Those 'Enormous Possessions'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 17, 23 April 1903, Page 18

Those ' Enormous Possessions'

' It ought,' says the San Francisco ' Monitor,' ' to be a dreadful shock to those non-Catholic friends who are scandalised by the " enormous possessions," aggre- - gating less than, ten millions, of the Philippine friars after three centuries of " supreme power " in the ArehV pelago, to learn that the Protestant church property in" the United States increased in 50 years— from 1850 to 1900— from 78,000,000 dollars to 401,000,000 dollars. The "vast belongings" of the " unscrupulous and avaricious religious Orders " dwindle into almost ridiculous insignificance by comparison. If the accumulation of property were the principal business of the religious Orders, as has been sometimes positively asserted by their critics, the result of three centuries of labor and opportunity proves either that they lack the skill in that line ascribed to them, or else they committed a grave blunder in the selection of their field of operations.'