But the Spaniard says adios instead of "good-morning." No
letter closes without the prayer, "God guard your Grace many years!"
They say a judge announces to a murderer his sentence of death with the
sacramental wish of length of days. There is something a little shocking
to a Yankee mind in the label of Lachryma Christi; but in La Mancha they
call fritters the Grace of God.
The piety of the Spanish women does not prevent them from seeing some
things clearly enough with their bright eyes. One of the most bigoted
women in Spain recently said: "I hesitate to let my child go to
confession. The priests ask young girls such infamous questions, that my
cheeks burn when I think of them, after all these years." I stood one
Christmas Eve in the cold midnight wind, waiting for the church doors to
open for the night mass, the famous misa del gallo. On the steps
beside me sat a decent old woman with her two daughters. At last she
rose and said, "Girls, it is no use waiting any longer. The priests
won't leave their housekeepers this cold night to save anybody's soul."
In these two cases, taken from the two extremes of the Catholic society,
there was no disrespect for the Church or for religion. Both these women
believed with a blind faith. But they could not help seeing how unclean
were the hands that dispensed the bread of life.
The respect shown to the priesthood as a body is marvellous, in view of
the profligate lives of many. The general progress of the age has forced
most of the dissolute priests into hypocrisy. But their cynical
immorality is still the bane of many families. And it needs but a glance
at the vile manual of confession, called the Golden Key, the author of
which is the too well known Padre Claret, confessor to the queen, to see
the systematic moral poisoning the minds of Spanish women must undergo
who pay due attention to what is called their religious duties. If a
confessor obeys the injunctions of this high ecclesiastical authority,
his fair penitents will have nothing to learn from a diligent perusal of
Faublas or Casanova. It would, however, be unjust to the priesthood to
consider them all as corrupt as royal chaplains. It requires a
combination of convent and palace life to produce these finished
specimens of mitred infamy.
It is to be regretted that the Spanish women are kept in such systematic
ignorance. They have a quicker and more active intelligence than the
men. With a fair degree of education, much might be hoped from them in
the intellectual development of the country. In society, you will at
once be struck with the superiority of the women to their husbands and
brothers in cleverness and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife
always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged
in a bargain.
