THE BARCELONA RISING

New Zealand Tablet, 14 October 1909, Page 1623

THE BARCELONA RISING

SERMON BY HIS LORDSHIP BISHOP GRIMES

Addressing the congregation in the Catholic .Cathedral, Christchurch, on Sunday,' his Lordship Bishop Grimes spoke as follows: —

You will doubtless be surprised at the unusual course 1 am about to take in speaking from this pulpit of anytlimg that appears in a secular paper. The nature and the circumstances of the case will, I trust, • amply justify me in this unwonted action. An article, entitled 'Spain ot 1 o-day,' and The. Barcelona Rising,' Avas given pride or place yesterday in one of our local newspapers— one that is much read by our Catholics in this diocese and in other parts of the Dominion. The article is from the pen of a well-known professor, who long held the chair of English Language, Literature, and History in the leading college of Canterbury, and it is for the most part a mere travesty of truth. J

The writer begins by observing that he had the good fortune to enter Spain as the Barcelona rising began. He did not venture near its zone, because of wrecked railways >J • j shortness of time « hut he.' listened to its echoes in Madrid, Toledo, and other important cities of -the centre and .south of Spain. To justify the large perspective he meant to give his own and the imagination of prejudiced persons whose views he was copiously to draw from, he picturesquely remarks that there is more perspective in viewing a conflagration at some distance from it. He tells us that the Government in Spain has established a rigorous censorship on all news, and therefore the newspapers are the last places to look for truth. Hence it is not from the press of the country that he obtains his information or receives his impressions. Nay, lie tells us that we have only to listen to the echoes that reached him from the regions around, and we shall understand the full significance of the movement from a national point of view. The Spanish Government, be bids us believe on his own ipse dixit, is, with the Queen-mother and the young King, wholly under tho thumb of the Jesuits; hence it would have us look upon the recent rising as a. purely anarchist movement. He furthermore assures us that the most significant feature of the Barcelona riots is their anti-ecclesiasticism, the revolutionists having set themselves chiefly against the monastic institutions and the churches, whilst the ' women ' were the most conspicuous in the rising against the Church, clearly showing, he adds, that it is not the workmen and peasants alone that are getting to hate the Church, but their wives and daughters, though he actually expresses his fears that their efforts in this respect are only sporadic. He gives what he flatters himself will be as amusing to his readers as to himself, a ludicrous example of the widespread superstition of the women of Spain. As to the Spanish men, ' masculine irreverence ' is the order of the day, because, forsooth, he did not see them cap in hand before the priests, nor continually on bended knees before them, their churches, or ecclesiastical things — this, he adds, despite the efforts made by the Jesuits to give and get recognition. The ex-professor obviously has a Jesuit bee in his bonnet. Without a word of condemnation of the brutal violence of the rioters towards helpless nuns and monks and priests, the chief victims of the Anarchist rising, he would fain have \is take comfort from the significant fact that these being the chief victims, and that the buildings burnt being mostly ecclesiastical and conventual, ~we can so readily get at the meaning of the revolution ; for, he would have us know, large sections of the Spanish people have come to believe that these are hotbeds of secret license and crime.

Like tlie three tailors of Tooley street, he presumes to warn the King and the Queen and the whole Spanish Government not to remain any longer under the yoke of the crafty and designing Jesuits. He warns them that unless they speedily shake off that galling yoke, the Monarchy will be replaced by a Republic with all the privileges of a Godless education for the soulless masses. Now, I, too, have spent some time in Spain, and, notably, in Barcelona. A few years ago I there held an Ordination, with the permission of the Archbishop of that city. During my stay there I freely mixed with all classes, from the highest to the lowest. .1 had the advantage to assist at all the offices of Holy Week in that city, and I fearlessly affirm that outside Catholic Ireland I never witnessed more reverence and more seemingly genuine piety in church' than in that and the other cities of Spain. The Governor and the Mayor of Barcelona, judges and barristers, journalists,- the highest officials in the Army, and men of other profession**, were conspicuous by their presence and respectful bearing in that vast cathedral, as well as for their deferential manner towards the priests and religious . . . whom they met in the streets. On Holy Thursday I saw far more men than^ women — men in their hundreds — in prayer before the altars, and in adoration of the most Blessed Sacrament. I most vehemently and fearlessly protest against the gratuitous and reckless assertion -that large sections of the Spanish people have come to believe that the ecclesiastical and conventual buildings in Spain are hotbeds of secret license and crime. I protest, too, against the untruthful assertion that the women of Spain were in the vanguard' of

tisan deem it an honor and a privilege to have Driest? ™rf peaceful dwel ings inoffensive citizens 4ose only crime was that, under the protection of Divine and- human law? they le?lnd e ren themSelVe A S ff° < * re °f the ° r P hans aS tagJ if J A i i ' \.T Aft ? r havin S destroyed with the fury of vandals venerable art treasures . . . they indulged m an unbridled orgie of passions amidst the ruins of the razed convents, eager to secure supposed proofs of torments and crimes that existed only in the imagination o ? the w eked instigators of the conflagration. . . We can aSS with the fullest knowledge that the convents and regions Houses have never been, as the. public have been Jive? to X ( leToe and TV "criminals, nor dens of mfsterious the vnp'fiosL 1S °tlyt Iy - the secta " an S ? irit that could circulate oMe£ tW ?n f im f / nd whi <* has no other object than to root out from the hearts of our people the th'p foTf a - ntS ?\ the faith-that- faitlf which is the fountain of heavenly virtues and which never excites furious passions - The religious houses, we repeat* arl S, r eS J ecollectlon and P^yer, always 'open for works of me y and ?<«<*?* ever accessible to the free action of ecclehnvo'^k?/^ 1^ 1 W una > *► *hpm, <m every occasion, we have aftorded facilities for the investigation of the suugosed crimes, , our interments not being clandestine, but burials authorised by the laws of the land.' '. J-Jo writer of the article to which I deem it my painful duty to refer appears to think that all Spain is like Barcelona. Now -we know that Barcelona-convenientfy situated on the borders of France, and not too far from Italy and Switzerland— has long been the hotbed of revolution and the home of foreign anarchists, from the neighboring countries It is well known to be the centre and focus of All the revolutions which have convulsed Spain durine the last century down to the recent anarchist riot in Barcelona may be traced to the secret or open ' orders' tKrfT g °| 1? i i° T f h ™ m the L ? dges " Does the writer of the article— which shouM never have appeared without a word of comment in a respectable Christchurch paper—wish the Lodges to order a Republic in Spain as they have in unhappy France? In the manifesto for the Grand Orient issued November 4, 1904, it is said: 'We declare to +!,« whole Freemason body that, in furnishing ttese document . (spy denunciations) the Grand Orient has accomplished only a stnet duty. We have dearly conquered the Repubw-' +1 ai ld . « ail S. the honor , ?f? f \ avi ng procured its triumph Without the Freemasons;' it adds, 'the Republic would Sot be in existence— Pius X. would be reigning in Franc? ' Instead of trying to make capital out of the superstitious, though certainly harmless, practices of the women of Spam, the writer, would do better to cry down the, stupid practices of his own. country women who encourage the many lying fortune-tellers whom our laws are powerless to prevent from defrauding so many in every walk of society