FRITTERING AWAY POWER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 9

FRITTERING AWAY POWER.

It often occurs to me that by lay Catholics having too many diutinct separate societies for the promotion of Catholic interests, they f i itter away their power. We have Hibernian Australian Benefit Societies, Father Mathew T.A. Societies, Christian Doctrine Societies, &c. These are all good. Yet only a very few of the Catholic community in each place join them, and they maintain but a languid port of existence, showing but small energy or enthusiasm. It is numbers that give life and enthusiasm to any society, as a general rule. Why cannot we have some general Catholic lny association to suit all tastes — religious, intellectual, and political — wherever the Catholic body is sufficiently numerous ? This general association should be subdivided into " sections " like the " Social Science Congress " at home, each section to manage its own " department." The entire " congress " would no doubt like some degree of i iterest in all the various sections. A leading object of such general congress should be to promote innocent amusement;, especially by books, music, and theatricals for the young, and ladies might be expected to take a leading p irt in all this. Next to the priesthood, the Catholic ladies are the most powerful for good whenever they put forth their hand among their own community. Shakespeare tells us that they who have no music in them are fit for anything bad. Of course contrariwise, they who love music or promote it iff others must be fit for every good thing. Music atid theatricals and amusements genernlly, like every good thing else, may be misused and made subsenient to vice in some shape 5 but if conducted under ecclesiastical supervision, there woold be little clanger in that. The nuns lmve innocent " dialogues " in their convents, and capital fun they give to old aDd young. Why should not wo ourselves have the same ? There are suitable dramas published in England for Catholic schools, and these not of a very tame kind either ; and amusing Catholic " illustrated" periodicals are now being also supplied by the Catholic press at home and in America. A congress or Catholic "association might do a good turn by importing these to furnish a good reading room and circulating library for the young, to be open two or three days a week, or even every evening. We Catholics aie often slow to begin a good work, but when once we do set about it, we do it thorough j at least so it is in the old country, and ought to be bo here too. In Dunedin I see you have a Catholic circulating library. The same should exist in all the chief centres of population iv the colony, at the Thames and Auckland more especially. No doubt this is only a question of a short time. Stir up your readers. In this aa in everything with good Catholics the clergy must lead us aud originate. They art Jo us et orijo loni.