Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 20 April 1911, Page 727

Irish News

ANTRIM—The Necessity of a Change \ jf Lord M'Dorinell, formerly Under Secretary for Ireland, addressing a meeting at Belfast University, on suggestions for the future welfare of Ireland, said that for the v last thirty years no man who had the opportunity of looking behind the scenes of Irish Government, and had. a capacity to read their meaning, could have any doubt of the urgency for a change in Irish Government. CAVAN— Bishop of Kilmore «',,. I The Most Rev. Patrick Finegan, D.D., the recently consecrated Bishop of Kilmore, has. been presented by the Catholic laity of his diocese with a, motor car and purse of sovereigns, and was afterwards entertained at luncheon in the Town Hall. The committee in charge of the arrangements brought off a perfectly? successful function. ~ There are forty-two parishes in the diocese, i and from -eachv of these two delegates attended, who, with the local priests and a number of gentlemen from the town of Cavan, made lip a most representative gathering which greeted his Lordship. . CORK— Christian Brothers 7 '"""'"^ At Cork on February 28 was begun the celebration of an interesting centenary, which was inaugurated by a reception by the Lord Mayor at the Town Hall. Cork citizens (says the Freeman's Journal) have rarely assembled to commemorate an event of greater local interest than the introduction.' of the: Christian Brothers into their midst. Founded in Waterford in 1803 by Edmund Ignatius Rice, the great Irish apostle of Catholic education for the masses of the people, this distinguished Order came into existence at an epoch when Ireland still suffered from the effects of the iniquitous Penal Laws which : were enacted to keep the people in intellectual as well: as civil and religious bondage. Rice merits to be ranked alongside O'Connell as the Liberator of his fellow-countrymen. A prosperous .merchant in the Urbs Intacta, seeing the condition of ; ignorance and neglect to which the Irish '■ people of the humbler classes were reduced, he nobly lesolved to devote himself and his means to the alleviation of their lot, and to the work of popular education, encouraged thereto by Dr. Lanigan, Bishop of Ossory, and Dr. Hussey, Bishop of "Waterford, the friend of Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, and the first President of Maynooth. Under such auspices the work, begun with a few assistants in 1802 in a rented house, which gave place the year following to the parent house on Mount Sion, prospered until In process of time the whole of the country was overspread with schools, centres of light from which knowledge, religious and secular, . illumined the minds of the people. If ''Council won deathless fame by emancipating Irish and English Catholics, to Edmund Rice belongs the imperishable glory of having endowed the people with the knowledge which taught them how best to use the liberty so dearly won. - ; DERRY—Presentation to the Bishop An interesting function took place recently at the Bishop's House, Derry, when the i Most Rev. Dr. McHugh was the recipient of a gift from his old class-fellows of Maynooth College. Owing to the protracted illness of his Lordship and other unavoidable circumstances, the presentation had been somewhat delayed. The gift took the form of a handsome crozier replica of the famous Clonmacnoise crozier. DUBLIN—-An Important Appointment I am credibly informed on sound authority (writes a correspondent of. the Freeman's Journal) that Mr. Maurice Joy, a well-known Dublin litterateur and journalist, until recently a prominent official of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, under Sir Horace Plunkett, has just been appointed to an Assistant-Commissionership of Agriculture at Natal at a salary of £9OO a year. Mr. Joy is favorably known in Dublin as one of the ' Intellectuals' of the new Irish literary movement, and his friends will rejoice to hear of his good fortune. It will now possibly be conceded that a journalist has brains and intelligence enough to gain him high official honors without undue influence or political wire-pulling. The Sale of Bad Literature His Grace the Archbishop of t Dublin, .in his Lenten Pastoral, says: The clergy should not relax "their efforts to awaken the? consciences of unworthy Catholics, vendors of immoral and irreligious publications, to the sense of the awful responsibility which ; they incur by lending themselves to the diabolical work of undermining the morals of the people through the dissemination amongst them of debasing the corrupting literature. Unhappily, in not a few places in the city and diocese, as elsewhere, there are persons calling themselves Catholics, who are engaged in this infamous traffic, j, heedless of every., warning, heedless

even-of the warning words of Our Lord: "What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world-if he suffer- the loss of his soul?» Such unworthy members of the Church.' says his Grace so long as they persevere in their evil courses are plainly unfit to be admitted to the Sacraments. " The Crusade Against Intemperance ." 1 ;,",t * Q ™ In the Lent f. n Pastorals of the Irish Hierarchy the HS Pe S Ce quest \ occupies a very prominent position. His Eminence Cardinal Logue says much ground has already been gained in the glorious crusade against .intemperance, and Irish t Catholics should be thankful -God for. this blessing, but he points out that it is necessarv^ to make sure of the ground gained, to consolidate vfctory and to guard against eventual defeat. If there is to ? Ha Xv reaL progress in, this vital, uphill struggle* al! must 5uU together, using every means, natural aS supernatuVal ? to achieve success. ;. The Most Rev T)r w.U -a«.m? V of Dublin says of Si cSSu? the faithful, especially in this time of penance, should avoid drunkenness,, a degrading vice, the cause not'only of many and most grievous temporal calamities, disgrace? and™W gary sickness and sudden deaths, but also of the SS everlasting damnation of souls. The Most TW Til HeaFv throSZt tlv^f yS the Temperate CrSde'preSi xniougnouttlie West two years ago is still producing Prpat blessings all over country; but as there is tendency to relapse into old habits of evil, the BkS of the province have resolved to renew the crusade during the sSuVanT?' «i„ g .el S is so calculatedSolfrSl if™ of th? d fT temporal happiness to the people as' the prafe tice of the great Christian virtue of temperance accompanied, as it always is, by the spirit of industry and tnS lhe Right Kev. Dr. O Dea, Bishop of Galway, savs drunkenness is much less common than it used to be and what is more hopeful, it has come to be regarded as'a disgrace Truer views prevail regarding the value of drink for health" work, and even pleasure; temperance is Sr taueht in of e a SC r h f olS; and .Ppinioii is growing « to th? need or a reform ol the licensing laws and of their admi^^T turn Lao Right Rev. Dr. McKerina, Bishop of CWher advises abstinence from all intoxicating drink during Lent' SS T OB i n i Slgn ? of the times a ch ange in th"dfink£c habits of the people. . The Bishop exhorts the clerJv inculcate the principles of St. Patrick's Anti-Treatin? League.. Many other Bishops write hi a simdar strain rerS^tfdot! 6 mUCh Ls b -n S KERRY— Great Crisis fund to which no doubt ou™o3l olanLSon & vPbS to.make a generous response. We havf arrived at i «££? .crisis m our national affairs; and it is emTnentlv an g " at sion for a long pull, a strong mill and SW + * D ca ~ national cause, I gladly double my annual sXcription^ 6 LIMERICK-A Venerable Catholic Passes Away Wales and Sisters Hilda and Laurentineof' the Sisters to Gnd^ Se ß ?r;ieeTn M ?* • h f l '.° f his household eaUed tu uoa_s service in this materialistic ace. While under his jurisdiction, no member of his famly ever missed th« Sees o <rfH^°BhfJS 6 R ° Sary ni^ htly ' and the other Practices or ±ioly Lhurch were equally respected. He loved the poor, who knew his generous spirit 1 and whosf prayers sounded so sweet as the alms were doled. The national movement had no truer supporter from the dawn of man W the f^T fereath ' W»R» was "the movement of TT«?+Jit L i an T i or, in -his declining years, the United Insh L K a g U e His motto was 'Faith and Fatherft • TlOU S h ™? " s years, he will be missed for many L + ? y in , th e parish he so edified by the family so Sce£ * ad n A ed " Hi t obsequies were carried out in the new church of where a Solemn Requiem Mas* was offered,, which .the remains were conveyed to the family burying ground in Clonkeen, amid the prayers of .Limerick ° attendlng from a " P arts of Ti PP era y ry and LOUTH— Nationalist Convention o? A i Nationalist-? Convention • in >! Dundalk on Februarv 27 selected Mr Augustine Roche, formerly member fo? vacancy£' " Nationalist candidat * for the 7 North LontU

WlCKLOW—Death of a Priest The news of the death of the Very Rev. "Wm. Dunphy, Barndarrig, County Wicklow, occasioned sincere sorrow among a wide circle of friends. He and his brother, the Very Rev. James Dunphy, Arklow, took a prominent part in the national movement. Father W. Dunphy was born in Durrow, Queen's County, in 1832. He studied in the Kilkenny and Carlow Colleges, and was ordained by Cardinal Cullen in 1861. GENERAL Unionists and Local Representation Taken to task by Mr. Gwynn, M.P., for an unfair attack upon Irish Nationalists, the Protestant Bishop of Durham soon retired from the field (says the Catholic Times). Other Protestant correspondents, however, hastened to complain that since the passing of the Local Government Act Irish Protestants have not had a fair representation on the local councils. Mr. Gwynn replied to them at considerable length in the current issue of the Spectator, and everybody who reads his letter must admit that it bears no evidence of prejudice. It was, he points out, hoped by the Nationalists on the passing of the Act that in many places political shibboleths would not be used by men seeking to take up the work of local administration. But this hope was not realised. The Unionists either refused altogether to come forward or presented themselves distinctly in the character of partisans. The result was that, as a rule, party lines have been followed. When they have been departed from the Nationalists have more frequently taken the step on behalf of the Unionists than the Unionists in favor of the Catholics. In Dublin Unionists were elected to the Mayoralty until Mr. Parnell's time, when a Unionist Lord Mayor refused the use of the Mansion House for a Nationalist demonstration. But in Belfast no Catholic or Nationalist has ever been appointed to the position of Mayor. Protestants should take note of the beam in their own eye and then they would not complain. The Cultivation of Tobacco The following memorandum from the Irish Tobacco Growers' Association to the • Development Commissioners has been passed at a meeting of the Association:The attention of this Association having been called to tho decision of the Development Commissioners 'to obtain temporarily scientific assistance for the investigation of the feasibilities of tobacco cultivation,' we beg to point out . That the experiments carried out under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and the reports of the Irish Tobacco Manufacturers thereon conclusively prove the suitability of the soil and climate of Ireland to produce several classes of tobacco of superior quality. 2. No expert in foreign tobaccos could be relied on to give an unbiassed opinion on the possibilities of Irish tobaccos., and this Association knows of no single expert in foreign tobaccos who would be considered a reliable judge of tho three main classes of tobaccos, namely pipe, cigar, and cigarette, all of which, have been successfully raised in Ireland. 3. The popularity of Irish tobacco is proved by the rapidly increasing sales of the Irish Tobacco Company, which was established for the special purpose of manufacturing Irish tobacco. At the request of. this Association the Irish Tobacco Company is prepared to furnish such information in proof of this as the Development Commissioners may desire. 4. That as the time for sowing tobacco will have passed before the end of March we trust that the Development Commissioners will give the matter their early attention. In conclusion, we wish to again point out that, having regard to the importance of the tobacco industry as a means of employment, the British colonies and foreign countries foster tobacco cultivation by the most rigid system of protection. Although Irish tobacco, even in its infancy, can stand a reasonable amount of taxation, it cannot be expected to bear the full weight of a tax which is almost 1000 per cent, of its cost until it has had time to recover from the effects of its suppression for a period of eighty years and has been organised on modern lines. The Revenue authorities collect about £2lO duty on every acre of tobacco grown in Ireland. So far as our knowledge goes, in no other part of the British Empire is any duty charged on home-grown tobaccos, although imported tobaccos in some cases pay an even higher duty than here. A grant of £25 per acre from the Development fund would have the effect of encouraging manufacturers and others to promote the cultivation of tobacco throughout Ireland, thereby enormously increasing the revenue of the. country, and providing thousands of agricultural laborers with steady, employment.