Roman Catholic Estimates of Ability
By Editor
THE Roman Catholic press always measures the ability of a person by his attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church. For instance, the Catholic Mirror of June 2 has two editorial articles illustrating this very thing. One is on that prince and father of modern caricaturists, Thomas Nast. But because he used his talent in this direction so powerfully against Roman Catholicism, he is set down by the Mirror as "a back number." His work is characterized by the Mirror as "crude, coarse, and clumsy." But it told and still tells, as the Mirror proves. Another person against whom the Mirror cannot suppress its wrath is Mr. Harold Frederick, the London correspondent of the New York Times. The Mirror accuses him of making at divers times "an attack on the Vatican," and says: "These attacks, of course, are of about as much importance as the firing of a boy's pin darts at some majestic old castle." And yet the Mirror spends more than a column on Mr. Frederick, of whom it speaks as "a sort of third-rate novelist." Incidentally it mentions that "if the Times is really not prosperous, as gossip in New York newspaper circles declares, it is quite likely that its anti-Catholic policy may have something to do with that melancholy circumstance." Messrs. Nast and Frederick and the New York Times are to be honored for the enemies they have made. THE question of taxing church property is being agitated in New York State. The value of such property in the State is estimated by the Sun at $140,123,000. The Literary Digest thus sums up the arguments used on both sides:— "Those who favor the exemption of church property argue that the property is non-productive. Those who urge the taxation answer: A great deal of secular property is non-productive, while in many churches pews are rented at such prices that only the wealthy can secure them, making these churches, practically, clubrooms for the rich. The exemptionists say that the churches exert a great moral influence. The non-exemptionists declare that this is the weakest defense of church pauperism, and ask, What can be said of the moral influence of an organization which deliberately refuses to pay its just dues?" What business has the Church asking the State for support, anyway, even in a negative way? The argument is all on the side of taxation; tradition, custom, and prejudice on the other.