The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-05-28
A CLERICAL ''MUCK-RAKER. -

Robert Speer, secretary of the foreign board of
missions of the Presbyterian, church, made vicious
attack on the Roman Catholic Church of South
America in today's session of the Worlds Sunday
School Convention The attack made sensation.
While some of the delegates cheered, others
tonshed and visbly provoked but the utterance had
been made.
Among other things Mr.. Speer said:
FEThe Roman Catholic Church of South America
is not even Christian organization"
''Robert Speer is but one of the many seetarian
'muck-rakers' with whom our country is afflicted,
if not accursed The defamers of South America
are, as a rule, returned and disappointed sectarian
missionaries, who intruded themselves on Chris
ton people and were coldly received. Returning to
the United States, after having failed their ex-
pectations, these irreclaimable bigots become the
ealumnators of courteous and friendly race, whose
inferiority must according to deractors like Robert
Speer be the damnng consequence of their Catholic
faith.
Now, let us listen to disinterested Protestant
Witness Mr.. J. B. Frisbee, who lived for thirty years
among these Latin-Ameriean people. He is writing
of Mexico, whose people kith and kin
to those of South America and which was recently
stigmatized by Rev. Lyman Harper as ga barbarous
and backward country. Here are few extracts
taken from Mr. Frisbee's article, reprinted by the
Gave Maria" May Z:
'FTo call country barbarous whose enormous In
dian population excepting few wild tribes is alb
solutely docie, law-abiding and Christian; whose
upper classes compare favoraby with the aristoc-
racy of any nation in the world, BIRTH education
ing its utmost for the upft of its people, where the
education of the masses is being enhanced day by
day. where strikes and labor unions are unknown;
where eranks and anarchists are not permitted to
enter; where divorce is not tolerated; where the
people of all classes are devoted to their religion
and where of the very greatest men of his time
rules with wisdom and JUSTICES certainly employ
ing the phrase to signify what is very antithesis
would better express"
Here is what Mr.. Frisbee writes of the religion |
IF these attn Americans:
Mexico like South America) is Catholic--abs,-
utely, immutably Catholic. No amount of prosely-
zing will ever make the slightest inroad upon the
religion of the country. The faith is
here land there to stay. The are good Catno-
les generally many of them magnificent opponents
# Catholic manhood; and the women are strong in
heir faith Volumes have been written about the
religion of Mexico. As rule, they contain an
unee of truth and ton of fiction, and are begot-
en- of either ignorance prejudice. Without doubt
hey are flagrantly unjust to Church and country
nd people Visitors to the country go there harbor-
ng wrong Impressions obtained from such writings
they depart for their homes with such
Impressions entirely eradicaed, edited by what they
ave seen, filled with admiration for the religious
cal and patriotism of the Mexican people, and
TIRED by the ideal democracy exhibited in the
hurches, where aristocrat and peon worship side by
de"
We have met many Protestant gentlemen who
we'd for years in these countries and they have in
ariably spoken of their citizens in language as APP
reciative that of Mr.. Frisbee. 1t used to be the