PREJUDICE

New Zealand Tablet, 24 June 1915, Page 22

PREJUDICE

In an article in the Daily yews on ‘Prejudice,’ the Right lion, G. W. E. Russell says: —To many generations of Englishmen, a hatred of Catholicism seemed a national virtue. They were apparently unable to discern even a trace of Christianity in the form of religion which we encounter when we travel in France or Italy or cross the Irish Channel. We long vaunted our resolve to ‘knit the hearts of the Empire into one harmonious concord,’ but (until the other day) we declined to let Irish Catholics have the schools or universities suited to them, because their religion was, as we gracefully put it, ‘ a lie and a heathenish superstition.’ If the war has done nothing else for us, it has shown us scenes in France and Belgium before which thisparticular prejudice must, I should think, give way. Kingsley, in spite of all that was lovable in him, was a .; mass of blundering, passionate, and inconsistent prejudices. His horror of Romanism amounted to frenzy, and involved him in that deplorable controversy with Newman which increased the influence of the accused even more than it damaged the reputation ' of -the accuser. But when one of his children asked who Heme was, he abruptly replied, A wicked man, my dear,' and changed the conversation. ' . ; ' : i'