In New Mexico there is not the extent of superstition that is to be found in Old Mexico. That is because Indian converts have been fewer. The Indians in Mexico have imported all manner of pagan ideas into current piety. That is natural, because they possessed elaborate nature rituals, fetish worships, diabolisms; and the missionaries seldom denied practice or belief if they could change its name to Christianity and induce the pagans to be baptized. But the Northern Spanish people kept their religion fairly pure. One remarkable phenomenon, however, in the State is the widespread prevalence of asceticism. Lent is observed with a rigor unknown elsewhere in America. There are thousands of people living in the mountains who practice self-flagellation and beat their bare backs with cactus or with whips till they are streaming with blood. They carry heavy crosses in procession. They even permit themselves to be tied in crucificial attitude and hung on a cross till they are exhausted. These are called the "Penitentes," apparently an offshoot of the Third Order of St. Francis, which was inaugurated in Mexico in the first year of Cortes' conquest. These are no longer safely in the bosom of Mother Church, neither are they excommunicated except by their own choice, but they are without priests, and practice their rituals in windowless chapels called moradas. Of these there are many on the mountain sides of the country near Santa Fe. The Penitentes cannot be considered popular—and they for their part do not ask the interest of outsiders. They are secretive, and some of the Texans are all for "cleaning them up." There is no "hundred per cent Americanism" in their practices, perhaps not one per cent, and I doubt that they can long endure. They are likely to be forced into the conventional orthodoxy of the Church within the century.
Santa Fe is in one way remarkable for its religious processions. Open-air rituals, ceremonies, processions, are forbidden in Mexico proper, and the monasteries and convents have mostly been dissolved. A monk is a rarity in Chihuahua, but a common figure in New Mexico. Sacred images repose in the churches in Old Mexico—but here nothing so usual as to bring them out into the streets in grand parade! When they carried out the little white De Vargas Madonna in memory of the succor given to the Spanish troops in the seventeenth century in the recovery of Santa Fe from the Indians who had risen, killed their priests, razed their churches, and sacked the country—the procession may easily have been a mile long. Brass bands, sacred banners, mounted candlesticks, choir boys and clergy, knights of Columbus led by some one with a long, bared sword. Indians wrapped in their blankets, squaws with black hair hanging in a cloud to their waists, children carrying garlands of flowers, Mexican men in their clumsy clothes, women in long array of black,—such a procession is a memorable and moving sight. It has a missionary power also, and draws converts who thirst for color and emotion in the dullness of the Protestant sects.
I was urged by some Americans to think that Romanism without the Pope might become the new religion of America, and that it might start its great evangelism and revival from Santa Fe itself. Perhaps I am too much of a European, but the idea of Romanism without a Pope seemed that of a tree without a root. "I used to go to the church of the Paulist Fathers in New York every day of my life," said Vachel Lindsay, who comes of an ardent Free Church stock. "I am seventy per cent with them. Get rid of their politics and the Pope, and I would be with them heart and soul."
Possibly as America swung free of England and Mexico of Spain, and as the whole of America to-day with its Monroe Doctrine has cut adrift from European politics, so also its Catholicism might one day say—We will build Rome afresh in the New World and put away the old Rome of Europe as something which has been outlived. There might be a religious war of Independence. The Roman adherence of the United States with its Irish, its Poles, its Czechs, its Southern Germans, Austrians, and Italians, and its Spanish-speaking peoples, is an enormous multitude. They obtain an increasing hold upon the control of America, and they are regarded at present by Protestants as an increasing danger. But that is due, not so much to the religious expression of Romanism as to what it implies politically.
Of course there is a very telling reproach to Catholicism, and that is, that in Catholic countries one always finds what Protestants call "backwardness." It is a common objection in New Mexico, where it is difficult to get enough money to carry out an advanced educational program, where natural ambition seems somehow thwarted by a satisfying religion, where the men do not think that their women can have opinions or use a vote, where ethical standards are low, and the conscience seems to be encased in proof. Inter-marriage is regarded with disfavor by Americans. Many are ready to say that these Spaniards are not Americans, that they cannot be till they become Methodists or Presbyterians and speak the language properly. Even those who emotionally admire the processions and rituals go home to cool off and become disparagingly critical of the people, as of foreigners. For such, a trip over the Border into Old Mexico would be the best medicine—that they might see how far New Mexico had progressed from what it used to be when it was part of New Spain.
BOOK IV
PANAMA