The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 1917. PAN-PROTESTANTS IN PANAMA

New Zealand Tablet, 9 August 1917, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 1917. PAN-PROTESTANTS IN PANAMA

tt/JJmln ■ LITT - LE wl »le ago a certain reverend gentleTijniYral man named Allen, with a previous reputation as an inventor in his favor, appeared in Dunedin in the role of a story-teller, fjffis(&¥ just at the psychological moment when the ggK£ LOYAL ORANGEMEN were holding *% solemn conclave on the poor Papists. We noticed with due gratitude the compliments paid to us —to Catholics collectively and to the Tablet particularly— at the time, and since then except for the distribution of a few characteristically poisonous pamphlets the L.O.L. may be described as moderately inoffensive. Mr. Allen poured into the sympathetic ear of a reporter some wild and weird tales of the ignorance and bigotry of South American Catholics and then disappeared from the stage. However, like Mother Carey's chickens, he was but the herald of a storm. During the past months the American Catholic papers have been kept busy on the trail of some of Mr. Allen's brethren in bigotry in Latin America, where they seem to have settled down for a real old-fashioned campaign of mud-slinging, with a zeal that must make the diggers on the canal blush for shame. People of this class are disowned by the respectable members of all Churches, and on their own part have discarded all pretence to self-respect. Convicted of bare-faced lies and calumnies they will brazenly hold up their heads among honest men, and aided by the contributions of their weak-minded dupes, continue to circulate filthy attacks, refuted and exposed' ten times over, recking nothing of truth if only the mud sticks and the shekels pour in. We cannot think that the Protestants of South America are represented by the men of this type who pose as the sole reliable guides in Israel, and by their blatancy bring discredit on the body to which they belong. -x-

. Formerly in South America there were only a few isolated ministers, aided by a little flying squadron of tract-throwers. Low an active and energetic campaign is preparing, and with unlimited resources at their command the protagonists of the movement hope to put into the field a whole army of- evangelists, teachers nurses, Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.A. secretaries, hymnologists, writers, and statisticians. It is the outcome of the Panama Congress of American pan-Protestants, v.mosc doings and sayings have filled three stout volumes which two more threaten to follow. The pan-Protest-ants are quite welcome to congress as often as they please; but when they proceed to draw up deliberate and sweeping charges against the Catholics they cease

to be harmless. This wonderful Panama council accuses the Catholic bishops and priests of being the causes of many evils that exist, and of many more that do not, in Latin America. The clergy are explicitly and implicitly charged with inefficiency, narrow-mindedness, want of zeal, and indifference to their mission, and of thereby inducing all sorts of social and political scandals in their respective communities. Among the men, says the Congress, faith is in peril and morals at a very low ebb; the clergy are so ignorant that they can not keep up with the intellectual progress of the people, nor show them how to be Christian and at the same time true to the laws of the mind and the accepted facts of modern knowledge. As the ‘‘scholarship of modern France" has been responsible for this progress we can have no doubt at all that, the pan-Protestants will soon show the people how to reconcile it with Christian ideals. We are content to let them try. Of course it is immaterial to say that more than thirty years ago Guzman Blanco secured by a revolution a constitution which dispensed with convents and monasteries and similar Popish strongholds, and that his policy found its counterpart in almost all the Latin American republics. From the pan-Protestant viewpoint that was just as it should be. And we cannot withhold our admiration of that sweet reasonableness so characteristicwhich blames the Catholics for the crimes of their persecutors.

With a touching spirit of chivalry, worthy of the best traditions of their forbears, the pan-Protestant fathers proceed to blacken before all the world the good name of the women of South America. ‘‘The death rate among infants is also great: from 40 to 90 per cent, die under two years of age. The causes are an unguarded milk supply, an appalling diffusion of venereal diseases, and a state of morals which leaves half .the children to be reared by an unmarried mother without aid from the father.” A saintly pan-Protes-tant lady, Florence E. Smith, says that no less than 60 per cent, of the women of the whole continent have lost honor, self-respect, and hope. Dr. Robert Speer, acting-chairman of the congress, states that it is safe to say that from one-fourth to one-half the population is illegitimate. We may incidentally mention that within the past , three months these calumnies have all been exposed in the columns of , America, and that figures have been produced showing that the South American women compare favorably with ladies nearer home so far as morality goes.

We will close this ‘‘unprovoked sectarian attack" with a choice quotation. A Bible Society hawker—alias, a souper— reports ; ‘‘Out of my twenty-three years of experience let me testify that after all my travels through Central America 1 have yet to find one Roman Catholic able to give a reason for the hope that is in him." We wot of soupers who in an incredibly short space of time were sent away wondering at the vigor of the faith as manifested by Catholics. And they did not return. Which of us does not know the oleaginous and sanctimonious hawker whose testimony is of such value to the pan-Protestants of Panama? On the whole, the continuity with Martin Luther is admirably manifested by the Panama fathers.