In some of these penances the people wear crowns of thorns on their heads and cords about their necks and go barefooted through the streets of the city in their pilgrimages to the church.  All, that through these means they may find some ease for the conscience which accuses them of evil.

What shall I say of the priests?  I believe I will say nothing.  I declined steadily to soil the pages of my note book with the records of the immoral deeds of these men.  I will let speak for me an educated Brazilian, a teacher in an excellent school in Pernambuco, who is not a professing Christian, but who, like a great many of his class, admires Christianity very sincerely.  When Mr. Colton, International Secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association, passed through Pernambuco in June, 1910, he was given a banquet by some of the leading men, which event offended so grievously the Catholic authorities that they published in the “Religious Tribune,” their organ, a bitter diatribe on the Young Men’s Christian Association.  The professor, to whom I referred, who is now one of the leading judges in the state, published the following answer to this attack.  He is in far better position to speak authoritatively about the Brazilian priests than I am.  His article ran as follows: 

“Fury unbridled.”

“The official organ of the diocese of Olinda could not on this occasion control its great animus.  It threw aside its old worn-out mantle of hypocrisy, it precipitated itself furiously and insolently against the Y.M.C.A.  It not only does not forgive, but does not fear to excommunicate the local and State authorities who appeared at the banquet nor the directory of the Portuguese reading rooms who lent their hall to said Y.M.C.A.

“After affirming that the evangelization of Brazil means its unchristianizing the clerical organ begins to call the members of the Association and Protestants in general wolves in sheep’s clothing.

“But we ask, to whom does this epithet apply better?  To us who dress as the generality of men, thus leaving no doubt as to our sex and freeing our consciences from the ignominious Roman yoke, direct ourselves by that straight and narrow way which leads to salvation; or to this black band which secretly and maliciously makes of a man its prey from the moment in which he sees the light of day until the moment in which he goes to rest in the bosom of the earth?  To us, Who having no thirst for dominion, seek to cultivate in man all the noble attributes given by the Creator, to us who teach clearly and without sophistry and gross superstitions the plan of salvation as it is found in the word of God; or to this legion of corrupt and hypocritical parasites, corruptors of youth, whose character they seek to debase and villify by means of the confessional?

“The only object of the wolf in dressing himself as a sheep is to devour the sheep.  And these shaven heads know perfectly well why we cite the chronicles of the convents; they know from personal knowledge who are responsible for the greater part of the illegitimate children, and they have no doubt about the permanency and progress of prostitution.