Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
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The ground was that invading Protestant missionaries were the cause of great internal disturbances in the South American Republics. Incidentally, their activities were a hindrance to the "Good-Neighbor" policy. In all the South American Republics religious freedom is guaranteed. Protestants are quite at liberty to practice their religion. Their churches and resident ministers enjoy the full protection of the law. But with World War II a new situation arose. Hundreds of American Protestant missionaries were evacuated from Japan and the Orient. The Protestant Churches of America decided to employ these surplus missionaries from pagan lands by sending them to the already Christian South American Republics. The Protestants there were already well provided for, and the flood of extra missionaries was for the purpose of attacking the Catholic Faith, the religion of the overwhelming majority of the citizens. Mr. John W. White, a non-Catholic correspondent of the New York "Herald-Tribune," who had resided for 25 years in South America, wrote in support of the regulations of the South American Republics. He said that South American Catholics were rightly exasperated by proselytizing Protestant missionaries who treated them as heathens and suggested converting them to the Christian religion! Mr. White added that the exclusion of further importations to stir up bigotry and strife would diminish "a most serious obstacle to closer friendship between the people of the United States and those of South America."
The Presbyterian Board said that is was deplorable that Catholic leaders were so far out of step as to propose abandoning the principle of religious liberty for which men from both the Americas were giving their lives in World War II.
Assemblies of God.These diverse bodies become very indignant with each other, should one presume to trespass on what each regards as its own "occupied territory"; yet all are trespassing on territory under the religious authority of the Catholic Church!
Calvary Holiness Movement.
Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Gospel Missionary Union.
Latin America Mission.
Mennonite Brethren Church of N. America.
Missions of the Andes.
New Tribes Mission.
Oriental Missionary Society and Inter-American
Missionary Society.
Presbyterian Church of U.S.A.
Scandinavian Alliance Mission of N. America.
Seventh Day Adventists.
South America Indian Missions.
Southern Baptist Convention.
Wesleyan Methodist Church of America.
Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.
It ought to be shocked by the efforts of the Protestant missionaries to cripple the work of the Catholic Church for the spiritual welfare of its own Catholic people! Let Protestants remain Protestants if they wish. But religious liberty also insists that Catholics have the right to remain Catholics, and to adopt all necessary measures to safeguard the faith they already possess. Also Catholics should be free from having to hear their cherished beliefs publicly assailed and ridiculed; and their widespread resentment is more than enough justification for those South American Governments which have done so to legislate against the further influx of Protestant enemies of the Catholic religion. You may say that Catholics should at least be free to hear the Protestant viewpoint. To that I can but reply that, if they really want to do so, there are more than enough representatives of the different Protestant Churches in Latin American countries to whom they could apply, without still more seeking entry into those countries.
To that I will let Mr. John W. White reply. As I have already said he is a non-Catholic journalist, correspondent for the New York "Herald Tribune," and resident for over 25 years in South America. He wrote as follows: "The great bulk of the millions of dollars poured into South America for missionary work goes for good salaries to the denomination leaders, and for the expensive operation of large missionary schools where there is no need of such schools. It has been impossible to induce the American missionary workers to leave the comfortable cities and go into the backward rural areas where there might be some excuse for their educational, medical and sociological activities. "From a purely religious point of view, this missionary work has been an abject failure. After more than 25 years of effort and the expenditure of many millions of dollars, the many rival Protestant sects working in the three River Plate Republics, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, reported a total of only 26,728 communicants in those countries in 1938. In this number are many United States families who remained Protestant." Mr. White concluded his report by saying that if North American Protestants wanted to throw their money away on that kind of failure, it would not concern anybody but themselves, were it not for the ill-feeling the r missionary activities create against the United States; an ill-feeling which has done more than any other single factor to sabotage Washington's "Good-Neighbor" policy with the South American Republics. Mr John W. White has since written a book on this subject, entitled "Our Good Neighbor Hurdle," published in 1943 by the Bruce Publishing Company, of Milwaukee, U.S.A. That book would go a long Way towards clarifying your ideas on this subject.
I have read it carefully. Not one word in it implies any persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Church. It relates how some Colombians, who happened to be Catholics, attacked some Protestants, including Presbyterians. But since these particular Colombians violated both Catholic principles and the actual instructions of the Catholic Bishops in Colombia, the accusation must be leveled against the perpetrators of the outrage, not against the Catholic Church. I am as much a Catholic as any Catholic in Colombia, and I can assure you that the Catholic religion has never inspired me with the slightest desire to do violence to Protestants of any kind.
Better say: "By Colombian fanatics who happened to be Catholics." Surely Protestant missionaries who go to Colombia go there with their eyes open. They go to a country in which 99.5% of the population are Catholics. But these Catholics are also Colombians, a highly excitable people who have inherited a legacy of political party strife which has led to constant unrest and internal disturbances. When, in 1825, Colombia ended victoriously its 15 years' struggle for independence of Spain, it began an era of civic chaos, and went through 70 successive revolutions. As a consequence, violent party loyalties �are the order of the day in Colombia; and the party not in political control even as I speak is smuggling arms across the border and carrying on a guerilla warfare against the Government. Unfortunately, American Protestant missionaries adopt an utterly foolish approach towards their selfimposed task of converting Colombians from Catholicism to Protestantism. They not only publicly abuse the Catholic religion instead of preaching their own positive doctrines, but have only too often encouraged the revolutionaries and bandits in the hope that a change of Government will be to their own advantage; and that the revolutionaries, once in power, will not forget their sympathy. Dr. W. Stanley Rycroft, secretary to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, reported in 1952 that during his visit to Colombia he found that "religious persecution has been an integral part of a virtual civil war in Colombia." It is not surprising that, in such a setting, Protestant missionaries who identify themselves with revolutionary elements sometimes get hurt.
That is not true. In 1950, the Archbishop of Bogota, the Capital of Colombia, issued a Pastoral Letter to be read in all Catholic Churches, in which he said "all violence against Protestants must be scrupulously avoided." The priests, however, could not neglect the duty of warning Catholics against yielding to the proselytizing efforts of Protestant missionaries and of denouncing the calumnies against the Catholic Church broadcast by those missionaries. At about the same time, a protest, signed by 250 prominent Colombian citizens was handed to the American ambassador, Mr. C. M. Waynick, which expressed regret for irresponsible violence against Protestants, but declared that "the incidents had been provoked by bitter propaganda which aimed at destroying the Catholic religion professed by the overwhelming majority of Colombians, and by the adoption of insulting and audacious ways, unworthy of true Protestants." On Dec. 13th, 1951, in response to an inquiry from the Australian Catholic newspaper, "The Tribune," the British Embassy at Bogota, in Colombia, warned against "a hysterical misrepresentation of the facts, representing as it does, isolated acts of hooliganism as being general throughout the country. This is certainly not the case." (Signed: F. F. Garner, First Secretary.) It was not without good reason that President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, in 1953, complained to a group of 40 United States newspaper men at Bogota, Colombia, about the inaccurate and often completely erroneous reports circulated throughout the world by Protestants in their efforts to discredit Colombia. And he pointed out to them that not only does the law in Colombia guarantee freedom of worship, but that hundreds of non-Catholics live there without their ever being molested because of their religion, these non-Catholics having always respected the beliefs and practices of Columbia's Catholic people.
The Catechism teaches that no one outside the Catholic Church through his own fault can be saved.
I do. Protestant missionaries have gone to the various South American States, tactlessly treating the Catholic people there as if they were heathens needing to be converted to Christianity. Then they have complained of the intolerance of Catholics on finding that they were not welcomed with open arms. As for any violence with which they have met, the Catholic Church has never either advised or condoned that, however great a provocation the anti-Catholic utterances of many of these missionaries have been to the Catholic populace.
Protestantism the Catholic Church must view with regret and coti*ft said demnation. Knowing herself to be the one true Church, and that it is the will of Christ that all professing Christians should be united in one fold under one shepherd, she condemns all schisms, heresies and separatist movements which detach people from her own unity. Protestantism began from criticism of abuses among Catholics in the 16th century, but unfortunately, instead of helping to correct them, the first reformers committed the supreme abuse of abandoning the Catholic Church herself. With all the intellectual, moral and spiritual power at her disposal, the Catholic Church is obliged to continue proclaiming the fulness of the Christian truth, denouncing and refuting denials of it. Where, however, it is a question, not of Protestantism as a system, or rather a variety of systems, but of Protestants personally, the case is very different. Towards them her rule is that of charity and sympathy. She acknowledges their sincerity, their lack of responsibility for the fact that by accident rather than by any choice of their own will they have been brought up without any knowledge or understanding of the Catholic religion, the good intentions and upright hearts to be found among multitudes of them. And she teaches Catholics that they are obliged to treat all non-Catholics with nothing but kindness and consideration in daily social life, and to pray that they too may receive from God the light to see the truth of the Catholic religion, the grace to embrace it, and the privilege of sharing to the full in all the immense blessings it could bring into their lives.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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