An 'Authority ' in Napier

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 5, 31 January 1907, Page 9

An 'Authority ' in Napier

Jokes that in the big cities have become as flat and stale as miusty penny beer are sometimes considered by the witlings' good enough to serve up as sparkling originalities in the regions ' out-back '. And in like - manner some are found to retail as first-class ' authori- - ties ' in smaller places writers who are utterly discredited in centres of intellectual life. ' Last week some " individual inflicted upon Napier intelligence the implied slur of supposing that, it would accept the slanderous and discredited Michael McCarthy— No-Popery writer and lecturer to Orange and Wiseite audie n ces— as a first-class " and decisive ' authority '. on the religious Md. of Call ' olic Ireland. As usual, the public were treated to the old wheeze that this bitter enemy of Catholics is" himself .a ' Roman Catholic .- As a matter of fact, he is, about as much a - Catholic as is the master of thenearest Orange lodge. It is true that Misther McCarthy was baptised into the ancient faith. But, while still a hobbledehoy, he was sent to a Protestant Grammar School at Middlcton. He, proceeded thence to the Protestant University of Trinity, where any rags or tatters of- Catholicism that still clung to him seem to have been torn off and scattered to the winds. We find it stated that long over twenty years ago he had ceased to practise -the duties of a Catholic; And there is scarcely a doctrine or practice of the Old Faith but he has denounced in- his publications in the rough and coarse invective of the Orange platform. Some years ago the ' Guardian ' (a well-known Anglican organ) said of him that he proved himself not to be a Catholic, nor even a Christian. And the • Church Commonwealth ' (an Anglican newspaper published in Australia)

wrote editorially as follows regarding one of his slopshop No-Popery, productions . in 1902 .: *It is as virulently Orange as any professional Church Associaitionist could ever wish*. Protestantism, is all light and altogether lovely, whilst Catholicism is as black as Erebus, and ree&s of rottenness An honest. controversialist is worthy of respect, but though we dislike the methods of modern Romanism, ~Mr. McCarthy's attack is not honest . ' ■ The McCarthy publications are- melancholy examples of the way in which history should not be written. To Carlyle, on one of his ' livery ' Says, the population of the' -world was composed mostly of Fools. To- the slipshod pet of the Orange lodges, the population of Ireland consists of Michael McCarthy,^ in an aureole ; the adherents of the Reformed creeds, who are wingless angels ; ajrnd ' Papists,' .who are fools or knaves, or incarnate ddmon'S*->many~of these about five shades deeper than the foul fiends of the Abyss. There are no normal human beings in the McCarthy style of -*' literature ' . The man's worthlessness as a witness was hit off' as follows in the course 'of a review of one of his books by the ' Otago Daily Times ' of August 14, 1905 : • That Mr. McCarthy will ever be mistaken fora torn historian we have not- the slightest fear ; nor do we feel very sanguine that any efforts on his part .will bring him within measurable distance of that literary summit, for he lacks the first essential quality of the historian, an unbiassed, analytical, and introspective cast pf mind '. 1 His feelings ', says the same paper, ' run away with his judgment to such- an extent" that he becomes, instead of a faithful recorder of events, a special pleader '. And *t dismisses him with the contemptuous remark that ' his prejudices t are inexcusable '. But prejudice is the shadow that ever follows little minds. The London ' Times ' has no warmer feeling in- its heart for Catholics in the Green Isle to-day than it had in the dread post-famine times, when it cried exultantly: ' The Irish are going with aTvengeance ! ' Yet the , ' Times ' wrote of McCarthy's second ' shocker ' : ' Mr. McCarthy's book is like its predecessor,, an ijntidy and clumsily composed volume ; its -style is poor and pretentious '. . Rivarol was only a little more caustic when ■ he said of a dull proser of the McCarthy calibre that he wrote in laudanum upon sheets of leadr The note of illiteracy clings Jike a barnacle .to No-Popery literature generally. In such stuff, literary quality would be .as , much out of place as a setting of diamonds- in a hodman's hod. And the literary hodman .now under review forms no exception to the general literary incapacity of his class. He caters, too, for the ' yellow ' and uncritical section of the public— a section that can neither understand nor appreciate literary excellence or sobriety of statement. After- having waded through one of his productions— which we shall by courtesy call ' books '— we incline to the opinion of an English non-Catholic reviewer that a sixth" standard-/ schoolboy might , grind better literary stuff out of .a sausage machine than Mr. McCarthy has. evolved out of ,Ahe grey matter of , his brain. Our Napier friends s,hould furnish themselves with copies of Dr. O'Riordans brilliant work, ' Catholicity and Progress in Ireland '. It is," obtainable from any Catholic .bookseller, . and reduces the . slanders of McCarthy and his kind to impalpable powder.