Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 14, 22 April 1925, Page 22

Current Topics

The Love letters of Henry VIII From an exchange we learn that the love 1 letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, which * have been discovered in the Vatican Library, ■ of all places, have just been published. The / editor is naturally exercised by the fundamental paradox of the Reformation: a pro- . fligate King who in order to reform the Church kills Sir Thomas More who wears a hair-shirt, and this is how he explains it : “If the religious Henry pursued pleasure, and Luther came out of his monastery and took a wife, it was because God in the sixteenth century was in a jovial mood.” On this a reviewer writes in the New Statesman “Out of idle curiosity I should like to know from the writer of this preface ' in what sort of mood the Almighty found Himself when Luther began to slaughter thousands of peasants who refused to look to him as the fountain of authority. Was it, I wonder, still jovial? Why should not the writer save ns nil trouble by writing a book called The Moods of God, dealing with the whole history.” A “ Burning *’ Question The crematorium question was brought before the Dunedin City Council last week by the report of its Finance Committee. The estimated cost, of construction was given as £2160. The Committee was unwilling to include this expenditure in the proposed outlay for the current year, but it was suggested that if those directly concerned in the venture cared to provide £SOO, the Finance Committee would undertake to furnish the further £I6OO necessary to make the total At the same meeting at which this report was read the Town Clerk read a financial statement, and in the course of it he pointed out that expenditure was increasing, and that if new demands of a pressing nature were to be met, they could be met only by the sacrifice of some items for which provision already had been made. In the face of that statement the Council propose to waste £I6OO upon the passing whim of a small group of well-to-do people who ought to be able and willing to pay for their fads themselves. When the deputation from the Cremation Society waited upon the City Council to present a petition, upon which I the names of clergymen, doctors, lawyers, professors figured as star attractions, it made , more noise than a street-ful of brass bands; yet that gay and glittering pageant cannot drown the squeak of a newly-born kitten when the music is written to the tune of Hurd Cash. If each person included in the galaxy of talent that signed the petition for a crematorium would only tear himself away from a modest five-pound note the total cost £ of.) the gruesome contrivance would be met without strapping any part of it upon the backs of the ratepayers and rent-payers. Evidently the passion for a crematorium I;which burns in the breasts of the cremationist". is only fierce enough to urge them to put their names to a document praying that others bo forced to pay for it. It is easy to

shout for a tiling when the painful operation of separating oneself from money does not come into the picture. There is no need for a crematorium; there is no general demand for it; it would serve no useful purpose that is not served at present by existing facilities; it cannot be justified upon moral, hygienic, economic, or legal grounds. The Municipal Elections will take place in the course of a few days, and ratepayers and rent-payers—especially Catholic ra tepayers and rent-payers—ought to put a plain question to candidates regarding this thing and insist upon receiving a plain answer. People who are prepared to waste £I6OO of public money because a few influential people urge'them to do so are not likely to administer the City’s finances wisely and well. Socialist Sunday Schools Christchurch has a Socialist Sunday School. The teachers in this establishment are amused at the outrageous ideas commonly held regarding these seats of theology, and in order to show how innocent and lamblike are the lessons taught, a teacher writes to an exchange giving an illuminating sample of the' studies engaged in. “For many Sundays now,” lit' writes, “we have been reading together a book called Th e Orit/in of the World, by dlcM illan, a b.nk specially written for boys and girls. 'What ii teaches 1. have put gown in the words that follow.” He then goes on, under the heading of “Cosmic Evolution/” to tnr-e the history of the earth, and to show ho v man appeared. After telling the children with scrupulous exactitude that “the sea was si ill vapor some four thousand million years ago, ’ ho goes on to say : “The earth cooled more and mere , i lien the water became condensed ; it f«-il as a holding rain on the hot crust of the earth. At last a boding ocean formed, dime went on, the waters cooled, and living things appealed in iln.- sea. They evolved from lifeless matter when the right conditions were found. . .” There is much more of the same kind of rubbish, which shows that the erudite gentlemen in charge of the Socialist Sunday School spend their time in stuffing the heads of innocent children with refuse from the pit ol dead and gone theories which Science has dug at its own back door. The Socialist teacher, therefore, in trying to fit his establishment with a character for respectability, unwittingly lias won for it a character for invincible stupidity. Science and Scientists So much for the science of the Socialists. Let ns now turn to the science of the scientists. We shall find that the latter cannot see things half so clearly as the former, and that they are learned enough to admit that their knowledge is very small. If they could only forget about 99* per cent, of what they know already they would be as certain of all things as the Socialists. Here are the opinions of a, few eminent men of science,

and readers will notice that the modesty of their claims is in marked contrast to the i|t> jy dogmatic certainty of those who do not and ■ cannot know anything of importance about 1 the subject of evolution. f Herr Du Bois Reymond, of Berlin University, an avowed evolutionist and materialist, declares that the universe confronts us with seven problems or enigmas for which science can offer no solution. These are: (1) the nature of matter and of force, (2) the origin of motion, (3) the origin of life, (4) the apparently designed order of the universe, (5) the origin of sensation and consciousness, (6) the origin of rational thought and speech, (7) free-will. The first, second, and fifth of these enigmas he regards as transcendental and beyond the possibility of solution. The others, in his judgment, may perhaps be solved some day. “Of the causes which have led to the origination of living matter,” writes Professor Huxley, “it may be said that we know absolutely nothing. . . Science has no means to form an opinion on the commencement of life-—we can only make conjectures without scientific value.” And Darwin: “No evidence worth anything has yet, in my opinion, been advanced in favor of a living being being developed from inorganic matter.” Professor Virchow, the eminent evolutionist, tells ns that “Whoever recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts to discover -a decided support for the (jeneratio acquivoca, in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world will feel it/.' doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of life.” “The more closely,” writes G. V. Bunge, “ aad the more deeply we examine the phenomenon of life, the more we com© to see t ,i at processes which we had thought to explain as results of chemical or physical laws . . . simply deride every attempt at mechanical explanation.” And Dr. Hertwig (1906) writes: “■Tile development of the eye and ear , . . cannot be regarded as a mechanical process. And the same can be said of every process of development, for everywhere we meet with a factor which is absolutely distinct from any form of mechanism factor, too, which has the principal part to play in the cell organism.” We may go on to quote many more authorities who write in the same strain, but enough, has been said to make our cock-sure friends in. Christchurch feel extremely foolish. Faith and Reason Outsiders allege that Catholic belief is an impediment to freedom of research. It i? . worth while investigating the matter that we may see how foolish is the attack made _ on the Church from this angle. First of all, it is well to be clear as to what is the motive and object of research and inquiry. The human mind exists for the sake of truth: truth is its natural object, just as sound is

the object of the hearing and color the object of-vision. Plato wrote long ago, “I -■ - N know nothing that is more worthy of the ' hhdiian mind than truth”; and Pindar sang: . 'Silicon Truth, the mother of sublime Virtue.” Therefore by freedom of research, i rightly understood is meant’freedom for the I truth, the right not to be hampered in the ! search for truth, not to be forced to hold as true what has not been guaranteed to the .intellect as true. On the other hand, freedom against the truth, freedom to ignore .truth, to emancipate the mind from truth should never be claimed by any honest searcher. For it is not freedom in itself, but truth in itself that is the aim of inquiry. Now Christianity requires us to assure ourselves of the certain credibility of its truths, and after such assurance to assent them and accept them on God’s testimony. , Revelation is accepted therefore because we know it comes to us on the testimony of an infallible God.- In this there is no bondage, no constraint, no opposition to the laws of reason. Such truths are then like beacons on the way through life. Because we know they are true they serve as a warning that whatever is not in accordance with them cannot be true, just as when we know that an atfiom in geometry is true, we reject at once whatever conclusion is contradictory to such an axiom. And there is no more bond- . age for truth in the one case than in the other. Truth can never contradict truth; if we arrive at a result in our investigations and find it in opposition to what we have already proved to be true, we at once conclude that the result is erroneous and we abandon it. Similarly, the truth which we receive because Ave know they come from God are a help rather than an impediment in the progress on knowledge. We cannot

separate faith and reason as Protestants do. , Wo cannot assent to contradictory propositions and reconcile them by saying that faith * is a. subjective thing and that it has nothing to do with the intellect. Truth cannot contradict truth. Philosophy is the true handmaid of religion. The sincere Christian knows that faith allows him full freedom for inquiry in every field. The Catholic knows that his Church is the infallible custodian of revelation. The Protestant knows that his Church is no sure guide at all. Hence it is that Protestants can never understand a Catholic’s attitude towards the teachings of the Church, and hence the misunderstandings from which attacks spring. In a word, God is Truth; He made the intellect; all created truth is but a reflex of Himself; and there can bo no real contradiction between revelation and truth. Unless we are prepared to make a god of man and to claim for him infallibility we have no grounds for supposing that the opinions of scientists can be right and the revelation made by God wrong. There is the essential difference between the Catholic and the atheistical attitude to-day. Multi errant quia superhi sunt (many people fall into error because they are proud”), said St. Augustine. Only want of humility and want of religion can make people reject God’s word because it does not square with their ideas. Believers, logical people, humble people, reject their own opinions at once as soon as they find that they do not square with the teaching fo the Church through which God’s revelation comes to us. When Bess Was Queen Anti-Catholic lecturers are fond of accusing the Church of being the enemy of human

liberty .wherever and whenever, she is powerful enough to force her will upon the people. > According to Father Husslein, S.J. the first oppressive,, Labor statutes against women were enacted by a woman. They are contained in the Labor Code of Queen Elizabeth, known as “ 5 Eliz., cap. 41,” and illustrate admirably the summary way in which labor difficulties were settled in the post-Reformation day. A servant problem had evidently arisen with the increase of wealth and luxury on the part of the rich and the deep and hopeless depression of the laboring classes which followed upon the Reformation. To supply .the desired number of domestic servants it was enacted by Queen Elizabeth that unmarried women between the ages of twelve and forty years could be assigned by magistrates to service at such wages as these magisrates should determine. If a woman refused she was committed to ward until she consented. The delicate prison attention bestowed upon such recalcitrants in the days of good Queen "Bess did not encourage any hunger strikes. In practice women might thus he turned over as bondslaves to any employer, against both their • own wish and the will of their parents, or guardians, to labor for any wages the magistrate might assign. There was no merciful limit set to the hours of labor, or the nature of the work that might lie imposed upon them. This proves that, far from re-establishing the human liberty of which the Church is alleged to have robbed the people, the Reformers look an early opportunity of striking a savage blow at that freedom of which the old Church had always been the stout and consistent champion.