WHAT BISHOP CLEARY SAYS.

Otaki Mail, 15 December 1919, Page 3

WHAT BISHOP CLEARY SAYS.

SACRAMENTAL WINE. j Iu ‘‘The Month” Bishop Cleary j writes as follows: Many Catholics were, during the last campaign, sin- j cerely concerned lest National Prohibi- | tion might result in rendering it im- , possible to secure the fermented wine ( required for the Sacrifice of the Mass, the great, central act 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 j fear was tho extent to which it was ex- I ploited by financial interests to which j Catholics’ supreme act of worship has • hitherto been apparently no more . sacred than a game of poker. Was it the Walrus or the Carpenter that “wept like anything to sec such quan- j tities of sand” upon the wind-swept j shore ? No matter. It seems to us that . neither anxious Catholics nor their ! troubled non-Catholic friends 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 Star of Empire takes its way. Tho N.Z. Licensing Amendment Act of ISIS, section 19, subsection 2, says:— ‘‘Nothing in this section shall extend or apply to the importation, manufaeture or sale in accordance with regulations made by the GovernorGeneral in Council in that behalf, of intoxicating liquor for medicinal, scientific, sacramental, or industrial purposes exclusively.’-! A letter from the Hon. AttorneyGeneral (Sir Francis Dillon Bell) conveys the substance of the proposed regulations in the following words'! — ‘‘l am authorised by the Cabinet to stare that, in the event of Prohibition being carried, regulations under subsection 2 of section 19 of the Licensing Amendment Act (1918) will provide for- the importation by 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 be used for other than sacramental purposes,”*