Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1904 — No Good hi Abusing Other Churches. [ARTICLE]

No Good hi Abusing Other Churches.

Monticello has had a good deal of excitement lately, and much illfeeling has beep created, by the visit there of an alleged ex-Catbolio priest named Seguin and his wife, who held meetings in the various churches, presumably to denounce Catholicism and its various institutions, and certainly to take up collections for an alleged “home” for ex-nuns and priests, they are said to be about to build, but no one seems to know when or where.

Their methods are described by the Herald as morbid and sensational, and while they were still there the Columbian Record, a Catholic paper published at Indi anapolis, had a long article about their record, and denouncing them as frauds. And we think it will generally be found to be the case when ex-priests and ex nuns go about making their living by abus ing the Catholic church, that they left it for reasons not creditable to them. In any case we never knew of any good to result to the religious interests of any community from the visits of this class of alleged “reformers.” As the Monticello Heraid well says, in this connection: “The bitterness that once existed between protestants and catholics is not so pronounced as in times past, and the catholic church is recognized as having a place and a function in the great Christian body. This was evidenced in the Methodist General Conference this week when Justice Lohr, a lay delegate from Deleware condemned all denunciation of other Christian bodies, and speaking particularly of the Roman Catholic church,, said: ‘lt has taken hold of a class of people whom perhaps no other form of. religion could have molded so w ill for the well-being of our common land. I feel like putting my hands under every evangelizing agency in this world that helps to uplift men and not pull them down.’ And this sentiment was received with approval by the conference.”