"LAND OF REVOLUTIONS."

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 113, 16 May 1927, Page 10

"LAND OF REVOLUTIONS."

THE POSITION IN MEXICO.

DISORDERS NOT DUE TO CHURCH. SERMOX BY BISHOP LISTON. Further reference to the position of «the"Catholic Church in Mexico was made by Bishop Liston during a sermon delivered at St. Benedicts at 11 o'clock Mass yesterday. "The causes of. the ignorance and the illiteracy ot the bulk of the people of Mexico to-day are the almost con* tinuous political disturbances during the last 120 years, and Radical, and latterly Bolshevist, rulers," the Co-adjutor Bishop said.

Dr. Liston stated that the missionary work of his church for three centuries, when it held a spiritual monopoly, was wise, zealous and elevating. The church found a race of 5,000,000 savages and cannibals, whose then religion demanded the slaying of human victims. It preserved the race, and, in two centuries, made them Christians, civilised, gentle,, courteous, refined, hospitable, honest, able to read and write. The boys were educated to many trades, and the girls trained in domestic tasks. Schools, with all tuition free, were, by orders of the bishops, always built alongside the churches, Colleges for free secondary education were set up quickly and grew rapidly. Within thirty years the first university was opened, with its library of 10,000 volumes and its medical school. This was 204 years before the great University of Harvard was commenced in the United States. Twenty more universities followed in Mexico, every one with free tuition. These produced scholars of note in the American world, writers, especially of linguistic books, orators, painters, sculptors and architects, the latter erecting buildings which for beaujy of outline and delicate tracery are still the delight of the cultured.

"In a word," said Bishop Liston, "the Catholic Church during this early period gave Mexico a foundation of educational institutions (primary, secondary and University) almost equal to those in Europe in that day, and certainly superior to those then existing anywhere in what is now the United States. The Mexicans of the eighteenth century (all educated by the Church and educated free), prided themselves on being able to stand beside European servants who were the glory of the Universities of the Old World."

The Bishop went on to say that the first printing press on the whole American Continent, was set up by the first Archbishop of Mexico, and it soon produced not only religious books, but also vocabularies, grammars and treatsies on law and medicine. The first printed

music in 1561, whilst the Mexican pupils of the Church produced the first newspaper In the New World, a dozen years ahead of anything of the kind in North America.

"And Mexico does not forget," said Dr. Listen, who continued, "In a land of revolutions for the past 120 years, not once has there been a popular rising against the Church. For all time, history will speak in her praise. ,.

'"Let us hear no more that the Church kept the Mexicans in ignorance," said the speaker in conclusion. If to-day over eighty pre cent of the people are illiterate and many have relapsed into savagery, it should be remembered, said Dr. Liston, that the educational work of the Church was swept away by revolutionaries, seventy years ago. It has been in chains ever since. Its schools, where not used as State schools, are either in ruins.or are used as prisons, barracks, asylums and tenement houses. For this sad sstate let thos« answer who took the cross and the book out of Indian hands, to replace them with a torch and a gun; who Lave hacked anc hewed at the. religious and educational work of the Church, and who have been in supreme power in Mexico since 1836.