The Church in Russia

New Zealand Tablet, 1 October 1908, Page 23

The Church in Russia

In the course of an article in the National Review for September, 1891, Professor Ceffcken paints a dark picture of the persecutions of Jews and Catholics that stained the reign~ of Alexander 111. o f Russia, who 'passed out' on November day, 1894 Ihese persecutions (says the learned professor) 'seem incredible in our age.' Thousands of unoffending persons were because of their fidelity to their faith, ' exiled to Siberia or to distant regions without any means of livelihood. As regards Cathol.cs, adds he, ' these measures are principally directed against the clergy ; but the Uniatcs (i.e., the Catholics who have he Slav hturgy) are unsparingly deported if they refuse to have their children baptised by an Orthodox pope' (that is, a Russian State Church clergyman), • and this is done with men, women, and children, peasants and merchants. Twenty thousand Uniates alone have been removed from the western provinces to bzaratow. Those who remain at home have Cossacks quartered upon them, and all sorts of compulsory means are used to stamp

Ihe subsequent course of events served to demonstrate the tiuth of Sir Ihomas Browne's saying, that 'persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.' The oppressive laws of Alexander 111. were relaxed in ,8,7. But they had a.ready sown the good seed; and when religious tolerance was decreed in 1905. and conversion to the Old Faith was no longer a felony whole distnets of the Empire were already whitening for the harvest. lhe Odessa correspondent of the Standard' (says the London Catholic Weekly of August ax) ' states that since the promulgation of the Religious Tolerance Edict of October ,0 1905, the conversion of Orthodox Russians to Catholicism has been _ of quite an intensive character, and all the efforts of the Russian Orthodox clergy to arrest the movement have proved utterly futile In the Government of V ilna alone , 30,000 people have become Catholics, and a large number of Orthodox rectorships and curacies have been closed. In the Governments of and In' « r ' " ° f Ch ° Im ' 2 ° o '° oo Orthodox > and in the Government of Minsk 8000 Uniates, have been received into the Catholic fold.'