Gambling'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 28, 13 July 1905, Page 18

Gambling'

The Rev. Dr. Gibb has sent to the ' N.Z. Times ' (Wellington) one of his characteristic communicatfons— that is to say, one that betrays not even a nodding acquaintance with the amenities of the ' Polite LetterWriter.' The subject was ' Church and Charity Lotteries.' It is not a theme that in itself, or in the circumstances in which the pugnacious Doctor wrote, was calculated to provoke high controversial temperatures. But the good man's letter glows with the heat of an electric furnace, with which he endeavors to toast both the editor of the ' N.Z. Times ' and the Catholic Church. Instead, he himself gets ' done brow 'in an editorial comment which charges him with distortion,

mlsstatement, studious all-round offensiveness, and an epistolary stfiyle, yfbich sonely needs amanWrnent,, 'We could,' says the editor, • probably teach the Revl Dr. GfflWb a good deal, including the arts of polite letterwriting and honest discussion.'

The emphatic Doctor has, apparently, not imp/roved in his knowledge of, or manner .towards, our co-religion-ists t since the days when we publicly convicted him, the columns of the Dunedin secular press, of wholesale misrepresentation of the doctrines and (practices of our Faith, of garbled and bogus f quotations ' from Cath-' olio authors and divines, and of silly credulity in publishing a Munchausen story of diabolical papal duplicity, which he • had ' from somebody who knew somebody that had met somebody who thought that he had read something i a,bput it in the London ' Times ' • some fifteen years ago.' Dr. Gibb may be an authority of the first rank on the cut of a Moderator's frill. But we decline to accept him as a witness in regard to anything affecting Catholic faith or practice. As regards church and charitable lotteries . we Catholics have clear-cut and definitely stated principles. ,We claim the right to be judged by them. The Rev. Dr. Gibb and his ministerial confreres have no fixed principles on the subject which they call ' gambling.' Tney are marvellously shy ajbout eveh defining their terms. ' Playing for a stake ' and ' playing for money' are very protean terms. We have more than once pointed out that they cover actions which are almost as different in intent and dfiect as a friendly dig in the seventh rib and an angry stroke of a twelve-inch bowie-knife; ■as ha'penny euchre and the staking of fortunes on one's 1 fancy ' in horse-flesh or on the trembling chances of rouge-et-noir. A gulf separates the injury done ta God's honor, to the individual, to the family, to society, by the different forms of what is loosely termed ' gambling.' And it can serve no good to the crusade against a growing evil to pin the same lalbel to them indiscriminately and damn them all to the bottom of the same deep pit of Tophet. Catholic teaching on the subject i's, on the other hand, clear and unmistakeable, and in Hull accordance with both Scripture and right reason. It has already been set forth more than once in our columns.

Official (see, for instance, those presented to Parliament on July 12, 1898) show that Dn. Gibb's own eo-religjionis'ts in New Zealand are by no means all averse to church and charitable lotteries. Moreover, we would lay Lombard Steeet to_ a China orange that Dr. Gibb and many of his confreres have substantial ' gambles ' in life and fire insurances — nay, it is e\en within the bounds of blushing possibility that they may now and then in a quiet way ' do ' a little on the Stock Exchange. The late Dr. Salmon, Provosrt of Trinity College, Dublin, was, we ween, a nobbier Roman (we mean Protestant)- than: them all- A few years ago his praises were sounded in Dunedin by Dr. Gibb, through a fog-horn letter to the press. Now if our Wellington friend turns to MacDottneH's ' Life of Archbishop Magee ' (Anglican) he will find there a letter by the late Provost of Trinity, in which the writer says : ' One form of betting is recognised as a prudential duty. I mean life assurance. You bet with an assurance . company that you will die ; they bet you will li\e— and you are well pleased to lose your bet. Betting is, you say, buying a chance ; but suppose that each ' would rather have the chance than the price .to be paid for it, why not ? Two boys want to see a show. Each has only half the price of admission. If they toss up, one of them has his wish ; if they don't, neither. If people take tickets at a bazaai, no one feels the loss of a shilling for a ticket, hut if the object to be raffled for is prettty, the winner may feel the gain as much. A clergyman once at a bazaar, when I professefl to be shocked at his having a raffle, declares that he did it

on the highest moral grounds. Without a raffle, none but a few rich people had the chance of obtaining the really valuable articles. By a raffle he accomplished the Christian Suty of putting rich and poor on terms of perfect equality/

1 • Archbishop Magee (according to his biographer) said of the letter quated above : ■' Good and very Salmonian ! ' I*t tip not, of course, q»uitie the Catholic posi|t<on, which gets back to the bed-rock principles underlying the subject. But it is interesting as the point af view of a prominent Protestant divine to whom the Rev. Dr. Gibib offered much incense once upon a time.