Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 11 July 1918, Page 14

Current Topics

The No-Popery Drive A cat has nine lives, but a No-Popery lie has a hundred and nine. The old lies that have been nailed come to life regularly year after year in striking evidence of the poverty of imagination on the part of the liars Now and then a new lie is invented and knocked over to rise again. The American No-Popery brigade recently published a statement to the effect that General Pershing warned the troops to be on their guard against the malignant influence of the Vatican, which was in league with Germany. A cable from the General brought an emphatic denial of the lie. But the people who tell these lies are so thick-skinned that exposure matters little to them. In England bigots of various types and sizes are trying to make out that the Pope must be pro-German because the Irish bishops made a stand against a move illustrative of the most damnable sort of Prussianism. And the most amusing thing about it is the pitiful effort of the London Tablet to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Here in New Zealand there is evidence that the Howard Elliott campaign is meeting with the fate that every movement based on lies must eventually meet. Two P.P. A. meetings in the south recently were absolute failures, and at one of them, in Mornington, the chairman condemned and repudiated the tactics of Howard Elliott. That gentleman's day has set in the South Island. The Catholic Federation and the Tablet have been well advertised by the orators of the P.P.A.', who know as well as we do that neither the Federation nor the Tablet ever attacked anyone who did not interfere with the rights of Catholics. Howard Elliott will soon be silent everywhere for want of support, but he has given us a motive for unity and suggested something definite to fight for. "Equal rights for all" is what he professes" to advocate. Let us put that into practice and never rest until we secure that minimum. It would mean our proper representation in Parliament and in every department of the Civil Service, as well as the right to expend our taxes on schools which a conscientious Catholic could support. In Australia the bigotry is even worse than here. The Australian Catholics are, however, able to look after themselves, and we need not worry about them, even if some of the seoinini tell Dr. Mannix that by his defence of our rights he is giving a handle to persecuting bigots, just as the same intelligent and high-souled people found fault with Cardinal Moran when he scourged Dill Macky and his brethren. In Ireland, of course, the bigots are always to the fore, and the whole Irish question is simply one of religious hatred. A little gang of Orange traitors ■ stand between the Irish people and the right of self-government, while the extraordinary group of men who in some inexplicable way have got hold of the reins of Government in England support in Ireland the very Prussianism and intolerance which they would have the world believe they are fighting against in Europe. While all this goes on the French infidels have been compelled to call on, as their saviour, a gallant Catholic general whom their bigotry kept in an inferior position until danger terrified them. While the Baptists and Methodists and Orangemen rave at home and abroad their friends at the front have to fall in under the leadership of the same Catholic Generalissimo, owing to the mediocrity and incompetence of the best men that so-called Protestant countries could produce. Catholic soldiers are holding four miles of the front for every mile held by Protestants, and our reward for that is a bitter campaign of lies and calumny all over the British Empire. The Empire ought to be proud of itself. The Catholic Union of Great Britain While Lord Northcliffe and the Rev. Mr. Campbell were raising the No-Popery flag in England because the Irish bishops have manifested to the world

•what they think of the latest example of English misrule in Ireland, that august body, the Catholic Union of Great Britain, have assumed the office of mentors and advisers to the venerable Hierarchy of Ireland. Professor Dickie's display of professorial incompetence was a joke compared to the attitude of that CatholicTory clique who, take themselves so seriously that they are perfectly unconscious of their egregious cheek and impertinence. Among them are Lord Denbigh, whose brains have not yet been discovered after many years of political somnolence; Sir William Dunn, who is said to be an authority on games of cards, but whose services to the Catholic cause are in inverse ratio to his assurance; a few officers of no particular distinction in the field of battle; a literary crank or two; and some magnificent specimens of Tory stupidity. These gentlemen call themselves the Catholic Union of Great Britain, but they no more represent the Catholics of Great Britain' than Howard Elliott or Professor Dickie represents the College of Cardinals. It is quite in keeping with their brains and their Catholicism, as they conceive it, that they should sit down and solemnly censure the Irish bishops in the following words : ■ "The Catholic Union has viewed with the deepest regret the action which the Catholic bishops of Ireland have deemed it necessary to take,for resisting compulsory service in the present war, action which appears to support the movement for organised disobedience to the law. ... "Catholics cannot regard without serious misgiving any interference by an ecclesiastical authority in questions which are purely temporal and political, and in no way concerned with faith or morals." - s There now! Imagine how small the Irish bishops must have felt when they read that, and when they were further informed that the indignant English Tories had complained to the Holy See of the wickedness of those turbulent Irish prelates who would not allow that dear old friend of the Pope's, John Bull, to make a doormat of them ! It is all the more ridiculous when we remember that when the English Parliament was making a, law for the government of Ireland, and when five-sixths of the Irish people were supporting the Government the same Catholic Tories actually stood on the platform with the men who were arming their rebels with German guns, and reviled their fellowCatholics. The day was when the English Catholics were glad of the aid of Ireland, and at present, if Ireland had not come to their rescue their worthlessness and supineness would have left them as helpless as dirt under the feet of the Protestant bigots with whom they now stand against Irish Catholics. But who ever heard of any sense of gratitude in them or their forbears ? Who doubts that they, like so many others of their class, are quite willing to lose the war if only Ireland is still trampled under the feet of Protestant England even as Belgium under the feet of the Kaiser's armies? If the Irish bishops had told their flocks to enlist we would hear no word of blame for interference in "purely temporal and political'' concerns. An utter incapacity to mind their own business and an impertinence in meddling with the affairs of others is characteristic of these ultra-loyal Catholics who are at all times far more ready to fight for their King than for their Pope. By doing so they win the approval or the contempt, as the case may be, of their Protestant brethren who make no bones about acknowledging that theirs is a State Church and that the*State is first. But they have made themselves ridiculous in the eyes of the Catholic world, and have added yet another notch to the long score of grievances their Irish benefactors have against them. If only they had a saving sense of humor ! : j Professor Dickie in the Ring- Again - During the heavy snowstorms with which the month of July came -in two remarkable things happened at the same time: Professor Dickie broke out and the cable service broke down. Thus while we were

deprived of the silly stories issued to us out here as news by the Harrasworth people we were, by way of compensation, offered a bundle of remarks from Professor Dickie which were certainly not behind the Harmsworth yarns in silliness and mendacity. A deputation waited on the Dunedin Presbytery to protest against Presbyterian schools accepting State aid in any shape or form. This gave the noble professor his text; and he took the floor in his own dear old style. He uttered at least three falsehoods in his remarks. But as he was speaking of Ireland and the Catholic Church, which in his own ignorant way he calls the “Romanist Church,” that was not wonderful. Having begun by saying that the Catholic schools were a menace to our national system and to the good feeling that should exist between sects in the Dominion, he went on to utter the enormity that for fifty years there would have been no Irish question but for the fact that there had been the pernicious bigotry of the teaching of those Catholic schools for the last century. If the Romanists, he went on, were sufficientily strong in New Zealand we should have here exactly the same division created in Ireland to-day by Romanist influence. The British Government had offered a system of national schools to Ireland that would in effect have been under the control of the laity, but the Catholic Hierarchy opposed that because they wanted absolute control of the schools to use them for purposes of religious proselytism. He thought it wise to let the Catholics know that here it was not a question whether they would get State aid or not, but whether the State was to tolerate their schools at all ! Finally we get from the learned and cultured professor the following remarkable gem; He felt, as he said, that “public money should not be spent in any institution that was not immediately and directly under public control. At the same time, so long as a Church was loyal to the Empire, and was not attempting to subvert national welfare, such a Church had a right to institute schools for its own people.” There is no need to point out to anyone who knows anything about the matter at all that it is false to say that the teaching in Irish Catholic schools is the cause of the Irish question, which is due simply to the obstinate bigotry and savagery of Presbyterians and Orangemen of the Dickie type, in whose favor a Protestant Government persecutes a small nation. It is false to say that the Irish Hierarchy ever contemplated proselytising in the Irish schools, but it is quite true that Professor Dickie’s friends did try to make the national schools proselytising institutions, in which education was to be offered with a Protestant Bible just as soup was offered to the starving women and children in the years of the great famine. He says that the State should allow freedom to Churches which are loyal to the Empire, and, as he tells us that he would if he had his way abolish Catholic schools, the inference is that in the opinion of the learned professor the Catholic Church is disloyal to the Empire and subversive of public welfare. This again, with all due respect to the professor, is a falsehood. The Catholic Church is the one Church which hearkens to the Divine command to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. It puts God first, and refuses to follow the example of other Churches, which allow secular officials to dictate to them in matters which are purely religious. This, and this only, is the disloyalty of the Catholic Church. We have no doubt that in the eyes of Professor Dickie it is wrong to put the State in the second place, but we have never yet met any man who thinks that the opinion of the learned professor in this matter is worth bothering about. In the few lines in which his utterances were reported in the Star we have found more ignorance and more bigotry concerning things Irish and Catholic than one could find anywhere except in the ravings of the Elliott person. The statements are so outrageously absurd and so obviously contrary to truth that one wonders if the professor is not giving us a sample of Scottish humor to console us for the breakdown of the cable service. It is hard to believe that a professor could make Such an exhibi-

tion of himself. Poor Professor Dickie! Next week we shall discuss the history of proselytism in Ireland fully.

Archbishop Mannix on the Wowser

The wowser is not a colonial product, although as a result of the benighted state of people in New Zealand, due to the irreligious and ungodly State schools, the wowser flourishes in this Dominion and attains proportions of general offensiveness unknown in civilised nations. The Australian climate and Government are also highly conducive to the good estate of the wowser, and from certain remarks made recently by Dr. Mannix we know that the wowser beyond the Tasman Sea is as like our own brand as one pea is like another. A bigot in religion and a tyrant in politics was, we believe, the original definition of the wowser; and it still describes him accurately. He is possible everywhere, but it is only in such countries as ours, where neither education nor principle is required in a candidate for the Cabinet, that he can be what he is amongst us. Rarely does one hear of a Presbyterian or Anglican wowser, as the members of those Churches are usually men of fixed religious principles, and their ministers are almost always men of education. Lower clown, among the fancy religions, the wowser is rampant. The wowser is everything opposed to the ideal of Christianity founded on the Love of Christ. ,And only when men step off trolleys or lay down an axe to take up the work of the Christian ministry can such ignorance of the Gospel as the wowser parsons display be possible. They do not bother about essentials. Give them a brass band and a catch-cry that will appeal to hysterical females and they are in full swing. As we all know, Prohibition and gambling are their favorite subjects. Jointly and severally they shriek forth the two commandments of the law according to the wowser : Thou shalt not bet on a racehorse, nor invest sixpence in a bazaar, especially if it be in support of a Papist institution; and, Thou shalt not encourage hotels, nor smile on him who would ask thee to have a "spot." For them indeed the whole law is contained in these two. They shut their eyes to the essential things. They care not a jot that the youth of the country is being demoralised by the irreligious atmosphere of our schools. That the sanctity of the marriage tie is of so little importance to many does not matter to them ; that race suicide is scandalously prevalent in our midst leaves them unmoved. They are so busy about making life uncomfortable for lheir neighbors that they forget that there is such a thing as sin. They make impossible laws for others, and they are indifferent as to how the law of God is observed amongst us. They have never done any good for anyone and they never will. They go to the utmost lengths to attain their ends. They will persecute, and plot, and boycott, and browbeat all who oppose them. They have made New Zealand notorious as their home and breeding place, and they will ruin the Dominion if they only get their way. We commend to our readers the following extract from an address by Dr. Mannix at Cathedral Hall, Melbourne, on June 17, as every word of it applies equally to the wily wowser in our midst in New Zealand : "Among other things, they were crying out for total prohibition of alcoholic drink and of gambling of all kinds. Now, according to his view, it was perfectly lawful to take drink in moderation. (A Voice: Hear, hear.) It was only the excessive use of drink that called for action, and he (his Grace) welcomed such action.—(Applause.) Drink was lawful or unlawful according as it was used or abused.—(Applause.) In the same way, betting and games of chance were lawful in themselves, and only reprehensible in their abuse. But because drink was often abused, and because there was too much gambling, certain extreme persons would have nothing but absolute prohibition of things in themselves quite lawful. But the remarkable thing was that many of those people who were crying out against the most innocent forms of gambling at bazaars, and who wanted total prohibition, were

quite silent regarding things which could in no circumstances be lawful. They had never a word to say about that awful cancer which was eating out the life of Australia — suicide.■_ (Applause.) They wanted drastic action—ill-advised action—against evils that mattered less ; they seemed to pay n 5 attention to the evils that mattered more. —(Applause.) There was a terrible wastage of Australian manhood in the war. They all wished it ended. But the wastage in the war was only as a drop in the ocean compared with what had been going on in Australia through the agency of a certain section of chemists and doctors and nurses. —(‘Shame!’) When this disastrous war was ended its wastage would end ; but the chemists and the doctors and the midwives of Melbourne—that section of them that he had referred to—would go on with their deadly work, and, apparently, those who were horrified at the menace to Australia by sixpenny raffles had not the honesty or the courage to say a word of warning about the murdering of the innocents. What a pity the reformers do not deal, and deal drastically, with the things that matter!”