Joseph McCabe

“ The Catholic priesthood would be hopelessly impoverished if that, the only honourable course, were adopted. The earliest boyish wish is jealously consecrated, for Catholic parents are only too eager to contribute a member to the ranks of the clergy, and ecclesiastical authorities are only too deficient in agreeable applications for the dignity; the result is that, instead of a boy being afforded opportunities of learning what life really is before he makes a solemn sacrifice of its fairest gifts, he is sedulously preserved from contact with it through fear of endangering his vocation. ”

“ Still the number of young girls who are received into nunneries is lamentably high, and the anxiety shown by nun-teachers to inspire their pupils with a ‘vocation’ is extremely deplorable. They frequently request priests to secure aspirants for their congregations, and many a priest is tempted, out of desire to find favour at the convent (an important social distinction) , to welcome the first word that his girl-penitents breathe in the confessional about a religious vocation. Many priests develop a perfect mania for sending their penitents to convents. ”

“ For the modern missionary is not so insensible to the charms of hospitality as his mediæval forerunner.
The ranks of the secular clergy are recruited by similar methods. Large numbers of boys, usually of the middle and poorer classes, are drafted annually into the preparatory seminaries to be preserved jealously in their vocation if they have one, or inspired with one if they have not. Parents and parish priests are continually on the watch for symptoms of the Divine call, and in the case of clever quiet boys the wish is not infrequently father to the thought. ”

“ The low ideal of sacerdotal education which they usually cherish is largely explained by the strong foreign element pervading them. They have been founded, at no very remote date, by foreigners, and are still frequently reinforced from the Continent. And it will be at once conceded that the Continental priest (or even the Irish priest) does not attach a very grave importance to the necessity of culture. A priest has definite functions assigned him by the Church, and for their due fulfilment he needs a moderate acquaintance with liturgy, casuistry, and dogma: beyond, all is a matter of taste. ”

“ Relying, in Catholic countries, upon the dogmatic idea and the natural reverence which his parishioners have for the priesthood, he does not concern himself with any ulterior means of conciliating and impressing them. The consequence is that a low standard of education is accepted, and those who have imported it into this country have been slow to realise the true condition of their new environment—to perceive that, in England at least, a clergyman must be a gentleman of culture and refinement. ”

“ The monasteries of the same order in each land are grouped into a province, and the central authority, the provincial, exercises a quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over them. All the provinces are united under a common general at Rome, and there is a special Roman congregation to regulate the conflicts (not infrequent) of bishops and the monastic clergy. Hence monks have but few points of contact with episcopal authority, and indeed they are usually regarded with jealous suspicion by the bishop and the secular clergy. ”

“ The more important bodies, Jesuits, Benedictines, and Dominicans, have more reliable sources of supply in their large public schools at Stonyhurst, Douai, and Downside: in such institutions the thoughts of the more promising pupils can easily be directed into the higher channels of religious aspiration by the zealous monks, without any undue influence whatever. ”

“ Finally, a word must be here said of the vocation of nuns: more will be said of them in the following chapter. It is true that the proportion of women who take the veil in maturer years is much larger than that of men; whatever may be their ultimate attitude it must be admitted that there is a large amount of earnestness and religious sincerity in the vocations of women. ”

“ For the religious orders—the regular or monastic clergy as opposed to the secular—do not fall directly under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese. Monks are irregular auxiliaries of the canonical army who are supposed to emerge occasionally from their mountain fastnesses to assist in the holy warfare. ”

“ In later years, when contact with earnest readers impresses them with a due sense of their position, they are not infrequently heard to desiderate the systematic training of their Romanist rival. No doubt in point of general culture they are much superior to the average priest: one can often recognise the priest who has entered the sanctuary in a maturer age after secession from Anglicanism by that impalpable ‘culture’ which is the characteristic gift of our English Universities. ”

“ And if we are to judge their philosophy by its fruits one hardly sees any occasion for unusual admiration: to one who is widely acquainted with the Jesuits it is painfully obvious that it turns out only a large number of uninteresting mediocrities. ”

“ The Dominicans and Benedictines also conduct their preliminary studies in a creditable manner in their well-known colleges, but most of the other religious bodies are extremely negligent in that stage of education. Each religious order is, of course, responsible for the education of its own neophytes. ”

“ Although the Jesuits have the finest Catholic schools in the country, and it need not be said that they have practically their choice of boys from them, it is not evident that, as a body, they show any marked superiority over their less-dreaded colleagues. They have not a single pulpit orator; they have not one man eminent in science ”

“ Monasteries and nunneries are no longer refuges of converted sinners, of disgusted roués, of maimed knights-errant, and betrayed women. One does not need the pen of a Huysman to describe the souls en route to the higher life of the religious world. ”

“ Even in sacred literature the divine influence is gradually fading from view; verbal inspiration is, of course, a hopeless fossil, and inspiration of any kind is growing alarmingly attenuated under the attentions of our modern Cheynes and Sayces. ”

“ Now, the economic world and the hierarchy of society seem in danger of being handed over to the play of ‘natural causes’; it is seriously doubted, even by many ecclesiastics, whether the distribution of wealth is an immutable divine arrangement after all. ”

“ Auscultory hallucinations are now preferred to voices floating in the air, crying ‘Tolle, Lege’; dreams are more congenial than visions, and exalted ideas in a neurotic or hysterical temperament are calmly substituted, even by spiritual writers, for ‘voices speaking in the heart.’ ‘Vocations’ to a spiritual life are usually admitted to be susceptible of a satisfactory ‘human’ explanation ”

“ Finally the student is treated to a three years’ course of theology, passes a severe examination, and is admitted to ordination. The various stages will be described more in detail as the writer passed through them. ”