A STUPID CALUMNY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 9, 28 February 1901, Page 18

A S TUPID CALUMNY.

Wb are unable to determine whether the oat-o'-nine-tails or the strait-waistcoat is the proper ' application ' for the cable demon who is responsible for the following message which appeared in yesterday's morning, and Tuesday's evening, papers. :— ' London, February 25.— Fresh opposition is being shown to the Jesuits in Spain and Portugal owing to the detention of several heiresses in the convents of that Order.' In our last issue fp. 2> we showed that, after the revolution of 1868, the Jesuits were, as a consequence of political and antircligiout, intrigues, diiveu finally and completely out of the Spanish peninsula. There is not now in Spain, nor has there been at any time since 1 868, any Jesuit ' convent,' house, college, or any other institution whatsoever. Neither is there in the country any resident Jesuit, nor even a ( Jesuit in disguise.' The whole story of the 'detention of heiresses' is a brutal and clumsy fabrication, unfit for the columns of any decent paper, and at home only at a Slattery meeting or within the portals of an Orange lodge.

The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1834. They are now permitted to live in the country, and their establishment in Lisbon is one of the highest centres of culture and refinement in Southern Europe They have beeu, however, made from time to time the object of the ferocious and active hate with which the Order is viewed by the oath-bound fraternity of the Freemasons on the whole of Continental Europe. In August, 1895, a pecaliarly contemptible, but happily unsuccessful, attempt was made to discredit the sons of St. Ignatius in the minds of the populace of Lisbon. The Correio Nacional —the leading newspaper in the city —stated that the disorders arising out of the attacks on the Jesuits were entirely the work of the Masonic lodges. Men dressed as priests were (said the Correio) sent out by them to steal, or feign to steal, children, and in order to render the Jesuits objects of popular execration, the calumny was industriously circulated that they killed the little ones to make human oil 1 The grotesque story waa not, of course, believed by any person of education, and the Catholic and many of the less extreme ' Liberal ' or anti-clerical papers defied the Jacobin organs to name any priest who had given the shadow of foundation for so monstrous a charge. The public of Lisbon waxed vexy indignant over the contemptible trick, and addresses of protest were extensively signed and presented to the King. The cause of religion, co far from being discredited, was served by the infamous imposture, and the disgrace recoiled on the head of its authors. The cable-message published in yesterday's morning papers is evidently a fresh attempt by the sectaries to hound up a feeling against the sons of St. Ignatius.