CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES IN THE FAR EAST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 50, 13 December 1900, Page 24

CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES IN THE FAR EAST.

A SLANDER REFUTED. BY KEY. C. COGNET, B.M. Undkk the title ' The Catholics in Japan,' the Bud'jet (weekly edition of the Taranaki Herald) published in a recent issue a mischievous article which roused the indignation of many Catholic subscribers. Quotiag three unknown authorities (Edw. Runge, Dr. McArthur, and Dr. W. Elliott Griffiths), the prejudiced author ventured to assert that the present Chinese difficulty was mostly due to the 'aggressiveness' of the Catholic missionaries, whose 'arrogant and overbearing behaviour to the natives ' called for a general uprising against European interference. As usual in such blundering attacks, the Spanish Inquisition is dragged by head or heels, and aspersions are cast on St. Francis Xavier's marvellous work in Japan. What the Jiudgrt'* correspondent means* with these vague and uncandid accusations we can only guess : because, on some occasions, a bishop or a missionary, backed by the foreign Legations, wan happy enough to rescue some unfortunate Christian individual, likply innocent, from the clutchea of a bigoted mandarin bent on persecution, Kdw. Runge and Dr. McArthur call this merciful and judicious action a 'meddlesome intrusion into Chinese internal affairs.' But, of course, if the same individual had been delivered by the medium of a British consul or of a Protestant divine like Dr. McArthur. then the English PresH would celebrate the name of the influential benefactor of mankind who stood for justice, innocence, or mercy. But since there is trouble in China, somebody must be to blame. Now the Catholic missionaries have dared to convert, baptise, and educate some 600,000 Chinese, with very slender resources, while their non-Catholic rivals— divided into some scores of separate and antagonistic organisations — have been spending millions of money in securing the more or less nominal adherence of some 50,000 or 60,000 natives, some of them, as Protestant natives testify, being merely of the ' rice-Christian ' clasß. The Catholic missionaries must therefore be blamed for the crisis. They are made as the scapegoat of the Jews of old — the victim of universal propitiation. The pagan Romans of old cried out : ' Down with the Christians ! The Christians to the lions ! ' whenever crops failed, the hail battered the vines, the thunder addled the eggs, earthquakes loosened the bricks in their houses. And such in effect is the logic of the

ory against the Catholic missionaries which come from the mouths of a little handful of unsuccessful missionary rivals in the Far East. When next people ask who fills the butchers' shops in Hongkong with large blue flies ? the answer will obviously be : Those plaguy Catholic missionaries, of course. Before I dismiss as perfectly unfounded the accusation of arrogance flung at our self-sacrificing missionaries, I bpg to remark that if St. Francis Xavier, St. Louis Bertrand, St. Peter Claver, the intrepid FF. Vogues, Brebenf. Marquette, De Smet, and a hobt of others — even the heroic Father Damien, of Molokai, and his numerous imitators — are counted amongst the ' arrogant ' missionaries who meddled with politics, we sincerely wish that our slanderers would show, in China and elsewhere, more of that ' arrogance ' aud aggrchoiveJucea ' which improve, both spiritually and materially, the condition of their neophytes. This is not a bare statement of mine, grounded ou nothing , 1 merely quote it a? it stands in the official report made and published by Dr. Isaac Taylor, Protestant Canon of York, in the Fortnightly lieview for October, 1888. Having expatiated on the practical usefulness of Protestant missionary work in India, the learned Protestant divine introduced a few statistics :—: — ' Mr. Squires (local secretary of the Church Missionary Society in the Bombay presidency) states that with his 97 assistants he has baptised last year 36 adults and '.»2 children, at a cost of £9441 7s Id, and the converts made by his Society, after (56 years of labor, do not amount to 2000, while the devoted Komnn priests are converting, educating, and consoling thousands upon thousands, at a nominal cost' (p. 493). And again : ' In spite of the prodigal expenditure of the Protestant societies, three-fourths of the native Christians of India are descendants of the converts of the early Jesuits. In the districts •where Xavier labored, 90 per cent, ot the native Christians are Roman Catholics. In Travancore alone there are half a million of them, twice as many as the Church of England societies can claim in the whole of Africa and Asia' (p. 11)7). These figures stand for one province of India only, Travancore. Elsewhere, the comparison would mm out in the same proportion. In China, for instance, the Catholic mift-ionaries have reaped a harvest of 600,000 6ouls. divided into 40 distinct dioceses. In Japan we count five dioceses and a total of 70,000 Catholic converts during the present generation. Everyone ought to remember that shortly after St. Francis Xavier's death, the Catholic Church was flourishing in Japan, Taikosama and his worthy successors endeavored to destroy it in a deluge of blood. However, they did not succeed, and when, some 30 years ago. other Xaviers came to revive 1 the ' sacred fire.' hidden by an Almighty Providence, that they had no trouble in fanning it again, the figures above quoted prove to satisfaction. Listen to Dr. Isaac Taylor once more ; he says (p. 498 of his report) : ' Sir W. Hunter tells us that the natives regard the Protestant missionary as a charitable Englishman, who keeps an excellent cheap school, speaks the language well, preaches a European fo:in of their old incantations and triads, and drives out his wife and his

little ones in a pony-carriage. The pony-carriage is obviously fatal to the missionaries' influence. If St. Paul before starting on one of his mipsionary journeys had required St. James and a committee at Jerusalem to guarantee him £300 a year, paid quarterly, and had provided himself with a shady bungalow, a ponkah, a ponycarriage, and a wife, he would not have changed the history of the world' (p. 498). This testimony, coming as it does from an eminent Protestant should perhaps suffice ; but as the Budget quoted three authorities we feel inclined to add a third witness, who is to be General Gordon himgelf, the purest and the noblest of all Puritans. His deposition is also borrowed from the same report as referred to above : it reads thus (p. 499-500) :— 1 f;r i pr il Gordon, n 7fißlon« Pnritfn Protestant if ever there was one. found none but the Roman Catholics who came up to the ideal of thr absolute Fclf-ievotion of the apostolic missionaries. In China he found the Protestant missionaries with comfortable salaries of £300 a year preferring to stay on the coast, while the Roman priests left Europe never to return, to live in the interior with the natives as the natives lived, without wife or child, or salary, or comforts, or society. Hence these priests Bucoeed as they deserve to succeed while the professional Protestant missionary fails. True missionary work is necessarily heroic work, and heroic work can only be done by heroes. Men not cast in the heroio mould are only encumbrances.' If Edward Runge, Dr. McArthar, and Dr. Elliott Griffiths are not satisfied with the authorities arrayed against their unsupported and unfounded assertions ; if Dr. Isaac Taylor, fir W. Hunter, and General Gordon are not competent to judge and decide about 'arrogance,' 'aggressiveness,' ' overbearing behaviour,' and true selfdevotion, Christian charity, and apostolic heroism, then our discussion must come to an end. For the benefit of our bona fide opponents, I wish now to elucidate the question of the rights and privileges granted lately to the Catholic Bishops and missionaries in China, and the obtainment of which has provoked so much ire and jealousy. It is but throwing dust into the readers' eyes to suppose that these privileges have caused any friction in China between the two powers, civil and religious, and so paved the way for a general uprising. On the contrary, it was precisely with a view to establish a greater harmony between the two elements and make their mutual intercourse quite smooth and easy that Kwang-Su, the Chinese Emperor, on March l.">, 1899, issued a decree giving the Catholic dignitaries a legal standing in China, placing bishops, vicar-generala, and priests on the same legal footing as viceroys, judges, and prefects respectively. The ceremonial to be observed when these authorities exchange visits of business or of mere courtesy is minutely described ; order is given to despatch at once any transaction proposed by the visiting party ; and the decree ends with the expression of a hope that ' the people and the Christians may live in peace.' Is it likely that if at the time public opinion was unfavorable to the Catholics such a decree would have been issued ? And,

if matters have been altered eince, must we not look for other factors than a wounded religious feeling ? This supposition is at least plausible. It is quite true to say that this favorable enactment was obtained through the ' unique and extraordinary popularity ' which surrounds Right Rev. Dr. Favier, the Catholic Bishop of Pekin, whether in Court or in the crowd. Moreover, I freely admit that M. Pichon, the French ambassador, did I help much towards the success of these negotiations. But I ask our uncharitable oppom-ntH whether they would growl so loudly against these 'rights and privileges,' had they been obtained, as in our case, by more persuasion, through the mHinm of Dr. McArthur. with the help of Sir Claude McDonald, the British ambassador? Most evidently not only they would not refu«e pn<*h favors for fear of provoking a revolt, but they would be praising to the ekies the happy instrument? of such a peaceful and flattering triumph. What is England now doing in South Africa ? Simply trying to obtain, pn- fas ft 7u-/as, civil rights for the oppressed Uitlanders ; where persuasion has failed, sheer force and might are now used to crush a handful of determined Boers. What would the same Britishers s»y if M. Pichon, following in the steps of Sir Alfred Milner, had declared war on the Chinese to uphold in China the foreigners' rights, and conquer by bloodshed what he managed to secure by mere diplomacy. This is my final remark. It is an egregious mistake to suppose that the Boxers, the Triads, the Great-Knives, the Black Flags and the White Nenuphars date their origin from the issue of the decree referred to. Every good student of Chinese affairs knows that all these secret societies are more political than religious. Some of them aim openly at the [overthrow of the present Tartar dynasty and seize every possible opportunity which is likely to further their ends. Others, like the Boxers, represent in China the opposition to European interference. For years and years Dr. Favier and M. Pichon have been the only Europeans living in China who seemed to grasp the incoming danger and who warned the Powers to be 4on the alert.' Tung-f u-siang and Prince Tuan, who are inspiring and leading the Boxers, aim at nothing else but the eradication of everything foreign in China. Before long we may hear of their attempts to usurp the Chinese throne, aud then woe to every foreigner without any distinction ! As long as the Catholic or Protestant missionaries were left alone, there have been no general uprisings, but only some local or provincial persecutions, soon checked by the wisdom and tact of our consuls. But when John Chinaman has seen his ports besieged by our threatening fleets, his name proscribed, his lands cut up by railways, and his very body attacked by the leopard, the bear an<l a host of other hungry animals ready to direct hi* anatomy and to divide it between themselves, he has resolved liot to surrender it without a struggle. Would you expect him to wrap his hetul in his ancestors' flag and to wait quietly for the final blow which is to sever it .' To any unbiassed mind the 'real origin of the Chinese troubles lies in the ambition and covetous. f«» of the Puw.r*, who, for the j.ake of their mercantile interests, strive to convert China into a ■vast market-field. Whatever the liudyrt may state to the contrary may perhaps prejudice a few empty-headed people against the Catholic Church and its zealous missionaries. But if this hitherto ebteernable and esteemed paper cannot afford grounding its opinion on better authorities than the Kunges, the M' Arthurs and the Elliutt Griffiths, its future must be pitied. Where giaats like Celnus, Julian the Apostate, Voltaire and Rousseau have signally failed, pigmies like those nain-id above cannot hope to succeed. The Churca of Christ can well smile at their bold impudence, and wade her way, through many struggles, to other victories, bearing in mind, b.h a sufficient consolation, these prophetic words of her divine Master and Spcniße : 'Blessed are ye, when they shall revile you and pi-r-^cute you, and speak all that is evil against you, "untruly, for my sake' (Matth. v. ii).