The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger

CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT MISSIONS.—At a recent meeting of a Wesleyan Missionary Association, London, the Rev. Josiah Cox, a Methodist missionary, forcibly contrasted the labors of Catholic and Protestant missionaries in China and other parts of the East. The following are the opening sentences of his address, reported in the Methodist Recorder:

I am afraid I have more to say than time will admit of my telling you, and I ought to content myself, therefore, with giving you a short sketch of the Wuchang mission, but I cannot help just referring for a moment to some general topics suggested in the report which we have just heard read by Mr. Wiseman. In the summary which he gave us of Protestant missions I could not but contrast the facts he detailed with the number of Roman Catholic missionaries at present laboring in China. We have in all 152, from all the Churches of America, Germany and Great Britain; but there are 516 bishops, priests and ordained native ministers laboring for the spread of the Roman Catholic faith in China, besides upwards of 800 priests in Japan, Thibet, Cochin China, Tonquin, and other places, in which there is not a single representative of any Protestant mission with the exception of two American missionaries in Japan. Therefore the Roman Catholic priests in China proper are four times as numerous as the ordained priests supported by Protestant Churches of Great Britain. I am often grieved to hear the caricatures which are sometimes given of Roman Catholics, instead of looking to the work which Romanism is doing even in the uttermost part of the earth. I have traveled pretty widely as a missionary and as a colporteur in ultra-Gangetic Asia, but my farthest roamings in either capacity have never brought me to any region where I could not trace the work of Roman Catholic missionaries who had preceded me.

Amidst the misrepresentations to which Catholics are subjected, we are from time to time gratified at the disinterested defense accorded to us by honest Protestants. Such is the following, delivered by I. N. Hays of Cook County, at the late Constitutional Convention in Illinois. We can only find room for the conclusion:

I owed it to my constituents, a large portion of whom have, with their co-religionists, been misrepresented and slandered on this floor, charged with the design to overthrow the free institutions of the country and that by gentlemen who are themselves seeking to change the constitution of the State in the interest of their own sectarian schemes. I owed it to the cause of truth and justice: I owed it to popular rights and freedom of conscience, now openly attacked, and I owed it to religion, in whose sacred name, under whose holy garb, this great wrong and outrage is sought to be done.

I will notice the aspersions upon that portion of our people who belong to the Catholic Church. I regret that there is not in this body any professed member of that Church to speak for it. I am not a member of that denomination, but I can now speak without prejudice. Starting out with a strong bias against the Catholic doctrines, believing sincerely the charges which I have heard repeated in this debate, and regarding the Church as corrupt and anti-Christian, I have, after an investigation of ten years, come to the conclusion that I have myself been in error; and that the Christian religion has been preserved, and still exists within the bosom of that Church, and that the vocation of its clergy, and the only purpose of its hierarchy, is the service of God, and the salvation of human souls.

The charges made here against the Catholics, and urged with passionate declamation, is that they design to overthrow the free institutions of this country. I ask where is the evidence to sustain this charge? I challenge investigation. I appeal to history. From the day when Lord Baltimore landed his Catholic colony on the shores of Maryland, and set the example of universal toleration, down to the present hour, I wish to know when and where the Catholics have ever failed in their duty to their country, or been found in opposition to her laws or institutions?—Was it in the revolutionary war? History answers that they were at every post of peril, and crowded every battle-field; that generous Catholics from beyond the seas, Kosciusko, and De Kalb, and Lafayette, and Rochambeau, aided in our struggle, and with them thousands of our Catholic allies, sent to us by the Catholic King of France. Who could say that we would have gained our independence without that aid? Was it in the war of 1812? Was it in the Mexican war, waged against a Catholic nation? Did any one ever hear that our Catholic citizens refused to serve the country in that war? Was not Shields there, and Morrison, and Lawler, and thousands with them? Was it in the recent gigantic struggle against armed rebellion? Here was the golden opportunity for all who had evil designs to aid in the overthrow of the Government. Where were the Catholics in that struggle? Did they ally themselves with the public enemy, to obtain advantages for themselves or their religion? Did not every State send her thousands of Irish, and German, and French, and American Catholics to the defence of the country? Did any of them turn their backs on the enemy? Every one knows that regiment after regiment of Catholics went from our cities. In Chicago Father Dunne, a Catholic Priest, raised a regiment. From a hundred thousand graves of heroes slain in our defense, over each of which, if found by their kindred, a wooden cross would gleam white in the sunshine, come the reproachful words, "It is not true that we, who died for our country, have been traitors to her cause." Who does not remember the death of the brave Mulligan of Chicago? I knew him well; brave he was as any knight of chivalry; pure, upright, devout. When wounded unto death, he lay on the field of battle, his soldiers sought to take him up, what were the last words of this true and faithful son of the Catholic Church, now denounced as being hostile to American liberties? "Boys, let me lie, and save the flag." What flag was that? Was it the flag of king or emperor? No; it was the red, white and blue—the star spangled banner of the United States—which, in his dying hour, when the blood was oozing from his wounds, was precious in his sight—more precious than his own life. Yet such sacrifices as these are not enough to shield the Catholics from this false and unworthy charge.