The 'Soupers'

New Zealand Tablet, 15 July 1909, Page 1102

The 'Soupers '

Probably there has never been a more barren enterprise of 'conversion' than that of the 'Irish Church Missions.' Under its more familiar'titles' of 'soupers' and ' souperism ' it has long been a name of execration to Irish. Catholics, from Dublin to Galway Bay and from Tory Island to Cape Clear —ever since, in the dark agony of the famine years it bargained and higgled and trafficked with the starving and dying people to ' Sell their sowls For penny rowls, For soup and hairy bacon.' Incidentally, the barren ' Irish Church Missions' do one good thing—they provide easy and lucrative positions for a considerable number of officials. Well-meaning old ladies from beyond the Irish &ea provide the funds. And the aforesaid funds are commonly collected by methods borrowed from the Orange-Tory ' carrion crows.' The Liverpool Catholic Times of May 21 appeals to decent Irish Protestants to show their detestation of the methods adopted by the ' Irish Church Missions' to extract coins from the pockets of credulous Britons. 'In the Worthington Gazette of May 12,' says the Catholic Times, 'we read that a special deputation, consisting of the Revs. "W. H. Fishe, " of the Dublin Mission," and W. E. Williams, tho secretary of the society, attended the animal meetings of the local supporters of the organisation. The Rev. W. B. Ferris, vicar of Christchurch, presided at one of thesa meetings, and is reported to have said that the Irish Church Missions was a home missionary society, "for it workel amongst the heathen in Ireland who worshipped as did the heathen in foreign lands." And the Rev. W. H. Fishe, the Gazette states, " gave several instances of the heathenism of the people of Ireland." Vulgar attacks of that kind betray ignorance and 'insolence combined, but they do not hurt Catholics, for every enlightened person is aware that the Irish Catholic child who has learnt the Catechism knows more about the Christian truths than these ill-instructed Protestant clerics. But it is a disgrace to Irish Protestants that they should Jjolerate the antiIrish bitterness and unscrupulous vilification.'