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Show j Catholic Opinion. j "Down with Combes'." cried the indignant in-dignant Breton Catholics at the despot persecutor of their church when he I went into their province the other day j to unveil a memorial to an Infidel like himself. Ay, down him, but the right plate to do it is at the ballot box. ! Freeman's Journal. New York. The secretary of the navy has issued an ord-r that the "Star Spangled Banner" Ban-ner" shall be recognised as the national tune throughout the service, all ofli-cers. ofli-cers. and men being required to stand at attention whenever it is played. This is as it should be. and docs away with the absurdity of having "God Save the King" masquerading under the title' of "America" at public and semi-public functions. Filot, Boston. A good deal of fuss has been raised by the refusal of a confessor up north to give absolution to those who have taken Mie "printers' oath." If the printers were all theologians we should think that oath objectionable. Reing only printers they mean no offense to religion by it. The oath assumes that there could bo such a thing as a conflict con-flict of duty. Type-setters are seldom troubled with perplexed consciences. Some one has asked the question: "If our Lord were shown to have taught heiesy what action should be taken by the Christian body?" We refer the case to the aforesaid confessor. Western West-ern Watchman, St. Louis. - There is a fierce dispute going on over the French Concordat.. XV i know-that know-that it is against the generally accepted accept-ed opinion; but we are convinced that if the Fren- h clergy were once turned adrift by the state and made to shift for themselves they soon would be the bfst supported priests in the world. This opinion is based on our knowledge of the generosity of French Catholics. Whero the state undertakes to support a priest the people refuse to support him beyond paying their taxes. If the govrrnment.of the United States undertook under-took to pay every priest in these states $-00 a year, we priests would soon have to economize so as to live on it. Western West-ern Watchman. St. Louis. I May a church edifice be properly re-! re-! garded as a nuisance, like an oil refinery, refin-ery, a gas works, or anything of that j kind? asks the Lns Angeles Times. "This seems a strange inquiry, but it is j suggested by the fact that citizens liv-! liv-! ing in an aristocratic part of the south-' south-' west recently ' subscribed ?i.."00 to induce in-duce a Catholic church that was about to he built to 'move, on' into another neighborhood." A Catholic church edifice edi-fice certainly cannot.be regarded as a nuisance in the sense specified by the Times, but it may become something worse to the mind of social sybarites who dread to be aroused from the comfortable com-fortable stupor of spiritual forgetful-; forgetful-; ness. Monitor, San Francisco. We have at last found out where the ! deadheads go after leaving this world. According to the Rev. J. J. Reed, who preached in the Washington Square ; Methodist Episcopal church, "no dead-' dead-' heads go to heaven; they go the other way.". Wonder what will happen when they put up the sign. "Free list entirely sustended?" American Herald, New-York. New-York. f A fitting tribute has been paid 1o Judge Denis O'Brien of Watertown in his unanimous renomination by the ; Kf publican 'and Democratic parties to ; the high office rf judge of the court of ! appeals. Although the judge will be ! forced to retire from the bench in 1007 ! by the inexorable, though absurd, pro- vision that judges must relinquish the j ermine at the age of 70, whether they ' are physically or mentally incapaei-! incapaei-! tated. it is a matter of satisfaction that I the state will have the benefit of his i ripe judicial erudition for three years j more. Catholic Citizen, Rochester. ' Bishop Joyce of ths northwest Indi-1 Indi-1 ana conference wept while denouncing the commercial spirit evinced by clergy cler-gy men of his sect, in seeking appoint ments. Ther? is a growing tendency, he declared, among candidates for pastoral pas-toral incumbencies to select those which pay the largest salaries rather than places where thsy be of most god. Not one minister, the bishop added, came to him during the entire conference and asked to be sent where he could best serve the Lord. No wonder won-der the prelate is -grieve!. Unfortunately, Unfortu-nately, however, this spirit is not confined con-fined exclusively to ministers of Bishop Joyce's religious persuasion. Monitor, San Francisco. As a leader. Dr. Brown son was not always popular, even among his own co-religionists.' He received many kindnesses kind-nesses from th? clergy; and not a feu-humiliations. feu-humiliations. He was not always right, he was not always great. But, in the sum total, he was that type of layman (especially in his character as a publicist), pub-licist), that makes among the masses I for higher intelligence, greater power of initiative, more thoughtfulness and j I deeper sincerity: the kind of layman ; j that we should like to hold up to the Catholic public as a model. Catholic j Citizen, Mil waukee. |