ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. (IRELAND CANADA A 



STRALIA- F 



583 



erable body of St. Edmund, king and martyr, and 

 sent it, in the custody of Mgr. Merry del Val, to 

 the new cathedral at Westminster. Until its 

 shrine should be prepared, the relic was entrusted 

 to the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England. 

 St. Edmund was King of East Anglia, 855-870; 

 taken prisoner by the Danes, and beheaded. He 

 was buried in the abbey church of Bury St. Ed- 

 mund's. Here his body remained until 1217, 

 when, after the defeat of a part of the confeder- 

 ate army at Lincoln by the earl marshal, Louis 

 (afterward Louis VIII of France), who led the 

 French forces, purloined the sacred relic, and car- 

 ried it out of the country. Two or three years 

 later the prince carried the body with him to the 

 south of France on his expedition to quell the 

 Albigenses, and deposited it in the Basilica of St. 

 Sernin at Toulouse. 



Bishop Brindle, D. S. O., the famous army chap- 

 plain, was appointed in November to the see of 

 Nottingham. 



In consequence of the erection of a cathedral 

 at Westminster on a larger scale, the Holy See 

 increased the number of its canons from 11 to 18, 

 and assigned to them the same canonical dress as 

 that used at St. Peter's at Rome. 



Ireland. As a sort of afterthought to the out- 

 cry made in all parts of the empire against the 

 accession declaration, the Irish members in the 

 House of Commons turned their attention to the 

 removal of another relic of anti-Catholic legisla- 

 tion the Catholic disabilities acts, of the reign 

 of William III and George III. In so far as they 

 affected the laity and secular clergy, these acts 

 had long been repealed, but certain of the regular 

 clergy, the Jesuits by name, and several other 

 orders by description, were still treated as outside 

 the protection of the law. In Ireland none of 

 these communities could hold or receive realty, 

 and while no attempt had been made in a genera- 

 tion to enforce the law as regards property pur- 

 chased, that bequeathed to a religious community, 

 a church, or a regular clerk was often diverted 

 from its legatee by a zealous or intolerant rela- 

 tive of the donor. The judgment of the master of 

 the rolls in the case of Doolan vs. Cahill, which 

 came before him in April, gave point to the con- 

 tention of the Irish members for the repeal of 

 the penal statutes. In this case the testator be- 

 queathed 500 to a Capuchin church, and the 

 master had no option but to set aside the bequest 

 as illegal, the whole course of decisions having 

 established the principle that the order had no 

 legal existence. In a later case (Roche vs. Mc- 

 Dermott, decided in May), the master of the 

 rolls gave the same pronouncement " with reluc- 

 tance that amounted to positive disgust." The 

 bill introduced by the Irish members was cleverly 

 side-tracked by Mr. Balfour, although no member 

 of the House of Commons could be found to op- 

 pose it. 



Better progress was made, however, in the quar- 

 ter-century-old agitation for an Irish Catholic 

 university. Early in March Earl Cadogan, Lord 

 Lieutenant of Ireland, received a deputation from 

 the Royal University, and, in compliance with 

 their unanimous request, presented the question 

 so strongly to the Government that in April a 

 royal commission was appointed to inquire into 

 and report on the whole field of Irish university 

 education. The commission began its sittings in 

 September, and the Bishop of Limerick, its first 

 witness, snowed that the population of Ireland 

 was 74.3 per cent. Catholic, 13 per cent. Episco- 

 palian, and 10 per cent. Presbyterian. The com- 

 mission made a searching inquiry into the entire 

 question, and at the end of the year was ready 



hoilld fol- 



h ien<ls of 

 . -'i at i lied 



'<nt- 



i t 



to rise and report. \\h;it |. L < 

 low its report was uiim i 

 an Irish Catholic univer.-r, 

 at the results of the yen i 



Canada. The Delpit marri;iH ( . 

 decided in March in the Super!'. j < 

 real, overturned what had been the i 

 of a century or more in the provii; 

 The decision was, that a marriage < 

 lies solemnized before a Protestant mini-!, i 

 valid. Under the French law of the provinec, 

 it was impossible for a religious officer to marry 

 persons both of whom professed a different re- 

 ligion from his own. The question, therefore, in 

 the Delpit case was of the construction of the 

 Canadian statute, which made all religions equal. 

 The case was appealed to the Privy Council. 



Australia. In October Mgr. Kelly, rector of 

 the Irish College at Rome, was appointed coad- 

 jutor to Cardinal Moran, Archbishop of Sydney, 

 with the right of succession. 



Bishop Crane, of Sandhurst, Victoria, died 

 Oct. 26. 



New Zealand. The foundation-stone of the 



freat new Cathedral of Christchurch was laid 

 eb. 11 with appropriate ceremonies. 



France. The attack upon religious orders in 

 France, which had been made at the beginning of 

 the Waldeck-Rousseau Government and contin- 

 ued unabated in every subsequent session of the 

 Chamber of Deputies, culminated June 22, 1901, 

 in the passage of the associations bill, which had 

 been introduced into the Chamber the year before. 

 The measure was one of confiscation and secular- 

 ization confiscation of the property of the regu- 

 lar congregations by making it impossible for 

 them to hold it, and secularization of the religious 

 orders by forbidding them to stay in France un- 

 less they should give up their distinctive religious 

 privileges as orders and become subject to the 

 jurisdiction of the French bishops, who are the 

 paid servants of the state. 



The measure as finally passed provided substan- 

 tially that no order could exist or hold property 

 in France unless within six months from the 

 passage of the act it should apply for authoriza- 

 tion. Should it apply, it might be successful or 

 not in getting its certificate, as the Deputies should 

 be in a lenient or stringent mood at the time of 

 the application. If it were successful, it must 

 submit its finances to Government inspection and 

 keep a list of its members, with their public and 

 private history, for the information of the pre- 

 fect. Further clauses provided that no congrega- 

 tion should be authorized which should not be 

 subject to the jurisdiction of the ordinary, who 

 must himself accept the obligation thus imposed 

 on him. And by Article XIV all congregations or 

 members thereof were forbidden to direct educa- 

 tional establishments, or to teach therein. 



Besides destroying the Jesuit and Assumption- 

 ist schools, the bill had a deeper object. It aimed 

 to destroy in the orders which should remain in 

 France the centralization of authority which was 

 of the essence of their being. To do this the 

 orders were made subject to the bishops, and to 

 complete the assurance of autonomy in each es- 

 tablishment, each house of each of the orders was 

 directed to apply for authorization as though it 

 were a separate congregation. As to the second 

 demand, it is entirely at variance with the actuat- 

 ing principle of the regular clergy, uniformity 

 of discipline, centralization of authority, and 

 obedience to a single superior. The first, so long 

 as the bishop should assume no more control 

 than that commonly possessed by the ordinary 

 over regular clergy in his diocese, the Pope re- 



