8o ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



which goes so far as to permit divorce by consent ; lay neutral 

 schools, in which anti-Catholic doctrines are taught while the 

 church or religious teaching is excluded, and a law permitting, 

 if not almost commanding, parish priests to marry, notwith- 

 standing their vows or the rules of the Church. At present 

 they are considering laws prohibiting religious rites for any 

 of the state, army or navy, so that the government may be 

 kept free from any alleged clerical influence, and also a law 

 permitting the equality of inheritance and legal rights between 

 legitimate and illegitimate children. 



Portugal has had a glorious and heroic past, but the last 

 two centuries have been centuries of impotence and dishonor. 

 Its magnificent churches, hospitals, monastery buildings and 

 abbeys testify to the time when the Catholic faith was a living 

 and quickening reality there. But, as the State gradually fet- 

 tered the Church, tying it limb by limb, the State grew om- 

 nipotent and paralyzed all independent action on the part of 

 the Church. Only so long ago as last August the Archbishop 

 of Braga suspended a religious paper, *'A Voz de Sao Fran- 

 cisco," for some infraction of ecclesiastical discipline, and was 

 prosecuted by the government for not having obtained permis- 

 sion from it to do so. The present Bishop of Beja, Dr. Sebas- 

 tian Leite de Vasconcellos, was driven from his see by the 

 revolutionists and fled to Spain for safety; he was accused 

 and condemned by the revolutionary government for being 

 absent from his see without leave. These instances show how 

 tight a rein the Portuguese government held over the Church, 

 and how little initiative or power was left to the clergy to do 

 their work as in other countries. Add to this the poverty of 

 the people, the heavy debts and incapacity of the government, 

 and we have the elements which make for backwardness and 

 immobility of a race which is largely scattered among its 

 country districts. But the faults, shortcomings and defects in 

 Portugal are really the result of State supremacy, and it re- 

 mains to be seen how much good can come out of the new 

 order of things which calls itself a republic, without being one 

 even in form. 



