"A TRAINING FOR LIFE"

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 145, 23 June 1930, Page 8

"A TRAINING FOR LIFE"

(To the Editor.) Sir,—"Old Territorial's" letter, which appealed in your .issue of Friday last, illustrates very well the utilisation of religious cant as a method of war-mongering propaganda—a method dear to a certain type of amateur theologian, and savouring strongly of hypocrisy. As a commentary on the dictum of the German Cardinal, it it worth recalling that for upwards of 1500 years the clergy and.regulars of the Catholic Church have been forbidden by Canon Law to bear arms. That canon was declared inviolate by the Concordat entered into between-the Pope and Napoleon, but after the renunciation of the Concordat by the Waldeck Rosseau-Combes bloc,early in' the present century; the clergy and regulars' were made liable to conscription. The French 'anti-Clericals, who later on pretended' to be shocked at the alleged desecration of cathedrals by the Germans, .made no' secret of the fact that they were "out" to destroy Catholicism in France, and they rightly concluded that vocations for the religious life would not flourish in military barracks. Doubtless there were (arid are) French types of Cardinal Faulhaber, but the fact remains that His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. protested ■in the strongest terms • possible, first against the denunciation of a bilateral agreement by one of the parties thereto, and, secondly, against the conscription of the clergy in defiance of the canons to the contrary ordained and enforced by- the Church for centuries. Cardinal Newman pointed out long ago that an obiter dictum, even by a bishop, is not necessarily Catholic doctrine,, and if Cardinal Faulhaber is rightly quoted^by your correspondent, he has given us a very apt illustration, show- i ing how national bias warps the reason., What is the real mind of the Catholic | Church in this connection, however, is shown by the interdiction of the clergy; and religious in Spain from attending bull-1 fights', though allowance is made for the multitude, even as Moses made allowance | for "the hardness of their hearts."—l am, 6tC" P. J. O'REGAN. i - 21st June. . . I