Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language

But side by side with these new religions were the traditional ones, and Esperantists were also active in Catholic and Protestant circles. In their case, and mirroring the universalist message of the language, ecumenism and inter- confessional dialogue were important concerns in their agenda.14

Catholic Esperantists were the first to organize. In 1902, the French Emile Peltier (1870-1909), the parish priest of a small town near Tours, tried to cre- ate a Catholic Esperanto organization. But instead of an organization, he had to content himself with a journaclass="underline" Espero Katolika (Catholic Hope). Already in its first issue of October 1903, Father Peltier made it very clear what kind of Catholicism he stood for. Contrary to the authoritarian and condescend- ing shepherd-and-flock paradigm of conservative Catholics, Peltier pledged to the Esperanto community his willingness to cooperate on an equal footing with other Esperantists, Catholics or not. As he put it: "We are happy to see that Socialists, Jews, Protestants, and Freemasons have their [Esperanto]

journals We will go further: we will open our journal to everybody. In all

fairness, we do not think that we own the universal truth, and are ready to concede that people whose religious ideas diverge from ours can teach us many things."15 Statements like these could attract an audience among the more liberal and social Catholics, but they also distanced traditional Catholics from the Esperanto movement, as some contemporaries pointed out. In any case, the more involved Peltier and likeminded Catholics became in the Esperanto movement, the more they drifted away from mainstream, official Catholicism to embrace ecumenism. Very much enthused after his participation in the Boulogne Congress, Peltier went so far as to publish in Espero Katolika a call for the creation of an Esperantist group of ecclesiastics of all Christian faiths. This group, according to his plan, would reunify all Christian religions. But Peltier was too far ahead of his time, and his ecumenical visions did not ma- terialize. He died in 1909, and the next year the Internacia Katolika Unuiĝo Esperantista (IKUE), which Peltier had first envisioned, was created.16

From 1911 to 1914, IKUE organized its own annual congresses, and in 1920 it resumed its international activities after the interruption of World War I. By this time the organization—weaker and more tightly controlled by the Catholic hierarchy—faced a strong competitor in the German priest Max Josef Metzger (1887-1944). In 1916, and while IKUE was almost inoperative, Metzger created the World Peace League of the White Cross (for the white cross usually imprinted on the sacred host in the Eucharistic). This was a pac- ifist and Catholic organization, which promoted the creation of a league of nations based on democratic and Christian principles of truth and justice. The White Cross wanted to unify the scattered groups of progressive Catho- lics that mushroomed during the war in Germany and abroad, as well as join- ing forces with other Catholic and non-Catholic pacifist organizations. Since it was an international organization, and Esperanto was widely used in the pacifist movement, the working language of the White Cross was Esperanto. In 1918 Metzger also founded the Peace League of German Catholics (Frie- densbund deutscher Katholiken), a non-Esperanto branch of the White Cross. Pacifism, however, was not Metzgers only concern. As a Catholic theologian, he was also involved in the German ecumenical movement, the Hochkirchlich- Oekumenischer Bund (High-Church Ecumenical League), created at the ini- tiative of some progressive German Protestants, to whose journal Una Sancta Metzger regularly contributed.