics. You have, over 100 Catholic newspapers and periodicals scattered among the 2,064,000 Catholic people of Holland. The.provision for education— least for higher education is ample. Each of the five dioceses has its theological college and its preparatory seminary. Beside these you have 22 colleges and high schools. There are 28 mission houses for training young men and women for the foreign missions. Little Holland holds a noble place in the foreign missionary fields. You have 160 Catholic hospitals, besides many orphanages and benevolent institutions scattered over the Catholic provinces. Higher studies are carefully cultivated : you have associations for the promotion of 'Faith and Science' in all the greater towns. All that is grand, but unhappily the medal has another side. With all these unions and associations, each one doing good work, the Catholic population is not, in numerical increase, keeping up with the increase in the rest of the population. ' In 1839, when Holland separated from Belgium the Catholics were 40 per *cent. of the population in the 1910

census they showed only 35 per cent. In late years the decline has been very marked. ‘The increase in the Catholic population,’ says the Catholic paper, De Tyd, ‘ has been 10 per 100 inferior to that of the Protestant population. What is the cause of this decline Several causes. are assigned. One is the poorer soil and the less favorable economic conditions of the southern (Catholic) provinces. Hence in the poorer districts the marriages are later, and the infant mortality is larger. The increase of mixed marriages is set down as another cause of losses to the Faith. A third cause is the greater influx of Catholics from the poorer country districts into the great cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, La Hague, Utrecht, and the other great industrial centres. Here poor country workmen, removed from their old religious and home influences, get lost in the crowds, and fall into the hands of the atheistic, Socialist societies. Once caught in the Socialist trap Catholic workmen are lost to the Church, Strange that the wild Utopias of Socialism should so fascinate thinking men, but the Dutch working man is not a logician or acute political analyst. At anyrate, the two great factors in this relative decline are Socialism and the rush to the cities, where the manners and the morals of the rustic invaders soon sadly deteriorate. Clearly the leaders of the Catholic organisations must look to this ‘ leakage,’ must devise new means to counteract these two evil influences. They require a second Dr. Schaepman to arise to pull them together for _ this general effort. Mayhap they have too many unions and associations in Holland as in France—‘ parochial ’ ■ institutions, each one doing good within its own sphere, but none taking in the great wants of the whole country. Mayhap the multitude of unions is really disunion, the dissipation of strength. Here the Germans show their wisdom and discipline ■with their great national Volksverein; with their great annual congress of German Catholics whose resolutions and discussions give a lead for the coming year ; to all Catholic Germany, and with their great central Intelligence Depot at Miinchen-Gladbach radiating the spirit and substance of these discussions and resolutions in thousands of articles, tracts, and booklets, week after week, to Catholic homes in’ the towns and villages of the whole Fatherland. A great national People’s Union of this .kind, is what France needs. She has multitudes of smaller ones; but as forces in national questions, cui bono ? A number of small confraternities or associations, each with its own oftentimes hustlers who prefer to rule in a village to being subject in a kingdom—are a sad dissipation of energy.

The Burning of Bebel.

The funeral obsequies and the cremation of Bebel at Zurich formed a great demonstration of Socialism. Twenty-five thousand people walked in the funeral procession from the Town Hall to the crematorium. Amongst them were 40 members of the German ' Reichstag, and about 250 members of other Continental Parliaments. Torrents of speeches were poured out on the occasion. Bebel had willed —‘ Let the urn containing my ashes be placed near that containing those of my wife.’ M. Vautel, writing in the Matin, says that herein was a contradictiona contradiction between the sentiment of the spouses who would not be separated even in death and cremation, which would reduce them to two little pinches of calcined phosphate. Besides, it was a faltering example, for Bebel taught free-love and the promiscuity of the sexes. It was an example of. conjugal fidelity, no doubt displeasing to some of his followers. Whilst the cinerarius or kiln-burner was sending up the body of Bebel in smoke, a great meeting was held in the square at Zurich, attended by 20,000 people. Socialist orators from all countries in Europe pronounced * panegyrics on the great leader. . They poured out a Mississippi flood of oratory, glorifying Socialism and its'greatest promoter. One described how Bebel found Socialism in Germany a poor squabbling sect and raised it to a powerful, well-knit party having at its back 4,500,000 electors. Another spoke of him as the Pope of Socialism another as the Cromwell of Socialism; another as a brainy man, without schooleducation, yet self-taught and the writer of many precious volumes; another as the great strong-willed

organiser who had kept a large mass of centrifugal elements within the bounds of an iron discipline. Others described his triumphs at the general elections and at the Socialist congresses at Eisenach, Essen, Erfurt, Nuremberg, and Amsterdam, and his victories over such opponents as Lassalle, Volmar, and Jaures. Indeed, a volume would be required to give a good account of his battles and victories for the cause. All deplored his death as a great loss to the came of social democracy and such, no doubt, it is.

A Great Organiser. One may well inquire as to the secret of Bebel’s power. How is it that an uneducated mechanic succeeded in forming a party supported by 4,500,000 electors and a camp-following of three times that number ? How is it that he ruled those motley and discordant elements with a rod of iron ? Like a general ho gave the word of command, and the troops moved in the direction indicated. At the Socialist international congress of Amsterdam in 1904 he met that French ranter, Jaures, and wiped the floor with him. What, then, was the secret of Bebel’s power? His nationality and his early surroundings; he was a German and he was the son of a soldier. Bebel was endowed with the German worship of discipline, spirit of organisation, taste for association, appreciation of solid present realities, and then, Teutonic pride and obstinacy. Though he succeeded in acquiring some smatterings of knowledge he was no original thinker; he got all his ideas from Karl Marx’s book, Das Kapital. Add to his national character his birth and early surroundings, and you have the whole man. He was the son of a soldier, born and reared in the barracks. As a boy he used to take drill with the recruits. Owing to his weak health he was not permitted to enlist. He became a turner, joined a working-man’s club, and, later on, put his military ideas and aptitudes at the service of the socialist propaganda. All his later life was then devoted to maintaining unity and discipline among the socialistic .groups, and he succeeded wonderfully in his purpose. Will his successors, Liebknecht, Ledebour, Haage, or Scheideman, be able to maintain that _ closely-knit organisation? Already signs are appearing that they ,will not.

The 1913 German-Socialists’ Congress at Jena.

This year’s congress of the Socialist organisations of Germany is going on at Jena. Obviously the energy, individuality, and strong hand of August Bebel are not there. There seems to be something like a tired, exhausted feeling over the meeting. The liveliness of former congresses is absent. There is a want of objective ; there is indecision and division of opinion as to what to aim at next. Some are for the general strike; some are for political agitation and parliamentarianism; some would turn the influence of the organisation to obtaining universal suffrage; others denounce all truckling with bourgeois parliaments. Some are for the international brotherhood of man; others maintain the necessity of national boundaries and national distinctions. Some are moderate constitutionalists; others are red-hot revolutionaries, who want something more emphatic to do than appealing to antiquated parliaments and political parties. Amongst the latter is a woman-Socialist —one Miss Rosa Luxembourg. Tired of the poltroonery and aimless platitudes of the male congressists, she got hold of the meeting the other day and held it for three-quarters of an hour, notwithstanding such ungallant interruptions as : ‘Shave off your moustache,’ ‘ Go and get a husband,’ ‘ No one would have her, ' her face is too hard/ She went on for the general .strike. A few sentences from Rosa’s speech may be interesting: ‘You, the chiefs of the party, are always talking optimism without limit. You are always bragging and boasting, and like Famulus in Goethe’s Faust you say, “ Look at us; what magnificent things we have accomplished.” Why do you not look rather into that profound disquiet which at present torments the soul of the people? A deep discontent has taken possession of the minds of all Socialists. They desire a new movement, an onward rush towards the goal, a fresh breeze to vivify the dry bones of the

party. We wish to have no more to do with bourgeois politics and constitutional agitations, and parliamentarianism. The people, the working men, the proletariat of Germany will take its salvation into its own hands. But you, the leaders, the committee of direction, seem to know nothing of this great popular impulse, and you denounce us who voice it as pessimists.’ Miss Rosa’s proposition was not carried. The general strike was denounced as impracticable, impossible, absurd, and suicidal. So Rosa’s resolution was rejected by 333 votes against 142. Socialism in Germany —the home of Socialismis showing signs of going to seed. Now that Bebel is removed it will be torn to pieces by divisions and parties within parties. It has had a successful quarter of a century’s run in the Fatherland. It will probably run a like course in America and Australia.