OPENING OF ST. JOSEPH'S SCHOOL, GREY LYNN, AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Tablet, 15 November 1917, Page 22

OPENING OF ST. JOSEPH'S SCHOOL, GREY LYNN, AUCKLAND.

(From our own correspondent.)

The ceremonial opening of St. Joseph’s School, Grey Lynn, was conducted on Sunday, November 4, by his Lordship the Right Rev, Dr. Cleary, in the presence of a gathering of about 1500 people. As the attendance was so large the ceremony could not conveniently be held indoors, the function being, therefore, carried out in the open air from the verandah of the adjacent convent. This was the first public function attended by Bishop Cleary since his return from abroad and he was accorded a hearty welcome by the Very Rev. Chancellor Holbrook, parish priest. Among those present were Right Rev. Monsignor Gillan, V.G., Rev. Father Ainsworth, S.M., and many of the city and suburban clergy. The school is built on a property with a frontage of 300 feet to the Great North Road and a depth of from 300 to 325 feet, the purchase price having been £4200. On one side two houses have been renovated and additions made, to form a commodious presbytery, and against the other boundary is a convent , accommodating the teaching staff of Sisters, which has been removed from its former site in Sussex Street and renovated and enlarged at a cost of £I3OO. The new school, situated between these buildings, has a solid and pleasing appearance. It is constructed in brick, with cement and rough-east facings. The contract price for its erection was £3500. The five classrooms have been fitted with the latest school furniture, and are admirably adapted for teaching purposes. The Right Rev. Monsignor Gillan, V.G., referred to the commencement of the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Grey Lynn in 1885. When he first came to the district it was one large estate of open fields, while to-day it was a closely populated suburb. For many years it was a part of his parish, while now the district possessed a fine school, a splendid convent, and a presbytery. He congratulated the Sisters, the parish priest, and the people of the district on their achievement. Rev. Father Ainsworth, S.M., also congratulated Chancellor Holbrook on the splendid results of his efforts, which would ensure the education of the children of the parish in accordance with Catholic ideals. Catholics, he said, were often regarded as fools in their contention concerning education, but as Christians they were wise men. They were determined to uphold the banner of true Christian Catholic education, and the new school would greatly assist that cause. Mr. R. McVeagh also addressed the gathering and combated the statement that was sometimes made y ignorant people that the Catholic Church was the enemy of education. He said that at all times throughout the medieval period and the dark ages, the Catholic Church had been recognised as the repository of learning and its members the teachers of the world. Historical records proved beyond all doubt that it was the Catholic Church that always held aloft the torch of learning. That policy of the Church was consistent throughout the ages down to the present day. Evidence was before them that day in the new school before them. Notwithstanding the difficulties Catholics had before them in the matter of education as they regarded it, they were determined the cause of true education would not suffer. Mr. E. Casey, as a member of the Grey Lynn parish, expressed the thanks of the parishioners to his Lordship the Bishop for his attendance. The Bishop, he said, was recognised as the greatest champion of Catholic education in the Dominion, and it was fitting that his first public act after his extended visit to Europe should be the blessing and official opening of the new school. The new building, would stand as a monument of the splendid co-operation between priest and people of Grey . Lynn.

BISHOP CLEARY’S ADDRESS.

• i, .® s teem it a great privilege to be associated to-day with the inauguration of this spacious, stately, and beautiful school, this latest and finest triumph of the sacred cause of Christian education in the diocese of Auckland.

i An added interest is attached to this occasion for the following reason: That this great Christian school is under the direction of one of the noble bands of evoted Sisters whose living and dead members have tor a long time past been the objects of a peculiarly atrocious campaign of coarse calumny. Men of manly spirit and clean heart and tongue spread the mantle of a decent silence over the memory even of dead women that were frail. But these campaigners select for their coarse fabrications saintly women that are dead—just because they are women and are dead, and because they cannot, from their graves, bring their cowardly detainers to justice. We Catholics, as a body, are far trom being over-sensitive about adverse criticism. As a body, we take no exception to, or merely reasonable notice of, any form of decent criticism of our Church, its polity, its persons, and its institutions. And any campaign by Christian men, in a Christian land, can and should be conducted without any outrage upon public decency. ° 1 Perhaps the most scandalous feature of this evil business is the fact that the head and mouthpiece of this oigauised violation of the graves and memories of pure women is a minister of a Christian Church. I mention him here simnly because I have high authority for the ti uth that there are times when the insignificance of ie accuser is lost in the magnitude of his accusations.' A writer in the local Anglican Church Gazette declares that the minister in question champions “principles that violate the Christian and civil code” ; that this is “the most distressing occurrence in New Zealand religious life for many years’’; and that it “excites disgust ’ against Christianity itself on the part of “many men outside, or on the fringes of, the Christian Church.’ I need not quote for you the terms of sane and manly disgust with which the slanders of this Christian minister and his fellow-campaigners were reprobated by a Commission of Inquiry and by the Parliament of this Dominion. On Friday last the leader of this campaign was afforded an opportunity of proving—-or of withdrawing—in an Auckland court of justice his attacks upon the good name of dead women. The cowardly calumniator fled the court to avoid examination and cross-examination. And from the mouth of an able Protestant magistrate all New Zealand has now read the following “testimonials” to that runaway minister of the Gospel of peace and truth and brotherly love: That he was “guilty of a very cruel slander on a dead woman,” that he “has cast aside all considerations of prudence and ordinary decency” ; that he committed an act “of which,” said the magistrate, “I “hope no decent man, let alone a minister of religion, would be guilty”; that he “has done a mean, cowardly, and low thing”; that he “behaved like a low cad”; and, speaking of the public horse-whipping which the slanderer had received from the wounded soldier-brother of the slandered dead nun, the magistrate declared: “Speaking as a man again, I am satisfied that he deserved all he got and a good deal more.” This is the third such public and official “testimonial” that this minister of the Gospel and his fellow-campaigners have received within a short time. From its runaway and unrepentant head and hero and chief calumniator the public can well judge the character of this “Christian” campaign against the bones and the sacred memory of dead women whose pure lives were dedicated to God and to the love and care of His little ones. In living memory, no deeper shame or injury or humiliation has been inflicted upon religion in this Dominion than that which has been inflicted upon it by this atrocious and unmanly campaign conducted by a Christian minister in the sacred name of Christ. On© does not meet such antagonists with kid gloves and honeyed words and rapiers of gilded straw. . -

This is not merely an outrage upon religion and the elementary decencies of social life. It is a bitter wrong and an organised menace to our common Country. The graves of dead women are being violated and their fair names foully traduced. But they are traduced as a means to a wider end. That end is to divide and weaken the Dominion by fomenting among the people the worst forms of dissension, rancour, and hate. And, in this respect, the campaign is, in its effect, as truly a movement in the interests of the Kaiser as if it were conducted under the signs of the black eagle and the iron cross. Above all, this movement would, if successful, drive a wedge into the ranks of labor ; it would set the workers, both those in uniform and not in uniform, at each others’ throats; it would cause dissensions in our armies; it would set back the social clock, weaken or cripple organisation, and tend to drive back our workers to conditions from which their rise was long and toilful and bitter. One serious defect in our laws is emphasised by this organised campaign of defamation of dead women. It is this : That your dead sister or dead mother or dead daughter— matter how saintly and beautiful their lives may have been—have no legal right to their good name. Any foul-hearted and foul-tongued slanderer can at will malign your most cherished dead ; he can wring with anguish the souls of living father, mother, brother, or sister; and the law affords no practical remedy for this crying wrong. It is high time that this defect should be remedied, and that next of kin should have a legal recourse against the defamers of the fair name of their beloved dead. Until this lack in our legislation is remedied, outraged decency, outraged justice, and outraged domestic love will naturally incline to the popularly approved course and inflict the humiliation of public horse-whippings upon the unmanly culprits who trade in coarse and calumnious imputations against saintly women in their graves. And it is now abundantly clear that this cowards’ war against dead and living women will come to an end only when it ceases to be safe and profitable. I wish, in conclusion, to bring to your notice Regulation 4d. of the “Additional War Regulations made by Order in Council dated the 4th December, 1916.” These Regulations penalise utterances published “with a seditious intention” or having “a seditious tendency.” Regulation 4n. says; “In these regulations, seditious intention ’ and 1 seditious tendency ’ mean respectively an intention or tendency to excite, whether in New Zealand or in any other part of his Majesty’s Dominion, such hostility or ill-will between different classes of his Majesty’s subjects as may endanger the public safety in respect of the present war.” Now, I am no lawyer; I do not know whether this regulation applies technically, or does not apply, as regards the war, to this scurrilous campaign of coarse defamation of our dead Catholic women who have gone to their reward. But three things I do know; (1) That the plain and direct object of all this atrocious vilification of dead women is to create “hostility or ill-will between different classes of his Majesty’s subjects,” and to set people at each other’s throat's in this Dominion. (2) One thing more I know: This effort to provoke strife and rancour in our civilian and military population can serve only one person and one cause : That person is the Kaiser; that cause is the evil cause of Prussian Junkerdom. I do not know what action (if any) the Government of this country may. take to mitigate this new application of the Prussian Hymn of Hate to the bones of dead women. But (3) this I do know, and I warn the Government, that we are not going to take this filth-bombardment lying down. If there is not in this Dominion a Government strong enough or patriotic enough to abate this indecent and dangerous propaganda of (in effect) pro-German hatred and dissension and strife in and out of our army, we ourselves will see to our proper defence. And in such a course as we may be compelled to adopt we count with confidence on the good-will of every clean-minded, purehearted, and patriotic man and woman in this Dominion ; we count upon all who stand for the decencies of social life; we count upon all who desire the reign

of peace and unity and goodwill in this splendid New Zealand- of ours; we count, in fine, upon every kind and gentle soul that has a reverence and affection for beloved dead who have gone before.

During the afternoon St. Patrick’s Cathedral Choir rendered appropriate music, including Mozart’s “Gloria” and the “Hallelujah” Chorus, a quartet in the former being taken by Mrs. Blythe, Miss Magee, Messrs. Egan and Dobbs. Mr. Leo Whittaker conducted. A collection realised £176.