Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 2 October 1913, Page 21

Current Topics

Eucharistic Congress for Australia ~ The Eucharistic Congress for next year is to be held at Lourdes, from the 9th to the 13th of September. We do not know how the little town will stand the strain in the matter of providing accommodation for the huge throng which will be sure to attend, but from the spiritual and devotional point of view the spot will be an ideal one for a Eucharistic Congress. Even a non-Catholic visitor, going with a full share of prejudices against the stories of miraculous happenings, found himself constrained after a short stay to write of the place as follows in the London Spectator : It is a very beautiful and a very gracious place. I have no cause to plead, either of creed or of medicine. Only to record the fact that a visit to Lourdes during a pilgrimage is something so singular in its nature as to impress our "curious hearts" as nothing else in this world can, and to leave us pondering as deeply as Hamlet himself on the more things in heaven and earth than any philosophy has yet been found to dream of. Nothing that the miracle plays and mysteries can show can be so vivid and so mystical as this. . . .It was the pool of Bethesda over again. . . . No man or woman at Lourdes remarks upon another's dress, or wears a dress upon which a remark could be made. The business of the place is prayer. ... It was the intense reverence and simple faith of all the worshippers that left the deep mark upon our minds at Lourdes. . It is something, and more than something, to find out a day or two of retreat in a place so detached from the interests of the world, and in its tendencies so distinctly ennobling.' No more fitting place could be found for the great act of faith and devotion of which a Eucharistic Congress is the concrete and comprehensive expression. *

The weekly Catholic paper published at Lourdes the Journal de la Grotte — a welcome announcement for Australasian Catholics. It is to the effect that the Congress for 1915 will be held at Sydney. At the Malta Congress this year (says the Journal) Monsignor Heylen stated that he had received several communications with regard to future Congresses. It was represented that for 1915 Sydney, New South Wales, should be favored; and for. 1917 Lima, South America, claimed the honor; therefore, it only remained to arrange for 1914 and 1916. It is also announced that Cardinal Lualdi has asked that his town of Palermo may be "honored by allowing the Congress for 1916 to be held there. Thus, for the next four years, the meeting place of the Congress has been arranged, as follows:—1914, France, Lourdes; 1915, New South Wales, Sydney; 1916, Sicily, Palermo; 1917, South America, Lima. The strength and virility of its Catholicity, the many natural advantages of the city, and the proved capacity of the Sydney Catholics for carrying out large undertakings of the kind, make the New South Wales capital an eminently suitable place for the holding of such a celebration, and afford a sure guarantee that the first Eucharistic Congress in Australia will be a magnificent success. 1915 will soon be here; and the great gathering, so near to our doors, is something to look forward to. ■;■ An 'Open Letter' to the Premier As we have already pointed out, Mr. Massey, who has generally been regarded as possessing in an especial degree the virtues of political integrity and straightforwardness, has exposed himslf to serious and damaging criticism by his yes-no utterances and attitude on the referendum proposal; and the criticism was not only quickly forthcoming but still continues, and will evidently not be silenced until' the Premier puts himself right with the country. One of the latest to give expression,, in caustic and plain-spoken comment, to disapproval of Mr. Massey's extraordinary attitude is the Rev. T. A. Williams, Baptist minister of Sydenham,

Christchurch. In ' An : Open Letter' to the Premier on: his attitude to two rival; deputations y re a referendum on " Bible-in-school "question,,'which appears in the Wellington Evening Post, Mr. Williams/ writes thus:' Sir,The electors in; general, and the ; two! opposing Leagues in particular,' have' surely a right to a less ambiguous attitude than that assumed by you in your reply to the two deputations which recently waited upon you. At present, none of us know where we are, or what we may expect from you. The two. deputations were apparently satisfied with your reply. The defenders of the present system, after your assurance that you would do nothing. to impair the secular system, reasonably supposed that you would be no party to a referendum. But after the second deputation had received your reply, Dean Fitchett publicly read a telegram from Dr. Gibb:— "Deputation great success; referendum practically promised next session." Now where are we?' '> ;' ■» Looking at some of the words you are reported to' have used in your reply to the second deputation, the confusion , becomes more confounded. - You' said: 'So far as I am personally concerned, I am in favor of moral and religious teaching in the public schools. I am opposed to anything which might introduce sectarian' differences and sectarian bitterness—anything which would interfere with the secular system of education.' You,, must see that these sentences are self-contradic-tory. _ They tell us that you are in favor of"both religious teaching and the secular system. But how can that be when they are mutually destructive? Now,.where are you on this question? You are not even on the rail. You are on either side of the rail at one and the same time. I would respectfully submit to you, sir, that your present position is, thus, not a very, dignified one for the First Minister of the State. With all deference, I would ask if you consider this "yesno" attitude worthy of a responsible statesman? And is it quite fair to the electors? If you really intend to champion a Referendum Bill, then frankly say so, and we shall know where we are and what to. do. I am sorry to remind you that your whole attitude, so far, on this important question contrasts unfavorably with that of a former Premier on the very same question, and suggests not the statesman but the politician. At this juncture, it is not smooth, contradictory words that we want, but a clear, definite pronouncement one way or the other. And have we not a right to expect this ? Please forgive my plain, blunt speech, and kindly remember that in all realms honesty is usually the best policy.' - * The demand for a definite and final declaration of intentions on the part of the Government is plainly reasonable; and Mr. Massey certainly cannot continue to see-saw from one side to the other on this question without suffering a serious loss of prestige. How History is Made Mr. Richard Bagot, a fairly popular and prolific writer whose books have a certain vogue and find a place on the shelves of most of our public libraries, has recently been the unwitting means of foisting upon his readers a noxious slander against the Catholic Church. The incident shows how easy it is for a writer of fiction to make himself ridiculous when, he is foolish enough to dabble with historical questions in regard to which he has not the slightest claim to special or expert knowledge. In 1911" Mr. Bagot published a book entitled My Italian Tear, in which, after emphasising his fidelity to facts, and his desire to give as true a picture of Italian life as his pen and competency allow, he goes on to describe a Corpus Christi procession in the province of Venezia in 1705, and how this included a ' Car of Purgatory,' into which, ' for the edification of the faithful,' twenty living infants were thrown into the flames and burned to death. This fact, he declared, was substantiated '; and without giving any evidence for his theory or assertion he yet drew, the inference that religious superstition was the explanation of the atrocity. On his version of the story being challenged in the

Eye '-.: Witness, Mr. Bagot gave Cavaliere Lampertico as his authority, but " father Thurston showed in the Month for March, 1912, on the authority of O. Brentari,, the-historian of Bassano, that the burning of the children was simply the result •of a frightful accident, which happened to the- processional Car, whereupon, as? was the .custom then, the Four Last Things wer© represented. The pageant caught fire, : and . sixteen children were accidentally burned to death. :• ■ - * ' Mr. Bagot protested that his account of the matter was the . true one; but he _ undertook .to make further investigations, and if he found he could not substantiate the charge, to withdraw, it. The promised investigations have now been completed; and, as a result, Mr. Bagot frankly retracts the charge he had made. Writing to the Editor of the Month, on June 30 ' of the present year he says:' I much regret that a family bereavement, ; in consequence of which I have been unable to return to Italy until quite recently, has prevented me from fulfilling my promise to the effect that, should my investigations into the case of the children burned in a car representing purgatory, which was a feature of a procession in honor of the Corpus Domini that took place in a town in'the Venetian State in the year 1705, prove me to have been incorrect or unjust in the account given by me of that incident in my book, My Italian.! (page 68), I would very gladly confess my error in the pages of the Month. My brother's (Sir Josceline Bagot) illness and death in March last unfortunately made it impossible for me to investigate personally the matter in dispute; but I asked two friends of mine—men of very different religious and political viewsto proceed with those investigations for me during my long absence in England. One of these gentlemen is well known in Italy for his historical r and political writings; while the other is an equally well known Italian ecclesiastic, a native of the Veneto, though now occupying a post in Rome. S I have only recently been able to learn the result of their researches. • It is a great satisfaction to me to be able to declare myself to have been completely in error in having attributed the tragedy in question to. an act of religious frenzy, as I attributed it in My Italian Tear. I think that it is proved, beyond any doubt, that the said lamentable occurrence was due to accident only, and not in any way to an outburst of fanatical superstition; and that the explanation of the affair published in the Month, refuting my account of it, is the true one.' Mr. Bagot adds that he has written to the editor of two Protestant papers which had quoted his account of the incident, to say that it was entirely erroneous, and to beg them to publish his disclaimer. . "'. •■•■■ * "' : Mr. Bagot deserves all possible credit for his candor and honesty; and by his frank and unreserved retraction he has done all that lay in his power to make amends for his fault. But the lie has got a clear two years' start; and hundreds, and possibly thousands, will have read (and believed) the original slander who will never see or hear of its withdrawal. The incident has quite a number of morals. First of all, as we have already indicated, it shows the extreme unwisdom of writers of fiction in dabbling in historical questions of which they have not made a special and personal study. In the second place, it.teaches that readers should be very chary of accepting wild anti-Catholic stories and theories when advanced by popular writers, however sincere and well-intentioned these writers may be. And finally, it illustrates the usefulness and value of an alert Catholic press. It took the Month considerable time and trouble to get the authentic facts supplied from Italy; but in the complete and public withdrawal of an odious charge its labor and enterprise have found ample reward. The Salt and Its Savor V memorable occasion, 'wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out.' In the

world of Protestantism the plague of Modernism cannot be stayed, and amongst our separated brethren the salt of Christianity is on the sure way to lose its : savor. We take three recent illustrations—from widely separated points of the compass give significant and painful evidence of the operation of the destructive and devitalising process. ' The first is ' from*" a case which received much prominence at the recent' Methodist Conference in England. The Rev. George Jackson, regarded as one of the ablest of Methodist ministers, had been appointed president of Didsbury Theological College, an important institution for the education and training of students for the Methodist ministry. Before the appointment took effect, however, Mr., Jackson delivered the Fernley lecture, in which, in unmistakable terms, he intimated his disbelief in certain of the Old Testament miracles, and expressed his sympathy with the application of what are called modern critical methods to the authority and interpretation of the Scriptures. In a further explanation and vindication of his views, he said: When I am told that the Bible is, in a sense that belongs to no other book, the Word of God, I cannot receive the saying merely on the authority of another, not even of the Apostles, nor of Christ himself for me it is God’s Word only as I hear God speaking in it,’ In other words, instead of subjecting himself to Scripture .he claimed the right to subject Scripture to himself, and to his purely personal and subjective interpretation and apprehensioh of it. An attempt was made, in consequence of such utterances, to have his appointment cancelled; but the Conference, by the overwhelming majority of 600 to 15, decided to let the appointment stand, and to give the Modernist professor full scope to indoctrinate the coming generation of Methodist ministers with his own destructive and pernicious principles, *

The second illustration is from high Anglican authority in Australia. It is not often that an Anglican prelate steps aside, at an important gathering of his Church, to give his express and explicit blessing to Modernism • but that is what happened at the Congress of the Anglican Church of Australia held at . Brisbane 111 the second week of September. The Most Rev. St. Clair Donaldson, D.D., Archbishop of Brisbane and Metropolitan of Queensland, was President of the Congress ; and in his presidential address he dealt with some of the great world movements with which the Church would have to reckon in the future. This is what he said at the very outset of his address: ' And first let me forestall criticism by confessing that Modernism is not one of them. Modernism, as I understand the term, is not a movement at all, but a phase of human thought, great and important indeed, but not directly concerned with the field of action. Modernism is the twentieth century phase of an ever-present controversy, which is as old as Christianity itself. It is simply the spirit of inquiry which seeks in every generation to square what it has learnt of Christ with the developments of modern thought; and although this self-imposed task may take us in some respects beyond the ways of thinking to which we have been accustomed, yet the changes will not be different in kind from those through which past generations have come; and we whose experience has assured us of certain fundamental things are not to be lightly disturbed, but rather stimulated and helped as we step aside to watch the process.' Such an utterance, on such an occasion, is surely an unpleasant sign of the time 3. ■ ' - ' • , * ,",;."."..- ;.'•' The third illustration concerns Modernism in its relation to the children— even the hapless little ones are now being brought under its baneful influence. According to the Rev/ A. A. Murray, Presbyterian minister of St. Andrew's, Auckland, Modernism, pure and unadulterated, is being openly taught in Protestant Sunday schools in America and elsewhere per medium of a volume known as the Westminster-Graded Lessons volume, by the way, which the Rev. F. E. Oxer, Moderator of the West Australian Assembly,' has just enthusiastically recommended to his Church. This is what Dr. James M. Gray, Dean of the Moody Bible

Institute, Chicago— mean authority—has to say regarding these Graded Lessons. We give his deliverance as quoted by Mr, Murray, from a letter in his possession, in a recent number of the Presbyterian Outlook. Under the title ‘ Graded Lessons and Degraded Truth,’ Dr. Gray writes; ‘We must not allow ourselves to be misunderstood or misquoted on this important question. No person of sense objects to the best religious education in our Sunday Schools or to the Graded Lesson in itself, but only to the way the enemy would use these things to come in upon us like a flood. It is the treatment of these lessons put out by the syndicate of publishers so known to which we are opposed, and this on four grounds : (1) It is unscientific in method; (2) Impracticable in application for a large constituency of Sunday schools; (3) Unscriptural in character; (4) And exceedingly harmful in its spiritual results. To speak of the last-named, the particular treatment referred to stands for the radical criticism and a purely human and faulty authorship of the Sacred Books. It reduces the Word of God to the level of ordinary literature. It substitutes Nature lessons for Holy Scripture. It breaks the unity of effort which has been' one of the strongest features of the Sunday school work for 40 years, and it slurs over the great essentials of the Christian faith. By these essentials I mean the nature and guilt of sin, the divine justice in dealing with sin, the atonement of Jesus Christ as the only hope of the sinner, the need of regeneration, by the Holy Spirit, justification by faith, and the eternal retribution of those who die in their sins. . . . The Religious Education Association, which has been a primary agent in the introduction of these Graded Lessons, has already obtained too great an influence over the Christian thinking of this country. This is saying nothing against the men personally who are at the head of it. We admit their human scholarship, high resolve, and earnest purpose. But permit this association to continue its influence in similar proportion for the next ten years, and our churches will be so weakened evangelically that there will be no strength for a protest.’ If all this is trueand there is not the slightest reason to doubt it—verily, the salt has already lost its savor. ,