The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, MAY 9, 1907. OUR FEDERATED YOUNG MEN

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 19, 9 May 1907, Page 21

The Ne w Ze alan d TABLET THURSDAY, MAY 9, 1907. OUR FEDERATED YOUNG MEN

TURING the nine years of our apprenticeship to journalism we have received no message of kindly encouragement that has gone .by so short a cut to our heart and snuggled so deeply in its core as the following official 'communication from our beloved friends of the Federated Catholic "Young Men's Societies of New Zealand :—: — ' Federated Catholic Young Men's Societies of New Zealand. Head-quarters : St. Patrick's. Hall, Boulcott St., Wellington, Ist May, 1907. ' The Editor, "N.Z. Tablet," Dunedin. 1 Rev. Sir, - { ' At the Annual Conference of delegates from the Federated Catholic Clubs of N.Z., held in Ohristohurch during Easter, '07, the following resolution was carried unanimously, viz. : " Th)at this Conference desires to place on record its appreciation of the noble work done by the 'N.Z. Tablet ', and that members of affiliated Societies be urged to do all in their power to promote the interests of this excellent Catholic paper." . ' My Executh c has pleasure in conveying this resolution to you. With best wishes, ' Yours faithfully, - - ' P. J. McGOVERN, ' Hony. Secretary.' For the which, thanks, and evermore thanks. On personal grounds the kinidly greeting of the -Federated Young Men is welcome to us ; for it comes from associations that, in our .purely missionary days, ever laynearest to our hearts, both by the asphalt pavements of cities' and ito the regions ' 'wav back ' 'wbJere the patient ox-team wound slowly over the lea. But to us the real significance of that encouraging "message Iks much deeper. It is to us the earnest that our representative young men realise the palace that religious journalism must fill in the" onward movement of the . Catholic faith in our day. They are our picked body of youmig lay Gideonites. They have brought to the furtherance of 'Cajtholic interests an ability which is often

more than that which is ordinary* in youth, and'»a solid, cool-headed, hard-faced earnestness that keeps on in the good work — often in the face of adverse circumstances — from New Year's day to St. Sylvester's. A foremost and most' direct place belongs by right to the good influences which' 'by word and example .they give to Catholic youth in the cyclonic period that lies between their leaving school and getting" permanently settled in life. It is the period when the fresh, budding life comes in contact with the thousand and one risks arising from idleness, evil companions, flrink, dissipation ; when pitfalls arc dropped into ; when faith is sometimes undermined or lost ; when promising lives are often shaken out of their true, centre of gravity. In the widening circle of the activities into which their beneficent zeal has been extemdkrg, they recognise the extent to which the intelligence of our rising (and risen) generation is day by day being played upon by myriad influences that tend to distort its notions of revealed truth. It can- ' not, happily, be said of New Zealand (as Robeut Louis Stevenson said of another country) that its> newspaper press is ' the mouth of a sew'or, where lying is professed as from an university chair, and everything ignoble finds its abode and pulpit '. But it is true that the atmosphere of current journalism is not favorable to th<o cultivation of Christian ideals ; that the shallow sciolist finds the daily paper the best pulpit from which to air his dogmatic theoiies about the deepest questions of the whence and the whither of life ; that some at least of the g-eat channels of communication are in the hands of agencies hostile to the Catholic faith ; that day by clay the journalistic drag-wet gatjhers in and casts indiscriminately before the eyes of young and old, of foolish and discreet, the stories of murders, suicides, robberies, frauds, scandals, divorces— and (in some flagrant cases, as well) ' the low tittle-tattle of the prizering, the racing-stable, and the green-room, bar-room gossip, and the coarse mouthings of the social riff-ratt '. We have placed the criminal in excelsis— upon a lofty pedestal. And if we were to> judge our day and country by tiro bulk of the secular press, our social history would be lihjerally bespangled with the Broad Arrow, and there (would be a deadly measure of truth in Gibson's cynical saving, that our ann'&ls are mere records of, crime/ folly, and misfortune. This familiarity with evil— this ' liberal education in depravity and crime '—represents almost the only mental food supplied to many a Catholic household. And the indifferentist, agnostic, or neo-pagan spirit of many newspapers infects the social atmosphere about them with a subtle dioxide which Catholics— unil'ess furnished with the neutralising agency of a sound instruction in their faith*— may find it year by year more difficult to breathe. The great antidote— as our young men friends well realise— is the Catholic newspaper. It lowers the criminal and the divorcee from their throne. After all, the thieves and the forgers and the murderers are not the majority. The world does not wag for the most part to the pressure of a" mainspring of conscious villainy. Simple faith and kindness and charity and selfsacrifice prevail vastly more, we believe, in it than v the premeditated wickedness that is noisy and ostentatious. A Father Damien is a better type of our race, and a better example to set day by day before the mind's eye of the world than William Sykes or Charles Peace. And truth is the best antidote to administer to those who hiaiv© imjb'ibed the subtle poison of journalistic nongodliness, and who are unaware of the magnificent Way in which, (a®, for instance, Dr. Pritchard has shown in his f Nature and Revelation ')' the general development of scientific knowledge is friendly to the faith of Christians. The great conflagrations of Paris and Chicago in 18-71, and the incidents of summer life in the Australian bush, show that fire is" sometimes -the best element for

i fightihg fire. In the same way, a strong, active, wellequipped areligious or irreligious press is best met by a strong, active, and well-equipped religious press. Yet, foe various reasons which we need not enter upon here, the. extent of the clientele of Catholic newspapers leave® much indeed to be desired. We are working, a s engineers say, ' linkednup '—at low pressure, which meiins low efficiency, and we are allowing the areligious press to do— even in religious mat"t(ers— too much of our thinking. A 'thoughtful writer -.gives us the following warning 'an regard to this neglect of the Catholic paper :— 'We shall be deprived of eyes and ears in our social intercourse. in some degree the 'daily press must think for us. But this constant intercourse into which we are daily thrust by our constant contact with the anti-Catholic press must, if no means are taken to neutralise its eiiect, blunt our susceptibilities as Catholics and have a deteriorating, effect upon our Catholic morale. We owe a duty to ourselves, not only to preserve the faith, but the instincts of faith— our instincts as Catholics. These, like every other instinct, may be lost if we take no care to preserve them. You cannot associate with bad company and find your sccisl intercourse among it without losing the instincts of higher morality ; and you cannot saturate the mind -daily with anti-Catholic ideals without in some measure endangering the instincts of faith, the instincts of Catholic morality, which it is the object of the Church to foster and educate. . . The cultivation of the Catholic press is— when we consider the natuie of the peculiar evil to which we are exposed — a necessary duty, if we would preserve intact our Catholic faith. Inadequate as it may be to cope with the evil to which it is opposed, it is nevertheless, the only means at our disposal. Its influence is gaining steadily, and the more we foster it, the greater will be its power and efficacy. . . It is a necessary antidote to that six days' evil wherein is preached what is not to our interest, either as Catholics or' as Christians.' . It was in gre&t part through the splendid Catholic press of the German Empire that the illustrious quartet of Centre leadsrs— Win'dthorst, Mallencroft, and the two Reichenspergers — sent the Man of Blood and Iron to Canossa and broke the legime of persecution known as the K'Ulturkampf. West of the Rh'ne, party divisions and the neglect of the good press have combined to leave the Church for a time at least in the power of its enemies. It is difficult to fortell how far the present tidal wave of aggressive infidelity will spread before it recedes, as all similar movements have receded. But we hope it will never find us neglecting one of our main lines of our defensive works while zealously engaged in good and necessary operations of another Kind for the honor of God and the spiritual good of our fellow men. There is a note of heart-breaking regret in the last lenten pastoral of the learned Bishop of St. Brieuc (France) which should serve as an inspiration and a warning to Catholics in lands that are more happily circumstanced : ' While we were building churches, they (our enemies) were founding newspapers. These newspapers created public opinion. This pu/blic opinion which they created was in their hands to do with as they pleased. They turned -it against us, againsVthe dogmas of our faith, against our worship ; and they it was who emptied our churches. This fact ought to be for us a warning lesson. Against the evil press we should have directed all our effort ; in favor of the good press, we should have made every sacrifice. Have we done so ?'