The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1874-10-04

CONVERSION OF LORD RIpoN.

London Tablet. Sept. iai
Last week the "Grand Lodge" of
Freemasons in England received COM
''with disuay." Its purport was that the
Marquis of Ripop, who for the last three
years has held-so the Times informs us
the Office of their "Grand Master, - resigned
his post and their surprise was heighten-
ed to "dismay" by the circumstance that
he did SO without assigning any reason for
the step. In the Pail Mall Gdsette, how
ever, on Friday afternoon, the matter was
something cleared up by the announcement,
on the authority of q correspondent, that
Lord Ripon had become q Catholic and
the same fact was stated next day by tn Q
Times in a leading article, though without
reference to any source of Information.
ferring to it as an event of public notoriety,
and in contributing from our own knowl-
edge the intelligence that his lordship was
received into the Catholic Church, on
Monday last, at the Oratory. If we regard
! this distinguished accession to the ranks of
the Catholic Church with feelings of joy,
we do SO in no spirit of vain exultation,
but rather because, looked at in its merely
social and mundane aspect, it cannot fail to
mark some further diminutiOn of anti Ca
tholic prejudice, and consequent mitigation
of that painful social disadvantage at
which, in this country, most Catholics, es-
pecially converts, find themselves ReIi-
gious as well as civil liberty is, as we are
often told, the Inheritance of Britons. for
whom il has undoubtedly been Il reality,
save hitherto with one conspicuous excep
ton, which cannot be said to have ceased
to exist, while the noble, the statesman,
and the man of commanding intellect can
be- told, as Lord Ripon was told by the
Times on Saturday, that his adhesion to the
faith of his ancestors is by itself q proof of
his "having renowned his mental and
moral freedom ;" aud that "his mind must
necessarily have undergone fatal demon.
alization )" and that by his conversion he
'.forfeits at once the confidence of the Eng
lish people," and "abandons every claim
to political and even social influence 5" and
so forth. We have been treated on similar
occasions heretofore to much the same
style of remark, and we say in reply, that
80 long as such assertions as these can be
publicly made in any respectable quarter,
it ia even politically necessary that some
persons of exalted station should become
Catholics if only to save the rights of con-
science and religious liberty from becom.
ing antiquated phrases, devoid of any real
and practical significance to ourselves.
And the greater frequency of such striking
| examples of the exercise of those rights by
the great must tend more and more to rem
| der the same exercise easier to the weak,
the obscure and the humble, who have
also consciences to satisfy and souls to save.
THE PRESS ON LORD R1PoN.
| Elsewhere we have remarked on the
comments and attacks of the press which
has given rise to q fact its writers End irri-
tating, q prominence that Catholic ef.
forts could have conferred upon it. If, as
the Times would have us believe, Lord
Ripon's conversion be the result of clerical
or Jesuiticat intrigues, it is owing only to
the Times itself and it's colleagues that the
matter is this week the staple topic at din
ner tables and in drawing rooms, in the
servants hall, and the resorts of working
men. Catholics have no need to proclaim
what our opponents persist in calling a
success on our part !; the publicity ia done
! to our hand as to the So called success,
we know it to be 30 in no other sense than
J as any answer to united prayer may be
| called victory and in so far as a solu-
ton may be deemed to have been given in
| an unlocked for manner to those who late
| ly asked-scornfully or epquiringly-Of
what use is a pilgrimage7
CONCLUSION OF THE ENGLISH PILGRIMAGE.
Pontigny has been reached, and all the
programme of the English Pilgrimage has
been carried out to the letter and on the
conclusion of the ceremonies, tue pilgrims,
500 in number, having all partaken Of the
hospitality of the good Fathers of St. Ed
mund, marched in procession to ST. Flor
|
France /; the crowd of spectators respou.
ding, with the hearty good will, Vice
F4m9leterrc. Enough has been said about
| the matter by the daily press to make
the pilgrimage and it's object we'll known
to the general public. Even the life of ST.
Edmund himself has been brought iuto
prominence, and the country is now toter-
ably we'll acquainted with the character
and acts of a great Englishman, of whom
it ought to be proud, and about whom the
popular manuals say either nothing or
very little, and that little distorted by mis-,
representation. Thus the pilgrimage, if
it did no other good, has contributed some
thing towards popular education. But an
other point of even greater interest than the
biography of st. Edmund has been brought
ont. The Times Correspondent, writing
frem Paris, quoted Alban Buffers account
of the miraculous preservation at st. Ed
mund's body incOrruptible III the shrine
over the high altar in the Cistercian church
at POntigny. The writer added that he
would suspend his judgment as to the fact