ARCHBISHOP O'SHEA AND ORANGEMEN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 202, 15 May 1918, Page 6

ARCHBISHOP O'SHEA AND ORANGEMEN

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—As the present occupant of the Master's chair in the Loyal Orange lodge, No. 18, Palmerston North, I Jiave to ask that you will be good enough to givo publicity to the following pro. test, which was unanimously adopted at our lodge meeting held on Thursday evening, when the attack recently mado by Archbishop O'Shea npon Orangemen caiue under discussion, that being the first opportunity our members had of dealing with it since its deliverance on April'2B:"Tliat, in view of the uncalled-for and wholly-unprovoked attack mado upon members of tho Orange Order by Archbishop O'Shea at St. Joseph's Church, Wellington, oil Sunday, April 25, as communicated to the Wellington papers and published by them the following day, the members of the Loyal Orange Lodge, No. 18, Palmerston North, conceive it to bo their duty to enter a public protest against the slanderous statements then made, seeing that they affect the fair famo and good name of Orangemen. So far from 'cursing and reviling' their fellows, which Archbishop O'Shea conceives to bo their customary practice, the Orangemen of the British Empire are solemnly pledged to fear God, honour the King, and to uphold the Constitution, and consequently their membership is confined to men of Christian thought and feeling, who are loyal subjects of His Majesty King George V. The order exists further to uphold the Protestant religion, and it is its defence of Protestant truth, based upon Biblical teaching, that really forms the gravamen of its offence in the eyes of Roman Catholic prelates and clerics. Believing firmly as it does that the whole superstructure of British liberty and justice has been built up on Protestant teaching and practice, the lodge points out that Orangemen deny to none those rights they claim for themselves in matters ot faith and conscience, together with the inalienable) right of all men of Bntinh birth and citizenship to uphold and defend these Biblical principles apart from which their order would not exist, its very constitution being based upon the Word of God, which remains an open Boole in its lodges all each of its meetings and which it is pledged to preserve, as such, for tho benefit ot nianr kind generally." .- Perhaps, Sir, you will permit me to add that during tho whole of my connection with the Orange Order I have never known, either inside or out of its lodge meetings, any Orangemen to have indulged in the "cursings and renhnga of their fellows" which Archbishop O'Sbca declared took place amongst them during Aukio week in Wellington, and 1 am satisfied that such things exist only in the over-heated imaginations ot the Archbishop hi.iisolf.-l i am ( ,^c., BNE> W.M., L.0.L., No. 18, Palmerston N. Palmerston North, May 11, 1918.