ATTACKS ON PILGRIMS

Evening Star, Issue 21193, 29 August 1932, Page 1

ATTACKS ON PILGRIMS

EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS METHODIST DENUNCIATION The ‘ Irish Christian Advocate,’ the official organ of the Methodist Church in Ireland, contains a remarkable, tribute to the Eucharistic Congress recently held in Dublin and a scathing denunciation of the attacks on pilgrims in Northern Ireland which took place in congress week. It describes the final ceremony of the congress as “a flood tumultuous and clamant, like the sound of many, waters, that poured through the sluice, gates of Phoenix Park and stood silently j still before a Redeemer’s ‘ actual presence ’ uplifted at the high altar on the long green sward.” Never, it says, for any Protestant assemblage can there have been so many Protestant prayers offered up, as Protestant prayers most devout and passionate were offered up, for this congress. The Church of Rome had actually summoned together a million, people in one time and place in the cause of religion. In a grossly secularised and material age they had thought the consummation unattainable; hut she had been able to show the cause of religion as still the most compelling force in the world.

“We cannot resist,” it continues, “ the challenging inquiry as to whether Protestantism would be capable of producing a similar demonstration. Let us not shirk the question. We may, reply that our church sets small store by spectacularisms, that we • don’t believe in prelatical splendour, .that numerical tests are of no account in Christ’s kingdom, that Jesus gained nothing of the multitude. All true enough, perhaps, but quite beside tho mark. ■ “ Have we Protestants any faith that would put us down, in units ot in thousands on our knees in the common street? Can we imagine ourselves doing this, cither with or without our unhappy divisions ? What does our religion take out of us, a net can it even take us out of ourselves? Such questions smite and sift our souls, perhaps leave us without answer, and might well leave us with contrition. Let us thank the Church of Rome for the service she does in pressing home to us this searching inquiry.” A “ HATEFUL ” STORY. The journal then turns to what it describes as a “quite hateful story. There was, they deplored to confess, in undesirable quarters, a renegade_ Protestantism that, as it had no pride of ancestry, they might well wish would , have no hope of posterity. , This bast r • sort drew bell uiv.<u:.JJ,uivh : oorda‘ on • Saturday aiul,Suu<j«i ; ' , A»;«ght; L-T' - Hot from a Catholic but from a Unionist • Press did they learn# . that stones and broken bottles were tho implements of their religion. Torn clothes, smashed windows, and bleeding Catholic faces were the pledges of their Christianity. Of eleven;trams leaving Dublin for Belfast on Sunday, night only two returned undamaged. “ Every decent-minded man, ’not to mention Christian,” it adds, “ has since hung his head in shame. It is customary to extenuate such outbursts by citing instances of provocation. God being our Witness, there was not this time the paltriest shadow of excuse. Last week we traversed an intensely Protestant district of this city on our visitation, where any suggestion _of Catholic, offensiveriess or aggression would at once have been reported. “ In over fifty houses we heard not one hint of such. On the contrary, wo have it on the testimony of a railway official that more quiet, orderly or devout companies of travellers never left the station in Belfast on a southward journey. To this quiet religious pilgrimage the reaction was one of broken bottles. THE REPARATION DUE. • “It would be dishonest to palliato such ruffianly blackguardism by that other usual pretext—there is an underworld of crime in even the best communities, and this was only a temporary ,or sporadic outbreak. The thing was too general for that. “ A chain of towns linked themselves in the disgrace—Deny, Coleraine, Ballymena, Larne, Belfast, Lisburn, and Portadown, with many smaller places' joining in. Why had the railway line to bo guarded, an armoured car sent to Sandy Row, a doubling and multiplying of police forces at most of the railway rendezvous? Every fresh policeman was an added Protestant shame. If,. our religion were intense and public-spirited enough such blackguardism would fear to show its head at any hour. Of course, the Northern Government has come out strongly m denunciation. . • “It is no time for denunciation, but for a great act of Northern abasement and shame. We are not let us own it frankly—we arc not the men to put this tiling down. . . “That a century of Gospel-teaching and evangelising should leave us with this residue is a withering indictment of the reality of our religion. “It is not ours at all to denounce.; Denunciation sets us apart from tho wrong and flatters an ill-timed complacency with ourselves as against tho offenders. We are the offenders; let us make humble confession to God and ask the forgiveness of the first Romanist we meet for our sin against God and against him—our brother-man.