'Soup Christians'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 12, 22 March 1906, Page 2

'Soup Christians'

During the long agony of the famine years a little handful of tho starving Irish peasantry— mere' anatomies of death —

' Sowld their sowls For penny rowls, For soup and hairy bacon.'

But they ' came back to God ' when ' the hunger was over.' In Melbourne, the Rev. Mr. Edgar also alleges that, some years ago, during a period of depression 'and distress, he found his way to an occasional hungry little ' Romanist's ' soul through its stomach. ' Soup, 1 said he, c . is a grand preparation for an after Gospel service.' For many years the ' soupers ' have been at work in Re me. They have had enormous funds at their disposal. Various enticing temporal inducements have been offered to little Beppo and Nino and 'Gnesina and Marietta to barter their ancient faith for a pres-enb mesa of pottage. But in Rome, as in Ireland and Spain and every • Catholic country, the curse of barrenness has fallen upoa thq Lafaors of the ' souper,' and upon, eiveryi effort made to win big and little ' Papishes ' to any of the hundreds of shifting creeds that arose during and since the great religious revdution of the sixteenth century.

Churches have been built to fuithcr the propaganda of tho Reformed creeds in Rome. Some of these edifices have changed hands or been closed. And all of them recall 1 in a way what Sydney Smith said of the empty churches of the State creed of his day in Ireland. ' Though,' said he, ' I have the sincerest admiration of the Protestant faith, I have no admiration of Protestant hassocks on which there are no knees, nor of seats on which there is no superincumbent Protestant pressure, nor of whole acres of tcnantless Protestant pews, in which no human being of the five hundred sects of Christians is ever seen. I have no pass-ion for sacred emptiness or pious vacuity.' The ' sacred emptiness ' and the ' pious vacuity ' of the Reformed churches in Rome are never likely to be thronged by the bended knees and the ' superincumbent pressure ' of Protestants of ItaliJan race* land tongue. Some months ago, 'in reply to a ' missionary tale ' copied into a New Zealand paper, we gave the meagre dimensions of the Protes'tiant population of the Eternal City as disclosed by the census of 1901. Here are the figures for the latest census, as given \ (by the Rome correspondent of the Philadelphia ' Catholic Standard ' (February 10) :—

According to the census of 1905, the number of Protestants living in Rome was 5,993, or 1.1 per cent of the population. Thirty-four years ago, when the Protestant propaganda was commenced in earnest they numbered 1,200 But since that day the population of Home has increased by one hundred per cent —it has exactly doubled it/self. . . However, we do not believe, despite the census of 1905, that there is 1 1 per cent, of Protestants in Rome. Many of the 5 993 returned belonged to the 45,000 foreigners who happened to be then in Rome waiting to witness some of the bie functions in St. Peter's ; for Protestants are as vigorous and persevering; as Catholics in the rush for entrance! tickets to the Cathedral of Christendom on such occa sions. No strict idea can then be formed (of the strength of Protestants living in Rome Their " Church " is made up chiefly of Germans, Americans and English, who spend a couple of months in Re me' and then like birds of passage, fly from weather unsuitable to their tastes.'

The same writer estimates the number of ' soup ' converts at ' something about a couple of hundred.' This would indeed be a scanty harvest aften all those years of effort and expense among a population impoverished by abnormal taxation. Each ' convert 'ia (he adds) computed to have cost from £6000 to £8000 The Latins and the Western Celts have at least one blessed privilege left* 1 : and that is a capacity for smiling 'expansively at those new apostles whose first and best arguments for their peculiar brand of Christianity are -bTibes of ' penny rowls ' and ' coup and hairy

bacon '—and such-like temporal advantages. What Sydney Smith terms ' lucrative apostasy ' w*as not the plan of conversion, followed by Christ's Apostolate long ago.