Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 10, 6 March 1902, Page 17

Notes

The Red Rag. The name of Je3uit is to a number of organised intolerants what the sight of the scarlet mantle in the hands of a chulo is to an Andalusian bull when surrounded by his tormentors in the ring. And thus it has come about that the Protestant Alliance of Great Britain recently addressed an impassioned request to the Salisbury Government to prevent England, by special Act of Parliament, from being ' invaded ' by expelled Jesuits from France, who, to a dead certainty, would demoralise the country and bring it to speedy and irreparable ruin. Lord Salisbury— who, by the way, has freely admitted numbers of Anarchists and other undesirable foreigners without protest from the Protestant Alliance—did not smell the Empire's crack o' doom in the landing of a few French Jesuits, and sent his petitioners the following curt reply : 'Dear Sir,— l am desired by the Marquis of Salisbury to acknowledge your letter of 19th inst. lam to say in reply his lordship is not aware that any legislation is likely to be introduced in regard to the subjects you mention. — Yours faithfully, ( K. T. Gunton.'

And then the Alliance worked its-elf into a state of ' regret and alarm' and sent to Lord Salisbury a furioua onslaught on the Jesuits, filled with the usual misinformation of which the society carries auch heavy stocks.

Impostors in the Toils. Evil days have fallen upon some of the employe* of the Protestant Alliance, ao-J others are at the present time in a bad way. The Slattery impostors were for a time in close touch with the the society, but later on it found it convenient to disown them. Other members of the noisome fraternity are in trouble just now. That unmitigated blackguard, the sham 'ex-monk' Nobbs (alias Widdows), is once more in tbe hands of the police. The ex-convict is again charged, as before, with an unmentionable crime, and at the time our last exchanges were issued, tbe case was pending against him at the Bow Street Police Court, London. The bogus ' ex-nun ' Margaret Shepherd — a former inmate of a Magdalen asylum in Bristol — had lately to make a secret and hurried departure from New York in order to escape arrest on a criminal charge. And this is how a Denver Catholic contemporary deals with the diabolical abominations which led to the infliction of long terms of penal servitude on the sham ' ex-nun ' and all-round cheat, swindler, and impostor, Diss De Bar and her male partner in nameless iniquity : ' How the blush of shame must burn the face of every decent Protestant as he reads the scanty, but horrifying, details of the trial of that female beast, Diss De Bur, and reflects that this disgrace to womanhood but a few years ago posed as an escaped nun, attracted large audiences, and was aided and assisted in her infamous work by Protestant Church organisations. . . . It is refreshing to hear that intelligent Protestants are at last showing some signs of repudiating those immoral scoundrels and shameless adventuresses who have been able for so many years to exchange the product of their filthy imaginations for good Protestant money ; and it is to be hoped that when a few more have followed the vile Diss De Bar to the prison cell the rest will be driven from the Protestant pulpit to the slams from which they came.

Aubrey de Vere. Correspondence from Ireland record the passing of one of the noted poets of the nineteenth century, Aubrey de Vere, on January 21. in his eighty-aixth year. ' The solemn angel of eternal peace Has waved a wand of mystery o'er his head, Touched his strong heart, and bade hi 9 pulses cease.' The sweet-singing son of a poetic father (Sir Aubrey de Vere) came of a Cromwellian stock and was brought up a Protestant. In 1851 he became a Catholic, and his piety, his strong personality, and the winning sweetness of his life — which was celibate to the last — • allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.' All the members of his family soon followed his example, and their conversion exercised a marked influence upon the non-Catholic aristocracy of their native Limerick county, with moat of whom they were united by ties of blood or marriage. Among those who followed the de Veres and ' went over to Rome ' were Lord Emly (Postmaster-General in Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1868-1874), the late Earl of Dunraven, some members of the family of the late Lord Monteag-le, the Ladies Fitzgibbon (of the family of the Earl of Clare), and a goodly sprinkling of the gentry that lived around ' sweet Adare, 0 lovely vale,' and in other parts of the County of LimericK. It is strange that in practically every biographical notice of Aubrey de Vere that we have met, he is set down as the author of the drama Mary Tudor, which was written by his father, Sir Aubrey, and which has attracted a good deal of notice since and on account of the appearance of Tennyson's drama of Queen Mary,

1 Missionary Tales. ' We pointed out a few weeks ago that the ' missionary tales told by Dr. Grattan Guinness against the Catholic Church in South America, during his money-raising tour in New Zealand, were of the usual style of Buch ' yarns.' It is by no means pleasant to have to switch the electric light on the crooked ways of those who manufacture the typical ' missionary tale,' which deserves about as much credit as snake or fish Syarns ' or big-gooseberry stories. But, on the Deuteronomic principle, the responsibility must rest with those who first lit the fire. The Rev. Dr. Starbuck, a learned American Protestant writer and divine, makes the following Bcathing remarks in a recent issue of the S.S. Review regarding a missionary society which he describes as ' one which carries off the palm for impudence in religious controversy as againßt the Catholics.'

• The chief organ of theirs in Spanish-America (says Dr. Starbuck) has now come regularly to me for several years, and leads me to suppose that whatever fragments of intelligence and decenoy

and conscienca these emissaries may have had on leaving home (and they seem to have gone out very slenderly provided with all three qualities), they lost them overboard on the way out. Certainly at home they would not have dared to publish an article sneering at marriage regarded as a spiritual union, coarsely declaring it, like Luther, a mere outward thing, and mocking at those who are shockei at the notion of dissolving it Yet this they do by way of evangelising the Spanish- Americans.' And he adds some words which are peculiarly applicable to the 'missionary tales' (alms ' snake-yarns ') which Dr. Grattan Gninness has been retailing throughout New Zealand to open the mouths— and the pocketa —of the gobemouches. 'There is practically no limit,' says Dr. Starbuck, ' to the degree of effrontery which a large proportion of the ministers of this denomination are capable where the Catholic Church is concerned.' Ifc is refreshing to see an honest Proteßtant protesting so vigorously against discreditable tactics which decent and God-fearing members of the Reformed oreeds must abhor as cordially as Catholics do.