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♦ Slattery in the States The movements of the unfortunate Slattery will always be of some interest to New Zealanders, because, as will be well remembered, it was in New Zealand that this unhappy adventurer met his Waterloo, and received such an exposureper medium of Dr. Cleary's pink pamphlets as ultimately compelled him to abandon his campaign of calumny, and beat a hurried and ignominious retreat from these southern lands. About a year ago we chronicled the fact that he was touring the United States, and was having, on the whole, a bad passage, the Mayors of some American cities absolutely refusing him a permit to lecture. Latest information to hand indicates that he is now in Boston, . telling his squalid tale to a handful of Orange followers. The following —which explains itself —from a Boston correspondent is published in the Edinburgh Catholic Herald just to hand: — 'Dear Editor, —I want to ask you about a certain individual by name Slattery, who is at present in Boston and causing no end of trouble. He claims to be an ex-priest, and is giving all kinds of information, mostly to Orangeman and the more bigoted class of Protestants who go to hear him. Some of his questions and stories have been brought to me, as a Catholic, by some of my fellowworkers who are of the opposite faith. The first and main question I have been asked isWas Slattery ever <i priest, and, if not, why don't I go and hear him and he will tell me all about it. Needless to say, I didn't accept the invitation, because no doubt I should have got my head broken, as I couldn't have sat and listened, ex-priest or not. So I thought I wouldn't go. _ This Slattery claims he is Irish, as he no doubt is by his speech, so I thought you could let me know if he ever was a priest, and if so, would you please also let me know why did he leave? Or did he get silenced for something? Dear Editor, I must ones more apologise to you for taking up your valuable time, and hope you will see your way clear to do me this favor, as I know you cerstainly can give these ex-priest gentry the "knock-out." I will now draw to a close; wish you and all your readers a happy New Year. — I am, etc., ' Beet Caldwell. ' 217 Brighton Avenue, Allston, Mass, U.S.A., ' January 2, 1911.' * The editor of the Catholic Herald wisely advised the young man to leave Slattery severely alone, and not increase the excitement about him by attending his meetings. At the same time he sent to the Boston correspondent a copy of the Catholic Truth Society's pamphlet, entitled The Slatterys. . Assuredly there is no lack of material for the refutation and exposure of this precious pair The most complete and detailed account of their careers is that given in the two pamphlets published by Dr. Cleary— Joseph Slattery: The Romance of An Unfrocked Priest, and Mrs. Slattery: The "Romance of a Sham Nun. The English Catholic Truth Society's pamphlet— The Slatterys —contains all the necessary and salient facts in their history; and the pamphlet entitled The Business of Vilification, Practised by ' Ex-Priests' and Others, published by the Catholic Truth Society of America, gives a brief but sufficient summary of the circumstances which led to Slattery's expulsion from the priesthood. Certainly there is no reason why any American Catholic should remain long in ignorance of the real facts and true inwardness of the Slattery campaign. « Mixed ' Marriages in South Africa 'Principles,' says Richter, 'like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.' Those who are governed by principle can be depended on to be consistent marked contrast to those who are guided by an ever-chang-ing, make-shift expediency. The Catholic Church has always stood, for example, for the sacredness of marriage and for her right to determine the conditions on which shall depend its validity as a sacrament of the Church. Rather ■ than be unfaithful to principle on this point, she has been content as in the case of the rupture with Henry VIII.— to lose a whole kingdom. Her attitude on this same question, as expressed in the recently promulgated decree Ne Tenure, has given rise to widespread comment and to not a little criticism— praise and blame alike have left her unmoved. An interesting illustration of her consistency, and unflinching adherence to this groat principle—the right of religion to a paramount say in regard to marriage—in whatever direction it may have to be applied " comes" to us from South Africa. There, when the new . Marriage Bill was under discussion in the Union Parlia-

ment on the Ist of December last, a proposal was made that marriages between white and colored persons, called 'mixed' marriages in < South Africa, should be forbidden by law. In bringing the. matter forward, according to The Cape Times, the member for Rustenburg (Mr. Grobler) moved that the following be a new sub-section to follow Sub-section 4: ' (5) The marriage between European and colored persons, no matter of what race, is prohibited. The lion, member in doing so, said that they were now building up a new nation in South Africa, and they must see that they kept the race pure. Europeans preferred to see the race pure, and not mixed with coloured blood, while he thought that pure-blooded natives also strongly objected to people of their color marrying white people. After a lengthy speech, the honorable member concluded by urging that now was the proper time to deal with the matter. * '. But the debate in Cape Town at once called forth a weighty and outspoken letter from Bishop Gaughren, Vicar-Apostolic of Kimberley. The letter appeared in the Transvaal Leader, and after a short introduction, ran as follows : ' The matter is not concerned with politics, as such, in which I should not care to interfere, but with something vastly more important. While all are agreed that marriages between the black and the white races are, generally speaking, very undesirable, and while we can, therefore, give Mr. Grobler credit for the best of intentions in introducing the prohibitory clauses in the Marriage Bill, nevertheless, in view of the deplorable consequences certain to result from the adoption of this clause, it is the duty of every lover of the country to protest against it, and to oppose it by every legitimate means. The result of a mixed marriage of the kind referred to is, at worst, but a physical evil, while the prohibition will issue m a flood of moral evil incomparably more ruinous and degrading. An effect probably not foreseen by the author of the clause is that it will, if accepted, bring men, whose great desire is to live as dutiful and law-abiding citizens, into conflict with the law. "Whatever the new law may enact, it will be the duty of the Catholic clergy, for whom I speak with authority, to bless marriages of tho kind referred to, if their people call upon them to do so. They must take the consequences of their opposition to the law of Parliament, in order to be faithful to the law of God. I have no right to ,speak for the clergy of other denominations, but I feel sure that many of them will take the same view of their duty. A law which thus conflicts with conscience cannot long be maintained Universal experience proves that, speaking generally, the less the State interferes m the matter of marriage, and the more the freedom of the citizen is respected, the better Beyond prohibiting what the moral law plainly forbids and determining the legal status and rights consequent oh marriage, it ought to be enough for. the State to be satistied that marriage has been contracted according to the formula of any recognised religious body, and to accord it formal sanction. In a country such as this it is only by a certain self-restraint on the part of our law-makers that serious difficulties and complications can be avoided ' The general principle here in question—that of fidelity to the law of God—is precisely the same as that involved in the decree Ne Tenure; and Bishop Gaughren's letter shows the consistency of the Church in her readiness to apply the principle as well in the direction of allowing marriages which the State might forbid, as in rejecting marriages which the State might recognise. « " Romish" Tyranny' The Rev. Dr. Hanson, who for some years occupied a London pulpit and is now minister of the Duncairn Presbyterian Church, Belfast, is perturbed in spirit at the approach of Home Rule; and has delivered his ■ soul in the congenial and hospitable columns of the London Times. Dr. Hanson, it seems, is a Liberal in politics; but Mr Asquith s promise of a measure of self-government for Ireami has put Ins Liberalism to a heavy strain. He calls his letter to the Times an 'Appeal to Nonconformists'; and in the course of it he entreats his ' old comrades in arms the Revs. J. H. Jowett, R. F. Horton, F. B. Meyer, Dr U Monro Gibson, C. S. Home, J. H. Shakespeare, and others—to hesitate before championing a measure the accomplishment of which would, in his opinion, be but the advancement of the power of Rome. After resurrecting the venerable bogey about ' Home Rule,' being 'Rome Rule, ' he continues: 'lt is not that your Ulstermaii is unwilling to trust his Roman Catholic countrymen with his life and fortune; he is profoundly and incorrigibly distrustful of the Church of Rome, which, he is convinced would bo put in a position of unchecked supremacy and would use her authority, for all it is worth to onnress Protestants. What he dreads is Popish ascendency and intolerance. You may call him a bigot if you will- but he is a bigot as Dr. Clifford is a bigot, in his uncom-

promising hostility to priestcraft and all its ways and wiles. Deliver" your Ulsterman from the fear of Romish tyranny, and he would accept "Home Rule" to-morrow.' ':-." •"■■; -.; - * *:.] 1 This stale and hollow talk, about 'Romish tyranny' and intolerance in Ireland has been many times refuted, -but never, perhaps, more completely and effectively than in the case of this ill-starred deliverance of the Belfast divine. The refutation has come, too, not from indignant Irish Catholics, but from Irish Protestant M.P.'s—men who for years have lived, and moved, and had their being in the very thick of this ' Romish tyranny,' And here is what they have to say. Captain Donnellan, M.P. for East Cork, taking occasion to refer to the matter in the course of an address to his supporters, remarked that the recent contest had served a useful purpose, for it had completely disposed of the fiction of Catholic intolerance in Ireland. Very few Irish Protestants, he was happy to say, were misled by it, and English Protestants were now, as a rule, too well-informed to be any longer frightened. Nevertheless, a case such as.his would help to. dispel any lingering doubt that some few Protestants might still have on the subject. As they, were all aware, he stood there as an Irish Protestant, and as an Irish Protestant he had hitherto been invariably returned unopposed during the space of nearly twenty years to represent one of the most Catholic constituencies in Ireland. When a contest was forced upon him, who were the first to stand solidly at his back? The Catholic clergy of East Cork. It would be well indeed if Protestant Antrim would take a lesson from Catholic Cork in religious toleration. The catch-cry of "No priests in politics," would always meet the reception it deserved from the Irish people, and it would be an evil day for the country when the Irish clergy ceased to exercise their rights as citizens in the country of their birth.' * Mr. Swift Mac Neill, M.P., one of the ablest and most respected of the Nationalist members, is still more pointed and emphatic. In a letter to the London Daily News, he thus gives Dr. Hanson his final quietus: "Dr. Hanson's fear of "Romish tyranny," in which he desires English Protestants to participate, in the event of the establishment of Home Rule, if I may say so in all courtesy to an old acquaintance, is unworthy of him. Taylor, a Protestant writer in his History of the Civil Wars of Ireland, says in reference to Irish Catholics: "It is but justice to this maligned body to add that on the three occasions of their obtaining the tipper hand, they never injured a single person in life or limb for professing a religion different to their own. They had suffered persecution and learned mercy, as they showed in the reign of Mary, in the wars from 1641 to 1648, and during the brief triumph of James II." I, myself, am one of the Irish Protestant minority, the son and grandson of Irish Protestant clergymen of the late Established Church. What a victim of "Romish tyranny"—this is what Dr. Hanson calls his "bogey"—l have been, the representative in the House of Commons for four and twenty years of South Donegal, the most Catholic constituency in the British Empire, for which I have been returned by the Catholic Bishop, priests and people of that constituency. I am the holder of a chair in the National University of Ireland, an institution mainly established for -•* the purpose of enabling the young people holding the faith of the great mass of the Irish people to receive the advantages > of University education without any violation of conscience or danger to truth or morals. The authorities of that University have placed not me only, but several other Protestants in positions of trust for - the teaching of their students, and have within the last few days appointed me Clerk of Convocation, an officer one of whose duties is to act as assessor to his Grace the Chancellor the Most Rev. William Walsh, D.D., the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Oh! the horrors of "Romish tyranny!'" * ; We can heartily forgive Dr. Hanson for an outburst which has evoked such a magnificent tribute to the tolerance of Catholic Ireland. Signs of Life # 'Cast thy. bread,' says sacred Scripture, ' on "the running waters; for after a long time thou shalt find it again.' * For many a day the N.Z. Tablet has been sowing the seed of a 'divine discontent' with the condition of things under which Catholics have to bear such a heavy and unjust burden for the education of their children; and it would seem that the healthy public opinion which this paper has aimed at fostering among its readers is once again —as in earlier days—beginning to find voice. The revival of interest on the education question is shown on every hand. _ In Dunedin, as the outcome of the speeches on tiie subject made a t the recent gathering of the Christian brothers Old Boys' Association, an interesting contro-

versy has arisen in which the Catholic position is being vindicated by Mr. J. B. Callan, Jun., with vigor and spirit, as well as' with conspicuous ability and effectiveness. In Wellington, the correspondence columns of at least one of the dailies are literally filled with a discussion of the subject; and the energy : with which the Catholic apologists have thrown themselves into the contest may be gathered from the representative-letters which we publish on another page. Throughout the Dominion—as the result of the deliberate and considered utterances of his Grace Archbishop Redwood and of Bishop Grimes, and of the able Pastoral of Bishop Cleary—leading dailies have devoted editorials to the question, afld in every way given the subject prominence. Here and there, in the course of some of the discussions, a little warmth may have been manifestedbut that is a small matter. Where is there, heat there is movement, and where there is movement there is life. On this vital matter, anything is better than stagnation. No man worked his way anywhere in a dead calm. * As a sort of corona to the Wellington controversy, Professor Mackenzie, of Victoria College, who has got the secularist 'microbe' very bad, has published a pamphlet entitled Defence of the Secular Solution. Professor Mackenzie is a Professor of English, though one would never have guessed it from a perusal of his pamphlet. Here, for example, is a specimen of English as she is wrote' by the Professor 'lt is the business of the Churches to indicate the divine implications of what the social conscience and an enlightened consensus of opinion pronounce good, true, and beautiful. In the name of all that is 'English' what does he mean by 'divine implications' in this portentous deliverance? And, apart from the English of the sentence, the Churches, by this time, are quite as likely to know what their ' business' is as is our agnostic Professor. It is the 'business,' presumably, of a Professor of English to teach English; but if he must leave his last, at least he might be modest enough to avoid heavy dogmatism of this order. v * Professor Mackenzie's main contention is that secularisation of education is inevitable, because of the divided state of religious opinion that it affords 'a working compromise 'that it ensures us against sectarian strife that it is necessary, in a word, in the interests of peace. 'Peace I' Do these upholders of secularism really delude themselves into believing, or think they can delude others into supposing that we have peace under the existing system. ' Peace'—while Catholic Bishops and Catholic laymen, whenever opportunity offers, are proclaiming with all the emphasis possible, their sense of the tyranny and injustice inflicted upon the Catholic body; ' peace'—while Anglicans and other non-Catholic bodies are working as they have never worked before to secure a radical alteration of the system; ' peace '—while our papers, as at Wellington, are full of wordy warfare and discussion of it of aby no means temperate character. It is—borrow a phrase from Professor Mackenzie—' consummate nonsense,' to describe our existing system as ' a working compromise.' It is not a compromise at —it is a surrender, total and complete, to the secularists. Having got all they wanted, and having absolutely nothing left to fight for, they sit back contentedly,' and blandly tell us that the maintenance of the present system is necessary ' in the interests of peace ! ! * Other points in Professor Mackenzie's pamphlet have been fully and ably dealt with by the local correspondents whose letters we reproduce. We may, however, dwell a little on a very glaring inaccuracy which occurs on the very first page of his pamphlet; and that, too, on a point which he . regards as fundamental. In addition to playing, in this pamphlet, the role of theologian, philosopher, moralist, scientist, and policitian, Professor Mackenzie also sets up as an authority on history. With what looks suspiciously like the ' pride that apes humility,' he describes his competency as a historian in the following terms: ' Those of us Mho, in our modest way, are students of history—ancient and modern, sacred and secular—know something of the normal course of events in connection with the rise, progress, and triumph, as well as the decline, disintegration, and fall of human institutions.' And then he goes on to perpetrate the following blazing inaccuracy. After asserting that all Churches were originally the servants of the State, ho continues: ' The history of the Christian Church is no exception to the rule. Aii institution that began in the service of the State (the italics are ours) gradually acquired such power and influence that it eventually employed the State in its service. The servant became master and vice versa.' What are we to think of a University Professor who .can gravely attempt to palm off on the public

such a statement as that ‘ the Christian Church began in the service of the State.’ The Christian Church —whose founder, Jesus Christ, allowed Himself to be done to death at the hands of the State rather than abate one jot or tittle of His claims; the Church, whose first earthly Head, St. Peter, was crucified head downwards rather than render to Caesar the things that' are God’s the Church, whose early disciples allowed themselves to be torn by the lions of the amphitheatre rather than submit to a State-imposed creed and worship. These elementary historical facts are known in our kindergarten and primer classes. Asa matter of fact, in bringing the early Christian Church into the discussion, Professor Mackenzie has brought forward what is really the most striking historical vindication possible of the present attitude of the Catholic Church in refusing, at any cost, to sacrifice conscience and Christian principle.. -

Incidentally—-and of course without intending Professor Mackenzie furnishes ammunition to the enemy. One of the ‘arguments’ which is being forever dinned into the public ear by the upholders of secularism, is that if recognition be given to the schools of one or two religious bodies all the others will clamor for recognition, and the break-up of our great ‘ national system is inevitable. Well, in England, under the Act of 1902, voluntary schools (mainly Anglican and Catholic) receive direct aid from the State; and here is how the matter pans out in respect to breaking up ’ the English Board or National system. The figures were submitted at the annual meeting of the Northern Counties League, held at Leeds on November 14 last, by its Secretary (the Rev. C. Peach); and they are quoted on p. 4 of Professor Mackenzie’s pamphlet: Since 1903 (that is, in seven years) voluntary schools in England have decreased in number by very nearly 1200, and the number of pupils on their registers by over half a million. On the other hand, during the same period the number of Council (or State) schools has increased by over 1700, and the number of pupils on the register by over three-quarters of a million. In 1903 the pupils' in the voluntary or Church schools outnumbered those in the Council schools by 650,000 ; in 1910 the pupils in the Council schools outnumbered those in the voluntary schools by 600,000. : In other words, the Council schools have 1,250,000 more pupils than they had seven years ago, while the voluntary or Church schools have more than half a million fewer than they had seven year ago.’ The explanation of this falling away of the Church Schools is to be found, in part, in the fact that they have been ‘ starved' by hostile administrative regulations; but, after making due allowance for this cimcumstance, it is evident that the State schools have easily held their own. An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory or guess-work; and in view of the foregoing figuresadvanced on high secular authority we may reasonably expect to hear a httle less of the bogey about the ‘ break-up ’ of the * national ’ system if recognition be given to denominational claims.

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.I whakaputaina aunoatia ēnei kuputuhi tuhinga, e kitea ai pea ētahi hapa i roto. Tirohia te whārangi katoa kia kitea te āhuatanga taketake o te tuhinga.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZT19110316.2.12

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New Zealand Tablet, 16 March 1911, Page 469

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3,824

Current Topics New Zealand Tablet, 16 March 1911, Page 469

Current Topics New Zealand Tablet, 16 March 1911, Page 469

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