'The Worst Worst'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 17, 26 April 1906, Page 18

' The Worst Worst '

The Rev. C. Doley (is this a printer's error for Daoley ?) is. a miission'ary en furlough. He is improving the shining hours of a stay in New Zealand by raising funds for the non-Catitro'lie missions in New Guinea and the Solomons. ' HeaUbenism and Roman Catholicism ' are (according/ to our enterprising visitor from afar) fthe chief afflictions of the Protestaint missions in those distant easte/rn islands. But their bitterest woe of all — ' the worst of all their worst worsts ' — seems to be the multntando of rival and crntradictory Christian creeds that compete in those islands ot reef and palm, and make the work of the Reformed evangelists ' intensely dillicult.' r lhe natural and radical remedy for such divisions is to mend and end them — to beccme one Fold, under one Shepherd. The remedy proposed by oiur reverend visitor 'from afar -is of quite a different kind. He does ne t suggest do.ng away with the divisions that are a laughing stock, to the infidel and a scandal to> the pagan. He would (in. ettect) merely conceal them from the simple-minded islanders by inducing missionaries of different stripes to agree to l conduct their work in separate parts of the lield.' We don't know how such a proposal strikes the average non. Catholic. The Catholic Church (whos-e mission is to preach to ' all nations ') could never acquiesce in such an arrangement. Does it not sound liae an eJJ c rt to score by constructive imposition in the missionr-field ? Is it not, in effect, a scheme to win Fuzzy-wuzzy to 'me truth as it is in Christ ' by concealment of a cclossal, if deplorable, fact of Reformed ecclesiasticism— in other words by a false pretence ? Is this how Christ would evangelise^ if He went to New Guinea ?