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Date: 1866-08-24
By: True Witness
Citation: “No title”, True Witness (24 August, 1866)
Other formats: TBA

The Protestant fanatics of Upper Canada feeling the utter abasement of their position, are trying to bolster up their conduct on the School Question with a persistency and elaborateness that betrays an inward knowledge of guilt.—Though nothing can repair the disgrace into which they have cast our Canadian institutions before the whole civilized world, it is still a cheering sign to find them acknowledging, if only in smothered whispers, their sin and their disgrace. Initium sapientiæ timor Domini—the upbraidings of a guilty conscience are the day-dawn of repentance.

Drowning men catch at straws. The quibbles and distinctions intermixed with occasional blurtings out of the truth, with which their apologists favor the world, would be amusing, if one could, for a moment, forget the melancholy fact, that Canada is fallen lower this day in the scale of intolerance and bigotry than ever was England, even in the days of “ye goode Queen Bess.”—

There is one distinction urged, erst by Mac-Gireren, and re-echoed by Brown and the Leader,—(Pilate and Herod shaking hands,)—which is particularly amusing, and which will go farther than anything else to prove the worthlessness of a cause which is propped up by so flimsy a reed. There is no parity, says McGiveren, between the two demands, because the prayer of the Lower Canadian Protestants is in unison with the acknowledged principles of the Catholic majority; whilst the prayer of the Catholic minority of Upper Canada is in direct opposition to the avowed principles of the Protestant majority.—

My-soul-bless-my-soul! we never expected Messrs. McGiveren, Brown, & Co. to become “Defenders of the Faith,” and opponents of staunch Orangeism and orthodox Protestantism. For, granting this worthy trio their admirable distinction, what does it amount to? Nothing more nor less than what everybody knew long ago, that the essential principles of Protestantism, as professed by the fanatics of Upper Canada, are bigotry and intolerance; whilst the essential principle of Catholicity, as practised all over the world, is to do to others as you would wish to be done by. Surely Messrs. McGiveren, Brown, and Gamp must be Jesuits in disguise who, under cover of pretended attacks against Catholicity, are only establishing its Divine origin. Or is their conduct only another example of “the devil outwitting himself,” and of “everything working for good in the Church of Christ.” More anon. Sacerdos.