Missionary Lore
149 MISSIONARY LORE AMERICANS of all denominations have long been interested enough in the work of foreign missions to make substantial contributions toward its support. Indeed, since the...
...The apostolate itself must have a clear knowledge of what manner of human material it is dealing with...
...But it demands interpretation, correlation and, to some extent, correction...
...We wish here to call attention to the able paper setting forth the purposes of this Conference which Dr...
...Nothing would establish so well the solidarity between missionaries and their supporters...
...The Jesuit and Franciscan records of the age of discovery show this very plainly...
...A person who has read nothing else about anthropology would have a fairly broad vision of the field and its possibilities...
...Thus the question suggests itself, would not a deeper understanding of the peoples among whom missionary work is being done make us all more eager to take a hand in that work...
...Thus the prevalent Chinese habit of tossing aside children who tax the family budget overduly, has aroused floods of pity and benevolence...
...Today the Catholic apostolate is profoundly interested in the scientific study of what we may call "lore...
...Several bright papers published in this country (at Maryknoll and elsewhere) encourage this practice...
...During the many years since it began to appear, this journal has printed an almost incomparably interesting dossier of first-hand reports from the missionary field of action...
...To approach a native Patagonian with the best graces of continental society would be to covet scorn and failure...
...Here is to be found the largest collection of facts and observations about the history and habits of "primitive" mankind ever to have been gathered...
...Cooper, is Les Missions Catholiques, of Lyons...
...It is eager to understand their psychology, particularly as it affects religion...
...And so the Catholic Anthropological Conference, to which attention was drawn in The Commonweal some time ago, has been established in the United States...
...Almost everybody who gives is, we suppose, confident that the goal is excellent and not disposed to inquire much further into the subject...
...It was believed—in spite of the old experience—that the superiority of western civilization would be demonstrated by business and industry, leaving the spiritual worker to put on "the finishing touches...
...Thus the help of trained anthropologists is required...
...But the best effort yet made, and strangely enough it is not mentioned by Dr...
...The question has corollaries, of course...
...Even the grandeur of the Himalayas and the sturdiness of the population resident among them has quickened imagination and stimulated charity...
...John M. Cooper has contributed to the November issue of the Ecclesiastical Review...
...Obviously, however, we need also to develop the practice of general reading in this missionary lore...
...Because this magazine is read, for all practical purposes, by the clergy alone, it may be worth while saying that Dr...
...Here and there, however, the campaign for mission funds has profited by stressing matters a little remote from spiritual conversion, but very human and rooted in custom...
...From the very beginnings of Christian missionary endeavor, the truth that an apostle must be, if not a native, then willing to make of himself a native, had pretty well been taken for granted...
...When one remembers the effect of one missionary monograph well done—Rene Bazin's Pere Foucauld—one feels that a publication of the kind we suggest would do a world of good...
...Naturally, the recent world conflict revealed the utter impossibility of progress according to this method...
...But during a later period, religious and commercial ventures among pagans were so closely interrelated and so strictly governed by nationalistic stipulations that a tendency to make the missionary a representative of his own country rather than a "native" became quite prevalent...
...It wishes to know the habits and the history of the so-called primitives...
...Missionaries have swiftly and firmly gone back to the truth...
...We think that if a summary of the subject could be prepared in something like the spirit of Les Missions Catholiques, it would find a welcome, and proffer assistance in a way no text-book or abstractly scientific thesis could...
...Cooper proves the necessity for readable and informative compendia from the vast accumulation of materials supplied by ages of missionaries...
...Indeed, since the war the largest share of the financial burden has been shouldered by this country...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 6
