Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11, 18 March 1909, Page 423

Notes

Benefit Societies The Independent Order of Oddfellows, we are told, are to abandon signs, grips, passwords, and "blie rest of the ' flummery 'of secret societies. We never could . understand why, in our day, men \ should act the part of rats in a cellar for the performance of any good work. Hence we welcome the new departure in the Oddfellows' organisation, and hope that other societies having an object that will bear the light of day, will go and do likewise. For Catholics, the Catholic benefit society is best in life and death. And, in the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society, we have in these countries an organisation of which Catholics may well be proud, and which, for them,- approaches most nearly to the ideal. Encouraging the Editor One esteemed subscriber, in enclosing his subscription a few days ago, remarks : ' The Tablet is the best pound's worth I get.' Another writes us as follows : 'As a Catholic parent, I feel that if I did not get the Tablet I would be doing the greatest injustice to my little ones that can read. The young nowadays are so apt to devour any printed stuff that comes their way, that it is incumbent on the parent who recognises his responsibilities to place " before the young and impressionable minds of his children wholesome reading matter. For this I find none ' better than the Tablet, which each week -pours out a crystal stream of pure Christian and moral teaching.' There spoke a parent with a cultivated conscience -in the matter of reading and a true sense of his responsibilities in this matter in regard to his children. Earthquake Heroism ' . 'Language,' says the Catholic Times, 'cannot adequately describe the gratitude which the Italians and Sicilians of all classes feel towards their clergy for the heroism of which they have given so many proofs during these trying days. Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, priests^ monks, and nuns have done infinite honor to their high calling by their eagerness to render help, their forgetfulness of themselves and their indifference to risks. S.ome of them, alas! have lost their lives; but their fate has not deterred others from facing danger. Whilst Cardinal Merry del Val and other members of- the Sacred College are exerting themselves to carry out the Holy Father's wishes with regard to the sufferers in. Rome, Cardinal Lauldi, Cardinal Nava di\Bontife, Mgr. Arrigo, the brave Archbishop of Messina, and a whole list of other prelates, priests, monks, and nuns are going through the * ruined cities and districts, ministering to the spiritual and corporal wants of the injured and the starving. Some of those who are thus engaged have seen friends killed or dying by their sides, and bear marks of suffering themselves, but they continue their ministrations without fal- ■■ tering, even when they are barely able to move from place to place. From Cardinal Nava di Bontife, who is sixty-two years of age, an interviewer' elicited the confession that he would never have believed he would have been able at his years to stand the fatigue he had endured. Surely the fortitude and self-abnegation which the Catholic faith inspires shine out gloriously on occasions such as this which try men's souls.' -