The Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, 20 November 1913, Page 55

The Catholic World

ENGLAND

THE DEFENCE OF THE SCRIPTURES.Mr. Athelstan Riley, who presided at Southampton on September 29 at a meeting of the English Church Union, said in the course of an address that 'when they looked over Europe they found that Protestantism as a great religious organisation was passing away. It was not among Protestant communities that they found the chief defence of the Holy Scriptures. The great truths of the Atonement and the Redemption were not secure behind the bulwarks of Protestantism, but behind those of the Church of Rome.'

CHARITABLE BEQUESTS. By the will of the late Miss Catherine Butler, of Blackheath, London, S.E., who died in July last, at the advanced age of 92, several Catholic charities have benefited to a considerable extent. The deceased lady's estate has been sworn at £32,233 net personalty. To her sister, the Rev. Mother of the Newhall Convent, Boreham, near Chelmsford, Essex, she left £3OOO, and for the purposes of the Diocesan Seminary of Southwark, she left £7OOO to the Bishop of Southwark, to be used by him for that purpose. To the Little Sisters of the Poor, at their Kennington Convent, she bequeathed £IOOO, and the same amount she left to the Rector of St. Ignatius Church, Stamford Hill, London, N. . To the Rev. Francis Joseph Sheehan she gave £I3OO, and to her niece, Mrs. Catalina Dunn, the sum of £2OOO. And she directed that the sum of £IO,OOO and the residue of her estate should be used upon trust for the benefit of the Church of Our Lady Help of Christians, Blackheath.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE JEWS. The Jewish World states that the Chief Rabbi addressed a letter to Cardinal Bourne in reference to the blood accusation which has been revived against the Jewish people in connection with the Beilis case in Kieff, Russia, in which the Chief Rabbi reminded the Cardinal that 'foremost among the chamwho have authoritatively defended Jews and Judaism against this foul and satanic falsehood have been the greatest and most learned dignitaries ' of the Catholic Church, and that several Popes had issued Bulls repudiating the allegation. He, therefore, asked Cardinal Bourne for an expression of opinion, which, he said, coming from the head of the Catholic Hierarchy in England, would to-day in Russia be second only to that of the Supreme Pontiff in exorcising this spectre of hatred. Cardinal Bourne replied as follows: ' I regret to learn that accusations of ritual murder are being renewed in Russia. As you say, the Catholic Church has, so far as I am aware, always recognised that such accusations had no foundation whatever in the religious belief or practices of the Jewish people. I trust that this fact will soon be universally recognised, and that if crime be committed it will not be attributed to motives which do not really exist.'

FRANCE

MORE SPOLIATION. _ The French Government still continue to carry on their infamous work of seizing colleges, schools, and convents. Fifty schools conducted by Brothers and Nuns were to be closed during October, the properties made over to the Corporations, and the Brothers and Nuns thrown on the world to fend for themselves as best they may. Each month the Official Gazette intimates that in named departments a certain number of the few remaining colleges, schools, monasteries, and convents are thereby assigned to the municipalities. In due course (says the Glasgow Observer), the bailiff, with a posse of police, breaks into the buildings and forces the inmates into the streets. Four thousand millions of francs was the calculated sum that was to

enrich the coffers of the Government. Garden-cities, people’s recreation grounds, hospitals, asylums for all the afflicted in the country, were to be the rewards of the robbery of the Church, but the very contrary has taken place; the millions have melted away; two of the ‘ liquidators ’ have been imprisoned for misappropriation of the money; children are left without schools; hospitals have been so badly managed that there is a universal cry for the reinstatement of the Sisters that have been expelled; valuable properties have fallen into ruins because they have neither found caretakers nor purchasers. Yet the mill of destruction grinds on as though some benefit was accruing to the French nation. There appeared in the Paris newspapers recently an account of one of those heartless evictions of a community of Nuns that brings back the memory of cruel evictions in Ireland, when the crow-bar brigade was at the zenith of its power. On Saturday, September 27, at Perigueux, just when dawn was appearing— o’clock in the morning Prefect of the town, accompanied by a body of police, broke open the doors of the Ursuline Convent. Thirty-four Nuns were forcibly put into the streets; three Sisters and an* infirm guest, as they were all bed-fast invalids, were carried on stretchers to the local hospital. One of the stretchers broke whilst on the journey, and the infirm Sister was thrown on the hard road. There was great indignation in the town when the inhabitants learnt of the cruel act in their midst. The Sisters found homes amongst the charitable. The commotion will calm down the convent property will be put up to auction, and all is over for the present. The crow-bar brigade is off to the nearest town or village to carry on more nefarious work.

ROME

THE ORDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. A message from Rome says that the General Chapter of the Order of St. Augustine, comprising all the provincial delegates, representing 2000 Augustinians throughout the world, on September 29 elected a Spaniard, Father Thomas Rodriguez, as General, and an Italian, Father Camillus Ditti, as ProcuratorGeneral of the Order. Four other delegates were elected assistants, including Father C. O'Gorman, of Dublin.

THE PRIESTS OF THE ADORATION. The most important and most edifying congress of the year (writes the Rome correspondent of the Irish Catholic) has been that of the ' Sacerdoti Adoratori' of Italy, who have been in congress in the Church of the Holy Apostles for the past three days. Five Cardinals, more than thirty Bishops, and nearly three thousand priests engaged in a holy union for promoting devotion to the Blessed Sacrament came together to testify their zeal in the great cause and to devise means to propagate the devotion. There were several magnificent discourses delivered by the greatest Italian pulpit orators Cardinal Richelmy, of Turin ; the Bishop of Syracuse, the Cardinal Archbishop of Pisa, and others. The Congress was concluded in St. Peter's with an Hour of Adoration in common, and some thirty thousands personsresidents, visitors, and pilgrimscame to be edified with the grand spectacle of three thousand priests in adoration, and to take part in the devotions. As the Congress began with a grand Eucharistic procession in St. John Lateran's, so the conclusion in St. Peter's was a similar procession, in which the Most Holy Sacrament was carried by his Eminence Cardinal Rampolla. Four other Cardinals and about one hundred Bishops took part in the procession, which went out from the Basilica and wound round the portico before returning to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. After the conclusion of the ceremony in St. Peter's all the priests of the Adoration Congress went to the Cortile of San Damaso, where they were received by the Holy Father, who had around him on the first loggia the five Cardinals, patrons of the congress.