I was sitting cutting a wafer (to take powders with) into oblates.
_She_: "You must not cut into consecrated things, not even put the
teeth into it. The priest says: 'Thou shalt not bite Christ.'"
Unfortunately, she has not any real impression of religion, either of
its beauty or its underlying truth. None of them have any idea of what
the New Testament is or contains; they do not know its best-known
quotations and stories. Religion, to them, is four or five rigmaroles,
which are printed in our _Abecedario_, the Creed, the Ave Maria,
the various Sacraments, etc., which they know by heart. These they
reject, but they have not the slightest conception of what Christianity
is. If I quote a text from the New Testament, they have never heard it.
But they can run the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven other
virtues, off by rote. One of these last, that of instructing the
ignorant, is a virtue which the priesthood (partly for good reasons)
have not practised to any remarkable extent in this country.
Yesterday Maria came home in a state of great delight, from a
_trattoria_, where a gentleman had spoken _tanto bene, tanto
bene_ against religion and the Pope and the priests; there were a few
_Caccialepri_ present (a derogatory expression for adherents of the
priests), who had just had to come down a peg or two.
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