The Policy of Attack

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 15, 9 April 1903, Page 2

The Policy of Attack

William Parnell— a relative of the late Charles Stewart Parnell— published, in 1807, his ' Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics.' He was a broadminded Protestant, and in the course of his woi k he pointed out that one of the gieat bars to the nation's strength and 'unity was 'a kind of nuiseiy tenor ol the Pope, which,' he added, ' still clings to our matuier reason.' This childish or insane tenor of the papal bogey manifests itself in many and vaiious wu\s and with strange results. One of its outcomes is the adopt ion of the thousand and one foims of misrepiesentation and calumny of which the Catholic Church and body are so often made the target. Many ot our 1 eadei s can recall the historic castigation which Caidinal Newman administered to Canon Kingsley The Canon was an extreme bigot and a strong hater ; and on that very accounl his opinion on the policy of vilifuatun and attack such as is so oitcn pursued towards us is all the more opportune and deserving of record * Canon Kingsley's words will be found on pp 235-6 of the first volume ol his ' Miscellanies ' lie declaies that the time for calling ' Popeiy ill-names is past ' •The truth is,' he adds a little faither on, ' Protestantism may well cry : " Save me fi om my friends ' " "We have attacked "Rome too often on shallow grounds, and, on finding our arguments weak, have found it necessaiy to overstate them. We have got angry and caught up the first weapon which came to our hand and have only cut our own fingers. . . We have been too proud to make ourselves acquainted with the veiy tenets which we exposed, and have made a merit of reading no Popish books but such as we weie sure would give us a handle for attack, and not even then without the precaution of getting into a safe passion befoiehand We have dealt in exaggerations, in special pleadings, m vile and reckless imputations of motive, in suppressions of all palliating facts. We ha\e outiaged the common feelings of humanity by remaining blind to the virtues of noble and holy men, because they were Papists, as if

a good deed was not good in Italy as well as in England. We have talked as if God had doomed to hopeless vileness in this world, and reprobation in the next, millions of Christian people, simply because they were born of Romish, and not of Protestant, mothers. And we have our reward ; we have fared like the old woman who would not tell her children what a well was, for fear they should fall into one. We see educated and pious Englishmen joining the Romish communion simply from ignorance of Rome, and have no talisman wherewith to disenchant them. Our medicines produce no effect on them, and all we can do is, like quacks, to increase the dose. Of course, if ten boxes of Morrison's pills have killed a man, it only proves that he ought to have taken twelve of them. We are jesting, but, as an Ulster Orangeman would say, "It is in good Protestant earnest." '