New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JULY 9, 1875. THE 'EVENING STAR' FELICITOUS!

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 115, 9 July 1875, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JULY 9, 1875. THE 'EVENING STAR' FELICITOUS !

++- — Otra contemporary is happy, very happy indeed, in his answer to our statement last week, to the effect that the Liberal Press, which advocated Catholic emancipation, has nothing in common with what is called the Liberal Press of the present day. He says, "On this point we claim to know something more than is afforded by mere reading, as we were personally, though humbly, concerned in forwarding those reforms, which have secured freedom and pros- ! perity to our native country." This reply compels us to modify our affirmation, so far as to admit that there is one i thing in common to the Liberal Press of forty years ao-o and of to-day — and this is the -Editor of the ' Evening Star.' So far, therefore, we freely acknowledge we have been mistaken. But we beg to remind him that the error is infinitesimal ; and would ask him to bear in mind a fundamental principle of logic: A generali ad yarticulare valet coti&ecuUo seel non vice versa, which, we may explain for the benefit of our non-classical friends, amounts to the common saying, " One swallow makes no summer." In reference to this point, the ' Evening Star ' says further, " Eew of the noble leaders whose work is regarded with such ingratitude by the writers in the ' Tablet ' remain." This journal is not open to the charge of ingratitude to these noble leaders. There is not, we think, least justification for the charge of ingratitude. "We have never, so far aB we can recollect, and certainly never intentionally, written one word from which such, a charge could be deduced. "We are very grateful to our friends, to whom our contemporary alludes, notwithstanding they only helped to restore to us that which, was already ours in justice, and which had been ours for centuries before their fathers, whose injustice they endeavoured to undo, had existed. Neither can we forget that it is to our own exertions, and those of oiir great tribune, O' Cornell, that we are mainly indebted for whatever liberties Aye now enjoy. And even these were not restored to us through love of justice, or a desire to make reparation, but through fear of civil war. Still, we are very grateful to Gratia:*, Plunkett, Burke, &c, &c. But these men, were they living to-day,' would make the world ring with their scathing denunciations of the persecution of Bismarck, which is at once mean and cruel. The ' Star' says, " We have ever claimed for. every man the free exercise of his religion, untrammelled by the State; but the ' Tablet' tells us that the Roman Catholic religion requires its professors to obey the commands of the Pope rather than Bubmit to the civil law of Prussia." Not exactly. The ' Tablet ' said, and says, that a Catholic can not obey the Prussian May Laios without ceasing to be a Catholic ; and that, consequently, the end contemplated by these laws is the destruction of the Catholic Church in Germany. At the present moment Catholics have not liberty of conscience in Prussia, they^are placed, by the unjust and persecuting laws of the State, in the position of either apostatising from their religion, or disobeying the May Laws. They cannot obey these laws and remain Catholics. And is not this persecution ? Bismarck says it is not, and our liberal contemporary of Dunedin, an old liberal too, cries, hurrah, noble and liberal Prince, you are not a vile persecutor, nor a cynical story teller, although you banished religions of both sexes from Prussia, without even waiting to ask them whether they would or would not obey the May Laws. Although you have plundered, imprisoned

banished, and deposed bishops and. priests for merely doing what they had been accustomed to do all their lives pre r viously, some of them for the last fifty years, and what bishops and priests are doing daily in every part of the world. Although you have closed all Catholic schools, compelled Catholic children to receive their education from Infidels, Atheists, and Protestants, driven away their pas- . tors from the laity, .and placed these in the utmost spiritual destitution, because they adhere faithfully to * the immemorial teaching and essential discipline of the Church. High and mighty Prince, the great Liberal of the age, the ' Evening Star' says in effect, you are no persecutor, because it is the law of Prussia that commands all Catholics to cease to be Catholics, to abjure the Vicar of Christ ; for is not this great Prussian law to be obeyed, come what will ; it is infallibly right ; in fact, it is above the law of God, which only says, that "He that will not hear the Church let him be to thee as the heathen and publican," whereas the Prussian state law says if you do not prefer itself to the religion of Christ, you aie not such a Prussian as the Government approves. But, according to the teaching of our contemporary, this is far a greater crime than the abjuration of Christianity itself ! ! 0 teinpora, O mores, and has it come to this with the newspapers of the nineteenth century ? The new doctrine of liberalism, which is word for word, and letter for letter, the old doctrine of despotism is that the State is to be obeyed in all things, the State is paramount to conscience, religion, Christianity, the Church. In the language of the present day, liberalism means despotism, and a change has taken place in the use of the words, such as happened in reference to the words Whig and Tory, which now mean precisely the opposite of what they meant originally. The men who call themselves liberals at present are the tyrants and despots of Europe. The ' Evening Star ' is uncommonly brave in its defence of Prussian tyranny, and asserts, in defiance of facts, that " there has been no attempt on the part of the Prussian Government to interfere with the religion of its Roman Catholic population. The rebellion- of which the pre' ates and others have been guilty, is defiance of the power of the State, and asserting the superior temporal authority of a foreign potentate — the Pope." As to the asserted noninterference with the religion of the Roman Catholic population, the Prussian Catholics differ altogether In opinion from the ' Evening Star,' and we fancy they ought to know whether their religion has been interfered with by the Government. They affirm they are grievously persecuted, in the Church, in the School, in the Press, in the fining' imprisoning, and banishing of their faithful pastors, in being deprived by persecuting laws of religious instruction, of sacraments, of public worship, of Christian burial, in being themselves fined and imprisoned for doing their religious duties, for doing what they had been in the habit of doing from childhood to manhood and old age. These terrible laws have deprived dioceses of their Bishops, parishes of their priests, children of Christian education, the Catholic press of liberty, the houses of Catholics, lay and clerical, of protection. Entire and vast districts are deprived of every means of Catholic worship and practice, and in the face of all this Bismarck has the shameless hardihood to say before Europe, " Catholics are not persecuted in. Prussia," and the ' Evening Star ' does not hesitate to endorse this palpable falsehood ! But the ' Evening Star ' is an old liberal turned despot. Bismarck was always a tyrant. The ' Star ' tells us that the " Bishops and others in Prussia have asserted the superior temporal authority of a, foreign potentate, the Pope." Here, again, our contemporary is in error. No Catholic in Prussia has asserted the superior temporal power of the Pope. To this most unwarranted assertion there is but one answer — and that is an emphatic denial. There is no question whatever of temporal power. The only question is — the existence or non-existence of the Church. The object of Bismarck is to destroy the Church utterly ; to banish Catholicity from Germany. And this is what our liberal contemporary highly approves of. In a little time, the exercise of the ! Catholic religion will be an absolute impossibility, unless in secret and at the expense of terrible risks, as it was in the worst days of the inhuman Penal Laws in England and. Ireland. For, the presence of all Catholic clergymen, native or foreign, in the Kingdom of Prussia, will be illegal before many more months have elapsed. This is what the 'Evening Star' defends, whilst saying, with grim irony,

" "We have ever claimed for every man the free exercise of his religion, untrammelled by the State." The 'Evening Star,' 1 says "But according to the Tablet, the Roman Catholics do claim more than their fellow -countrymen consider sufficient for themselves — they claim to live under a different codo of laws from those enacted for the common weal of the State." Not at all, the Tablet never made any claim of the sort. The Tablet •claims , nothing but the right and liberty to be a Catholic, that is all, and that is all the Prussian Catholics demand ; and this is exactly what Bismaeck denies them. And in claiming this, we only ask as much as other religions and •churches demand. Take, for example, the Free Kirk, does it allow the State to make laws for its guidance, as to the mode of appointing its pastors, of regulating its Church Courts, the deposition of its ministers, <fee, &c. What folly in a public writer to put forth such crude expressions. No Church, except such as is the creature and slave of the State, would allow, or ever did allow the State to make laws as to its doctrine or government, as to its worship, or its discipline, as to the appointment of its ministers, and the administration of its sacraments. The Tablet claims for the Church the right and the liberty to govern itself, and no more. But tbis is what Prussia denies her, and it is for doing this that Bismarck persecutes her so terribly. It is for refusing to yield that which cannot be abandoned, without denial of Catholicity, that Prussia inflicts pains and penalties on Catholics. In fact, what Prussia asks of Catholics is, that they should turn Protestants at once. This, however, they are not likely to do, though the ' Evening Star ' considers them rebels for not doing it. The \Star' says "It is the Tablet's doctrine of the justifiableness of rebellions that has led to the troubles of France, Spain, &c." The justifiableness of rebellion is not our doctrine ; but we take the liberty of asking the Editor of the ' Star ' to examine his conscience in reference to the deposition of James 11. of England, of the revolt of the United States, and dethronement of the Italian Princes. We have never advocated rebellion ; but we refuse to obey laws made for the purpose of destroying the Catholic Church, because, in reality, such are not laws at all, but iniquities which must be repelled.