As they performed their bloody rituals, a volcano could erupt nearby and pour down on the pyramid and the dwellings below it; or in the midst of their slaughter, the earth could shake so horribly that everybody, altars and pyramid, too, would go tumbling in all directions far and wide. But no, Jesus is merciful and sends his mother to open her cloak of infinite mercy wide above them and let these cruel creatures know the sort of wicked delusion they have been living in and to tell them that from this time forth they, too, who have been languishing in the sin of ignorance, will have the opportunity to repent, that Jesus is ready to forgive all their sins if only they begin to live as true Catholics, with salvation and everlasting life awaiting them after death.
‘So now do you at last understand,’ I say to the populace, ‘the infinite mercy of God? And if such is his mercy to Indians, how much more will he be merciful to you, who were once of the true faith but were led astray by lying Lutheran lips. At this very moment, you have the opportunity to repent sincerely of your erring ways and sinful lives and return to the flock, to come home. O people,’ – by now they are quite moved by such powerful images – ‘do you think all the attacks of plague, not to mention other diseases that have been assailing you for centuries – do you think they are without cause or purpose? Do you think stopping the Turks would truly be so impossible if it were God’s will? Are the Turks not perhaps a warning to you, so you realize at last the terrible error of your ways?’ At this point, some clever Dick usually pipes up with something like, ‘We’re not the only ones starving because of the Turks – Catholics are, too!’ to which I reply, ‘How could it be otherwise? It’s not just Lutheranism that is sinful; there are many other heresies, too, lurking among the people. And now do you at last understand why you are afflicted by these terrible misfortunes? So start by walking the Catholic path, and if you are faithful and disciplined in following Jesus and the true doctrine – because it’s not so very easy to understand the Gospel! Oh, no! Otherwise, Jesus would not have chosen Peter from among his disciples and said, “Peter, you are the rock on which I build my Church,” and he would not have handed him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven – so if you walk the Catholic path, things will be better for you than before. I know the preachers taught you how to read a little, but for the right understanding of the truth it is not enough to move your finger from letter to letter. As difficult as the Gospels are, the Old Testament is even more confusing, and some of its stories must be interpreted with particular care. Especially Genesis, the First Book of Moses, from the time before God gave Moses the Law. Because I don’t want to hear some patriarch tell me again, “What did I do that was so wrong? Lot’s daughters, too, had a drink with their dad and then, before the eyes of God, they all got drunk and fooled around, and the two girls gave birth to their own brothers.” ’
By this point the populace has considerably softened. People are looking at each other, looking around, glancing a little at the altar and then staring at the floor, lifting their eyes again and looking at the side altars, as if checking to see if there might still be a statue or picture of a saint somewhere, if maybe not all of them had been demolished. And then they look at each other again and slowly start nodding their heads, as if to say, you know, he’s right. ‘Because I admit it,’ somebody speaks up, ‘the last time the plague was ravaging this area, we never closed the Gospel for a second – I mean the one in our own language, in Slovene. Our eldest son would turn the pages backwards and forwards, and we’d repeat after him what he was reading, all the while caring for our sick and then carrying out their bodies. We also fumigated with sage and juniper, but things kept getting worse, so one of us went into the cellar and pulled out the little statues of St Roch and St Rosalia, and we lit candles to them, fumigated the house with dried herbs and brought gifts to the saints.’
‘What? What do you mean, gifts?’ Such foolish, superstitious customs always infuriate me.
‘Well,’ they start squirming, ‘so the saints will hear us and grant our prayers.’
‘And if you didn’t give them these stupid gifts but only the pure prayers of your hearts, you don’t think they’d listen to you?’
‘The plague takes such a terrible toll. When plague comes, death strikes us down left and right. Sometimes it lays waste to almost an entire village, sometimes, literally, to entire families,’ they answer me.
‘But what sense does it make that instead of praying humbly before the holy images you perform magic and witchcraft? Things that Leviticus, the Third Book of Moses, strictly forbids!’ I scold them.
So sorcery, too, will have to be beaten out of their heads, but only when we have brought order to our priestly ranks and dealt with the Lutherans. Personally, however, I think this step-by-step strategy is too slow and we would do well to consider introducing foreign approaches and have more frequent witch trials. Witchcraft is like the plague. And just like physical plague, plague in the soul cannot be driven out by fine words. It would be easier and more effective to use force. This, as well as the concrete methods of implementation, deserves our careful consideration.
In most cases, my visitations have turned up the following: Catholic parish priests who are poorly educated and often drunkards, many who are vile whoremongers, quite a few who are senile and incapable of the least intellectual thought and, most importantly, none with the passion or fervour needed to kindle the true Catholic faith in believers. For if you want to inflame another, you must yourself be on fire! This sort of passion have I rarely found within the Catholic ranks, so I have ordered the replacement of a number of the Church’s representatives. Some parish priests, during my visitations, promised and swore on the Latin Scriptures that henceforth they will more zealously undertake God’s service. But sadly, I find that the Protestant clergy are better educated and more fervent in their religion, and so, too, are their sheep, who are regularly sheared by their shepherds and taught not only Lutheran bleating but even some meagre reading skills. The Protestants’ sermons, too, are more colourful in comparison with what is mumbled out by our Catholic sluggards. I am, therefore, delighted by the great attention that is being paid to the homiletic training of young Jesuits – and more recently Capuchins – for with the proper rhetorical skills they will easily prevail over the preachers. We must not forget that what the populace loves is drama, not bland parables delivered in drab churches plucked of every adornment. The populace loves chubby cherubs and their supernatural hornèd adversaries; they like being terrified by angels with swords and spears and demons with protruding tongues, and then, if they but slightly shift their gaze, being instantly comforted by the benevolent eyes of a saint with a white lily in his hand – but for every care and misfortune, the best panacea of all is the Virgin Mary.
The populace does not like abstractions; they prefer simple, solid things. And if, by rough estimates, at least half of them turn to superstition and witchery, they are also disposed towards eccentrics, who in these parts present themselves under such names as Founders, Leapers and Ecstatics. From what I have learned, there are not many of this last group in these provinces and they do not arouse the sympathies of the people, who think them too fanatical if not outright deluded, so they are neither popular nor dangerously widespread.
To conclude, allow me to offer yet another example of something we encountered time and again on our visitations. If the parish priest is not very old – by which I mean the forces of nature are still pumping blood to his head, although it often does not get there as it is first trapped in his loins – the presbytery door will be opened by a girl, and not some skin-and-bones waif either, but a wench with ample curves who is suggestively dishevelled. When we ask to see the priest, she almost always becomes flustered and evasions follow, which amount to: ‘The master is sleeping’.
‘What do you mean he’s sleeping? The sun is approaching midday!’ I say to her sternly.
At this question, the girls usually say the priest had been out during the night giving someone extreme unction and so was lying in a little.
‘Extreme unction or not, it’s time he gets himself out of bed!’ I persist. ‘It may happen that a man stays up all night, but it’s only sluggards who rise when the sun is pouring out its light on the earth and, in the summer, its heat, too.’ I don’t mince my words.
Then we push the girl aside and march into the presbytery. We open all the doors, while she fidgets, probably