The New Zealand THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1912. I. THE ALLEGED PERSONAL AND CIVIC SHORTCOMINGS OF CATHOLICS*

New Zealand Tablet, 11 January 1912, Page 29

The New Zealand THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1912. I. THE ALLEGED PERSONAL AND CIVIC SHORTCOMINGS OF CATHOLICS*

N--:a beautiful morning of early Spring'' two men' occupied- the ' box, seat-/of/thevcoach ■■ ? thati'runs /between; §-— ■ they had/passed Xthef second•' N a beautiful morning of early Spring' two men occupied the box seat of the coach that runs daily between Hawera and Opunake. When they had passed the second clump of pines beyond the Waihi stream, both turned their eyes to the right, and this is what they saw. , One beheld a glorious landscape, but he looked out of the eyes of a poet.- Such brilliancy of color, combined with harmony, he thought he ; had never seen. At his feet, a 'glorious patch of emerald green, in the middle distance right and .left,,. tufts of darker hue, bespattered with. the golden wattle bloom, behind the / purple tints of the snow-capped l mountain, and :! above the sunshot clouds like' a canopy ri of glory. : He was enraptured with the vision of the sublime and beautiful, and in his/heart decreed that it was in very deed .beyond-all price. ; The other looked through the eyes of a dairy farmer, and he saw eighteen inches deep/ of rich dark loam, and beneath this an /excellent sub-, soil, all promising a continuous supply of ■ rich grass, •" capable of feeding, without the aid of bone manure,' a large dairy herd, and worth .£SO an acre.' Now we/ who are neither farmers nor poets, but mere onlookers see. that each of /these; men has his- own point of view] considers v only ; one out of several aspects of what is ■ before him, and ; is in blissful ignorance that there is any other but his own//'We see "that through this ■ ignorance there is danger of misunderstandings and of a conflict, that at any moment ; the poet may mock the farmer, who expects to draw a ton of" butter fat -'" out of a patch of scenery, and the farmer- may ridicule the. poet because he hopes to hang' a hundred acres of meadow land in the National Gallery, or - enshrine•' it ; all in p /a- page of immortal verse. And this is really what very ; often happens in life, and .becomes the cause of so many quarrels and the ground for so many urt-' from a Reply to the Rev. Messrs.' Boys . and North by the Very Rev, P.J. Power, Hawera. . ..\ , ''■■■;• V";

worthy-charges;againsti venerable institutions that are entirely ■.. innocent and -altogether praiseworthy. '', ■■■„■ ■"' •'.'■■ ~- ''.„- "' v ■:■■-• -v- i.>;-/■ - ; '".■■..■--■ -. * V Consider the attacks just now being circulated in our v midst by 'certain reverend.; gentlemen against' the venerable' Mother- Church o'f' Christendom and - against Catholic persons. These spring from the unwillingness or inability of these 1 gentlemen to consider the possibility of any other point of view but their own. They fail ; to consider that 'Catholics' and non-Catholics take essentially different views of religion• and' the mission of 7 the Church. Holding their own Protestant view, they draw from it their" own Protestant principles. But when they measure. ? and condemn Catholic morality on Protestant principles, they become as foolish and ridiculous as the farmer who would express' in terms of cheese or butter fat the immortal genius and divine inspiration of the poet. The idea which they seem to have of the r object of/religion and the mission of the Church\ is one which we could not for a moment approve of; yet it is one which we can understand: it has the merit of being simple.-.; No intellectual assent to the -teachings of Christ is necessary either for Church membership Jor for salvation. Each Church member may adopt his own personal view and justify it by his own personal conviction.; There is no obligation to know God by learning and accepting the truths He has taught. Faith is 'not a mental assent to dogmas,' but confidence in God,' The mission of the Church appears to be to foster the social virtues, to suppress crime, to bring to all the enjoyment of . the comforts of life, to disseminate'/ the blessings of wealth, civic progress, and national pre-eminence. In a word, as Cardinal Newman puts it,, to make this world pleasant arid the loss of it painful.' . i •.-.;■... ." ' ; ; -./■' '-: ."■/; ' : ' / ' ""-.- '-'-■ / V"; -/*.,;.',,. •-..; -•.,. f.'; ■ . ..-i.;,,.. • ... : , . //Then, noticing that the Catholic Church fails or seems to fail to pursue these aims, or to consider them as indispensable, they lay it as a charge against us, arid as a proof of failure that we do not count in the world's politics,' that the verdict (of the great social forces), is Written, in" the failing vitality ■of ' v Catholic lands,' that we figure in criminal statistics,' and so forth.- .Now, supposing for the sake of argument, that all this were : true, that all; these failures were successfully and to the minutest detail proved against us, we should be as little affected by them as the poet who admires the:. landscape is by the rise and 'fall of the London markets. The world, no doubt, and those who stand by the world - against the Church, i make much of civic virtue and national greatness, .but the Church, while she sees goodness in these, -is compelled by her view of God, religion, and her own mission, to put them in a very • secondary . place. .« She places first faith, purity, and charity, some of which the world will not even ~ recognise, and some .•: of which' so-called Christian preachers undervalue, dislike, and even declare impossible. Her great and primary duty is to teach the doctrines ■of /Christ • and \ wage continual ■•,' war against sin. And sin, be it remembered, is not any mere offence against society,, or against' any civic or political institution. Nor vf is poverty a sin, nor is failure to gain or maintain political pre-eminence by arms or diplomacy. Sin, according to : the view of the Catholic 'Church, is any wilful thought, word, deed, or omission, contrary to the law of the Creator. Wilful unbelief or heresy is a rebellion against the Creator >on the part of the intellect which He created; therefore the Church must ;join with St. Paul; in 1 fighting against it as a - most grievous sin, excluding from , the Kingdom. Then there are/the various violations of the Ten .Commandments, by which the will as weir as the intellect rebels against God, and against these two she must be ever fighting; and if her ; hands are at certain times • and places so full that '-she seems to do little towards the suppression of mere crime, or towards the cultivation of. civic virtues, in/this very seeming she is manifesting her divinity, by /accentuating the priority and superiority of the claims of the moral law. Excess in drinking,' says 'Cardinal Newman, 'is one; of ; the world's most-; disgraceful offences;',odious it ever is -in - ; the eye's of the Church, but if it does' not proceed to

the loss of reason, she thinks it a , far less sin than ; one deliberate act of detraction, though the matter- of it may be truth.' ;■ And, on other hand, 'there- are sins : the most heinous in the eyes of the Church which are not considered by the world and the critics of the Church serious enough ' to < exclude their perpetrators from .the drawing-room or from the religious ordinances of non-Catholic :Churches, e.g., progressive polygamy, or polyandry /--that ■: is to say practical; Mormonism. , ■; --/ - . ;:-.:•;-. " v - * .' ■ ',:,-■■■'-. ■ . ■ ; If our critics, therefore, would be honest, let them lay to our charge a violation of some principle that follows from > our idea , of the ■ mission of ;- the Church. Let them prove against us that we neglect -the duties of the commission to teach all nations ; all whatsoever Christ has revealed. Let them prove that we neglect to build Christian schools in; which to bring up God's children in His knowledge and love; let them prove that we have no orphanages to guard/the_ boys and girls of wicked or unfortunate" parents; no asylum where' poor Magdalen may with her, tears -; wipe ■ out from the memory of God the history of the past; let them prove that we have no Sister*' of Mercy, no Sisters of Charity, no Little Sisters of the Poor, no Sisters of Nazareth, no Sisters of Compassion to linger by the bed of sickness, to comfort the loneliness of the incurables and the aged poor, and to close the eyes of the deserted dead. Let them prove that through our neglect any of our young people contract merely civil marriages, and so live'in a state of legalised adultery; let them prove that we tolerate divorce, and put no ban upon the marriage of those who have been divorced. Let-them lay these or any other violations of the moral law against us; but• let them not "-; persist in making themselves a spectacle to men and angels by striving to measure with their little civic tape that Majestic Church, spiritual and universal, that received her credentials from Divine lips, and that has pursued her couise for • two thousand years—sometimes blessed, sometimes cast out of the world, but always undaunted, always triumphant. ' ' - ■ * ■ -I- have shown, then, that even if we had a large percentage of criminals, this would prove nothing against the divinity of the Church but I think I can, moreover, show that the charge itself, though not to the point, cannot even be proved. Take, for the purpose of -illustration, our own little town of Hawera. I find that during the eight months of this year already elapsed, 69 persons were convicted of drunkenness and other crimes in the Magistrate's Court; but does -'any sane man imagine that there were only 69 offences against the law \ committed .here during that time Those who interest themselves in these matters say that the police do their duty very well if they detect and bring before the Magistrate one in twenty off end against the law. This would allow for close upon 1400 petty and major crimes within the eight months. How, then, can, one arrive at the. religion of the 1400 from that of the 69 ? -/ But matters are even much worse than this; for, out of the 69 convicted, 67 paid the fine, and only two went to gaol and would, if the old arrangement prevailed, have had their religion recorded;Tf these two were members of Mr. Boys'„ congregation, should I be justified in concluding that all the criminals of Hawera were Methodists Logic is not a strong point with the reverend gentleman. Nor does he seem to have paid much attention to A the Eighth Commandment of the Decalogue, as appears from his reckless repetition, of charges already refuted. In my pamphlet, Know Popery, . page 4, referring to the statement that Catholics had a certain proportion; of criminalsjl ; gave the following answer: -', The compiler of {.Official /, Tear Book has discontinued the practice of publishing the religions, of prisoners, because, as he explained in an interview given to the Wellington Evening Post, the figures were entirely misleading, owing to the fact that for their own purposes prisoners, frequently made false statements regarding;.. their '/ religion ; and for pother reasons. Did you know this, reverendi;sir?. If / you l did, your ; statement of a half truth is the worst kind of lie, and is a disgrace to a Christian pulpit. If you

did not, your. conduct is not less reprehensible, for you should have made the most exhaustive enquiries - before running the risk of bearing false-witness against the neighbor.' /- * * Mr. Boys read my reply, yet in a subsequent issue' of the Bawera Methodist Monthly, in which he refers »to my pamphlet, he gives his readers no hint that I. had challenged his figures, or that the compiler of the Official Tear Book had expressed any opinion, but repeats the false charge in all its native and naked brutality. And now a third time, in his pamphlet, he repeats the identical accusation. •He writes:— Turn to the last prison statistics published by the New Zealand Government concerning the religion of prisoners, and we find, as in previous statistics, the Roman Catholic prisoners number between 30 and 40 per, cent.' I do not wish to accuse Mr. Boys of a wilful lie; but, surely, Government statistics are not given in such slipshod fashion. There is a decided difference between 30 and 40, as every one must see who would not be a reckless calumniator of his neighbor. When were the last statistics given; in what volume are they to be found what is the page; and, above all (may I implore the reverend gentleman), what is the exact percentage? I ask him, in all seriousness, to fall upon his knees before God, and ask himself if such conduct is calculated to bring credit upon the religion he professes. I here leave this part of the subject, with a recommendation to the Rev. Mr. Boys to read a penny pamphlet, entitled, Catholics' and Crime, by Mr. Benjamin Hbare, 'of Melbourne. An Australian paper says that ' Mr! Benjamin Hoare is the most eminent of Australian journalists, and the man who, next to David Syme, is the greatest force in Australian journalism. 'lie'is in fact, Mr. Syme's right hand.' Statistics are a terrible weapon in his hands against Protestantism, and he makes them show the vile pre-eminence of Protestant countries and Protestant quarters of Catholic countries in every form of moral depravity: in illegitimacy, infanticide, foeticide, suicide, murder, deaths from drunkenness, etc. I have resisted every temptation to quote from him, because I am not "attacking 1 rotestantism, but defending the Catholic Church from a Protestant attack.