It is impossible to wish well to the Russian missions anywhere. Undoubtedly one would rejoice to see heathen baptized and taught the faith of Christ, if only it were done by any one except by Russians. But Russian missions, enormously subsidized by the Government, are, always and everywhere, the thin end of the wedge for Russian conquest.
Look at the countries where Russia has political interests or ambitions—Syria, Persia, Manchuria, China, Japan, Alaska—there you will find Russian missionaries; look at places where the Czar has no policy—Egypt, Africa, South America, &c.—there the Church of Russia is unheard of. And Russia, even when it has only a protectorate, means at once intolerance and persecution of every other form of Christianity.[1] One remembers the long list of crimes wrought by the tyrants at Petersburg and by their servant the Holy Synod, the ghastly story of Poland, the Ruthenian persecution, the dead Georgian Church, the Roumanian Church crushed in Bessarabia, the ruthless harrying of the Armenians, and one realizes that Russia and her ecclesiastical arrangements are the common enemy of the rest of Christendom.[2] And of all the millions of people who rejoice at the crushing defeat of this barbarous State in the late war no one has more reason for joy than the Catholic missionaries who can now again breathe in peace in Manchuria. It is wonderful that, in spite of the intolerance of the Government, Russia should teem with dissenters. Leaving out of account at present the Latin
- ↑ Three years ago Russia and China made a treaty about Tibet. This is one of its clauses: "In Tibet complete liberty of worship shall be established for the Orthodox Russian Church and for the Buddhist religion. Every other religion shall be absolutely forbidden" (E. d'Or. viii. p. 50). The treaties of 1858 and 1860 that marked the advancement of Russia in Manchuria put an absolute end to the Catholic missions there. Meanwhile, under the rule of the more civilized yellow man, Leo XIII was able to establish four Catholic sees in Japan.
- ↑ Even of her Orthodox sisters. Nothing can exceed the hatred now shown by the Phanariote and Greek Orthodox for Russia, who is responsible for all the Bulgarian trouble, and for the gradual destruction of their supremacy everywhere. For the violent language they use against the "persecutor of all the Churches of God," see E. d'Or. vii. p. 366.
Silbernagl, pp. 146–147. An Imperial Ukaze has given the Bishop of Alaska two vicars (in 1903 and 1904) for the Russian Church in the United States, See E. d'Or. vii. pp. 231–235, and viii. p. 103.
