Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 25, 25 June 1908, Page 22

Notes

♦ Wasn't Loaded ' Early last week two boys up North went out with a gun that, of course, ' wasn't loaded '. The local paper reports that the service at the graveside, over the younger of the pair, was ' very impressive. There's no gun so deadly as the one that ' isn't loaded '. Cardinal Logue and Dr. Neligan We quote elsewhere in this issue some remarks recently made by the Anglican Bishop of Auckland in regard to ' muck-rake Imperialism '. Remembering with what violence and aplomb a number of our secular newspapers feli upon Cardinal Logue in connection with that bogus ' interview ' in New York, we are waiting with some anxiety to see what is going to happen to Dr. Neligan. A Mighty Growth In 1813 (according to the archives of Baltimore ca/fchedral) six priests ministered to some 20,000 nouis. in the whole State of New York and part of New

Jersey. There is no record of any college, hospital, academy, or asylum. ' What ', asked Cardinal G-ibbons iv his centenary sermon, ' is the situation to-day '! In the same territory there are one archbishop and nine bishops (including a coadjutor and an auxiliary bishop), 2536 priests, upward of 1400 churches, and a Catholic population of about 3,000,000. The whole region is now adorned with colleges, academics, and schools, protectories, asylums, and hospitals, and with all the appliances that religion and benevolence can devise for the alleviation of suffering humanity. New York is to-day the most important See in the United States, and is second to few, if, indeed, to any, in the Avhole Catholic world.' The Catholic faith has achieved great ■triumphs under the Stars and Stripes. In numerical strength and in religious activity, it has no peer in ' the land of the free and the home of the brave '. And it seems destined to perform even greater achievements in the future. Floreat ! Broken Promises One of Shakespeare's gentlest characters was (says the great dramatist) ' ever precise in promise-keeping '. But there are those a-many who look upon promises as Hudibras's coarse-grained squire looked upon the even more sacred obligations of an oath. Said the varlet Ralpho :—: — ' Oaths are but words and words but wind, Too feeble implements to bind, And hold with deeds proportion, so, As shadows to a substance do '. Just so much of regard has been, apparently, paid by their authors to the fine promises made by the leaders of the French Radical-Socialist ' bloc ' or ' machine ' when they were about to enter upon their policy of expulsion of religious and the laicisation — in other words, the atheismg — of the national institutes of education and charity throughout the country. The promise of the fabled ' milliard ' for old-age pensions was, of course, never seriously meant — it simply made to one class the sort of appeal that the Eighth Henry made to another when he set out to confiscate the monastic property throughout the length and breadth of England. ■ ' All sorts of improvements ', says the ' Catholic Times ', ' were promised by the ' bloc '. ' Frenchmen are now discovering how much the promises meant. Within the last few days there has been posted on the walls of Paris a large placard in which the effects of laicising public charity or the Public Assistance, as it is called, are described. Of the hundred million francs allotted to the Public Assistance, sixty-seven per cent., or two-thirds, are swallowed up in paying officials ; only thirty-three per cent., or one-third, has a chance of reaching the poor, who do not, in fact, receive even the whole of this sum. During the last twelve years the numbjer of sick persons in the hospitals has increased by two per cent.,' but the number of those who are well paid to attend them has increased one hundred and forty-four per cent. Last year five hundred and seventy-four new positions were created, at the expense of the poor, for the benefit of the well-to-do. It is fot this that the self-sacrificing religious who received litile more than their bare support were expelled. The same thing can be said of nearly all the State institutions ; expenditure has gone up and efficiency gone down. Pages could be filled with accounts of the atrocious scandals caused by the new lay attendants in the French hospitals.'