The Latin Field by Jean Vuilleumier

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 20, 1902

The Latin Field

By Jean Vuilleumier

JEAN VUILLEUMIER

This field comprises Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Each one of these countries has some interesting features which prepare the way for the proclamation of the message.

Belgium

Belgium’s constitution, adopted in 1830, contains the most remarkable article that I know of on the Sunday-law question. It says (I quote from memory): “No law shall be passed stating which days shall be observed as rest days, or in what manner they shall be observed.” And yet, in flagrant violation of this article, the Sunday-law movement has succeeded in getting the government to issue all postage stamps with a perforated appendix asking the mail carriers “not to deliver on Sunday.” The sender of a letter or package can either leave this appendix or detach it. This is a curious scheme, and shows that the advocates of Sunday law are everywhere alive and wily.

France

France is just now in the midst of a severe conflict between a liberal government and the Catholic orders and their supporters. Many orders have been obliged, by the new law enacted last year, to close their convents, schools, factories, and other institutions. On the other hand, many priests have left “the church” within a few years, and are working hard to emancipate their fellow prisoners, as they call them.

Spain

The recent general strike at Barcelona is the first instance in modern times, says Le Temps, of Paris, of a complete cessation of work resulting from the organization in one locality of all lines of business and labor against capital. The anti-clerical movement started by the government of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, in France, has made a deep impression on a large class of Spaniards, and has resulted in many manifestations of hostility against the Catholic Church during the last year.

Spain is now, and has always been, under a clerical government. There has been one exception to this, however. That was in 1868, when the influence of Don Emilio Castelar was at its height. Religious liberty was then introduced into the constitution, but was soon after withdrawn. An interesting account is told of a New Testament which was sold in a village several years ago. The reading of this book led to the founding of a small church on Christian principles.

Portugal

Within the last year there have been many hostile manifestations against the Catholic Church, and especially against the Catholic orders, in Portugal. Resolutions of approval have been sent to the French government by public meetings.

Italy

Italy has some earnest and able advocates of the separation of church and

state. Garibaldi and Cavour—whose opposition to the papal church as a political machine made Italy what it has been since 1870—are regarded with as much enthusiasm and respect in Italy as Washington and Lincoln are in the United States. It is well known that the Italian government is permanently anathematized by the pope for making Rome its capital, hence a latent hostility between the pope and the king. The government is pledged to oppose the political doctrine of the Vatican, and would have to abdicate the moment it should submit to that doctrine.

The twentieth of February of this year, King Victor Emmanuel II, in opening the second session of the Italian Parliament, made a speech in which is found the following striking statement: “As to the relations between the state and the church, my government means to strictly maintain the separation of the civil and spiritual spheres; to honor the clergy, but to keep it within the limits of the sanctuary; to show religion and liberty of conscience the most unbounded respect, but to preserve absolutely intact the prerogatives of civil power and the rights of national sovereignty.”

Is it not both surprising and encouraging to hear religious liberty defended and proclaimed by the ruler of Italy, when it is being abandoned and ignored in the United States and other enlightened Protestant countries? And is it not time for the third angel’s message to follow up these rays of light with the glorious torch of the everlasting gospel?