Belloc predicts death of Protestantism...

The Mansion House, Dublin

Cutting a potentially long story short I would like to say that this Blog promotes all of Belloc's output: be it good, bad or indifferent. With this in mind, some readers may be slightly offended by the following post. But Belloc wouldn't be Belloc if he wasn't, on occasion, provocative!

''Protestantism is hopelessly dead and has nothing left but a fossil difficult of digestion and incapable of propagation, according to the famous author, Hilaire Belloc, who was speaking yesterday [16 October 1913] at the eleventh annual conference of The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin.

Mr. Belloc, who was speaking on the place of the Catholic Church in the modern world, continued by prophesying that the coming years would see the Catholic Church prevail amongst religions, not least because Freemasonry had grown old and become ridiculous, while Jewish finance, for so many generations a secret enemy, had been dragged out into the open.

Cardinal Logue, the primate of All Ireland, presided over the conference which drew a large number of other members of the Catholic hierarchy and members of the clergy to its sessions.

Other speeches focused on the issue of housing the poor, with reference to the Church Street tenement collapse, and on a Catholic interpretation of the labour movement.''

Source - RTE online historical archive.