THE “PROTESTANT WOMAN’S” WAIL

New Zealand Tablet, 2 August 1917, Page 28

THE “PROTESTANT WOMAN’S” WAIL

The lady who edits the Protestant Woman is troubled in spirit (says the Catholic Times). Messages reach her telling of "the ever and rapidly increasing

aggressions of Rome." One letter comes from a village where the vicar was a Ritualist and he has now gone over to Rome ! Her correspondent, filled with indignation, declares that "the sword must be unsheathed." Another letter describes the progress Catholics are making in a provincial town. "Some of the best families," sadly confesses the Protestant Woman, "seem to have no compunction in allowing their daughters to marry Roman Catholics. In one such case, of very recent occurrence, the bride is already a pervert. To what conclusion can we come but that the senses of the people in this land, of ours, including many Christians, as well as those who make no special profession of Christianity, are absolutely steeped in a fatal slumber?" That is really the trouble. Protestantism has sent (hem to sleep, made them careless and indifferent. Instead of attacking Hie Catholic Church, which is quite as much opposed to mixed marriages as she is, the Protestant Woman ou<>ht to strive to rouse them from sleep— to combat tho indifference, unbelief, and paganism which, for many years before the war, had been robbing the Protestant Churches of worshippers and which even that, cataclysm has done little to remove.