CATHOLICS AND THE COMING CENTURY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6, 8 February 1900, Page 10

CATHOLICS AND THE COMING CENTURY.

In an interview with a representative of the Westminster Gazette Cardinal Vaughan gives an interesting outline of the steps being taken by the Catholic Church to celebrate the opening of the twentieth century.

This year's celebrations (his Eminence observes) will be of a most comprehensive character. The whole of the Catholic Church will by a universal act of religion consecrate to her Redeemer the elope of one century and the beginning of the next. Every effort will be made to impress upon all Catholics the necessity of renewing their consecration to the love and service of Jeaus Christ. Loyal addresses will be presented to the Pope, one by the clergy and another by the laity. Various acts of sacred homage will be crowned by au act of public reparation and conseoration which will be made before the Blessed Sacrament is exposed either during the hour of transition from the present century into the next or at such suitable period as the Ordinary may determine. A national memorial of this consecration will be erected in the Metropolitan Cathedral.

You tell me that the Church of England is also celebrating in a special manner the advent of the new century ? Ah, well, we shall noc interfere with them. There will be nothing 1 controversial or antagonistic in our plan of action. We are not opening a net — the Catholic Church is above that. Do not connect the crisis in the Established Church with this jubilee. The one is quite remote from the other ; but as you ask me what is my opinion of the so called crisis, I will tell you. The Established Church is riding 1 for a fall. It cannot live. It will not live. It ia merely a sect flourishing like the Arians and the Eutychians for three or four hundred years, and then collapsing 1 . When there is serious and continuous friction the end cannot bo far off. I, myself, am confident that the end is not very distant. Such things are impossible in our Church. We have precisely the same faith. The learned may have a larger acquaintance with the doctrines of the faith than the illiterate, but there is nothing upheld by the most distinguished member of the Catholic Church that is not endorsed by the rrost simpJe Catholic. We are essentially united. In this respect the Catholic Church excels all others. Is there not a difference f