Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 19, 14 May 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

Sunday The gifted Dunedin Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. Waddell, has been blistering some professing Christians for the manner in which they spend the Sunday. 'It is,' said he on last Sunday, ' a day on which they may sleep more, and smoke more, and eat more and lounge more. It is cleanshirt day, 101 l about day, visiting day, gossiping day, generally vacant and self-indulgent day.' Catholics are, of all Christians in these countries, the best church-goers. But there are among them a few whom the learned Doctor's description fits like a yellow kid glove. Broken Hearts ' A town in Missouri, ' says J;he ' S.H. Eeview, ' ' has a pharmacy known as the Broken Heart Drug Store. In towns nearer to us than Missouri there are quite a number of broken pledge drug stores.' Now ' the Philosopher of the Sandwich Islands ' had a pretty close insight into the ways and wiles of the human heart, and the stuff it is made of ; and he had no abiding faith in the existence of the broken ones. 'Mi experience,' says lie in his ' Afferisms, ' *is that, next to the gizzard, ■ the harte is the tuff est peace of meat in the whole critter. ' Bad Mothers and Bad Companions A parent (a former Government official) writes to us in reference to an editorial paragraph on ' Bad Mothers ' that appeared in our issue of last week. He is in entire agreement with the statement of our experienced clerical prison visitor — namely, that, in the immense majority of cases, young men, well brought up so far as church and school do their up-bringing, owe their downfall to bad mothers. Bad companionships (adds our ex-official friend) are another, though less potent, factor in the destruction of youth, and especially of boys and young men whom a dire necessity forces to work in shop or factory or Government position far away from the sweet and bracing influences of a good home. Our correspondent mentions several instances in point that have lately come within his knowledge. They are cases such as those with which every priest in great cities has a melancholy familiarity. There is a family resemblance in them all : the undesirable companions met at work or in boardinghouses, the hasty friendships, the low amusements, gambling, the familiar speech at the ' bar ' — ' same again,' and the young man that came from a clean, pure home in the country or in a provincial township ' Becomes what you would call a " Blood," One part whiskey, three parts mud, The kind that chews the devil's cud, And chews it to excess. ' The slippery slope of Avernus is well greased and sandpapered, and the young ' blood ' often spins down it on ball-bearings. And His Majesty's is often, for him, merely the Halfway House to hell — or the ante-chamber of the Pit. Holland ♦ Many,' says Mr. Dudley Baxter in the ' Aye Maria,' S ' seem under the impression that Holland is decidedly a Protestant country, as contrasted with its Catholic neighbour, Belgium. In reality, Holland is now almost as much "HJatholic as Calvinist, the actual proportion being two-fifths ; and every year this happy change becomes more emphatic. The number and splendour of Dutch Catholic churches afford quite a remarkable surprise. In every town and in many villages, often almost side by side, new edifices arise in place of the old fabrics taken from us centuries ago.' . Anger-Cures In the old Irish fairy-tale of Will-o '-the- Wisp the devil, when enticed into "Will the Blacksmith's magic easy chair, was quite powerless for mischief, and became, like one of his famous children, s

- ' ' The mildest-mannered man That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat. ' There was, perhaps, better psycho-physiology in that fairytale than its unknown author was aware of ; for we find it laid down in Lotze's ' Microcosmus ' (vol. ii., p. 28) that '"rage is quieted by muscular repose,' and that ' it is a dictate of prudence to get an angry man to sit down in an easy-chair.' It would, we fear, be difficult to get some angry- men or angry women into easy-chairs without the moral suasion of a knotty club._ Still, the easy-chair cure may be worth bearing in mind. At Walsall, in the olden days, scolds were ' treated ' with iron collars around their necks and iron plates held fast upon their tongues ; and it is said that in Pekin the dumb asylums are in part supported by fines levied off dames who fail to control their tongues. Shakespeare recommends angry people to go over ' the four-and-twenty letters ' of the alphabet ; and Max O'Bell urges upon all concerned the old French motto : Before speaking, let your tongue go seven times around your mouth. In such circumstances, of all others, there is (according to an old Celtic proverbial saying) melody in a closed mouth ; and to the angry, one might well address the remark that the Countess of Pembroke made to Chaucer of the halting tongue and fluent pcn — ' Your silence pleases infinitely more than your speech. ' He was a philosopher who thought of repeating the alphabet when urged by anger, and who discovered the value of making the tongue, in the same circumstances, travel seven times around the mouth. But, alack ! not every man or every woman knows when he or she is angry. And the discovery too often comes, like the p'leeeeinan of melodrama, when the mischief has been done ; and then there commonly remains only the surly repentance that is a fresh offence, or the cherished bitterness that is invested at a usurious rate of interest. Catholic Marriages In the course of our pamphlet on Catholic Marriages, we pointed out the evils that have, in large historic instances, flowed upon society through a relaxation of the old Church laws against marriages of consanguinity and of affinity. ' Under God,' said we, ' the world owes largely to the Church's laws" against marriages of blood relatives, and against marriages of affinity, that sweetness and that purity of our cherished domestic relationships_that constitute one of the proudest glories of Christian society.' The New York ' Times ' said in a recent number that this legislation of the Catholic Church, and her insistence upon the lasting nature of the "marriage bond and upon the necessity of thought and deliberation in entering thereupon, must win' the approval of all reasonable persons, whatever may be their religious belief or lack of religious belief. 'It is the view of the Church,' says that widely circulated journal, ' that this relation is to be considered not simply, and hardly chiefly, with reference only to the immediate parties to it, but rather with full consideration of the welfare of offspring. There has been a good deal of loose talk, pome of it with certain scientific pretension, as to the subject of what, in the slang of the day, is called " eugenics," and the contributions to it have ranged from suggestions of trial marriage to the notion of complete State regulation of the production and rearing of children. But it is the dictate of common sense and the world's experience that the most trustworthy guarantee of desirable offspring is care and intelligence in the assumption of the marriage relation. It is to this that the Church of Eome directs its most persistent and careful regulations. Its legislation, though not enacted by public agencies, has a sanction recognised by those to whom it is addressed, and there is a widespread, thorough, and devoted organisation for giving it .effect. It is not easy to exaggerate the benefit to the community thus secured, and which could not otherwise be had.' • " Church Progress in Australia Some figures remind us of lines of soldiers on parade, strong, victorious in the past, confident of the future. Such, for instance, are the figures that we publish from time to time showing the triumphant progress of the Church in America and Australia— and, in the latter country, notably

in the two great Sees of Sydney and Melbourne. In his recent valedictory discourse, previous to paying his customary visit to Borne, the Archbishop of Melbourne gave some statistics which are a record of rapid progress in the past and of high hope and resolution for the future. During his Grace's administration of a little over twenty years (up to last August), there has been expended in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, for religious, charitable, and educational purposes, the vast sum of £1,272,874. < But, ' added his Grace, * what will please the Holy Father most to hear is the broad and deep foundations which your faith and your generosity have laid for Catholic education. Banish faith from the schools in one generation, and you have banished God from the country in the next. Some generous help had been proffered us from outside, but we have not sought it. We have borne our burden alone. Our schools have multiplied enormously throughout the whole Commonwealth. The younger grow up with the light of religion to guide them? and those 'disastrous effects which we see in Italy, honeycombed as it is with secret societies, subversive to religion, to morality, to society itself, since the State has taken education out of the hands of the Church ; and in France, which,- following the same course, has become now frankly infidel — those disastrous results, I say, will not befall us here. ' ♦ In God We Trust ' In well-regulated families much attention is rightly paid to the external manifestations of domestic affection. Love grows and thrives on the evidences of love, and the goodnight kiss of parent and child, and the words of affection that pass between them, are the trimming of the lamp that keeps the sacred flame burning brightly, without smoke or flicker or choking carbon. To some extent, the same thing holds true of a nation as of a family. And it is an evil day when a people, as a people, neglect or cast aside its external marks of reverence for the God, the Father of us all, just as it is for a family when the children abandon the little courtesies and the evidences of affection that make the charm of domestic life. » There occurred, for instance, in France, a worse ' debacle ' or downfall than that described by Zola, when the BadiealSocialist majority in the French Legislature contemptuously cast aside- the signs of reverence that the French nation collectively paid to the Deity in the grand old prayer-motto of its coinage, ' Dieu protege la France ' — ' God protect France. ' And heaven knows, it needs the divine protection now, of all the periods of its history. President Boosevelt made a mistake — nay, a blunder — when, following the evil example of French official atheists, he, a believing Christian man, ordered the motto, 'In God we trust, ' to be removed from that portion of the United States coinage which bore it. Congress, however, has, by the overwhelming majority of 255 to 5 decided to restore the old and honoured motto. During the discussion on the Bill, Bepresentative Ellis, of South Carolina, broke into poetry and recited a rather telling parody on Kipling's ' Becessional. ' One verse ran as follows :—: — < Wo bowed before the shrine of Wealth, And, drunk with riches, went astray. i Eestore, O God, the nation's health, And lead it in the old, true way. ' In sorrow, shame, and vain regret We plead that Thou wilt spare us yet.'

President Boosevelt had intimated in advance that if Congress directed the restoration of the motto, he would not veto their action. And so an error of haste is to be corrected at leisure. i

How Converts feel People are, full many a time and oft ' Charm 'd with distant views of happiness, But near approaches make the prospect less. ' The mountain near by wears not the royal purple that clothed in the distant prospect ; and possession oft brings its illusions. Not so, however, in the case of those who seek rest of souk* and freedom from changing winds of doctrine, in the bosom of the City of Peace, the Catholic

Church. Father Bobert Hugh Benson, the brilliant author and convert son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, says, after years of experience of the Old Faith : * The Church promises a great deal, but my experience is that she gives ten times more, and if you put on the balance the most successful life outside the Church, and the most unsuccessful and disastrous life within her fold, a thousand times rather choose the latter. The Catholic Church is supremely what she promises to be. She is the priceless pearl for which the greatest sacrifice is not too great.'

Newman, Manning, and many others have spoken in a similar strain of joy at the ever-unfolding beauty of the Catholic Church. Coventry Patmore is one of the customary cases in point. He filed and polished and burnished his literary work with the scrupulous care of Kinglake, until his ' Angel in the House ' has come to occupy a place of high honour among the poetic achievements of the nineteenth century. In his biography, which was published in 1900, we find the following words* which this devout convert wrote with his own hand : ' From that time ' (of his reception into the Church) ' to this ' (1888) ' no shadow of religious doubt has ever crossed my understanding or my conscience ; though it was not until the autumn of the year 1877 that my faith became the controlling power which for five-and-thirty years I had longed and prayed to find in it. 3 A like freedom from the rackings of doubt and misgivings marked the newly-won faith of the noted English writer, convert, and publisher, Mr. C. Kegan Paul. Aulus Gellius tells us that poisons proved rather wholesome than hurtful to the ducks of Pontus. In like manner, Mr. Kegan Paul records, in his ' Confessio Viatoris,' how certain 'books' (as we may by courtesy call them) of a vehemently NoPopery character, such as 'Father Clement,' 'The Nun,' etc., first led his halting footsteps towards Borne. Auguste Comte was a still N more unlikely teacher. Yet Mr. Kegan Paul learned from him the apparent paradox that 'Positivism is Catholicism without God.' "Under Comte 's directions he read 'The Imitation of Christ' — that exquisite book of Catholic devotion that is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever to souls that would get close to God. 'The daily study of the "Imitation" for several years did more,' he says, 'than aught else to bring me back to faith, and faith back to me. '

' Those who are not Catholics, ' says Mr. Kegan Paul in his 'Confessio Viatoris,' 'are apt to think and say that converts join the Roman Communion in a certain exaltation of spirit, but that, when it cools, they regret what has been done, and would return but for very shame. It has been said of marriage that every one finds, when the ceremony is over, that he or she has married another. . . . We wed Bachel, as we think, and in the morning, behold, it is Leah. . . . But the Church is no Leah — rather a fairer Eachel than we dared to dream ; her blessings are greater than we had hoped. I may say for myself that the happy tears shed at the tribunal of Penance on that twelfth of August — the fervor, of my first Communion — was as nothing to what I feel now. Day by day the Mystery of the Altar seems greater, the unseen world nearer, God more a Father, our Lady more tender, the great company of the Saints more friendly, my guardian angel closer to my side. Sorrows have come to me in abundance since God gave me the grace to enter His Church, but I can bear- them better than of old, and the blessing He has given me outweighs them all. . . . It will be said that I am very confident. My experience has been like that of the blind man in the Gospel who was also sure. He was still ignorant of much, nor could he fully explain how Jesus opened his eyes, but this he could say with unfaltering certainty : ' ' One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." '