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.
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