An Old Story Revived.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 17 July 1902, Page 18

An Old Story Revived.

Just two years ago a paragraph went the rounds of the nonCatholio press to the effect that ' a Protestant revival ' was taking place in Franoe. It was stated at the time, with a disregard for facts, figures, and details which is a peculiar feature of all statements regard ing the alleged progreps of Protestantism inContinenta countries, that many hundreds of priests had left the Catholic Churoh and had become Protestant ministers. We dealt with this fiction at the time, and sinoe then the matter was not heard of until the other day. Evidently the paragraph was pigeon-holed for further use, and now we hear of it gracing the back pages of some of the North Island secular newspapers, its reappearance coinciding to some extent with that of the sea serpent. Here is what a writer in an English review of a recent date says of Protestantism in France :— •An inquiry into French Protestantism is met at the threshold by this singular paradox : that while the Protestant spirit haa taken possession of France, Protestantism as a form of church life is declining. On the other hand, its influence so increases that Protestants are to be found in all sorts of positions of authority and power far out of proportion to their estimated numerical strength ; on the other hand, its temples are empty of worshippers, and the number of members diminishes with ominous rapidity.' In other words, it is a political, not a religious faotor.

In our issue of July 2G, 1900, we wrote in part as follows regarding the alleged , conversion ' of French priests to Protestantism :— « The collapse of the " lot von Rom " fairy tale was followed by the story of " a Protestant revival " or " a new reform " in France. The " revival " consisted in the alleged adoption by ■ome French priests of some more or less vaguely Protestant principles and modes of belief. As in the case of the '• lot von Rom" notion, the estimates of the number of French clerical " converts " presented a curious diversity where statistics ought to have been so easy procurable. They ranged from 30 or 40 to 200 and, as is usual in such circumstances, were suspiciously chary of furnishing names of places, and persons and other particulars which would have made it possible to test the truth of the story It is now twelve months since the story first originated. As " news "it is rather mouldy now. Yet it has been served up quite recently as something fresh and new, and found its way into those dumping grounds of "Catholic intelligence" that is mostly anti Catholic — the religious columns of some of our Saturday daily papers. One or two of the alleged clerical ''converts" belong to the class of genuine ex-priests. We have, thus far, no evidence that any of the others ever were priests. Nor is there anybody to vouch for the personal character of the alleged "converts" — a rather important omission, seeing that, as a matter of common notoriety, an enormous proportion of those that pose, or have posed, upon the platform as "ex-pneats" were adventurers or criminals who were never in the Catholic ministry, nor even members of our Church, Practically all those that were genuine — and they are happily very few— were unfrocked clerics who, like the selfconfessed impostor Slattery, were drummed out of the ranks of the Catholic clergy for conduct unwoithy of their high and holy calling. We have only to add that (1) we have no evidence whatever that 100 or 200 or n0 nor yet a woore of persona prof mint/ to be priests have 'gone over' in France, much leas that genuine priests have done bo. Some of our readers may recall the story published in the Church Standard (Philadelphia) last year by Rev. J. S. Hartzell to the effect that during the 10 years, 1888-18U7, 17 priests in the United States had 'verted to the Episcopalian Church. When the matter was investigated, not so much as one of the alleged ♦ converts ' could be named or discovered. A detailed report of the ourious controversy on the subject appeared in the Philadelphia Standard and Timer of July 2<J, 1899, and furnishes a further warning against lightly accepting figures of such 'conversions' coming from a country such as France, the Catholio clergy of which bear so honorable a record for zeal arid piety and devotion to their sacred calliug.'