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Of course it does. But what has that to do with the persecution of heretics? One wonders what dread specters your Protestant friend conjures up in his own mind when he hears the words: "Holy Office!" As I have explained, it is simply an official Committee, presided over by the Pope, which weighs and considers possible dangers to the faith and morals of Catholics, warns them against doctrines and movements which could undermine their piety and fidelity to the religion of their baptism, and prescribes positive measures to be adopted by Catholics for the preservation of their own spiritual welfare. Is the Catholic Church to be blamed for exercising such careful supervision over the spiritual interests of her own subjects? No Protestant has anything to fear from the Holy Office; and any anxiety any Protestant professes to experience is the creation of his own imagination.
Yes. The "Christian Year Book," a Protestant publication, admitted that Protestants have official and complete liberty to hold their own religious services in their own churches. My copy of that book is for 1947, when the world-campaign of anti-Spanish prejudice was at its peak. Protestants are not granted liberty to engage in public activities calculated to undermine the faith of Catholics. Spain is a Catholic nation, which officially professes the Catholic religion. It remained unaffected by the Protestant Reformation, with all its sad discords and legacy of divided and conflicting denominations. And there is no reason why a few fanatical zealots should be allowed to try to produce a Protestant Reformation there now.
Not where Protestant congregations existed to justify their continued use. Protestant agencies, set up in towns and villages where there were no Protestants and which had no purpose other than persuading Catholics to forsake the Catholic religion could not rightly expect to be allowed to continue their activities in favor of introducing religious dissension. More and more Protestant writers today deplore the lack of unity among Christians. They point out that sectarian divisions are wrong in principle, a waste of energy and resources, and an obstacle to the work of the Church. They plead for a better understanding, for greater cooperation, and for efforts towards reunion. Why, then, should they go to a country where the people are united in one and the same Catholic Faith, and try to establish rival sects there? That would be to create in Spain the same religious problem which they say they desire to solve at all costs! Their inconsistency makes it impossible to sympathize with them in this complaint.
That surely is not surprising. In the 1870's Protestant bodies in England were sending "missionaries" to Spain with the peculiar notion of converting that country to "Christianity." As yet untouched fields were open to them amongst teeming millions of pagans. But no. They must go to Spain and seek to undermine the Catholic religion there. They were filled with the ignorance and old-fashioned bigotry which spoke of the Pope as "The Beast," and of the Catholic Church as "Antichrist" and the. "Scarlet Woman." Is it any wonder that, when they sought to propagate such ideas among the people, the Papal Nuntio protested against granting toleration to such intolerant propaganda?
So it is, from the viewpoint they had in mind, that of all the conflicting divisions which have resulted from the idea that people are free to set up new Churches of their own according to their varying interpretations of the Bible. I could quote a dozen Protestant authors declaring this result a very great evil. For example, the Rev. Hugh Martin, a Baptist clergyman, in his book "Christian Reunion" says: "The Church ought to be a united body comprising within its membership men and women from all the racial, economic, national and class groupings of society . . . How can we hope to be believed, when the Church itself is divided as it is today?" (p. 17). He would agree, therefore, with the Bishops of Spain that freedom not to belong to the one united body which the Church ought to be is an evil. But it is quite another matter when we speak of the freedom of sincere individuals to adhere to religions they believe to be right, even though mistakenly. Since individuals have the right and the duty to be true to their own conscience, freedom to do so cannot in itself be an evil. That freedom in religious matters the Spanish Bishops did not intend to condemn.
That problem is easily solved. Church and State in Spain are two independent powers, the one concerned with the spiritual interests of the people, the other with their temporal welfare. The two powers are not to be identified. The mere fact that they could enter into a Concordat with one another, on August 27, 1953, is evidence enough of that. A government does not enter into a Concordat with itself! The Church has not undertaken to defend any particular form of government or any particular political party in Spain. Franco, however, has had the sense to realize that religiously the Spanish people are Catholics, and that they are not in the least likely to accept any substitute form of religion. They will be either Catholics or nothing. But the overwhelming majority of Spaniards are Catholics who prefer to support religion rather than sheer secularism. Franco, therefore, interpreting the will of the Spanish people has undertaken in the name of the State to promote the welfare of the Catholic religion. The one statement some might be inclined to dispute in my explanation is that declaring the lack of agreement on the part of the Church to defend the political interests of Franco. Yet here are the words of an official statement published by the Primate of Spain, Cardinal Pla y Deniel, Archbishop of Toledo, in September, 1945; a statement subscribed to by all the Bishops of Spain: "In the attacks on Spain and its present government, the same foreigners also implicated the Spanish Hierarchy, accusing it of serving a Fascist or totalitarian regime. For our part, there has not been, nor is there, servitude of the Spanish Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; nor has it defended, nor does it defend, Fascist or totalitarian conceptions. For our part, during the 25 years of our episcopate, during which there have been all kinds of governments in Spain, our one purpose has always been to maintain our eternal doctrinal principles in the face of the most diverse political situations. We have always upheld non-interference of the Church in any political regime."
That is not true. The Catholic Church teaches that, in a country where many different forms of religion prevail, as in our own country, it is quite lawful for the State to grant completely equal freedom to all religious bodies. This doctrine she modifies in a country where the population is overwhelmingly Catholic, as in Spain. There the non-Catholic minority must be granted freedom of belief and worship. But she teaches that the State, recognizing officially the Catholic religion as the religion of the country, should not giant to the minority freedom to campaign against the faith professed by the Catholic people. That is not in the least unreasonable.
The, new Concordat of 1953 re-affirms that provision, although the last words are not as you have given them, but "nor for the private practice of their worship."
That is true. After all, the 28,000,000 people of Spain who are Catholics must be assured of their freedom to preserve their Catholic culture and traditions if they wish. All the members of the different Protestant sects in Spain amount to but 20,000 at most; and half of these are not Spaniards at all, but foreigners. These different minorities are free to worship according to their own consciences in their own churches and chapels. But public demonstrations of an aggressively anti-Catholic nature in an almost entirely Catholic community are only calculated to create public disorder, as they have done again and again in Spain. The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, therefore, declares in Article 29 that in the exercise of rights and freedoms everyone must be subject to such limitations as are determined by law in the interests of public order and the general welfare.
To say that Protestants should be allowed to practice their religion peacefully in Spain, and that they should in turn be restrained from baiting and provoking the Catholics of the country whose hospitality they enjoy, bears no resemblance whatever to urging that they should be "treated like the Jews under Hitler.
That means simply that, since the people of Spain are Catholics, and since religion is a part of Spain's educational system, it is the Catholic religion that will be taught. What would be the use of teaching Catholic children their Catholic religion, whilst simultaneously undermining it;by teaching contrary religious doctrines? Protestants are free to have their own schools, as they have in Madrid, Barcelona and a few other places where they are numerous enough to be able to build them. There are also non-Catholic private schools for the children of foreign residents to which Protestants may send their children. The relatively few non-Catholic-children who do attend State schools are exempted from religious instruction, and may be taught their religion at home or in Protestant Sunday schools attached to their churches.
Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar, the Right Rev. Douglas Horsley, heard of Mr. Bevin's statement, he at once wrote to say that the Spanish authorities had never interfered With Anglican worship, and that Anglican Churches were open and in use in Jerez de la Frontera, Rio Tinto, Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona, Palma and Malaga. He added that Anglican Churches in Spain have always retained English services for English-speaking people, so that Anglicans in Spain may have the opportunity of attending Church of England worship. As Anglicans made no attempt to interfere with .the religion of Spanish Catholics, they have received every courtesy from the Spanish Government. But the Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar added that Churches belonging to the Baptists have been closed by the Government in those cases where there was no Baptist congregation, and where the Churches had been built by money from England and staffed by English Baptist ministers for the sole purpose of inducing Catholics to abandon their own religion in order to become Baptists. Dr. Horsley said that there had never been any question of Anglicans behaving in such a way, and that they had been subject to no disabilities.
Several times the Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar, the Right Rev. Douglas Horsley has refuted that charge. Writing in the columns of the Anglican "Church Times," of Aug. 4, 1950, he said that on his visitation of the Anglican chaplaincies in Spain he "encountered much kindness and a genuine welcome" wherever he went. "Anglicans (who do not proselytize in the country)," he wrote, "are treated with friendliness and respected by Roman Catholics of General Franco's regime." On another occasion he wrote that agents of other Protestant bodies bring trouble on themselves by causing disturbances in Catholic communities. That the law has to be increasingly invoked against increasing violations of it does not mean that "intolerance is on the increase," as C. L. Sulzberger expresses it
Why do they want to reside and work in Spain? The very term "foreign missionaries" conjures up visions of the jungles of Africa, the remote fastnesses of Tibet, coral islands of the Pacific, China and Japan, or the Esquimaux of Alaska and the Arctic regions. We do not speak of foreign missionaries being sent to an already Christian country! The Catholic people of Spain deeply resent the tactless efforts of Protestant missionaries who regard them practically as pagans, needing to be converted to Christianity. Those efforts have resulted only in a dissension and disorder which the Spanish Government is rightly determined to prevent. The Protestant World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, in 1910, declared that Protestant resources should be employed in the evangelization of pagan peoples to whom the Gospel had never been preached, and not in countries where the Christian religion was already established�as it has been established for centuries in Spain.
In asking one question, you beg a dozen questions! It is not an old Spanish custom to stifle the other person's point of view. Nor, where the religion revealed by Christ is concerned, are we dealing with merely "a point of view." I would not be bothered with the Christian religion for a moment if it were merely some "other person's point of view." Furthermore, no valid comparison can be made between missionaries who set out to teach Christianity to pagan peoples, and Protestant propagandists who go to Spain to try to substitute their various particular forms of Protestantism for the Catholic Faith of the people there. As for Spanish discourtesy, it is quite evident that you do not know your Spaniard. The proverbial old world Spanish courtesy is as much a reality today as ever it was. A letter from an Australian friend of mine, which came almost with your own, speaks glowingly of the extraordinary courtesy he has received from all classes of Spanish people. But then, he did not go as a tactless and prejudiced Protestant missionary, not knowing how to behave himself and deliberately setting out to make himself unwelcome. To spit in a man's face and find that he resents it does not disprove a man's courtesy. And to tell a Spaniard that his religion is idolatry and to ridicule his devotion to the Virgin Mary is a much worse thing to a Spaniard, I can assure you, than to spit in his face. Baptist, Church of Christ, Witness of Jehovah, Seventh Day Adventist, or just plain "Bible-Society" so-called missionaries in Spain have no idea of the Spanish psychology. James Cleugh, author of "Spain in the Modern World," quotes a recipe for a Spaniard given him by Don Alvarez: "Take one portion of individualism, of the spirit of independence, courage, loyalty r-this comes from our aboriginal forefathers, Celts and Iberians. Then take one portion of pride, of the sentiment of honor and respect for tradition� this is Roman. Then a portion of religious sentiment, the respect for hierarchies and dignities, spiritual and physical�this is Gothic. Then take a rather generous portion of fatalism, warlike spirit and passionate emotion �from the Arabs�mix and shake well, heat and serve. And there's your Spaniard!" And to these people comes a foreign preacher, with a Protestant Bible under his arm, sent by some small, insignificant, modern sect to tell them that the Catholic religion to which they have been faithful for over a millennium is the religion of the "Harlot" and of the "Beast" of the Apocalypse!
Intolerance towards a system of belief is not the same thing as intolerance towards good people who believe in that system. The latter is a wrong kind of intolerance. Here let me ask you how else could a Catholic regard Protestantism except as an evil? As a Catholic, he regards Protestantism as erroneous; and if religious error is not an evil, why do Protestants themselves go to Spain to rescue the benighted Spaniards from what those missionaries themselves think to be the great evil of Catholicism? Whatever our ideas of "systems," we need not be intolerant of "persons." That the Spanish people regard Protestantism as an evil does not mean that they regard sincere Protestants as evil persons. They respect their right to freedom of conscience, and do not interfere with their personal- practice of their religion in their own Protestant churches and chapels.
No. Catholic translations of the Bible are available in the Spanish language for the Spanish people. The few Spanish people who happen to have become Protestants may retain the Protestant translations of the Bible in Spanish which have been given them. As I have said, out of 28,000,000 people in Spain, about 20,000 are Protestants. Of these 20,000, about 10,000 are Spaniards and about 10,000 foreigners. Of the 10,000 Spaniards who profess to be Protestants, about 3,500 attend Protestant Churches, whilst the rest are merely nominal Protestants indifferent to religion in practice. What is forbidden in Spain is the distribution of Protestant translations of the Bible amongst the Catholic population by Protestants who hope that Catholics also will be led into various Protestant errors. It is a travesty of the facts to call that the forbidding of the Bible, as if there were no Bible other than the Protestant version and Catholics had no Catholic translation of Holy Scripture available to them.
That is not quite correct, for that Society is allowed to supply Bibles to Protestants in Spain.
It did. But the British and Foreign Bible Society was not content with confining its activities to Protestants in Spain. It had agents throughout Spain engaged in distributing Protestant translations of the Bible to Catholics and endeavoring to undermine the faith of Catholics, trying to persuade them to become Protestants. As there are only about 10,000 Spanish people professing to be Protestants, it is clear that the stock of 110,000 Protestant translations of the Bible in Spanish was meant for distribution to Catholics. The authorities rightly objected to that.
The Catholic Bishops were in duty bound to protest publicly against the distribution of Protestant translations to their Catholic people. If the British and Foreign Bible Society really wished the people in Catholic Spain to have copies of the Bible in the Spanish language, it should have financed the printing and distribution of authentic Catholic translations acceptable to the population. But the effort to distribute Protestant translations is quite another matter.
He had no grounds whatever for that statement. In reply to his charges the Diplomatic Information Service Office in Madrid issued a Memorandum based on six reports by different writers, and offered to give any person access to their sources of information and a "Visa" to come to Spain and check the facts on the spot. Section (a) of the Memorandum says: "Protestant foreigners have the right to open and run their own schools, in which they are not obliged to teach Catholic doctrines." I have already mentioned that there are Protestant schools in Madrid, Barcelona and elsewhere. Moreover Protestants have some 200 churches or chapels in Spain, far more proportionately to the Protestant population than Catholics possess, and they are free to use these buildings as Protestant schools for their children during the week if they cannot afford to erect other premises.
It is not true that Spanish Protestant citizens, if unemployed, are not ffiven the same relief as other Spanish citizens. But you must remember that over half of the 20,000 Protestants in Spain are not Spanish citizens, but foreigners who came there to promote the cause of Protestantism. When I myself went from Australia to America to spend a year there in 1940, I had to give a guarantee to the American Consul in Sydney that I would be able to support myself for that period as I would not be entitled to any relief at the expense of the United States Government were I in need. Foreign Protestants who go to Spain and are not citizens of Spain are not justified in complaining that they have not the same privileges as born Spaniards. As for Protestants born in Spain not being able to secure a commission in the army, or in the Public Service or the Police Force, that is a matter for the Government and in accordance with the declaration of the Constitution that the Catholic religion is the official religion of the Spanish State whose officers must be professing Catholics. That does not mean that the Spanish State is under the dictatorship of the one true Church. Far from it. There is a host of things in which the Spanish civil authorities go their own way regardless of the wishes and even of the protests of the Church. Needless to say, there are absolutely no legal discriminations against Protestestants in their work or professions. There are Protestant, Jewish and Moslem doctors, dentists, college professors, lawyers, etc. Ignacio Bauer, an historian of Jewish birth, is a Professor at Madrid University, whilst the Protestant Dr. Jorge Araujo teaches mathematics at Saragossa University. Although these are not posts directly representative of Government authority, they are officially regulated positions, and there are no religious tests in regard to them.
Such behavior was quite inexcusable. The group of hot-heads had neither ecclesiastical nor civil authority to behave like that. The Civil Governor of Seville at once ordered an inquiry and a police guard was appointed to protect the church in question as well as the other two chapels serving the 600 Protestants in Seville. Compensation was paid by the Spanish authorities. , Sudden outbreaks of violence by irresponsible groups against what are regarded in Spain as agencies for anti-Catholic propaganda, when such attacks are a violation of both the teachings of the Catholic religion and of the laws of the land, are no more the fault of the Church or State than the beating up of the Japanese crew of a boat in an Australian port by a group of irresponsible returned soldiers would be the fault of the Australian Government. All that the authorities can be expected to do under the circumstances is to punish the offenders and compensate for the damage. And that was done in Spain, in regard to the incident you mention.
The example you quoted was certainly not a typical one. It was quite an isolated one. Also it took place on March 3rd, 1952, whilst the Cardinal's Pastoral was not published until March 9th. It was therefore inspired by no words of his. Nor was there a single word in his Pastoral which could justify such lawless behavior. He was protesting against the Government's neglect, under the pretext of politics, to apply the law forbidding Protestant propaganda amongst Catholics, a propaganda which was consequently on the increase.
It is a strange thing that almost simultaneously President Truman, of U.S.A., protested that the Franco Government was too intolerant towards Protestant institutions in Spain, whilst Cardinal Segura protested that the Franco Government was being far too tolerant! Since 1945 the Franco Government has permitted Protestants to open as many churches and mission centers as they wish. And they have opened far more than necessary for their own purposes of worship. The Cardinal was not unjustified in declaring that their express purpose was to undermine the faith of Catholics and win them to Protestantism. He would not have done his duty if he did not raise his voice in defence of his own flock.
I am not in a position to pass judgment on the accuracy or otherwise of the Cardinal's estimate of the state of affairs in Spain. I am not there. He is. And his verdict is certainly more likely to be right than mine. All I can say is that he has the right and the duty to do all he lawfully can to safeguard the spiritual interests of his Catholic people.
Do you really blame him for that? If you yourself hold that all religions are equally acceptable in the sight of God, then you should admit that the Spanish people already have in their Catholic religion a religion equally as acceptable to God as any other, and you should blame Protestant missionaries for going there in order to substitute other religions. Their going to Spain, and the pouring in of financial aid from outside bodies, is intelligible only on the supposition that they do not believe that one religion is acceptable to God as any other. They believe Catholicism an evil from which the Spanish people need to be delivered by Protestantism. Protestants cannot logically work on the principle that one religion is not as good as another, and then blame Cardinal Segura for maintaining that same principle. I am willing to admit that if any form of Protestantism is true, then Catholicism is false, and it would be a good thing if Protestants could banish Catholicism from Spain But it cuts the other way. If Catholicism is true, then all the different forms of Protestantism are false; and it would be a good thing if Protestantism in all its forms were kept out of Spain. You see, it all comes back to the question of the respective merits of Catholicism or of Protestantism as claimants to be the true form of the Christian religion. Until that question is settled, not much headway can be made in the discussion of secondary problems.
We must try to view this, not from the viewpoint prevailing in our own country, but from that prevailing in Spain. Take a Catholic household where there is one Protestant guest. There would be no room for complaint if the head of the household said: "Myself, my wife and the children are now going to have family prayers in the living room. Of course, since we are all Catholics, the prayers will be Catholic prayers, and we do not expect you to, share in those. But if you wish, since you are not a Catholic, you may say your own prayers privately in your own room." The guest would be most unreasonable if he said: "No. I want to say my prayers according to my Protestant religion publicly in the living room, so that you will all be present to hear them and be induced to adopt my religion instead of your own." It is like that in Spain. Spain is like one big Catholic household religiously The few Protestants in Spain, and half of those few foreigners, are told that they are quite free to practice their religion privately, but not to force their attentions upon the Catholic communities in which they live.
The Cardinal was addressing Catholics. He warned them that as Catholics they could not hope to please God without fidelity to their Catholic Faith, itself a divine gift. He did not deny that those who have never been Catholics might possess a faith in Christ resulting from divine grace given them by God in view of their good dispositions and lack of knowledge of Catholicism. But he could not imply that God would be willing to accept from Catholics who know the full Christian truth what He is willing to accept from non-Catholics who are mistaken through no fault of their own. In the setting of the Cardinal's remarks there was no room for a distinction between "Catholic" faith and "divine" faith.
The cases are not parallel. There are immense differences between Eire and Spain. For centuries Eire has been dominated by England. At the time of the Protestant reformation, England forced on the country its new Church of England, intruding Protestant Bishops into Catholic Sees, confiscating Catholic Church property, and leaving Eire when it became a Republic with the Protestant Churches as established institutions. In Eire there are over 150,000 Anglicans, 28,000 Presbyterians, 9,000 Methodists, and 11,000 belonging to other lesser Protestant denominations. Most of these Protestants are descendants from ancestors in Ireland who had been there for several centuries; and when Eire drew up its constitution it rightly made allowance for them�an allowance which could have no application in Spain, practically untouched by the Protestant reformation and with Catholic traditions only in which all its inhabitants have been united as far as religion is concerned right up to the present day. There is no reason why, because Eire found itself with a Protestant population to be provided for, Spain should make provision for a Protestant population to grow where it does not yet exist. It is of no use looking at Spain through Australian or through American eyes, if we wish to understand the position there. It is only by looking at things Spanish from the Spanish point of vi,ew that we'll be able to form a reasonable and impartial judgment.
For information as to why the Pope has or has not acted in any given way it will be necessary for you to write to the Pope. He does not send me daily cables giving me an account of his conduct! However, on the matter you mention, there are several points to be cleared up first. When you speak of the Protestant Church, to which Protestant Church do you refer? Anglican? Baptist? Methodist? Presbyterian? Witnesses of Jehovah? Again, since such Protestant Churches as do exist in Spain are allowed to function, it is difficult to see why the Pope should request permission from Franco on their behalf that they may be allowed to function. Yet, again, the Pope is not in a position to issue instructions to General Franco as to the way in which he will administer the civil laws of Spain. Lawful rulers of countries rightly claim that theirs is the right to preserve order and promote the temporal welfare of citizens. By the Concordat of 1953 the Pope and the Spanish Government entered into an agreement as to what the relations will be between the Catholic Church and the Spanish Government. It is for spokesmen of other Churches to arrange with the Spanish Government what their own standing will be in Spain. The Pope cannot be expected to negotiate on their behalf and in the way they want him to use a power they refuse to acknowledge in any other context.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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