A STUPID CALUMNY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 49, 7 December 1899, Page 3

A STUPID CALUMNY.

A FAIRY TALE OP A FAR-OFF LAND.

BUT WE GET UPON ITS TRACK.

In its issue of April I— auspicious and appropriate date !— the Dunedin Evening Star reprinted from the Sunday Magazine the following extraordinary, and on the face of it, untruthful tale :— ' In the latest annual report of the British and Foreign Bible Society there is a singular account of the methods adopted by ecclesiastical authorities in the Argentine Republic for uniting the Indians to the Roman Catholic Church. Article 15 of the Argentine Constitution obliges the Government to do all in their power to convert the pagans, and this was how it was done in the case of 200 Indian prisoners. The ceremony took place in the presence of the Governor of Chaco, the officials of the province, and a crowd of spectators. The Indians were obliged to kneel between two long rows of soldiers. An officer obliged one prisoner after another to open his mouth, and a second functionary threw a quantity of salt into the opened mouth. This happened amidst the laughter of the onlookers and the grimaces of the Indians. Then followed a Franciscan monk with a veseel of holy water, and sprinkled the kneeling Indians, who were now bidden to rise. Each Indian received a scrap of paper, on which his new name was inscribed, a sort of cape or mantle, and a glass of rum The conversion of the Indians was now completed.'

We dealt with this foolish tale in our issue of April 6 and characterised it in fair-set terms as ' a plain unvarnished falsehood.' We did so (1) on the ground of the general unreliability of missionary reports, and (2) on the intrinsic improbability of the story. *

(1) We are aware that there are on the foreign missionary field many truly zealous and devoted members of the separated Churches. 1 But,' we added, ' we have a rank abundance of Protestant evidence that cannot be gainsaid, that there is a large class of missionaries who believe that the cause of the God of Truth is served by the dissemination of round, sounding, bulky falsehoods, and who would not forego their tilt at Rome, even were the sky to fall. A scathing article on the subject appeared in the National Review for December, 1897, from the pen of the Rev. H. Hensley Henson a well-known English Protestant clergyman. He declared that 'uncorroborated missionary's evidence is scarcely considered evidence at all,' and that this growing lack of public confidence ' has its explanation in the discovered errors of the past and the suspected conditions of the present. Compared with the civil servant, with the independent traveller, with the army officer, even with the higher type of merchant, the average missionary does not command confidence.' Elsewhere in the same article the writer says : ' The Protestant missionary is ignorant almost always, and by necessary consequence he is prejudiced. He is generally in a thoroughly false position — the reporter and judge of his own achievements. He works under thoroughly bad conditions, for his reports are the advertisements of a money-raising society, and they are addressed to constituents — the rank and file of the denominations—who are as greedy of sensation as they are credulous of prodigies.' As far back as 1873 Dean Stanley spoke strongly of the necessity of ' the necessity of a vigilant endeavour to repress the exaggeration, to denounce the fallacies and inaccuracies ' of the missionary reports. The veteran missionary worker and writer, Dr. Oust, in his Missionary Methods (London, 1894) denounces in fervid language the exaggeration prevalent in such reports, their tilts at Rome, their never-ending calls for ' more money and more men and women.' One of the Church Mission Society's annual reports, quoted by Dr. Cust, has the following plaint :— ' How hard it is for the missionary to be patient when his friends at home are so impatient, and how great is the temptation to embellish the account of his annual labours 1 I fear there are grave soandals connected with our missionary reports.'

(2.) No doubt about it. And the insane story included in the Bible Society's last report is but a fresh instance in point. We have said that the story of 'how converts are made in the Argentine' is, on the face of it, untrue. In our issue of A pril 6we wrote : ' The heading of the story, the statement that the Indians were " united " to the Church, and that their "conversion" was "completed," all indicate that the author of the tale intended his readers to understand that the silly tomfooleries he describes were merely a form of reception into the Church, usual in the cafe of the pagan Indians of Argentina. Catholics need scarcely be reminded that no such method as that described is, or ever was, known to our " ecclesiastical authorities " anywhere for " uniting " or " converting " either Chaco Indians or anybody else to the Catholic Church. It is evidently here a question of adults, and the method of receiving adulta into the Church is laid down in minute detail in the Ritual, a book which ia on the hands of every priest. It includes a serious, and in the case of pagans a lengthy, course of instruction in Christian doctrine. At its completion the catechumen is, if desirous of it. baptised in accordance with the rules and ceremonies laid down in the Ritual. Then, and not till then, is he " united "to the Catholic Church. It is true that Baptism can — servatisservandis — be validly conferred by sprinkling. But it is equally true that, by reason of the doulJt attaching to it, the Sacrament is nowhere conferred in this manner in the Catholic Church. Immersion and infusion (pouring on of water) are the only methods known in practice. In the Latin Church infusion is the rule, and no departure therefrom is permitted unless where Baptism by immersion has been established as a legitimate custom. The world has yet to produce "a Franciscan monk " so phenomenally ignorant of his faith as to play such havoo with the Ritual, or to administer the Sacrament of Baptism to unwilling adults who, on the hypothesis, were ignorant of the meaning of the ceremony. This were a superstition on a par with that of the Bible Society's own agents, who rank as a "convert" any

uninstructed pagan who accepts a Bible, which in few cases he can read and in practically no case properly understand.'

WE SEARCH THE CHACO

Thus far our issue of April 6. We concluded our note by expressing our determination to get to the bottom of this evil tale. We may fairly claim to have done so. The Chaco is far off. It is half as big again as the total area of Great Britain and Ireland, and is on the borderland of civilisation But it will soon, we trust, prove as unsafe a place for the spinning of missionary legends as the Catholic Truth Society and decent Protestant writers have already made Mexico. Thanks to the editor of the 3«ut7iern Cross of Buenos Aires — whose courtesy we hereby gratefully acknowledge— we are now in possession of a first batch of official documents which give the lie direot to the silly story of the Bible Society's agent in Argentina.

(1) The first of three documents forwarded to us is the original letter (in Spanish) of Father Vicente Caloni, Guardian or Superior of the Monastery of San Lorenzo, the head house of the Franciscan missionaries of the Chaco. He has spent twenty-nine years in the Chaco, and during part of that time he has been twice Prefect of the Missions. Consequently he is in a position to speak. He roundly declares the story of the Sunday Magazine ' ridiculous,' ' repugnant,' and declares that ' the author of that falsehood has not even known how to give it the appearance of truth.' Elsewhere in the same letter he says: 'What that London magazine says is false. The Chaoo is divided into two territories (gobernaciones'), one governed by Col. Lusuriaga, and the other by Col. Uriburu, both gentlemen of excellent education and high character, and both many years resident in the Chaco. Nothing of what the Protestant magazine mentions ever happened in the territory of either.' The writer states that he time and again divided his crust of bread with the Protestant ministers who at long intervals appear on the borders of Santa Fe and the Chaco, but he is quite decided as to the f ruitlessness of their attempts to convert the Indians.

(2) Another document is a letter from the secretary of the diocese of Santa Fe, to which the Chaco belongs. He declares the Btory a ' gross calumny,' and promises an official denial of it as soon as the Administrator of the Diocese should have an opportunity of formally communicating on the subject with Father Pedro Iturralde, Prefect of the Chaco Missions. This, however, was unnecessary, as the Notario Mayor of the diocese of La Plata (Rev. James M. Fssher), who kindly interested himself in the matter, saw Father Iturralde in Buenos Aires. Writing to the Southern Cross of August 18, Father Ussher gays : ' Naturally he (Father Iturralde) smiled at the nonsense published by the Bible Society as the missionary reports of its subsidised agents, who run up occasionally near the Chaco, but, generally speaking, not too near the Indians, look around for a while, then go home and report all the good work they have done, the number of Bibles distributed, the number of Indians they have converted, and how many more they might have been able to convert were it not for the inconceivable, idolatrous perversity of the fanatical friars who sprinkle Ind an prisoners with holy water,' etc.

(3) Another document forwarded to us by our courteous confrere of the Southern Cross is a copy of a petition addressed to the Governor of Santa Fe, date! May 1, 1899, and signed by Mr. Charles Webster, a Protestant gentleman, who lives at Colonia Florencia, on the limits of Santa Fe and the Chaco. Mr. Webster's petition is strong evidence of the high esteem in which the Franciscan Fathers are held in that distant region. The petition states that the only way to prevent the destructive invasions of the Indians is ' to establish Catholic missions in suitable places,' erect schools for the education of the Indians, place them and th Q missions in charge of the Franciscan Fathers. In the petition Mr Webster offered 25 hectareas (about (50 acres) of land to the Fathers for a school at Florencia, and intimated his intention of personally collecting funds for the erection of the building. Another Protestant gentleman in the same district wrote to Father Iturralde urging him to further the petition by every means in his power. In this connection we may state that a similar suggestion is made the burden of a leading article in the Prensa, a secular paper published at Buenos Aires, iv its issue of Jauuary 31, 1899. It pays a high eulogium to the priesthood for its work of civilising and Christianising the wild man in South America, and roundly declares that the priest, and not the soldier, is to be the saviour and civiliser and pacifier of the Cbaco.

TRUE MISSIONARIES,

We may well conclude with the following words of Father Uasher's communication to the Southern Cross of August 18 :—: —

' The Franciscans go about their work in real earnest, and make no fuss about it ; they go into it heart and soul, and don't send reports to the newspapers magnifying their work, their privations, and their sacrifices. We should scarcely have known they were to be found in the Chaoo at all, only that some Protestant minister took the trouble of writing nonsense about them to the Bible Society. They go out into the Indian territory where no other white man dare go ; they go and s L ay there, spend their lives there, and they are the only w hite men an Indian will trust. They do not calumniate the Protestant ministers who sometimes go up iv that direction trying to undo the work they have been doing slowly and silently during Ihe last hundred years. Some time ago I became acquainted with an <Id friar in San Lorenzo. He was eighty years of age, had ppi nt over forty in the Chaco. and then come home to rest and quietly await his end in that historic old monastery. He has since died. Not long since F. Ermete Constant i was killed In the Chaco after living there thirty-sevtn years. Father Vicente Caloni has been there twenty-nine, .as we have already seen ; and actually there are nine other Franciscan priests in Chaco, and, dishonourable though it may be to our boasted civilisation, the Indians are not always the most uncivilised people with whom they are obliged to deal, and never the most ungrateful.'

We are endeavouring to get into communication with the Governors of the Ohaoo. But we were fairly warned at the outset that Argentina, like Spain, es el pais de la manana : the land of to-morrow— of that procrastination which eats up time and makes the soul so often weary with profitless waitiDg.