6 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



his personal identity ; to the average Spanish mind it is un- 

 thinkable. 



At present the Church is composed of nine archbishoprics or 

 provinces, with forty-seven suffragan bishoprics or dioceses. 

 The Archbishop of Toledo is the Primate of all Spain, and 

 Patriarch of the Indies. There are in all Spain some 17,369 

 organized parishes, having 22,558 churches and 7,568 chapels, 

 which are served by 33.303 priests. As a whole the figures do 

 not show that Spain is abnormally overcrowded with priests, 

 although in some of the dioceses the dwindling of population 

 within the last century has left them supplied with more 

 churches and clergy than possibly they need at the present 

 day. On the other hand, many places in Spain show that the 

 Church is under-equipped with clergy. Nearly the entire popu- 

 lation is Catholic. There were in 1900 some 213,000 foreign- 

 ers in Spain whose religious affiliations were not counted, 

 some 7,500 Protestants, 4,500 Jews, and from 18,000 to 20,000 

 Rationalists, Indifferentists, and others. This is as near as 

 the census can inform us. 



The Constitution requires the nation to support the clergy 

 and maintain the buildings and equipment of the Church for 

 public worship, as especially regulated by the Concordat, which 

 will be mentioned later. This, it must be understood, is not 

 liberality on the part of the State, although the present genera- 

 tion is trying to give it that aspect, but is merely a return of 

 part of the fruits from the estates and property of the Church 

 which were seized by the State under various pretexts during 

 the past. It is an indemnity rather than a grace. The esti- 

 mate of expenditure in this regard for the year 1910 was 41,- 

 337,013 pesetas, or about ^8,267,000, which was about the 

 same as for the year 1909. This sum looks magnificent when 

 it is viewed as a whole, and no account is taken of its actual 

 application. Some persons reading hastily the figures as given 

 in the daily newspapers get an idea that the clergy receive the 

 whole of it. But that is far from being the case. In the first 

 place the appropriation is used to run the Ministry of Wor- 

 ship : to pay the salaries of the minister, his assistants, and 

 all the clerks, employees, and the cost of the statistical and 

 administrative work. 



In the second place the fabric of the cathedrals and churches 

 must be kept up out of this sum. Most of the cathedrals in 



