Mr. Rhodes and the Catholic Church.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 10 July 1902, Page 2

Mr. Rhodes and the Catholic Church.

We have never been able to justify, still less to admire, the methods by which Cecil Rhodes became the greatest of the money kings of the modern world but we are bound to confess at the same time that his life and career have furnished convincing evidence of the keenness of his mental grasp and the general sureness and soundness of his practical judgments. Mr W. T. Stead in a much-quoted article in the Review of Reviews has made every one familiar with Mr Rhodes' high opinion of the Jesuits and with his great ambition to found a society composed of men of strong convictions and of great wealth, which would do for the federation of the English, speaking race what the Society of Jesus did for the Church immediately after the Reformation. His admiration for this great Order however and for the Catholic Church as a whole was still more fully and definitely expressed in dinner-table conversations with his friends one of whom, writing under the norn de plume of « Logic,' has given a detailed account, in the following letter to The Spectator, of Mr Rhodes' remarks on one of these interesting occasions. We may add that the publication of the letter in a paper having the standing of the Spectator is itself almost a guarantee of the truth and genuineness of the events which the letter records.

• I think,' writes the correspondent, ' the following brief account of a conversation which I had with him about three years ago may prove interesting at this moment to your readers. I was sitting next to Mr Rhodes at a large dinner, and our conversation turned on religious belief. Mr Rhodes expressed himself in strongly eulogistic terms of the Roman Catholic Church. He said : " I have a great admiration for the Roman Cathohc Church ; it is in my opinion the one logical religion in the world, and if I only had the time I should like to become a Jesuit myself. Do you know any Jesuits ? I have met many of them in Rhodesia, and have so great a respect and so keen an admiration for them as a body, that I take off my hat to them, each and all. It is not so much what they do, or what they say ; it is what they are that has impressed me so deeply." This expression of opinion, coming from such a source, naturally impressed me greatly, and the following day I repeated the above conversation to a Jesuit priest of my acquaintance, and have often quoted it since.