OUR ROMAN LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, 14 March 1918, Page 30

OUR ROMAN LETTER

By “Scottus.”

y?- 5 If readers expect to find in the notes of this month anything in the shape of a detailed account of the •whirlwind that is now, after the lapse of so many centuries, sweeping down from the north over the fair fields of gentle Venice and threatening those of Lombardy, they are doomed to disappointment. I do not know enough about what is really taking place to venture on a narrative. Indeed, I am very much inclined to suspect that they know a great deal more about it all than do we who have to depend information on the few lines of the official bulletin issued every afternoon by General Cadorna. Practically every other printed source of information is cut off from us. No .Irish paper has been allowed to reach us since the start of the Hun offensive, and even the English papers are apparently regarded with suspicion, possibly because the Italian authorities do not consider them incapable of drawing the long bow. And indeed when one remembers the first days of August, 1914, when glowing accounts were published in England and Ireland of the sinking of 17 Hun battleships and the capture of 19 others, the conclusion forces itself on one that possibly the suspicion is not altogether unjustifiable. Of course the reports passing from mouth to mouth are infinite; but I would not dream of harrowing the censor’s feelings by repeating them; and, in any event readers will find as much as they want in the first November issue of Mr. Hilaire Belloc’s prophecies, which in the present case have ceased for once to be prophetic, and should rather be regarded as jeremiads or threnodies, and which happened to get through, possibly because previous experience had led the censors to consider it incapable of containing anything likely to exercise a depressing effect on its readers. One aspect of the case, however, demands attention. The threatened provinces are those of Venezia and Lombardy, to which Goldsmith's words apply just as accurately to-day as they did a couple of centuries ago: “ Whatever fruits in different climes are found That proudly rise or humbly court the ground ; Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear Whose bright succession decks the varied year; ~.r Whatever sweets salute the northern sky With vernal lives that blossom but to die - These here disporting own the kindred soil Nor ask luxuriance from the planter’s toil; While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand To winnow fragrance round the smiling land.” The two provinces cover some twenty thousand square miles of the most fertile plain in Europe, stretching from the Alps to the Appenines, and are inhabited by an agricultural and industrial population that supplies the rest of Italy with much of its food and manufactures. Already the question of the sufficiency of the food-supply for the coming year had begun to arouse serious apprehension; and it would seem as if immense stores had to be destroyed or abandoned in the retreat before the new Attila and his hordes. Should these smiling plains fall into the enemy’s hands or be otherwise rendered unproductive for the coming year, the outlook would be such as should lead the authorities furiously to think. As regards the rank and file of the population, like those of every other belligerent country, they are kept very much in the dark and know but little of what is actually taking place. For these personally and apart from the merits or otherwise of the war, about which I do not feel competent to speak, I have nothing but the sincerest sympathy. Against the will of the great majority they were dragged into the war by promises and prospects of a speedy victory that time has not yet realised. I have lived for years in their midst I have -received much kindness at their hands; when barbarous laws imposed on us by other peoples that now prate of rights and liberties forbade our Catholic youth to receive a V Catholic education at

home, Italy opened her: doors to us and gave us shelter and supported our ; colleges and admitted us to her lecture-halls, all gratuitously; and if the Italian people have their faults and foibles, I am afraid we are sometimes too ready to forget that many of these are due to contamination from without, and to dwell on them without taking into due account the many good qualities that nature and grace have planted in the soul of a land naturally Catholic and in the heart of a people not very unlike our own in many kindly features that make for humanity and civilisation in their truer sense. In this connection I cannot help remarking that Englishmen who have been letting their tongues wag too ' freely in and about this country for the past year or two would have been better advised in making due allowance for the Italian people and in laying aside that air of superiority that seems to attend the Englishman as closely as his shadow wherever he goes. If a rude awakening is to come it will be a poor consolation for them to remember that it is they that are to blame. For the present at least, there is little danger of this; for the immediate outcome of the Hun offensive has been in the direction of a widespread wave of patriotic and belligerent feeling among the non-combatant population. Whether a similar feeling prevails to a like extent in the trenches I am unable to say for certain, but the reader who desires to form an opinion will do well to turn to the issue already mentioned of Mr, Hilaire Belloc’s prophecies. * * * Even amidst war’s alarms the Holy See keeps the even tenor of its way, leaving no stone unturned to hasten the advent of peace, but at the same time neglecting nothing that could contribute to the welfare of all the churches. Within the past two months Pontifical solicitude has manifested itself in a noteworthy way by the erection of two new ecclesiastical departments or boards. The first of these takes the shape of a Pontifical Commission in connection with the observance of the new code of ecclesiastical law which comes into operation next Pentecost. The purpose of the commission is twofold—first to provide for the authentic interpretation of doubtful or difficult points in the code ; and secondly, to guard against any tendency the future might display towards the multiplication of new rules and regulations of a general character. Something similar was done in connection with the vast body of legislation issued by the Council of Trent more than three centuries ago when Pius IV. and Sixtus V. established a commission for the observance of its decrees which has since grown into the important department known as the Congregation of the Council. The new commission is organised on similar lines, and will doubtless take over a large share of the business hitherto transacted by that congregation. Cardinal Gasparri is naturally its first president; and with him are associated Cardinals De Lai, Pompili, Van Rossum, Bisleti, Giustini, and Lega, with a number of specialists as consul tors and minor officials. Among the consultors Mgr. Luzio, who spent many years as Professor of Canon Law in the Royal College of Maynooth, is worthy of special mention. * * * The other new department referred to is evidently modelled along the lines of the old Congregation of Propaganda, and is in fact intended to relieve that body of the care it has hitherto exercised of the Churches and peoples that follow what is known as the Oriental —that is, the Churches of the East, which are in communion with Rome and in which religious rites, ceremonies, and discipline are not identical with those observed in the Latin Church. The Congregation of Propaganda, which was founded in 1622, and which, to use the words of Donovan’s Rome, had for its object ‘‘the propagation of the faith, particularly in missionary countries, for which purpose it educates in its Urban College of the Propaganda young ecclesiastics from the various missionary countries throughout the world. ~ The congregation, which is composed of several cardinals and a prelate as secretary, 1 meets■; twice a

month; but it also assembles sometimes extraordinarily in ; the presence of the Pope. the election of bishops and vicars - apostolic for missionary countries, to providing missionaries for these countries, and to all ecclesiastical questions that may arise regarding them.” Some years ago, as will be remembered, certain countries : such as Ireland, which had come under Propaganda owing to the cruel misfortunes of the times, and other countries such as those of North America, which had grown up under the fostering care of Propaganda, were removed from the jurisdiction of that body and placed under the common law of the Church. The dismemberment is now almost completed by the erection of the new congregation for Catholics of Oriental rites, to wit, the Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Rumanian, Ruthenian, Bulgarian, Syrian, Chaldean, and Maronite, in parts of Austria, Hungary, Russia, Bosnia, Rumania, Turkey, as well as in Abyssinia, Egypt, the. East Indies, and certain English and United States colonies in South America. The total number of Catholics in communion with Rome in these countries is well over eight millions, and these are governed by six patriarchs, 20 archbishops, 53 bishops, and six vicars-apostolic. The old Congregation of Propaganda will continue to provide for all the rest of Africa and of Asia, as well as for Australia, though it is by no means improbable that the flourishing Church in the latter country will soon take its place under the common law. Under the wings of the new congregation there is to be established a missionary college, similar to that of Propaganda, in which intending missionaries will be fitted for their work by a two years’ course of special training in Oriental history,, geography, ethnography, archaeology, orthodox theology, canon law, rites, and liturgy. •3v vf * Mgr. Keating, senior chaplain to the British forces at Salonika, has been summoned to Rome, where he will be created bishop and placed over all the chaplains to the British forces as chaplain-in-chief, with the rank

and title of. army-bishop or Fpiscopus castrensis. The Episcopus castrensis is an institution s^ old standing in the German army. A similar institution was provided for the Italian army on the declaration of the war against Austria two and a-half years ago. The breakdown of the existing machinery controlling chaplaincies to the British army about the same time led the Irish bishops to the conclusion that something similar was advisable to meet the needs of the case, and there is reason for believing that a suggestion to this effect was put forward in their name. Had this been acted on at once the public would have been spared much of the ill-informed or malevolent trash recently appearing in the columns of Irish papers on the subject of alleged shortage of chaplains. It is only fair, however, to say that the delay owes its origin to no one in Rome. Where non-Cathohc governments and vested interests o various sorts are concerned the Holy See has not always a free hand and has often to waste precious time in surmounting opposition or difficulty even in quarters where neither should be expected. U P to the present, as will be remembered, the task of providing chaplains to the British forces rested exclusively on the shoulders of the Archbishop of Westminster in virtue of an instruction issued to that effect y the Holy See some dozen years ago. Henceforth tins task, with the authority and responsibility accompanying it, will devolve on flic new army-bishop. ' * * * J 1 In the course of a few days, and before these lines see the light, silver currency will go out of circulation m this country, and is to be replaced by bank notes for one and two francs. Meanwhile the exchange value ot the franc, which in normal times Was ten pence is now down to sixpence. ?