A JOURNALISTIC ESTIMATE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, 14 November 1918, Page 28

A JOURNALISTIC ESTIMATE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

To understand the long life, the power that has lasted through centuries, the purpose that continues unchanged as men come and go within the great Catholic Church it is necessary to realise that that Church was the fix-st great republic of our era, and that it is a great republic now (says the New York Even in;/ Journal). In the days of savage kings and despotic rulers, in the later days of refined monarchs and government slightly less brutal, the Catholic Church, an organisation of spiritual as well as temporal government had an immense advantage over every government on earth. The kings -and the emperors came, died, and each successor was a matter of accident. The child that happened to be born first inherited the crown. Because of the weakness due to accident of birth dynasties and kingdoms and empires changed, melted, and disappeared. But the Catholic Church went forward through the centuries steadily gaining in power, because from the first tho government of the Church was a republican form of government. When some feeble king was succeeding to the throne and the power of France, when some weakling through accident of birth was mad© ruler of Spain, or England, the ablest man within the Church was chosen to rule. A boy that had been the humblest and poorest of children, tending animals in the field, sleeping on a hard bed or no bed, while the boy emperor was in his palace, lived to see himself upon the Throne of St. Peter and see the emperor grown to manhood humbly submissive without the gate. In commenting on the elevation of Cardinal Farley to be- a Prince of the Church, the Journal says; It is well for those who read about him in this country to know the Church which has made him a Cardinal has been for many centuries as truly republican in government as the system that put a President in the White House at Washington. It is encouraging to all of those that believe in republican government and who

want, to believe that this nation, properly managed, can endure, to. realise that - the greatest, oldest, most powerful organisation in the world is the great Catholic Church, based spiritually upon the Rock, St. Peter, and materially upon a republican form .of government, a true democracy, recognising no birthright, no aristocracy, other than that of intellect, character, and devotion