The record-union., 1894-12-04
THE CASE OF FATHER DUCEY
AGAIN.

AGAIN.
The California Catholic, a very digni-
fed and able paper, published in
the interest of the Roman Catholic
Church, in an article printed in another
column, takes the secular press of the
country to task for criticising Archbishop
Corrigan in the Father Ducey matter.
The argument Of the journal named is,
that priest having taken a voluntary
obligation to obey his clerical superiors,
must do so uncomplainingly or get out
OF his robes, and that his act and that of
his superior in the issue of obedience or
disobedience. is not one with which any
body outside of the Church has anything
to do.
Generally this is true; it is true that
every religious organization must have
some authoritative head invested with
power to discipline those who, having
assumed obligations under the organiza-
tion, put them to one side and still claim
the right to remain within the society,
and avail of it's benefits.
But the case of Father Ducey assumes
public importance and has secular inter-
est, not because he is a Catholic priest in
revolt. as the California Catholic assumes
or hints. but because his superior, in
applying discipline, took occasion to de-
nounce public legislative inquiry into
official corruption as shameful" and
the sessions of the legislative committee
as unworthy attendance by even lay
men, who, 'if honest would blush to go
to such an assemblage''; or in words to
such effect the Catholic Archbishop, over
the shoulders of subordinate, scourged
the committee and the friends of reform
and the cause they were promoting,
namely, decency, and the exposure and
punishment OF crime ana gross mall
administration OF the affairs of the chief
municipality of the nation.
We do not propose to be so uncharitable
as to intimate that the Archbishop ex-
pressed his sympathy in this roundabout
way for crime, peculation in Office and
official corruption because the offenders
were Catholics, seven out of ten. But we
do say that that very fact ought to have
been reason for the Archbishop
70 have sent priests and agents to
hear the proceedings of the committee
and observe the witnesses on the stand as
they testified. With entire appropri-
ateness he and pastors and guides of
all other religious denominations
having Pensioners or members of their
church under public fire for conduct,
while assuming to be followers and OBJ
servers of the laws of God, that would
tend to scandalize the profession of re-
ligIon, might we'll have appeared at the
sessions of the committee, and as Ameri-
can citizens have proffered their assist
ance to the legislative authority in its
endeayor to uncover corruption. Thus
the ecclesiastics might have borne further
testimony to the claim that the church is
factor In all moral advances and the
~0A1SNeAOh Va al SN14S mon.
1t is not because Ducey is a Catholic or
priest, or that Corrigan is an Arch
bishop of a church aud the ecclesiastical
superior of Ducey, that the secular press
has taken up the subject as one proper to
be debated in the open. If Archbishop
Corrigan has right to denounce the po-
lice investigation in New York as shame
ful, similarly laymen and sinners may
with equal right and appropriateness ex-
press their sympathy for Ducey when his
churchly master lays the lash over his
shoulders for favoring and aiding the
cleansing of the great metropolis.
The press is not attempting to make
hero out Ducey for apparently revolt
ing" nor is it treating Archbishop Corri-
gan as IAN autocrat, destroyer OF the
liberty and rights OF IAN American citizen";
but it holds that it is of Importance
and of public concern when the act of
churchly rebuke amounts to an obstruc-
ton to the course of justice by an ill-con-
cealed expression of contempt for the
machinery that is set in operation to
punish offenders against the law.