Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLVIII, Issue 35, 1 September 1921, Page 39

Catholic World

THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

-The Providentissimus Pens, laid the foundation, deep and wide, of modern Biblical study in the Church (writes Cuthbert Lattey, S.J., in the July Catholic World); but if we desire to see the programme worked out in practical detail, it is rather to Pope Leo’s successor that we must go, Pius X. Here again, perhaps, attention has been too much riveted upon the repression of error, useful and necessary as it was, and it has not been fully realised that the zeal" of the Pontiff, here as in other matters, was eminently constructive. The Apostolic Letter upon the study of Sacred Scripture in clerical seminaries, issued in March, 1906, sets forth an admirable scheme of organisation, in 18 short directions. As an example of the spirit in which they are conceived, it may be enough to quote the eleventh, which enacts that seminaries which enjoy the right of conferring academcial degrees must increase the number of their Biblical lectures, “and, therefore, general and special questions are to be treated more thoroughly, and more time and study given to Biblical archaeology, or geography, or chronology, or theology, and likewise to the history of exegisis.” The vrl of the original is here rendered “or,” but is evidently not intended to present alternatives mutually exclusive.

THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN.

The great fact (says Sir Bertram C. A. Windle in the July Catholic World) is that when St. Augustine came to the island, apart from the pagan Saxons, it was the home of an organised Christian Church. From its commencement right down to the time when the Legions left, and history goes into seclusion under a cloud, it remained an organised Christian Church (Catholic, of course, for the two were synonymous) in full communion with Rome. When it once more appears from behind the cloud it reappears dishevelled, no doubt, from its long seclusion and want of intercourse with the rest of the civilised world, but for the rest, save in two points, not, we submit, of the first importance, in full agreement with the Church at large. The Church, which was the mother of good deeds until the wicked hunger for gold coupled with the still more wicked lust of the flesh in a monarch and his creatures tried, almost successfully, to destroy it, was the descendant of this, and how any student of history can look upon it at any time in its career as a Protestant, still more-a Presbyterian, organisation is certainly difficult to understand.

PAPAL NUNCIO AT PARIS: ARCHBISHOP ' CERRETTI’S VARIED EXPERIENCE.

Mgr. Bonaventura Cerretti has, as was expected, been appointed by the Pope to be Nuncio at Parisan appointment which is eminently satisfactory to all concerned and fraught with many high hopes (states the London Tablet). Born at Orvieto in 18/2, he took his doctor’s degrees in Theology and Canon Law at the Vatican Seminary, where on the termination of his studies he was retained as Professor of Literature and followed the courses of the University. After a short time at the Apostolic Penitentiary he was called to the Secretariate of State as “minutante” in the section of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1904 he accompanied Mgr. Serafini to Mexico as secretary, and two years later was .appointed auditor to the Apostolic Delegation at Washington, where he gained the confidence of all and made many friends. Thence, in 1914, he was sent as Apostolic Delegate to Australia as titular Archbishop of Corinth, and was as successful in Australia as in the United States.

In 1917 he was recalled to Rome to the position of Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, rendered vacant by Mgr. Pacilli’s appointment to the Munich Nunciature.

Mgr. Cerretti has thus had a wide experience which has made him not only a ripe diplomatist but a facile linguist, and such acquirements, coupled with his natural qualities, should help to smooth the difficulties of his delicate task in Paris. . * ■

In this connection it is curious to note that on the very clay M. Jonnart left Paris to take up his Ambassadorship to the Vatican in Rome, M. Combes, the chief engineer of the rupture of the relations now resumed, died at Pons, in his 86th year.

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THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH OF TURKEY.

Constantinople.—As an offset to their massacres of Christians in Anatolia, the Kemalists appear to be about to set up a National Church of Turkey. This is made clear by the draft of a measure, which has been drawn up by the Commissariate of Justice at Angora, relating to the constitution of the independent “Turkish Orthodox Church.” This State Church will embrace all the archbishoprics in the territory subject to the authority of the Great National Assembly. These dioceses will be under the jurisdiction of a new Patriarch, whose seat of government will be at Kessaria, and the scheme takes in Constantinople, Adrianople, Smyrna, and Gallipoli.

It is evidently designed for the benefit of the Orthodox, and there is no suggestion that Roman Catholics will be included in the National Church of Turkey. The Patriarch will be allowed to appoint the parish priests, subject to the approval of the Kemalist Government. The bishops will be selected and nominated by the Mahometans who comprise the Nationalist Government.

As to the claims of the Greek Government to be the protectors of the Orthodox, the Council of the Ecumenical I atriarchate at Constantinople has addressed a sharp note to Athens, accusing that’ Government of having brought about tho failure of an election to the Patriarchate. This election should have taken place at the end of June, when a successor was to be chosen to the late Archbishop of Biusa, who died in London this year, and who occupied the Patriarchal Throne as locum tenens.

DISSENSIONS IN GERMAN CENTRUM.

Berlin.—For some time it has been known that there are serious internal differences among the members of the Centre or Catholic Party in Germany, and there is expected shortly a debate that will centre around the political future of Dr. Mathias Erzberger. - Since the Helfforich libel action the former Finance Minister has been urged by the Party leaders to lie low. Erzberger did nothing of the kind; as a matter of fact, he put himself up for election in Wuerttemberg, and was returned to office with a very handsome majority, ■ The Centrum has, however, enlarged its scope, and it is no longer definitely a Catholic party, many Protestants and Jews are to be found in its membership, since they find themselves able to accept its programme, which is distinctly political and not necessarily Catholic. Last year two smaller parties were formed by the discontents from the Centrum. But within the Party itself there are now two tendencies; one which has a definitely religious basis to its general outlook on life and politics; the other which has a more elastic outlook. The approaching crisis, if crisis it can called, is to decide to what extent Erzberger shall guide the fortunes of the Party or whether he shall be recognised as one of its leaders at all. The Centrum was the only political party in Germany that passed through the Revolution unscathed. But the revelations at the Helfferich libel trial, when an attempt was made to break Erzberger politically! have tended to place him in the light of a liability rather than an asset to the Centrum—at least to the Berlin fraction at all events. [A cable message from Berlin, under date August 27, records .the assassination there of Herr Erzberger.—Ed! y.z.T.) x: ■ : :