BOOK NOTICES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 3, 18 January 1923, Page 21

BOOK NOTICES

Almanac of the Diocese of Maitland and Family Home

Annual, 1923. a

A calendar (that helps the clergy until the Ordo appears), interesting diocesan and parochial information, lists of days of fast, abstinence, special devotion, and holy days of obligation, historical particulars of the various districts, and many other valuable features make the Maitland Almanac an Annual worthy of imitation in ©very diocese. This year it also includes an account of the jubilee celebration which brought from all parts, numbers of bishops, priests, and laymen to Maitland to manifest their 1 esteem and regard for the venerable Bishop, whom may God : preserve : for many years to come. " With the Almanac came his Lordship’s greeting for the Christmas season, expressed on a card containing a reproduction of the dearest of the old'ltalian Madonnas. Not Raphael’s, not Luini’s, not Dolci’s, but Sassaferato’s. •'

Blue and White, St, Patrick’s College (Wellington) Annual. • Our congratulations to the Editor on his success with

the latest college annual. It is worthy of the oldest Catholic college in New Zealand, the apple of our venerable Metropolitan's eye. The illustrations, as usual, are excellent. ' The articles are of the high standard one associates with St. Pat's Annual. Two members of the able, and devoted staff of professors have had the good fortune to tour Europe during the past twelve months, and, as they are Fathers Schaeffer and Gondringer, we need not add that their contributions to the Annual are of great interest. W.e like the Editor's ideal for the college, that it should be a real alma mater, a fostering-mother to all its pupils, past and present, and that professors and all should form one grand St. Pat's family. A spirit of that kind is worth preserving and parents would be well advised to take it into account when thinking of where they will,send their sons to college. Its past Rectors have in a remarkable degree won the respect and reverence of the boys, and it would be hard to find a better, man than the present holder of the office to replace them. » <*X> s .

Manly Blazes the Trail

HOW CARDINAL MORAN FOUNDED ST. PATRICK’S ' COLLEGE.

The decision of the Victorian Hierarchy to establish a Seminary at Werribee Park directs attention, to St. Patrick’s Ecclesiastical Seminary, Manly, which has blazed the trail so far as the training of an Australian priesthood is concerned. Hundreds of priests have passed from its doors to labor on the Australian mission, and it has trained lads from practically every diocese in the Commonwealth, Whether it is nationalised in the future or not, it can proudly claim to be the pioneer seminary, and as such will have its own place in Australian Catholic history. 1 A peep at the story of the founding of Manly is, therefore, just now interesting. We take our information from an article entitled “The Cradle Days of Manly,” which was published in 1916 and of which the author was Father

Patrick M. Haydon. He tells us that in the episcopate of’ Archbishop Folding an Imperial grant allocated the present church lands on the hillside of Manly as a site for an episcopal residence. But the rocky slopes were forbidding, and to Dr. Folding the hill looked hopeless enough. Indeed the hill itself slumbered, after that, through forty dreamless years. The tale proceeds:

During an excursion around Sydney Harbor shortly after his arrival in Australia, Archbishop Moran visited Manly Cove. The Church lands were pointed out to his Grace, probably with a degree of humor by those who regarded the uninspiring hillside as qn impossible legacy. But Dr. Moran saw further than the wilderness of rock and the wild riot of ti-tree scrub. He looked long at the spashes of September gold waving in the aureate arms of the wattle-strewn hill. Then, gradually, the site took new form. Broad, gravelled avenues pierced the bosom of the rise, Towering pines appeared, ranged themselves in comely^order, and stood stock-still on- the sloping face, A vision of white came over all, a dream of the college to be — creation of delicately worked freestone, crowned with a massive Norman tower, raised high above the roaring sea. Irreclaimable no longer! The barren hill was won. St. Patrick’s in that instant vwas won, and albeit in dreams as yet, stood high and mighty against the east, with its square front peering with confidence into the heart of Australia’s west.

The first Plenary Council .of the Australian Church assembled in Sydney towards the end of 1885. The Archbishop of Sydney, who had been meanwhile elevated % to the Cardinalate, chose this as > the most suitable time for the inception of Manly College. Accordingly, on November 19, 1885, a large number of the clergy (including 14 bishops from the Plenary Council) and laity, proceeded to Manly for the .laying of the foundation stone. The ceremony was brief. The architects (Messrs. Sheerin and Hennessy) presented the Cardinal with a silver trowel and an ivory mallet, and, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, the foundation stone was declared well and truly laid. ,The clergy then sang -the “Magnificat” and the “Laudato Pueri,’’ after which an adjournament was made to Shelly. Beach, where over 200 guests were entertained at luncheon by his Eminence the Cardinal.