CONDEMNED PRIESTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18827, 3 April 1923, Page 7

CONDEMNED PRIESTS

SOVIET'B ATTITUDE

INTERFERENCE REStNTED

Press Association —By Telegraph —Copyright , LONDON, March 31.’ ’ The Daily Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent states that commutation of the death sentence was granted to Zepliak lest the Catholics should regard the penalties as directed against priests and religion generally, hut Budekvitch used his status as a priest to participate in counterrevolutionary plots. The Soviet newspapers, in justifying the sentences, resent foreign interference. They declare that tho Anglican Church, which formerly executed Roman Catholics, has no right to protest; while British Labour leaders who dine with the King cannot be seriously regarded.—A. and N.Z. Cable. CARDINAL BOURN ICS PROTEST. LONDON, April 2. (Received April 2, at 7.45 pirn.) Cardinal Bourne (Archbishop of Westminster), preaching in Westminster Cathedral, protested against the sentence of the Russian Archbishop. “The whole ,world,” he said, “haa shuddered at the news. lie was sentenced solely because he did his duty as a Christian. Ten years’ solitary confinement is more awful than death itself." —A. and N.Z. Gable. INTENSIVE PROPAGANDA. “OPIATE FQR THE PEOPLE” ATTEMPTS TO ATHEISK MASSES.' i ’ Simultaneously with its active persecution of tho Chr.stian Church, which has recently assumed unprecedented proportions in tno form of wholesale executions and imprisonment of church dignitaries and the general spoliation of property and valuables, folk, merly the property of religious ooinimmi-i ties, (he Soviet Government is conducting an intensive propaganda campaign ot atheism and anti-religious leaching. Copies of the two principal anti-religious publications issued under the auspices ot tho Soviet. Government and the Communist Party, Revolution and the Church unci the Atheist, have reached London, and protide interesting documentary evidence ot the methods applied by the Communists to persuade the masses that “religion is an opiate for the people.” Practically the whole of the first issue of the Atheist is devoted to a violent attack not on the official Russian Church, but on the various sens which in tho lust 60 years have established themselves m Russia partly under the influence of tho German Lutheran colonists and partly as tho result cl popularisation of Tolstoyan revolutionary religious teachings. The article in question, called “Autumn Flies” without any pretence at an historical study of the matter, confines itself chiefly to blasphemous abuse and to attempts to prove that tho Russian Baptist and Evangelist Chinches are merely organs in the pay of “American and British multimillionaires, such as Rockefeller and Lloyd Georgt.” The latter, continues, the article, in his attempts to arrive at a friendly agreement with Soviet Russia, is merely acting as a tool in the hands of the British Nonconformists and Quakers, who wish to convert the Russian masses to their faith. The furruti explanation is* given of the British Quaker organisations spending their money in feeding the starving masses of Russia. ( ' Tho latest issfie of the Atheist, in which, the true character of the whole enterprise is revealed, is given, up to the counteracting of anti-Semitic propaganda, which is assuming proportions causing not a little alarm to the Bolshevik-Jewish rulers of Russia. The second periodical organ of the Soviet oirtbrell'igious movement, Revolution and the Church, is edited in a slightly different void, and attempts to be more “scientific" in its methods, dealing especially with tho Mlcgcd “countor>-revollirionary” activities of the Russian Church and clergy. Both periodicals have a negligible circulation, and are boycotted both by the intelligentsia and the masses. Apparently the “new church reformation” movement, headed by the pro-Bol-shevik clergy is not a success. Tho Isvotia complains that, the proposed All-Russian Church Congress will be attended only by representatives of tbo “loyal” clergy in consequence of tho hostile attitude toward tho "new movement adopted by the lay population of Petrograd and Moscow, who are ly>yeotting the- “Living Church” movement.