Religion: Sphere of Influence?

Last month Catholic Digest printed an article by Episcopalian John Erskine in which he termed Protestant missions south of the Rio Grande “the work of pure destruction,” urged their abandonment. Catholic Digest in turn suggested that such missionary activity “violates our Good Neighbor policy” and that the U.S. “should cease to make divisions in South America.” Last week the Christian Century, leading Protestant weekly, returned the salvo: “There are enough religiously indifferent people in South America to give Protestant missionaries an ample field for a century. What if they do proselyte? So does the Roman Catholic Church.”

This week Catholic Digest was back in the battle with another article by a Protestant, the New York Herald Tribune’s veteran Correspondent John W. White. Said Newsman White, who likes to keep his categories separate: “My interest in the problem is purely patriotic and political, not religious. If we are sincere in our desire to make the Western Hemisphere safe for democracy, we must have the real friendship of our South American neighbors. The first and most important step in winning that friendship would be to call home our missionaries.”