

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 



615 



prompt, seemed likely to be more complete and 

 satisfactory, was that looking toward the unifac- 

 tion of the primary and secondary educational 

 system for England and Wales. Under the sys- 

 tem which had grown up in the past fifty years, 

 Catholics had been allowed to build their own or 

 voluntary schools, toward the support of which, as 

 regards secular education only, a special aid grant 

 had been annually made by Parliament, which 

 amounted to about five sevenths of the cost of the 

 secular education furnished. In addition to the 

 .subscriptions necessary to defray the extra two 

 sevenths of expense, rates for the support of board 

 schools in which nonconformist religious instruc- 

 tion was given were also levied upon Catholics. 

 The Government before the elections announced 

 its readiness (1) to unite all the schools under a 

 central board as regards inspection and control, 

 and (2) to provide a uniform system of secular edu- 

 cation and uniform taxation to support it as soon 

 as the different denominations concerned should 

 agree upon the exact form of the measure. At a 

 meeting of the English Catholic hierarchy resolu- 

 tions were adopted calling for support of the 

 schools out of the imperial exchequer on account 

 of the inequality of rates. Accordingly a bill was 

 introduced in October into Parliament providing, 

 as regards secondary schools, for some of the re- 

 forms demanded. 



Sunday, Oct. 7, was celebrated throughout Eng- 

 land the golden jubilee of the restoration of the 

 English hierarchy in 1850 by Pius IX, when Car- 

 dinal Wiseman was created Archbishop of West- 

 minster. 



For the first time for many years the Govern- 

 ment, in forming a new administration, omitted 

 to include a single Catholic, the Duke of Norfolk, 

 who resigned his post as Postmaster-General to go 

 to the war, being passed over in favor of his tem- 

 porary successor. The new Parliament, however, 

 had 4 Catholic members for England and 73 for 

 Ireland, an increase of 1 and 4 over their repre- 

 sentation in the Parliament preceding. 



The estimated Catholic population of the United 

 Kingdom was 5,500,000, and of the empire 10,- 

 500,000. 



Charles Russell, Lord Chief Justice of England 

 and its greatest Catholic layman since Thomas 

 More, died Aug. 10, aged sixty-seven. With the 

 exception of More, his was the highest judicial 

 post ever held by a Catholic, and had he lived he 

 would no doubt have succeeded More in the chan- 

 cellorship. 



Right Rev. John Vertue, D. D., Bishop of Ports- 

 mouth, died May 23, aged seventy-four. Other 

 great losses to the Catholics of England occurred 

 in the death of J. P. Crichton-Stuart, Marquis 

 of Bute, Oct. 9, and Rev. Richard F. Clarke, S. J., 

 Sept. 9. 



Scotland. The educational claims of Scotch 

 and Irish Catholics were presented on the last 

 Sunday in September in all the churches in Scot- 

 land by Archbishop Eyre of Glasgow, as forming 

 an important issue in the general election then 

 at hand. In Scotland all schools are denomina- 

 tional; but while the Presbyterian schools are 

 supported by the Government, the Catholic schools 

 receive no help from it. 



The archiepiscopal see of St. Andrew's and Edin- 

 burgh was made vacant by the death of Most 

 Rev. Angus McDonald, April 28, aged fifty-six. 

 To succeed him, Right Rev. James A. Smith, 

 Bishop of Dunkeld, was appointed Sept. 15. An- 

 other appointment of interest to the antiquarian 

 was that of Rev. Francis McManus to the charge 

 of a church erected during the year at Bannock- 

 burn, less than a mile from the battlefield. 



Ireland. The university question still held the 

 center of the Irish stage, and as far as anything 

 in the way of success greater than wide discussion 

 was concerned seemed likely to continue to do so 

 for a number of years. Speeches on the question 

 were made without number, meetings by the score 

 were held, and uncounted resolutions passed. 

 These, as far as they went, were valuable as show- 

 ing the temper of the people and the amount of 

 sympathy enlisted in the cause. Chief among 

 them was the pastoral of the Irish bishops, in 

 synod assembled, in which the whole question was 

 carefully gone over, and the argument ably pre- 

 sented. That the demand for a Catholic university 

 for Ireland, Catholic in the sense in which Trinity 

 College is Protestant, was entirely reasonable and 

 just, was admitted by all or nearly all those who 

 opposed it in the House of Commons when on 

 March 23 the matter was brought to a vote. The 

 university side was ably presented by Mr. Balfour 

 and by the Irish members. There was no bill be- 

 fore the house, and the matter arose on a resolution 

 that the Speaker leave the chair on the civil service 

 estimates. Mr. Balfour urged Mr. Healy not to 

 ask for a division, since the resolution presented 

 a strict party question, division upon which fur- 

 nished no criterion of the amount of sympathy 

 the merits of the question commanded. Mr. Healy 

 insisted, however, and the division disclosed 177 

 against the measure to 91 in support of it. 



The Second Plenary Synod of Maynooth was 

 held from Aug. 28 to Sept. 11. The first synod 

 was held twenty years ago. Numerous ecclesias- 

 tical questions were discussed, and the pastoral 

 already mentioned issued, in which the history of 

 the Church in the island for the past twenty-five 

 years was considered. The pastoral, besides its 

 advocacy of the Irish national university, went 

 into the question of intermediate education, and 

 the system of national education was strongly 

 condemned as antichristian. The agriculture act, 

 providing for technical instruction in farming, was 

 commended, though considered hardly radical 

 enough to stop the drain of Irish emigration. The 

 whole system of land laws, " in which rents are 

 periodically made a matter of litigation before a 

 tribunal in which neither side has confidence," 

 was denounced, and in its place the bishops hoped 

 to see as the solution of the Irish question a system 

 of peasant proprietorship by which the great plains 

 then almost worthless might be reclaimed, and the 

 peasant himself restored to industry on his own 

 land. The pastoral further condemned obscene 

 literature, horse racing on Sundays, and secret 

 political societies. The pastoral was published 

 both in English and Irish. 



Two questions of intermediate education, the 

 first that of state support of denominational 

 schools and the second the compulsory teaching 

 of the Irish language in certain districts, were 

 presented to the House of Commons by the Irish 

 members. As to the first, complete support of 

 Catholic schools by the state seemed as far off as 

 ever when the debate ended. The plan for teach- 

 ing Irish in the schools of the district where it 

 was still the common language, while not formally 

 adopted, was turned over to the Commissioners of 

 National Education with permission to allow such 

 teaching in exceptional cases. 



The relief of Mafeking was celebrated by Orange- 

 men in Belfast by breaking in the door of the 

 Mater Hospital, and doing damage to Catholic 

 churches and schools which cost the city corpora- 

 tion 3,000 to repair. The capture of Pretoria 

 was similarly celebrated. 



France. The persecution of the religious con- 

 gregations which took up so much of the time of 





