Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 11 May 1911, Page 853

Current Topics

The Press and the Delegates ■ On the whole the press of the Dominion have been more than cordial in their attitude towards the Irish delegates ; and those papers, in particular, which really represent, not a section -• of the people, but the general body of democratic opinion in the country, have been especially explicit and emphatic in their endorsement of the Nationalist cause. One or two of the ultra-Conservative journals, however—notably the Dominion and the Christchurch Press— have damned the mission with faint praise, or, rather, they have damned it at large, without praise of any quality or degree. In this-as Conservative organsthey have simply been true to their traditions; and readers of- the papers in question could Hardly have expected anything better. One does not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles, nor blessings on a democratic movement from papers whose settled policy it is to oppose democracy. The Dominion does not see why funds are wanted; and it is oppressed with the thought of the financial burden which England may be called upon to bear in the first years of Home Rule which feature of the proposals it regards as ‘critical.’ In all the long years during which Ireland was robbed by over-taxa-tion to the tune of two and a half millions a year, the Conservative papers discovered nothing ‘ critical ’ in the situation—they apparently regarded the operation as a perfectly natural and proper one. The Press, on the strength of an alleged American utterance of Mr. Redmond which it has dug up from files dating back to 1908, professes to fear that the Nationalists are really aiming at separation. The columns of American papersas the Press knows full well — the last place in the world in which to look for a measured and accurate statement of the views and utterances of visitors to the Republic ; and after his last mission —a few months ago—Mr. Redmond had to publicly repudiate some of the imaginative deliverances attributed to him. On this question of separation, Mr. M. Nolan, in a characteristically vigorous letter, puts the Press right in such complete and convincing fashion as to fully justify him in his demand for some sort of apology from the Christchurch paper. Mr. Redmond has explained so often recently in reasoned, deliberate, and authoritative articles that ‘ Ireland’s demand is for full legislative and executive control of all purely Irish affairs, subject to the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament,’ that if there still remain any of the reading public who are not properly seized of the position the fact must be due either to want of goodwill or to congenital obtuseness, r Litem scripta manet —Mr. Redmond’s written statements remain, and the Irish Party will be bound by them. In the meantime, if —as we should be sorry to think —the Press and the Dominion hoped by their animadversions to arrest the flow of contributions to the New Zealand fund, it is satisfactory for. us to reflect that they will be wofully disappointed. Few things stimulate interest and enthusiasm in any cause better than a little opposition. The Irishmen of New Zealand will resent being dictated to by papers who have no first-hand knowledge of the situation in Ireland, and who have little sympathy with her people. Wellington has answered the ! Dominion’s strictures by a magnificent response to' the delegates’ appeal— contribution on this occasion far eclipsing any of the city’s previous efforts.- If the Press only continues its narrow and illiberal, criticism it will . doubtless succeed in achieving a similar success for the Christchurch gathering. . ' Is Popery Creeping In s, Some two or three weeks ago a troubled Presbyterian cleric wrote to the Otago Daily Times all . the way from ’Picton to voice the anxious query; ‘ls Popery creeping into the Dunedin Presbytery?’ The immediate occasion .I of the Picton brother’s agitation was the. fact that the ' Dunedin Presbytery had 'christened a newly-erected structure as ‘ St. Margaret’s Residential College’ — naming it after a Catholic saint who was canonised by the Pope of Rome, which,’ said the perturbed Pictdnite, ‘ is one of the greatest sins we can commit.’ Certainly it was a sufficiently grave enormity; but it was a mere ‘circumstance compared to the way in which things seem to be /moving in Presbyterian circles in the United States. There.

as we learn from the Ave Maria, the editor of the United Presbyterian recently published a leading article in praise and glorification of the Blessed Virgin!, ' The article was entitled ‘ The Mother of Jesus;’ i‘ Is this,’ asks the editor, a startling subject -for art editorial or a sermon in a Protestant newspaper or pulpit?’ We leave it to Picton to answer; and without pausing for his reply we hurry on to give some extracts from this' piece of Presbyterian ‘Popery.’ * ‘ • • . We set before ourselves for examples,’ says the United Presbyterian, the virtues of other Bible characters. We study the character- and extol the virtues of the disciples, prophets, saints, and early Christians. Sermons are filled with references to. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (the mother of Zcbedee’s children), Simon’s wife’s mother, and many other women; but the Mother of Jesus is almost ignored in more than one Protestant pulpit. . . •.' Surely there is no reason why we should refuse or neglect to honor her who was and • is “ blessed among women.” That which makes her character great is her faith, shown in her meekness, humility, quietness, fidelity, obedience, and love. . . All these things, and His death itself, did not triumph over her faith. We find her in the upper room, with those who trusted Him, just after His Ascension. She must have heard Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, and witnessed the wonderful ingathering that followed ; and that must have gone far to heal the hurt in her heart. She was the incarnation of all that is pure and sweet in womanhood and motherhood. Blessed is she that believed!” Blessed also are ye that believe.’ * In respect to the statements regarding the way in which the name of Mary is tabooed in Protestant pulpits, the above is an absolutely true bill. We know whereof we affirm when we say that while many sermons are heard in Presbyterian churches on Ruth and Naomi, on Miriam, on the other Marys mentioned in the New'"Testament* on : Dorcas and Lydia, etc., the queen of womanhood, the august instrument of the Incarnation, is not deemed worthy of even a passing tribute. There, are, however, in more directions than one, welcome signs of a change. It is not so much that Popery is creeping in, as that mere no-Popcry is dropping out. Long-standing prejudices are at least beginning to lose their hold the bitterness of the older Calvinism is dying down; and the day is not very far distant when the unreasoning anti-Catholic declamation which was once so common will find its only exponents in antediluvians like our Picton friend, or in the discredited ranters of ' the Orange lodge. Mr Balfour on the Education Question Mr. Balfour’s views on the education question .have always been broad and statesmanlike. He does make some attempt to lay a solid foundation by getting down to fundamental principlesin marked contrast to the pettifogging politicians in this part of the world who seem utterly unable, on this question, to rise to anything higher than a miserable policy; of shallow expediency. Mr, Balfour was principal speaker the other day at the first of a series of meetings to be held throughout England in celebration of the " centenary of the National Society ‘ for Promoting Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church’; and if he had set himself, ex professo, to state and vindicate Catholic principles and the Catholic attitude on the education question, he could hardly have succeeded better. !i‘ He began by saying that he endorsed the plea made by the previous speaker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for ‘ definite religious teaching.’ ‘lt was folly,’ continued Mr. Balfour, to divide education into secular and religious, as if they were two separate things. The founders of the National Society thought the education of a ; child was one thing—a single name for a bundle of influences that could not bu dissociated. They rejected the idea that they could put into separate compartments those influences that were to act upon the religious convictions of children, and “into another compartment “ secular learning.’ What is/this but an endorsement of the age-long attitude of the Catholic Church, as expressed, for example, in Dr/ Cleary’s work on Secular Versus Pelijious Education. ‘The three great agencies in education,’ says -Dr. Cleary, ‘are the home, the school, the church. In the vital matter of educating in religion and virtue, the Catholic Church has ever stood for the now scientifically accepted principle of unity and concentration ; she has ever required harmony in the ped^-

gogical (training) action of home and church and schooleach acting and reacting on the child in its own proper measure and way, and all on uniform principles. In other words, religion and religious training should enter into all tjie processes of education.’ • ; ; ; " v _ •■ * ; Mr. Balfour is still, as he has always been, a champion of the rights of parents; and his vindication of their claim to a say on the subject of the religious instruction of their children is certainly not the least effective portion of his address. We quote from the report in the Daily News of March 24. ‘I have always looked forward,’ he said, ‘to the time when it would be, .found ; possible to give in our public elementary schools that teaching to every child or to the great majority of the children —for no system can be quite perfect—the religious teaching which the parents of that child desire. It is to that goal I look forward. That is the only solution which seems to me perfectly consistent both with our own ideas of religious liberty, with our ideas of parental responsibility, and with that fundamental doctrine in which all in this room are agreed—namely, that it is a misfortune for any child to be brought up without any religious knowledge whatever. If the individual parent unhappily chooses to say of his own child that he thinks religion a corrupting influence, that he would rather not have his child taught religionwell, then, we must acquiesce. But do not let us frame our system so as to make religious teaching difficult; do not let us frame our system so as to produce the fantastic illusion that there is such a thing as undogmatic religion. Let us frankly face the situation; let us frankly face the fact that Christians, though the things on which they agree are far more important than the things on which they disagree, yet they disagree-and parents, desire their children to be brought up in accordance with one or other of the denominations. Let us frame our system in such a manner that these legitimate wishes of the parent can be effectively carried out in the case of the vast majority of the children of this country.’ ' What is this vindication of parental rights and parental responsibility but an echo of the traditional Catholic teaching as set forth, for example, in a manifesto issued by the Catholic Bishops of New Zealand some seven years ago. ‘The duty of the physical, intellectual, moral, and religious growth and development of the child,’ says the manifesto,, ‘ falls primarily and byright upon those who were the immediate cause of its existence—namely, upon its parents. This is a dictate of the Natural Law, of which God is the Author. It is, moreover, to parents, and not to the Civil Power or to School Boards, that God’s positive command was also given to train Up their children to “fulfil all that is written in the Law.” (Deuteronomy xxxii,, 46; see also Eph. vi., 4). These rights of parents and the Christian Church are not a civil grant. They are rights of the Creator, against which no man and no human organisation has any rights. . . They can neither be surrendered nor taken away, and every Government is bound to respect them by the very law which justifies its own existence.’ And the political bearing and practical application of these principles were thus outlined by Mr. Balfour in a speech in the House of Commons when introducing his Education Bill of 1902: ‘Whatever may be the origin of the present state of things, we have as a community repudiated responsibility for teaching a particular form of religion; we equally assume responsibility for teaching secular learning: As we have thus left to the parent the responsibility in this matter surely we ought, in so far as we can consistently with the inevitable limitations which the practical necessities** of the case put upon us, make our system as elastic as we can in order to meet the wishes of the parent. Ido not stand here to plead for any particular form of denominational religion. V I do stand here to say that we ought as much as we can to see that every parent gets for his child the kind of religious education he desires.’ That is the principle which found expression in Mr. Balfour’s Act, and which is in operation in the Mother Land to-day—why, and oh why, should it be impossible of application in tiny New Zealand? Tercentenary Utterances . The members of the L.O.L. whoin response to an official summons by advertisementattended the Protestant Bible tercentenary celebrations in Knox Church on Tuesday

of last week must have been sadly disappointed.- f To the credit of all concerned, the ‘ anti-Rome ’ note was not,. in the least in ■ evidence, there being - only one speaker who came within even remote distance of - reflecting on the Catholic Church. The Rev. P. W. Fairclough, whose; lot it was to speak on the precursors of the ‘ Authorised Version,’ implied, though he by no means stated, that in pre-Ref tionbtimes knowledge of the Bible was almost a : minus quantity, and that the Church on the whole was opposed to the translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular. Incidentally Mr. Fairclough made the remarkable : statement that ‘ in such times The Conformities of St. Francis made the saint equal with Christ, , and preachers declared that. St. Thomas A’Becket was . more, merciful than .the Saviour.’ This may be taken as a fair illustration of that historical fable which, as Newman showed half a century ago, is the basis of the general Protestant view of the Catholic Church. Readers of the Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England will remember the parallel instance cited by Newman, and how completely the historical misstatement was exploded and exposed when original authorities were consulted. Such, reputable . historians as Mosheim, Jortin, Maclaine, Robertson, White, and Hallam, had all stated that in the seventh century Catholics , were taught that true Christianity consisted in merely coming to church, paying tithes, burning candles, and praying to the saints; and in support of the statement they quoted a sentence from a sermon by Eligius, ,an obscure saint of the day. Mosheim had been the first to make the allegation and quotation, and each of the others had simply passed the tradition on without ever troubling to verify the statement. It was not till 1833 that it occurred to the Protestant Dean of Durham, Dr. Waddington, who was engaged in publishing an Ecclesiastical History at the time, to consult St. Eligius himself. The result came with something of a shock to the man who had pinned his faith to the great name of Mosheim. ‘lt was with great sorrow and some shame,’ he wrote, ‘ that I ascertained the treachery of my historical conductor,’ that is, . Mosheim. The expressions cited by Mosheim,’ he continues, ‘and cited, too, with a direct reference to the Spicilegium in which the sermon is contained, were forcibly brought together by a very unpardonable mutilation of, his authority. They are to be found, indeed, in a Sermon preached by the Bishop, but found in the society of so many good and Christian maxims, that it had been charitable entirely to overlook them, as it was certainly unfair to weed them out and heap them together, without notice of the rich harvest that surrounds them.’ Amongst the maxims thus referred to are the following: —‘ Wherefore, my brethren, love your friends in God, and love your enemies for God, for he who loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. He is a good Christian who believes not in charms or inventions of the devil, but places the ' whole of his hope in Christ alone . . . who has no deceitful balances or deceitful measures, . . . who both lives chastely himself, and teaches his neighbors and his children to live chastely and in the fear of God.’ After citing a large number of similar passages, Dr. .Waddington adds: ‘The impression which Mosheim, by stringing together certain sentences without any notice of the context, conveys to his readers, is wholly false; and the calumny is not the less reprehensible, because it falls on one of the obscurest saints in the Roman calendar.’ The Rev. Mr. Fairclough has evidently trusted to similarly unreliable historical conductors; and if he will take the trouble to look up original authorities, he will find how egregiously his guides have blundered. ' ? ; As to the other notion—that the Reformation restored the Bible to the people—it is little wonder that Mr. Fairdough only ventured to hint, and not to assert; for never was there a fable more utterly groundless nor more easily exposed. Before Luther’s pretended discovery of the Bible, the Catholic Church had printed over 100 .■ editions of the Latin Bible, which means many thousands of copies; and it is to be remembered that in those days all who could'read, read Latin, and even preferred to read a Latin Bible than one in their own language. In German there were 27 editions before Luther’s Bible appeared. In Italian there were over 40 editions of the Bible before the first Protestant edition appeared. There were two in Spain by 1515. In French there were 18 editions by 1547; the first Protcs-

tarit - version appearing -in 1535. As to England, Sir Thomas More, -referring' to a supposed law forbidding any English version of the Bible, says -that it is unnecessary to defend the law, for there is none such, indeed. .■ . For you shall Understand that . . -. the whole Bible was long before Wycliffe’s days by virtuous and well - learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good -and godly people ' and with devotion and soberness well and reverently read,’ (More’s Dialogue; ap. Gasquet, Eve of the Deformation, p. 209). Out of a large number of authorities available we quote the following—all non-Catholics—who make mince-meat of the musty legend that the Reformation ‘ restored ’ the Bible to the people:—l. The Protestant Church Times, July 26, 1878, says ’ This catalouge (of Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition in South Kensington, 1877) will be very useful for one" thing at any rate, as disproving the popular lie about Luther finding the Bible for the first time at Erfurt, about 1507. Not only are there very many editions of the Latin Vulgate i.e., the Bible in Latin, the very thing Luther is pretended to have discovered), but there -are actually nine German editions of the Bible in the Caxton Exhibition earlier than 1483, the year of Luther’s birth, and at least three more before the end of the century.’ 2. The Quarterly Review (October, 1879) says: ‘The notion that people in the middle ages did not read their Bibles is probably exploded, except among the more ignorant of controversialists, r . The notion is not simply a mistake, it is one of the most ludicrous and grotesque blunders.’ 3. Dr. Maitland, another Protestant, says: ‘ The writings of the Dark Ages (i.e., the middle ages) are, if I may use the expression, made of the Scriptures. Ido not merely mean that the writers constantly quoted the Scriptures, and appealed to them as authorities on all occasions—though they did this, and it is a strong proof of' their familiarity with them—but I mean that they thought and spoke and wrote the words, the thoughts, and phrases of the Bible, and that they did this constantly and habitually as the natural mode of expressing themselves. They did it, too, not exclusively in theological or ecclesiastical matters, but in histories, biographies, familiar letters, legal instruments, and documents of every description ’ (Dark Ages, No. XXVII.). 4. Dean Hook, an unimpeachable Anglican witness, c .declares: ‘ It was not from hostility to a translated Bible, considered abstractedly, that the conduct of Wycliffe, in translating it, was condemned. Long before his time there had been translations of Holy Writ’ (Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Vol. 111., p. 83). And, as shown in detail in Dr. Barry’s article which appears elsewhere in this issue, Canon Hensley Henson, in the new Encyclopaedia Britannica writes to precisely the same effect. Thus—out of the mouths of nonCatholic authorities—is effectually disposed of this pious figment that the Catholic Church throughout whole centuries had kept the Bible away from the people, and that the blessed Reformation had restored it.