« Previous page | Start of chapter | Book contents | Next page »
CHAPTER I....continued
Perhaps the hardest and most trying duty which a Catholic clergyman has to discharge is connected with what are so well known to laity and clergy as `sick calls,' requests made by the relatives or friends of the sick or dying for the attendance of a priest. From this duty the Catholic priest never shrinks. It matters not what the distance, the hour, or the danger, though the sick or dying person was a hundred miles away, though it was midnight, and there was not a star visible in the heavens--though the place to be visited reeked with the deadliest pestilence, the priest should at once obey the solemn summons. The priest who shrinks from this imperative duty is unfit for his mission; happily, an instance of neglect or cowardice is rarely heard of in the Catholic Church. But there are circumstances in which the conscientious discharge of this duty is attended with an amount of individual hardship that can scarcely be appreciated by those who inhabit a country at once thoroughly cultivated and thickly populated.
Father Geary, a Halifax priest--originally from Waterford, and now about four years dead--frequently attended 'sick calls' at a distance of a hundred miles from the city, along the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, and did so without the assistance of horse or vehicle of any kind. He had literally to walk the hundred miles, and this he has done as often as four times in the year. As the tidings of distress reached the city, generally by boat, the zealous missionary at once girded his loins and prepared to set out on his long and arduous journey, frequently in the depth of a Nova Scotian winter, when the snow lay two feet thick on the ground, the thermometer was many degrees below zero, and a cutting blast blew right in his teeth. There was not in his mind a thought of shrinking, a second's doubt as to the necessity of then setting out: a human soul was in peril, and the priest's duty was to reach the sick person's bedside as speedily as possible; and this he did. Twenty miles before breakfast was 'a trifle' to Father Greary.
Within the last ten years a Nova Scotian priest has discharged the duties of a district extending considerably over one hundred miles in length; and while I was in Halifax the Archbishop appointed a clergyman to the charge of a mission which would necessitate his making journeys of more than that many miles in extent. And when a missionary priest, in 1842, the Archbishop would make a three months' tour from Halifax to Dartmouth, a distance--going and returning--of 450 miles; and would frequently diverge ten and even twenty miles from the main line into the bush on either side, thus doing duty for a population of 10,000 Catholics, who had no spiritual resource save in him, and a decrepid fellow-labourer on the brink of the grave.
It is not three years since a young Irish priest, then in the first year of his mission, received what, to him, was literally a death summons. He was lying ill in bed when the 'sick call' reached his house, the pastor of the district being absent. The poor young man did not hesitate a moment; no matter what the consequence to himself, the dying Catholic should not be without the consolations of religion. To the dismay of those who knew of his intention, and who remonstrated in vain against what to them appeared to be an act of insanity, he started on his journey, a distance of thirty-six miles, which he accomplished on foot, in the midst of incessant rain. It is not possible to tell how often he paused involuntarily on that terrible march, or how he reeled and staggered as he approached its termination; but this much is well ascertained--that scarcely had he reached the sick man's bed, and performed the functions of his ministry, when he was conscious of his own approaching dissolution; and there being no brother priest to minister to him in his last hour, he administered the viaticum to himself, and died on the floor of what was then, indeed, a chamber of death. Here was a glorious ending of a life only well begun.
Bermuda is included within the spiritual jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Halifax, and to this fact is owing one of the most extraordinary instances of a 'sick call' on record. A Catholic lady in Bermuda was dying of a lingering disease, and knowing that further delay might be attended with consequences which she regarded as worse than death, she availed herself of the opportunity of a vessel then about to sail for Halifax to send for a clergyman of that city. The day the message was delivered to the clergyman a vessel was to sail from Halifax to Bermuda, and he went on board at once, arrived in due course at the latter place, found the dying lady still alive, administered to her the rites of the Church, and returned as soon as possible to his duties in Halifax; having, in obedience to this remarkable 'sick call,' accomplished a journey of 1,600 miles.
It is the opinion of many candid and unbiassed men in Ireland, that the existence of a State Church, and that the church of the small minority of the population, is injurious to the country in many respects, especially in preventing that social fusion and Christian harmony which are among the happy results of complete religious equality. No one who has been in Nova Scotia but must, if not utterly blinded by prejudice, be convinced that the non-existence of a State Church and a dominant religion is attended with the most beneficial consequences to that colony. There is no cause, no legalised cause, of hostility and ill blood, no provocation to anger--no grievance.
The Catholic feels himself to be on an equality with the Protestant, towards whom he does not and cannot entertain a sentiment of hostility; and the Protestant is pleased to know that his Catholic fellow-citizen regards him with a kindly and fraternal feeling. 'We have no occasion to grumble; we are able to meet together and go hand in hand in all matters; and, in fact, we are the happiest people in the world,' said a Catholic Irishman, whose memories of his own country were full of bitterness, but who enjoyed the contrast the more keenly. 'I hold the opinion,' said a Protestant gentleman, the descendant of an Irish father from the south of Munster, 'that if the followers of a church will not sustain it, it is not worthy of being sustained, and the sooner it falls the better.' Few perhaps of this Protestant gentleman's relatives in the old country would endorse his opinion; but he could estimate the advantage to the social harmony of his country of not having in the heart of the body politic a perpetual source of mutual exasperation and bitterness. From persons of all creeds and classes I received the most gratifying testimony as to the good feeling existing between the different churches, and the happy result of the prevalence of this Christian sentiment. 'The Archbishop has done much to promote this feeling,' was frequently remarked by Protestants and Catholics, officials and townspeople. True, the Archbishop has done much to break down the barriers which sect will create under the most favourable circumstances; but had there been in Nova Scotia a State Church, and a dominant party, sworn to maintain it at any cost or hazard, not all the wisdom, tact, and kindliness of so eminent and influential an ecclesiastic as the Archbishop of Halifax could successfully counteract the hostility these would be sure to engender.
It would be foreign to the truth to assert that Catholics in Nova Scotia have not their difficulties to contend with. They have difficulties and troubles, but they are in a position in which they can endure if they cannot overcome them. For instance, unscrupulous politicians will occasionally raise an anti-Catholic cry, that for the time inflames the passions of the unreflecting, and disturbs the good understanding which, as a rule, pervades the colony. But it not unrarely occurs, that the same politician--generally a man who troubles himself but little about religion in any form whatever--who thought it his interest to excite ill feeling against Catholics, discovers that it is more to his advantage to stand well with that body; and instances are told of the same unscrupulous party-leader one day calumniating, and the next making overtures to, those who can at all times materially influence the result of an election, or even the fate of an administration. Nor is this utter dishonesty and shameless want of principle confined to a few unscrupulous individuals in one British Colony; it is much to be regretted that the species--whose chief characteristic is, that they are ready to sacrifice everything, save and except what they think to be their personal interest, for a good 'cry'--are to be found plentifully scattered throughout America. Even the most bankrupt politician finds `No Popery!' a useful cry--for the time; for the good sense of the community wearies of the folly, or the politician has probably invented something which has the merit of novelty, and he allows Catholics to exist in peace.
« Previous page | Start of chapter | Book contents | Next page »