Religion: Protestant Picture

The Rev. John Mackay, Presbyterian president of Princeton Theological Seminary, went to Europe last summer on a special mission: to study the status of Protestants in predominantly Roman Catholic countries. This week, in Presbyterian Life, he published his conclusions. Highlights:

¶ “Belgium is a lay state which is benevolently neutral towards religion.” The government gives financial subsidies to Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews, but no attempt is made to control religious policy. Protestants in Belgium are generally “confident, happy and grateful to God and the Belgian government for the freedom which they enjoy to engage in worship and to propagate their faith.”

¶”France is a lay state which is rigidly detached from religion.” Dr. Mackay found the influence of France’s 700,000 Protestants important out of all proportion to their numbers. Even France’s Catholics, he claims, show Protestant influence; seven “distinguished Roman Catholic clergymen” told him they would not want to see France become a “clerical” state like Spain.

¶”Italy is a clerical state which strives to impede Protestant growth.” Though the Protestant minority (some 100,000) are guaranteed religious freedom by the Italian constitution, old Fascist police laws are often invoked locally to prevent them from opening churches. The Italian people, says Mackay, while not hostile to Protestants, are cynical about governmental suppression of them—”As in so many other parts of the world today, the old robust liberalism is dead.” _ But Protestantism is not only holding its own in Italy, “its ranks swell with new adherents.”

¶ “Portugal is a clerical state where a dictator has nationalized a dominant church.” But though the country’s press has long been silent on the existence of Portugal’s 15,000 Protestants, Mackay reports that they enjoy relative freedom. Protestants can get permission to open new places of worship and hold public meetings. Dr. Mackay’s presence in Lisbon and a public lecture he delivered in Spanish on “Protestantism and Latin Culture” were reported in the press. The Protestants’ “spirit is buoyant and in their ranks are distinguished members of the legal and medical professions.”

¶ “Spain is a clerical state which maintains a Protestant ghetto.” Mackay, who studied in Madrid in 1915-16 and speaks Spanish fluently, found Spain “worse than I had imagined . . . The peace that prevailed was the peace of the sepulchre.” More than at any time since the 16th Century, there is “that terrible concept of Spanish unity . . . which equates Spanish nationality with adhesion to the Roman Catholic Church and makes the state the tool of the church’s will.” Spain’s 20,000 Protestants are virtually isolated from normal life: according to Mackay, they may not mark their churches, publish church literature, hold services in private homes, conduct recreational clubs or parochial schools, or become army officers, teachers or lawyers, and they have trouble getting married. “In the great city of Madrid, there are only two judges who have the conviction and the courage to perform civil marriages for couples, one member of whom has broken with the Roman Catholic faith.”