Salt to Shake

New Zealand Tablet, 8 November 1906, Page 10

Salt to Shake

Catholics— especially those who confine their journalistic reading to the . daily papers— would -do well in theseparlous times to carry about . a peck of salt in their pockets. They will need it all if they are going to swallow the s,tories of papal and .episcopal chuckleheadedness that ooze fchrou'gh the cables from anticlerical sources in Paris, arid of l agrarian outrages ' that are invented or ' adapted ' in the interests of the anti-Irish Ireland that is • yellow, ', People that are .otherwise reputable frequently do " not resist' - the temptation to strengthen the lines and round the corners and em"broider the details of their ' good ' (or bad) stories, in order to heighten the effect. But in those regions of society where Christian ideals and principles prevail/ the- thorough-going falsehood— the lie of pure, inventionis happily very rare. In the political world, however —more especially during periods of -great ferment—out- , right .lying is now probably much more" a European" I Great Power than it was in the day when the economist Ricardo coined his historic dictum. "A specially severe" economy of ' truth is to- be -expected, is : a matter of course, from politicians. who (lite those in France) have cast off the principles of supernatural faith andits moral i, restraints, and -entered upon a-fier.ee and unrelenting war against: all • religion. It is therefore no surprise to find that the steam-factories of the~ Political Fib in that . lodge-ridden land are working overtime. « Never tell a lie', wrote Mark Twain- in an autograph album ; "" and then came the afterthought : ""' P.S.— Except to keep in practice '. There is no danger 'that political prevaricators, especially in France, will have lack of practice with their fajoritd weapon. "They" 'take' their cue from Voltaire, the tradticer of " the. saintly. Maid of Orleans. For half a century, . until . death cut short his evil career, Voltaire waged war against the Church with .a' bitterness • that assumed at last' the proportions, of a sort of obsession. Falsehood, satire, and ridicule were

the horse,.;-. foot, and artillery, of - his fierce crusade. 'One is, obliged- to Jie ',. said he in a, letter to Diderot.; .And in^the, eighteenth fvolunie of .his '.Oeuvres Completes', we find the following Machiavellian ; wisdom ' in the course. of - a- letter to. another- -collaborator, ' Thiriot : ' Lying is 'a vice only when it does harm.; it is a very great virtue when it does, good. Be, then, more virtuous, than ever. ->z You must lie like a .devil— not, timidly and- for a time only, •> but boldly and always. ._ "V Lie, my friends, lie. -I will do a similar good turn when occasion offers.' . • • . . Voltaire's bones-are ..mouldering. into the. dust „ beneath Tissot's. great dome of the Paris Pantheon. • Beside them is. the dried skeleton, of his friend" and coworker, Rousseau— cheat, -thief, fibster, roue . (as he tells us in his • Les' Confessions^)... Par nobile- fratrum ! Their -mantle has fallen upon • worthy -.successors— &S is evidenced by the flood of proven calumny that for some years past hasf been -flowing outj from . <t>he French anticlerical . press, against the Catholic ecclesiastical persons and institutions. . The - long-drawn onset culminated in .a recent attempt of the ' Matin '• and its foreign echoes to fix- upon the Holy Father the stigma of having misrepresented . the views of ' the . French episcopate in regard to the proposed Associations -| of Worship. The attempt has - failed— it is _ one of ||the failures that add a sauce to life. The ' Bloc .' anatits organs have learned the Voltairian lesson well. But ' Truth" crushed to earth shall" rise again ; --"**-**.- The eternal years of God .rare hers.' The Political Fib may for the moment strengthen the position of the evil cause against the just one.; But time and progress work for the Church. She lhas been through all this fulf many a time since the days when her Divine Founder was - accused of . Being in league with Beelzebub, and when her early martyrs were credited with devouring babes and adoring a donkey's head. _ Even French Freemasonry can tell us nothing new. -' The world,' says Newman, ' has long ago done its worst against us ; long ago has it ' seasoned- us for this encounter. .-Tin the way df obloquy and ridicule, it has exhausted/ upon vs 1 long "since all it had to -pour, and now if is " resourceless. More it cannot say against us' than it has said already.' -« ■ * That indiscriminate .Indian stork, the adjutant-bia>d, ' swallows with equal serenity a luscious frog or , a tenpenny nail. And the .Harlem goat is. credited with, an appetite for discarded hob-nailed boots and rusty kerosene tins. Apt figures of the omnivorous and in- . discriminating gobemouche who is prepared to swallow at a gulp any and every story, however monstrous and impossible, that is to the discredit of Rome:! Such people swallowed, without ' nosing ' it, the portentous cabled story about the parish priest of ' Fangeres, and the calumnies -on the nuns. at. Aixj Nancy,' and Paris. Until the wild Masonic-cum-' Bloc ' campaign against religion in- France is over, sensible and fair-minded. people -will .at least suspend, judgment on anti-Catholic stories coming from France— and ,not forget to. make a generous use of.rthat peck of salt. • . -.-