PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT.
If the Pope were merely the head of the Roman Catholic Church; if,
limiting his action to the interior of temples, he would renounce the
sway over temporal matters about which he knows nothing, his
countrymen of Rome, Ancona, and Bologna might govern themselves as
people do in London or in Paris. The administration would be lay, the
laws would be lay, the nation would provide for its own wants with its
own revenues, as is the custom in all civilized countries.
As for the general expenses of the Roman Catholic worship, which in
point of fact no more _specially_ concern the Romans than they do the
Champenois, a voluntary contribution made by one hundred and
thirty-nine millions of men would amply provide for them. If each
individual among the faithful were to give a halfpenny _per annum_,
the head of the Church would have something like £300,000 to spend
upon his wax tapers and his incense, his choristers and his
sacristans, and the repairs of the basilica of St. Peter's. No Roman
Catholic would think of refusing his quota, because the Holy Father,
entirely separated from worldly interests, would not be in a position
to offend anybody. This small tax would, therefore, restore
independence to the Romans without diminishing the independence of the
Pope.
Unfortunately the Pope is a king. In this capacity he must have a
Court, or something approaching to it. He selects his courtiers among
men of his own faith, his own opinions, and his own profession:
nothing can be more reasonable. These courtiers, in their turn,
dispose of the different offices of state, spiritual or temporal, just
as it may happen. Nor can the Sovereign object to this pretension as
being ridiculous. Moreover he naturally hopes to be more faithfully
served by priests than laymen; while he feels that the salaries
attached to the best-paid places are necessary to the splendour of his
Court.
Thence it follows that to preach the secularization of the government
to the Pope, is to preach to the winds. Here you have a man who would
not be a layman, who pities laymen simply because they are laymen,
regarding them as a caste inferior to his own; who has received an
anti-lay education; who thinks differently to laymen on all important
points; and you expect this man will share his power with laymen, in
an empire where he is absolute master of all and everything! You
require him to surround himself with laymen, to summon them to his
councils, and to confide to them the execution of his behests!
Supposing, however, that for some reason or other he fears you, and
wishes to humour you a little, see what he will do. He will seek in
the outer offices of his ministers some lay secretary, or assistant,
or clerk, a man without character or talent; he will employ him, and
take care that his incapacity shall be universally known and admitted.
After which, he will say to you sadly, "I have done what I could." But
if he were to speak the honest truth, he would at once say, "If you
wish to secularize anything, begin by putting laymen in _my_ place."
It is not in 1859 that the Pope will venture to speak so haughtily.
Intimidated by the protection of France, deafened by the unanimous
complaints of his subjects, obliged to reckon with public opinion, he
declares that he has secularized everything. "Count my functionaries,"
he says:
"I have 14,576 laymen in my service. You have been told that
ecclesiastics monopolize the public service. Show me these
ecclesiastics! The Count de Rayneval looked for them, and
could find but ninety-eight; and even of those, the greater
part were not in priests' orders! Be assured we have long
since broken with the clerical _régime_. I myself decreed
the admissibility of laymen to all offices but one. In order
to show my sincerity, for some time I had lay ministers! I
entrusted the finances to a mere accountant, the department
of justice to an obscure little advocate, and that of war to
a man of business who had been intendant to several
Cardinals. I admit that for the moment we have no laymen in
the Ministry; but my subjects may console themselves by
reflecting that the law does not prevent me from appointing
them.
"In the provinces, out of eighteen prefects, I appointed
three laymen. If I afterwards substituted prelates for those
three, it was because the people loudly called for the
change. Is it my fault if the people respect nothing but the
ecclesiastical garb?"
This style of defence may deceive some good easy folk; but I think if
I were Pope, or Secretary of State, or even a simple supporter of the
Pontifical administration, I should prefer telling the plain truth.
That truth is strictly logical, it is in conformity with the principle
of the Government; it emanates from the Constitution. Things are
exactly what they ought to be, if not for the welfare of the people,
at least for the greatness, security, and satisfaction of its temporal
head.
The truth then is that all the ministers, all the prefects, all the
ambassadors, all the court dignitaries, and all the judges of the
superior tribunals, are ecclesiastics; that the Secretary of the
_Brevi_ and the _Memoriali_ the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the
Council of State and the Council of Finances, the Director-General of
the Police, the Director of Public Health and Prisons, the Director of
the Archives, the Attorney-General of the Fisc, the President and the
Secretary of the _Cadastro_ the Agricultural President and Commission,
are _all ecclesiastics_. The public education is in the hands of
ecclesiastics, under the direction of thirteen Cardinals. All the
charitable establishments, all the funds applicable to the relief of
the poor, are the patrimony of ecclesiastical directors. Congregations
of Cardinals decide causes in their leisure hours, and the Bishops of
the kingdom are so many living tribunals.
Why seek to conceal from Europe so natural an order of things?
Let Europe rather be told what it did when it re-established a priest
on the throne of Rome.
All the offices which confer power or profit belong first to the Pope,
then to the Secretary of State, then to the Cardinals, and lastly to
the Prelates. Everybody takes his share according to the hierarchical
order; and when all are satisfied, the crumbs of power are thrown to
the nation at large; in other words, the 14,596 places which no
ecclesiastic chooses to take, particularly the distinguished office of
_Guardia Campestre_, a sort of rural police. Nobody need wonder at
such a distribution of places. In the government of Rome, the Pope is
everything, the Secretary of State is almost everything, the Cardinals
are something, and the priests on the road to become something. The
_lay nation_, which marries and gives in marriage, and peoples the
State, is nothing--never will be anything.
The word _prelate_ has fallen from my pen; I will pause a moment to
explain its precise meaning. Among us it is a title sufficiently
respected: at Rome it is far less so. We have no prelates but our
Archbishops and Bishops. When we see one of these venerable men
driving slowly out of his palace in an old-fashioned carriage drawn by
a single pair of horses, we know, without being told it, that he has
spent three-fourths of his existence in the exercise of the most
meritorious works. He said Mass in some small village before he was
made the cure of a canton. He has preached, confessed, distributed
alms to the poor, borne the viaticum to the sick, committed the dead
to their last narrow home.
The Roman prelate is often a great hulking fellow who has just left
college, with the tonsure for his only sacrament. He is a Doctor of
something or other, he owns some property, more or less, and he enters
the Church as an amateur, to see if he can make something out of it.
The Pope gives him leave to style himself _Monsignore_, instead of
_Signore_, and to wear violet-coloured stockings. Clad in these he
starts on his road, hoping it may lead him to a Cardinal's hat. He
passes through the courts of law, or the administration, or the
domestic service of the Vatican, as the case may be. All these paths
lead in the right direction, provided the traveller pursuing them has
zeal, and professes a pious scorn for liberal ideas. The
ecclesiastical calling is by no means indispensable, but nothing can
be achieved without a good stock of retrograde ideas. The prelate who
should take the Emperor's letter to M. Edgar Ney seriously, would be,
in vulgar parlance, done for; the only course open to him would be--to
marry. At Paris, a man disappointed in ambition takes prussic acid; at
Rome, he takes a wife.
Sometimes the prelate is a cadet of a noble house, one in which the
right to a red hat is traditional. Knowing this he feels that the
moment he puts on his violet stockings, he may order his scarlet ones.
In the meanwhile he takes his degrees, and profits by the occasion to
sow his wild oats. The Cardinals shut their eyes to his conduct, so he
does but profess wholesome ideas. Do what you please, child of
princes, so your heart be but clerical!
Finally, it is not uncommon to find among the prelates some soldiers
of fortune, adventurers of the Church, who have been attracted from
their native land by the ambition of ecclesiastical greatness. This
corps of volunteers receives contingents from the whole Catholic
world. These gentlemen furnish some strange examples to the Roman
people; and I know more than one of them to whom mothers of families
would on no account confide the education of their children. It has
happened to me to have described in a novel[8] a prelate who richly
deserved a thrashing; the good folks of Rome have named to me three or
four whom they fancied they recognized in the portrait. But it has
never yet been known that any prelate, however vicious, has given
utterance to liberal ideas. A single word from a Roman prelate's lips
in behalf of the nation would ruin him.
The Count de Rayneval has laboured hard to prove that prelates, who
have not received the sacrament of Ordination, form part of the lay
element. At this rate, a province should deem itself fortunate, and
think it has escaped priestly government, if its prefect is simply
tonsured. I cannot for the life of me see in what tonsured prelates
are more laymen than they are priests. I admit that they neither
follow the calling nor possess the virtues of the priesthood; but I
maintain that they have the ideas, the interests, the passions of the
ecclesiastical caste. They aim at the Cardinal's hat, when their
ambition does not soar to the tiara. Singular laymen, truly, and well
fitted to inspire confidence in a lay people! 'Twere better they
should become Cardinals; for then they would no longer have their
fortunes to make, and they would not be called upon to signalize their
zeal against the nation.
For that is, unhappily, the state at which things have arrived. This
same ecclesiastical caste, so strongly united by the bonds of a
learned hierarchy, reigns as over a conquered country. It regards the
middle class,--in other words, the intelligent and laborious part of
the nation,--as an irreconcilable foe. The prefects are ordered, not
to govern the provinces, but to keep them in order. The police is
kept, not to protect the citizens, but to watch them. The tribunals
have other interests to defend than those of justice. The diplomatic
body does not represent a country, but a coterie. The educating body
has the mission not to teach, but to prevent the spread of
instruction. The taxes are not a national assessment, but an official
foray for the profit of certain ecclesiastics. Examine all the
departments of the public administration: you will everywhere find the
clerical element at war with the nation, and of course everywhere
victorious.
In this state of things it is idle to say to the Pope, "Fill your
principal offices with laymen." You might as well say to Austria,
"Place your fortresses under the guard of the Piedmontese." The Roman
administration is what it must be. It will remain what it is as long
as there is a Pope on the throne.
Besides, although the lay population still complains of being
systematically excluded from power, matters have reached such a point,
that an honest man of the middle class would think himself dishonoured
by accepting a high post. It would be said that he had deserted the
nation to serve the enemy.