Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 17 August 1911, Page 1569

Current Topics

The Snub Direct

" It is satisfactory to note, that while ' the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing ' in regard to Ne Tenure, the agitators receive scant sympathy when they appeal to responsible authorities to -interfere. The latest illustration in point is that furnished by the case of an Edinburgh celebrity, the Rev. Jacob Primmer—sort of Scottish comrade-in-arms to the Rev. Dr. Gibb. We are indebted for the facts to our live contemporary, the Edinburgh Catholic Herald. ' Once more,' says our contemporary, ' Mr. Primmer has been snubbed, and by no less a person than the Under Secretary for Scotland. When the storm of the McCann case blew hardest, the ladies attending the Queen's Hall Protestant meetings drew up a petition, "humbly beseeching her Majesty to use her Royal influence on behalf of Mrs. McCann, Belfast, to see that her children are restored to her." What precisely it was expected the Queen could do in the matter is a mystery. Anyhow they drew up a petition, to which, it is said, some 9505 women of Edinburgh appended their signature. The petition, along with the inevitable letter of Mr. Primmer, was forwarded to the proper quarter. In the beginning of the month Pastor Primmer received a formal acknowledgment from the "Under Secretary for Scotland of the receipt of the letter. This did not satisfy Mr. Primmer, perhaps naturally. He again wrote on the 14th June pointing out that only receipt of the letter had been acknowledged, and asking if the petition to the Queen had reached him, and, if so, if it had been presented along with Mr. Primmer's letter to her Majesty. Five days later Mr. Primmer received the following curt reply: "Case of Mrs. McCann, Belfast. The Under Secretary for Scotland has to acknowledge receipt of the letter from the Rev. Jacob Primmer on the above subject." 'Even after this,' comments the Herald, 'we hardly suppose that Mr. Primmer will give up either drafting resolutions or writing frenzied letters.'

The Edinburgh 'Evening News, of June 27, pinks Brother Jacob's petition with the following gentle raillery'': ' Pastor Primmer has hardly received fairplay from the Secretary for Scotland over the McCann petition to the Queen. For one thing, it must have been a troublesome, thing to get up the petition; and, above all, it was enclosed in a "mahogany casket." As far as can be noted, the casket has in no way been acknowledged by the minions at Whitehall. * They acknowledged the petition before the formality of insertion in the official waste-paper basket, but we take it that some one captured the box. If the Queen was pleased "to give no commands" on the subject, as crowned heads have so often done with Primmer epistles, surely the casket might have been returned. It .might have been used- for sending petitions up and down from Queen Street Hall to London, and" after the business was extinct and the land was free from error, a suitable resting place might have been found for the box at John Knox's house or in the Edinburgh Municipal Museum. The pastor is a man not easily daunted, and he should insist on a satisfactory reply or the return of the casket, which may, for all we know, be holding the Secretary's cigars Mr. Primmer will observe to-day that the Pope has sent an autograph letter to the King. Let him watch what is done with the Papal letter, and insist that his Eminence of Townhill receives as much consideration, as his Holiness at the Vatican.'

The Struggle in Portugal

The Portuguese Bishops—whose spirited manifesto we published in our columns the other day~-have not had long to wait for an opportunity of giving effect to their determination to resist to the uttermost the degrading slavery which it is sought to impose upon them;, and it is becoming abundantly evident that, on the side of the persecuting Government, the contest will be carried out to the bitter end. The news-

paper El Mundo, the organ of the Minister of Justice, states that the Procuradoria—the highest legal consultative body under the Republic— decided that the Bishops are now to be criminally prosecuted for high treason and endeavouring to incite the clergy aud Portuguese Catholics in general against the new regime. The ground put forward for this prosecution is the publication by the Bishops of ' the Pastoral Letter or Manifesto above referred to. At the same time the Government, through its own newspaper organ and its press marionettes, is industriously circulating the statement that, while the Bishops are remaining firm, the 'majority of the clergy have decided to ignore the instructions of the Vatican,' and 'to side with the Government in matters connected with separation.'

That there will be some few instances of weakness on the part of individual priests is more than probable; but that there will be any such general submission'as that hinted at, and desired by, the Government, there is not the slightest reason to anticipate. The evidence thus far to hand points stronglyindeed, conclusively—in altogether the opposite direction. Thus, the Oporto correspondent of the London Standard says: ' That the country continues in a state of unrest, in spite of the declarations of the press and of Ministers, is proved by the frequent acts of rebellion committed in the northern provinces, such as the refusal of priests to give up church registers, the stoning of Republican deputies, and the —something successfulon the part'of the populace to prevent the arrest of priests accused of preaching against the Provisional Government.' And the Standard writer makes it perfectly clear what is the direct cause of the trouble. A great deal of hostile feeling,' he continues, 'may be attributed to the law separating Church and State, which, in spite of a great deal of propaganda in its favour, has been received with. feelings of disgust at the spirit in . which it has been conceived. In this district, at meetings held to consider their position regarding the new" law, the priests have almost unanimously decided not to accept the provision granted them, and have passed resolutions of unconditional adherence to the orders of the Pope and Bishops. Unless the law is amended it is exceedingly unlikely that the Government will be able to force its execution in the numerous small country towns and villages of Portugal, where the "priests still* have a great deal of influence.' The cable published last week—the effect that Archbishop Bourne was calling upon the Government to protect the rights of British Catholics in _ Portugal, and to infotfn Portugal that Great Britain's friendship could only be retained by the discontinuance of the unjust and degrading conduct now shown towards them— a further indication that the Portuguese . Government of swaggering revolutionaries are not going to have it all their own way.

Since tsie foregoing was written a. Lisbon cable has appeared in the daily papers intimating that twelve hundred out of 6000 of the lower clergy have accepted the Government's mess of pottage. This is a very different story from El Mundo's original statement that ' the majority of the clergy, have decided to ignore the instructions of the Vatican.' And even this latest version has to be liberally discounted ; for the manufacture of anti-Vatican announcements has been carried to a very high pitch of perfection in Lisbon official circles, and it will doubtless be found that the cases of compliance with the State's demands have been as freely and as frequently multiplied as Falstaff's rogues in buckram. The true facts will appear in due time.

A New Coronation Service

Mr. H. W. Massingham in the London Morning Leader, and the writer of a notable article in the London Nation, have strenuously denounced the anomaly and insincerity of the present Coronation service ; and have put forward, in all seriousness, a plea for the substitution of a new and less unreal ceremony. The English Coronation rite,' says the Nation writer,' \ is a thing unique. Regarded seriously, it is a meaningless anachronism and anomaly. But it makes a

brilliant historic pageant. 1; Its symbolism, its ritual, its language carry us to the days of faith and chivalry, and, in some places, it even takes us back to the aspirations of the men who lived in the days before Alfred ruled. The rite is, in truth", a fair piece of mediaeval tapestry, over which a rough hand has daubed, or rather printed, the war cries of the triumphant Whigs of 1688. The religion of the Unction, the chivalry of the sword and spurs, the mystery of the throne that encloses the stone on which, in our forefathers' belief, the head of Jacob rested, the fierce feudalism of the oath of Homage are still present,- but; to the vast majority of English people, they, are present as the scenes in a play, and not as the solemnities of. an awful sacramental mystery. Even the fact that the rite is associated with the Eucharist fails to inspire reverence.'

And then the writer- make* a pointed contrast. After tracing the history of the English Coronation ritual, showing that the mediaeval office, the Liber Itegalis, grew up gradually in the Benedictine Abbey of Westminster, and was the work of unknown justiceloving monks who slowly composed it in their cloisters, he continues: ' Could those Benedictine monks have dreamed of the use to which after ages would put their solemn office book, it would doubtless have perished in the flames. To the true medievalist, what could be more, repulsive than the picture of an Archbishop administering to the King an oath under the order of Parliament? In the ancient days, the successor of St. Augustine, the national representative of the Kingdom that was not of this world, bade the King, the lord of armed might, to swear that he would rule as a Christian Prince, that he would love justice and mercy, that he would protect the Church,- and uphold the laws and customs that good St. Edward had granted to the clergy and people. Only when the King had taken this oath was he deemed worthy to receive the Holy Unction.' And then comes the contrast. ' To-day the oath of the Revolution of 1688, which, the Primate administers, makes no contract between King and Church. It is a contract between King and Parliament, and when the Parliament Bill is law, the successor of Dunstan and Becket will administer it as a servant of the House of Commons. When Napoleon dragged Pius VII. to his Coronation at Notre-Dame, he shrank from inflicting on his guest this final insult. To the Pope he took. the old oaths of the' feudal king; only when the Pope and the Churchman had departed did he swear to the President of the Senate and Legislative Assembly to respect ai|tl protect equality and liberty. It would be well if our statesmen of 1688 had taken a similar course.' '.

The main objection taken by these critics is that, while the present Coronation.ceremony makes a brave pageant, the mass of the people regard it as a show arranged for their amusement—and tn\is,- what is nominally a sacred service, becomes a mere travesty of religion. There is some truth in the contention; and it cannot be denied that the use of the old Catholic symbolism and ceremonial, while the reality, of Catholic belief and Catholic sacrifice is wanting, gives an unmistakeable air of insincerity and unreality to the religious aspect of the function. The Nation writer calls frankly for its abolition. 'The rite is, in fact,' he concludes, ' hopelessly in conflict with the spirit of the age, and its days are numbered. To replace it by. a ceremony that shall really symbolise the, higher political and ethical ideas of our own time will be no easy task. Yet it is a task which, in the name of progress and honesty, should be attempted, and one which the House of Commons might seriously consider.' The fact that the work of revising-the Coronation service—and, presumably of preparing the new order— proposed to be relegated to the House of Commons, shows how far the world has travelled in the direction of handing over to Caesar the things that are God's.

I Once Again—Make Order '

The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, the well-known Congregationalist leader,- once startled his congregation and good people generally—by solemnly tittering from

his pulpit in the City Temple the prayer God damn the Sultan.' ~: If that eminent .divine were alive; to-day he would doubtless invoke the same imprecation on the head of the present Turkish rulers. , Telegrams from Podgoritza to an Austrian paper— Catholic Vaterland—give a disquieting account of Turkish villainy and of the Turks' treacherous and wholesale violation of the armistice that had been agreed on. The messages, state that the Ottoman troops are devastating the Malissori country, cutting down every fruit tree and vine, .destroying every house and such crops as had been sown, and killing all sheep and cattle with the object of.compelling the Malissori after the . conclusion of peace to emigrate or to die of hunger.. The amnesty proclaimed a few days ago and framed so as not to impede Torgut Shevket Pasha's action has been neutralised by his bombardment of the insurgents near Broja. His.tactics are to drive the Malissori proper into Montenegro while their country is being devastated. : All the Malissori employed in Skutari have been expelled, and those who with their flocks and cattle had wintered as usual near the coast have been forbidden to return to the hills. The cattle will thus perish for lack of fodder and their owners of malaria. When the Malissori country has thus been depopulated the Turks intend to colonise it with emigrant Mussulmans. •x-

In the face of these facts the Vaterland utters an indignant protest, entitled 'Once againmake order.' 'Had such methods as these,' it says, ' been adopted by a despotic Sultan a storm of wrath would have shaken the civilised world. The Great Powers are aware of all the Young Turkish abomination and brutalities. The air of the Balkans smells of powder. Yet Russian representations have been ignored and Austro-Hun-garian advice is being " considered " while the Malissori country is being devastated and the inhabitants driven to choose between emigration and starvation. Is not such conduct the purest mockery of Austro-Hungarian advice ? Is our Government not aware that the Turkish tactics aim at destroying one tribe after the other in order cunningly to crush at last the Catholic Mirdites who are under Austrian protection? Why, then, doe 3 it shrink from further plain talk with the vandals of Stambul ? We think it is time most emphatically to press for the fulfilment of the wishes we brought forward without heeding the whining of the protectors of the Turks. To draw back after having once made an attempt would be to incur a degree of discredit to which we, in view of our prestige as a Great Power and as the protectors of the Albanians, cannot expose ourselves.' *

The Times Vienna correspondent emphatically endorses, both the Vaterland's protest, and also its statement of the facts. ' There is, unfortunately,' he writes, 'no reason to consider the Vaterland's interpretation of Turkish intentions to be exaggerated. Strong as its language may sound it is not stronger than the situation warrants. The systematic destruction of Christian races and the substitution for them of Mussulman immigrants from Bosnia, the Caucasus, and Turkestan was debated, and as the British Government well knows, was deliberately resolved upon at the- secret congress of the Salonika Committee last October. If the Powers do not intervene promptly and efficaciously now to save the Malissori and the Mirdites, they will be compelled to intervene far more drastically in the not distant future, when Macedonia will once more have been turned into a shambles. Prompt action at this moment may not only save.the Christian Albanians,, but may, by compelling the Young Turks to pause] avert or at least indefinitely postpone the threatening Balkan conflagration.'

Creeds and Figures in Ireland 1 A few weeks ago a paragraph went the round of ' our daily papers giving the decreases in the three principal religious denominations in Ireland between 1901 and 1911. The figures—taken from the recent official —were given as follows; ■

The inference that has been drawn in many non-Catho-lic quarters is that the drain of population which has been going on during the decade has been practically confined to Catholics that the Protestants of the North are not leaving Ireland, because the North is prosperous and contented and that it is only in the Catholic South and West that there is discontent, and consequent emigration. • A detailed examination of the figures, however, completely shatters this comforting .theory. The examination has been made by a contributor to the Belfast Irish Weekly; and the result of his analysis given in two special and carefully-written articles—is 1 to show that, outside Belfast City,, the Protestant communities in the North of Ireland are decreasing in numbers far more rapidly than their Catholic neighbours. The preponderant percentage of all-round Catholic loss is accounted for by the emigration from the Catholic centres of Munster and Connaught. In the East, South/and West of Ireland,' says the writer, ' Episcopalians and Presbyterians do not emigrate they belong to sections of the community who are not greatly affected by industrial conditions: as a rule, they are not numbered amongst the ''labouring classes," who furnish 95 per cent, of those who seek their fortunes overseas." Then, the increased population of Belfast; accounts for part of the advantage displayed in the above figures. But let us travel away from Belfast and the Counties directly affected by its proximity, and take typical "Ulster areas outside it.'

The writer takes first the County of Deny — sets of figures in this, as in all the other cases, being taken from the official census of 1901 and the RegistrarGeneral's ' Preliminary Report, with Abstract, of the Census Returns for 1911.' Here are the comparative figures for County Derry, the returns, for the sake of convenience, being restricted to the three leading denominations:—

Here, where, above all, the Unionist '.' leaders ' have tried to persuade their dupes that Protestantism prospers under the Castle regime, the Episcopalian population has decreased at more than double the rate of Catholic decrease, and the Presbyterians have lost (in proportion) over six times more than the Catholics. Next comes Tyrone, with the following figures:

Tyrone County is evidently not in a satisfactory state. The Catholic decrease is three times the average for the Catholic population of all Ireland the Episcopalians have fallen at a rate nearly five times greater than their general average; the Presbyterian decrease is more than thirteen times their all-round average. ' The Presbyterian decrease in Tyrone,' aptly remarks the Irish Weekly writer, ' should really persuade the General Assembly that everything is not for the best under the best of all Administrations in this northern county.' Turning to the almost entirely agricultural county of Cavan, the official documents give the following figures:—

Here, while the Catholic population of Cavan has fallen nearly as heavily, in proportion, as Tyrone, the

Episcopalians have diminished at little less, than twice the Tyrone rate, and the Presbyterians have.lost nearly as heavily as in Tyrone— more than 50 per cent, over the Catholic standard of loss in Cavan.

Finally, we have the following interesting and significant figures regarding Donegal:

'Donegal,' comments, the writer, 'is one of.the poorest of Ireland's counties; and the Catholic population have occupied the poorest and wildest parts of the Irish Highlands ever since the clansmen of O'Donnell were driven from the richer lands of the East and South-East of Red Hugh's territory to make room for James I.'s "planters." ... But the Catholic Celts are holding their own in Donegal ; they are not yet as scarce in that brave old fortress of freedom as "the Red Indians on the shores of Manhattan." Perhaps the General Assembly— and Episcopalian clergymen like the Rev. Mr. Kerr—will explain how it "is" that 7 per cent, of the Presbyterians and 9.7 per cent, of the Episcopalians who were in Donegal ten years ago have disappeared. They did not fly from Home Rule. They were not "persecuted." They were as free as their coreligionists in Belfast or Portadown. But they have melted away, as the people melt from every country governed by strangers.' In the face of the above figures what is to be thought of the brains of the noisy fanatics who talk about taking up arms,' arid fighting, and killing their neighbours, in defence of a system of government under, which such results are brought

Decrease. Per cent. Catholics ... 70,005 2.1 Episcopalians ... . ... ■ 5,600 ... 1.0 Presbyterians . .. ... 3.400 0.8

1901 1911 Catholic. 65,296 64,436 Episcopalian. ... 27,804 ... 27,080 . Presbyterian .. 46,682 ... 43,191 Decrease Decrease p.c 860 :. 1.2 724 . 2.6 . 3,491 7.4

Catholic. 1901 ... 84,404 1911 ... 78,935 Catholic.Episcopalian. 84,404... 33,896 78,935... 32,283 . Episcopalian.Presbyterian ... 33,896... 29,656 ... 32,283... 26,540 Presbyterian ... 29,656 ... 26,540 Decrease 5,469 Decrease p. 6.4 5,469... 1,613 . c. 6.44.8 1,6133,116 ' 4.810.5 3,116' 10.5

Catholic. 1901 ... 79,026 1911 .:. 74,188 Catholic. Episcopalian. 79,026 ... ""14,122 74,188 ... 12,954 Episcopalian. Presbyterian. ... ""14,122 3,220 ... 12,954 ,;. 2,920. Presbyterian. 3,220 2,920 Decrease 4,838 Decrease p. 6.1 4,838 1,168 c 6.1 8.2 1,168 300 8.2 9.6 300 9.6

1901 ... 1911 Catholic. 135,009 132,943 . Episcopalian. ... 19,908 ... 17,975 Presbyterian ... 16,212 ... - 15,064 Decrease Decrease p 2,066 .C. 1.5 ;' ! ;v.:; 1,933 ;'■■'■■; ... 9.7 . .: 1,148 7.0