Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 24, 11 June 1903, Page 1

Current Topics

A Fiji Incident According to Chesterfield's maxim, ' the scholar without good breeding is a pedant, the philosopher a cynic, the soldier a brute, and every man disagreeable.' It is a pity that our New Zealand Parliamentarians or their guides did not remember this on the occasion of thenrecent visit to Father Rougier, his confreres, and his tribesmen at Naililih, in Fiji. As it was, their treatment of the Catholic missionaries and their hospitable people was rnarkod by an exhibition of boorish disregard of good manners that must have left in the minds of the bronzeskinned islanders a contemptuous estimate of the tact and social standing of the law-makers of New Zealand and their travelling friends. An unpleasant significance can hardly fail to be locally attached to the incident by reason of the fact that one of the leaders of the expedition adopted (as reported by the cables) a strongly partisan attitude towards the Catholic party during the course of the agitation, about the alleged holocaust of Wesleyan Bibles at Nailihli — an agitation which began in a hurricane, and ended in an ' audible smile.' "We have awaited on explanation of this wretched incident. None has been forthcoming ; and from private sources we have learned that the following account, by the special correspondent of the ' Otngo Daily Times,' is, so far as it refers to the unpardonable slight cast upon Father Itougier and his people, quite correct.

'We landed,' says the writer, 'at Naililili Mission Station. This is the scene of the now historical Bibleburning episode. Here a rather unfortunate incident occurred, for which, however, none of the New Zealand party were in any way responsible. Word had been previously sent by the Colonial Secretary to Father Rougier, head of the mission, notifying him of our intended visit, and that our party would land their on the way up to Nanvuso. As we drew near we could see the Union Jack and other flags waving gaily over the mission buildings, nnd an abundance of refreshments and a native brass band were awaiting our arrival, and wo could see from the launch that extensive preparations had been made to hospitably entertain the party, instead of landing, as intended, the launch was slowed down, and tyTr. Duncan, the Union S.S. Company's Suva agent, shouted to Father Rougier and his two confreres, who were awaiting us at the landing, that we would call on cfur return, and the launch steamed on up-stream. When we returned to Naililili there was no band to discourse sweet music, no refreshments, no flags flying, and Father Rougier and his confreres were conspicuous by their absence. Instead of a pleasant welcome, as antici-

pated we saw only a few sullen-looking Fijians. (These by the way, were from another district, and had come to sell curios to the visitors. The local natives all stood by the missionaries in their protest against this unpardonable breach of faith Ed ' N Z T ') The reason given for not carrying out the original' programme was that the river was rapidly shoaling, owin R to the ebbing tide, and if a halt was made, as originally intended, the launch would have been unable to make Nanvuso Had this explanation been given to Father Jjougier on our upward journey, as it undoubtedly should have been, a great deal of irritation would have been avoided. Apart from this incident, which our party deplored very much, a most pleasant day was spent on the Rewa.'

It will be admitted that Father Rougier and his people administered a se\ere but well-merited rebuke to the- inconsiderate and ill-mannered visitors who were directly or indirectly responsible for this grievous offence against the laws of hospitality and good breeding.

The French Penal Code Lecky sums up in one contemptuous sentence the character of the groups of stunted and knock-kneed politicians that have ruled the destinies of Fiance since the days when the Second Empire met its death on the field of Sedan. In his ' Democracy and Liberty ' (vol. i , p. 43), he says of them : ' Few French Governments have produced or attracted so little eminent talent, or have been, for the most port, carried on by men who, apart from their official positions, are so little known, have so little weight in their country, and have hitherto appealed so feebly to the imagination of the world.' They have waged a constant and fatuous war against the Church and against some of the natural rights of man that were respected even during the whirling storm and fury of the ereat French Revolution. The persecution of the Church reached an acute stage during the late administration of M. Waldeck-Rousseau. It has culminated in the bitter, far-reaching, and relentless proscription and spoliation which have marked the rule of his successor, M Combes. M. Waldeck-Rousseau waa a mere oppoi tunist— a political marionette that had to dance and posture as his violent Republican, Radical, and Socialist manipulators pulled the string. He is by religion a Protestant. He was a persecutor of nuns, yet his daughter is a pupil in a convent in Rome, and' his wife was recently a patient in one of the hospitals corv ducted by the Sisters in Paris. Like his predecessor, M. Combes is also an opportunist. He is worked by the same ' machine ' and is bound to serve his anti-clerical masters by a course of proscription, confiscation, and exile for priests and nuns. Likjo Russell Lowell's ' pious editor/ he can sing :

' It ain't t>y princerples nor men My preudent course is steadied.' Pliancy, and not political principle, directs his policy*

It will, perhaps, secure him in office till the resources of persecution have been exhausted. And then he will probably get ' fired ' like any other tool that has passed the days or the occasion of its use. But for the moment he struts with absurd pomposity upon the stage — a pigmy politician aping the Man of Blood and Iron, a Tom Thumb in the buskins of the giant Blunderbore. • M. Combes and the Radical-Sociab'st-"Repuhlicnn conlltion on whom he depends for office make no secret of the fact that they aim, In effect, not merely at terminating the development of the Catholic religion in France, but its very existence. 'La Lanterne,' the Socialist organ, recently announced the programme in the following terms : ' The religious Orders have received a preliminary blow. Others must be dealt. After the religious Orders of males come the religious Orders of females, by no means the least pernicious. After the religious Orders the Church. After the friar, the priest. After the fulfilment of the law against the religious Orders, the termination of the Concordat and separation.' The pace is usually fast and furious when the devil drives. And both M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Combes have found themselves constantly rushed from position to position, from, lesser to greater instalments of persecution, to satisfy the insatiable demands of the rabid fanatics by whom they have been dressed in a little brief authority. Some weeks ago the viceroy of a Chinese province sent instructions to one of the mandarins under his jurisdiction to ' carefully try ' a batch of political prisoners that were under arrest and ' then have them all beheaded.' A course analogous to this was the first political crime into which M. Combes allowed himself to be dragged by the wire-pullers. When the infamous Law of Associations was under discussion, the most solemn engagements were made that the case of each religious Order would be separately inquired into and decided on its own merits. But M. Combes' masters were not satisfied with this arrangement. The Orders were first suppressed wholesale and exiled. The farce of inquiry (if any) came afterwards. This secured him a short lease of office. He has just now contracted for a further extension of his shaky tenure of power by breaking another of his pie-crust promises. 'He started,' says the ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' ' by saying that he bore no ill-will save to the religious congregations, and that he would respect the position of the secular cleigy as created by the Concordat, of which he was a partisan.' He has now been swept past that position We are within easy view of the complete realisation of the pemil code that was set forth with such brutal candor by 'La Lanterne ' And the words and actions of M. Combes clearly show that the ruling party and the pup-pet-Premier are both alike bent on what may be teimed a war of extermination against the Chinch A longwindied Bill of 98 clauses has been introduced by M. do Pressense — a tyrannical measure, worthy ol the da> s of Queen Anne or the Second George While nominally intended to separate Church and State, its real object is to bind the clergy hand and foot, to mal-e the Church the wretched bond-slave of the Government, and to cripple its power for good among the people

One Result Meantime the work of proscription, spoliation, and banishment goes furiously on. Jn Paris, at the Grande Chartreuse, and many other places — especially m Urittany—the expulsion of the religious has been marked by strong, sometimes dangerous, manifestations of popular resentment. There is a n.ore than ever rigid application of the long-established policy of penalising or dismissing from the public service those who dare to practice the duties of the Catholic religion or send their children to convent schools. As things stand, outside the army and navy, the practice or profession ot the Catholic faith is almost as insuperable a bar to public employment as it was under the Irish penal cod<> or us it is to this (Ki\ in the Orange Corporation of Belfast One result of this form of persecution has been to enormously increase the proportion of Protestant olncials in the employment of the State. Numerically and socially, Piotestunts form an insignificant section of the population of Trance. They have for generations exercised the fullest and most absolute freedom of religious worship, and their clergy are to this hour salaried by the State. But ' they form a little world apart,' says the English Protestant writer Hamerton in his 'French and English,' 'which (except,

perhaps, in the most Protestant districts, and they are of small extent) appears to be outside the current of the national life.' A little over twelve months ago the ' Contemporary Review ' pointed out what it termed ' the singular paradox ' that ' while Protestantism as a form of Church life is declining ' in France, its power in the State has been of late years steadily rising. 'On the one hand,' says the ' Contemporary ' article, ' its influence so increases that Protestants are to be found in all sorts of positions of authority and power, far out of proportion to their estimated numerical strength ; on the other hand, its temples are empty of worshippers, and the number of members, in both its confessions', diminishes with ominous rapidity.' It is estimated that the Protestants of France have dwindled to 600,000 in a population of over 38,000,000. And yet their political influence ' is,' says the ' Contemporary,' ' nearly seven and a half times as great as might be expected from the actual number of its professed adherents.'

We Rave no objection to the State securing the best service it can, irrespective of creed. But our readers will recall the hysterical fits into which a section of the non-Catholic press and pulpit in Australasia fell when the Orange lodges raised the false alarm that Catholics occupy a stronger relative position in the service of the various States than is warranted by their proportion to total population. One should have thought that, on similar grounds, our quill-drivers and pulpiteers would have stormed and thundered at the Lutherans and Calvinists of France for the manner in which they have been swarming, out of all proportion to their relative strength in the population, into posts of honor and emolument under the State from which practising Catholics are excluded almost as rigorously as if they were felons. But no voice of protest is raised. In Australasia a lying Orange rumor that Catholics have too great a share of the Government loaves and fishes almost led to an order to our co-religionists to step off the earth. And now forth steps one of our New Zealand papers and in its issue of last Saturday glories in the thought that the pieponderance of Lutherans and Calvinists in the public sei-Mce of France is merely an evidence of the ' dominating qualities 'of Protestantism ! It serenely omits to that these ' dominating qualities ' did not appear in Fiench public lik> until the 'Protestantism' had so far e\<iporated as to be a neeiigeable quantity in the moral development of the nation, and until the profession and practice of the Catholic religion had become a bar to public appointments.

A Sign of Hope O'Connell, in a memorable utterance, says of bigotry that it ' has no head and cannot think, no heart and cannot feel When she mo\es, it is in wrath; when she pauses, it is amidst ruin.' The description is a skin-fit on the labid fanaticism that stands m the high places of Fiance to-day. The fuiy against the Chinch is all along the line In addition to the direct campaign for the plunder and expulsion of the religious Ordeis, M. Combes has issued a ukase of perpetual proscription and disability against e\ery person that is or has been a member of a religious association. All o^r the country ho is closing chinches that were elected and irequente-d by the people — e\(n the beautiful shrine of Lourdes is threatened. Priestly ministrations are foi bidden to the sick and d\ ing in hospitals, etc ; many of the bishops and the parochial clergy are harried and then- meagre incomes — a small return from the confiscated property of the Church— wilhdi awn • 'the meanest of all the forms ot conti o\ et s\ , ' as Lecky calls it in his ' Democracy and J.ibeity ' (\ol 11 , p. 84) , and the stunted head of a tyrannical regime has even gone so far as to in\ade the episcopal don am by deter mining who shall and who shall not be allowed to di\ icte the Word of Cod to the people from the pulpit. This has led to a defiant protest by the Bishop of Orleans, the Bishop of- Nancy, and others, which constitutes the most hopeful feature in this diinpartrn against religion The Bishop of Orleans (Dr. Touchet) defied the edict, placed a preacher mterdicted by M Combes in his Cathedral pulpit, and at the close of the sermon declined to the assembled multitude: 'We hold our mission of preaching, not from any man, chief ol State, or minister of Public Woiship, but from Jesus Chi ist, and so far us the diocese is concerned, no one but the bishop has the right to inhrbif o 'any preacher.' The sturdy prelate's brave words were received witih

thunderous applause. They mark a new and hopeful development in the struggle for religious liberty. The end of the war against religion in France will be near at hand wtien a few score of its bishops and clergy will go to gaol and ro,t there as a protest against the infamies of the present regime of proscription and tyranny. It was so in 1812. Three of the State prisons then held four Cardinals, four bishops, two superior-generals of religious Orders, one vicar-general, nine canons, and thirly-4jight parish priests and curates That was the beginning of the end. Thus, far, clerical France, despite its deep piety and fervid zeal, has been, perhaps, overtimid or over-sluggish, as the result of a long tradition of political repression. We fervently hope that the vigorous 1 action of some members of the episcopate is a sign that the leaders of what ia Catholic in France are at length prepared to display that spirit which has made their countrymen and countrywomen such splendid martyrs on the most difficult of the world's foreign mission fields.

The Church in Germany has set them an example well worthy of imitation. She (says the London ' Spectator,' a non-Catholic publication, in a recent issue) ' did not yield before Bismarck, but fought on patiently and hardily, till by and by the Centre held the balance of power in the German Parliament, and the Falk Laws were abandoned as impracticable. Rome then was fighting Teutons, who are always hard to beat, and she won ; won, too, on Parliamentary ground, in the chosen arena of democracy. , . She called up no new power. She, bo to speak, argued the question out, and finally convinced all German statesmen, if not all Germans, that needle-guns will not kill ghosts. She made that effort under, Leo XIII., and he is still alive, and she may make it again.' Bismarck lived to go to Canossa. The First Napoleon, too, had" at last to haul up the white flag in his long struggle against tho Church. These were the two greatest and most commanding figures of the past hundred years. Where they failed, the Liliputian French politicians of to-day can nover hope to succeed.

All 111 Wind In blessing others, France is Bingularly blessed. Tho persecution and exile of the French clergy and religious during and after the Great Revolution brought many a blessing, to England, Ireland, America, and the other hospitable lands that gave them a shelter and a home. History is now repeating itself in favor of those countries that are affording a retreat to the religious that havo been proscribed, plundered, and exiled by M. Combes and the fanatics whose tool he is. ' 'Tis an ill wind,' bays the ' Aye Maria,' ' that blows nobody good. Norway and Denmark are profiting by the tempest of go\ernmental tyranny that is dispersing the French Sisters to the four quarters of tho world. At Draminen, at Randor, at Reykjavik, and in Copenhagen, hospitals and schools are being established with laudable diligence, cjotension of such work being made possible by the arrival of the exiled French nuns. Besides their free schools in Copenhagen, the Sisters have opened others, known as French schools — although, as a matter of fact, four languages are regularly taught therein : French, English, German and Danish. The blessing of the hospital at Reykjavik, capital of Iceland, was recently made the occasion of a veritable celebration, in which the governor, the prefect, the mayor, the doctors, and all other notabilities of the island, participated. Within a decade France will probably be offering inducements to the exiled njuns to return to their own country ; and if a free hand is allowed to the present rulers fo,r a year or two more, there can be little doubt that the Sisters' home-land will eorely need them.'