That Methodist Protest

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 15, 9 April 1903, Page 1

That Methodist Protest

There are indications that our Methodist clerical friends are returning to saner counsels in reference to their recent protest against the appointment of a Catholic Governor to Fiji. The indignation which this illjudged and busybody resolution provoked in the islands may possible have had something to do with the calmer and cooler second-thoughts which have happily come ( o the minds of the leaders of the Svd'ney Conference. At any rate, the foolish protest against the Governor's religion is practically withdrawn. ' His

courtesy and impartiality ' have beeti made the subject of high encomium, and he goes forth with a complete, if not very graciously-bestowed, Methodist absolution, which is about as near an approach to an apology as we can expect. Those wicked Catholic missionaries are now the sole scapegoats. They are accused of making 'an unfair use ' of the fact that the Governor, is a Catholic. What the ' unfair use ' may be, we are not told. But it is possible that — as was stated by one or more of them lately— the presence of a Catholic Governor lends a special emphasis to their denial of the legend (alleged to have been instilled into the Fijian native mmd by the non-Catholic missionaries) that ' all the great chiefs of the world are Protestants.' At any late, it is high time that the squalid and meddlesome contioversy raised by Methodist outsiders in Sydney and New Zealand about Governor Jackson's religion should take a less violently sectarian turn. This is, let i's hope, a pieparation for its final and decent interment.