Roman Catholicism in Spain. Anonymous

such a change is, that the clergy themselves know the state of degradation into which they have fallen—the total loss of their influence and of their importance—without making the least effort to raise themselves from that state of humiliation and abasement.

      On two recent occasions have been seen evident proofs of the utter prostration of that class which once domineered over the entire nation. When the famous Merino attempted, in the summer of 1851, to assassinate Isabella II., and also during the political convulsions of July 1854, from the results of which the liberal party remained triumphant, so fearful were the clergy of exciting the popular indignation, and so persuaded were they that public opinion was against them, that their prelates advised them not only to abstain from appearing in the streets in their clerical costume, but even to discontinue the use of the church-bells, with which they had been in the habit of calling their congregations to the mass and other religious exercises. This advice was followed with as much eagerness and precipitation by the clergy, as though they wished to hide themselves from public notice, or as though they had been guilty of some illicit and scandalous offence.

      It is clear that, to some extent, such a transition is the result of that state of poverty to which the secular clergy have been reduced; and hence it is that many priests, particularly those in the country, have given themselves up to a variety of secular pursuits and speculations, which are expressly prohibited by the canon laws, and which appear incompatible with the dignity and character of their ministry. Some of them have become publicans, others coach-proprietors, and not a few of them smugglers on the coasts and frontiers—a propensity, however, to which they have always been addicted, even in the times of their greatest prosperity.

      We have spoken of the ultramontanism of the Spanish clergy. Never had those doctrines more fanatical defenders, nor sectarians more fiery partisans, than the ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula; the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, the superiority of his jurisdiction with respect to the bishops and to the general councils, was propagated not only in books but in the pulpit and the confessional. Nevertheless the enlightened ministers of Charles III., Aranda, Campomanes, and Floridablanca (the first initiated in the school of French philosophers of the eighteenth century, and the last two in that of the learned and pious recluses of Port-Royal), after having procured from the king the abolition and banishment of the Jesuits, desired to foment in Spain the opinions which those eminent ministers of the crown maintained against falsifiers of Christian truth; and, to that end, they founded a collegiate church in the principal convent which those fathers had in Madrid, conferring its canonries upon ecclesiastics who professed the same doctrines as themselves, and who were, besides, generally venerated for the profundity of their scientific knowledge, as well as for the sanctity of their lives. The canons of San Isidro, to whom allusion has already been made, were Jansenists; and, consequently, they professed opinions diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish clergy. According to them, as has already been intimated, the episcopal dignity was equal in all those who possessed it, and the pope was no more than the first among equals—primus inter pares; the right to confer dispensations was not vested exclusively in the court of Rome, but each bishop could exercise it with equal authority in his diocese; external discipline of the church belonged of right to the regal authority, as also did that of presentation to benefices; the bulls and other papal precepts were not to be obeyed without the indispensable requisite of the monarch’s approbation; and, finally, the Pope, as well as the rest of the bishops, was inferior in authority to the general council, in which was concentrated the legislative power of the church, whether with respect to the dogma or discipline and administration.