Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 41, 19 October 1922, Page 47

Catholic World

THE CHURCH OP TURKEY. The attempts of the Moslem Turks to set up a National Orthodox Church of Turkey are greatly derided in Bulgaria, where the Christian inhabitants have had many centuries of experience of the Turks in their treatment of Christians (says Catholic News Service , London), But the Turks have started in with Anatolia, where they are engaged in making the Greek Orthodox Church into the National Orthodox Church of Turkey, This is to be known as the Turkish Orthodox Church, and it will have a kind of Patriarch of its own, a sort of revival to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In furtherance of this plan a so-called congress of Christian Greeks has been jobbed up in the ancient city of Caesarea, and this assembly has declared its independence of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and voted for Turkish as the liturgical language of the new Church. ' Candidates for the Patriarch of the new Church have not yet been decided upon. A great deal of political sounding is going on, and the Patriarchate will be conferred, upon an ecclesiastic most likely to become the willing tool of the Angora Government, which is putting through this scheme merely to throw dust in the eyes of the Christian world. CATHOLICS LEAD IN BOHEMIA. With its centuries-old tradition of Jan Huss and all that Hussism stands for, Bohemia should be an overwhelmingly Protestant country. Yet the fact remains that out of its 6,670,578 inhabitants, there are 5,216,169 Catholics, or about 78.2 per cent, of the whole. The Protestants come a very long way behind, with some 246,114 adherents; while as to the newly-founded Czechoslovak National Church, which is supposed to have enticed the Catholics away from their allegiance by the millions, this body can count, on no more than 437,377 adherents. These figures are compiled from the official statistics of the census of this year. There are 79,777 members of the Jewish faith in Bohemia, 658,076 persons who boast that they belong to no religious denomination whatsoever, and some 33,665 who belong to one or other of the other religions. So that in spite of all the anti-Catholic propaganda, with which the country has been riddled during recent years, the Catholics lead with a considerable majority in Bohemia. Probably a million Catholics Have been * lost to the Church, some of them having fallen away from sheer indifferentism, others having been drawn away by the promoters of the so-called National Church. Yet, even of these lapsed brethren, only a few have gone over to Protestantism, most of the others have dropped out of religion altogether. BOLSHEVY AND THE CHURCH. When Archbishop Tikhon, the Patriarch of Moscow, was arrested by the Bolshevists and thrown into prison, he appointed the Archbishop Agathangelos of Jaroslav as his deputy, to act until a new Patriarch could be elected. The Bolshevists have prevented the carrying out of this plan by formally forbidding Archbishop Agathangelos to leave his episcopal city or to take up the burden laid upon him by Archbishop Tikhon. Meanwhile the affairs of the Orthodox Church In Russia -are being administered by a junta composed of ecclesiastics with leanings towards Bolshevism, and a body of laymen, hand-picked by the Soviet chiefs themselves. Archbishop Agathangelos has protested to all Orthodox Russia against these proceedings, and declares his intention of- convoking a proper ecclesiastical assembly in the near future. Under the present regime there is little possibility of this assembly being convoked, and as all of .the 148 Russian bishops have been deprived of their Sees or. are about to be deprived, measures seem to have been taken in advance for preventing a proper ecclesiastical 'synod from ' meeting. '

The Soviet anti-religious propaganda department declares that 37 bishops have been won over to the Bolshevist side, and it is with the connivance of these prelates that the Bolshevised Russian Orthodox Church is being carried on at present. 1 THE BOLSHEVIST ASSAULT ON RELIGION. For the moment the Bolshevist assault on Christianity seems to be entirely successful, according to the reports that come into Poland from Soviet Russia. The Patriarch of Moscow is still in prison, as is also the Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, with other high Orthodox prelates, and the sentence of death still hangs over their heads. But apart from their persecution of these defenceless bishops, the Soviet authorities are pushing ahead their plans for bolshevising the Orthodox Russian Church. A new and so-called pro-Bolshevist Church Party has been formed in Moscow, and all those clergy' who refuse to join the Party are, first of all dismissed from their clerical offices, then they are arrested and tried as counter-revolu-tionaiies, and many of them have been shot as common felons. The Bolshevists seem to have an easy tool in the Bishop Antonin, whom they have caused to be elected in some manner as the head of the new Soviet Church. Vladimir Lvoff, a layman who was Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod in Kerensky’s Provisional Government, has been plucked forth from obscurity, and like another Thomas Cromwell has been set in office as a hammer of the clergy malleus monachonm ! L\off is engaged at present in what he describes as a comb-out of the clergy in other words, his occupation is to rope in all the clergy to an acceptance of the new Soviet Church, or else to see to it that they follow in the footsteps of their martyred brethren. Meanwhile the Soviet authorities, enraged by the failure of their tactics at Genoa and the Hague, have sternly refused to listen to any meditation on behalf of the imprisoned bishops, whether that meditation has come v’om. Rome ,or from Canterbury. The news that the Patriarch Tikhon and the Metropolitan Benjamin have been shot is expected any day now. SAINT HENRY OF WINDSOR.” A small, but not uninfluential, band of Catholics, old Etonians, is said to be interested in bringing to the attention of the Apostolic See the claims of King Henry VI. of England, for beatification and ultimate canonisation. In any case, the Apostolic Process would be a long and extensive one; and it is premature to' speak ?LT T neW Samt as being likel t( > receive the title of St. Henry of Windsor”—which one of the daily papers conjectures will be his title. Henry VI., who died at the age of 39 in 1461, while lacking m the sterner qualities that a Monarch of his turbulent time needed, was a man of extremely saintly life. He founded Eton College in 1440, in honor of God and Our Lady, and prescribed certain devotions to be performed in that college, which have remained unfulfilled for nearly four centuries. Another of his pious foundations was King’s College at Cambridge. ~. ThaVHenry VI. was venerated as a Saint up to the tune of the Reformation admits of no doubt. As evidence of his canonisation by popular acclamation, the promoters of his cause will need merely to pay a visit to York Minster where, in the great choir screen of the northern capital they will find one empty place among the niches' containing representations of the Kings of England. That empty place is the niche formerly filled by the statue of Henry VI. which was removed when Protestantism was set up in York Minster, as the statue of . the King was venerated by the people as the representation of a Saint and prayers were offered before it. ! ’ i -Under^ Henry VI. affairs of State were administered bv Cardinal Beaufort, Chancellor of England and Bishop of Winchester who was one of -the judges who-passed sentence on &t. John of Arc. The Cardinal secured from Rome a mandate to raise a body of troops, for the purpose of putting down the Hussite heretics in Bohemia; but the scheme never came to anything on account of ’political rivalries at home. " - • .