THE LENTEN PASTORALS OF THE VICTORIAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2218, 25 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE LENTEN PASTORALS OF THE VICTORIAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS.

The Melbourne Leader in a recent issue says :— The Lenten pastorals of the Archbishop of Melbourne and the Bishops respectively of Ballarat and Sandhurst, read last Sunday in the various Catholic churches of the colony, contained the usual fulmination against our State system of education, together with warnings against the evil-effects of reading a certain class of periodicals and newspapers, and attending the theatres or masonic lodges, all such practices being calculated to demoralise their flocks and imperil the faith. Happily for society papal encyclicals and prelatic pastorals have long since ceased to frighten people, the purpose they mainly serve being almost identical with that of the" big gooseberry," the bunyip, or the sea serpent, iv the silly season. The pastorals with " damnable iteration " travel over the same well beaten tracks. We have often repeated the statements of grievances alleged by the Catholic Church with the modest demands the concession of which can alone satisfy her. Living in the past in a medieval atmosphere and shutting their eyes to the progress of modern science, historic criticism and the march of human enlightenment, the faithful fondly imagine that the thunders of Rome and the anathemas of her priests retain their whilom portentous ring. If the views of the Catholic bishops may be judged by their pastorals they would not yiily inculcate upon the youth of their charge the duty of isolating themselves from their Protestant fellow citizens, but they would prohibit them from reading the daily papers. They would confine their course of periodical reading to the old fashioned columns of the Advocate, witt its never-ending caoiue over the grievances of Ireland. They would prevent Catholics from attending theatres, and so keep them in intellectual leading strings as to force them to abstain from novels. In other words, they would have Irish Gatholica live apart from the general community, and form a colony among those of their own faith, living select and separate, like the Chinese- in their oamps or the Jews in their ghettooa. j

Scandal.— Bofore marriage, Bays a honpecked one, a givl speaks to her lover with her eyes— after marriage with her tongue.