A TERRIBLE PICTURE

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 17, 1890

A TERRIBLE PICTURE.

REV. JOHN BOYLE, a missionary of the Southern Presbyterian Church to Brazil, publishes in the St. Louis Presbyterian a terrible indictment of the Roman Catholic priests of that country. The following is a sample paragraph, the more general statements of which have been preceded by details which fully support them:—

"What a glorious, happy day it will be when these chaste old bachelors (the priests) come to have full sway in the United States! when they can have their families around them and own them publicly! when their children can call them 'papa' instead of 'Father!' when they can have sons-in-law and daughters-in-law and grandchildren! when the prejudiced old bachelor grandpapas can have two or three families, with at least one young wife, even though she be his own niece or cousin! when they can steal the good-looking wives of their poor parishioners! when they can perform a marriage ceremony, and then buy the bride for a few days for thirty-five dollars, as was lately done by a vicar in a town in this province—a fact sworn to by a public official as a notorious fact and published in O Piaz, of Rio de Janeiro, the newspaper of widest circulation; when any chaste old priest has been to the marriage ceremony of the people, and then carry off the young wife as long as he wishes, which happened in S Jose de Tocantins, Goyaz, some years ago! The young brother is now a member of the Provincial Legislature of Goyaz, and I got well acquainted with him there last year. It will be a jolly day for Americans when rich planters or farmers call for their spiritual guides to administer the sacraments of the church to their families, and then run them out of the house and off the place with a revolver, for improper language used to the mother of the family, as lately happened to a vicar in Goyaz, who is a man of education; or when the people must gather and drive their spiritual adviser out of the town and parish, as lately happened to 'Father' Tristoo de Mendonca, vicar of the town of Santa Rita, in Goyaz, as he himself published in one of the Goyaz papers. And this vicar is a man of more than ordinary ability, and so scathing a writer that the bishop is thoroughly afraid of his pen, as he has learned to be from experience."