Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 17 July 1919, Page 14

Current Topics

Home Rule' v. - ou.nni Of course we are taking it for granted that, you all know that ; Ireland , has ~ Home Rule •, now. r/ Surely .the evidence is convincing. Did not the British Parliament pass at the f beginning of the late . lamented - war a Bill in which it was provided that Home Rule . should be deferred for 12 months, ; “or if /at r . the expiration ,of those 12 months the present; war has not * ended, ,until such latex' date (not being later , than the end of the present war) as may be fixed by his Majesty by Order-in-Council” ? There now! ~ What, more do you want If we were . dealing with Huns who tear up, scraps of paper, of course that Bill ,would, mean .nothing.; -■ It would not do .to take it seriously. But as we are dealing with British gentlemen, have we not, ample reason as Irishmen to take their word of honor ? If you want further proof of that you will find it in the next paragraph.", •

The Word of British Government Two young boys were kidnapped by the British Army in Ireland. They were taken away secretly; their parents did not know if they were drowned ; they had committed no crime. After long delay—after vain appeals to the police and even to Lord French—by some means the Habeas Corpus Act was put in motion. The Irish Lord Chief Justice gave the police such a castigation as is rarely given them in the land where they can do no wrong. While he was scourging them, the Government let the boys out at the back door—just as a publican would bustle out thirsty customers on a Sunday when the “peelers” are signalled, as the Dublin Leader has it. When asked to explain this bit of Prussianism, MacPherson had the effrontery to stand up in the House and say that “the boys were taken, into the care of the police in order to protect them from the Sinn Feiners.” Needless to say, he had not the courage to tell that deliberate falsehood to the Lord Chief Justice. Again, when the recent siege of Limerick aroused strong comment in England, Mac calmly told the House that Limerick was made a military area on account of the strike, when as a matter of fact everybody in the House knew that the strike did take place as the result of Mac’s proclamation. If you want further evidence of how British statesmen keep their word, recall-half a dozen of the little episodes in the political life of Lloyd George which exemplify what we are saying. There have been asses put in Dublin Castle before now there have been lunatics- sent over to rule Ireland ; there have been out-and-out liars time and again. But surely MacP her son takes the cake! Why then doubt that the Home Rule Act is a reality? There remains just one reason. Some weeks ago, at a demonstration in favor of Irish freedom in America, a banner with a strange device 'was carried through the streets. That device was “CONCESSIONS BE DAMNED.” For the reason that stands for we still doubt. Ireland will have no more fooling, no more half-loaves. What she wants is not any sort of good government from England. It is self-government and nothing else. Knowing that does not prevent us from watching with amusement how the “statesmen” will wriggle out of the position their Tom-Fool Bill has put them in. It is instructive to remember that the first session of the League of Nations will sit at Washington—-especially when you also recall that the American envoys to Ireland are going home with a full account of what they saw themselves and with details so far suppressed concerning the barbarous treatment of Irish women in British gaols. Tilo. A rnnn/>orx rmnow will V. Xi-„L * . 1 :• L _ t *•* avuii o vvxai M-O nfuiuii VV CUHJIIIIIH 111 a, bllOrfc time. - r- ■

Good P.P.AI Advice i ,n ~ it: . .p* - t u - : , There is good in everything. As we once said (and were nearly exterminated, for the joke), even bagpipes do not smell. A. ’.wise, man , welcomes the good at all

times, and rejoices .when, he can \ draw good from evil. There is not much that is good ■ or "middling: in the P.P.A., as everybody knows,, r , r It is quite certain that if ; the ignoramus I Earnshaw . and his confreres did not protect themselves by only addressing select hearers in their alleged, public . meetings the, ghouls land cop-.-rophagi would have been hosed off the face of the earth ; long since. i Strange as it may seem, we are at. one with them as regards two things. .We. believe,-like -them, but for unlike reasons, that no Catholics should be in the ;i Civil Service; and we heartily subscribe to their, protest against marriages between Catholics and Protestants. J Not, as we said for their, reasons, do - weagree so far. In the Civil Service of the 'Empire, with its network of that Masonry which corrupted the French army and, hardly less, the British army,, during-the war, Catholics stand little chance of rising to decent positions. What jobs they get, generally speaking,- : are; not worth having, and there is little or no hope; of their getting out of the ruck. Look at the higher positions and you will see what moonshine the ranters talk when they say that Catholics hold more than their just proportion of Civil Service billets. Catholics are allowed to sweep up the crumbs that fall from the Masonic banquet tables, to wear a few policemen's boots out on the asphalt, to sort letters or to add up figures at a desk at a starving wage. The judgeships, the well-paid defence jobs (jobs is the word, mind), the inspectorships of schools, the positions that count are reserved for the chosen few under the flag of freedom. It is as sound advice, as can be given to tell Catholics to shun the Civil Service as they would shun the plague. Parents ought to instill into their children from early years a horror of policemen and a detestation of the Post Office strong enough to save them from being later caught in the coils of the octopus that is the N.Z. Civil Service. Back to the land, to commercial callings, to the professions, to the trades and arts and crafts, ye Catholics. Leave to the P.P.A. the Civil Sex-vice, and be free men and women, not afraid that the practice of your religion will cause you to lose your starving wages. And as for mixed marriages, even such a problem in humanity as the Nosworthy person or the foul-mouthed glory of New Zealand Upper House cannot be so stupid as not to know that the Ne Tcmere Decree, regarding which they make untrue statements, is aimed directly at preventing mixed marriages. Therefore, as they tell Protestants not to marry Catholics at any cost, if they were wise (which they certainly are not), if they were gifted with common sense (which nobody has ever yet alleged), they would welcome the Ne Temere Decree as a trump card. Apart, however, from the mental vagaries of P.P.A. spouters, our advice to Catholics in this matter falls in line with theirs: avoid mixed marriages, boys and girls, for your own sake, for the sake of the Church, for the sake of your soul. Possibly one per cent, of mixed marriages may turn out well; but we doubt it. It is certain that 99 per. cent, turn out badly, and that when the glamor of passion which blinded reason has gone the eyes of the Catholic party are opened to the fact that a mistake has been made that even death cannot set rightfor after death there will be the children who, in their -weak faith, their defective training, their carelessness for religion, will inherit the curse and pass it on to their own children in turn. Yes, even as Balaam's ass, the P.P. Ass. has spoken well once. : . ' ''

On the Views of a Forger , ; . ac;V There is no need to tell anybody who reads . the following extract that it was taken from the Passing Notes of “Givis,” the New Zealand Riggott; “In the Spectator of April 12 is an excellent retort +u,-. 1 ; n ,,4- 4-t i UID OIU.ICUU Jlil-ClXlj ui tliuugo vv ? (jUcit? cl 3 licit?, Irish malcontents are perpetually chanting. If the British of to-day are to be answerable for ; the misdeeds of the British of Cromwell's time, .why is not the same rule ; applied to the Roman Church? ‘lf Protestant Englishmen must make amends for injustices or crimes said ,to have . been, committed generations • ago, by . what

right do Roman Catholics - demand ,r to be free from the same obligation ? On these terms the > Roman Catholics owe reparation for the ? massacre of r; St. Bartholomew, for the two Irish massacres' of ' the 17th 5 century",' ( and for the terrible Trish rebellion of '9B.- Why should the poor English; race be the only' one to which is applied the: law that "the sins of the fathers must be visited on the children" ? ; The argument, of course, does not bear looking - into. 'a * Shakespere as -usual told the truth: "Crimes like land are not inherited."' You may inherit the lands of your ancestors, but you do hot inherit their crimes,—' Crimes like lands are not'inherited.' Otherwise; St. Joseph's in Dunedin would inherit the infamy of the Spanish Inquisition, and Father Coffey —with reverence be it spokenwould be answerable for the enormities of Torquemada." "'/''■■' ..f.ylt- may or-may not be that this quotation was found "Civis" in the Spectator. When a man has once been detected in forgery of testimonies there is an end to his credibility. The Spectator is, as we all know, a bigoted Tory Protestant paper, restricted to a circle of readers of the opinions and political morality of Piggott "Civis." It does not matter for our purpose whether "Civis" forged this passage or not. It is just the sort of thing one would look for in the paper mentioned the sort of thing usually served up to ignorant bigots by No-Popery rags and by ranters who are more desirous to calumniate Catholics than to tell the truth. It is a fair specimen of the stock-in-trade of these coprophagous creatures, and in a country where ignorance of history goes hand in hand with bigotry such stuff is always sure of a market. Before commenting on the extract, let us notice a quotation which is undoubtedly approved by "Piggott" himself: "Crimes like lands are not inherited." While remembering that there is no little authority for saying that the sins of parents are to some extent inherited by their children and grandchildren, we let that pass to reflect on the allusion to lands. Are lands inherited ? Probably under civilised Governments they are. Our experience is, however, not derived from civilised Governments. 1 In the country in which we were born it was the custom of the Protestant rulers to rob the Catholics of their lands, to give them to British spies, informers, assassins, and what mot, and to wield the power of the law, not for right and justice, but to secure the robbers in their ill-gotten goods. To the present day the descendants of robbers hold our lands, and churches and cathedrals built by Catholics for Catholics have been allotted to —according to Protestant highwaymen and brigands. At the present day, in order to support the sons and daughters of the plunderers, the British Government makes a rebel a Cabinet Minister, while it protects lunatics who murder Catholics : it sends airplanes to pour down fire on women and children ; it kidnaps children in defiance of the Habeas Corpus Act—which is apparently not for "Romanists" ; it makes pledges and breaks them at will ; it arrests men and women because they take Mr. George at his word and ask for self-government. No, "Piggott," lands are not always inherited—under the Union Jack, at any rate.

St. Bartholomew’s Day “On these terms the Roman Catholics owe reparation for the massacre of St. Bartholomew.” (The Spectator, as quoted by the Dunedin “Piggott.”) Until learning became fairly common in England ranters used to use the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day as a weapon of attack against the Catholic Church. Nowadays, owing to the advance of historical research and the growth of decency among English Protestants, reference to this massacre is mad© only by ignorant bigots of the 'Ken sit, McCabe, or Spectator type—and by dishonest persons who know well the truth of the case but still us© it to pander to their No-Popery readers. Some time ago “Piggott Civis,” when taken to task about his false figures, said he did not know anything about statistics ;> later when his-historical excursions were ridiculed he said he-did : not know anything about historyWe : have : also seen that* he does not know how to quote Lecky without introducing into the text, as genuine,

a passage from another, historian whom Lecky condemns as unreliable. The one thing left for "Piggott Civis" to do is to vent his No-Popery and anti-Irish rag© in the Saturday columns of the Otago Daily Times, which he thus places on a level with the Auckland Sentinel, the American Menace, the Orange Nation, and other similar unsavory rags. Modern criticism has abundantly shown*; that 1 three facts are clear concerning the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. First, that th© massacre was inspired by political motives, not by religious motives secondly, that : the slaughter was not a matter of long premeditation; and thirdly, that the-Church was in no; way responsible for the execrable deed. We will proceed to explain \ these three propositions, and make it clear that while anti-Catholic bigotry and hatred' were responsible for the murders committed by the hirelings of 'Elizabeth and Cromwell;' nothing' but the eternal dishonesty of low Protestants of the "Civis" typo can accuse the Church of complicity in the atrocity, of St. Bartholomew's Day. The guilt of that crime belongs to Charles IX. and his mother, with their ad- : visers. That they happened to be Catholics is the only connection the Church has with it—-a connection as slight as that which the Protestant Church to-day has with the origin of the war and with atrocities, committed by the Lutheran German Kaiser. For bigots of the "Civis" type that connection is enough. And with as much logic Catholics, taking a leaf from their book, would be justified in saying that the Protestant Church is responsible for the rape of women, for the burning of churches, for the. murder of civilians, ; whether committed by the Protestant British Government in Ireland or by the Protestant German Government in Belgium. So far from religion being at the root of the massacre of the Huguenots, it was religion that prevented it from being more terrible than it was. Charles IX. was a poor figure of a king, stunted in mind and vicious. He was completely in his mother's hands. She was a Catholic in, name alone, a freethinker who was ready to use Huguenots and Catholics alike for her own ends. She was prepared to destroy Catholicism in. France if she could thereby serve herself. The' one thing certainly absent from her character was zeal for religion of any kind. Sweeping allegations are made by bigots to the effect that the clergy were actual assassins, but it is remarkable that when we do encounter the name of a bishop or priest in the records of the atrocity we find them active on the side of mercy. Historians agree that the French clergy, with few if any exceptions, were not only innocent of the crime, but that they in many cases successfully opposed it, even at the, risk of their lives. Protestants are fond of drawing a picture of the Cardinal of Lorraine, blessing daggers for the bloody work, when in fact he was all this time absent in Rome at the Conclave for the election of Gregory XIII. Fleury, who is not by any means too partial to the clergy, says of them '"The clergy, .in spite of all the ill-usage they had received from the heretics,, saved as many of them as they could in various places." . At Liseux, as is well known, the bishop, Jean Hennuyer, saved a large number of Protestants from , the mob. At Toulouse the monasteries took a glorious Catholic revenge for the past outrages of the heretics by sheltering them. At Nantes and Montpellier the clergy hid them in their homes. To show how little religion had to do with the massacre it is sufficient to consider who the Huguenots were. No man with the slightest knowledge of history could say they were inoffensive citizens. For years^they had .endeavored by secret plotting with the enemies of France and. by open rebellion to overthrow, the lawfully constituted government. , : They started three civil wars, and although treated with clemency after each defeat, they . still conspired-.against the King. They betrayed two cities to England ; they destroyed fifty cathedrals, hundreds of churches, profaned sacred shrines, murdered priests and , tortured innocent people as the British. soldiers tortured, the Irish for the love of God in Ninety-Eight. For all this they were well ' ! treated 5 -; until '- their crimes became so 'unbearable that they awakened passions as' bad as their own. '' The Court of France declared by

Parliament, August 26, that in carrying out this severe measure it had merely anticipated , a plot of Coligny and his Huguenots against the life of the King and of the princes of the royal family. The massacre was instigated by - the Queen, who urged it on her weakminded son as a necessary political coup. It was political in" itself and in all its bearings, and religion had nothing to do with it outside the diseased minds of people like "Civis" and the editor of the only paper he seems to read—the Spectator. As to the second point, that the massacre was premeditated, it is not necessary to dwell long upon it. Non-Catholic writers who accused the Pope of being the cause of it needed some such theory to support them. The discovery of manuscripts from the diplomatic correspondence of the sixteenth century has set the matter at rest in the minds of all historians who have any pretence to scholarship. While llanke, Soldan, Lingard, Martin, Alzog, and others discredit such a theory it still seems good enough for the bigots who will.; never know or "never learn anything except what is given them by Piggotts and "Civises." The third point to be settled is the alleged complicity of the Holy See in the matter. The London Times (which paid the first Piggott) says in the issue of September 5, 1892: "What judgment are we to form about the Pope who gave his approval to the St., Bartholomew Massacre, and who is now ranked among the canonised saints of the Church?" The plain answer is that, in the eyes of people who know what canonisation means, the charge against Pope Pius V. is as absurd as anything ever yet invented by Protectant liars and forgers, from Luther to "Civis." Another answer is that Pius was dead four months before the massacre took place. One Canon Jenkins tries to meet this by saying that "the urgent letters of this sanguinary Pope to the King and Queen of France led on to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew." According to this Protestant luminary it was the letters of Pius V. that did the trick! When the letters are examined it is found that beyond exhorting that the murderers be punished, justis j/oenis, justisque su-ppli-ciis quae legibus statuta sunt (by just penalties and punishments according to the law), and threatening the negligent King with the judgments of God for neglect of duty, there is no evidence. As for Gregory XIII., the facts of the case were concealed from him and he believed that a plot to kill the King had been discovered and the conspirators punished, and not unnaturally expressed his satisfaction by a Tc Deitm. We recommend our readers to study how the points here touched are treated by Cardinal Moran.

We are not to be wise and prudent, according to the flesh, but simple, humble, and pure. —St. Francis of Assisi.