Religious Orders in Spain.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 25, 19 June 1902, Page 6

Religious Orders in Spain.

To one living abroad aa much as I do (writes Mrs C. E. Jeffery in the Catholic Times) it seems curious to note the apparent inability of English Catholics to understand the present agitation against the religious Orders in various Catholic countries Yet it seems to me perfectly clear and obvious It is impossible, indeed, to visit any Continental country where this agitation is going on, and to study the foreign newspapers, without gaining the clue to the apparent myst-ry. This week the Catholic Times has a paragraph on the threatened action of the present Government of Spain against the religious Orders. It finishes up by saying : <It is hard to conceive why the people should be so bitterly opposed to inoffensive men and women whose only desire is to lead a quiet life.' Well, the answer to this is that ' the people ' are not opposed to the religious Orders Quite the contrary. The vast majority of the people in all these lands are extremely attached to them— as well they may be, seeing that all the great charitable institutions— the hospitals, schools, and homes of refuge for the poor and the afflicted— are managed by the religious. It is true that a section of the working classes who are not Catholics at all, but Socialists and Anarchists, periodically raise a hue-and-cry against the Religious. Of course these men are stirred up and goaded on by professional agitators, who work them up to frenzy pitch by incendiary speeches, and often subsidise them to commit deeds of violence, as in Portugal, where I heard it said that loafing ruffiana out of work were paid liberally to stone priests and even nuns (notably the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul). In every country nowadays there are two parties violently opposed to eaoh other— namely, the Liberals (so-called), i c., the freethinkers and anti-Christians, who hate all religion, and whose aim is to overthrow it, and the Conservative or clerical party, who make a stand more or less determined against the encroachment of their Godlesa opponents, and in the cause of law and religion. Senor Sagasta, the Spanish Premier, is not even nominally a Catholic, I believe. He is a man of no religion, and a resolute enemy of the Church. He may find ie convenient to cloak his aimi under fair-sounding words, such as declaring that the remonstrances of the Holy See will be treated with respect; but that stands for nothing. To say that the great mass of the populace in Spain or Portugal is inimical to the religious Orders is as unjust and untrue as it would be to say that at the Protestant ' Reformation ' the poor of England were party to the dissolution of the monasteries which were their great refuge and support. So far from the lower classes in Portugal being hostile to the religious Orderi, I was told when I was there that the people were clamoring for their recall and were signing monster petitions to the Government for the repeal of the laws against them.

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