Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5, 4 February 1909, Page 169

Current Topics

Aid for Catholic Schools . ' I know,' said Mayor Rose, of Milwaukee, recently (quoted by, the Aye Maria), '- that what I am going to say - will lay me open to the charge of political horesy. But I v . believe that with 36,000 children in the public schools, and r over 20,000 in the parochial institutions, it is short-sighted public policy thab demands that parents who send their children to the schools of their choice shall place upon themselves a double burden of taxation. The day will dawn, and speedily, when either they will, be exempt from aiding in maintaining the public schools, or the parochial schools will be aided from the public funds.' The Accession Oath Nos amis Vennemi — in other words, the extremcr sections of our No-Popery friends in Great Britain and Ireland — are beginning to sit up and ' take notice-?— of the movement for the reform of that ' relic of barbarism,' the accession oath. They (or, rather, some of them) have begun to issue rather sultry fuhninations against the proposed excision of the outrageous formula which describes Catholic worship as ' superstitious and idolatrous.' ' Make the accession oath as Protestant as you like,' says Father Bernard Vaughan, ' but not insulting.' ' And one by one in turn, some grand mistake * Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.' It is high' time that the accession oath cast off its outrageous references to the faith of 250,000,000 Catholics. A London Fog Winter sometimes lingers in the lap of the northern May, and the thick London fogs of the clammy Novembertime linger oft into the keen and biting cold of the young new year. Oscar Wilde sang of London's November speciality : ' The yellow fog came creeping down The bridges, till the houses' walls Seemed changed to shadows, and St. Paul's Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.' But that was not the prize-taker, that was not the father and mother of the fogs that descend at times upon the great Babylon and leave nothing but a few near walls and an atmosphere of thick, rolling grey, punctured here and there with the muffled yellow glare of lamps trying hard to shine. One of these fogs was briefly described as follows in a cable message in Monday morning's daily papers : ' There has been a heavy fog in London for over two days. All traffic was dislocated, and all trains were seriously delayed. There have been many highway robberies and burglaries. The lamps were alight continuously from Tuesday afternoon till Friday morning.'

In his droll ' Nocturnal Sketch ' — a piece of ' Blank Verse in Rhyme ' — Hood tells of some of the events that happen in London when ' Anon night comes, and with her wings brings things Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung. . . . Now thieves, to enter for your cash, smash, crash, Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep, But, frightened by Policeman 83, flee, And, while they're going, whisper low, "No go I"' But the gas that ' Up-Blazes with its bright white light,'

and the electric film were no match for the protective fog that clothed the London footpad with a cloak somewhat' like that of Jack the Giant-killer or Siegfried's mantle in the Nibelungenlied. And so, under its safe cover of murky grey they perpetrated ' many highway robberies and burglaries ' — and, no doubt, were shocked at their own moderation in stopping short at these milder operations of their craft. Some years ago we cast up as follows some of the further cost which London pays for the luxury of its fog: A simple eight hours' 'day of it may involve an extra positive expenditure of from £50,000 to £100,000 in chinking coins of the realm. A goodly proportion of this finds its way into the hands of the gas and electric light companies. A fog also brings much danger, tribulation, and expense to the railway companies. ' Fog signalling, 5 says an English, railway paper before us, 'is expensive. At Clapham Junction alone £50 has been spent by a single railway company during a day's fog in extra pay to the platelayers. When the red light cannot be seen at a distance

of a hundred yards the platelayers become fog signallers. For this they are paid a shilling a day in addition to thoir rogular wages and " f ourpence per hour overtime, provided the overtime does not run. into a second shilling.'

' Accordiiig.:;to Senator Parkins, of California, ' there is .no fog on land" or- sea which can resist our new dispelling ideyice.' What the aforesaid device may be]' this deponent saitli riot." We are merely told -that ' the only noise connected with -the device i 3 a muffled blast at intervals.' ' Muffled blow ' might ' possibly be a better description. But blast, or 'blow,' or 'bluff,' or whatever it may be, the new 'dispelling device ' would do well to try its 'prentice hand at the able-bodied fogs of California, Oregon, and Nova Scotia before it joins' issue with" the goldmedallist of all the fogs that hangs' at intervals over ' famous London town.' A Catholic Census, U.S.A. A cable message in last Saturday's papers deponelh as follows: ' Including. those persons, who are affiliated ly family ties to members, Avhether they belong to the organisation or not, the census gives the Roman- Catholic* Church of the United States a total of 22,474,1f0. This total, which includes the Philir pines and other islands under the American Flag, gives 14,235,451 as the number" in the United States proper. Mr. Smalley, the New York correspondent of The Times, says that these statistics are useless for purposes of comparison, inasmuch as all other churches enumerate the actual members of the churches.' * Our readers would do well to reserve judgment on the statement that persons are entered upon the new census as Catholics, ' whether they belong to the organisation or not.' We may add that Archbishop Glennon, of St. Louis, was placed in charge of this census by the United States Government. Here are some facts in connection therewith which do not seem to square with the cable message quoted above: In an audience with Pope Pius X. on December 12, 1908, the learned Archbishop spoke as follows (we take the report from the Mulwaukee Catholic Citizen- of December 19 — the italics are ours) : 'He [the Pope] was especially interested in a summary or statement -I" made to him concerning the results of the firsf'real attempt at a census of Catholics in the United States. I explained how I had been appointed by the United States Government in an official capacity to take this census, and how I had received every assistance in my work from the civil authorities. His Holiness was much- impressed on hearing that the figures positively ascertained by us greatly increase the former estimate of the number of Catholics. Our results show about 14,000,000, from which 15 per cent, is to be deducted in the printed reports to allow for children under a certain age, who are not counted. But I had to explain to the Pope that while these are the figures recorded in the official count, a great deal of supplementary information convinces me that the actual number of Catholics in the United States is not short of 18,000,000.' It will be noted that the figures contained in the cable message quoted above relate to the ' printed reports. ' and the ' official count ' only, and not to the ' supplementary information ' received by Archbishop Glennon. At it Again? Professor Haeckel is once more passing through tlxe waters of tribulation. Years, ago scientific "men hosed him with scorn for the manner in "which he 'faked' the illustrations of the human and the canine foetus in order to support a theory of his that has long since been placed in the lumber-room of ' scrapped ' and useless fancies. Since then the Professor has ' committed ' The Biddle of the Universe, an extraordinary mixture" of science, of unscientific or unproven theories, and of metaphysical argumentation for which the author is wholly' unequipped. This book has, however, done "much mischief among untrained minds ; but one of its happiest results has been the publication of Dr. Gerard's The Old Biddle and its Newest Answer — a cheap edition of which has been published by the Catholic Truth Society. We cordially commend that admirable book to all and sundry of our readers. The further course of Haeckel' s tribulations is recorded as follows by the Berlin correspondent of the Philadelphia Catholic Standard and Times. We quote from our gifted contemporary's issue of December 5 : ' Since the appearance of the popular edition of his Biddle of the Universe,' he has been attacked more fiercely than ever. . Lodge, Reinke, Paulsen, and others who stand in the "forefront of the scientific world .pulled many of his hypotheses into. shreds. Two zoologists many years ago had already convicted Haeckel of falsifying illustrations : the same accusation is brought againsb him by Dr. Brass, the zoologist, in regard to his latest

published lecture, The' Problem, of Man. Dr. Brass's state-, ments appeared in two papers, and could not escape -the notice of the Jena professor, who promptly called his accuser a "deliberate liar." Dr.^ Brass now comes back at him with the following declaration: " Haeckel has not only misrepresented the stages of the development of man, ape, and other mammals, in order to give plausibility to his hypotheses, lie' has also taken from the posthumous works of a scientist the figure of a makak, cut off its tail and mads a hylobates out of it. He has committed the greatest possible crime against science. The proof of the justice "of my accusation I shall bring in an illustrated pamphlet ontitled Ignorance or Falsification? HaeckeVs Latest Embryo Pictures. If Haeckel is again convicted of falsification, it will be, or ought to be, all over with his authority as a savant.' Faith of Scientists From tho same letter of the able and woll-informed corrospondent mentioned in the last preceding paragraph we extract the following : ' A prominent German naturalist, Professor Dennert, of Godesberg, in his latest book, The 'Religion of the Naturalists, examines the attitude of all the groat scientist ancient and modern, towards religion. Three hundred men of science pass in review, and the result is quite astonishing. In thirty-eight cases it was impossible to determine tho religious position. Two hundred and forty-two are confessed theists [that is, believers in God], twenty are indifferent or atheistic, but only five are anti-Christian materialists in the real sense of tlie word. This means that of the 262 scientists, less than 2 per cent, openly declared hostility against Christianity and belief in God ; about 6 per cent, were more or less indifferent. The overwhelming majority believed in God. How far their religion went it is not always easy to ascertain. Many were, no doubt, free-ihinking and unsettled, but very many, too, were strict followers of a Church; in ninety cases this has boon proved beyond all cavil. Professor Dennert next selects thirty-two names — the immortals, according to him (and few will disagree with him), in the realm of "the natural sciences — beginning Avith Copernicus and Galileo and ending with Pasteur and J.-^von Sachs. Of these, Scheele's religious attitude is unknown, Lavoisier and Laplace were atheists, Humboldt and Darwin were indifferent; of the other twenty-seven, at least fourteen — Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Ray, Swammerdam, Leibnitz, Boylo, Eulor, von Hallcr, Cuvicr, Faraday, Pasteur, and Lord Kelvin — were practical adherents of a Christian denomination. Who can say, in the face of these facts, that religion and science are incompatible ? Is not rather the contrary tho truth? Ab least every Christian man of science can say he is in very good company.' Adulteration In his German Society at the Close of the Middle 'Ages, Bcli'ort Box summarises (p. 216) some of the old guild laws against adulteration, scamped work, and the like. Some of these laws are well described by him as ' ferocious in their severity.' In some towns, for instance, ' the baker who misconducted himself in the matter of the composition of his bread was condemned to be shut up in a basket which was fixed at the end of a long pole and let down so many times to the bottom of a pool of dirty water.' The same writer records lioav, in 1456, two grocers and the female assistant of one of them were burned alive at Nurnbcrg for having adulterated saffron and spices, and how" a similar fate befell some dishonest members of the samo profession at Augsburg in 1492. Tho same droad penalty of fire, we may remark, hung, till (we tliink) well on in the eighteenth century, over the heads of women who murdered their husbands. * Some time ago we referred to tho adulteration of sundry common drugs by dangerous substances calculated to bring physical and moral ruin to the home. In his recently published book, The Popes and Science, Dr. James J. Walsh describes the following account of th& manner in which a Sicilian law of nearly seven centuries ago regulated the purity and price of drugs : ' Nor must any licensed physician keep an apothecary's shop himself. Apothecaries must conduct their business with a certificate from a physician, according to the regulations and upon their own credit and responsibility, and they shall not be permitted to sell their products without having taken an oath that all their drugs have been prepared in the prescribed form, without any fraud. The apothecary may derive the following profits from his sales : Such extracts and simples as he need not keep in stock for more than a year before they may be employed may be charged for at tho rate of three tarrenes an ounce. Other medicines, however, which in consequence of the special conditions required for their preparation or for any other

reason the apothecary has to have in stock for more than a year, he may charge for at the rate of six tarrenes an

ounce. Stations for the preparation of medicines may not

be located anywhere, but only in certain communities in the , Kingdom, as we prescribe below. "We decree also that the growers of plants meant for medical purpose shall be bound by solemn oath that they shall prepare medicines , conscientiously, according to the rules of their art, and as far as it is humanly possible that they shall prepare them in the presence of the inspectors. Violations of this law shall be punished by the confiscation of their movable goods. If the inspectors, howcvor, to whose fidelity to duty the keeping of these regulations is committed, should allow any fraud in the matters that aro entrusted to them, they shall bo condemned to punishment by death.'