The Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, 2 October 1913, Page 55

The Catholic World

ENGLAND

V THE DIOCESE OF SOUTHWARK. -~ 7 -' The fund which is being raised by his Grace the Duke of Norfolk and a committee of influential Catholics to commemorate the silver jubilee of the ordination of the Bishop of Southwark now. exceeds £13,000, and the committee js hopeful that the first £20,000 of the total of £IOO,OOO aimed at will be received before the close of the present year. In view of the fact that the fund is to be devoted by his Lordship to the liquidation of church, mission, and institutional debts in the diocese under his jurisdiction, it is believed there will be no dfnculty in attaining the object of the committee during the period mentioned. CARDINAL BOURNE AND THE DOCTORS. Catholic members of the International Medical Congress attended High Mass at Westminster Cathedral on Sunday, August 10. They were distinguished by the Congress medal, surmounted by blue ribbon, and the miniature flags they wore to denote the languages spoken. The gathering was probably more cosmopolitan than that at either of the other Church services, and the medical men of all shades of complexion from white to jet displayed the universality of the Church in a striking manner. The occasional sermon was preached by the Cardinal Archbishop, who appropriately reminded the Catholic members of the profession who listened to him of the high ideals they should ever keep before them. They were, he said, God's instruments for this life and the next, and they could discharge their duty only if they remembered their responsibility to and their dependence upon Him. Solemn and suggestive words. To-day outside the Catholic Church definite Christian belief is fading away, and this loss is perhaps more marked amongst medical men than amongst others. . The result is that in many cases the oportunities which offer of being helpful spiritually as well as corporally are not availed of. When a word, a suggestion, might induce the sufferer to seek peace and consolation where they are to be foundin religious practices—the medical attendant is silent. Elsewhere his influence is perhaps used to weaken faith. Catholic doctors are bound to take up a far different attitude, and to their credit be it said, they realise the duty defined by the Cardinal, of recognising that they are brought close to immortal -souls, and that their character, the language they use, and the principles which govern their lives are influencing their patients spiritually as well as for the healing of their bodies. -After Mass the Cardinal, who was accompanied by Bishop Butt, held a reception in the Throne Room at Cardinal-Archbishop's House, some -hundreds of the Catholic doctors and their wives being present. In the course of «a short address, delivered first in English and then in French, his Eminence expressed the pleasure it gave him to meet them in a less formal way than he had been able to do in the Cathedral. He expressed the hope that his visitors were having a very pleasant time in London, and that they "would go away with happy recollections of the Congress, and especially of the part that Catholics had been able to take in it.

FRANCE

THE SERVICES OF PRIESTS AND NUNS. The French Government, atheistical and sectarian though it is in its attitude towards the Church, is nevertheless driven to recognise, on certain occasions (writes a Paris correspondent) the valuable services rendered by the priests and nuns, whom, as a rule, it treats as the born enemies of the State. . The Minister of the Interior has lately given medals of honor to two country priests and to over fifty nuns who distinguished themselves by their devotion to the sick. On a similar occasion some months ago, the minister, in a petty spirit, ignored the fact that the women whom he

thought fit to reward were nuns; this time, in almost every case, he has had the frankness to acknowledge the-fact and to mention their profession as religious. On this long list we find aged Sisters, some of whom have spent forty, forty-three, fifty, fifty-six, fifty-nine, and sixty-three ; years in hospital work. Thus Sister Salmon, directress of an asylum for women, has received a gold medal as a reward for her enlightened care of mentally afflicted women during twenty-seven years, and of deaf mutes for twenty-four years. Altogether, fifty-one years of her life have been devoted to the most grievously afflicted of God's children. Another, Sister Brugnot, several times contracted grievous maladies in the service of the sick at Montbard.,' Sister Lemoine distinguished herself by her devotion during an epidemic of smallpox'; another by twenty-five years of 'devoted service' in a lepers' hospital at Guadeloupe. ■ /'■ . THE CAUSE OF BEATIFICATION. A meeting of the Cardinals and Theological Consuitors attached to the Sacred Congregation of Rites was held in the Vatican on August 5, and the following, among other matters, was considered: The introduction of the Cause of the Beatification and Canonisation of the servant of God, Sister Mary Bernard Soubirous of the Religious, of Charity and of Christian Instruction of Nevers.

GERMANY

A HERO OF CHARITY. ; : ~ Catholic Germany is about to celebrate the centenary of another hero of charity, born in the same year as Ozanam— Kolping. Those who have visited Cologne will remember his monument outside the Monorite Church, the bronze group showing a priest holding a young workman by the hand; and his grave before the altar of the same, church, with its inscription: 'I ask the alms of. your prayers.' But few among us know the wonderful story of the poor boy, too weak to face heavy work, who was apprenticed to a shoemaker, worked at the trade for years, learned Latin in his leisure hours, became a priest, and then the apostle and friend of the German workers, and the founder of the network of organisations that now guard the faith and protect the interests of the German Catholic workers from the day of apprenticeship through every stage of their lives. Kolping began his task when the factory system was replacing the old homelike traditions of German industry. He himself, in his shoemaking days, had seen what the results were of the sweeping change in the industrial life of the people. Labor was unorganised. The rush to the manufacturing towns had begun, and, amid new and unfamiliar surroundings, too many of the 'Catholics drifted away fraom the practice of religion. Kolping was, with_J7bn Ketteler, the pioneer of Catholic social work, and, though his own labors were limited to Germany, his example was followed in, other countries. Cologne is to be the centre of the coming celebration, but there are no cities or towns in the Catholic districts of Germany which do not possess foundations and organisations that have sprung from Kolping's ' apostolate of the workers,' so that the centenary will be kept in many places, and will everywhere give a new impetus to the movement of which the shoemakerpriest was the founder.