The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1917. ATTACKS ON THE POPE

New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1917, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1917. ATTACKS ON THE POPE

W VMm HOSE people who are least disposed to *sSF'i!ri recognise the authority of the Pope or to "ffjlx^ "W admit that he has any influence at all in fKsf»> tne universe of Christendom now attribute to him authority and power that in their V <flP * hearts they cannot but acknowledge while |pw their lips would, on reflex judgment, deny it. It is not good Catholics, who at all times reverence the Vicar of Christ as the common Father of the faithful, but the ranters and the bigots, for some of whom at least to curse the Pope is a solemn liturgical observance, who have been shrieking for three years that if the Holy Father did'not actually cause the war he certainly could stop it if he abandoned his policy of "pro-German" reticence and told the Kaiser his duty. If these people had a sense of humor we should be spared very many of their manifestations of lunacy: undoubtedly a blight must have fallen on the intelligence of those heirs of the Reformation who gravely assert that not only is the Roman Pope in collusion with the Protestant, Lutheran Kaiser, but also that the same inspired exponent, of Lutheranism would be likely to heed a reproof from that quarter against which Brother Martin's choicest scurrility was exercised. What they say about the Pope would be amusing if it did not connotate such a profound state of mental wretchedness among a large number of the inhabitants of the English-speaking world to-day. " * -.'■-.. " • ■ " : .■ Among those who have attacked the Pope preeminence is due to the author of a pamphlet entitled the Silence of Benedict XV., by a cultured non-Cath-olic, who says that the Pope could, if he wished, make Berlin tremble, and shorten the war to the saving of thousands of lives. But instead of doing his duty we are told that the Pope kept a sphinx-like peace, maintaining a strange silence in presence of vast moral issues, failing to do his part through motives of fear or policy, meeting the forces of darkness by silence and moral cowardice ! Such charges are taken bodily from * the columns of the anti-clerical press—and it strikes us we have lately been treated to variations on the same tune in this country. The main accusations may be reduced to five heads. (1) The Pope has not spoken out to stop the war (2) that during.the war, he has done nothing, and his : Church has done nothing; (3) he has not protested against the violation of the moral law; (4) he has taken up an attitude of cowardly neutrality and (5) by his silence he has compromised not only his own Church but Christianity generally. Under the first head Father the'author- of a timelyi}

pamphlet entitled Pope Benedict XV. and the War, gives passages from the Pope's numerous appeals to sovereigns and people to "Lay aside hostile thoughts and meet together for the conclusion of an equitable peace." Under the second he tells what the Pope had tried to do, and accomplished, for the relief of prisoners, for the alleviation of the Jewish sufferers in Poland (which Jews in New Zealand apparently forget), for the schismatics under the Turk, and for the Armenians in Asia Minor. Under the third heading Father Brennan points out that those who excluded the Pope from the Hague Conference might have the decency to be silent if he now refused to exhort the belligerents to keep its terms: but the Pope does not do so: he has spoken out in vehement condemnation of the cruelties of the war, time and again. And if he has not gone as far as blind bigots would have him go it is because he understands what is due to his part of an impartial judge better than they do. These people never complain that he does not censure such doings as Maxwell's, or the devastation of Poland during the Russian campaign. An Anglican writer, disgusted with the inane attacks on the Pope, says that these people who demand denunciation of Germany would have a stronger case if they were ready to restore the Pope to the position he once held, or were in the habit of obeying him as a general rule. They have short memories of the part taken by them and their forbears in the spoliation of the Papal States. * The writer to whom we have referred thus classifies the papal critics who carry on the foolish campaign against the Holy Father: "The rationalist press and the gloomy Dean [of St. Paul's], the crazy Bible Protestant and the collector of diplomatic gossip, the fanatic who cannot speak a panegyric of Italy without a sneer and a taunt at the Vatican, and the High Churchman who conceals his fundamental Protestantism behind a veil of-decent ritual." All these, divided among themselves, are ever ready to make common cause against the Papacy; and in their dishonorable policy they are aided and abetted by the press more often than is creditable to the traditions of journalism. This fair-minded English layman points out their blindness to truth and justice, emphasising the fact that only hatred and ignorance can explain such conduct in the light of all the Pope has done since the war began. Here is a paragraph from the Bulletin, which surely cannot be said to be one of the many instruments which the frenzied fancy of the No-Popery army declare to be part of the awful policy for Roman domination of the world: "While the Kaiser calls Gott to the bloodfeasts and the English archbishops combine with the Nonconformist conscience to urge on the slaughter, there is surely nothing wrong with a Christian movement towards international healing. Evidently the time is premature, but, equally evidently, the Pope is bent on doing the world a good turn ; and to attempt things like that a bit too soon is better than to attempt them a lot too late." The war would end very much sooner if only the itinerant parsons and the benighted editors who denounce the Pope would make common cause with him for the alleviation of suffering humanity. But did they ever yet even dream of doing anything so really beneficial ? Their tactics are worthy of Bedlam, and they reap according to their sowing. It does seem to hit them very hard that outside their own walled garden all men of good-will gratefully recognise what the Pope has done to alleviate suffering and to forward peace, and that he alone has established by his works his right to be called the common Father of Christians.