CORRESPONDENCE

Grey River Argus, 2 May 1932, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE

RUSSIA AND RELIGION (To the Editor.) Sir, —Each week contributions to I the Argus on Russia of a laudatory character have shown one side of the p’eture. There is another. As 1 those inter-sted in Russia will be no less interested in this side than in the one they have so far contemplated, I shall with your permission, refer to it. The testimony of “eye-witnesses,” distinguished and otherwise, who talk about “religious freedom’’ in modern Russia, is shattered by official news issued from the Vatican City recently. 1 am going to quote the figures that were quoted by Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., vice-president of Georgetown Uni-versity,-at the annual meeting in Minneapolis of the American Catholic Historical Association. Fr. Walsh, who was formerly president of th • Near East Welfare Association, received the figures by te’egraph from the Vatican City. He declared:—“Before 1917, wli-n the Bolsheviks came into power, there were mor e than .13,000.000 Cathol cs in th e Russian Empire. To-day the number is between 1.500 000 and 2 000,000. Six hundred and fourteen Catholic churches were in use. To-day only 182 remain open. Of the 581 chapels, not a single one remains open. Three Catholic Bishops I and 200 priests are in Bolshevik prisons. The present generation of Soviet youth, taken at large, [must be considered not merely as lost Ito religion, but gained n substantial numbers to militant Atheism. The widespread Bolshevisation the young is one of the most significant facts

emerging from the Revolution. It 'is Moscow’s most practical and most enduring achevement. In the case of the relatively small percentage of Catholic children (the total Catholic population to-day i s somewhere between 1,500,000 and 2,000.000 out of Russia’s 160,000,000) the spiritual debacle is less notable. Resistance has been firmer and support more active from the Universal Church outside

nuss a. i\o institution save the .papacy could have organised that worldwide act of supplication on March 19. 1930, which so enheartened Christian Russia in chains. Other elements concur. The ancestral Faith has become more precious precisely because of persecution which drives men always nearer God. More tangible results, j however, are discernable in another |fi Id where the. Bolsheviks count on I the truth of the ancient warning:— (Strike the shepherd and the flock will ibe dispersed. A brief comparison between the status of the Church before 1917 and subsequent to the November

Revolution will illustrate the direction of Bolshevik strategy. Persecution is ino new experience for the Catholic I Church in Russia. Considered as an [alien sect by the Orthodox Tsars, its history records a long series of oppressive enactments, autocratic suppressions of dioceses and reHgous establishments, frequent imprisonment and exile both of clergy and laity, even (violent periods during which martyrdom was not infrequent. But despite all the human obstacles thrown in its jway by a bureaucracy which had inherited the historic resentments of [Byzantium, the Faith held fast. In point of fact, during the two short years of Second Spring following the granting of religious toleration in the Constitution of 1905, the inherent vit-

ality of the Catholic principle manifested itself in the astonishing phenomenon of 500,000 converts from Orthodoxy. ’ ’ Continuing, Fr. Wa’sh says: —“Before 1917 there were considerably more than 13 000,000 Roman Catholics in the Russian Empire, served by 4.600 priests. In that specific territory, which may for convenience be called Muscovite Russia, exclusive of the Kingdom of Poland, there was on? arch-diocese and six : uffragan sees. Moghileff, the seat of the Metropoli an. xereised jurisdiction over the largest ecclesiastical province in the world. embracing three-fourths of European and the whole of Asiatic Russia—s,4so,4oo square miles. Withn the territorial limits now controlled by the Soviet power, there were., in 1917 the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, 614 Catholic churches in operation; today 182 remain. In addition, there wer e 581 chapels; to-day not on© remains. There were 810 priests; to-day 110 are at liberty while 200 languish in Bolshevik pr sons. The remainder have perished from privation and starvation or have been exiled or executed. In 1917 there were seven seminaries; to-day not one remains. There were eight Bishops; to-day. of j the new Hierarchy since created, • two iar • at liberty and three in prison at forced labour. These sombre actual ties are some- ' •times obscured by tourists returning from Moscow and reporting that they visited churches and found religious services being conducted as usual. Bu; it must bo remembered that Moscow, Leningrad and the larger cities 1 to which visitors commonly confine I the’r visits are but a small fraction of the vast territory under State control. And even in these centres of

population, the visitor however openminded. could only have visited the churches that still exist or are open. What of the thousands that have been closed or are destroyed? And why , were they closed? Let him not for - h get that the Orthodox or Catholic priests whom he may have seen at the ! altar are those who are still alive andi

: at liberty. Did the visitor have an j opportunity to inspect Solovetsky Ts- ■- land, or the cells of the G.P.U. or the ' prison camps where so many are confined under conditions of slavery? And what guarantee is given that the ministers of religion whom he then saw are at Fberty now? .They are disappearing daily. And the iay members of all churches who remain loyal to their faith do so at the peril of their lives, their liberty and their happiness.” Describing the a>ms of the Soviets in their war upon religion, Father Walsh said: “There is being waged in Eastern Europe at this moment an ancient conflict in which the protagonists are not men but principles. The arena, as befits titanic [adversaries, is that one-seventh of the [earth’s surface which stretches from the Arctic Circle to the Hindu Kush Mountains and from the Polish frontier to the Sea of Japan. The stake is twofold. First, the soul of a great nation whose exhausted body has been bludgeoned into passive submission bv ten years of terrorism. Bur ultimately th e prize is the soul, the body and the spiritual allegiance of the entire human race. He who visualises the Russian scene solely within the frame of the Five Year Plan and limits his enquiry to its political, economic and social accidents has but scratched the surface of the Communist mind. He has not seen the woods because of the

trees, has not pierced the first of the seven veils of propaganda that obscure the bas e issue between two clashing civilisations. The objectives of the Communist State are not confined to domestic prosperity and security, nor limited national fnontjiers. . . The Bolshevik victory of November 7. 192 7, was not mer.ly revolution in the accepted sense as h’storically understood —that is, a re-allocation of sovereignty but revolution in the domain of economics, religioiq art, literature, science, education and all other human activities. It sought to create a new arch-type of humanity, a ‘collective man’ and a new culture adapted to the mpersonal ‘mass man.’ who should displace for ever the ‘soul-encumbered individual man.’ It was meant, and so proclaimed, by its protagonists, to be a challenge to the modern State as con. stituted not merely in imperial Russia but through the entire civilised world. It i s philosophic materialism in arms, the most radical school of thought that ha:' yet come on the stage of human affairs. War, implacable war, with no mercy shown, direction, action, terrorism. complete annihi'ation of the bour. geois opponents —such is the all-Tnclu-sive strategy of th s impatient Hotspur of the Nations.” According to the Berlin correspondent of “The Times ” the German Evangelical Church alleges inhuman ipersecution of its religious communi. ties settled in the Volga Basin. It declares that 300 pa.stors have been imprisoned and sent to labour camps. One pastor named Erbes d’ed of spotted typhus, which his starved system could not resist. Another, imprisoned by the Ogpu. was forced to stand upright in a cell for seven days. When he collapsed, exhausted, he was beaten and forced to stand again. hoped to extort a confession concerning alleged anti-Soviet activities. This pastor wa s condemned to hard labour in the S berian forests, where he was obliged to fell trees in conditions of unutterable cold and filth. Often he lacked bread. The Church ap'peals for fhe immediate rescue of those persecuted.—l am etc., * • READER.