Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 37, 30 September 1925, Page 22

Current Topics

Protestant Countries -/If exceptionally they are spent in, say, the felt; is -a popular delusion in- Britain and building and adorning of a home, the taste America, and also in New Zealand, that manifested in that home is such -'as; to set Protestant countries are superior to Cath- any artist s teeth on edge. The tastes or the olic countries, and that this superiority is dividend drawers are m general no better. due to the influence of Protestantism. Bri- A large proportion of the dividend spend, '.tain and America are referred to as countries in S . ls .» manifestation of 7crude, savage of great wealth,.and this is said to be due - v f m^ £ U consists m the mere advertising to Protestant ascendancy. Britain may be » f th * fact that the spender is a drawer of very wealthy, but precious little of her wealth lar S 6 dividends. That is his pleasure. The .finds its way among the masses of the peo- tast f s manifested by some of the best classes >-, u-i "a i.- i.- i .I x. ii w,tyi---~* of dividend drawers, the remains or an old pie, while statistics show that the bulk or "* . u**"**' * '..,. - ... ~- , -..•:-. . '. Vi j j. • \iZi. aristocracy, are practically identical with m American laborers do not receive living , -■«.,, «*> ,t> «- , -, j , -iv • i '■•. ■•» r ~ a j. ii • -j. „t those of the redskins — hunt wild animals, wages. As far as it affects the majority of ... „ • . , • ..' ®si '—'''' i -n x x j. '!"'■• ii - to reioice in muscular exercise, to eat flesh, ,the people Protestant prosperity is a myth. J ,/,./,- , , ' T , , ' Catholic countries, such as Spain and Italy, to consume alcoho ic stimulants. In order to Catholic countries, such as Spain and Italy, "have, on the other hand, many advantages measure accurate y the tastes, the pleasures have, on the other hand, many advantages „ , . . , , <. . -i- - countries have not. It is of the majority or the members of our civili--which Protestant countries have not, It is ...„,. , , „ ~ . 8835 that Madrid, a city of a million in- satlou it ls sufficient to do a round of their said that Madrid, a city or a, million in- , . i u-i. ~4. l j only one murder last year. places of amusement, of our theatres, of our habitants, had only one murder last year. l . , ' . ' , , , „„ •Compare that record with New York's or music halls, to inspect our book shops. The Compare that record with I\ew lork s or , , ~- ■,-,■ ? t „j r - i c ,i Ti v ii i real concrete measure of the condition or -London s. As for the Italians, all who go ..... ~ , , , -' u i. .1 • i -4.1 xi • i ' our civilisation is displayed, not bv our Ir.about them are impressed with their beau- ..,, , . -, ',, '. . »■ , -,-f.;i ~ 4.- ii 4. • j.* i i political economists and their figures, but titul national characteristics due as much : „ r __ „ -.,, , „ .-. ? . , , * I 4.1, • r* xi i- c -4.1 x xi • t x- bv W..H. Smith and Son and their bookIto their Catholic faith as to their Latin *,. "__ ~,. ~ . , .-■■ - . , n„i -d x« x„ x . . . • xi -d x stalls. \\. 11. Smith and Son are the real blood. Protestant missionaries in the East? .... . ~.,,.. •„ . x . •• \'. 'x r •■-•... x 4«- ~ visible representatives or our dividend civi--just now are making a strong point of the ... v. ...... . ~- '■■•■-, - „x ™ ixi e-n x"•■''• 14 • • i hsation. Our civilisation, in the opportuni.,:great wealth of Britain and America m order ..„>,,. , , ... /,% Wit ■ „, R xi, n • xi -xi c xi ties it affords tor the satisfaction or the most •: to impress the Orientals with a sense of the ~,,,, . , . . . - c „_ • „-x ~e -n x j„ x- nxi i. highlv-developed human desires is greater superiority or Protestantism over Catholic- L , ..... . . * . * ';-'«. mi ■ „ .i • i i xxi than any civilisation in the past. But in ism. They say nothing, however, about the L , ■ •-,,.,,, _„„ , c"*xx-i i i the enormous majority of the members or our masses or poverty-stricken humans who are :.,.,. „ ', ° , . , x.A ; j'• • i i-i civilisation those human desires have not rorced to herd in noisesome slums which , , , , ~ , ~ :• . ,-i „„ i , ~ ~, , r ~ been developed; .thev have-on the contrary stand as a reproach to the wealth that can , , •*. , i , .., , ~ " x i x . , j-x' -x • j been stamped out. In great literature they tolerate such conditions at its very door. , , , T ~ , , ~ ' -.rni, •'■'.•"■ '•'. ™ ,x- c ." x ....■.:■'•■,. xi take no pleasure. In great thought they Jhe accumulation of great wealth is not the , , , T . ~ fe x , J :•;; x c i- • • -i- x- xi ~' , take no pleasure, in science they take no test of religion or civilisation: the use that , T , • , Ll . , , ;. ~„j. ~c -x ■ xi x x -r> i i pleasure. In great art they take no pleats made of it is the test. People are known T • ■' b 1 ~ ; . . l .x t, v.-iu • i -i-x x i sure. In great drama they take no pleasure, not so much by their ability to make money T , ■ . ~ ~. • , l T , ,i . i• i xi i-j -r " in great music thev take no pleasure. In as by the manner in which they spend it. In ..,,- < x- : , . , ,i • x ~ • • a,- i nxi v • j • i the very questions upon which the existence countries in which Catholicism predominates c xi 11 :. , . , U i • i . j ./, - n or the world urgently and poignantly dewealth is used in accordance with reason and i xu *x i • i x * xi "1 . , : - nnA - i , j , , . -xi xi pends they take no interest. Any theatrical good morals; but what is wrong with those . . , , , , ~ - , ■■-■-■, . .. , x , ,ti • , r • , manager, any art dealer, any bookseller, any secular countries which are stvled Protestant ..-,.7 i-x . : • n +i,„ixi, A ii i 'it xi publisher, any newspaper editor, anv musi,is that the people who have had the oppor- ■ «*■ -. -i, lii xi! x rnrrr\o^ a.-/•■■ ~ c i • i i - cian ' ai, y artist will tell von that THOSE tunity of making much money have never TT TVfa vrV p „. v ' T ~ - , -i ji. x j x IHIM«S DO I\OT PAY. In other words, . learned how to spend it. , - , , , , , ~ .-•••' m -,..:." . / . . - people do not want to spend their money

Dividend Civilisation upon such satisfactions. What does pay in To those who have developed swelled head drama is what the Revues provide; what does from gloating over the -greatness and gran- pay in literature is what W. H. Smith and deur of the civilisation in great Protestant Son 'M I : what does pa in music is 'The empires we commend the following,- wheh Bin - : Boys ?: " hat does pay in thought are was published some time ago in the English- the leading articles in the Morning Post." Memew :

l Our present civilisation is really higher Censure for Bishop Barnes than any in r the past because we do possess' Bishop Barnes of Birmingham evidently is in greater abundance means of higher satis- as great a nuisance to his own people' as 'he faction, of higher interests. But the actual; f W -to those of other faiths. His frequent inmanifestation of that higher quality, : tlieV^'.'suiting references to the Catholic Church and actual use of those . available means, is ap- to the Anglican High Church party have parent only in the few, the very few. 1 The caused the English Church -Union to appeal rest remain barbaric; The way in which the to the /Archbishop' of Canterbury, asking vast majority of the members of our civilisa- Grace to bid -the Bishop hold his tongue, tion spend their wages or- their v dividends _ The appeal is couched in dignified terms," but shows .• that they are barbarians, that is, the essence of it is that the English Church primitive, uncultured, unevolved. /You know Union does not .think it becoming that an the way in which the wages of the wage- Anglican bishop should, be an ordinary Nojearners- are usually spent. * They are spent Popery .ranter, and that, , all things: conin alcoholic stimulants, in fornication, in '.. sidered, Bishop Barnes is making an inamusements of the most- barbaric kind, .in; tolerable nuisance ./.of himself.; So say all cinema shows of the /usual blue-murder type, of/us.- ,- : ,

An Exasperating Church . The Catholic Church cuts into everything, interferes with everything, and, up to' point, exercises control even over those bodies ;' that repudiate her as a stumbling-block to progress. Of late years a large number of representative Protestants, finding that large ' families entail a good deal of responsibility, have discovered that patriotism demands a declining birth rate; It is a mark of the modern Pharisee that he always has a sanctified motive upon which to hang his cowardice ... and selfishness. Therefore, the ‘advocates' of birth control try to make a virtue out of shirking their obligations by saying that the Empire will collapse unless large families are discouraged. But a disturbing thought, however, arrests the attention of a writer in the London Outlook. . .’“The Roman Catholic Church,” he says, “has made up its mind quite definitely on the subject [of birth con- - trol] ; and I invite the attention of the Bishop of Birmingham and the Dean of St. Paul’s—both of whom are advocates of birth control the fact that one result of this attitude is that- the Catholic population is going up and Protestant down all over the world. I do not in .the least - suggest, of course, that the Vatican was influenced by this consideration (which, so far as . I understand its premises and arguments, seems to me logically flawless), but it is at least a point of some practical importance. If the Catholics are going to produce, children’ and the Protestants are not, then it does not really matter very much how loudly the Pro- 1 ' testant hierarchy denounce the lay world for breeding—from its worst stocks, ’j'he time will come when the Catholic survivors will rewrite history in very different terms, and the Protestants, having birth-controlled i themselves out of existence, will find it diffi- ' cult to answer.”

Catholics and Anglo-Catholics English Catholics are not greatly impressed with the Anglo-Catholic movement. Henry C. Watts, writing in America i, tells ns why. There exists to-day in England nothing so entirely and unmistakably English as the Catholic Church. On, every side, by cathedrals, by titles, by customs, and by traditions, people are reminded of England’s Catholic past. But between the Catholic past and the present stands the Reformation and all that followed from it. It marked the parting of the ways for many in England. Some chose the way that led to suffering, death, and v a clear conscience; others rode to wealth and power with troubled souls. The Anglo-Catholics of to-day are the lineal descendants of those .who would not suffer for the faith the plain Catholics are the lineal descendants of those who paid the . price and kept the faith. ,> The difference is too great to be bridged over by mere imitation of Catholic ceremonies. • Catholics see ' a non-Catholic ecclesiastic, nominated by the Prime Minister of the day/ sitting in the Chair of St. Augustine,- bearing an honored title conferred by the Roman See upon the, Apostle of the English, and held by his sue-? j cessors. They think of tfeir ancestors ruling ' the historic Church back for more than four-

. . ■ ■- ■ i: - -■ 1 ---r-': ' u. teen hundred years; and then hear with \ amazement their Church of to-day contemp- '■ tuously referred to as the “Italian Mission,” y in the attempt to label as foreign that which is the most ancient and .English thing in England. The zeal and sincerity, the learning and piety of the Anglo-Catholics are not held cheaply by the Catholics of England, whose generous acknowledgment is in sharp contrast to the treatment meted out to the high-churchmen by the extreme Evangelicals in the Established Church. But beyond that, human justice cannot expect the English Catholics to go. There is a past that stretches too far back, a tradition that is too crowded with greatness, an army of martyrs whose / blood has been too lavishly poured out in England, for the English Catholics to make as much as a single gesture that would imply /the denial of even one drop of the martyrs’ blood. ' There was a day, in 1559, when the English had to make a. choice, and they chose. The English Bishops, who were Englishmen and not Italians, rejected the Elizabethian settlement, and chose rather to go into exile, and the supporters of the Reformed Religion . stepped into their bishoprics. s The AngloCatholics of to-day trace their religious de- ' scent from these last, and from no other source. Their fathers chose to go from the Catholic family in the sixteenth century; the sons, to-day, choose to adopt some of the customs and manners of that family. But the English Catholics, remembering the blood that has been shed, beginning at Tyburn with the Carthusians in May, 1535, ap<J eniding also at Tyburn with Archbishop Plunket in July, 1681, have a simple and, it seems, reasonable duty: either to declare to their Anglican fellow-countrymen that imitation of Catholic customs is imitation, and nothing more; or else by their silence let it be implied that Fisher and More, Campion and Plunket, were mistaken and deluded.

'Bulls” and “Bears” - Some years ago Frank Norris wrote a book which lie called The Pit. He dealt minutely with the great gambles in American wheat, and he showed how the food supply of a nation was made the sport of Wall Street gamesters. The book was such a damning indictment of the whole commercial system, that many thought the picture was overdrawn. Senator Shipstead, of Minnesota, contributes an article to the Dearborn Independent in which he discusses the annual “fleecing of the lambs.” The Echo, commenting on the Senator’s article, says that the gambling in wheat is not restricted to actual wheat. For every bushel of actual wheat there are scores of bushels represented by “futures.” On March 13 last, Chicago alone sold 527,000,000 bushels of wheat “futures” or double the world’s visible supply. Thus, .the main food of 112,000,000 persons becomes a counter in a gambling game, and the producers have but little chance of honest marketing. The Government itself too .often helps to develop the ,'A - * * inflated price bubble which is the inevitable cause of the ultimate collapse. Early last season the Department of Agriculture aided the “bull” propaganda by estimating the

American crop as below normal. . Then it heralded rumors ..that there - was. a world scarcity , In both cases it was wrong. The Federal Reserve „ System loaned the speculators on the stock exchange “call” money at the low rate of two per cent., and aided speculation by realeasing a tide of. loanable funds estimated at , more than a million dollars. In the short period of . ninety days the level of loading stocks was lifted 25 points and added $6,000,000,000 to their picture valuation. When the truth-about the grain crop leaked out there was a terrific collapse on the stock exchange, and the investors found they had been swindled by the “bull” propaganda both in industrial stocks and in grain. _ Mr. Shipstead expresses the “hope that the timer-may come, under a free and sometime independent press, when such a national sham as that we have just witnessed shall not prosper under the Government and become a national disgrace.” It all goes to show what can happen to V people when they throw first principles out of the window. It is then a case of everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost. About Galileo It would be too much to expect that Galileo would escape the Tennessee trial. Under the management of Mr. Clarence -Harrow he made his bow at Dayton in his historic role of “the martyr to science.” Mr, Benedict Elder contributes an interesting article to the Fortnightly Review to show that Galileo was not in any sense a martyr to science. Mr. Elder points out that Galileo is credited with being the first to hold the theory that the earth moves. This is contrary to fact. He did not prove that the earth moved, and he was not the first to hold the theory. The ancient Greeks held it before him, as did also Nicetas of Rome. Philolaus of Egypt, and Aristarchus of Samos. The theory was not proved until the middle of the last century, when Foucault invented the gyroscope, by means of which he measured the motion' of the. earth, and for the first time demonstrated by mathematical proof that the earth does move. Galileo tried to prove it by the phenomenon of the tides, blit his claim in this respect "is now recognised as a grave error. Galileo has a claim to greatness for his laws of falling bodies, his proportional compasses, his demonstrations in statics,' his principles of virtual velocities, and his inventions. But he is never mentioned in connection with these achievements. It is only as the stalk-' ing horse for propaganda against religion that he is honored. Nicholas of Cusa and Copernicus both held the theory that the earth moves. Yet they were not silenced as Galileo was. The reason was this they did not teach the movement of:the earth as a fact, but as a theory. Galileo, on the other hand, claimed that it was demonstrated and offered the false proofs noted above. The general public, even the educated public, concludes Mr. Elder, must'accept the teachings of science largely on faith; that is to. say, faith- in the competence, the integrity, and the prudence of the scientists, who will not rashly assert that to be a. fact which "is not demonstrated. - Unless those of us who ‘

• - ; • V ‘ , V:. /// have neither the time nor the means for -; the special study necessary to equip‘one’in / the field of science can trust. scientists to teach as a fact only what is fully demonstrated, we cannot put faith in them. In $ Galileos case the Holy Office merely applied this rule. They acted in the interests of / science. They accepted the verdict of the scientists of their day, that Galileo’s “proofs” / were inadequate. They said to him, you are . not able to prove your theory;,, you must therefore follow the example of Cusa and Copernicus and teach it as a hypothesis only. - And science has vindicated their judgment, by rejecting the proofs which Galileo offered . and producing real proofs.

Snake in the Grass ; f file unreasoning and uncompromising hatred which the world nurses against, the Catholic Church peeps out at us in a multitude of trivial acts. The eagerness with: which the newspapers ’misrepresent her in' small affairs shows that they are ever on the 4 watch for an opportunity to deal her a staggering blow. • For example, the Chicago / Daily Tribune, in describing' the flogging of . some prisoners in a Canadian prison, man aged to convey the impression to its reader* that the punishment was inflicted under Catholic direction in a Catholic institution. The story was told in sensational style, and good Protestants shivered as they learned that “the fangs of the 1 cat,’ the medieval avenger, hissed through the air in the high- - walled quadrangle of St, Vincent de Paul’s, and curled across the cringing flesh of three crucified men, until the white skin turned,, livid and blood spurted from the stripes.” After the flogging the prisoners were sent/to the hospital, where they were “spead/J? eagled on their cots and held fast, despite their feeble writliings, while salt was officially rubbed into their wounds.” The Canadian Department of Justice promptly denied the allegations contained in the scur- - rilous article. The official refutation says in part: “A supposed account of the awarding of this punishment has been sent broadcast over the world by a Montreal newspaper. r I he description given of the carrying out ; of this part of the sentence awarded by the % Judge is entirely misleading and incorrect. The punishment was carried out in the most!? humane method _ possible. There were no faintings, no struggles. There was no salt ; used and the men were not placed in hospital. The punishment awarded by the court • was carried out in the presence of- one of the ' inspectors of penitentiaries, a deputy warden - of the institution, and the prison surgeon.” A Catholic exchange points out that the St. Vincent de Paul prison is a State in-/ stitution with which the Catholic Church has ; no connection whatsoever. It derives its name . from the municipality within the precincts '. of-which it is situated. In itself this par- ■ ticular calumny counts for very little; but it is disturbing to think that the men who/ lie so, easily -and so cunningly about small affairs are in - a position to shock the ears of millions with a serious slander. And it is miscreants of this type who are always £ : bleat in g about the" freedom •of the press! “- ■