democratic republic of workers of all classes, organized in a régime of liberty and justice’. Government ‘emanated from the people’ and all citizens were equal. The country would renounce war as an instrument of policy. No titles of nobility would be recognized. Both sexes would vote at twenty-three. There would be only one chamber of parliament. Property would be ‘the object of expropriation for social utility’. Some of these clauses might be invoked to justify socialism; others could be regarded as giving safeguards against it. Then, since the men of the republic feared a meddlesome Head of State, such as King Alfonso had been, the powers of the President were limited by a six-year term, and ineligibility for immediate re-election. The President would, however, nominate the Prime Minister. The acts of the President would be valid if signed by a cabinet minister, but the President could veto laws which he did not like. He could be removed nevertheless if he were to dissolve the Cortes twice.
The religious clauses brought dismay. Article 26 separated church and state. The payments by the state to priests were to stop in two years, though these salaries had been compensation for the confiscation of church lands in 1837. All religious orders had to register with the ministry of justice. If they were judged a danger to the state, they would be dissolved. 1 All would have to pay ordinary taxes. Orders which required a vow beyond the three normal canonical vows would anyway be dissolved. This was merely another way of dissolving the Jesuits, from whom a special oath of loyalty to the Pope is customarily exacted. No order was to be permitted to hold more property than it required for its own subsistence, nor was any to indulge in commerce. All orders were to submit annual accounts to the state. All education, meanwhile, was to be inspired ‘by ideals of human solidarity’. Religious education, that is, was to end. Every ‘public manifestation of religion’—including the Holy Week, Epiphany and even carnival processions—would have to be officially approved; while divorce was to be granted as a result of mutual disagreement between the parties, or on the petition of either party, if just cause could be shown. Civil marriages were to be the only legal ones.
The inclusion of such sweeping anti-clerical clauses in the constitution of the republic was ambitious, but foolish, whatever the merits of the case might be. It might have been that the application of such conditions would ultimately have made for a juster Spain. Nevertheless, it would have been wiser to have delayed before the presentation of total disestablishment. It would have been better too to have held back dissolution until the place of the Augustinian and Jesuit schools could have been taken by lay establishments of comparable quality. For, with all their shortcomings, these orders had created the best secondary schools in the country—for those who could pay. Even liberal newspapers denounced these measures. Yet Azaña thundered in the Cortes: ‘Do not tell me that this is contrary to freedom. It is a matter of public health.’ Unfortunately, Spanish liberalism had come to look on the church as a scapegoat for all Spain’s ills; but no such simple explanation was, in fact, honest. Furthermore, these ideas were far from innovations: the Jesuits had been expelled before, and compulsory religious education had been dropped in 1913, to be restored by Primode Rivera. The difficulty was that Spanish Catholics were forced into having to oppose the constitution if they wished to criticize its educational policy. 1
The debates in the Cortes on these clerical clauses brought the first of many governmental crises in the Second Republic. Alcalá Zamora, the Prime Minister, and Miguel Maura, the minister of the interior, both Catholic ‘progressives’, resigned in October. The Speaker of the Cortes, the serene Besteiro, assumed the temporary rank of
The religious clauses brought dismay. Article 26 separated church and state. The payments by the state to priests were to stop in two years, though these salaries had been compensation for the confiscation of church lands in 1837. All religious orders had to register with the ministry of justice. If they were judged a danger to the state, they would be dissolved. 1 All would have to pay ordinary taxes. Orders which required a vow beyond the three normal canonical vows would anyway be dissolved. This was merely another way of dissolving the Jesuits, from whom a special oath of loyalty to the Pope is customarily exacted. No order was to be permitted to hold more property than it required for its own subsistence, nor was any to indulge in commerce. All orders were to submit annual accounts to the state. All education, meanwhile, was to be inspired ‘by ideals of human solidarity’. Religious education, that is, was to end. Every ‘public manifestation of religion’—including the Holy Week, Epiphany and even carnival processions—would have to be officially approved; while divorce was to be granted as a result of mutual disagreement between the parties, or on the petition of either party, if just cause could be shown. Civil marriages were to be the only legal ones.
The inclusion of such sweeping anti-clerical clauses in the constitution of the republic was ambitious, but foolish, whatever the merits of the case might be. It might have been that the application of such conditions would ultimately have made for a juster Spain. Nevertheless, it would have been wiser to have delayed before the presentation of total disestablishment. It would have been better too to have held back dissolution until the place of the Augustinian and Jesuit schools could have been taken by lay establishments of comparable quality. For, with all their shortcomings, these orders had created the best secondary schools in the country—for those who could pay. Even liberal newspapers denounced these measures. Yet Azaña thundered in the Cortes: ‘Do not tell me that this is contrary to freedom. It is a matter of public health.’ Unfortunately, Spanish liberalism had come to look on the church as a scapegoat for all Spain’s ills; but no such simple explanation was, in fact, honest. Furthermore, these ideas were far from innovations: the Jesuits had been expelled before, and compulsory religious education had been dropped in 1913, to be restored by Primode Rivera. The difficulty was that Spanish Catholics were forced into having to oppose the constitution if they wished to criticize its educational policy. 1
The debates in the Cortes on these clerical clauses brought the first of many governmental crises in the Second Republic. Alcalá Zamora, the Prime Minister, and Miguel Maura, the minister of the interior, both Catholic ‘progressives’, resigned in October. The Speaker of the Cortes, the serene Besteiro, assumed the temporary rank of
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