“A native clergy always provides better services”.

The Cuban ecclesiastical hierarchy against the preludes of modernism in a country without vocations (1828-1868)

Abstract

Since the second half of the 19th century, the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Cuba had to face the challenges of a society where religious indifference, Protestantism and the new philosophical doctrines were transforming the traditional role of the Catholic religion and threatened the colonial order. In the midst of a crisis of vocations among the natives of the island, the Church was forced to resort to a clergy of Spanish origin to combat the errors of modernity (Syllabus, 1864). The replacement of an autochthonous clergy by another Spanish has been interpreted as part of a strategy of Spanish overseas policy that sought to strengthen the bond of fidelity of Cuba with the metropolis. The analysis of the structural problems of the ecclesiastical institution on the island and the reading of that process by the Cuban bishops and the apostolic nuncio in Madrid, they allow us to rethink the reasons in which that substitution occurred to conclude whether it was a strategy or need, without the conclusions hiding the fact that at the time of independence the Church was seen as a Spanish institution that should be purged of its peninsular elements