ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

New Zealand Tablet, 18 August 1921, Page 11

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

Reader. We recommend The Catholic World, as a good American monthly. America is a splendid weekly review, and for reliable Irish news you cannot get better than The Irish World. We get several papers through Linehan (Melbourne) and Gordon and Gotch (Dunedin).

G.R. —Sometime we may find space for your list of apt quotations. The subject is not of general interest. Horace and Shakspere are, we think, the most widely quoted. You remember the story of the man who was so pleased to find that Shakspere was full of “quotations” that he knew already. Many popular sayings are also to be found in Gay. It is hard to beat that line of Goldsmith’s: “The loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” There is much comfort in reflecting on it when a raucous cachinnation arouses you from your first slumbers.

W.M.Your friend is wrong. There is evidence to show that, bishops were distinguished from priests in the early Church. Clement of Rome (A.D. 101) and Ignatius Martyr mention them. St. Jerome says (Epistle 101): “What, except ordination, can a bishop do that a priest cannot?” As for your friend’s opinion on the monks of the Middle Ages you can tell him that the boot is on the other foot. We, not they, are ignorant. The Protestant historian, Maitland, speaks of the old monasteries as “repositories of the learning which then was, and well-springs of the learning that was to be; as nurseries of art and science, giving the stimulus, the means, and the reward to invention, and aggregating round them every head that could devise and every hand that could execute.”

Inquirer. There is no doubt that the mind has a great influence over bodily ailments. Hypnotism, suggestion, and education of the will have wrought cures that astonished people. Often their success lay in the fact that persons were simply persuaded to do things which they were quite well able to do once they regained control over their nerves. You do not hear, however, of people shedding cork legs, glass eyes, etc. The prayer and the exercise of faith recommended by Ratana have ■ not yet restored lost limbs or eyes, but may quite well heal functional troubles in ways known to nerve specialists. Don’t expect miracles to be as common as your meals. It is far wiser to go to a doctor when you are ill: “Honor the physician when you have need of him; for the Most High hath created him.” Remember that superstition is a sin against faith by excess. Which reminds us that once upon a time we took up a statue of St. Anthony and found a ticket for “Tatt’s” under it. It did not win. The Saints do not concern themselves in such matters, in fact, like the Council of Churches, they seem to disapprove of racing and betting. However, being saints, they do not make themselves a nuisance about it.