The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-05-25
Continued from Page
METHODIST AND THE BIBLE.

METHODIsTs AND THE BIBLE.
Bibles printed for the use of Catho-
lies? Will he dare quote a single
ordinance of Catholic prelates in South
America forbidding to Catholics the
reading of the Bible? He tells us
that Bibles were taken from Metho-
dist Colporteurs and burnt This may
have happened. But we're not the
volumes that were burnt Bibles bear
ing the impress of Methodist publish
ing-houses, the acceptance of which
adhesion to Methodism, an act of alb
duration of Catholic faith, an act of
belief in the assertions of Methodist
Colporteurs that Catholicism is mass
of superstitious paganism? That the
offerings of Methodist Colporteurs
were now and then thrown into the
fire, that one of those Colporteurs,
Rev. Samuel P. Craver, had stones
pelted at him-this is quite possible.
To South Americans, as to all Catho-
lies, the Catholic faith is the most
sacred of possessions. To stand by
and hear it illuminated and vilified is
to exercise over oneself degree of
self-control of which red-hot Spanish
blood is not always capable, which,
indeed, it has not been quite easy to
the ordinarily cool-headed Catholics of
Minneapolis and St. Paul to put into
practice beneath the torrent of insults
to their Church, of calumnious mis-
representations of it's doctrines and
practices, flowing daily, for the past
few weeks, from platforms and bench
es of official Methodism meeting in
Quadrennial Conference. Verify, if
somewhere in South America stone
did not, now and then, find it's way
to a Methodist Colporteur, we might
be tempted to believe other reports set
forth by Methodist missionaries to
South America that Catholic faith
there is dead, that the populations
with palpitating bosom and open hand
are welcoming the arrival of Method
ism.
Conference Ratifies Charge.
The Quadrennial Conference has
formally ratified and made to be it's
own the stultifying assertions of it's
missionaries to Italy and South Ameri-
ca as to the exclusion of the Bible
from those countries. It's official reso-
luton reads: Whereas, in all those
lands, which form large part of the
missionary field of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, the teachings and prac-
tees of Romanism deprive the people
of the Bible - So much
the worse for the Quadrennial Confer
ence as to the love it bears to truth
plain and ostensible.
1t is surprise that the Conference
did not tell us that right here in the
United States, and in other English
speaking countries, the Catholic
Church deprives the people of the
/ Bible. Once started into the race of
calumny on the question of Bible ex-
c1usion, it must have been hard to
repress willing steppings. The temp
tat1on, we may say, was there: but
the peril of detection was too proxi-
| N~SS' SAAoP0S IAO OOA1O1OuCS udu
some inkling of the testimony of Sir
Thomas More, Chancellor of England
under Henry VIII, that "the whole
Bible was even before Wyclif's days
translated by virtuous and well-learned
men into the English tongue, and by
good and godly people was well and
reverently read with devotion and
soberness." Perhaps, too, the Con-
ference was not altogether unmindful
that the first family Bible, or the first
quarto Bible published in the United
States, was issued by a Catholic pub
Usher, Matthew Carey, of Philadelphia,
in 1870. Or perhaps, it bethought it.
self that in the Twin City it is not
so safe to tell huge stories against
American Catholics. as 1t is to tell
them against the Catholics of far-away
Italy and South America.
Henry Ward Beecher used to say
that some people had two requisites
for Heaven: First, do you believe in
Christ? Second, do you hate the
Catholics? Well, then, pass into
Heaven" Are the members of the
/ Quadrennal Conference to be num-
/ bered among Mr.. Beecher's some