A summer journey to Brazil

Rio, December 29. The church bells of Rio make a great clangor on Sundays. If religion were a thing of sounding brass, this great city would have cause to be known as one of the centers of Christianity. There is a jangling chime in the Lapa dos Mercadores, and there are bells great and small, harsh and shrill, resounding from hill to hill and echoing back from the outermost mountains. The Church is the oldest of Brazilian institutions. On the Castello there is a church, once the cathedral, with a portion of its walls as old as 1567. The cornerstone of the Capella Imperial, now the cathedral, was laid as far back as 1761. The Candelaria, the largest and most costly church in Rio, has been under construction since 1775. The crumbling church of the Franciscan friars on San Antonio was begun in 1700, the Gloria, overlooking the harbor, was built in 1714, and the Rosario about the same time. Many of the monasteries and convents, which are now practically abandoned under the operation of Imperial laws, date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The churches are not only of great antiquity, but they have been built in the main by lay brotherhoods employed in works of mercy. No other South American city has so many hospitals and asylums in active operation. The Misericordia alone cost $1,750,000 and accommodates 1,200 patients. The lay confraternities have done and are still doing a magnificent work of mercy in Rio, and are imparting to religion elements of practical philanthropy which command respect and admiration. But old and useful as the Church is, and loud as is the summons to the faithful from belfry and tower this summer morning, religion seems to have little vitality in the Brazilian capital. It has lost its hold upon the intelligent and educated classes. An American who contrasts the listless and perfunctory celebration of mass in the churches here with the same religious service in New-York churches of that faith is shocked and amazed. What is devotional there is the most mechanical mummery here. The priests have the appearance of worldly men earning a good living in religious trade. The very altar-boys, as I have watched them here, seem to be cutting up pranks with unseemly levity in the holy places.

A single Sunday in Rio will go far toward convincing any thoughtful observer that one of the best things that could happen for the Church in Brazil would be the same rough shaking-up which political institutions are receiving. I write in no spirit of intolerance or hostility to Roman Catholicism. It is the comparison which I have made here and in other coast towns between the Church as it is found in the United States and in Brazil that compels the conclusion that the abrogation of the establishment as a State religion would be of inestimable benefit to Christianity. If the country has required thorough-going processes of revolution, so has the Church. The separation of Church and State would tend powerfully to promote a revival of religion. Roman Catholicism is purest, strongest and more active as a religious force where it is separated from the State, and where Protestantism is arrayed against it, as in the United States. It is corrupt, weak and least useful where it is a State establishment, as in Brazil, and where Protestantism does not come into serious rivalry with it. The most sincere Catholic here would have reason for rejoicing if the Provisional Government were to proclaim a separation of Church and State. There would then be signs of resurrection among these gilded tombs of religion.

What has impaired the influence of the Church in Brazil has been the corrupt and scandalous life of many of the clergy. This is not a wanton Protestant charge. It is the sorrowful admission of faithful Catholics themselves. The evil has been one of long standing. When Dom Pedro II. was in his infancy, Antonio Diogo Feijo was Regent of the Empire. He proposed as a good Catholic a measure for sanctioning the marriage of the clergy, and compelling the Papal authorities under menace of disestablishment to allow its enforcement. When the measure failed, he wrote a book entitled Celibao Clerical or Clerical Celibacy in defense of his position, with many detailed statements of fact. The book was burned by order of the ecclesiastical authorities, but a copy of it was found in a village of San Paulo not long ago, and an edition of 5,000 copies was immediately reprinted. The immorality which this devout Catholic Regent denounced in his day still defiles the influence of the Church in Brazil. Some of the most active politicians here are known to be the sons of priests. Celibacy is too often only a cloak for immorality here. Good Catholics frankly tell you that this is one of the open scandals of their Church.

This is a time when there is real educational work to be done in Brazil. A nation is to be trained for self-government and citizenship. Old things have passed away. New social and political conditions are to be created. The Church should have a great part in this work of making a nation. It should be breaking the bonds of superstition, ignorance and medievalism. It should be teaching men and women by the example of its own clergy to lead pure and incorrupt lives. It should be leavening the whole lump of Brazilian republicanism. If the Church were disestablished and the clergy purified and reformed, it would be one of the grandest and most useful results of the revolution. For, in the long run, no nation in its political life and aspirations can get above the level of the religion which it believes or affects to despise.