SPANISH EXCESSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 40, 17 February 1937, Page 13

SPANISH EXCESSES.

POSITION OF CATHOLICS.

BISHOP LISTON'S COMMENT

Comment on a London cablegram published yesterday, stating that the absence of anti-religious propaganda or molestation of Protestant churches or pastors while many Roman Catholic chuffches were destroyed and priests killed had impressed the Anglican Free Church group who had returned from Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, was made by the Right Rev. Dr. J. M. Liston, Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland. Bishop Lieton said that the statement attributed to the group was. notable for its reticence and its imagination.

"Reticence," said Bishop Liston, "is shown on such well-established facts as the suppression of religious worship in districts still under the Spanish Government, the holding up of Christmas Day to official contempt, the destruction or closing of every church in Barcelona, the disallowance of any Christian marriage or burial for the past five months, the putting to death of more than 40 per cent of the priests of the country, and the trampling underfoot by the destructionists of the monuments, churches, rites and oven God, of the Catholic people of Spain.

"Reticence, too, has been exhibited on the indisputable fact of the splendid awakenings of the religious spirit of the true Spanish people, and the general rifling, both in regions where the Catholic faith has remained most living, and in othere where it has been suffer ing through Communistic and atheistic propaganda.

"While in some placee churches, have been burned, priests murdered, and the name of God cursed, in others crowds are to be seen praying for God's forgiveness, priests are shown every eign of respect and many die crying out, 'Long live Christ," , continued the bishop.

"Thie talk of the wealth of the Church in Spain is aheer nonsense and imagination. From the days of Napoleon, the Church has been harassed under the influence of Continental Liberalism. A century ago the Liberal ministry confiscated and auctioned all the land of the Chnrch in Spain, and more than once einre there has been spollution on similar lines. "The great bulk of the parish clergy have l>e»pn woefully poor but content. and the religious orders, although expelled times in the past 130 years, have returned to set up educational establishments of every kind and of the firet quality," eaid Bishop Liston. "A glance at the map disperses the notion that the Church has anything to do with capitalism," Biehop Lie ton added. "It was in capitalistic Spain that Marxism became strong, and in non-capitalistic Spain that the Church kept the loyalty of the people. It was only in the large capitalistic centres like Madrid, and, above all, Barcelona, in I the mining districts of Asturias and in Andalusia, that the peasants were

ground down, not by the Church, but hy absentee landlord* and the ranchers. And it was just in these districts that

Communism flourished," Bishop Liston concluded.