Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

Most priests make engagements or “intentions” for more masses than they can perform, and if he is honest, he will sell his surplus to a less favored brother priest with few “briefs” at a handsome profit. Technically they are supposed to do that, but who ever knew a priest to do so?

O no, he knows a good thing when he sees it and the “dear people” will never know the whole thing is a humbug. To be sure, when the priest finds a tough case he will charge a good round sum to pray him out of Purgatory, and he usually collects from Mr. T. C. while he is alive and in good health, clothed and in his right mind.

Reprobate sinners who had a tough time on earth and no hopes for better in the future, generally fix the future all right with the padre before they start to the house-warming. Now these good fathers do not believe a word of the doctrine they preach, because they are all well educated, but they teach it to the people and threaten with excommunication if they do not find the shekels, so the poor beggars will go naked to find their assessment.

And not only in Mexico. I know a poor woman in Michigan who had to sell her only cow to raise a forty dollar assessment on a new church, and she did it under fear of a threat. I have had a poor cancer-eaten pilowa hold out her skinny hand to me and beg in the name of God for “un centavo, Señor,” for her starving children, and I have followed her back to the vestry to see her buy candles to burn before the altar of her chosen saint for value received from that defunct in times past. What does the priest care for the price of blood-money? Follow me to Jinks and see.

Jinks is a licensed gambling house, that I was told on good authority paid the city twenty thousand dollars a year to run the faro bank, three card monte and the roulette wheel. In search after knowledge, I went to Jinks. It is as public as a theater and good order is preserved by policemen who sit to the closing hour and see the lights out. There at a late hour I saw barrels and barrels of silver dollars change hands. Neither bank drafts, paper money nor gold are accepted—only silver.

Great brawny armed porters are there whose only duty is to carry boxes of silver from the vaults to the table, and from the table to the vaults, and at every table sit the clean faced priests who gamble with stacks of silver till the wee sma’ hours, and tomorrow they will go among their parishioners and beg more money for Mother Church. They teach the people that absolute obedience to church behests can only be had in obedience without will and will without reason.

Says Charles Lampriére: “The Mexican church, as a church, fills no mission of virtue, no mission of morality, no mission of mercy, no mission of charity. Virtue cannot exist in its pestiferous atmosphere. The cause of morality does not come within its practice. It knows no mercy and no emotion of charity ever nerves the stony heart of the priesthood, which, with an avarice that knows no limit, filches the last penny from the diseased and dying beggar, plunders the widows and orphans of their substance as well as their virtue, and casts such a horoscope of horrors around the death-bed of the dying millionaire, that the poor, superstitious wretch is glad to purchase a chance for the safety of his soul in making the church the heir of his treasure.”

The reader may get the impression that I am rather hard on the Catholic Church. Of the church in the United States I know but little, but when the reader has seen as much of the church as I saw in Mexico, he will at least be charitable to the writer. There in the Catholic Church the worship of Christ is hidden behind the theatricals of gaudily dressed priests, incensed sanctuaries, ornamented images of the Virgin Mary, beautiful pictures, frescoed paintings, scapulars, medals, relics, and Agnus Deis, with their accompanying indulgences; and associated with most entrancing music, fragrant flowers, lighted candles, gorgeously dressed altars, surpliced acolytes, blessed ashes, holy water, consecrated wafers, holy oil and chrism.

There are also the attractive ceremony of extreme unction, confession, satisfaction, besides the lenten feasts, the days of abstinence, genuflections and stations of the cross, the crozier, and mitres, with the pontifical high mass, decorations, Latin liturgies, illuminated missals, gold and silver ciboriums, ostensoriums and chalices, candelabras and vases, crosses and precious stones, costly laces and fine linens, and the royal purple and the countless ceremonies which the blind follower is not meant to understand.

The bible and Christ are left out of the above enumeration, and never have I seen the bible in the hands of a Mexican layman. They are discouraged from owning a bible and are told that the priest will read and interpret it for them. What can a Mexican Indian get for his peace of soul and conscience out of the above enumeration, when probably five hundred words constitute his entire vocabulary and Latin is no part of it? All these insignia must he go through before he gets to Christ, and then he is told he is not worthy to go to Him, but must pray the Holy Virgin and the Saints to intercede for him, else he will be eternally damned in the fires of Purgatory. Some particular Saint is chosen and assigned him, and he is assured that if he buy candles enough and burn them on the altar before that particular saint, the said saint will prosper his undertaking, and if it succeed, he must ever afterward give the credit to the saint.