BOLSHEVIST WAR AGAINST RELIGION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19032, 9 June 1924, Page 2

BOLSHEVIST WAR AGAINST RELIGION

Captain Francis McCullagh, the author of “The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity,” is a most remarkable man who has contrived to live in this modern drab world a life of adventure varied enough to make an Elizebethan green with envy. He has for years been a famous newspaper correspondent and his one idea has always been somehow or other to get to places that everyone else on earth would sedulously avoid and to find out facts hidden from the rest of the world.

During the Russo-Japanese War he spent part of the time with the Russians and part of the time with the Japanese, which naturally led to some trouble and to his imprisonment in Japan. A year or so later he was expelled by the Moors from Agadir. He was with the Turks during the Balkan War, and was taken prisoner by the Bulgars. He was with the Italians during the fighting in Tripoli and found much to admire in the conduct of his old friends, the Turks. At the beginning of the Great War he was with the Russian army that was attacked by Von Hindenburg; afterwards he received a commission in the British Army and was employed on hazardous intelligence work in Macedonia- He was with Kolchak and was captured by the Bolshevists, and since his release he has stayed in Russia as a special correspondent of the New York Herald.

Like the rest of us, Captain McCullagh has limitations and his prejudices. He is an Irishman and a Roman Catholic and he has a natural and proper horror of the blatant blasphemies of the Bolshevists. But no one who knows him can doubt his absolute sincerity. In his book 4 ‘The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity,’ ’ as in all that he writes, he relates the truth as he sees it, the truth discovered often in the face of the most imminent peril. Captain McCullagh asserts that the Bolshevists attack on religion is a vital part of the Lenin revolutionary theory. “We have finished with the earthly Czars,” said a Moscow weekly about a vear ago, “now we shall deal with the heavenly Czars.” This is the official policy. Captain McCullagh quotes “a prominent and impartial authority,” who told him:— The Soviet Government has from the outset pursued a definite anti-clerical policy and has never lost an opportunity of folding relipion up to ridicule. The latest legislation on the subject of religion is particularly illuminating as showing its attitude in this connection. Clause 121 of the New Criminal Code runs as follows: “The teaching of religious beliefs in State or private educational establishments and schools to children of tender age and to minors is punishable by forced labour for a

period not exceeding one year. All newspaper readers know something of the struggle between the Soviet Government and the Patriarch Tikhon. The Patriarch was imprisoned, but mainly owing to the protests of the British Government was never brought to. trial. But Captain McCullagh reminds us that 28 Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church and 1215 of its priests are said to have been put to death. When it was discovered that persecution was not of itself sufficient to destroy the Orthodox Church the Soviet leaders determined on the policy of permeation. The services, of a number of priests or “advanced” opinion were enlisted and the ‘‘Living Church,” sometimes called the “Red” Church, came into being. Captain McCullagh says of this new Church that it is “directed” by time-servers without any religious convictions themselves.” But in this connection I remember that Mr F. A. McKenzie, who also knows his recently wrote appreciatively of some of the “Red” bishops. Whatever their character may be these are the facts. There is now in Russia a Church obedient to the country’s atheist rulers. Tikhon himself was persuaded to sign a declaration in which he said, “I have completely adopted the Soviet platform,” though the Soviet platform prohibits the imparting of religious instruction to children save by their parents, forbids the preaching of uncensored sermons, and forbids the training of ecclesiastical students. It is difficult, indeed, to regard the “Red” Church as anything more than a burlesque Church intended to kill and not to encourage the development of religion. And Captain McCullagh tells that it is by no means unlikely that it will attract the majority of Orthodox priests, men of no great intelligence or education, who can hardly be expected to make heroic sacrifices. As it is, he says (other witnesses contradict rather than confirm him) that religion is already dying in Russia.

Ten years ago there were probably a million candles lighted every morning in wayside shrines, and before wonder working ikons throughout the great empire of Russia, from the Baltic to the Pacific, but there are not a hundred candles lighted now, and most of the shrines and churches are showing signs of neglect and decay. If the Russian peasantry to whom religion was an important part of everyday life arc successfully robbed of their faith, revolution will have at its hand possibly an irresistible instrument for destruction of European civilisation.

How venomous is the Bolshevist hatred of Christianity was shown during the proceedings at the trial of A.rchbishop Ciclplak and 15 Roman Catholic priests, most of them Poles, in Moscow last year. These proceedings are reported at length for the first time in Captain McCullagh’s book. As one reads them one is reminded of the coarse brutality of the French Revolutionary Tribunal as it was described with many exaggerations by Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities.” In the course of his speech the Public Prosecutor said, “Your religion . . . I spit on it, as I do on all religions—on Orthodox, Jewish, Mohammedan, and the rest. The presiding Judge bullied the prisoners and smoked cigarettes. The Archbishop and his comrades were condemned before they were tried.

The Archbishop himself and Mgr. Budkicwiez were sentenced to death. The other priests were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The Archbishop’s sentence was commuted, but he is said to-be dying in prison. Another of the prisoners, a very old man, has been stricken with paralysis, and another has gone mad. Mgr. Budkiewicz was executed with dreadful brutality. Captain McCullagh, who has a genius for discovering such, scenes, says:—

Mgr. Budkiewicz 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 executioner 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. Two years ago Lenin was obliged to compromise over Communism. His successors may be obliged to compromise over atheism, but it would be idle to deny that such a book as Captain McCullagh’s fills one with considerable apprehension.