THE GUIBORD BURIAL CASE

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 368, 25 March 1876, Page 3

THE GUIBORD BURIAL CASE

('Pall Mall Grazetta.') The Judicial Committee ordered that j Joseph Guibord should be buried in that j part of the Catholic cemetery which is reserved for those who die in communion with the Church. In a sense the order has been executed, for his body now lies in the grave in which he had designed it to be laid But the character of the. ground has been changed by the act of the ecclesiastical authorities. It is now a grave in the Catholic cemetery, but not of it, The bishop has laid it under an interdict, and it has in consequence become a spot to be shunned instead of reverenced. Ought the State to accept such an evasion of its commands as an adequate fulfilment of them ? Ought it not rather to insist upon the removal of the interdict and the restoration of the ground to its ordinary condition as part of a Catholic cemetery ? There are things the performance of which is only a question of outlay. It may or may not be worth while to take the trouble of achieving them ; but. provided that the necessary trouble is taken, there, is no douht as to the result. 1 here ar« others again which no exertion of power can make sure of, because they relate/ to mutters which in the last resort lie bey ond material control. Things which the/civil power can do by its own agents, if tl,ie order given to some one else to do tl/,em is disobeyed, belong to the first class Things that can only be done by the p/erson to whom the order is irsued beloi jg to the second class A prudent Government may order a horse to be taken /to the water, but it will be chary of giiVing orders that he be made to drink. /

'J'he application of these considerations to the G.uibord case is simple enough. 'J'he need for the intervention o/i the civil power was obvious, because soci'ety rests on the due observance ol contract, and here was a contract on the part of t'me Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authorities to allow Joseph Guih u'd to be buried i.m tikre grave he had purchased, unless it/eoiaiki be shewn that he had broken the c/iredilfcns under which his body was to be/admitted to the ce ■ etery. The Judicial Committee, to whom the case came /up c-n appeal from the highest Canadian court, decided that there had been no breach of these conditions on ihe part of Gijifoord, and decreed that burial in the giave he had bought must be allowed to Ijis body. After this order had been given the state stood pledged to employ its whole force in giving effect to it. There was no reference in this order to the nature -of the conditions. No opinion was: expressed as to the propriety of the action which had been taken against Guiboid during'his lifetime by the authorities of His Church. It was alleged that Guibord had incurred a certain specified ecclesiastical censure which carried with it j certain consequences, of wh'ch exclusion from the Oatnolie cemetery was one The Judicial Committee said nothing on the point whether the ecclesiastical censures in question could properly be incurred by acts such as those of Uuibord; it simply said that there was no evidence that, the cen r sure required to sustain exclusion from the cemetery had ever been passed. C< nsequently, there had been no breach of the conditions on his side, and there must be no want of performance on the side of the

ecclesiastical authorities. And when the time for performance came there wds no want of performance. .The Judicial Committee had ordered that G uibord should lie in a certain grave, and in that grave he lies. It looked at one time as though there would be resistance, and as though the whole military force of the colony might be needed to ensure obedience to the order. But at the last moment the Church devised a middle course—a modus vivendi which excused good Catholics Irom offering any opposition to the admission of the body into the cemetery, while it quieted the passions aroused by the thought of its remaining there. Guibord's right to lie in the piece of ground he had contracted for was recognised; but the bishop made certain statements about the ground which, in the eyes of those whoac- j I cept them, made this recognition valuelessThe ecclesiastical authorities are in the position of a man who, being compelled to> make over land which he has agreed tosell, consoles himself by telling his neighbors that it is so barren that the purchaser will make nothing out of it. 'J hose who believe him will agree with him that he has lost nothing by the transaction, but the court which has enforced the contract is only concerned to see that the purchaser gets the land. If ecclesiastical considerations had been imported into the action of the Judicial Committee, and their judgment had read like a pamphlet against Vaticanism, it is probable that the Canadian Catholics would have declared themselves persecuted ; that the bishop would have been ready with a non possumus in answer to every suggestion of compromise, and that, except while the cemetery was in possession of the military, Guibord's body would not have been suffered to lie peaceably in the grave. All this has been avoided, because the State has gone on its ovn way, has enforced the observance of its laws, and has shown neither fear on the one side nor favor on the other. Iso doubt there are some enthusiastic partis ms notably among the Canadian Orangemen, who think the burial of Guibord in the Catholic Cemetery but a half measure. No service, they will say, has been read over his grave ; on the contrary, the bishop has cursed the ground in which he lies. The State should not have suffered itself to be defied in this way." It should have insisted, if not on the performance of t'ne prescribed funeral rites, at least on "/the removal of the interdict. Any ;juch. decree as this would have gone ui the the teeth of the principle mentioned above. Burial in a certain place may prudently be ordered, because ii can,, if necessary, be enforced But. burial with particular words, when these words derive all their value from being uttered by a person who cannot be made to say them, cannot be enforced, and therefore cannot prudently be ordered. In '.ike manner no one but the bishop can remove the interdict pronounced against Guibord's grave, and, supposing that thf bishop prefers vj go to prison rather thfvi remove ii:, victory ; must eventually deela'/e itself on his side t if he has the resolution to hold o?at loner enough. These are considerations which may seem of little moment to fanatics;, but they will be of very real importance in the eyes of a Government whic'n is accustomed to compare means with /ends and to count the cost of what it undertakes.