CARDINAL MORAN ON DEMOCRACY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 29, 20 July 1905, Page 29

CARDINAL MORAN ON DEMOCRACY

In opening a bazaar at Balmain his Eminence Cardinal Moran had something to say in reply to Mr. Reid, Who was up to the time Premier of the Commonwaalth. His Eminence said :— Perhaps I may be permitted to make some reference to the leader of that Quixotic campaign whkh has been carried on during the pasl few months. I referred to that campaign some 10 dajns ago when opening another fair, and the Right Hon. Mr. Reid has made a forlmal reply to the remarks which 1 enunciated on t/hat occasion. I must first of all congratulate the Right Hon. the Premier of our Commonwealth on the altered circumstances under which he has made his formal reply. Some few years ago— and I thi^k it was not more than three— when a public meeting was held in the Town Hall of Sydney, Mr. Reid was one of the chief speakers, a/nd on that occasion he made a public statement to the effect that he derived his religious information and his theological learning from the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' It is a very long name, ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' ; nevertheless, it is a depository of a wonderful amount of information on scientific subjects. But when it treats of theology and religion ie has been well described as a monument iof ' learned folly.' And yel, it was to Such a monument of 'learned folly ' that Mr. Reid would go for the source of his religious information in those days. But those were the days of his religious wanderings. He has now paid a visit to Rome to learn from the encyclicals of the Holy Father saner and wiser principles, and in making his journey to Rome he has paid A Short Visit to Canossa. He is not the first statesman who has visited Canosvsa. When the great German leader, Count Bismarck, was in the heyday of his triumphs in the cause of his fatherland, and when he had led all the forces of Germany, material and intellectual, to the fray to ensda^e the Catholic Church in Germany— on the day that a pu'blio monument was being erected to commemorate his triumphs, he declared that he would never visit Ca'nossa. Aiid yet before two or three years had run their coun-e he was on the highway to Canossa, declaring that the requirements of his fatherland necessitated a change of his policy ; and tfiat if hitherto he had warred against the Catholic Church he found now by experience that it was necessary to conciliate the Church, and that his future efforts would be to harrwonjse the relations of the Catholic Church with the interests of his fatherland. Well, on the occasion of the public meeting to which I ha\e referred, the Hon. Mr. Reid, deriving his theological knowledge from the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' declared that the Catholic Church enslaved the soul, and that the greatest enemy of freedom in the world was precisely the Pope, and he and his associates on that occasion 9id not fail to go back to the Apocalypse and some of its utterances to show the Scarlet Woman in all her deformity and in all her wickedness. But those w € ere the days of Mr. Reid's wanderings. He has now gone to Rome, and declares it is from The Encyclicals of the Holy Father that all wise men will derive the truest and most enlightened information. And I would recommend the friends of Mr. Reid to pray that he may have the gift of rerseverance in the same course, and I bep to assure him that if he did persevere he would have a preat many more things to learn from the encyclioals of the Holy Father. He will learn some grand maxims of the necessity of religion in education.

I believe Mr. Reid was at one time Minister for Education ia this colony. And speaking on this matter of education lam reminded that during the past few days one of the leading associates of Mr. Reid in liis socialistic campaign does not hesitate to say that the public schools of Australia are Protestant schloois which means, I suppose, that those who have at present the administration of those schools in their hands have succeeded in introducing Protestantism as an essential element of those schools. Now, if any statement wa.e necessary to justify our Catholic citizens in the sacrifices vhich they ha\e made to support their own Catholic schools for Uathehc children, that would justify thelm to know that the public schools, which the Bishops in the first instance condemned, have really under various names become Protestant schools. And whilst they are thus Protestantised, some of those who are best experienced in the matter of education tell us that those who are engaged in carrying on the system would find ample spheres for their energy and devotedness. They tell us that not only in the literary and moral bearings of these schools, but even in their material aspects, there is great room for improvement. One of those beslt acquainted with the education of Australia and the Home countries has declared, during the past days, that the public schools of Australia do not hold a foremost place amongst the schools of civilised countries ; in fact, he said they are a disgrace to the Empire. These, I think, were the words he used. They are not my words, but the words of a commissioner fully conversant with the matter of which he treats. Well, besides this matter of education, in which Mr. Reid will find abundant material for instruction in the encyclioals of the Holy Father, he will also find a grefct deal of sound principles 'to guide him in his socialistic campaign. He will find in This Beautiful Encyclical on Labor— which is one of the most remarkable documents published in the present century, and which a leading French politician, though hostile to the Church, has declared to be a monument of enlightenment of which any of the leading statesmen of Europe in the nineteenth century might be justly proud, and of which he sa"id the Holy Father, as the representative of Christ, showed himself in it the father of his people, gathering his people to the bosom of Holy Church. In this encyclical on labor I say Mr. Reid will find some \ery important principles. One of those principles is that the laborer has not only his duties, but also his rights. On the other hand the employers, or the wealthy class, ha\e not only their rights, but their duties, too ; and the whole tendency of sane policy would be to harmonise these conflicting interests to bridge over those abys-ses which separate the working class from their employers. Further in that encyclical on Lfbor the Holy Father tells us it is not only for daily maintenance that the laborers have a right and claim, but for frugal comfort and for other environments of their homes which such comfort implies. And it -would he the policy of a wise Government;, if capitalists failed to come to the aid of the working man, to secure this frugal comfort for his home, to co-o; crate and to assert these rights, and to .see that the laborer received the full recompense to vvhi/h he is entitled. These are the maxims, primary maxims, laid down in that golden encyclical, and it 'is precisely to carry oi/t those maxims that what I call the true democracy of Australia is laboring for, and laboring for with penuine interest, and with the countenance of every, enlight^red and, I think, every honest politician in Aus-tral-a. It is not at all in promoting those wild-cat schemes of communism and other similar schemes that Vl.tralian democracy is engaged. It is only to defend the workman in his legitimate rights, and at the same time to bring wisdom to our capitalists, that they may not, ((nly ajjselrt their rights, but also fulfil those dHiti-es-which carital would imipose upon them.