Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 6 October 1921, Page 14

Current Topics

Ireland \ We take it for granted that most of our readers have seen that Mr. Stead has called attention to the fact that,' notwithstanding the gas-attacks of our daylio men and their misrepresentations,-what Lloyd George offered Ireland was not Dominion Home Rule, or any-thing-that any Dominion would dream of accepting. We made this fact plain from the very beginning, and it is satisfactory to know that the one truthful secular periodical in Australia endorses our view, which, indeed, was quite obvious. We do not agree altogether with Mr. Stead, because we think Mr. Massey would be perfectly willing to do or say anything at all that Lloyd George would order him to do or say, but we are one with him in that every other Prime Minister would reject with scorn such an offer ' as was made to Ireland. However, that now belongs to the past and we have to deal with the present situation. It is satisfactory to know that Sinn Fein has accepted Lloyd George’s invitation to a conference, and there is a possibility that the result of the meeting of the Sinn Fein and the English delegates may bring a lasting peace. Ireland, with good reason, still distrusts the British Premier, and there is no danger'of her delegates being, hoodwinked. That England is in sore straits and eager for a settlement is clear from the changed tone of Lloyd George’s latest pronouncement. Bluff having failed, he now speaks of coming to an agreement regarding association with the Empire. The omission of the two little letters “in” after “with” means a great deal. Lloyd George’s chief concern at present is to find a way out that will save his own face and at the same time be acceptable to Dail Eireann. His greatest trouble will be from the representatives of the Orange murderers within his own household. As long as Ireland has to deal with such a quick-change artist as Lloyd George it is hardly safe to be optimistic,, but there are grounds for hope.

The Washington Conference

Sir Auckland Geddes has made it plain even to English obtuseness that Ireland blocks the way to any friendly settlement between England and the "United States, and such a settlement is of immense importance to England. Ireland remembers how the sham Convention was staged for the purpose of deceiving America, and it is not likely that a sham settlement will succeed in doing so again. It is also noteworthy that the French journal, Le Matin, warns America against English intrigue. It calls attention to the fact that England and Japan are deeply interested in strengthening their armies and navies, and asks America tp consider against what power this increase of armaments is aimed. Not at France, not at Germany, not at Russia, the Matin says, and it concludes that, America would be well advised to see that all England's cards are laid on the table honestly before entering into the discussions proposed by the Washington Conference. England has friends in America, of course. Some of the great papers are bought by British money, and, let us remark, these are the only American papers quoted by our day-lies when they try to make the public believe that American opinion favors Lloyd George against Sinn Fein. On the other hand, true Americans, and also some forty millions of Americans of German, Austrian, and Irish blood', know England too well to allow themselves to be deceived again. It is safe to predict that unless the Irish question is settled definitely whatever representatives England sends „ over will have a hard row to hoe. Lord Northcliffe's plain speaking made Lloyd George and Lord Curzon impossible, and as far as the persons suggested as delegates are concerned it seems to us that England might as well send Messrs. Massey or Nosworthy, for all tjhe good they will achieve.-• , ',';••; ' V '

. There are, by some strange forgetfulness on the part of Greenwood ,@two respectable men, both named O'Connor', among the Irish judges. One of them was punished for ' protesting against the Brithun effort to conscript Ireland in the war for economic domination. The other will soon be punished if by any chance Sinn Fein loses the rubber for he has given a salutary drubbing, to the very biggest of the Brithun bigwigs. Here is the ion's comment on the incident:

"The military authorities, by imitating the soldiers who resisted the famous judgment of the Irish' King's Bench in the case of Wolfe Tone, have exhibited in a dramatic manner the service that the Master of the Bolls has done to British law. The case of two Irishmen who were sentenced to death by military courts came before him in the Chancery Division, and he found that the military courts were illegal.' He described a military court such as that which tried these cases as 'a military court constituted in some way unknown to the law, by some military officers.' The military authorities claimed the power to try men and sentence them to death because a state of war existed in Ireland. But provision had been, made for the emergency in the Restoration of Order Act (1920), and the proper course was to proceed by the methods and the courts set up by that Act. This plan did not suit the military authorities, who wanted, as Sir John Simon put it at the, time, to create new punishments not sanctioned by the law. Accordingly, they set up these military courts, and tried and punished a great many Irishmen, until at last one of their sentences has been reviewed with a result most satisfactory to all who care for our traditions and our liberties. The military authorities are so accustomed to have things their own way that at first they proposed to resist the judgment of the Court by force. The Master of the Rolls described, their conduct with becoming vigor, and on Friday in last week the authorities were instructed by the Government to submit to the lawful authority. "Readers of Dicey great book on the Law of the Constitution will recall his account of the proceedings in the case of Wolfe Tone. On the morning on which Wolfe Tone was to have been executed an application was made for a writ of Habeas Corpus to the Irish King's Bench, on the ground that the officers who tried him were attempting illegally to enforce martial law. The,Court granted the writ. 'When it is remembered that Wolfe Tone's substantial guilt was admitted, that the Court was filled with judges who detested the rebels, and that in 1798 Ireland was in the midst of a

revolutionary crisis, it will be admitted that no more splendid assertion of the supremacy of the law can be found than the protection of Wolfe Tone by the Irish Bench.' We are glad that a judge has been found independent enough to maintain the law against Governments and soldiers to-day. A similar appeal to-the House of Lords failed last week, but it is important to note the ground on which it was dismissed. Ad appeal was made to the House of Lords for ' a writ of prohibition ' against the military court that sentenced two men to death last April for being in possession of revolvers. The Judges dismissed the appeal on the ground that a writ of prohibition could not be issued because the military court was ' in law not a court nor a judicial tribunal of any kind.' An important sentence in Lord Cave's judgment must be noted: 'The dismissal of this appeal on the ~ ground that prohibition did not lie would not prevent the appellants from applying for writs of habeas corpus if thev should "be so advised, but on the question whether such an application could be properly granted, he expressed no opinion.' It is not unlikely, therefore, that we may one day have an opportunity of learning whether ■ the supremacy of the law' is as important a principle to the House of Lords in 1921 as it wasjto the Irish Bench in 1798."

The Irish Nuns

Here and there among the sacred documents that are the sources of theology there are indications that God has-regard for heredity in the bestowal of his

graces, and that it may often be more than, a figure of speech to talk of a Catholic youth being sanctified in his mother's womb. If heredity counts at all what a force it must be among the Irish people who are "beyond all doubt, taken as a whole, the most Christ- , ian people in the universe to-day. Pure and untarnished by the slightest stain-of heresy the faith has come down to them in a living stream from Patrick, to whom it came from Celestine, to whom it came from Peter, to whom it came from Christ Himself. Our faith is then Apostolic. As a divine gift our forefathers received it and transmitted it to children who knew its value so well that although England robbed them of everything else she was unable to kill 'the Irish faith. It has grown robust in a suitable soil; if was watered by torrents of the blood of martyrs; it was purified by seven centuries of such oppression and trial as no other nation ever endured. To-day it flowers in the souls of the boys who can die with smiling faces for the love of Ireland; in the hearts of the girls who rival their brothers in bravery; in the old people who having outlived their fighting days can only kneel and pray to God from full hearts for the salvation and victory of the race that has carried the .. standard of Christ to the • outposts of the world. It has borne fruit that is almost miraculous in the labors of the Irish missionaries of all times. Erigena in Oxford, Scottus, who now sleeps in Cologne by the Rhine after, his successes at the University of Paris, Richard of St. Victoire, the Irish professors who were the glory of Salamanca and of Louvain—all were the splendid harvest of the Irish faith. Recall also the apostolic wanderers, old and new, who went forth in every age of Christian Ireland, to teach the Gospel to strangers — peregrinari pro Christo —as their glorious Watchword was. Columba made lona a sanctuary and a fountain of sanctity; Donatus prayed in Gaelic as well as in Latin on the heights above Florence the Beautiful; Gall's name still stands on the map of Switzerland ; Fiacre has passed into a popular French word; far away in the South of Italy, the cathedral of Cataldus stands above the Mediterranean, looking across towards Greece. Not less than theirs was the glory of the preachers of later days. There is a church to St. Patrick in every big city in the New World. • The roll of American, Australian, Zealand, and South African bishops is full of great Irish names; and the colleges at home still continue to send forth year after year numbers of young levites to take up the torch that falls from the weary hands of those who have labored and borne the burden of the day before them. Perhaps the fairest flower of all, perhaps the*choicest sheaves in the harvest, are represented by the nuns of Ireland, about whose wonderful work for the faith far too little is told and written. Side by side with the. old pioneers they prayed and worked from the very beginning—the days when Brigid gathered around her. a chosen band of virgins at "Kilcfere's holy fane." They too survived the years when thei dungeon, fire, and sword, were the earthly reward or those who • were true to Christ; they too defied the power of the English apostates who would rob Ireland of religion and drag her children down to their own low level. And in time, the Irish nuns also went forth in order to take their part in the missionary work which has been the special charge of the faithful nation. And, we know well that if Irish bishops ana! priests have founded dioceses and parishes all over the earth, they could not have succeeded as they did were it not for the noble' co-opera-tion of the daughters of Brigid who taught in the schools that kept the churches full in lands like New Zealand where atheists try by every means in their power to banish God from the hearts of the young. 1 < In detail we find an account of some of the Orders for women, more intimately associated with Ireland, in the following extract from the Irish World of August 20. We produce it here in order to mark in some way, all too inadequate, our appreciation of all that we owe to these true heroines who labor amongst us for no earthly reward: : ';H;' ; : r ;. ,'s. 'The Dominican Order was the first religious com.

munity to be established in Ireland. It was introduced in 1224, three years" after the death of St. Dominic. .-•"• But there is no definite record of Dominican Nuns in; Ireland until the Galway foundation in 1644, confirmed;'.'; by the Apostolic Nuncio in 1647. That community withstood a siege of the Cromwellian forces in 1651 and '■'■£ sailed- for Spain under the terms --of surrender. This :>■;." seems to be the only recorded instance of the "Flight of Women,," a sort of prelude- battlefield, of Europe, ; nearly half a century later. ••'..- The survivors of these nuns returned to Galway in 1686 in the reign of James ll.,'but after the defeat of that monarch they were forced to disperse in 1697 under' an edict banishing the hierarchy and religious Orders. They re-established the community in 1756. It was not from Galway, however, but from Cabra, near Dublin, that members of the Order spread out to Port Elizabeth l in 1867, to Dunedin in 1870, and thence to New Zea- \ land and Western Australia.

Loreto Order.

The Loreto Order, which has made wonderful progress in India, is practically an Irish foundation. Of course the foundress, Frances May Teresa Ball, of Dublin, a sister of Justice "Ball, a distinguished Irish judge, served her novitiate with the Sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, established in York, England, in 1688 when James 11. ascended the throne. She was the instrument selected in 1821 by Archbishop Murray of Dublin to perform a great work. Nobly have her spiritual daughters fulfilled the mission the Archbishop entrusted to her. Having dotted Ireland witty their convents and schools, they extended the sphere of their labors to India 1841. To-day they are spread over that peninsula from Bengal to the Punjab, and have carried their activities to the Mauritius Islands, Spain, South Africa, and Australia. "The missionaries rejoice to find your former children steady, practical Catholics and perfect Christian mothers." - That was a Jesuit's tribute to their work in India.

Presentation Order.

The Presentation Order was founded in 1775 by Nano Nagle, a member of the same family as Sir Richard Nagle, Attorney General and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons in the Parliament of James 11, 1689. •

In 1820 a House of the Order was established in St. John's, Newfoundland, by Sisters Josephine French and M. de Sales Lovelock, who went there from Galway. Mothef-Xavier Cronin of Kilkenny founded in 1854 at San Francisco . the first House of the Order in the United States. Mother Hickey of Terenure, Co. Dublin, opened in 1874 a House at St. Michael's, New York. The Order was extended to Madras in 1841 by Mother Xavier Kearney of Mullingar, Co. Westmeath; to Hobart, Tasmania, in 1866 by Mother Xavier Murphy of Fermoy Co, Cork, and to St. Kilda, Melbourne, in 1873 by Mother M. J. Byrne, Kildare.

Sisters of Mercy.

The Sisters of Mercy, founded in 1827 by Mother Mary Catherine McAuley, Gormanstown House, Dublin, sent communities in rapid succession to St. John's Newfoundland, in 1846; to Perth, Western Australia, in 1846 ;to New Zealand, in 1848 San Francisco, in 1854. The first Rev. Mother over the HcSuse in San FranciscW was Mother Mary Baptist, a sjster of Lord Russell olKillowen, the first Catholic Lord Chief Justice of England. It was from Kinsale Convent, Co. Cork, that Mother Baptist and the nuns who were her companions sailedWor California; and from Ennis came the first Sisters of Mercy to New Zealand. Many Irish ladies devote their lives to the service of the poor in the Congregation of tjhe French Sisters of Charity 'founded* by St. Vincent de Paul in 1634. One of these Irish women, Sister Alice O'Sullivan of Clonmel, Co. Tipppfary, was s martyred at Tieri Tsin, China, during the Rising of 18707 " . **- On Ocean Fringes.

In another French Congregation, that of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, a most admirable service, re-

quiring great courage as well as great zeal, is being performed by numerous Irish Sisters on behalf_pF races until recently the victims of the slave trade. A branch of the community was established in Chapelizod, Co. Dublin,.in' 1862. Mother Felix Smith of Edgeworthstown, 'Co.. Longford, directs the Irish band of Sisters toiling in. Sierra Leone. The numerous establishments of the community in the Seychelles Islands are conducted by Irish Sisters. With the foundation of many of the Houses.there the name of the late Mother Emilienne Kearney, Westmeath, is associated. Mother Ursula McCormac of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary, superintends the Chandernagore Schools near Calcutta, while the work in the Fiji Islands is being piloted by Mother Margaret Maguire of Belfast and Sister Cecelia Haughton of Dublin.

The West Indian communities are in a flourishing condition. The Trinidad Schools exhibit a high standard of efficiency, particularly the Boarding School at Port of Spain. An aunt of T. M. Healy, the well known Irish King's Counsel, and former member of Mr. Parnell's Parliamentary Party, was a member of the Sisters of SW Joseph of Cluny,. and died at her post in the Island of St. Lucia, West Indies. \ Angels of Mercy. Thus are Irish women scattered over the world, spreading faith and knowledge of the true God, illuminating the minds of peoples sunk in intellectual as well as immoral darkness, and even nursing the fever stricken, the plague ridden and the leprous. Well might the poet in an ecstasy write of their Mission of Mercy in Life:

"Ye are the seed of the Saints, O ! my Sisters beloved, Beautiful, fair as a bride for her wedding arrayed. Would I could frame, as I yearn to, a hymn in your honor, . ',

Sisters of Mercy that stand beside Death undismayed."