The Missionary | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 6, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 14.

The Missionary.

ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN CONGO.

THERE were other causes, however, which contributed still more efficiently to the overthrow of Christianity in Congo, than the foreign slave trade. Had this been left to itself, and allowed sufficient time to work out its own natural results, it would, with the utmost certainty, have obliterated every trace of civilization and Christianity. But there were other causes that intervened and did the work more summarily. We allude to the character of the religion the missionaries introduced into Congo; the manner in which that religion was propagated; and the unjustifiable measures that were adopted to uphold it after it became the established religion of the country.

One would naturally suppose, that going among a people so deeply debased, and so utterly ignorant, of course, of everything pertaining to Christianity, as the inhabitants of Congo must have been when they were first discovered by the Portuguese, the missionaries would have taken special pains to instruct them in the principles of the Catholic religion before introducing them into the church. It is but natural to suppose that they would have translated the word of God into their language, established schools for the instruction of the youth, and employed all the ordinary means for diffusing Christian knowledge among the people, in connection with the preaching of the gospel. But the world knows that such a course is no part of the policy of Rome. In all parts of the world where they have attempted to establish their religion, whether in earlier or later times, the baptismal seal has been looked upon as the only thing necessary to convert any heathen into a bona fide member of the Romish Church. They pretended, it is true, to catechise their candidates for baptism, but the ordinance, according to their own statements, was administered with so much rapidity, and in such wholesale style, as utterly to preclude the idea of anything like thorough catechetical instruction.

None but those who have had some experience in training the heathen mind, can understand how slow it is to receive religious instruction. The divinely appointed mode of "giving line upon line, and precept upon precept," and this persevered in for a long period, is indispensably necessary to impart to their minds the first and the simplest principles of revealed religion. But the Congo missionaries made no allowances whatever for the sluggishness of the heathen mind. They either misapprehended its true character, or regarded religious knowledge as a matter of only secondary importance.

Their chief ambition seems to have been to drag as many into the church as possible, and if their merit is to be measured by the number of their converts, they are the most meritorious and praiseworthy men that ever lived. Father Carli states that during his

residence in the capital of Bamba, he seldom baptized less than eight or ten children a day, and not unfrequently fifteen or twenty. During a residence of two years he baptized 2,700. One missionary in Chiovachianza is reported to have baptized 5,000 children in a few days. Another missionary baptized 12,000 persons in Sogno in less than a year. Father Merolla states that he had baptized as many as 272 in one day, and in less than five years, he had baptized more than 13,000. He mentions the case of a brother missionary who had baptized 50,000; and of another who during a residence of twenty years had baptized more than 100,000.

The missionaries, however, did not confine themselves to the single ordinance of baptism. They introduced, as far as they could, all the rites and ceremonies of the Romish Church. The mass was celebrated with all due pomp; the confessional was erected in almost every village; penances of all grades and kinds were imposed; children and adults alike were required to perform the rosary, and the people en masse soon learned to make the sign of the cross, and most readily did they fall into the habit of wearing crucifixes, medals, and relics.

There were certain heathenish customs, however, which the missionary fathers found much difficulty in inducing the people to abandon; and they were never entirely successful until they substituted others of a similar character, which the natives regarded as a sort of equivalent for those they were required to give up. One of the missionary fathers has very ingenuously placed the customs which were abolished, and those which were substituted in their place, side by side in his journal, little imagining how forcibly others would be struck by the family likeness of the two. The limits of this article will not allow us to extract extensively from his journal, but a brief reference to a few of these customs will be quite sufficient to justify the remark just made. It was a custom of the country, for example, to bind a cord of some kind around the body of every new-born infant, to which were fastened the bones and teeth of certain kinds of wild animals, which was regarded as a sort of a charm to preserve the health and life of the child. This practice was regarded by the missionaries as an offense of high grade, and the mother who had the temerity to present her child for baptism with one of these heathenish cords about it, was scourged in public and in the severest manner. In the place of this, the missionaries enjoined "that all mothers should make the cords with which they bound their infants of palm leaves that had been consecrated on palm Sunday; and moreover guard them well with other such relics as we are accustomed to use at the time of baptism."

Another custom that was regarded as not less objectionable by the missionaries, was the practice of handing over every new-born infant to a native priest or sorcerer to tell its fortune, which they pretended to be able to do by examining its form, its limbs, and countenance. In the place of this, they enjoined "that all mothers, after the birth of their first-born, should carry it to the church and perform the ceremony of entering into the holy place; and if it be sick, we order its mother to recommend it to the Lord, together with some sort of a vow."