'On a Certain Silliness.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 23, 5 June 1902, Page 1

'On a Certain Silliness.'

Whenever a public controversy arises on any point connected with the Church's doctrine or discipline—and especially

when the Church happens to have to take the unpopular side — there is sure to be found at least one empty-headed individual who will plunge headlong into the discussion— to which he is in no sense a party — and, after making himself ridiculous over a column and a half of valuable space, wind up by signing himself ' A Good Catholic/ or ' A Practical Catholic,' or ' A Catholic Layman,' or some similarly honorable, but muchabused title. Our bright contemporary the Aye Maria has recently, under the heading quoted above, been dealing some hard but well-deserved blows on the perpetrators of this particular form of foolishness. After describing the various kinds of correspondents who make a nuisance of themselves bywritingon subjects they know nothing about, our contemporary truly and aptly sums up thus : 'If there is one correspondent, however, who renders himself especially obnoxious by the obtrusive silliness with which he thrusts himself into a newspaper discussion, it is surely the shallow-brained critic who denounces some point of the Church's doctrine or discipline and then subscribes himself ' A Practical Catholic' * We have had amongst ourselves a disagreeable example of this ' obtrusive silliness ' during the past week. After the disclosure in the Dr. Davies case — which was fully referred to in our columns last week — a ' Catholic Priest' thought it well, in a temperate and timely letter to the daily press, to draw public attention, and especially the attention of the Catholic community, to the serious moral aspect of the question involved. Whereupon a misguided individual, who signs himself ' Layman ' and modestly ' claims to be as good a Catholic as the priest is,' 'writes craving the freedom on behalf of himself and several other Catholics to repudiate some of the sentiments expressed in the letter.' After intimating, with quite an air of authority, that he considers the priest ' has overstepped the bounds of discretion by giving expression to some of the sentiments he did,' and further expressing the opinion that ' a stone has been cast at our fair Church by the publication of the letter, this self-appointed and self-satisfied censor concludes : ' His letter, if allowed to go without comment, and from a Catholic, too, would only tend to widen the sectarian rift that unfortunately does exist, and allow the false dogma that the laity dare not have the moral courage to differ from their priest should they hold contrary views.' It is true, no doubt, as the old Latin poet remarked, that it is pleasant to play the fool on occasion ; but there are fortunately few Catholic laymen in this Colony who have so little sense of propriety as to imagine that a suitable time for playing the fool is when a priest is officially explaining the teaching of the Church on a gravely important question of faith and morals.