The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 1910. METHODIST MISSIONS IN ROME

New Zealand Tablet, 14 April 1910, Page 581

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 1910. METHODIST MISSIONS IN ROME

y * CLOUDING to the cables, the disagreement last W//lmkk W f ek , b , etweea the Pope and Mr. Roosevelt Y /&%VV which deprived the latter of the honor of an TgyUU interview with the Holy Father was inseparr—ably connected with the recent action of Mr. Charles V . Fairbanks, former Vice-President of the United States, in making arrangements for an . audience with the Pope and at the W > same time accepting an invitation to deliver a lecture before the Methodist Mission in Rome and the Holy Father’s objection to this proceeding was an objection, not to the fact of the Methodist Mission, but to the grossly offensive-and objectionable methods which it employs. The Methodist organisation entered < Rome through the breach made on September 20, 1870, with Garibaldi s Red Shirts. It has a handsome conventicle and hail in the Via Venti Settembre, and both conventicle and hall are, as a tribute to Garibaldi, consecrated- to and named after Venti Settembre. The lapse of forty years has made no change in the spirit of the Methodist organisation, which remains to this day a hot-bed of anti-Papal bitterness. Not only does it maintain an unceasing campaign of calumnious detraction against the Holy See, but those acquainted with the facts know also that under its auspices an extensive system of ‘ souperism — i.e., making converts by bribery—is carried on. The Methodist Mission in Rome does not exist for the purpose of ministering to the spiritual wants of the Methodists resident there. real victims of its propaganda* are the poor and destitute of the great city, who are offered material benefits of the most substantial kind in return for their denial and abandonment of the Catholic faith. * A general idea of the nature of the methods employed may be gathered from the testimony of Archbishop Ireland who speaks from personal first-hand knowledge of the subject. Interviewed by the secular papers at Chicago regarding the Fairbanks incident, the Archbishop said; ‘I am sincerely sorry for Mr. Fairbanks. I know the conditions in Rome and know of the work of the Methodist Association there, and for that reason the action by the Church authorities in the case of the former Vice-President is no surprise to me. The pernicious methods employed by the Methodist Association in proselytising are at the bottom of the affair. I was in Rome last winter, and I made while there, a particular study of the Methodist propaganda. I spent several weeks in the investigation, and I understand its methods. The purpose of the work is confessed openly. The means employed are by no means honorable, It takes every advantage of the poverty of the poor. The books circulated and displayed in the windows of its book stores are slanders against the Catholic faith and the Pontiff of Rome and misrepresentations of the whole Catholic system, . . The success the Methodist Association has met with‘is far from adequate to the energy and the money it has expended. It does not make permanent Methodists of the Italians, but only poor Catholics or infidels.; It may detach Catholic pupils from the Church and this means, for Italians, from all religion.’ This American Methodist Association,’ adds the Archbishop ‘ differs radically from the other Protestant churches in Rome. It should not be identified either with the other

churches in that city, nor with , the Methodist Church in this country. One need, only . glance , at the . title of the books displayed in the window of its book store to realise that its propaganda is such, as honorable Methodists in America would never stoop to. It should be understood that the refusal of the Pope to receive Mr. Fairbanks was not connected in any way with the fact that he is a Methodist. It was - because his address before the Methodist Association could be construed by the Roman populace only as an endorsement of that organisation and its methods, and as a confirmation of its claims and charges by a former Vice-President-of the United States.’ /" * Archbishop Ireland’s statements as to the more than questionable nature of the methods employed by the Methodist organisation in Rome find confirmation in the published statements of some . of the missionaries themselves. The Rev. Everett S. Stackpole, for example, a New England Methodist minister, who was at one time a missionary in Italy,' gives us, in his Four and One-Half Years in the Italian Missions, a fairly clear insight into the working of this curious propaganda. For the quotations which follow we are indebted to the critique of Mr. Stackpole’s book, which appears in our contemporary, the Sacred Heart Hevieio for February 12. The general spirit animating the mission is illustrated by the reflections of the missionary on his first glimpse of St. Peter’s and the Vatican. ‘Here at last,’ he says, 1 is the citadel of the hostile forces. Here is the centre of that huge system of error and superstition that we have come so far to spend our life in opposing,’ etc. After several years on the Italian mission Mr. Stackpole, gives, with scarcely concealed shame, his missionary experience. Here is his account of the way a Methodist Sunday school is formed: — ‘To attract the children a prize as offered every Sunday; it might be a pair of slices, or stockings, a cap, a handkerchief, some fruit or confectionery. As a prize for every scholar would be rather too expensive, a species of lottery was instituted, and the fortunate, or unfortunate, one got the prize. A year later the practice was discontinued, and immediately the children began to inquire, Are we not to have our prizes?” “Perhaps at Christmas time, but not every Sunday,” was the reply. “Then we won’t come to Sunday school,” they said, and the following Sunday not one of the forty children appeared. There has been no Sunday school in this Methodist church from that day to this.’ ■ * ■' The annual salaries and grants paid by thesauthorities in America are in jiroportion to church membership, and Mr. Stackpole bluntly declares that the reports of converts and church members are doctored accordingly. He says; ‘ We once asked one of the preachers why he did not cut down -the statistical report for the minutes to actual facts, and'he replied, That would not please the presiding elder.” Every preacher in the Italian mission knows that all the authorities on both sides of the ocean want to see every year in the reports an increase of membership, probationers, conversions, etc., and they are accommodating enough to make the desired increase.’ To such lengths has this dishonesty gone in Italy that the preachers are known, according to Mr. Stackpole, to have borrowed members from neighboring missions so as to be able to make a good showing when the superintendent should visit their mission. As a final warning Mr. Stackpole says: -‘ Our churches are growing, our missionary operations extending, our benefactions swelling, and we congratulate ourselves upon our progress; but, we have only to continue making the same kind of progress long enough, and our destruction is sure.’ As an explanation, apparently, of this somewhat cryptic utterance, Mr. Stackpole adds the following significant sentences: —‘lt is, of course, quite improper to state in public print all the facts that the authorities need to know. They would be disgraceful to all concerned.’ * Such—on the showing of its friends — is the Methodist mission in Italy. In view of the facts, it is easy to understand the Holy Father’s unwillingness to take any step that would have even the appearance of seeming to sanction the utterly dishonorable methods employed. A public address by a former President or Vice-President of the United States before the Methodist Association could have no other moaning in the eyes of the Roman public than American approval of the methods and propaganda of the association; and the subsequent reception of the lecturer, by the Holy Father would assuredly be taken, in many quarters, as indicating that the Pope himself did not disapprove of the proselytisers’ practices. As Sovereign Pontiff of the Catholic Church and guardian of the spiritual interests of the flock under his charge, the Holy Father could not allow his position to be thus misunderstood. Judging by Mr. Roosevelt’s cable to America, that gentleman is taking the Pope’s action in a thoroughly generous and manly spirit;

and it is. evident that the harmonious relations that have hitherto subsisted between the Church and the. great Republic in the building up of which Catholics . have played so large and honorable a part—are not likely to be in the least disturbed by the incident.