Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 14 November 1907, Page 22

Notes

Modernist Errors With 'this issue we publish a translation of the Pope's great Encyclical on the Errors of Modernists. The translation is that of the London 'Tablet ', but a few minor errors that crept into it have been corrected. Conciliation The principle of conciliation has scored a signal victory in averting the great threatened railway strike in

England, and in preventing such a calamity for several years to come. If political parties in England are 1 wise, they will hasten to give the principle legislative sanction. In this respect there is no need that the 1 British parliamentarian should make his country a corpus vile for an untried experiment in labor legislation. New Zealand has shown the way, and the tardy Britisher can safely follow. Catholic Belgium 1 Belgium ', says ( the ' Glasgow Observer ', 'is a Catholic country— the only country' in Christendom with an expressly Catholic Ministry in power for the- past twenty years, the only country where Catholics as a parly have had and have the upper hand. Belgium is the most prosperous country in the world. The Bel- - gian State pays the Catholic priests a State salary. 'The Belgian State goes further. Catholic State that it is, it pays Protestant ministers State stipends, and it pa3 r s even Jewish Rabbis' the same.' - » Immovable amid Change In the ' Bellman ' (Minneapolis, U.S.A.), Mr. William C. Edgar, a non-Catholic writer, writes recently as follows :— . ' Never in the history of this land was there^gireater; need than now for the great restraining, conservative influence which that (the Catholic) Church is able to exercise upon the wayward spirit of the nation. It is doing what no other religious 'body of less inflexible standards and inferior power of organisation can attempt to do successfully — a service to mankind the value of which is beyond all power of estimation. ' It stands immovably in a world of mutable, changing purposes ; pointing steadily to the value of law, discipline, and order ; proclaiming 1 the beauty and worth of self-sacrifice and service ; teaching the .lessons of obedience and humility. With its ..strong arrri it gently but firmly restrains its people from following the dangerous paths which lead to chaos, and bids them find their anchor for the present and hope for the future in the quiet sanctity of the Church's influence.' The notable Encyclical which we publish in this issue shows once more the strong arm with which the Church ' gpntly but firmly restrains its people from following the dangerous paths which lead to chaos '. Incentives to Crime The remarks of Mr. Justice Denniston at Auckland on Monday last, when dealing with three youths who had- pleaded ' guilty ' to breaking, and entering-, and! stealing ammunition, and who had, gone bushranging at Dargaville, should be carefully noted by parents and guardians, " Mr. Justice- Denniston said he had a very strong objection to posing as a moralist, hut he must say that he certainly thought some comment should -be made upon, the practice of carrying round the country spectacular representations of all the ruffians of the colonies — spectacular representations in which crirces ' were presented before boys as heroic deeds, but' in which in the end the desperadoes were shot and justice was vindicated. Then, again, there was ''Robbery u'ftder Arms,' which was presented in. exactly the same form. ' I repeat,' continued his Honor, ' that I do not like posing as a moralist and delivering lectures from the Bench, but I think that in the interests of public morality something should be done to prohibit exhiMtiqns of the sort. I have no doubtrin my mind that these "boys! would not be here to-day but for these exhibitions. I have no hesitation in expressing my opinion. I cannot help thinking that in dealing with these lads I really ought to take into consideration that public facilities are given, and not forbidden, for presenting crime in this way beforex them. Much mischief is no doubtt done by books, but they reqluire reading and a certain lamount of trouble to get at, while with these spectacular exhibitions the whole thing is presented in a convenient and alluring way. I have only just had another illus-

tration before me to satisfy me that these exhibitions are directly alluring boys and young men to crime, and I shall take this into consideration in dealing .with these cases.