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Show A CLERICAL "MUCK-RAKER." Robert Speer, secretary of the foreign board of missions of the Presbyterian church, made a vicious attack on the Roman Catholic Church of South America in today's session of the World's Sunday School Convention. The attack made a sensation. While some of the delegates cheered, others were astonished as-tonished and visibly provoked, but the utterance had been made. Among other things Mr. Speer said : "The Roman Catholic Church of South America is not even a Christian organization." "Robert Speer is but one of the many sectarian "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 a Chris-tion Chris-tion people and were coldly received. Returning to the United States, after having failed their expectations, ex-pectations, these irreclaimable bigots become the caluminators of a courteous and friendly race, whose inferiority must, according to detractors like Robert Speer, be the damning consequence of their Catholic faith. Now, let us Isten to a disinterested Protestant witness, Mr. J. B. Frisbee, who lived for thirty years among these Latin-American people. He is writing of Mexico, whose people are kith and kin to those of South America, and which was recently stigmatized by Rev. Lyman Harper as "a barbarous and backward country. Here are a few extract! taken from Mr. Frisbee 's article, reprinted by the "Ave Maria" May 7: "To call a country barbarous whose enormous Indian In-dian population, excepting a few wild tribes, is ab solutely docile, law-abiding and Christian; whose upper classes compare favorably with the aristocracy aristoc-racy of any nation in the world, in birth, education, character and gentility; whose government is striving striv-ing its utmost for the uplift of its people; where the education of the masses is being enhanced day by day; where strikes and labor unions are unknown; where cranks 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 one of the very greatest men of his time rules with wisdom and justice is certainly employing employ-ing the phrase to signify what ts very antithesis would better express." Here is what Mr. Frisbee writes of the religion of these aLtin" Americans : Mexico (like South America) is Catholic absolutely, abso-lutely, immutably Catholic. No amount of proselytizing prosely-tizing will ever make the slightest inroad upon the established religion of the country. The faith is there ,and there to stay. The men are good Catholics Catho-lics generally, many of them magnificent exponents of Catholic manhood; and the women are strong in their faith. Volumes have been written about the irreligion of Mexico. As a rule, they contain an ounce of truih and a ton of fiction, and are begotten begot-ten of either ignorance or prejudice. Without doubt they are flagrantly unjust to Church and country and people. Visitors to the country go there harboring harbor-ing wrong impressions, obtdned from such writings. Invariably they depart for their homes with such impressions entirely eradicated, edified by what they have seen, filled with admiration for the religious zeal and patriotism of the Mexican people, and stirred by the ideal democracy exhibited in the churches, where aristocrat and peon worship side by side." We have met many Protestant gentlemen who lived for years in these countries and they have invariably in-variably spoken of their citizens in language as appreciative ap-preciative as that of Mr. Frisbee. It used to be the i "priest-riden and ignorant Irish," but the tr-biip.-, Celt wouldn't stand for it and the bigots an,; ,. ' howlers are now turning on our inoffensive :, courteous southern neighbors noighlw.r , vj Mr. Taft recently said: "For courtesy .ma r- ment they are not surpassed by any pcupl,. j., . ) rope or the United States." ' |