Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7, 18 February 1909, Page 263

Notes

Maria Monk '■ Grand Master Snowball (Melbourne; has had his glorious, pious, and immortal feelings beaten black and blue by a recent announcement in tlie Commonwealth Gazette. That publication had instructed the Customs authorities to forbid the importation of two abominable books, one of them a lucubration of tho unfortunate Chiniquy, tho other the foetid romance attributed to the poor, half-witted non-Catholic gaol-bird and ' soiled dove,' Maria Monk, but written by her paramour, a reprobate ex-preacher named Hoyt. ' Because Roman Catholics,' said Mr. Snowball at an Orange gathering, ' did not wish the people to road such books they influenced the Federal authorities to have the books excluded.' * ' _ As soon as the report of the Grand Master's threnody appoared in the Melbourne daily press of February 2, the Very Rev. Dean Phelan, V.G., delivered this neat ' backhander ' in regard to the statement that the importation of that class of printed filth was forbidden through what the brethren commonly call ' the machinations of Rome ', : ' Turning from fable to fact, •we find the case stands thus: — Our Customs Act of 1901, section 52, forbids the circulation of "blasphemous, indecent, or obscene" literature, and prohibits the importation of the same (section 50) under a penalty of £100. 'But do the works of Maria Monk come within the meaning of this Act? Well, the Customs authorities, if they required information on the point, need^iot come to " Rome " for instructions, but could turn to the pages of Chambers' Encyclopedia, edition 1906, and under the heading "Maria Monk" they will find the good lady's character summed up :- "A woman of bad character, who pretended in 1835 to have escaped from tlie nunnery at Montroal, and who, coming to New York, found a good many credulous adherents." 'If Maria Monk had " credulous adherents " in America, I have too much respect for tlie good sense of our Australians to have any fear that they will allow the purity of their homes to be stained and the minds of their children to be poisoned by a literature reeking with moral filth, even though the advocate of such literature is the Grand Master of the Orange lodges, and the champion of the Bible in the State schools.'