A Dignified Rebuke.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 33, 14 August 1902, Page 2

A Dignified Rebuke.

Our Melbourne and Sydney cables of a few weeks ago let us know that the 12th of July was not allowed to pass in those centres without the usual Orange eruptions and though the messages contained little detail sufficient was said to indicate that the Orange orators had been more than usually coarse and violent and had literally • gone the whole hog ' in their denunciations of the Church. We now learn that the conduct at these meetings was so outrageous that all religions were more or less brought into disrepute by such an exhibition, and Archbishop Carr accordingly deemed it his duty to draw public attention to the unchristian and anti-social character of the Orange utterances and to administer to the bigots a dignified and effective rebuke. The Archbishop selected as the occasion for his reference to the matter the issue of a Pastoral Letter in connection with the annual collection for Peter's Pence in which, after alluding to the personality and life-work of the Pope and to his masterly refutation — in his recent great Encyclical—of the many calumnies urged against the Church, his Grace proceeds to refer specifically to the recent ..Orange attacks.

We make one or two brief extracts. ' The same calumnies/ said his Grace, ' which were refuted in the encyclical of the Holy Father they had repeated amongst themselves during the past week. That they should be repeated by men who sought notoriety by abuse of the Catholic Church they need not be surprised. But what Catholics had a right to complain of was that those men should profane the Gospel of peace and of charity by quoting texts to suit their evil purposes. Let them appeal to some Draconian code in justification of their uncharitable and unchristian hatred and calumnies, but let them spare the letter and the spirit of the Holy Bible from the profanation of such association. They had a right to complain, too, that reputable citizens lent the sanction of their name and presence to proceedings which, even if they were not so wanting in truth and charity, were so demoralising as to greatly lower the standard of public decency and propriety.' His Grace acknowledges that there may be some who are sincere in this public opposition to the Church but for the most part they fail to see the true inwardness of the agitation in which they are engaged. 'No doubt,' he says,' there are some who honestly believe that there is something to be feared from the Catholic Church, and therefore that it is well each year to assemble and demonstrate against her.

They do not advert that many of the orators are making political capital out of these demonstrations, and that to produce any effect they have to appeal to the lowest passions of their audience, or go back to ancient times and ancient feuds, and try to fasten the odium of these on the Catholic Church. But they can produce nothing certain, nothing tangible, nothing present, beyond their own v ifounded suspicions and vague uncharitable charges.'

This last sentence really contains the pith of the whole matter. In all this din and hubbub against the Church which is peiiodically made by the Orange organisations they produce ' nothing certain, nothing tangible, nothing present,' nothing the truth or falsity of which can be promptly tested here and now. For the rest it need only be said that Dr. Carr's whole letter was, both in its matter and in its spirit, a model of what such an utterance should be, full indeed of loyalty to principle and to conviction, but full also of Christian charity, courtesy, and forbearance.