Church from State

Exactly one year ago Spain's Constituent Assembly drew up the new Republic's Constitutional article providing broadly for "separation of church and State." That same day dynamic, counter-religious Don Manuel Azana became Premier of Spain. Last week he was still Premier--no mean record, considering Spain's tribulations. Firmly entrenched. Premier Azana celebrated his first official birthday by presentation to the Cortes of Spain's new Law of Religious Orders. This act, which Spaniards believed certain to pass, will implement the Constitution's counter-religious clauses, much as the Volstead Act implements the 18th Amendment.

As in Mexico, the new Spanish act is aimed not at Protestants (who will be virtually unaffected) but at the Church which was connected and will now be separated from the State. At one blow the act will deprive the Catholic Church of ownership of Spanish art treasures valued at more than $500,000,000; ownership of Seville Cathedral, where Discoverer Christopher Columbus prayed; ownership of El Escorial, the frowning monastery where Spain's officially "Catholic Sovereigns" lie buried; and, generally, of ownership of all churches, church lands and property. On the other hand the Spanish Republic, like the French Republic, will grant to the Catholic Church both use and administration of much of the "separated property."

Other Features of Spain's new act:

1) Church schools will continue to function throughout Spain, being gradually replaced by State schools over a period of years.

2) Public worship must ordinarily take place in premises granted to the Church, but exceptionally the State will issue permits for open air worship and religious festivals, such as Seville's famed Easter processions.

3) The State's assent must be sought and obtained before each appointment of a dignitary of the Church in Spain. 4) Members of churchly orders will at once be excluded from industry--Spanish nuns must stop their needlework, Spanish monks their manufacture of liqueurs and other specialties.

French monks, originators of the liqueur La Grande Chatreuse, were ousted by the State from France in 1904, moved to Tarragona in Spain where they have been making their exquisite cordial ever since. They must now move again, perhaps into the Papal State, if they wish to continue liqueur making.

Rupture? In Madrid last week Monsignor Federigo Tedeschini, the Papal Nuncio, was reported to be urging Pope Pius XI not to break openly with the Spanish Republic or pronounce such charges of "unheard of persecution" as His Holiness pronounced recently against the Mexican Republic (TIME, Oct. 10). "The Nuncio . . . feels," cabled Correspondent Frank L. Kluckhohn of the New York Times, "that permitting some kind of worship is better than the church being expelled entirely. ... 'A field abandoned is a field lost' is said to be his view. . . . He feels that a rupture between Spain and the Vatican would not help any but would be likely to evoke extremist anti-church manifestations."

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