'a Bandera Catolica'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 22, 4 June 1908, Page 9

'a Bandera Catolica '

•Mark Twain has said that ' the difference between a" cat and a lie is this, that the cat has only nine lives '. ' The truth of the great humorist's caustic statement is nowhere more apparent than in the 'faked' or fabricated ' quotations ' which the most screamy and

hysterical class of itinerant No-Popery crusaders profess to have* taken ■ from ' Romish" canon law ' , or from Bellarmine, Liguori (the name is spelled in all sorts of ways), Manning, and other Catholic writers. Time and again these alleged 'quotations ' are exposed in books, pamphlets, arid" the newspaper press', but ' uno avulso, non deficit' alter '—you tear one up by the roots, another springs up beside it. A- curious ca-se of the vitality of the ' quotation ' falsehood appears in the • Month ' for April, 1908. The ' Month ' deals, in the issue referred to, with a singular! y bloodthirsty ' quotation ' alleged to have been taken from the ' Bandera Catolica' ('The Catholic Standard'), which is described by the ' Protestant Press Bureau ' as a Roman Catholic paper published in Barcelona (Spain). The date of publication is given as 1883. And the ' Month ', after some inquiry, has been unable to find anybody who has ever heard 1 of the ' Bandera Catolica '. « We are not surprised at this. For the puny journalistic rag, which infected the atmosphere for a brief period, was only a miniature news-sheet a few inches square ; it had a short and precarious existence ; and there are perhaps not a dozen persons to-day in Barcelona who remember even its name. It was diabolically anti-Catholic, and, if our memory serves us aright, was run by one of the anarchist-socialist or revolutionary organisations that have played such an evil part in the history of Barcelona. The word ' Catholic' (Catolica) was, presumably, introduced into the tiile for the same reason that a No-Popery gutter-journal published in Dublin styles itself ' The Catholic '—perhaps to indicate the people on whom it poured out the torrent of its vituperation and misrepresentation, or, perhaps, to spread its venom and sneak its insults into unguarded Catholic homes. The alleged ' Bandera ' quotation was, on our first acquaintance with it, published with a great flourish of trumpets by an Orange clergyman, one Rev. H. Greenwood, in the ' Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser ' (Victoria) of September 7, 1896. The alleged quotation was stated to have been taken from ' a Roman Catholic periodical entitled "La Bandera Catolica", printed in Barcelona (Spain), and bearing the date July 29, 1883 '. It was an almost unquotable glorification of wholesale massacre, a revelling, 'an immense joy ', in the thought that the day was near at hand when persecution would rage in Spain, when pious Catholics would perpetrate murder on a vast scale for the glory of God, and when they would ' see Freemasons, Spiritists, Freethinkers, and anti-clericals writhing in the flames of the Inquisition '. Here (said the Rev. Mr. Greenwood) was an authoritative declaration, from a sound and reliable Catholic source, of the bloodthirsty spirit of Papists in this present day.' The authors and retailers of this savage ' quotation ' forgot the saving principle of the old-time fibster :—

* Lest men believe your tale untrue Keep probability in view '.

. The wildncss, the hysteria, the exaggerated savagery of this alleged ' quotation ' give the case away. The very, .crudeness and the inartistic brutality and exaggeration of the affair ought to give pause even to the most extreme exponent of No-Popery. Even if the quotation were correct, and its translation faultless, it ■would obviously be illogical and absurd to deduce therefrom ' the 'bloodthirsty spirit of Papists in the present day '. One might as well conclude that there is a bloodthirsty spirit among Protestants at the present day just because a few excited Orange clerics like the Rev. Dr. Kobinson, the Rev. * JoUnny ' McCrae, Grand-Chaplain Drew, and a few others hounded on their hearers, in moments of oratorical. passion, to deeds of violence or blood, or because one^E-frother E. Harkness, at a celebration of ' the glorious twelfth ' in Mary-

borough (Victoria) in- 1887, declared, in reference to Catholics, that the brethren ' only wanted to be let loose and they would exterminate them ' (' Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser ', July 13, 1887). -„ A professor of common-sense is badly needed by those who attach undue importance, or attribute a representative and official character, to the irresponsible vaporings and hysteria of excited joltheads speaking or writing merely as individuals. But where the Catholic Church is concerned, logic, or even plain, wholesome horse-sense, is not an outstanding mental feature of f those who deal in ware of the ' Bandera ' kind. Whether that miniature anti-Catholic sheet ever contained the murderous words summarised above, we have not been able to find out. The paper has been defunct for the past quarter of a century. In any case, it does not matter two straws to- Catholics whether it did or did not contain the words referred to. We dynamited the ' Bandera ' quotation so far as Australia was concerned. Three years later (in 1899) it broke out in a fresh place— to wit, in the Cohvyn Bay (England) ' Weekly News and Visitors' Chronicle '. We then forwarded to the 'Catholic Times' the necessary ammunition to make smithereens of the legend. And now once more it has shown its brazen face in England as an evidence of ' the bloodthirsty spirit of Papists at the present day.' It seems to us lo be rather evidence of the bloodthirsty credulity of some people. The latest revival of the ' Bandera ' fiction is being exploited by an organisation which calls itself the ' Protestant Press Bureau '. This is controlled by one Lc Lievre, of anti-convent romance notoriety, and is sometimes called the Le Lievre Sustentation Fund. The plain fact of the matter is, that the 'Bandera Catolica ' was about as much ' a Roman Catholic periodical ' as ' The Catholic ' (Dublin) and the Orange organ, the ' Victorian Sentinel ' are ' Roman Catholic periodicals '. Our inquiries among friends in Barcelona met with prompt responses, the substance of which duly appeared in the ' Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser. We content ourselves with here reproducing a translation of a letter •which was sent to us by command of the then Bishop of Barcelona, Monsignor Jaime Catala y Albosa :—: —

1 To the Rev. 1-1. W. Cleary.

' Rev. Sir,— By order of his Lordship the Bishop of this diocese, Monsignor Jaime Catala y Albosa, I have the honor to inform you that the periodical, "La Bandera Catolica ", was " lupus in pelle ovina " ' (a wolf in sheep's clothing). 'It was condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities, as you will see by the following decree :—: — 1 " Ecclesiastical Bulletin of the Bishopric of Barcelona. — In the discharge of the duty which our office imposes upon us, we call the attention of the faithful of this Diocese to the periodicals which are published in this city under the titles of "La Bandera Catolica ", "Lo Martell ", and "Lo Bon Christia ". And we do so, in the case of the first mentioned, because of the reproduction therein of what is called the " Arsemu oi Devotion ", the reading of which was prohibited by ecclesiastical authority of this diocese in a decree bearing date May 25, 1878 ; and in the case of the other two periodicals, because of their continuing, respectively, to publish the writings entitled " The Wasp " and " The Good Catholic ", which were condemned by our authority. By virtue of this decree, such of the faithful as have in their possession any issue of the above-mentioned periodicals, will deliver them up at the office of our private secretary, or to their respective parish priests.— Barcelona, July 16, 1883.— Ignacio Pala y Marti ". ' Accept, Rev. Sir, the expression of the respect with which I have the honor "to be your servant,

It will thus' be seen that the 'Bandera Catolica ' was under ecclesiastical interdict at the very time when it is alleged to have published the brutal words summarised in a previous paragraph. So much for . the ' Bandera ' and the statement or insinuation that it was an authoritative mouthpiece of Catholic belief and policy. We are sending marked copies of our present issue to the ' Month ' and ' Catholic Book Notes '. Our Catholic contemporaries would do well to follow Captain Cuttle's advice, and, when found, make a note of the facts here set forth. For the ' Bandera ' extract is sure to be heard of again. Afrd it may crop up anywhere. Falsehoods of that class have the toughness of a microbe— or of Joe Bagstock in Dickens' s tale. They pass, like Hannibal's great enemy, ' per damna, per caedes ', and take a deal of killing. But patience and watchfulness will at last abolish even a patch of Canadian thistle.