A Missionary Failure

New Zealand Tablet, 22 October 1908, Page 22

A Missionary Failure

A non-Catholic writer in the London Times has been giving some refreshingly frank expressions of opinion as to the wellknown futility of the efforrs that atv being made to 'vert Spaniards to any of the manifold varieties of the Reformed creeds. 'He dismisses with disdain ,' says the Liverpool Catholic Times, ' the supposition that the Church is losing ground before the Protestant attack. He even says that the heads of the Protestant missions agree that Spain is a most barren soil for their missionary labors. And then he remarks that some missionaries have come to the conclusion that all they do is to unsettle the Christian faith of their pupils, and that they are drawing baclc from the work. Testimony of this kind, from a writer ,who shows -.hat he has no .bias in favor of Catholicism, should suffice to tighten the purse strings of pious Protestants" in . these islands when missionary agencies appeal to them for funds to evangelise the benighted Catholic Spaniards.- The fact is that Prot-stant efforts to convert Catholics from Catholicism result in a change; where such efforts result in any • change at all, not to Protestantism, but. to unbelief in religion of any kind. A man who has been a Catholic, believing a definite dog--matic deed, is not likely to desert it Lr the uncertainties; contridiction, end vagueness' of Pro,tesU- 1 doctrine. . A SpaniaH may be a bad Catholic, but he will never be a Protestant,- good or bad. The memories of his own country's past are quite enough to keep him from jhe. supreme folly of leaving the Church for a community that is as far from his religious ideals" as war is from peace.'