Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 23 January 1919, Page 14

Current Topics

Michael the Catholic ’ About twenty years ago now a man wrote a dirty book. He was a briefless barrister, and he wanted to make money which he had not the brains or stamina enough s to make in an honest way at his profession. And because he was a mean thing he set himself to write an unclean book, for he knew that there is always a market among unclean people for unclean books. When we say it was an unclean book that he wrote we do not mean that it was a pornographic work: there is a greater uncleanness even than that; and it is the work of a man who attacks the good name of his mother, or the religion of his fathers, or his country in order to make money. The book was received in decent quarters as such a book ought to be. The writer was dismissed curtly with the remark that his book was the book that such a man would inevitably write the sort of book Judas would write were he alive to-day and did he want another thirty pieces of silver. But besides the decent men and women in the world there are others : there are those who make the market for writers like Michael McCarthy and for the books that such writers publish. And while the book was rejected with scorn by the first class it was received with delight by those others after whose heart it was. In time the story of Michael the Catholic became well known at home, and the vogue of his book passed away. But another market was still open, and the book was taken up by those who live on hatred of all things Irish and all things Catholic, and it was sent out to the Colonies, which abound with bigots. So it comes to pass, as a result of the low standard of education and of self-respect among us, that there are still people who write to the papers and quote Michael McCarthy as if he were an authority instead of merely a creature who set himself to make money by the prostitution of his honor. The falsehoods contained in Michael’s pages have so often been refuted that we need not dwell on them here; but we will, for the benefit of our readers, say a word about the primary falsehood under the cover of which McCarthy advertised his other lies. This man tells us that he is a Catholic, and here there are fools who believe him. Let us examine Michael’s Catholicity. First, he spent three years as a boy at Middleton Protestant School. Reflect on what that means in Ireland ; and weigh the claims of the boy or the parents to Catholicity. But we can let. that pass. Tie then snent four years in Trinity College, the chief stronghold of No-Popery in Ireland. That will also pass. He tells us that his learning (?) is due to his association with Protestants. He maintains that the Papacy was founded by a decree of the Emperor Phocas, and not by Christ ; he denies the Catholic doctrine of the Mass and of the Sacramental system ; he hints at his unbelief in the Real Presence, and sneers at Catholic observances as gibberish and mummery. In a word, he denies the teaching which is, essential in the Catholic Church and cuts himself off from the Fold of Christ. He does what Luther did before him, and what every apostate does. But Luther and the ordinary apostates do not pretend that they are still Catholics, as Michael McCarthy does. His apostasy is so evident that no man can doubt it; and yet he screams and shrieks in his pages, “Lam a Catholic! I am a Catholic ! I am a Catholic !” when all who know anything about him know that he is not anything of the kind. Having begun by this initial lie he proceeds to attack the faith of the people of Ireland and to pander to the low bigotry of Protestants of the uneducated type by a series of sweeping propositions which proclaim his total ignorance of the social and economic problems with which he pretends to grapple. Here is not the place to go into that; Monsignor O’Riordan’s book, Catholicity and Progress in Ireland, contains abundant refutation of the drivel of Michael the Catholic. Our intention is merely to bring before our readers the sort of man Michael is; and that can be judged from his assertion that he is a Catholic.

We have said his work was not pornographic; that needs a qualification: his condemnation of -the chastity of the Irish people is tantamount to a plea for. immorality. - _ • Religious Statistics of Germany and Austria A correspondent tolls us that he is often told that Germany is a Catholic country and that the Pope and the Jesuits have unlimited power there. We are not surprised that • there are still fools who retail’such nonsense when we consider that Protestant Professors have not yet risen above the standard connoted by such statements. We have always taken it for granted that even in New Zealand State schools there could be nobody so ignorant as to be blind to the fact that the war was mainly between two' Protestant countriesProtestant Prussia and Protestant England, —both as hostile to the Pope and the Catholic Church as it is possible for them to be under modern conditions. Both were indeed assisted by Catholic countries. Protestant Germany was helped by Catholic Austria, just as Catholic Italy and Catholic France filled in the gaps left on the Western Front when Orange generals turned tail and ran. And small thanks Catholics receive, at the hands of Orangemen or other Prussians for saving them in the hour of peril. For the information of our correspondent we here give the religious statistics of Germany and Austria, as found in the last edition of the authoritative Statesman’s Year Booh : (Page 907) Religion in Germany. The constitution provides for entire liberty of conscience and for complete ; social equality among all religious confessions. The relation between Church and State varies in different parts of the Empire. The Jesuit Order is interdicted, in all parts of Germany (Italics ours), and all convents and religious Orders, except those that are engaged in nursing the sick and purely contemplative Orders, have been suppressed. There are 5 Roman Catholic archbishoprics, 14 suffragan bishoprics, and 6 immediately subject to Rome. The following is the result of the last census; Percent, of 1910. Population. Protestants ... 39,991,421 61.6 Catholics ... 23,821,453 36.7 Other Christians ... 283,946 0.4 Jews ... 615,021 1.0 Others ... 214,152 0.3 Catholics were in a majority in only three States—viz., Alsace-Lorraine, Bavaria, and Baden-Baden. They had more than 20 per cent, in only four others—viz., Oldenburg, Wurtemburg, Hesse, and Prussia. (Page 697) Religion in Austria. Per cent, of 1910. Population, Roman Catholics ... 22,530,000 • 78.8 Greek Catholics ... 3,417,000 12.0 Armenian Catholics 2,000 0.0 Old Catholics ... 21,000 ■ 0.1 Greek Oriental ... 66,000 2.3 Armenian Oriental ... 1,000 0.0 Evangelical ... 589,000 2.1 Other Christian sects 7,000 0.0 Jews ... 1,314,000 4.6 1- - Others ... 25,000; 0.1 From the above it is clear that Germany is not a Catholic country, and that so far from being under the heel of the Jesuits the Order is not allowed into the country at all. And as for the influence of the Pope with the Kaiser, unfortunately for Europe and for the cause of humanity the Pope has as little influence with Wilhelm as he has with his British relations. Sinn Fein In a letter from one of the prominent leaders of Sinn Fein among the senior clergy, received by us, shortly after the result of the elections was made

known, we are struck by the quiet confidence in the power of a united Irish people to assert their rights against the rule of brute force. He speaks thus of the effect of the Easter Rising: “We have prevented the attempted revalidation of the fraud of the unnatural union between Ireland and England; at the cost of a little blood we snatched- our generation from being inoculated with West Britainism, and delayed, at least, a national apostasy. Were it not for the men of Easter Week Ireland would be conscripted and partitioned. She would stand with one hand tied to Orangeism with a black knot, the other free to wave a Union Jack over the remnant of a noble race weeping in vain for the dead who died for England, while a scoffing world would only say : Scienti et volenti non ft injuria.” Thus, while even Sinn Fein itself was opposed to the hopeless Rising and while Eoin McNeill got ten years in gaol for trying to stop it, the people realise that the blood of Pearse and his comrades regenerated the Irish race and we recognise that the regeneration would have been a failure ’were it not for the brutality of the soldiers and the criminal treachery of Lloyd George. These were the factors which turned the scale in favor of Sinn Fein, made its policy possible, and gave it the stupendous victory it has already won at the elections. The following is a copy of one of the Sinn Fein manifestoes issued by candidates for election: For 118 years we have followed the programme devised for us by Englishmen — namely, representation in the London Parliament, — and has it brought us any nearer even the meanest measure of freedom ? The chosen leaders of the Irish race are now in English —the laws are still made by Englishmen in England’s interest— Liberty of the Press and Freedom of' Speech are denied —it is illegal to be Irish—the only freedom we have -is to die for England and England’s Empire. In the last century Four million# of the. Irish race have fled from Ireland. Two millions have died of starvation. Ireland’s world-trade has almost gone. Irish shipping is practically non-existent. Ireland's taxation has increased from two million pounds when her population was eight millions to thirty million pounds when her population is 300,000 — 5s per head of the population when Ireland had her own Parliament, against <£6 17s 6d to-day. ( Why should Irishmen leave their countryit is one of the richest in the world ? Why should we pay England’s taxes and her bills ? Are you satisfied that we should always be poor Why should we not be as free as England is herself ? Democracy is coming into its own again. The bonds that have held us for 700 years are breaking. You have only to push the door and it will open before us into the garden of freedom. ELECT A FREE-IRELAND CANDIDATE! For Democracy Some months ago when discussing President Wilson’s declaration that peace could be made only with the German democracy, Mr. Stead hinted that there were certain other countries in which the rights of the people were quite as much ignored as in Germany. We have since read in Everyman that some English papers have very definitely arraigned the British Government for its autocratic spirit and demanded that the people who were fighting, should know at least what they are fighting for. England as well as Germany kept the people in the dark regarding things that the people had a right to know and to discuss; a British oligarchy as well as a Prussian assumed the right to make wars and to make treaties without , the approval of the people whom these things most concerned, inasmucu as, although the .men who form the Govern-

ments reap the profits, the men who are ignored have to do the fighting and the paying. The British tyranny is supported by a network of influences, at the back of which there is unlimited money for bribery. People who have never suspected how the political parties worked will have their eyes opened by reading Chesterton's work on Party Government, which gives some" idea of how the money is raised and how it is spent in the interests of the rulers, and not at all for the good . of the people. A clear proof that the English Government does not govern for the people at all is the fact that in spite of the people's mandate to give Ireland self-government Ireland is still oppressed in the interests of a few people who have money and know how to use it. Unless all the signs in the heavens are misleading the day is at hand now when this state of things must end. Democracy must become- a reality as well as a name. The fate of a nation cannot be left in the hands of a few unscrupulous individuals such asQ Carson and Milner in England at present—the one a German agent, the other a German by birth. The lives of thousands of men cannot be left at the mercy of capitalists and economers who do not hesitate to sacrifice the workers whether in war or in peace for their own commercial aims. Mr. Hughes is reported to have said that the present war is a war for economic domination, which, as translated into English by Archbishop Mannix, means a trade-war: whether one agrees with Mr. Hughes or no there can be no doubt that the Boer war was a sordid trade war waged unjustly in the interests of British capitalists for whose aims thousands of Brutish lives were lost and, still worse, thousands of Boer women and children died in the awful concentration camps through which, as General Butler says, England struck "at the womb of the nation." In Russia alone has the Democracy succeeded in beating the Autocracy. There is evidence of unrest in England and in Germany sufficient to warrant us- in thinking that if the people are not consulted after the war it will not be very long until there is another war between Socialism and Capitalism, likely to be waged as universally as the present international : conflict. At present there is hardly a' country in' which the Government cannot be described with more or less truth as the Capitalist State. Do we not hear it said every day here that the New Zealand Government is for the rich ? And is there not much appearance of reason in the statement? In England the abominable class distinctions are tenfold worse, and in Ireland there is not even a pretence of an attempt to conceal the fact that the Government is exercised in the sole interests of the Orange minority. The war will have been in vain if all these wrongs are not righted, and if Democracy is still to be no more than an empty name and the people but instruments for exploitation in the hands of Capitalists. If as the outcome of all the slaughter a new era begins in which Governments will govern for the people, defending the rights of individuals, protecting especially the poor and the helpless, guided in all things by considerations of justice and truth, then there will be hope of a lasting peace such as President Wilson dreams about; but if the old wrong system is but fortified for the promotion of still more Imperialistic aims and for larger conquests, then it is very likely that instead of" lasting peace we shall be face to face with the prospect of seeing in other countries such horrors . as were the consequence of wrongful pule in Russia last year. The day is not far off when the people will tolerate no more tyranny on the part of their own Governments.