They intermarry;
and since their sacred days, such as Christmas, are not celebrated at
the same time the non-celebrating congregation cease to work, out of
sympathy. Even with the alteration of the Orthodox calendar there will
be days which one community will keep as workless days, so that it may
go visiting the others and congratulating them. But this bland
behaviour of the people is unfortunately not maintained when they
discuss their priests. And in the Lika, where the population leads a
rough, laborious life, they are not satisfied to have an academical
discussion. They hold that if a man is celibate he is not manly, and
scenes have taken place which Hogarth might refuse to draw.
WHAT THE CZECHS ARE DOING TO-DAY
The twenty-three priests of the Zagreb diocese who were in favour of a
married clergy and of several other reforms could not stand up against
their ecclesiastical superiors. The movement has made no open progress
and their leader has been constrained to abandon Holy Orders and
become a timber merchant. Nevertheless the idea of a national Church
has not vanished; a good deal depends for other countries on the
degree of success which attends the newly established national Church
in Czecho-Slovakia. It already possesses over half a million adherents
out of a population of 13 millions. We may be going to witness the
rise of a series of national Churches, a consummation which--a Roman
Catholic might observe--will very likely be no more successful in
bringing nearer the brotherhood of man than the wide-flung Catholic
Church. The enthusiastic nationalism of such new Churches may, in
fact, help to postpone that happy state of things. In any case, and
whatever be the results, we shall do well not to ignore the beginnings
of what may be a mighty Reformation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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