A CARNIVAL IN BUENOS AYRES.
By Jean Vuilleumier
IT is interesting to study the molding influence for good or bad which religions have upon the heart and lives of men. Paganism, with its best maxims, its heroism, its culture, its arts, leaves society at the mercy of revolting customs and base corruption. Yea, more, its very religious rites at times encourage and sanction all sorts of abominations. Roman Catholicism brings with it some rays of divine light, which would lead humanity toward purity and true love of man, were it not that these rays are thickly intercepted by silly superstitions, gross errors, and cruel dogmas. As it is, Roman Catholicism, even in an age of civilization and enlightenment like ours, can but leave society as a whole a paganized mass. These thoughts are brought to my mind while glancing over a Buenos Ayres daily, La Prensa, about the festivities of the late carnival, whose sickening scenes I was quite fortunate in escaping, owing to a trip into the country. Buenos Ayres, like every other Catholic metropolis, teems with gorgeous churches, sanctuaries, and convents, with prelates and priests, high and low, and monks and nuns of all orders. The avowed purpose of all these agencies is purported to be to permeate the mass of society with the sanctifying influences of the Gospel. This permeating process has been going on here ever since the first Spanish vessel landed the first Catholic priests on these shores, and began their conquest in the name of the "holy faith," with the sanction and the benedictions of the pope and the king of Spain. How far said process has succeeded can be properly estimated on carnival week. Months before the event, scores or rather hundreds of committees and tens of thousands of individuals are at work collecting money, appointing programs, and devising decorations and masquerades. All important streets organize their processions, or corsos, to be accompanied by bands of music. At the same time, the city council and chief of police hold grave meetings, in which are discussed at length the measures to be taken to hold within proper bounds(!) the expected outburst of pleasure and dissipation. Said measures, prohibiting strictly(!) all indecent or immoral words, songs, attitudes, or vestures, are printed and posted all over the city a week or two ahead. Then come instructions stating that all street-cars and other business vehicles shall stop running on the streets which the corsos are to follow. Days in advance, all cabs are engaged to run all night, at handsome prices. And now everything is ready, and as the shades of night settle upon the city, the pent-up stream of human buffoonery, clownishness, and concupiscence, held in check for a whole year, bursts out in all its fury. The masquerades begin their long processions along the streets and avenues. Thousands of people are seen capering, gamboling, squeaking, pantomiming, according to their roles and disguise. Some wear national or historical costumes; there are the grave, the eccentric, the grotesque, some simple, some gorgeous; some represent animals, and others an infinite variety of objects or classes of people. An important feature in the processions are the decorated carriages, in which appear disguised people who do not care to walk. In one part of the city, the Boca, it is estimated that 50 per cent. of the entire population wore masks. The Admiral Brown Street procession contained no less than 10,000 members. The above-named paper, which is a most enthusiastic supporter of the carnival, says:— "Sobriety has hidden itself, and all the wrinkles of the gravest thinkers are giving way under the atmosphere of joy which is pouring out from all the pores of the carnival. . . . It is the spontaneous and living expression of the state of mind of the people." Then it goes on speaking of the "pure, serene, resplendent atmosphere" of these three days of mirth, which are a "movement of the people toward the ideal of art," and tend toward "purifying popular customs and elevating them to the highest possible degree of perfection"(!). According to the writer of said article, far more judgment is shown by the Southern nations in seeking to forget and soothe human woe in these noisy but hygienic and moral manifestations, than by the Northern nations who seek the same benefits in whisky(!). These proceedings go on simultaneously in all the cities of the country three or four solid days, the same as in the cities of Spain, Italy, and France, and they have been going on for 1,500 years throughout all Christendom. In the middle ages, the pope and the cardinals took themselves an active part in the revelries of the carnival. Some pious prelates and fathers of the church, like St. Ambrose of Milan, endeavored in vain to stamp out this heathenism from the so-called Christian nations. Society as a whole has remained heathen under the undisputed sway of the Roman pontiff. Nothing but the pure Gospel can change the life by purifying the heart. And as the Gospel acts only where it is freely received, we may not wonder at the failure of Romanism. May the revival of true Christianity go on in many hearts, and may God's people be soon prepared for a better world.