ARCHBISHOP MANNING AND THE ATTEMPT ON BISMARCK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 75, 3 October 1874, Page 14

ARCHBISHOP MANNING AND THE ATTEMPT ON BISMARCK.

-UH.ATIKG- on tho words of the Jews to Our Blessed Lord : "Do we not say well that thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil ? " His Grace remarked that every Christian, and much more every Catholic, must lrorn the heart deplore and detest every attempt at the crime of assaseination. It was an act of mad fanaticism and a great moral crime. .No Jess a moral crime and cruel wrong, however, was it to charge such a crime on the Catholic Church. The "leading journal" hao" used such words as these : "The Romish .Church will find that it has lost by this act of fanaticism ;" and yesterday, after gathering together all the lies, insinuations, imputations, and suspicions that could be collected from the newspapers of Germany, the writer went on to say that if anything could justify the persecution of Catholics by the German Government, it would be such an event as this. The Archbishop appealed to Englishmen— to honest men— whether this were language that ought to come from men of honor ; whether it did not contain in itself the malice of falsehood ; whether those who wrote »nd pubJished it could not and ought not to have been more correctly informed. Ills Grace then went on to mention the statement alluded to in the last number of the -Tablet '-that the intending murderer of the Chancellor had a mother who is a helpless lunatic, and under restraint as such ; and that he himself had attempted to slab his employer, for which offence he had been imprisoned six months. What would men say, continued the Archbishop, if I were to imitate the language of t he limes, and publicly warn the British Empire that it would find itselfaWby the last act of murder committed by some criminal lunatic? bhould I not be told : " How dare you blacken the British Empue for the crime of one of its subjects 5 a crime for which it is not responsible ; the crane too of a madman." But there exists a settled purpose- on Ihe pun of some men to impute crimes to tho Catholic Church, just : as the Jews reproached the Saviour of the world with bein» ■tinder dmbolicul possessjon. This crime ot public calumny is surely a" crime of no lew black dye than the crime of assassination, for it poisons the public mmd, and its direct tendency is to produce murder and hooushed. The Archbishop concluded by stigmatising the perseouting spirit of the German Government. Its hollow pretexts were, that the Church %vas plc.'tmg agoinst the peace and greatness of the Umpire; nay, against society itself; but these charges deceived no one, although a section of the English people had exnressed its sympathy Wl th ti-em. It is the lawless revolutionary spirit of modern times that is to blame for jhe present disturbed state of Europe— not the Catholic Church. She is accused like the lamb-innocently. It is her divmc laws and tenching alone that can produce peace and happiness amongst the nations of the world." uaj^ueas