rsons; they annointed themselves
with the last essence extracted from their flocks, and there
was in them nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of
decent.

#God in the Schools#

But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a
modern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will. Until
recently, Spain was such a country. Now the people are turning against
the clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to Rafael Shaw's "Spain
From Within":

On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church,
interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life,
ordering the conditions of employment, draining them of
their hard-won livelihood by trusts and monopolies
established and maintained in the interest of the Religious
Orders, placing obstacles in the way of their children's
education, hindering them in the exercise of their
constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of
them who are bold enough to run counter to priestly
dictation. Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona; they are
instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes to war in
Morocco; it is dragged into it solely in defense of the
mines owned, actually, if not ostensibly, by the Jesuits.
The consumes cannot be abolished because the Jesuits are
financially interested in their continuance.

* * * * *

We have read the statement of a Jesuit father, that "the state cannot
justly enforce compulsory education, even in case of utter
illiteracy." How has that doctrine worked out in Spain? There was an
official investigation of school conditions, the report appearing in
the "Heraldo de Madrid" for November, 1909. In 1857 there had been
passed a law requiring a certain number of schools in each of the 79
provinces: this requirement being below the very low standards
prevailing at that time in other European countries. Yet in 1909 it
was found that only four provinces had the required number of
elementary schools, and at the rate of increase then prevailing it
would have taken 150 years to catch up. Seventy-five per cent of the
population were wholly illiterate, and 30,000 towns and villages had
no government schools at all. The government owed nearly a million and
a half dollars in unpaid salaries to the teachers. The private schools
were nearly all "nuns' schools", which taught only needle-work a