JAPAN AND THE VATICAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23335, 29 October 1937, Page 15

JAPAN AND THE VATICAN

TO THE EDITOB Sir,—The letter of "Catholic" under the heading " The Japanese Houseboy " is to be explained by the fact that there is now a Japanese Ambassador at the Vatican and a Papal Nuncio at Tokio. as the result of negotiations since 1931 after Japan's outrage of Manchukuo, for which the League of Nations denounced her. The following quotation from the Roman Catholic French Quarterly. Revue des Deux Mondes, of January 15, 1935, will enlighten your readers: —"Japan to-day respectr Christianity in general, but Catholicism particularly. It is just as favourable as Russia is unfavourable. No Japanese prince or mission now passes through Rome without paying homage to the Sovereign Pontiff. A short time after it had given birth to the new State of Manchukuo the Japanese Government advised its ward to turn to the Holy See with a request that it should be officially recognised—an event of some importance seeing that the Powers refused to recognise it ind Japan had left the League of Nations. These JapaneseManchukuoan overtures did not secure formal recognition, but as the Catholic missions in Manchukuo supported them the Vatican appointed a French Vicar Apostolic to negotiate with the Government of Manchukuo about religious affairs."

The Vatican recognises only the two extreme and opposing economic and political systems, Communism and Fascism, and seems to have allied itself with the latter. But both are equally hostile to that democracy which is fundamental in the English-speaking world. It is extremely dangerous for the Church to be allied with any economic or political system, as it must condone its tyrannies, and runs the risk of disaster if that system falls. But in its violent hostility to Bolshevism the Vatican ignores democracy.

To return more particularly to the lett- r of " Catholic," it is difficult to write calmly about his term " holy war." What kind of moral sense or understanding of the religion of Jesus Christ can call the Japanese outrages in China a " holy war" ? That may perhans be well enough for the fanaticism of Moslem Arabs, but is surely repugnant to the Christianity of the New Testament. But what have we fron the same source? First, the unspeakable cruelties of Fascism in Abyssinia, ther the heartrending atrocities of Tascism in Spain, of which we are reading daily, and now this rape of China by Japan—each a "holy war." Readers with intelligence and independence are not to be duped with propaganda from that source. I am sure that the great bulk of your readers with me rather thank you for your sober and truthful comments in your various editorials on Spain. Japan, and so on.

Let me say that 1 am as strongly antagonistic to Atheistic Communism as "Catholic" and his Balclutha confrere and the great mass of British freemen, but believe there is a better way of opposition than enslaving, bloody Fascism.—l am. etc., October 27 Christian Democrat.