Costly Converts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 14 November 1907, Page 10

Costly Converts

An Italian contemporary (■.' Rome ') publishes some interesting figures from the- ' Eighty-eighth Annual Report of the Methodist Episcopal Church', for the year. 1906. Our, contemporary estimates that i since 1870 over two and a half irdllion dollars ' (i.e., over £500,000) ' have been lavished J by the Methjodists on the conversion of Italy. It must be confessed' that the results are scarcely in keeping: with such profuse expenditure.. The Almighty Dollar is, according- to .Addison a wonderful clearer of the understanding and a deft remover of doubts and scruples. " But it cannot do everything. And-one of the most signal failures on its record is its failure to convert any considerable number of Irish, or French, or Spanish, or Italian. Catholics? to any of the protean forms of worship which look for~their principles' to the great religious revolution of the ■ sixteenth century". ; • • "

- Towards the close of a lengthy article, our Italian contemporary ' summarises as follows/ and . coir orients, upon, the statistics that appear on pages 118-119 of the Report :— ~ - .

o. n,J nn ™ Italy and ltali an Switzerland there are about 34,000,000 of people, and the -Methodists among them including both "members and probationers," total exactly 3449. Rome, which is -well over the half million mark, contains 266 Methodist members and probationers. How many of the 3,449 and the '266 are Italians, and how many of them are Americans, English, Germans, etc., we do not pretend even to guess

but taking them all as Italians, we reach -some interesting results.- It will be found 'that the attainment of the present Methodist following in .Italy has cost about 7..000 francs (£280) a head ; that the half a million of francs (£20,000) -spent on Italian Methodism last year (1906)* has resulted in a net gain over "the ' numbers of the previous year of just 75 persons, which works out at 6,666 francs (£266)-per every additional Methodist ; that at the same rate of expenditure and the same rate of progress it will take 12,500,000;000 francs (£500,000,000)' and thirty-six thousand years to convert the Italian people" from the errors of Popery -to the_ light- of' Methodism. -Unfortunately, there are'several- flaws in the calculation, for we find that "in some respects Italian Methodism is going back. The last report,- for instance, announces that' there were 32 " native preachers " "on the field," whereas the previous one registered 55. We note also - that in the space of one brief year these 32, aided by the nine foreign mismionaries of Methodism, baptized as many as two adult and eighty-six infant Italian Methodists, while -in the previous year the baptisms of adults were no fewer than five, and of infants eighty-seven. " This means a diminution of six baptisms in the year — but it must be remembered that there were twenty-three fewer missionaries to do the work.' - ' '

.A few- years agp we showed, from actual- statistics,, that' the Methodist body in ItalyMs very largely made up *of foreigners. And may not mere natural increase among them account' for the ' net gain over the ' previous year of just 76 persons ' ? At any rate, at £266" a head, ' conversions ' might be considered reasonably easy, till we recall the hopeless barrenness that has ever marked the 'missions to "Irish Papists'. There are those among our readers who can recall- the simple heroism of the starving peasants who faced the slow agonies of death in the Great Famine of 1846-1851, rather than

' Sell their sowls For penny rowls, For soup and iiairy bacon', / offered to them, on condition of renouncing their faith, by organisations that are still known by the hated name of ' sou,pers '. A somewhat similar spirit seems to exist among the Catholic poor in the slums and alleys of the cities of Italy.