The Eucharistic Congress

New Zealand Tablet, 24 September 1908, Page 10

The Eucharistic Congress

.IMS" now nearly thirty years -since the idea of organising Euchar.st.c Congresses occurred to , Monsignor de Segur who then:- wore the mitre of . the great French. See of Orleans.' ' 'The .first Congress (says the" Weekly Frcejvan) ' was held -at Lille on ["^''V-f 1 -- n" ICC • hCn th€ *- have beV'held at Avignon, L ege H. ei burg, loulouso, .Paris, jVniwerp, Jerusalem, Reims "Ron? T?m ' -Tvf' L ° UrdeS ' >* !ni > NamUr ' Angouleme Rome, loumay, and. Mete. The assembling of this year's Conl £-ess ,n London is of historic as well . as re n gious importance.i mportancc . -No event ,n England of recent date is of more profound and wide-reachmg import than the. great Catholic , revival which began midway in the nineteenth century. The Tractarian movement wns v ".stirring of dry bones, symptomatic of a religious resurrection, and no feature of that movement is more marked than the recognition, of the fact that the Eucharist is. the "centre

the chief source of light and life in the Church. 7f' iris"": impossible to mistake, and hardly possible to over-estimate,- --the; historic significance of a. Catholic Congress held . in.t he capita! 1 of .a Protestant country, to proclaim publicly .belief in", and' pay - homage., to, the. Blessed Sacrament. Time was when, it' waV judicially, held to be a "crime", punishable ' by death .for ,a priest, to celebrate Mass ;', when . every effort that relentless bigotry and subtle statecraft could, devise was employed .to cause the continual Sacrifice to cease throughout- the length "and breadth of the land ; when Cromwell proclaimed that " wherever the Parliament of England ruled .there should be.no Mass," which,' even to this day, the succession or Coronation path blasphemously declares to be " damnable and .idolatrous " ; when even the ritualistic resemblance to it, designated by Beaconsfield." the. Mass. in masquerade," would lead a man to the Tower and the block'; when altars were demolished and desecrated, and priest-hunter^ like sleuth-hounds, were let loose against the Lord's anointed for exercising their priestly office. The Catholic revival referred to has happily changed all that.'

it will be news to many of our readers to learn that public processions of the Blessed Sacrament— about which some extremist lately -aised such a storm— have been regularly carried out in England for over sixty years. ' The first public procession in honor ofjhc Blessed Sacrament in England since the Reformation,' says the. Weekly Freeman, ' was organised in 184; by father Dominic, the saintly Passionist who received Newman and Dalgairn, intj the Church, and who shortly before tha, had been publicly hooted and hissed. The procession, which grew into a custom that soon spread, has remained to this day. - . . The writings of Daigairns and Faber, so tho-ouchlv impregnated with a devout Catholic spirit, have likewise been among the chief factors in propagating devotion to the Blessed Eucharist and popularising the theology appertaining thereto Nothing is more curious, and I will add more hopeful," writes Mr. Lilly in the Dublin Review. " than the change which has come over a large section of the Anglican body in its attitude towards the Sacrament of the Altar." There is. another ground of hopefulness as regards the religious outlook. Although the of much of modern thought may be in heterodox directions here is underneath the movements of opinion which characterise his age an honest searching after truth in many minds. The literature scattered broadcast by the Truth Societies of England and Ireland, that species of propagandism which may be called the Apostolate of the Press, meets this need. -The man who first pressed the lever of the printing-press," says Cardinal Wiseman, wielded a more powerful and nobler sceptre than the sovereign who may have dropped a few coin* in his hand as a bra/c mechanic." If the spoken or printed words of men have such potency in propagating truth, what diffusion of light may we not confidently anticipate will radiate from Westminster during the Euchanstic Congress.'