Ths New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 1920. ARCHBISHOP MANNIX

New Zealand Tablet, 5 August 1920, Page 25

Ths New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 1920. ARCHBISHOP MANNIX

>ft4 *—^—— “ YEN from the sordid dailies it is possible r to derive amusement on most days of the 1 & year. For the intelligent reader, gifted with a sense of humor, the press, during some weeks past, eclipses Punch and similar alleged comic papers. Our cultured ep and polished journalists have assured us u v very seriously that Dr. Mannix is not worth noticing, and that it is a great mistake to take him seriously, while at the same time, in editorials, more or less pitiful, in fablegrams more or less contradictory, in letters from correspondents more or less demented, the name, of the great Archbishop of Melbourne and his sayings and doings are published and discussed and distorted so furiously as to convince us that those who protest that he must not be taken seriously do take him very seriously indeed. We will

not dwell on the fine chivalry and the exquisite' taste manifested by some of our contemporaries in all this pother, nor will we pause to point out how fablegram contradicts fablegram, with a confusion equal to the muddled thought ’ and struggling ignorance displayed by the average Jingo pressman. Rather will we reflect for a moment on what the Archbishop has done to arouse the discordant barking of the Orange whelps and, their supporters.

In the first place, Archbishop Mannix was not long in Australia when his caustic humor and his inexorable logic made the No-Popery bigots, who were used to having the field all to themselves, feel very foolish. That, of course, was enough to make him an object of hatred to such gentlemen. Messrs. Worrall, Snowball, Rintoul, and the rest of them writhed under the lash, and the bigoted and dastardly dailies that never showed a particle of fair play to Catholics shared in their discomfiture. Naturally they did not forget. When the war broke out and it became the duty of all true Protestant bigots to abuse and vilify the Pope, Dr. Mannix, in his cool, humorous way, turned the tables on the Orange clan again and again, convicting them of falsehood and misrepresentatidn, and, of course, driving them to still higher pitches of idiocy. After the 1916 Rising in Ireland, their fury against the man who pointed out how the Government had promoted to high positions the Ulster rebels was further increased. The same year found Australia moving towards Conscription. The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney issued a pastoral letter calling on the people to support Mr. Hughes, while Dr. Mannix, with equal right,- and not by a pastoral letter, expressed his conviction that Conscription was a hateful thing, likely to bring evil in its train. Reflect that the merits of the case are based on ethical considerations, and that every man has a right to stand for what he believes to be true and just. Reflect that the Pope gave his opinion that Conscription is an intolerable burden on the liberty of the people, and that it is not capable of demonstration that any Government has the right to demand the sacrifice of a man’s life in return for the accidental benefits given him by government. The Archbishop was quite right in opposing Conscription. He was accused of being unpatriotic and pro-German ; but his view was splendidly ratified by the men who went to the war, and fought and died, while those who were against the Archbishop stayed at home in easy billets and comfortable pulpits. Again, Mr. Churchill, Mr. George, Bonar Law, and other leading English statesmen, vowed to the soldiers that the war was for the right of every people to choose their own form of government, no matter whose selfish interests were crossed, for the destruction of tyranny over a weak people by a strong, and for the extermination of all bullies who were holding down defenceless nations. “Why,” said Lloyd George, “did God make small nations if he did not intend them to be free ?” The Archbishop applied all this to Ireland, and, accepting the words of Mr. George and his friends, declared, as their words warranted, that Ireland ought to have the right of self-determination. Every man with a spark of honesty in his soul must see how right he was, but in the face of all the English pledges, he was denounced as a seditious person and a disloyalist by the disreputable gang of Jingoes and editors who aided and abetted the English statesmen in making liars of themselves before the whole world. Austin Harrison, G. K. Chesterton, Clement Shorter, Shane Leslie, Erskine Childers, many British officers, and members of the British Parliament hold and assert Ireland’s right to self-determination and nobody calls them names but when Archbishop Mannix holds exactly the same thing he is denounced and derided and ridiculed by a brainless, unprincipled mob, so blinded , by bigotry, so maddened by prejudice, that they cannot see their ; own shame and inconsistency. They cannot even see that while they cry out “sedition” and “dis-

loyalist” ten . thousand of the men who went to fight for small nations marched in procession to honor the Archbishop, while fourteen winners of the V.C. formed a guard of honor* for him. The heroes rally round him, while insignificant penny-a-liners and rabid parsons throw mud at him!

When people who should have known better emerge with a violent headache from the Jingo fever, they will be heartily ashamed of the coarseness and vulgarity of many of the attacks made on the great Archbishop of Melbourne. Indeed, if the record of previous convictions -did not stand to their credit, it would be thought incredible that men in clerical garb should forget themselves as they have done. The fierceness of the attacks upon Catholics is not without its compensations. It has shown them both their enemies and their friends, and they know now better where they stand.” In these words Father Maurice O’Reilly passes the only sane. judgment on the parsonical and journalistic onslaught against Dr. Mannix. As Cardinal Mercier bravely stood for the rights of Belgium, when under the armed heel of the Prussian, so Dr. Mannix stands for the rights of Ireland, crushed under the heel of England to-day. Lloyd George now threatens him with dire penalties if he lands in Ireland. In his cool, sarcastic way, Dr. Mannix remarks that if he is sent to gaol he will have scored a point on Cardinal Mercier, whom the Huns never sent to gaol. Well, British fair play is a wonderful thing. You can see it even in sport any time you go to see the Mansis’ boys in Christchurch whipping their opponents at football. I hen the attitude of the crowd will reveal to you what a hopeful future is before the Empire. Incidentally- you will learn there, as you will learn from the coarse attacks made on Dr. Mannix by journalists, what sort of things the British gentlemen are who hate a consistent man, a man who believes pledges are meant to be kept, and that justice is more than a huckster’s catch-cry.