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Show CARDINAL VAUGHN'S LETTER i I CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND WAS NOT PREJUDICED. Unjust to Identify the Church With the Injustice Whereby Dreyfus Was Condemned. Inasmuch as nearly all, if not all, the falsehoods which declared that the Catholic Church in France sided with the opponents of Captain Dreyfus during dur-ing his recent trial' at Rennes, were of English fabrication, tha following letter of Cardinal Yaughan's on the subject, which we take from the London Lon-don Times, to which the Cardinal s nt it. is timely and instructive: Sir The unprecedented tornado of feeling which in the name of justice has not unnaturally been sweeping I through the English press, like all hurricanes, hur-ricanes, is apt to be discriminating and to destroy much that should be left standing. It may perhaps be vain to speak in the midst of a storm: nevertheless, never-theless, I offer the following observations: observa-tions: First, it is unjust to identify the Catholic Chun h with the act of injustice injus-tice whereby Dreyfus was condemned at Rennes without clear evidence of guilt. The Catholic Church has had nothing to do with the various trials that have taken place; and I learn on reliable authority that all. or nearly all, the generals and persons concerned in the trials had not bef n pupils of the Jesuit or, Catholic colleges, as has been said, but of the state lycees, and that I was in error when I spoke even of Colonel Picquart as a Catholic. It has been, irom oeginiuiii; io enu, a nun.":: iii.n.ii. an affair of military interes-ts and of state treason in which the Church has had no place. The bishops, therefore, rightly made no attempt to interfere in a. matter that belonged to the secular secu-lar power. But is urged that they did not "control the opinions of the clergy and faithful, and are therefore deserving deserv-ing of censure. But for years the case was at least doubtful, and there was prima facie presumption, of guilt against Dreyfus. Men of undoubted candor and intelligence were found on either side, and nothing was certain until the full evidence was published. What would be said in England if. in a debatable matter of great interest, the bishops sought to impose silence or their own opinion upon a people priding themselves on their freedom of opinion? And where is the freedom of opinion; if a man is to be branded with ignominy unless he adopt the judgment prescribed for him by another? an-other? The French people are as free as we are to hold what opinion they think right or the most likely to be right. That on one side or the other there should have been violent and passionate feelings is only to say that-the that-the French are formed of the same clay as ourselves and are swayed by feeling as well as by reason. But when there was a danger of disturbance, as at Rennes, we see that the Church spoke through the Cardinal Archbishop, counseling calm and. moderation. Am attempt has bean made to drag In the Holy See. But the Holy See has taken no side, and I say of my own knowledge that the Holy See declined to intervene in a matter that fell so clearly within the competence of the state. If the Holy Father had advice to offer to the government, he has his accredfited representative in Paris and would have spoken through him, not through the press. One cannot help wondering sometimea how- it happens, if all this indignation be but the virtuous result of love of ( justice, that no public pretest has been praised in England against the unjust and penal . measures that have been passed in France against a multitude mul-titude qf men and wormem because they exercise their natural right to live together to-gether in association and to spend their own money on good works. The other point on which I would say a word is that the Catholic church condemns the persecution of the Jews, and of every other race. If Jews or Christians practice usury and extortion extor-tion or do any othea hurtful thin?, let laws be passed, not against Jews, but a.gainst the malpractices complained of; and let the laws strike Jew or Gentile Gen-tile with equal severity when guilty. And if in one country or another Jews are persecuted by Christians, this must no more be put down as a charge against the Catholic church than drunkenness, drunk-enness, rioting' or any of the crimes that disgrace Christian communities. The Catholic church may here or there fail in her mission sometimes by the human frailties from wdiich churchmen are not always exempt, sometimes by the fact that her free action is impeded. and that she has to work, as Archbishop Arch-bishop Whately said of himself, with one hand, and that the best, tied behind be-hind her. But I say fearlessly that the Popes and the Catholic church have been the defenders of the race of Israel, Is-rael, and that, whatever inter-racial antipathies may arise, the church will always seek to moderate and in the end subdue them. I do not wish one word I write to be taken as an approval of the Rennes verdict. ver-dict. On the contrary, I share the indignation in-dignation expressed against it because it was unjustified by the evidence; and it is -within 'the right of any man, in any country, to say that upon the evidence evi-dence before him a verdict is infamous. But, havinsr denounced the judgment pronounced by the five officers, it is simply monstrous that foreigners should at once rush in and, before the judgment has been considered by the supreme authority of the state, should denounce a whole nation as savages, outside the pale of civilization, and cover them with dishonor and abuse, childishly proposing to punish so odious a people by sending1 no English cottons or chemicals to their exhibition. It has been even proposed through the press as a righteous expression, of indignation indigna-tion to banish, not, indeed, all French subjects, but all French Catholics engaged en-gaged in works of mercy and charity ..rvno-at iic Karfl of hrroio. souls who spend themselves and their French money in nursing- and succoring our destitute classes, with a generosity and a self-sacrifice no words can express or ever repay. Could the folly of passion go to a stranger or more unseemly length? The Guardian newspaper pointed out very well last week that France is our next door neighbor in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe, and that riot only Christianity but self-interest demands the cultivation of friendly relations. But these will be rendered simply impossible impos-sible if we stin?r a highly sensitive people peo-ple in their honor and cover them unjustly un-justly with self-righteous scorn and abuse. It seems to me that, whether we regard re-gard the history and character of the' great nation which is our next door neighbor, the interests of the unfortunate unfortun-ate man whose cause we have espoused, the self-respect due to ourselves as a people, or the law and spirit of the Christian commonwealth, we are bound to a greater measure of self-restraint and discrimination than some of us have hitherto shown. |