Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 23, 8 June 1905, Page 1

Current Topics

Anti-Treating In New Zealand, as in other parts of the Englishspeaking world^ numbers of people are led under ' the affluence of the intoxicating bole ' by a custom that one of our judicial authorities properly described as the curse of the country. We refer to the custom of treating—or, as it is commonly called in these lands, ' shouting.' We have from time to time referred to the admirable association which was formed some years ago by esteemed clerical friends of ours in our native county of Wexford, for the purpose of dynamiting that pestiferous habit. « If,' said the late Archbishop Croke, Iwe could get rid of these customs and notions, the backbone of drunkenness in this country would be broken.' The rapid spread of the Anti-Treating League throughout Ireland is a rambow of brightest hope and promise for the future of the land of the tear and the smile. A close and valued clerical friend of ours says of the League : ' Our endeavors are principally directed to one class— not to total abstainers, nor to that multitude whose representative Father Martin Dunne (rest to his soul !) saw going into a public-house in .his parish. '•• Luke," said he, "the devil is going , in there with you." " Begar, sir," replied Luke, " it's not worth his while; I've only got tuppence." ' We hope to see the dayi when the Anti-Treating League will be in beneficent operation throughout the whole of New Zealand. Such a consummation would, indeed, mark a new era in tne cause of temperance among us, and would extract one of the worst and most insidious dangers from the wine when it is red,

Divorce in New Zealand Some unknown Briton gives the following translation oj an old Latin epigram :— ' If on my theme I rightly think, There are five reasons why men drink : Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry, Or least I should be by and by, Or any other reason why.' The grounds for divorce in New Zealand will soon be as comprehensive as those okt reasons for drinking, if our lawmakers follow as fast in the near future as they have in the recent past the evil trend of American legislation. There ia a certain element of lottery in marriage, and first-class prizes are not always drawn. Some disgruntled American compared matiimony to searching blind-

folded for an eel that has been placed in a bog along with a hundred rattlesnakes. The majority (siaid he) 'don't pull' out the eel. But it is not so bad as all that, even though many women fail to get the right man, and may men fftid they have married quite a different woman to the wingless angel they led to the altjar, Unfortunately, our legislation proceeds *n the assumption that misfit marriages are to be ended— nor mended or stretched or adapted ; that wedded couples are to be exempted by law from the duties' of selfrestraint and mutual forbearance ; and that the solemn promise made by them be-fore God and man to stand by each other for worse as well as for better, till death do them part, is a mere empty formula, to be set aside as whim or temper or baser passion may dictate. • Thd New Zealand Divorce Act of 1898 afforded greatly enlarged facilities to irascible or ill-assorted pairs to enter into tandem polygamy.' It was naturally followed by a sudden increase in Divorce Court business. Tnat increase has been more than maintained. It ha 9 already reached the dimensions of a public scandal. And the end is not yet. Here are the significant figures that appear on p. 163 of the advance sheets of the New Zealand Official Year Book ' for 1905 :— Petitions. Decrees. Dissolution Dissolution of Judicial of Judicial Marriage. Separation. Marriage. Separation 1896 55 6 36 2 1897 48 10 33 1 18°8 51 13 32 2 1899 112 10 46 16 1900 11l 5 85 3 1901 138 1 103 1 1902 136 2 91 — 1903 146 3 136 3 Three chief circumstances combined to make the engines of our Divorce mill run at higher speed since the Act of 1898. The first was the extension of the grounds of divorce ; the second, the chance of having cases' heard in camera and thus deci3ed quietly and without ' scandal ' ; the third is the ease with which dissatisfied or misfit couples can enter into collusion to break the legal force of a bond which they find irksome. This is the nearest equivalent to the toper's self-generous principle of ' any other reason why.' It makes divorce almost as easy in New Zealand as in Dakota. ' A man and his wife,' says the Wellington 'Post,' ' agree that a divorce vs desirable. By arrangement the wife leaves the husband. He asks her to return and she refuses. Also by arrangement the husband petitions for the restitution of conjugal rights, and the wife disobeys it.

The husband then proves disobedience, and petitions lor divorce forthwith. There is no trouble, no scandal, and little expense. The petition for the restitution of conjugal rights is often the preliminary preceeding to divorce. It 6s almost impossible to prove collusion.' ' There is no doubt whatever,' says tne same paper, 1 that the number of divorces is increasing in New Zealand. Whereas in J 893 there were only 25 decrees for dissolution of marriage, as against 85 in Victoria, the position was reversed in 1903, in which year Victoria's record was 101 t while this Colony's was 136. The figures quoted indicate, as plainly as figarcs can indicate anything, that the direct result of the Act of 1898 was to cause an immediate rush to the Divorce Court, and it is evident that the rush has not yet been stemmed.' * The marriage bond is the basis of society. Our legislative tampering with it can only work national dryrot and decay. In the meantime the swift spread of the divorce plague in New Zealand furnishes uncomfortable external evidence of the secret spread of vice in ' the ulcerous place ' of our social body, where ' Rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen.' Our law-makers and our Divorce Courts are combining to bring the devil's millennium to New Zealand. The chief hope of staving it off, both in this Colony and in the United States, lies in a return to the Catholic teaching regarding the unity, indlssolubility, and sacramental character of the marriage bond. When this teaching is reflected in our legislation and in our judicial system,, our garrison bands may turn out and play the Dead March in ' Saul ' after the hearse that carries the malodorous carcase of divorce to a dishonored grave.

War against Religion •Nabuichodonosor's servants heated the fiery furnace so mightily hot for A/arias and his companions, that the flames blew out and burned and scorched the Chaldeans that stood near. The incident gave rise to the Shakesperian proverbial saying :— ' Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself ' For years past the anti-rclip,ious fanatics in the French Chamber of Deputies ha\e been piling pitch and tow and dry wood around the Church and fanning the flames with the hot blast of wild speeches and insane calumnies, till the blaze was like the glow of an electric furnace. But it is likely that they are o\er-doinig the agony ; and there are not wanting signs that, as in the case of the three children of Nabuco's days, they may themselves be singed by the bla/e which they have meant for the destruction of the Faith in France. ♦ With the exception of the Freemasons, the Radicals, and the extreme Socialists, there is, we belie\e, no party in Franco that aims at or desires 'the destruction of religious faith and Christian morality. And a wholesome reaction is sure to follow any serious effort to carry to a serious issue the formal declaration of war against all religion that was made by Deputies Allard, Vaillant, and other prominent anti-clericals in the French Chamber a few weeks ago during the debate on a miotion in connection with the Church Separation Bill. ' 1 do not disguise from you,' said M. Allard, ' the fact that my proposal tends to de-christianise the country. » . I do not conceal my intentions, which ought to be those of all true Republicans. It is necessary to speak out plainly ; there is an incompatibility between the Church Catholicism, and even Christianity, and the Republican regime. Christianity is an outrage on reason, an outrage on nature. .. . We Socialists combat religions because we believe they aie a permanent obstacle to progress and ci\ilisation ' Deputy Vaillant declared that his party — who, by the way, have controlled, to a great extent, the policy of all late French Administrationswill never rest until religion has disappeared from the

Catholic* in Russia A book on Russia, published some ten years ago, states that ' liberty of conscience ' is enjoyea in the dominions of the Tsar. But it was, at least then, the sort of liberty of conscience with which Artemus Ward creaits the early New England Puritans. ' They fled/ says he, « from a lanti of despotism to a land of freedom where they could not only enjoy their own religion, but prevent everybody else from enjoying Ms.' It was likewise akin with Oliver Cromwell's idea of liberty of conscience. In negotiating with the Governor of Ross (Ireland) for the surrender of a fortress, Oliver wrote that he would not ' meddle with" any man's conscience.' But he added this ' saving ' clause : •' If by liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing and to tell you now that where the Parliament of EnglanS have power, that will not be allowed of.' Alexander 111., the father of the present Tsar, is said to have hated some of the popular features of western civilisation, and especially that of religious equality before the law, 1 Witn a hate Found only on the stage,' or among the Radical-Socialist ' bloc ' in the French Chamlber of Deputies. During his reign (as Professor Geftcken showed at the time) persecutions were enacted by his Ministers ' against Catholics, U-niates, Protestants, and Jews, which seem incredible in our age, but which" are well attested. Thousands of persons who have committed no wrong other than that of being faithful to their inherited creed, have been driven from their homas, and exiled to Siberia, or to distant regions without any means of livelihood. As regards Catholics, these measures are principally directed against the clergy ; but the Uniates— ie., the Catholics who have the Slav liturgy— are unsparingly deported if they refuse to have their children baptised by an Orthodox pope ' (that is, priest), ' and this is done with men, women, and children, peasants and merchants. Twenty thousand Uniates alone have been removed from the western provinces of Szaratow. Those who remain at home have Cossaclks quartered upon them, and all soits of compulsory means are used to stamp out this sect.' * In 18-97, under the present Tsar, some of the most oppresshe laws of Alexander 111. against Catholics were relaxed ; permission was accorded to repair damaged or ruined churches in Poland ; and the 11,420,000 Catholics within the boarders of tne far-stretching Empire began to breathe more freely. Chamfort described the Russia of a century ago as a despotism tempered by assassination. To a great extent it remains so still. The latest and most important instalment of religious liberty which tempered the despotism that rules the country was won by the assassin's bomb and the popular upheaval that shook the throne of Muscovy like a snock of earthquake. Freedom is often born of disaster and humiliation, after the bitterest pangs of labor. And, under Providence, the recent dire calamities in the Distant East may mark the dawn of a brighter era for the Russian West. One of the first results of the recently enlarged religious liberties within the Tsar's dominions was (as the cables say) the return of 22,000 members of the Russian State Church to the unity of the Ancient Faith. And— if the statement of a correspondent of the ' Chilta Cattolica ' is correct— hope gilds with a cheerful ray the future of that Faith in the realms of Muscovy. ' I was recently told,' says he, ' by an Orthodox Rtussian priest, in the

course of a conversation, that the upper classes of Russian society are showing a great many tendencies toward the profession of Catholicism. This is accounted for by the fact that the families of the nobility live in Italy ana France a greater part of the time, and naturally are affected by the religious convictions of the people with whom they are in contact. Further, although the intellectual condition of the higher clergy of the Russian Church is perfectly satisfactory, at the same time the lower members of the clergy are too ignorant and have too many moral failings to exercise a beneficial influence on the cultured classes. Russian orthodoxy does not respond to the demands of their minds. With reference to the spiritual organisation, the orthodox religion clearly reveals its inferiority when compared with Catholicism, which, notwithstanding the severity of .the Russian laws, preserves inviolate its prestige, and even in St. Petersburg repeals its admirable force of organisation, and its supernatural vitality.'