The Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, 25 May 1911, Page 975

The Catholic World

v AUSTRIA A FLOATING CHAPEL. Following the announcement made of the establishment of a motor chapel, the account of a floating chapel in Vienna will be read with interest. Particulars are given by a new quarterly magazine which, under the name of Stella Maris, has just made its appearance. The magazine, which is printed in the German and English languages in parallel columns, will cater for Catholic sailors, and is pubished under the auspices of the Catholic Seamen's Mission. The floating chapel, we are told, was established by the Rev. Dr. Muth, the parish priest of Kaisermuhlen, on a large tug in the winter harbor at Frendenau, and Mass was said for the first time on January 8. There are 1300 watermen, mostly Catholics, in the district; On February 8 fifty-seven persons were confirmed in the chapel by. the Archbishop-Coadjutor, Dr. Nagl. BELGIUM ACCIDENT TO A CARDINAL. In the endeavor to avoid a beggar woman near Waterloo the chauffeur of a motor-car in which Cardinal Mercier, the Archbishop of Malines, was driving, ran into a tree. The car was wrecked, the Cardinal was severely cut about the face and had several teeth broken, and the chauffeur sustained internal injuries. ENGLAND A RECORD OF SOCIAL WORK. Lady Edmund Talbot is one of the three ladies who have been included on the committee which has been appointed by the Home Secretary to inquire into the constitution, management, discipline, and education of reformatory and industrial schools in England and Wales. This nomination will be specially gratifying to Catholics, who know Lady Edmund Talbot's long record of enlightened social work. Not only has she founded Catholic Social Union Clubs in London and Sheffield, and been associated for over a decade with the Ladies of Charity, but she is a member of the committee of the British Institute of Social Science and as hon. secretary for the Catholic Association for Settlements and Girls' Clubs has contributed some striking papers on settlement work. • THEY GOT THEIR ANSWER. Replying to a letter from the Committee of the Protestant Alliance protesting against payments made in Malta to certain institutions connected with the Catholic. Church for celebration of Masses, vestments, etc., the Colonial Secretary points out the payments in question are made, not by the British Government nor out of Imperial funds, but by the Government of Malta out of Malta's revenues; and that that dependency, nearly all of whose inhabitants ■ are Catholics, is self-supporting, and receives no grant-in-aid from Imperial funds. It is further explained that English law does not apply to Malta. FRANCE THE SOCIALISTS' IDEA OF LIBERTY. .The weapon with which the French anti-clericals are promoting their crusade against religion is tyranny (remarks the Catholic Tivies). They are a disgrace to the human species. One of them, a Socialist named Bonysson, who has been returned to the Chamber of Deputies for a Landes Division, holds that everybody who presumes to teach in France except an unbelieving Socialist should be expelled from the country. This is the idea of liberty whicjb the French Socialists cherish. Bonysson is not at all satisfied with the progress made by the Monis Cabinet in carrying out the policy of persecution. .The Ursulines have a school at Bazas, in the Department of Gironde. The Order was authorised in 1843, and the nuns have been f doing excellent educational work. In consequence it was B arranged that they should be allowed to conduct the school until next July. This of course is a crime and high misdemeanor. The Socialist Deputy charged M. Emile Constant, Under-Secretary of State, with having saved the Order from dissolution at Bazas because the members there were his constituents. In the interests of political morality ' this was not to be tolerated. So the Prime Minister promised that the law against the religious would-be rigidly enforced, and then a resolution of confidence in his intention to see that it was executed was passed. The French Socialists and the French Government have not the slightest conception of what true liberty means and they have reduced France to the condition of a land 'of tyrants and slaves. --;.

DISHONEST OFFICIALS. :-The confiscation of the treasures of the French Church is leading to some extraordinary transactions, not without their touch of fraud and their unpleasant suggestion of sacrilege. The latest case (says the Freeman's Journal) is that of the ' Shrine of St. Martin,' which with an ancient censer was sold last year by the Commune of Soudeillese for no less a sum than £1640;/s The buyer, delighted with his purchase, took it to London, where he asked £24,000 for the shrine as a magnificent example of Limoges enamel. Here, however, an expert told him heT possessed merely a forgery of the famous reliquary,. the original having been already sold to a private collection in England. It is clear that some official, getting possession of the reliquary in 1907, sold it to his own profit, replacing it by an imitation. These are the sad adventures of an object of sacred import round which have gathered the associations of centuries of faith. ■ ITALY THE CATHOLIC ELECTORAL UNION. .:-:The;rules and regulations that are to guide the members of the Catholic Electoral Union of Italy have just been forwarded to the president of that body, Count V. 0. Gentiloni, by the Cardinal Secretary, of' State (writes a Rome correspondent). In a letter accompanying the documents his Eminence says the Holy Father has the fullest confidence that the arrangements of the Holy See regarding the Union will be received/ with obedience and docility. The second of the rules or statutes states that ' the object of the Union is to form -and discipline Catholic electoral forces and to guide them in the eventual political elections according to the directions of the Holy See—to which purpose it will devote all its energy—and to support local Catholic initiative in the administrative elections. All this is in. defence of religion and the Church and in favor of good administration and the true moral and material interests of the , population.' The new regulations are generally regarded as ,of great importance. "v>'; CRUSADE AGAINST IMMORAL LITERATURE. $. The steps taken last June by Signor Luzzatti against pornographic literature of every description have had admirable results (says a Rome correspondent). According to a list of these results, from June 16, 1910, down to the same date of last month, upwards of 340 prosecution were brought against vendors of indecent literature. As is natural to expect, Naples, Rome, Genoa, Turin, and other large cities head the list of delinquents. In carrying on the ' Holy Campaign' inculcated by the ex-Premier with 'unrelenting severity,' to quote the words of his circular, the police confiscated within the time mentioned above no less than 40,000 illustrated post-cards, 20,000 photographs 3500 negatives, 10,000 booklets, 300 drawings, and many objects of an indecent character. To detectives who have proved themselves specially active in the campaign the sum of 3000 lire has been distributed by the Government. , r]] ROME A VALUABLE MANUSCRIPT. Abbot Gasquet, 0.5.8., who is continuing his researches in the Vatican Library for his great work of revision of the Vulgate, recently came across a MS. which he attributes to a date no later than the year 350 A.D., and which may have been handled by Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian GENEROUS FRENCHMEN. The Holy. Father on March 27 received in audience Count De, Colleville and a number of French gentlemen who recently formed themselves into a committee with a view to present St. Peter's with monumental organs worthy of the great church. Learning of the vast amount of money that is necessary for the work of renovating the pavement of the church, the committee tendered his Holiness the sum of 10,000 francs on the occasion to further a project the Pope has so much at heart. Pius X. warmly thanked the generous Frenchmen for aiding an enterprise which the dignity of the Cathedral of Christendom has rendered necessary. PORTUGAL MISSIONS IN WEST AFRICA. The utmost anxiety and distress is prevailing ..amongst the Portuguese missions in West Africa, and a letter quoted in the Osservatore Romano of April 1, from Sister Stanislaus, of the Congregation of St. Joseph of Cluny, from Landana, shows that the religious Orders established in Portuguese territory are much exercised as to whether, the decree of expulsion against the religious congregations' from Portugal will be enforced upon their missionary brethren. What in such a case, asks the Sister, will become of the Christian converts already made? Many of the nuns have worked there for years, and have grown old in labors and sufferings for the faith.

A CRITICAL SITUATION. According to recent news from Madrid, the situation in Portugal is becoming daily more critical. Through private sources one hears of general uneasiness. A great number of arrests have been made in connection with supposed plots against the Government. GENERAL MANY A MICKLE MAKES A MUCKLE. The editor of the Report of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith in ihe Archdiocese of New York (says the Catholic Weekly) has some remarks which tell quite as forcibly for Catholics this side of the Atlantic as for their American brethren. The one hundred thousand dollars collected in New York - represents, we are told, but one per cent per annum for every Catholic in the diocese. Can Catholics not rise to their responsibilities, and, be it added, their privileges, by one and all helping home and foreign missions by each sparing some such littlepercentage off their income, whether large or small? Even the 'painless penny' that all could give and none would miss would go to swell, the receipts which in England fail so lamentably short of what the needs of our foreign missions demand. As the American editor truly says, ' who would feel the giving' when it is the question of- such a mite? But, on the contrary, how much the S.P.F. would ' feel that giving' if all the faithful would exert their generosity even to this little extent!