CATHOLICISM IN MEXICO.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 23, Issue 47, 23 November 1899, Page 28

CATHOLICISM IN MEXICO.

Some time ago the Boston Herald published a series of articles on Mexico from the pen of Mr. F. R. Guernsey, a non-Catholic writer, who referred in very complimentary terms to the virtues and social characteristics of the people of the Land of the Sun. Mr. Guernsey's estimate of the Mexicans did not please the bigots, and they said so in various religious newspapers. Mr. Guernsey was not dismayed by the torrent of abuse which his articles called forth, and returned to the subject in a recent number of the newspaper in which his original articles appeared. He says :—: — ' In a Catholic country I have, as an outside observer, a mere newspaper man, discovered that a great many people live up to what they profess, that there are happy homes whose inmates base their lives and all their actions on the teachings of their divine Master ; in a word, that Catholicism here is a vital principle animating good men and women, and making of many of its ministers saints on earth.' He reverts to exceptions naturally taken by the educated classes to misdirected attempts of foreign Protestant ' missionaries ' to change the religion of the people. He freely admits that among the would-be evangelisers are some excellent, well-meaning men. ' But the fact remains that the upper class in Mexico think that we should refrain from trying to convert them to a new form of Christianity till we have modified some of our practices, such as lynching " niggers "as a Sabbath-day observance, etc. They object to our bringing moral soap and hot water into their houses to do a bit of cleaning while our own home requires purification.' To the question whether ProtestaDt missionary efforts in India, Hawaii, and Africa have not resulted in their unprecedented material and commercial development, Mr. Guernsey replies : ' Missionary efforts in the Sandwich Islands appear to have resulted in the descendants of the missionaries turning over a most interesting little kingdom to our Government, and the Hawaiians are resentful — that is, the few that have survived contact with our civilisation, which is fatal to the felicity of the brown races.' 'The ''material and commercial interests " of the peoples of so-called heathendom are surely not the prime objects of Christian endeavour, for, if Christianity means anything, it surely implies tbe fixing of our gaze on the infinite, on the world beyond, and a neglect of mere money-making and commercialism. 1

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