The Mass in Madrid
Paulding, Gouverneur
THE MASS IN MADRID By GOUVERNEUR PAULDING THE cathedral is eighteenth-century baroque in gold and white. It used to be a convent church and the balconies arc shielded with screens. There are...
...They fill the side chapels...
...The new world had gold in it and Spain half-but only half-forgot her message which was the message of God...
...The officiating bishop gives the ancient formal message of union and peace to the priest at his right...
...For the enemies of the Church she was Catholic and hopeless...
...Behind each one a priest carries the scarlet hat with its gold tassel...
...They come in until before the altar are seated thirty-five bishops and archbishops from every part of Spain...
...And everywhere this perfectly legitimate effort brings with it theoretical and doctrinal materialism...
...The theory had been applied to the France of before the Revolution...
...You turn almost any street corner in Madrid and you look off onto a desert with high clouds above it driven by the eternal winter wind...
...They will not be abie to see from there, but they will be able to hear...
...A bishop enters the church, kneels for a moment before the Blessed Sacrament in a side chapel, and walks up the aisle...
...On these benches sit priests and laymen facing each other...
...Spain could afford to be called ignorant if the ignorance of her detractors left her alone...
...his revolt in a way was sufficient substitute for a revolution...
...He takes his seat in the chancel...
...Into it have climbed three priests...
...This providential quickening of faith and fidelity where there was the gravest danger of both being lost has been always one of the most evident of the many signs of the Church's divine origin and mission...
...The sunlight comes through the windows at the base of the dome...
...Yet after the Revolution came the Cure of Ars, and Saint Therese...
...People carry little chairs as far front as they can get...
...Cardinal Segura, archbishop of Toledo, primate of Spain, enters the church, kneels before the Blessed Sacrament, advances up the aisle...
...it was within...
...For there was a danger to be met...
...It was a new plan mainly because the modern industrial system had reached Spain and because this system everywhere implies discontent and organized effort to secure better conditions...
...it was new and urgent...
...There is a jangle of harsh bells...
...In the past, persecution had been met by martyrs...
...This was for casual modern thinking a paradox...
...The message of superhuman charity and joy was joyous...
...It was admitted that Spain was a country of ignorance and "superstition...
...The attack on the church has always failed...
...The plan was new because of the new conditions, but it was, nevertheless, the immutable Catholic plan for the saving of men's souls...
...This had seemed a paradox but it was not a paradox...
...Outside Madrid for mile after mile there is nothing at all...
...In the cathedral takes place the ceremony of the kiss of peace...
...It changes the light on the rose-colored vestments, heightens the scarlet of the cardinal's cape, and blending with the light of the candelabra, unites the church with the world outside...
...Ever since George Borrow the attack against the Church had neglected Spain...
...It passes from prelate to prelate down the Hierarchy even to the altar boys...
...A Pontifical High Mass begins...
...The church is filling up...
...But they were left with a hope and an affirmation...
...By God's help man has built his fortress cities, man has created a country and held on to it, man has hurled his adventurous strength across an ocean and discovered a new world...
...The great doors open and shut and you hear the crowded street outside...
...In Madrid today I saw that the Faith was alive...
...Standing in the cathedral listening to the Gospel, it was impossible not to admit that Spain was a Catholic country...
...It was new because it organized Catholic labor: it was old because it maintained the supreme authority of the Church...
...An aisle has been formed with two rows of benches end on end from the altar to the doors...
...The Catholic plan brought out by these conditions was new because it recognized the necessity for organized labor in industry and agriculture: it was old because it insisted that these organizations remain conscious of the soul and its destiny...
...These men of Spain the pasture land, of the wind-swept hills and the lonely distances, received this message from Rome and from God as the early Christians must have received their travel-stained bishops-with delighted confidence...
...Spain has always been a Catholic country...
...Soon there are no chairs left...
...In Spain man is in scale with God...
...They hoped and they said that where there was no danger, the Church relaxed its hold and the spirit died...
...It is the inauguration of the First Spanish Congress of Catholic Action...
...The priest comes down the steps and transmits it to the cardinal...
...Surrounded by 6,000 delegates from every province of Spain, it was impossible not to see that Spain's Catholicism was active...
...Bare windswept pasture land...
...The new plan of Catholic action was to meet that internal danger...
...It is better so, for you can get more people into a church standing than seated...
...Now three cardinals advance up the church blessing to right and left...
...In fact the only drawback to the theory was that it had been applied to every Catholic country in Europe, and that in Europe the Faith of the Apostles is not dead...
...They come in two and three at a time now...
...They said that the Faith was not lost by those placed at the most dangerous points in the defenses, but by those within the safety of the city walls...
...They kneel there crowded into it with only their heads showing above the edge of the pulpit...
...But her reward for Catholic Latin America is not of this world and it will not pass...
...That it existed was admitted by the worst enemies of the Church...
...only it did not come from without...
...So that when the mitred bishop standing at the altar gives the final blessing, it is given out of doors to the world...
...He is almost everything...
...The presence in Madrid of these 6,000 delegates from all Spain showed that the Faith in Spain was alive...
...The men on the benches half kneel-they have no room to kneel-and one out of five manages to kiss his ring...
...They will be able to see and hear...
...Goya in his drawings showed how she was hard pressed...
...At the rear of the church there is a pulpit for use probably when Mass is said in the main side chapel...
...The theory had been applied again and again to Italy, and its absurdity is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that the world's attention is centered on the living Faith in Rome...
...You hear cheering outside...
...There are rose-colored tapestries hung on the walls...
...Habitually one considered the Church to be active where it was in a minority, to be intensely active where there was intense danger, and to create new means of action where there were new difficulties to be met...
...Spain was being punished for the absurd temerity of keeping her land free from Africa and, above all, for the great crime of keeping unity in that land once it was hers to hold...
...Then at the doors you see a tall figure cloaked in an ermine mantle...
...The actual modern indifference and materialism had been met by prayer and by explicit definition of implicit doctrine...
...Spain even managed to pass through the devastating eighteenth century...
...In the cathedral the officiating bishop stands to hear the Gospel read...
...She took the gold and the prize was of this world and it passed...
...The main door is opened...
...People stand all along the sides on the steps of the side chapels...
...They said that in the most Catholic countries the Faith sickened and died almost without the world's being aware of its death...
...In Spain man is in scale with nature...
...Outside the cathedral is Madrid...
...There is a pause...
...The bells ring continuously...
...He advances slowly, recognizing faces, stopping to recognize with a swift intimacy a very humble old priest...
...He is almost nothing...
...Great roads like military roads cross the high plateau to connect Madrid, the capital established by will in a desert, with the strong Basque provinces, with industrial Barcelona, with the great towns of the South...
...Clouds pass and uncover the sun...
...The papal envoy from the threshold slowly blesses the church, prays before the Blessed Sacrament, advances to the altar, bows deeply, turns, bows to the cardinals, turns again to bow to the bishops and takes his seat...
...Spain has always been faithful to that Gospel-humanly, with lapses-yet with a fidelity greater than that in any other country save Ireland...
...The priest coming down from the altar smiled as he placed his arms on the cardinal's shoulders...
...They look like puppets in an eighteenth-century theatre...
...The bells clash again, and the dean of the cathedral chapter hurries down the aisle to greet the arrival of another bishop...
...The crowd presses harder toward the aisle...
...There was a Catholic Spain, but though it was so traditionally, its effort was new...
...It was a country asleep if not dead, or rather asleep materially-until the foreign capitalists came along to help-and dead spiritually...
Vol. 11 • January 1930 • No. 12
