The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." MONDAY, JUNE 9, 1924. BOLSHEVIK PERSECUTION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19032, 9 June 1924, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." MONDAY, JUNE 9, 1924. BOLSHEVIK PERSECUTION

Archbishop Nicolai’s story of religious persecution in Russia, as recounted in last week’s cable news, gives further proof of the close alliance of blasphemy and Bolshevism and the consequent relentless oppression of the Orthodox Church of Russia by the Soviet atheists. Captain Francis MeCullagh, in his book, “The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity,” describee the execution of Mgr. Budiewicz, one of the Roman Catholic priests sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks last year: — “Mgr. Budkicwicz was conveyed to No. 11 Bolshoi Lubyanka on the night of Good Friday, and was immediately made to descend into one of the cellars. The method by which the murder was carried out was deliberately arranged with the object of making the martyr die in as undignified a manner as possible. He was stripped naked and made to traverse a dark corridor leading to another cellar, where an experienced executioneer was awaiting him. On reaching the end of this corridor Mgr. Budkiewicz found himself in a room which was suddenly lit up by a powerful electric light that made the unfortunate priest blink and stagger back awkwardly. Before he had recovered himself the executioner had shot him through the back of the head; and the bullet, coming out in the centre of the face, had rendered it unrecognisable.” This horrible story is only one out of many gruesome incidents mentioned in Captain McCullagh’s book. It is a matter of history that in the French Revolution the “Reds” tried to stamp out the Christian religion; in fact, they invented another religion to put in its place. They abolished the Christian Sabbath, desecrated the Christian temples, and set up a worship of the “goddess of reason,” who was represented by a well-known member of the demimonde. But they were not ashamed of what they were trying to do, nor did they attempt to deny it. The Bolsheviks seem more timid and more ashamed. They have denied that they are guilty of persecution. Yet, as Captain McCullagh and others have conclusively proved, these Russian

"Reds” are pursuing the same policy,’ and they are carrying it out even more effectually. Besides torturing and killing the Christian priests, they are filling the churches with priests of their own. The worship seems to go on all the same, but the pseudo-priests art: all actually athetists. With McCullagh’s record of the Bolsheviks’ anti-religious atrocities before him, a writer in the Age discusses the interesting question, “Why has Bolshevism attacked the Christian faith?” Why did the French “Reds” a eeptqry and a half ago do the same J When we dig down underneath the surface, is there a real, substantial antipathy between the revealed religion and 61iese revolutionary upheavals? Every kind of life in the world has been able to find or to develop a religion which suited it. Bolshevism could do that also, just as the French revolutionaries thought they could do it. But why this deep-seated opposition between these revolutionary movements and that particular religion which is accepted by the leading civilisations of mankind as unique, revealed, and supreme? Captain MeCullagh says that the attack came, not from the Russian people, but from the nest of Communists who have seized power in Russia. “The decent Russian people are to be sympathised with on their country being thus converted into a cesspool for all the crime and bitterness and obliquity of the human species.” It would appear as if these attacks were the outcome of the criminality of the criminal class, who, for some reason or another, had allied themselves with Communism, but the Melbourne student of the problem considers that we must look elsewhere for the ultimate source of the whole business. In Melbourne and in New York and in London there is, he says, the same hostility— not coming from a merely criminal class, but from a youthful, semi-educated class tainted with Communism as a kind of fad. What, he asks, is the cause of it all, what is the reason for it all? And the answer he suggests is that it is because this special religion—and this religion alone —opposes the natural self-will and the natural self-opinionativeness of men, and insists upon opposing them? This makes it specially repugnant to the youthful extremists, and to the criminal or lawless classes. No other religion —not even Buddhism—has so set its face for law and order, for the home and the civilised society and justice, and against mere anarchy or social tyranny or the worship of material things. No religion has been such a safeguard, such a civiliser, such a check to the ordinary man with his turbulent and rebellious nature as the Christian religion. The tyrant hates it, and so do the Socialist, the Communist, and the anarchist. If they are to prevail, Christianity must go. But they will not prevail. For the moment revolutionary individualism may be rampant in the world; but that the forces of evil are to be permitted to triumph is unthinkable. Captain McCullagh sounds the right note when he says that the Christian Church alone is strong enough to face and beat back the disease.