Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 23 July 1914, Page 34

Notes

Our Rome Letter We commence this week, in the shape of a letter from Rome, a new feature which we think will be of very great interest to the readers of the Tablet. We have long desired to have a direct communication from Rome ; and we have now completed arrangements for a regular weekly letter. Our contributor—a priest attached to one of the churches in Rome—is very favorably situated for obtaining interesting and authentic information. The Referendum Bill The consideration of the numerous petitions against the Rible-in-Schools Referendum Rill. which have been presented to the House was commenced by the Education Committee of the House on Tuesday. The committee has agreed to hear witnesses representing the three principal parties interested in the Bill, viz., the Bible-in-,Schools League, the National Schools Defence League, and the Catholic Federation. The Bible-in-Schools League has boon invited to send four witnesses and the Defence League and the Catholic Federation two witnesses each. The committee, of which Mr. G. M. Thomson, Member for Dunedin North, is chairman, will sit on Tuesday and Friday of each week. The total number of signatures attached to the petitions against the Rill which have been presented to date is 56,411. Bible-in-Schools Referendum ; Peculiar Procedure Under date July 21, the Parliamentary reporter of the Dunedin Evening Star wires: ‘The Education Committee of the House sat this morning to consider the petitions which have been presented against the Religious Instruction in Schools Referendum Bill. Only a. few hours previously, the Defence League and the New Zealand Catholic Federation had been informed that they were required to attend for the purpose of giving evidence, the idea being that the evidence of the Bible-in-Schools League should be taken last. That arrangement, especially in view of the fact that the notice was so short, did not meet with the approval either of the League or the Federation. However, Professor Hunter and Bishop Cleary attended, and it is understood that they expressed their views in this direction, and it was arranged that Bishop Cleary should be the first to give evidence, and that ho should address the committee on Friday morning. The proceedings arc to bo open to the press.’ I ‘ Bugle or Angelus ? Harold Begble’s Appeal Harold Begbie, the novelist, in a letter to- The Times, suggests that, as the Irish question is obviously a religious question, the most hopeful way of approach-

ing a solution is to get the two disputants into a religious frame of mind. With the spirit of his gracious and apposite appeal Catholic Home Rulers everywhere will be in entire sympathy. * ‘I am convinced,’ he writes, 4 that Catholic Ireland has already made the first move in this matter. One finds that the chief shops in so Catholic a town as Cork are kept by Protestants: one finds in a Catholic centre like Waterford prosperous Quakers taking a. leading part in social and civic activities; throughout the whole of Catholic Ireland, including the NorthWest fishing villages of Ulster, Protestants live in perfect amity with their Catholic neighbors, and Catholics all over the country express the most earnest admiration for the good and valuable qualities of the Protestant population. This is well known. There is no Protestant question in Catholic Ireland. People arc neighborly and good-humored. Is it not possible to persuade the Orangemen of Ulster that there are qualities in the Catholic which deserve admiration? Take tlic Catholic Irishman’s wit, his social pleasantness, his imaginative faculties, and the enormous importance he attaches, to chastity: are not these things worthy of Protestant friendship? No man in his senses will say that Belfast is as beautiful as Cork, as intellectual as Dublin, as spiritual as Lettcrkenny or Skibberecn. Is it not manifest that Belfast would be a more beautiful, intellectual, and spiritual city if her leading citizens encouraged the too dour Orangeman not to dwell upon theological differences with Rome, but to imitate the nobler of those good qualities in the Catholic Irishman which make the South of Ireland as charming and gracious a, country as Italy or France? This would bo a first step. ' . * ‘ No political adjustment can solve the Irish question. Politics will leave a sore. The difficulty is a religious quarrel between two parties inhabiting one house, and the only way to solve that difficulty is to reconcile the disputants. Can any reconciliation servo this purpose except a religious reconciliation — that is to say, a reconciliation inspired by tolerance, kindness, charity, and reverence for the brotherhood? I think it is time for party politicians and drill sergeants, and fanatical sectarians to hold their peace. I think it is high time for all those men in the three kingdoms to whom religion is not only the supreme force in creative evolution, but the sovran authority in human life, to end this horrible political brawl and begin a religious settlement. And I can think of no greater glory for the Church of England at this hour than to solve the Irish question in this holy way. The bugles have been blowing long enough. It is time for the Angelus to sound. “Kind words,” says Faber, “arc the music of the world.” ’