Sizing Them Up

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 42, 15 October 1903, Page 18

Sizing Them Up

When Brann's • Iconoclast ' «lights out' after a •mean white,' it generally strikes him at a high velocity. Tihat outspoken American non-Catholic journal has lately had a breezy article on the doleful prospects of Protestamt missionary enterprise among the more than 6,000,000 Catholic natives of the Philippine Islands. The ' Iconoclast ' bases its prediction of failure on the fact of common experience that ' H is almost if not qiuite impossible for an intelligent Catholic to become a good Pirotestajnt.' • When,' says he further on, 'an honest, upright Catholic abandons Catholicism he almost invariably becomes an agnostic. When a dishonest devotee renounces his Catholicism he is apt to become a first-class Protestant scalawag. I have known several reformed priests who wrote books, delivered lectures, and endeavored to tc expose Romanism" in every possible way, bqt 1 have never Known one who could be trusted or that possessed a single spark of honor.' He then gives a few 'samples. ( There was,' says he, « Chiniqjuy, of Kankakee, 111., who was not only a cheat, a fraud, but one of the grandest prevaricators who ever tried to rob the father of his laurels. Thia old impostor collected thousands upon thousands of dollars from his dupes, ostensibly to found missions and build homes for expriests. A fraction of the amount would be invested in some ramshackle den. Chiniquy Would blow in the balance, set fire to the- mission or home, report that he had bjeen burned out by Catholics, arid hit the road on another foraging expedition. . . Protestant missionaries in Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines will appeal to the Chiniquys, Sequins, and Slatterys, but the sacrifice of the blood-baptized ideals of the republic is a frightful price to pay for such cattle. The better class may, as before observed, become infidels, but never Baptists, Presbyterians, or Methodists. If infidels are doomed to be damned, as these self-same missionaries tell us, then it is high time for them to cease their manufacture.'