American Passionists in Argentina
In our present age when the United States of America are sending out so many and such well-equipped men to the various parts of the world in the interest of science, commerce, and finance; and in particular when the grand and noble Republic of Argentina is the recipient of so many picked men of great intellectual and executive ability, one is tempted perhaps to think of America merely as the colossal scientific, commercial, and financial marvel of the world. To an outside observer who hears of her great progress in what we commonly call material things, and even in the more strictly intellectual things, America may appear as a great, big, successful, intellectual animal, without heart or soul religiously.
What a gigantic blunder such a thought would be! America, taken as a whole, is just as religious as it is scientific, commercial, and financial. I do not say you do not meet with irreligion, nor with crime, nor with Paganism pure and simple, for you do. I do not say you will not find un-Christian selfishness, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, for you will. Yet, I maintain that these are but, the ignoble exceptions, and as it were shadows, throwing into sublimest highlight the noble, generous, religious, God-fearing, and God-loving soul of America.
If America in a spirit of broad generosity strives to make other nations and peoples the benefitted recipients of her scientific, commercial, and financial abundance, so too in a moral and religious way does she strive to assist them, especially those nations which are entirely or mostly Pagan, and those other nations which while entirely and deeply religious and Christian, yet by reason of greatly scattered populations, or because of immigration to these places from America, Ireland, England, Scotland and other places where English is the prevailing language. These good religious people finding themselves in a strange land, surrounded by people speaking a different language, naturally long for and need for themselves and for their children, those who can come to them speaking their own language, and bring them the moral support and sweet consolation of their own religion. From the time when America was first able to "stand on their own feet," as we say, till the present time, she has been just as religiously generous in going to the spiritual assistance of these peoples as she has been in helping them in a scientific, commercial, or financial way,—in fact, in the present writer's opinion, even more so.
Not to speak of hundreds of other noble and generous instances, the writer is concerned merely with the Passionist Fathers of the U.S.A. He is not at present speaking of their Missions in Hunan, China, to which place in the past two years they have sent and supported some thirty Missionaries, building Churches, schools, and orphanages; nor is he speaking of the establishment of the American Passionists in Germany. He is merely, confining, himself to the work the American Passionists have done in Argentina.
It is likewise far from the writer's intention to in any way ignore or minimize the excellent work done in Argentina by the good Passionist Fathers from Ireland, and the similarly noble, self-sacrificing, deeply religious work done by the Irish-Argentine Passionists themselves and done, moreover, in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles of every kind. No! In the present article, the writer is confining himself to the work done in and for Argentina by merely the American Passionists.
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