In Old Madrid

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 28 March 1907, Page 10

In Old Madrid

j Christ-hunting is neither so easy nor so profitable" " a pastime for Freemason , politicians south, as it is *• north, of the Pyrenees. Five Ministries " went beneath the surface in a few months over an effort to penalise—some - more, some less— the religious" Orders'.' And' last week game the brief but momentous announcement by cable from Madrid : ' The,. Spanish Conservatives .triumphed at the elections.' In the last Parliament they-

numbered" over a hunded in a Lower House of 405 members. To-day they hold, it appears, the reins* of power. The elections were brought out on- the religious issue.. And the result is a reeling .blow to the 1, tie. - faction of. enemies -of religion in>the Spanish Cortes. Well, even Satan (says Milton) •Gives not o'er, though desperate of success.' - But with the eloquent, learned, pious Senor Maura (the most , brilliant lawyer --in Spain) at the head ,of the triumphant party, with the Dynastic Liberals at his side, and with the feelings of . a great Catholic population at his" back, we may safely predict that there is for many a year to come little to fear from the antli-religious animosities of the Republican faction there, writing some weeks ago, the London '--Daily Graphic ' shrewdly predicted that the popular reaction against 'the anti-clerical policy 'will probably end in a* long tenure of office by the" Conservatives.' Then! it adds :—: — -- - • - - ' - . - , 1 This is an, instructive object-lesson- in the unwisdom of conducing too hastily from the attitude of the French people that the Church of. Rome is a decadentforce which only requires to be resolutely attacked in order to disappear altogether. That this _is a delusion is shown not only by: the attachment which the great bulk of the Spanish people still feel ffor"r r " the Church, but still more strikingly -by the orthodoxy and solidarity of the more cultured German Catholics, as "Illustrated by the stand they have made during the recent elections in the Fatherland.' It looks as if a chapter' of Belgian history is " about to foe repeated further south. For :the moral and material well-being of. Spain, this is a consummation- devoutly to be desired.