WHAT BISHOP CLEARY SAYS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2068, 16 December 1919, Page 3

WHAT BISHOP CLEARY SAYS.

SACHAMENTAL WINE. In “The Month,” Bishop Cleary writes as follows: —Many Catholics were, during the last campaign, sincerely concerned lest National Prohihilion might result in rendering it impossible lo secure the fermented wine required for the Sacrifice of the Mass, the great, central net of our worship. With Catholics, such an apprehension —whether well or ill grounded —was a natural expression of their faith and devotion. The peculiar feature of this fear was the extent to which it was exploited by financial interests to which Catholics’ supreme act of worship lias hitherto been apparently no more sacred than a game of poker. Was it the Walrus or the Carpenter that “wept like anything to see such quantities of sand’ upon the windswept shore? No matter, it seems to ns that neither anxious Catholics nor their troubled non-Catholic friends in the “trade” need “weep like anything” over the matter of sacramental wine, in the event of National Prohibition taking New Zealand, as it follows the westward track along which the Wlar of Empire takas hs way. The N.Z. Licensing Amendment Act of 191 b, section 19, subsection says; “Nothing in lids section shall extend or apply to the importation, manufacture or sale in accordance with regulations made by the Governor-General in Council in that behalf, of intoxicating liquor for medicinal, scientific, sacramental, or industrial purposes exclusively.” A letter from (ho then Hon. At-torney-General (Sir Francis Dillon Bell) "conveys the .substance of the; proposed regulation in the following words; — “1 am authorised by the Cabinet to slate that, in the event of Prohibition being carried, regulations under sub-sect ion 2 of section 19 of the Licensing Amendment Act (1918) will provide for the importation hv the several churches of wine for sacramental purposes, in such quantities as any church may require for lengthened periods, the churches being required to give sufficient security that the wine so imported shall not he used for other than sacramental purposes.”*