CHAPTER II. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

I. The Catholic System.

The effects of the system.--Completion of the ecclesiastical

hierarchy.--Omnipotence of the Pope in the Church.

--Influence of the French Concordat and other precedents from

1801 to 1870.--Why the clergy becomes ultramontane.--The

dogma of Infallibility.

In 1801, at Rome, pending the negotiations for the Concordat, when Pius

VII. still hesitated about the deposition in mass of the survivors of

the ancient French episcopacy, clear-sighted observers already remarked,

"Let this Concordat which the First Consul desires be completed,[5201]

and you will see, on its ratification, its immense importance and

the power it will give to Rome over the episcopacy throughout the

universe."--In effect, through this "extraordinary, nearly unexampled"

act of authority, and certainly unequaled "in the history of the

Church,"[5202] the ultramontane theory, contested up to this time,

maintained in the speculative region of abstract formulae, comes down

to solid ground, into practical and lasting use. Willingly or not, "the

Pope acts as if universal bishop;" urged and constrained by the lay

power, attached to a dictatorship,[5203] he entered upon it and so

installed himself, and, ten years later, Napoleon, who had impelled him

on, regretted that he had done so. Warned by his Gallican jurists,

he saw the ecclesiastical import of his work; but it was too late to

retreat--the decisive step had been taken.--For, in fact, the Pope had

deprived all the chieftains of a great church of their thrones, "his

colleagues and co-bishops,"[5204] successors of the apostles under the

same title as himself, members "of the same order and stamped "with the

same "character," eighty-five legitimate incumbents[5205] and, still

better, as admitted by himself, blameless, worthy, persecuted

because they had obeyed him, banished from France on account of their

unwillingness to quit the Roman Church. He had ordered them to resign;

he had withdrawn apostolic powers from the thirteen who had refused to

tender their resignations; to all, even to those who refused, he had

appointed their successors. He assigned to the new titularies dioceses

of a new pattern and, to justify novelties of such gravity,[5206] he

could allege no other reasons than circumstances, the exigencies of

lay power, and the welfare of the Church. After that the Gallicans

themselves, unless accepting the risk of a schism and of separating

forever from the Holy See, were obliged to allow the Pope above and

beyond the ordinary powers exercised by him within the old limits of

canons and of custom, an extraordinary power unlimited by any canon or

by any custom,[5207] a plenary and absolute authority, a right above

all other rights, by virtue of which, in cases determined by himself, he

provided in a discretionary way for all Catholic interests, of which he

thus becomes the supreme judge, the sole interpreter and the court of

last appeal. An indestructible precedent was set up; it was the great

corner-stone in the support of the modern Church edifice; on this

definitive foundation all other stones were to be superposed, one by

one. In 1801, Pius VII., under the pressure of the reigning Napoleon,

had obliged the prelates of the old régime, sullied by a monarchical

origin and suspected of zeal for the dethroned Bourbons, to abandon

their seats. In 1816, under the pressure of the re-established Bourbons,

the same Pius VII. obliged Fesch, cardinal-archbishop of Lyons, and

uncle of the fallen Napoleon, to abandon his seat. Bercastel et Henrion,

XIII, 192. Cardinal Fesch having been banished from France by the law

of January 12, 1816, "the Pope no longer regarded the person of the

cardinal, but the diocese that had to be saved at any cost, by virtue of

the principle salus populi suprema lex. Consequently, he prohibited the

cardinal from "exercising episcopal jurisdiction in his metropolitan

church, and constituted M. de Bernis administrator of that church,

spiritually as well as temporally, notwithstanding all constitutions

decreed even by the general councils, the apostolic ordinances,

privileges, etc." In both cases the situation was similar, and, in the

latter as in the former case, motives of the same order warranted the

same use of the same power.

But the situation, in being prolonged, multiplied, for the Church, the

number of urgent cases, and, for the sovereign pontiff the number of

cases of intervention. Since 1789, the entire civil order of things,

constitutional, political, social and territorial, had become singularly

unstable, not only in France but in Europe, not only on the old

continent but likewise on the new one. Sovereign states by hundreds

sunk under the strokes and counter-strokes, indefinitely propagated and

enforced by the philosophy of the eighteenth century and of the French

Revolution; others, by dozens, arose in their place, and, in these,

different dynasties succeeded each other; here, Catholic populations

falling under the rule of a schismatic or Protestant prince; there, this

or that Catholic country, for fifteen years included in a mixed state,

detached from it and constituted apart. In Protestant America, the

Catholics, increased to millions, formed new communities in Catholic

America, the colonies had become independent; almost everywhere in

America and in Europe the maxims of government and of public opinion

had changed. Now, after each of these changes, some initiative,

some direction, some authority was necessary, in order to reconcile

ecclesiastical with lay institutions; the Pope was on hand, and on each

occasion he establishes this concord.[5208] At one time, by a diplomatic

act analogous to the French Concordat of 1801, he negotiates with the

sovereign of the country--Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Prussia, Austria, Spain,

Portugal, the two Sicilies, the Netherlands, Belgium and Russia. Again,

owing to the tolerant liberalism, or to the Constitutional indifference

of the lay government, he alone prescribes, notably in Holland, in

Ireland, in England, in Canada, and in the United States, a division

of the country into ecclesiastical districts, the erection of new

bishoprics, and the lasting regulation of the hierarchy, the discipline,

the means of support and the recruiting of the clergy. Again, when

sovereignty is in dispute, as after the emancipation of the Spanish

colonies, he does without it, in spite of the opposition of the

mother-country, and, "without putting himself in relation with the new

governments,[5209] he, acting for himself, "that he may put an end

to the widowhood of the Churches," appoints bishops, assigns them a

provisional régime in anticipation of the epoch when, in concert with

better founded governments, he will decree their definitive régime. In

this way, all the great existing churches of the Catholic universe are

the work of the Pope, his latest work, his own creation attested by a

positive act of contiguous date, and of which the souvenir is vivid:

he has not recognized them--he has made them; he has given them their

external form and their internal structure; no one of them can look

within itself without finding in its laws the fresh imprint of the

sovereign hand which has fashioned it; none of them can assert or even

believe itself legitimate without declaring the superior authority to be

legitimate which has just endowed it with life and being. The last

step, the greatest of all, above the terrestrial and practical order of

things, in speculative theology, in the revelation of the supernatural,

in the definition of things that are divine: the Pope, the better to

prove his autocracy, in 1854, decrees, solely, of his own accord, a new

dogma, the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and he is careful to

note that he does it without the concurrence of the bishops; they were

on hand, but they neither deliberated nor decided.[5210]

Thus arise durable powers, spiritual or temporal, little by little,

through the uninterrupted and uncontested series of their acts; from

1791 to 1870 all ecclesiastical precedents, one added to another, became

consolidated, one through the other and through their mass; story after

story, steadily ascending and converging to raise the Pope higher still,

until at last, on the summit of the edifice, the Holy See becomes

the keystone of the arch, the omnipotence of fact being completed by

omnipotence of right.

Meanwhile Catholic opinion came to the aid of pontifical opinion, and,

in France, the clergy spontaneously became ultramontane because there

was no longer any motive for remaining Gallican. Since the Revolution,

the Concordat and the Organic Articles, all the sources which maintained

in it a national as well as particularist spirit, had dried up; in

ceased being a distinct, proprietary and favored body; its members are

no longer leagued together by the community of a temporal interest,

by the need of defending their privileges, by the faculty of acting

in concert, by the right of holding periodical assemblies; they are no

longer, as formerly, attached to the civil power by great social and

legal advantages, by their honorable priority in lay society, by their

immunities from taxation, by the presence and influence of their bishops

in the provincial parliaments, by the noble origin and magnificent

endowments of nearly all their prelates, by the repressive support which

the secular arm lent to the church against dissenters and free-thinkers,

by the immemorial legislation and customs which, erecting Catholicism

into a State religion, imposed the Catholic faith on the monarch, not

alone in his quality of a private individual and to fix his personal

belief, but again in his quality of public magistrate, to influence his

policy and to share in his government. This last article is capital,

and out of its abrogation the rest follows: at this turn of the road

the French clergy is thrown off the Gallican track, every step it

takes after this being on the way to Rome. For, according to Catholic

doctrine, outside of the Roman Church there is no salvation; to enter

it, to rest in it, to be led by it is the highest interest and first

duty of man; it is the unique and infallible guide; all acts that it

condemns are culpable, and not only private acts, but likewise all

public acts; the sovereign who commits them may, as an individual, be

Catholic by profession and even loyal at heart; but, as a ruler, he is

disloyal, he has lost his semi-ecclesiastic character, he has ceased to

be "the exterior bishop," he is not worthy to command a clerical body.

Henceforth, the Christian conscience no longer bows down before him

with love and respect; nothing remains to him for support but social

prudence; and again is it with resignation, because the Church commands

obedience to the authorities, and the same Church commands disobedience

to these authorities when, abusing their power, they encroach on its

rights.

Now, ten years ago, the State had done nothing else, and, to the old

Concordat which was not good, it had just substituted a Concordat that

was worse. This new alliance, concluded by it with the Church in 1802,

is not a religious marriage, the solemn sacrament by which, at Rheims,

she and the King promised to live together and in harmony in the same

faith, but a simple civil contract, more precisely the legal regulation

of a lasting and deliberate divorce.--In a paroxysm of despotism the

State has stripped the Church of its possessions and turned it out of

doors, without clothes or bread, to beg on the highways; next, in a fit

of rage, its aim was to kill it outright, and it did partially strangle

it. Recovering its reason, but having ceased to be Catholic, it has

forced the signature of a pact which is repugnant, and which reduces

their moral union to physical cohabitation. Willingly or not, the

two contracting parties are to continue living together in the same

domicile, since that is the only one they possess; but, as there is

incompatibility of humor, they will do well to live apart. To this end,

the State assigns a small, distinct lodging to the Church and allows her

a meager supply of food; this done, it fancies that it may cry quits;

and, worse still, it imagines that she is always its subject, and still

pretends to the same authority over her; the State is determined to

retain all rights conferred upon it by the old marriage, and these

rights it exercises and adds to. Meanwhile, it admits into the same

lodging three other Churches which it subjects to the same régime: that

makes four mess-rooms to be maintained and which it watches, supports

and utilizes the best it can for the temporal advantage of the

household. There is nothing more odious to the Catholic Church than this

advertised, practical polygamy, this subvention granted indifferently

to all cults, this patronage in common, more insulting than abandonment,

this equal treatment[5211] which places the pulpit of truth and the

pulpits of falsehood, the ministry of salvation and the ministries

of perdition, on the same footing. Nothing is more serviceable for

alienating a Catholic clergy, for making it consider civil power as

foreign, usurping, or even inimical, for detaching the Gallican Church

from its French center, for driving it back towards its Roman center and

for handing it over to the Pope.

Henceforth, the latter is the unique center, the sole surviving head

of the Church, inseparable from it because he is naturally its head and

because it is naturally his body; and all the more because this mutual

tie has been strengthened by trials. Head and body have been struck

together, by the same hands, and each on the other's account. The Pope

has suffered like the Church, along with and for it. Pius VI., dethroned

and borne off by the Directory, died in prison at Valence; Pius VII.,

dethroned and carried off by Napoleon, is confined, sequestered and

outraged for four years in France, while all generous hearts take sides

with the oppressed against his oppressors. Moreover, his dispossession

adds to his prestige: it can no longer be claimed that territorial

interests prevail with him over Catholic interests; therefore, according

as his temporal power diminishes his spiritual power expands, to such an

extent that, in the end, after three-quarters of a century, just at the

moment when the former is to fall to the ground the latter is to rise

above the clouds; through the effacement of his human character his

superhuman character becomes declared; the more the sovereign prince

disappears, the more does the sovereign pontiff assert himself. The

clergy, despoiled like him of its hereditary patrimony and confined like

him to its sacerdotal office, exposed to the same dangers, menaced by

the same enemies, rallies around him the same as an army around its

general; inferiors and superiors, they are all priests alike and are

nothing else, with a clearer and clearer conscience of the solidarity

which binds them together and subordinates the inferiors to the

superiors. From one ecclesiastical generation to another,[5212] the

number of the refractory, of the intractable and of independents,

rigorists or the lax, goes on decreasing, some, conscientious

Jansenists, hardened and sectarians of the "Little Church," others,

semi-philosophers, tolerant and liberal, both inheriting too narrow

convictions or too broad opinions for maintaining themselves and

spreading in the newly founded society (milieu).[5213] They die out,

one by one, while their doctrines fall into discredit and then into

oblivion. A new spirit animates the new clergy, and, after 1808,

Napoleon remarks of it, "It does not complain of the old one, and is

even satisfied with it; but, he says, they are bringing up new priests

in a sombre fanatical doctrine: there is nothing Gallican in the

youthful clergy,"[5214] no sympathy for the civil power. After Napoleon,

and on getting out of his terrible hands, the Catholics have good

reasons for their repugnance to his theology; it has put too many

Catholics in jail, the most eminent in rank, in holiness, bishops and

cardinals, including the Pope. Gallican maxims are dishonored by the use

Napoleon has made of them. Canon law, in public instruction and in

the seminaries (of the Catholics), ends insensibly in unlooked-for

conclusions; texts and arguments opposed to the Pope's authority seem

weaker and weaker; texts and arguments favorable to the Pope's authority

seem stronger and stronger;[5215] the doctors most deferred to are

no longer Gerson and Bossuet, but Bellarmin and Suarez; flaws are

discovered in the decrees of the council of Constance; the Declaration

of the clergy of France in 1682 is found to contain errors condemned

and open to condemnation.[5216] After 1819, M. de Maistre, a powerful

logician, matchless herald and superb champion, in his book on "The

Pope," justifies, prepares and announces the coming constitution of

the Church.--Step by step, the assent of Catholic community is won or

mastered;[5217] on approaching 1870, it is nearly universal; after 1870,

it is wholly so and could not be otherwise; whoever refuses to submit is

excluded from the community and excludes himself from it, for he denies

a dogma which it professes, a revealed dogma, an article of faith which

the Pope and the council have just decreed. Thenceforward, the Pope,

in his magisterial pulpit, in the eyes of every man who is and wants to

remain Catholic, is infallible; when he gives his decision on faith or

on morals, Jesus Christ himself speaks by his mouth, and his definitions

of doctrine are "irrefutable," "they are so of themselves, they

alone, through their own virtue, and not by virtue of the Church's

consent."[5218] For the same reason, his authority is absolute, not only

in matters which concern faith and morals, but again in matters which

concern the discipline and government of the Church."[5219] His judgment

may be resorted to in every ecclesiastical case; nobody is allowed

to question his verdict; "nobody is allowed to appeal to the future

oecumenical council;"[5220] He has not only "a priority by right,

an office of inspection and of direction; he holds again priority

of jurisdiction, a full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the

universal Church,... ", "the total plenitude of this supreme power," not

indirectly and extraordinarily, but "directly and ordinarily, over all

churches and over each one of them, over all pastors and all believers,

over each believer and each of the pastors."--Read this in the Latin:

each word, through its ancient root and through its historic vegetation,

contributes to strengthening the despotic and Roman sense of the text;

the language of the people which invented and practiced dictatorship had

to be employed for the affirmation of dictatorship with that precision

and that copiousness, with that excess of energy and of conviction.

II. The Bishops and their new Situation.

The bishop in his diocese.--Change of situation and rôle.

--Depreciation of other local authorities.--Diminution of

other ecclesiastical authorities.--Decline of the chapter

and the jurisdiction.--The bishop alone dispenses rigors and

favors.--Use of displacement.--Second-class clergy subject

to military discipline.--Why it submits to this.

The change brought about in the condition and role of the bishop was

not less grave. Along with the court noblesse and great ecclesiastical

property, we see the prelate of the old régime disappearing by degrees,

the younger son of a noble family, promoted by favor and very young,

endowed with a large income and much more a man of the world than of

the Church. In 1789, out of 134 bishops or archbishops, only 5 were of

plebeian origin; in 1889, out of 90 bishops or archbishops there are

only 4 of them nobles;[5221] previous to the Revolution, the titular of

an Episcopal see enjoyed, on the average, a revenue of 100,000 francs;

at the present day, he receives only a salary of from 10,000 to 15,000

francs.[5222] In place of the grand seignior, an amiable and magnificent

host, given to display and to entertaining the best company, keeping

an open table in his diocese when he happens to be there, but generally

absent, an habitué of Paris or a courtier at Versailles, we see another

stepping forward to take his seat He is bearing the same title, is

a personage whose habits and origins are different, a resident

administrator, much less ornamental but much more active and governing,

provided with a more ample jurisdiction, with more absolute authority

and wielding more effective influence. The final effect of the

Revolution in relation to the bishop is the same as in relation to the

Pope, and in the French diocese, as in the universal Church, the modern

régime sets up a central, extraordinary, enormous power of which the

ancient regime knew nothing.

Formerly, the bishop encountered around him, on the spot, equals and

rivals, bodies of men or individuals, as independent and powerful as

himself, irremovable, owners of estates, dispensers of offices and of

favors, local authorities by legal sanction, permanent patrons of a

permanent class of dependents. In his own cathedral, his metropolitan

chapter was, like himself, a collator of benefice; elsewhere, other

chapters were so likewise and knew how to maintain their rights against

his supremacy. In each body of regular clergy, every grand abbot or

prior, every noble abbess was, like himself, a sort of sovereign prince.

The territorial seignior and justiciary on his own domain, was through

the partial survival of the old wholly secular feudal order equally

sovereign. Likewise sovereign, was, for its part, the parliament of

the province, with its rights of registry and of remonstrance, with

its administrative attributes and interference, with its train of loyal

auxiliaries and subordinates, from the judges of the presidencies and

bailiwicks down to the corporations of advocates, prosecutors and other

members of the bar.[5223] The parliamentarians of the district capital

(chef-lieu), purchasers and owners of their offices, magistrates from

father to son, much wealthier and much prouder than nowadays, were,

in their old hereditary mansions, the real chiefs of the province, its

constant representatives on the spot, its popular defenders against

ministerial and royal absolutism. All these powers, which once

counterbalanced episcopal power, have disappeared. Restricted to their

judicial office, the tribunals have ceased to be political authorities

and moderators of the central government: in the town and department,

the mayor and general councilors, appointed or elected for a certain

time, enjoy only temporary credit; the prefect, the military commandant,

the rector, the treasurer-general are merely passing strangers.

The local circumscription, for a century, is an exterior post where

individuals live together in contact but not associated; no longer

does any intimate, lasting and strong bond exist between them; nothing

remains of the old province but a population of inhabitants, a given

number of private persons under unstable functionaries. The bishop

alone has maintained himself intact and erect, a dignitary for life, the

conductor, by title and in fact, of a good many persons, the stationary

and patient undertaker of a great service, the unique general and

undisputed commander of a special militia which, through conscience and

professions, gathers close around him and, every morning, awaits his

orders. Because in his essence, he is a governor of souls. Revolution

and centralization have not encroached on his ecclesiastical

prerogative. Thanks to this indelible quality he has been able to endure

the suppression of the others; these have come back to him of themselves

and with others added, comprising local superiority, real importance and

local ascendancy; including the various honorable appellations which,

under the ancient régime, denoted his rank and preeminence; at the

present day, under the modern régime, they are no longer in use for a

layman and even for a minister of state; after 1802, one of the articles

of the Organic Laws,[5224] interdicts them to bishops and archbishops;

they are "allowed to add to their name only the title of citizen and

monsieur." But practically, except in the official almanac, everybody

addresses a prelate as "my lord," and in the clergy, among believers,

in writing or in speaking to him, he is called "your Grace," under the

republic as under the monarchy.

Thus, in this provincial soil where other powers have lost their roots,

not only has he kept his, but he has extended them and much farther; he

has grown beyond all measure and now the whole ecclesiastical territory

belongs to him. Formerly, on this territory, many portions of it, and

quite large ones, were enclosures set apart, reserves that an immemorial

wall prevented him from entering. It was not he who, in a great majority

of cases, conferred livings and offices; it was not he who, in more than

one-half of them, appointed to vacant curacies. At Besançon,[5225] among

1500 benefices and livings, he once conferred less than 100 of them,

while his metropolitan chapter appointed as many curés as himself; at

Arras, he appointed only 47 curés and his chapter 66; at Saint-Omer,

among the collators of curacies he ranked only third, after the abbey

of Saint-Martin and after the chapter of the cathedral. At Troyes, he

could dispose only of 197 curacies out of 372; at Boulogne, out of 180,

he had only 80, and this again because the chapter voluntarily abandoned

to him 16. Naturally, the eyes of all candidates turned towards the

collator; and, among the highest and most lucrative places, those

which gave the least trouble and afforded the most satisfaction,

all sinecures, ranks, simple benefices and large urban curacies,

probendaries and canonicates, most of the offices, titles, and incomes

that might tempt human ambition, were in the hands, not of the bishop,

but of the king or of the Pope, of an abbot or prior, of an abbess,

or of a certain university,[5226] of this or that cathedral or

college-body, of a lay seignior, of a patentee, or of an indultaire,

and often of the titulary himself. Thus, the hold of the bishop on his

clercs was feeble; he did not hold them through the hope of a favor.

And, on the other hand, he had still less hold on them, no hold at

all, through fear of losing favor. They might displease him almost with

impunity; his faculty for punishment was much more restricted than his

means of recompense. His subordinates could find shelter and refuge

against his displeasure, and even against his hostility. In the first

place, and as a principle, a titulary, whether ecclesiastic or secular,

owned his office and hence was irremovable; they themselves, plain

vicar-curates, the humble desservans[5227] of a rural parish, had

acquired this privilege through the declarations of 1726 and 1731.[5228]

Moreover, in case of interdiction, suspension or of censure, a titulary

could always recur to the courts against episcopal judgment and any

other, against all encroachment on spiritual or temporal prerogatives,

or on those which were useful or honorary belonging to his charge.

These courts were of two kinds, one ecclesiastical and the other

secular, and in each an appeal could be made from a lower to a higher

court, from the diocesan official to the metropolitan official, and from

the présidial to the parliament, with a complete judicial staff,

judge, assessors, public ministry, prosecutors, advocates and clerks,

restricted to the observing of all judicial formalities, authentic

papers, citations of witnesses and challenges of testimony,

interrogatories and pleadings, allegation of canons, laws and

precedents, presence of the defendant, opposing arguments, delays

in procedure, publicity and scandal. Before the slow march and

inconveniences of such a trial, the bishop often avoided giving

judgment, and all the more because his verdicts, even when confirmed by

the ecclesiastical court, might be warded off or rendered ineffective

by the lay tribunal; for, from the former to the latter, there was

an appeal under writ of error, and the latter, a jealous rival of the

former, was ill-disposed towards the sacerdotal authorities;[5229]

besides, in the latter case, far more than in the former, the bishop

found confronting him not merely the more or less legal right of his own

party, but again the allies and patrons of his party, corporations and

individuals who, according to an accepted usage, interfered through

their solicitations with the judges and openly placed their credit at

the service of their protégé. With so many spokes in the wheels, the

working of an administrative machine was difficult; to give it effective

motion, it required the steady pressure, the constant starting, the

watchful and persistent efforts of a laborious, energetic, and callous

hand, while, under the ancient régime, the delicate white hands of a

gentleman-prelate were ill-adapted to this rude business; they were

too nicely washed, too soft. To manage personally and on the spot a

provincial, complicated and rusty machine, always creaking and groaning,

to give one's self up to it, to urge and adjust twenty local wheels, to

put up with knocks and splashes, to become a business man, that is to

say a hard worker--nothing was less desirable for a grand seignior of

that epoch. In the Church as in the State, he made the most of his rank;

he collected and enjoyed its fruits, that is to say money, honors and

gratifications, and, among these gratifications, the principal one,

leisure; hence, he abandoned every special duty, the daily manipulation

of men and things, the practical direction, all effective government, to

his ecclesiastical or lay intendants, to subordinates whom he scarcely

looked after and who, at his own house, on his own domain, replaced

him as fixed residents. The bishop, in his own diocese, left the

administration in the hands of his canons and grand-vicars; "the

official decided without his meddling."[5230] The machine thus worked

alone and by itself, with very few shocks, in the old rut established by

routine; he helped it along only by the influence he exercised at Paris

and Versailles, by recommendations to the ministers in reality, he

was merely the remote and worldly representative of his ecclesiastical

principality at court and in the drawing-room.[5231] When, from time

to time, he made his appearance there, the bells were rung; deputations

from all bodies hurried to his antechambers; each authority in turn, and

according to the order of precedence, paid him its little compliment,

which compliment he graciously returned and then, the homage being over,

he distributed among them benedictions and smiles. After this, with

equal dignity and still more graciously throughout his sojourn, he

invited the most eligible to his table and, in his episcopal palace

or in his country-house, he treated them as guests. This done, he had

performed his duty; the rest was left to his secretaries, ecclesiastical

officials and clerks, men of the bureaux, specialists and "plodders."

"Did you read my pastoral letter?" said a bishop to Piron. And Piron,

who was very outspoken, dared reply, "Yes, my lord. And yourself?"

Under the modern régime, this suzerain for show, negligent and

intermittent, is succeeded by an active sovereign whose reign is

personal and constant; the limited and easy monarchy of the diocese is

converted into an universal and absolute monarchy. When the bishop,

once invested and consecrated, enters the choir of his cathedral to the

reverberations of the organ, lighted with wax candles amidst clouds of

incense, and seats himself in solemn pomp[5232] "on his throne," he is

a prince who takes possession of his government, which possession is

not nominal or partial, but real and complete. He holds in his hand "the

splendid cross which the priests of his diocese have presented to him,"

in witness of and symbolizing their voluntary, eager and full

obedience; and this pastoral baton is larger than the old one. In the

ecclesiastical herd, no head browses at a distance or under cover; high

or low, all are within reach, all eyes are turned towards the episcopal

crook; at a sign made by the crook, and according to the signal, each

head forthwith stands, advances or recedes: it knows too well that the

shepherd's hands are free and that it is subject to its will. Napoleon,

in his reconstruction of the diocese, made additions to only one of the

diocesan powers, that of the bishop; he suffered the others to remain

low down, on the ground. The delays, complications and frictions of a

divided government were repugnant to him; he had no taste for and

no comprehension of any but a concentrated government; he found it

convenient to deal with but one man, a prefect of the spiritual order,

as pliable as his colleague of the temporal order, a mitered grand

functionary--such was the bishop in his eyes. This is the reason why

he did not oblige him to surround himself with constitutional and

moderating authorities; he did not restore the ancient bishop's court

and the ancient chapter; he allowed his prelates themselves to pen the

new diocesan statute.--Naturally, in the division of powers, the bishop

reserved the best part to himself, the entire substance, and, to limit

his local omnipotence, there remained simply lay authority. But, in

practice, the shackles by which the civil government kept him in its

dependence, broke or became relaxed one by one. Among the Organic

Articles, almost all of them which subjected or repressed the bishop

fell into discredit or into desuetude. Meanwhile, those which authorized

and exalted the bishop remained in vigor and maintained their effect.

Consequently, Napoleon's calculation, in relation to the bishop or in

relation to the Pope, proved erroneous. He wanted to unite in one person

two incompatible characters, to convert the dignitaries of the Church

into dignitaries of the State, to make functionaries out of potentates.

The functionary insensibly disappeared; the potentate alone subsisted

and still subsists.

At the present day, conformably to the statute of 1802, the cathedral

chapter,[5233] except in case of one interim, is a lifeless and

still-born body, a vain simulachre; it is always, by title or on paper,

the Catholic "senate," the bishop's obligatory "council";[5234] but he

takes his councillors where he pleases, outside of the chapter, if that

suits him, and he is free not to take any of them, "to govern alone, to

do all himself." It is he who appoints to all offices, to the five or

six hundred offices of his diocese; he is the universal collator of

these and, nine times out of ten, the sole collator; excepting eight or

nine canonships and the thirty or forty cantonal curacies, which the

government must approve, he alone makes appointments and without any

person's concurrence. Thus, in the way of favors, his clerical body has

nothing to expect from anybody but himself.--And, on the other hand,

they no longer enjoy any protection against his harshness; the hand

which punishes is still less restrained than that which rewards; like

the cathedral chapter, the ecclesiastical tribunal has lost its

consistency and independence, its efficiency; nothing remains of the

ancient bishop's court but an appearance and a name.[5235]

At one time, the bishop in person is himself the whole court; he

deliberates only with himself and decides ex informata conscientia

without a trial, without advice, and, if he chooses, in his own cabinet

with closed doors, in private according to facts, the value of which

he alone estimates, and through motives of which he is the sole

appreciator. At another time, the presiding magistrate is one of

his grand-vicars, his revocable delegate, his confidential man, his

megaphone, in short, another self, and this official acts without the

restraint of ancient regulations, of a fixed and understood procedure

beforehand, of a series of judicial formalities, of verifications and

the presence of witnesses, of the delays and all other legal precautions

which guard the judge against prejudice, haste, error, and ignorance and

without which justice always risks becoming injustice. In both cases,

the head over which the sentence is suspended lacks guarantees, and,

once pronounced, this sentence is definitive. For, on appeal to the

court of the metropolitan bishop, it is always confirmed;[5236] the

bishops support each other, and, let the appellant be right or wrong,

the appeal is in itself a bad mark against him: he did not submit at

once, he stood out against reproof, he was lacking in humility, he has

set an example of insubordination, and this alone is a grave fault.

There remains the recourse to Rome; but Rome is far off,[5237] and,

while maintaining her superior jurisdiction, she does not willingly

cancel an episcopal verdict; she treats prelates with respect, she is

careful of her lieutenant-generals, her collectors of Saint Peter's

pence. As to the lay tribunals, these have declared themselves

incompetent,[5238] and the new canon law teaches that never, "under the

pretext of a writ of error, may a priest make an appeal to the secular

magistrate";[5239] through this appeal, "he derogates from the authority

and liberty of the Church and is liable to the gravest censures;" he

betrays his order.

Such is now, for the lower clergy, ecclesiastical law, and likewise

secular law, both agreeing together in not affording him protection;

add to this change in the jurisprudence which concerns him a no less

divisive change in the jurisprudence which concerns him a no less

decisive change in the titles which place and qualify him. Before 1789,

there were in France 36,000 curés entitled irremovable; at the present

day, there are only 3,425; before 1789, there were only 2500 curés

entirely removable, while to-day there are 34,042;[5240] all of the

latter, appointed by the bishop without the approbation of the civil

powers, are removable at his discretion; their parochial ministry is

simply a provisional commission; they may be placed elsewhere,

passing from one precarious curacy to another no less precarious. "At

Valence,[5241] Mgr. Chartrousse, in one month transferred 150 priests

from one parish to another. In 1835, in the diocese of Valence, 35

transfers were sent out by the same mail." No assistant-priest, however

long in his parish, feels that he is at home there, on his own domain,

for the rest of his life; he is merely there in garrison, about the same

as lay functionaries and with less security, even when irreproachable.

For he may be transplanted, not alone for spiritual reasons, but

likewise for political reasons. He has not grown less worthy, but the

municipal council or the mayor have taken a dislike to his person;

consequently to tranquilize things, he is displaced. Far better, he had

become worthy and is on good terms with the municipal council and the

mayor; wherever he has lived he has known how to mollify these,

and consequently "he is removed from parish to parish,[5242] chosen

expressly to be put into those where there are troublesome, wrangling,

malevolent, and impious mayors." It is for the good of the service and

in the interest of the Church. The bishop subordinates persons to this

superior interest. The legislation of 1801 and 1802 has conferred full

powers upon him and he exercises them; among the many grips by which he

holds his clergy the strongest is the power of removal, and he uses it.

Into all civil or ecclesiastical institutions Napoleon, directly or by

counterstrokes, has injected his spirit, the military spirit; hence the

authoritative régime, still more firmly established in the Church than

in the State, because that is the essence of the Catholic institution;

far from being relaxed in this, it has become stricter; at present it is

avowed, proclaimed, and even made canonical; the bishop, in our days,

in fact as in law, is a general of division, and, in law as in fact,

his curés are simply sergeants or corporals.[5243] Command, from such

a lofty grade falls direct, with extraordinary force, on grades so low,

and, at the first stroke, is followed by passive obedience. Discipline

in a diocese is as perfect as in an army corps, and the prelates

publicly take pride in it. "It is an insult," said Cardinal de

Bonnechose to the Senate,[5244] "to suppose that we are not masters

in our own house, that we cannot direct our clergy, and that it is the

clergy which directs us... There is no general within its walls who

would accept the reproach that could not compel the obedience of

his soldiers. Each of us has command of a regiment, and the regiment

marches."

III. The new Bishop.

Change in the habits and ways of the bishop.--His origin,

age, capability, mode of living, labor, initiative,

undertakings, and moral and social ascendancy. [5245]

In order to make troops march, a staff, even a croisier, is not enough;

to compulsory subordination voluntary subordination must be added;

therefore, legal authority in the chief should be accompanied with moral

authority; otherwise he will not be loyally supported and to the end.

In 1789, this was not the case with the bishop; on two occasions, and at

two critical moments, the clergy of the inferior order formed a separate

band, at first at the elections, by selecting for deputies curés and not

prelates, and next in the national assembly, by abandoning the prelates

to unite with the Third Estate. The intimate hold of the chief on

his men was relaxed or broken. His ascendency over them was no

longer sufficiently great; they no longer had confidence in him. His

subordinates had come to regard him as he was, a privileged individual,

sprung from a another stock and furnished by a class apart, bishop by

right of birth, without a prolonged apprenticeship, having rendered no

services, without tests of merit, almost an interloper in the body of

his clergy, a Church parasite accustomed to spending the revenues of his

diocese away from his diocese, idle and ostentatious, often a

shameless gallant or obnoxious hunter, disposed to be a philosopher

and free-thinker, and who lacked two qualifications for a leader of

Christian priests: first, ecclesiastical deportment, and next, and very

often, Christian faith.[5246]

All these gaps in and discrepancies of episcopal character, all these

differences and distances (which existed before 1789), between the

origins, interests, habits, and manners of the lower and the upper

clergy, all these inequalities and irregularities which alienated

inferiors from the superior, have disappeared; the modern régime has

leveled the wall of separation established by the ancient régime between

the bishop and his priests. At the present day he is, like them, a

plebeian, of common extraction, and sometimes very low, one being the

son of a village shoemaker, another the natural son of a poor workwoman,

both being men of feeling and never blushing at their humble origin,

openly tender and respectful to their mothers,--a certain bishop lodging

his mother, formerly a servant, in his episcopal palace and giving her

the first seat at his table among the most honored and noblest of his

guests.[5247] He is "one of fortune's officers," that is to say, a

meritorious and old officer.[5248] According the "Almanac" of 1889, the

three youngest are from forty-seven to forty-nine years of age; all the

others are fifty and over; among the latter, three fourths of them are

over sixty. As a general rule, a priest cannot become a bishop short of

twenty or twenty-five years' service in lower or average grades; he must

have remained in each grade a longer or shorter period, in turn vicar,

curé, vicar-general, canon, head of a seminary, sometimes coadjutor,

and almost always have distinguished himself in some office, either

as preacher or catechist, professor or administrator, canonist or

theologian. His full competence cannot be contested, and he enjoys a

right to exact full obedience; he has himself rendered it up to his

consecration; "he boasts of it," and the example he proposes to his

priests is the one he has himself given.[5249] On the other hand, his

moderate way of living excites but little envy; it is about like that of

a general of division, or of a prefect, or of a high civil functionary

who, lacking personal fortune, has nothing but his salary to live on. He

does not display, as formerly, confessionals lined with satin, kitchen

utensil of massive silver, hunting accoutrements, a hierarchical staff

of major-domos, ushers, valets, and liveried lackeys, stables and

carriages, lay grand-seigniors, vassals of his suzerainty and figuring

at his consecration, a princely ceremonial of parade and homage, a

pompous show of receptions and of hospitalities. There is nothing but

what is necessary, the indispensable instruments of his office: an

ordinary carriage for his episcopal journeys and town visits, three

or four domestics for manual service, three or four secretaries for

official writings, some old mansion or other, cheaply repaired and

refurnished without ostentation, its rooms and bureaus being those of an

administrator, business man, and responsible head of a numerous staff;

in effect, he is responsible for a good many subordinates, he has a

good deal to attend to; he works himself, looking after the whole and

in detail, keeping classified files by means of a chronological and

systematic collection,[5250] like the general director of a vast

company; if he enjoys greater honors, he is subject to greater

exigencies; assuredly, his predecessors under the ancient régime,

delicate Epicureans, would not have wished for such a life; they would

not have considered the benefit worth the effort.

Even when old, he draws on his energies; he officiates, he preaches,

he presides at long ceremonies, he ordains seminarians, he confirms

thousands of children,[5251] he visits one after another the parishes

in his diocese; often, at the end of his administration, he has visited

them all and many times. Meanwhile, shut up in his episcopal cabinet, he

is constantly inspecting these four or five hundred parishes; he reads

or listens to reports, informs himself on the number of communicants, on

what is required in worship, on the financial state of the fabrique,

on the attitude of the inhabitants, on the good or bad dispositions of

municipal counselors and mayors, on the local cause of dissension

and conflict, on the conduct and character of the curé or vicar; each

resident ecclesiastic needs guidance or maintenance between intemperate

zeal and inert lukewarmness, evenly balanced according as parishes and

circumstances vary, but always in a way to prevent false steps, to turn

aside mistakes, to humor opinion, to stop scandals. For the entire

life of the clergyman, not only his public life but again his personal,

domestic, private life, belongs to and concerns the Church:[5252] there

must be no evil reports, even without foundation, on his account;

if these occur, the bishop summons him to headquarters, warns him,

admonishes him, and, without unburdening himself by handing the

matter over to a responsible tribunal, he alone passes judgment after

personally conducting the investigations, suffering the worries, and

carrying out the painful, painstaking labor always attendant on direct

absolute power. Likewise, in relation to his upper and his lower

seminary: here are two indispensable nurseries of which he is the head

gardener, attentive to filling annual vacancies and seeking proper

subjects for these throughout his diocese, ever verifying and

cultivating their vocations; he confers scholarships; he dictates rules

and regulations; appoints and dismisses, displaces and procures as he

pleases, the director and professors; he takes them, if he chooses, out

of his diocese or out of the body of regular clergy; he prescribes a

doctrine to them, methods, ways of thinking and teaching, and he keeps

his eye, beyond his present or future priests, on three or four hundred

monks and on fourteen hundred nuns.

As to the monks, so long as they remain inside their dwellings, in

company together and at home, he has nothing to say to them; but,

when they come to preach, confess, officiate or teach in public on his

ground, they fall under his jurisdiction; in concert with their superior

and with the Pope, he has rights over them and he uses them. They are

now his auxiliaries assigned to or summoned by him, available troops and

a reinforcement, so many chosen companies expressly ready, each with

its own discipline, its particular uniform, its special weapon, and

who bring to him in following a campaign under his orders, distinct

aptitudes and a livelier zeal. He needs them[5253] in order to make

up for the insufficiency of his local clergy in arousing the spirit

of devotion in his parishes and in enforcing sound doctrine in his

seminaries. Now, between these two forces a common understanding is

difficult; the former, adjuncts and flying about, march in front; the

latter, holding the ground and stationary, look upon the new-comers as

usurpers who lessen both their popularity and their fees; a bishop must

possess great tact as well as energy to impose on both bodies of

this clergy, if not an intimate union, at least mutual aid and a

collaboration without conflict.--As to the nuns,[5254] he is their

ordinary, the sole arbiter, overseer and ruler over all these cloistered

lives; he receives their vows, and renders them free of them; it is he

who, after due inquiry and examination, authorizes each entrance

into the community or a return to society, at first each admission or

novitiate, and next each profession of faith or assumption of the veil,

every dismissal or departure of a nun, every claim that one makes,

every grave act of severity or decision on the part of the superior.

He approves of, or appoints, the confessor of the establishment; he

maintains seclusion in it, he draws tighter or relaxes the observances;

he himself enters its doors by privilege of his office, and, with his

own eyes, he inspects its régime, spiritual and temporal, through

a right of control which extends from the direction of souls to the

administration of property.

To so many obligatory matters he adds others which are voluntary, not

alone works of piety, those relating to worship, propaganda, diocesan

missions, catechizing adults, brotherhoods for perpetual adoration,

meetings for the uninterrupted recital of the rosary, Peter's pence,

seminary funds, Catholic journals and reviews-but, again, institutions

for charity and education.[5255] In the way of charity, he founds or

supports twenty different kinds, sixty in one diocese alone, general

and special services, infant nurseries, clubs, asylums, lodging-houses,

patronages, societies for helping and placing the poor, for the sick at

home and in the hospitals, for suckling infants, for the deaf and dumb,

for the blind, for old men, for orphans, for repentant prostitutes, for

prisoners, for soldiers in garrison, for workmen, apprentices, youths,

and quantities of others. In the way of education, there are yet more of

them--works which the Catholic chiefs have most at heart; without these,

it is impossible in modern society to preserve the faith in each new

generation. Hence, at each turning-point of political history, we see

the bishops benefiting by the toleration or warding off the intolerance

of the teaching State, competing with it, erecting alongside of its

public schools free schools of its own, directed or served by priests

or religious brotherhoods;--after the suppression of the university

monopoly in 1850, more than one hundred colleges[5256] for secondary

education; after the favorable law of 1875, four or five provincial

faculties or universities for superior instruction after the hostile

laws of 1882, many thousands of parochial schools for primary

instruction.

Foundation and support, all this is expensive. The bishop requires a

great deal of money, especially since the State, become ill-disposed,

cuts off clerical resources as much as possible, no longer maintains

scholarships in the seminaries, deprives suspicious desservans of their

small stipends, eats into the salaries of the prelates, throws

obstacles in the way of communal liberalities, taxes and over taxes

the congregations, so that, not merely through the diminution of its

allowances it relieves itself at the expense of the Church, but again,

through the increase of its imposts, it burdens the Church for its

own advantage. The episcopacy obtains all necessary funds through

collections in the churches and at domiciles, through the gifts and

subscriptions of the faithful; and, every year, it needs millions, apart

from the budget appropriation, for its faculties and universities

in which it installs largely paid professors, for the construction,

location and arrangement of its countless buildings, for the expenses of

its minor schools, for the support of its ten thousand seminarists, for

the general out-lay on so many charitable institutions; and it is the

bishop who, their principal promoter, must provide for this, all the

more because he has often taken it upon himself in advance, and made

himself responsible for it by either a written or verbal promise. He

responds to all these engagements; he has funds on hand at the maturity

of each contract. In 1883, the bishop of Nancy, in need of one hundred

thousand francs to build a school-house with a work-room attached to it,

mentions this to a number of persons assembled in his drawing-room; one

of these puts his hand in his pocket and gives him ten thousand francs,

and others subscribe on the spot to the amount of seventy-four thousand

francs.[5257] Cardinal Mathieu, during his administration, archbishop

of Besançon, thus collects and expends four millions. Lately, Cardinal

Lavigerie, to whom the budget allows fifteen thousand francs per

annum, wrote that he had spent eighteen hundred thousand francs and had

incurred no debt.[5258]--Through this initiative and this ascendancy the

bishop becomes a central social rallying-point; there is no other in

the provinces, nothing but so many disjointed lives, juxtaposed and kept

together in an artificial circle prescribed from above; so that a

good many of these, and of most consideration, gravitate to and group

themselves, especially since 1830, around this last permanent center and

form a part of its body; he is the sole germinating, vivifying, intact

center that still agglutinates scattered wills and suitably organizes

them. Naturally, class and party interests incorporate themselves

additionally along with the Catholic interest which he represents, and

his ecclesiastical authority becomes a political influence; besides

his secular and regular clergy, over and beyond the two thousand five

hundred exemplary or directorial lives which he controls, we see

behind him an indefinite multitude of lay adhesions and devotedness.

Consequently, every government must take him into their calculations,

and all the more because his colleagues stand by him; the episcopacy,

banded together, remains erect in face of the omnipotent State, under

the July monarchy as claimants of free instruction and under the second

empire in support of the temporal power of the Pope.--In this militant

attitude, the figure of the bishop is fully unveiled; the titular

champion of an infallible Church, himself a believer and submissive; his

voice is extraordinarily proud and defiant;[5259] in his own eyes, he

is the unique depository of truth and morality; in the eyes of his

followers, he becomes a superhuman personage, a prophet of salvation or

of destruction, the annunciator of divine judgments, the dispenser of

celestial anger or of celestial pardon; he rises to the clouds in an

apotheosis of glory; with women especially, this veneration grows into

enthusiasm and degenerates into idolatry. Towards the end of the second

empire an eminent French bishop, on a steamboat on Lake Leman, taking

a roll of bread from his pocket, seated himself alongside of two ladies

and ate it, handing each of them a piece of it. One of them, bowing

reverently, replied to him, "At your hands, my lord, this is almost the

holy communion!"[5260]

IV. The subordinate clergy.

The subordinates.--The secular clergy.--Its derivation and

how recruited.--How prepared and led.--The lower seminary.--

The higher seminary.--Monthly lectures and annual retreat.--

The Exercitia.--The Manreze du Prêtre.--The curé in his

parish.--His rôle a difficult one.--His patience and correct

conduct.

A clergy submissive in mind and feeling, long prepared by its condition

and education for faith and obedience, acts under the sway of this

sovereign and consecrated hand.[5261] Among the 40,000 curés and

desservans "more than 35,000 belong to the laboring class of workmen and

peasants,"[5262] not the first class of peasants, but the second class,

the poorer families earning their daily bread and often with a good many

children. Under the pressure of the ambient atmosphere and of the modern

régime, the others keep back their sons, retaining them for the world

and denying them to the Church; ambition, even low down on the scale,

has developed itself and changed its object. No longer do they aspire

for their sons to become a curé but a school master, a railroad

employee, or a commercial clerk.[5263] It was necessary to go descend

further, a lower stratum has to be attained, in order to extract from it

the priests that are lacking.

Undoubtedly, at this depth, the extraction was more expensive; the

family cannot afford to pay for the child's ecclesiastic cal education;

the State, moreover, after 1830, no longer gives anything to the lower

seminary, nor to the large one after 1885.[5264] The expenses of these

schools must be borne by the faithful in the shape of donations and

legacies; to this end, the bishop orders collections in the churches in

Lent and encourages his diocesans to found scholarships. The outlay for

the support and education, nearly gratis, of a future priest between

the ages of twelve and twenty-four is very great; in the lower seminary

alone it costs from forty to fifty thousand francs over and above the

net receipts;[5265] facing such an annual deficit, the bishop, who is

responsible for the undertaking, is greatly concerned and sometimes

extremely anxious. To make amends, and as compensation, the extraction

is surer; the long process by which a child is withdrawn and instructed

for the priesthood goes on and is finished with less uncertainty.

Neither the light nor the murmur of the century finds its way to these

low depths; nobody ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper;

vocations can here shape themselves and become fixed like crystals,

intact and rigid, and all of a piece; they are better protected than in

the upper layers, less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less

risk of being disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism,

by modern ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as

elsewhere, interfere with their silent internal workings.[5266] When the

choir-boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns

to his parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many

disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy

talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits

of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the

half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor. Stone upon stone and each

stone in its place, his faith builds up and becomes complete without

any incoherency in its structure, with no incongruity in the materials,

without any hidden imbalance. He has been taken in hand before his

twelfth year, when very young; his curé, who has been instructed from

above to secure suitable subjects, has singled him out in the catechism

class and again at the ceremony of confirmation;[5267] he is found to

have a pious tendency and a taste for sacred ceremonies, a suitable

demeanor, a mild disposition, complacency, and is inclined to study; he

is a docile and well-behaved child; whether an acolyte at the altar

or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the chasuble properly; all his

genuflexions are correct, they do not worry him, he has no trouble in

standing still, he is not excited and diverted, like the others, by the

eruptions of animal spirits and rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is

open to cultivation, if grammar and Latin can take root in it, the curé

or the vicar at once take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis

or nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or the seventh grade, and

then he enters the lower seminary.[5268]

This is a school apart, a boarding-house of picked youths, an enclosed

hot-house intended for the preservation and development of special

vocations. None of these schools existed previous to 1789; at the

present day(in 1885), they number 86 in France, and all the pupils

are to become future priests. No foreign plants, no future laymen, are

admitted into this preparatory nursery;[5269] for experience has

shown that if the lower seminary is mixed it no longer attains its

ecclesiastical purpose; "it habitually turns over to the upper

seminary only the bottom of the classes; those at the top seek fortune

elsewhere". But if, on the contrary, "the lower seminaries are kept

pure, the entire rhetoric[5270] class continues on into the upper

seminary; not only do they obtain the bottom of the classes but the

top."--The culture, in this second nursery, which is prolonged during

five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so under the

ancient régime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in the glass

letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the younger

sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced into

it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the

episcopacy. During the vacations,[5271] fairy scenes and pastorals were

performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the Great

Mogul," and the "Shepherds in Chains"; the seminarians took great care

of their hair; a first-class hair-dresser came and waited on them; the

doors were not regularly shut: the youthful Talleyrand knew how to get

out into the city and begin or continue his gallantries.[5272] From

and after the Concordat, stricter discipline in the new seminaries had

become monastic; these are practical schools, not for knowledge, but for

training, the object being much less to make learned men than believing

priests; education takes precedence of instruction and intellectual

exercises are made subordinate to spiritual exercises[5273]--mass every

day and five visits to the Saint-Sacrament, with one minute to half-hour

prayer stations; rosaries of sixty-three paters and aves, litanies,

the angelus, loud and whispered prayers, special self-examinations,

meditation on the knees, edifying readings in common, silence until

one o'clock in the afternoon, silence at meals and the listening to an

edifying discourse, frequent communions, weekly confessions, general

confession at New-year's, one day of retreat at the end of every month

after the vacations and before the collation of each of the four orders,

eight days of retirement during which a suspension of all study, morning

and evening sermons, spiritual readings, meditations, orisons and other

services from hour to hour;[5274] in short, the daily and systematic

application of a wise and steadily perfected method, the most

serviceable for fortifying faith, exalting the imagination, giving

direction and impulse to the will, analogous to that of a military

school, Saint-Cyr or Saumur, to such an extent that its corporeal and

mental imprint is indelible, and that by the way in which he thinks,

talks, smiles, bows and stands in your presence we at once recognize a

former pupil of Saint-Sulpice as we do a former pupil of Saumur and of

Saint-Cyr. Thus graduated, an ordained and consecrated priest, first

a vicar and then a curé desservant, the discipline which has bound and

fashioned him still keeps him erect and presenting arms. Besides his

duties in church and his ministrations in the homes of his parishioners,

besides masses, vespers, sermons, catechisings, confessions, communions,

baptisms, marriages, extreme unctions, funerals, visiting the sick and

suffering, he has his personal and private exercises: at first, his

breviary, the reading of which demands each day an hour and a half, no

practical duty being so necessary. Lamennais obtained a dispensation

from it, and hence his lapses and fall.[5275] Let no one object that

such a recitation soon becomes mechanical[5276]; the prayers, phrases

and words which it buries deep in the mind, even wandering, necessarily

become fixed inhabitants in it, and hence occult and stirring powers

banded together which encompass the intellect and lay siege to the will,

which, in the subterranean regions of the soul, gradually extend or

fortify their silent occupation of the place, which insensibly operate

on the man without his being aware of it, and which, at critical

moments, unexpectedly rise up to steady his footsteps or to save him

from temptation. Add to this antique custom two modern institutions

which contribute to the same end. The first one is the monthly

conference, which brings together the desservans curés at the residence

of the oldest curé in the canton; each has prepared a study on some

theme furnished by the bishopric, some question of dogma, morality or

religious history, which he reads aloud and discusses with his brethren

under the presidency and direction of the oldest curé, who gives his

final decision; this keeps theoretical knowledge and ecclesiastical

erudition fresh in the minds of both reader and hearers. The other

institution, almost universal nowadays, is the annual retreat which the

priests in the diocese pass in the large seminary of the principal town.

The plan of it was traced by Saint Ignatius; his Exercitia is still

to-day the manual in use, the text of which is literally,[5277] or very

nearly, followed.[5278] The object is to reconstitute the supernatural

world in the soul, for, in general, it evaporates, becomes effaced, and

ceases to be palpable under the pressure of the natural world. Even the

faithful pay very little attention to it, while their vague conception

of it ends in becoming a mere verbal belief; it is essential to give

them back the positive sensation, the contact and feeling. To this

end, a man retires to a suitable place, where what he does actively or

passively is hourly determined for him in advance--attendance at chapel

or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in

his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest--in

short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies

which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations

and overcome him with spiritual impressions; immediately around him,

impressions of the same kind followed by the contagion of example,

mutual fervor, common expectation, involuntary emulation, and that

overstrained eagerness which creates its object; with all the more

certainty that the individual himself works on himself, in silence, five

hours a day, according to the prescriptions of a profound psychology, in

order that his bare conception may take upon itself body and substance.

What-ever may be the subject of his meditations, he repeats it twice the

same day, and each time he begins by "creating the scene," the Nativity

or the Passion, the Day of Judgment or Hell; he converts the remote and

undefined story, the dry, abstract dogma, into a detailed and figured

representation; he dwells on it, he evokes in turn the images furnished

by the five senses, visual, audible, tactile, olfactory, and even

gustatory; he groups them together, and in the evening he animates them

afresh in order that he may find them more intense when he awakes the

next morning. He thus obtains the complete, precise, almost physical

spectacle of his aspirations; he reaches the alibi, that mental

transposition, that reversal of the points of view in which the order

of certainties becomes inverted, in which substantial objects seem to

be vain phantoms and the mystic world a world of substantial

reality.[5279]--According to persons and circumstances, the theme for

meditation differs, and the retreat is prolonged for a shorter or longer

period. For laymen, it generally lasts for three days only; for the

Brethren of the Christian Schools it is eight days annually, and when,

at the age of twenty-eight, they take their vows in perpetuity, it lasts

thirty days: for the secular priests, it lasts a little less than a

week, while the theme on which their meditations are concentrated is the

supernatural character of the priest. The priest who is confessor and

ministrant of the Eucharist, the priest who is the savior and restorer,

the priest who is pastor, preacher and administrator--such are the

subjects on which their imagination, assisted and directed, must work

in order to compose the cordial which has to support them for the entire

year. None is more potent; that which the Puritans drank at an American

camp-meeting or at a Scotch revival was stronger but of less enduring

effect.[5280]

Two different cordials, one reinforcing the other, are mixed together in

this drink, both being of high flavor and so rank as to burn an ordinary

mouth. On the one hand, with the freedom of language and the boldness

of deduction characteristic of the method, the sentiment of the priest's

dignity is exalted. What is the priest?"He is, between God who is in

heaven and the man who tries to find him on earth, a being, God and

man, who brings these nearer by his symbolizing both.[5281].. I do not

flatter you with pious hyperboles in calling you gods; this is not

a rhetorical falsehood.... You are creators similar to Mary in her

cooperation in the Incarnation.... You are creators like God in time....

You are creators like God in eternity. Our creation on our part, our

daily creation, is nothing less than the Word made flesh itself.... God

may create other worlds, he cannot so order it that any act under the

sun can be greater than your sacrifice; for, at this moment, he reposes

in your hands all that he has and all that he is.... I am not a little

lower than the cherubim and seraphim in the government of the world,

I am far above them; they are only the Servants of God, we are his

coadjutors.... The angels, who behold the vast riches passing through

our hands daily, are amazed at our prerogative.... I fulfill three

sublime functions in relation to the god of our altars--I cause him

to descend, I administer his body, I am his custodian... . Jesus dwells

under your lock and key; his hours of reception begin and end through

you, he does not move without your permission, he gives no benediction

without your assistance, he bestows nothing except at your hands, and

his dependence is so dear to him that, for eighteen hundred years, he

has not left the Church for one moment to lose himself on the glory of

his Father."--On the other hand, they are made to drink in full

draughts the sentiment of subordination, which they imbibe to their very

marrow.[5282] "Ecclesiastical obedience is... a love of dependence, a

violation of judgment.... Would you know what it is as to the extent

of sacrifice? A voluntary death, the sepulcher of the will, says Saint

Climaque.... There is a sort of real presence infused into those

who command us...." Let us be careful not to fall "into the crafty

opposition of liberal Catholicism.... Liberalism, in its consequences,

is social atheism.... Unity, in Roman faith, is not sufficient; let us

labor together in the unity of the Roman spirit; for that, let us

always judge Rome with the optimism of affection.... Each new dogmatic

definition produces its own advantages: that of the Immaculate

Conception has given us Lourdes and its truly oecumenical wonders."

Nothing of all this is too much, and, in the face of the exigencies

of modern times, it scarcely suffices. Now that society has become

incredulous, indifferent or, at the least, secular, the priest must

possess the two intense and master ideas which support a soldier abroad

among insurgents or barbarians, one being the conviction that he is of

a species and essence apart, infinitely superior to the common herd;

and the other is the thought that he belongs to his flag, to his chiefs,

especially to the commanding general, and that he has given himself

up entirely to prompt obedience, to obeying every order issued without

question or doubt.[5283] Thus, in that parish where the permanent curé

was once installed, especially in the rural districts,[5284] the

legal and popular governor of all souls, his successor, the removable

desservant, is merely a resident bailiff, a sentry in his box, at the

opening of a road which the public at large no longer travel. From time

to time he hails you! But scarcely any one listens to him. Nine out of

ten men pass at a distance, along a newer, more convenient and broader

road. They either nod to him afar off or give him the go-by. Some are

even ill-disposed, watching him or denouncing him to the ecclesiastic or

lay authorities on which he depends. He is expected to make his orders

respected and yet not hated, to be zealous and yet not importunate, to

act and yet not efface himself: he succeeds pretty often, thanks to

the preparation just described, and, in his rural sentry-box, patient,

resigned, obeying his orders, he mounts guard lonely and in solitude, a

guard which, for the past fifteen years, (from 1870-1885) is disturbed

and anxious and becoming singularly difficult.

*****

[Footnote 5201: Artaud, "Histoire de Pie VII.", I., 167.]

[Footnote 5202: Comte d'Haussonville, "L'Église romaine et le premier

Empire, IV.,378, 415. (Instructions for the ecclesiastical commission of

1811.) "The Pope exercised the authority of universal bishop at the time

of the re-establishment of the cult in France.... The Pope, under the

warrant of an extraordinary and unique case in the Church, acted, after

the Concordat, as if he had absolute power over the bishops." (Speech by

Bigot de Préameneu, Minister of Worship, at the national council, June

20, 1811.) This act was almost universal in the history of the church,

and the court of Rome started from this sort of extraordinary act,

passed by it at the request of the sovereign, in order to enforce its

ideas of arbitrary rule over the bishops."]

[Footnote 5203: So stated by Napoleon.]

[Footnote 5204: Bossuet, "OEuvres complètes, XXXII.", 415. (Defensio

declarationis cleri gallicani, lib. VIII, caput 14).--"Episcopos, licet

papæ divino jure subditos, ejusdem esse ordinis, ejusdem caracteris,

sive, ut loquitur Hieronymus, ejusdem meriti, ejusdem, sacerdotii,

collegasque et coepiscopos appelari constat, scitumque illud Bernardi ad

Eugenium papam: Non es dominus episcoporum, sed unus ex illis."]

[Footnote 5205: Comte Boulay (de la Meurthe), "les Négociations du

Concordat," p. 35.--There were 50 vacancies in 135 dioceses, owing to

the death of their incumbents.]

[Footnote 5206: Bercastel and Henrion, XIII., 43. (Observations of Abbé

Emery on the Concordat.) "None of the past Popes, not even those who

have extended their authority the farthest, have been able to carry such

heavy, authoritative blows out, as those struck at this time by Pius

VII."]

[Footnote 5207: Prælectiones juris canonici habitæ in seminario Sancti

Sulpitii, 1867 (Par l'abbé Icard), I., 138. "Sancti canones passim

memorant distinctionem duplicis potestatis quâ utitur sanctus

pontifex: unam appelant ordinariam, aliam absolutam, vel plenitudinem

potestatis... . Pontifex potestate ordinaria utitur, quando juris

positivi dispositionem retinet.... Potestatem extraordinariam exserit,

quando jus humanum non servat, ut si jus ipsum auferat, si 1egibus

conciliorum deroget, privilegia acquisita immutet.... Plenitudo

potestatis nullis publici juris regulis est limitata."--Ibid., I, 333.]

[Footnote 5208: Principal Concordats: with Bavaria, 1817; with Prussia,

1821; with Wurtemburg, Baden, Nassau, the two Hesses, 1821; with

Hanover, 1824; with the Netherlands, 1827; with Russia, 1847; with

Austria, 1855; with Spain, 1851; with the two Sicilies, 1818; with

Tuscany, 1851; with Portugal (for the patronat of the Indies and of

China), 1857; with Costa Rica, 1852; Guatemala, 1853; Haiti, 1860;

Honduras 1861; Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and San Salvador, 1862.]

[Footnote 5209: Bercastel et Henrion, XIII, 524.]

[Footnote 5210: "Adstantibus non judicantibus."--One of the prelates

assembled at the Vatican, Nov. 20, 1854, observed that if the Pope

decided on the definition of the Immaculate Conception... this decision

would furnish a practical demonstration... of the infallibility with

which Jesus Christ had invested his vicar on earth." (Émile Ollivier,

"L'Église et l'État au concile du Vatican, I., 313.)]

[Footnote 5211: Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., 105. (Circular of Pius

VII., February 25, 1808.) "It is said that all cults should be free and

publicly exercised; but we have thrown this article out as opposed to

the canons and to the councils, to the catholic religion."--Ibid., (Pius

VII. to the Italian bishops on the French system, May 22, 1808.) "This

system of indifferentism, which supposes no religion, is that which

is most injurious and most opposed to the Catholic apostolic and Roman

religion, which, because it is divine, is necessarily sole and unique

and, on that very account, cannot ally itself with any other."--Cf. the

"Syllabus" and the encyclical letter "Quanta Cura"of December 8, 1864.]

[Footnote 5212: Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution révolutionnaire dans

le departement du Doubs," X., 720-773. (List in detail of the entire

staff of the diocese of Besançon, in 1801 and in 1822, under Archbishop

Lecoz, a former assermenté.--During the Empire, and especially after

1806, this mixed clergy keeps refining itself. A large number, moreover,

of assermentés do not return to the Church. They are not disposed to

retract, and many of them enter into the new university. For example

("Vie du Cardinal Bonnechose," by M. Besson, I., 24), the principal

teachers in the Roman college in 1815-1816 were a former Capuchin, a

former Oratorian and three assermentés priests. One of these, M. Nicolas

Bignon, docteur ès lettres, professor of grammar in the year IV at the

Ecole Centrale, then professor of rhetoric at the Lycée and member of

the Roman Academy, "lived as a philosopher, not as a Christian and still

less as a priest." Naturally, he is dismissed in 1816. After that date,

the purging goes on increasing against all ecclesiastics suspected of

having compromised with the Revolution, either liberals or Jansenists.

Cf. the "Mémoires de l'abbé Babou, évêque nommé de Séez," on the

difficulties encountered by a too Gallican bishop and on the bitterness

towards him of the local aristocracy of his diocese.]

[Footnote 5213: Cf. the "Mémoires de l'abbé Babou, évêque nommé de

Séez," on the difficulties encountered by a too Gallican bishop and on

the bitterness towards him of the local aristocracy of his diocese.]

[Footnote 5214: "Mémorial," July 31, 1816.]

[Footnote 5215: Both systems, set forth with rare impartiality and

clearness, may be found in "L'Église et l'Etat au concile du Vatican,"

by Émile Ollivier, I., chs. II. and III.]

[Footnote 5216: Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., p. 14. (Letter of M.

d'Avian, archbishop of Bordeaux, October 28, 1815.) "A dozen consecutive

Popes do not cease, for more than one hundred and thirty years,

improving that famous Declaration of 1682."]

[Footnote 5217: Ernile Olliver, ibid., I. 315-319. (Declarations of

the French provincial councils and of foreign national and provincial

councils before 1870.)--Cf. M. de Montalembert, "Des Intérets

Catholiques," 1852, ch. II. and VI. "The ultramontane doctrine is the

only true one. The great Count de Maistre's ideas in his treatise on the

Pope have become commonplace for all Catholic youth."--Letter of Mgr.

Guibert, February 22, 1853. "Gallicanism no longer exists."--"Diary in

France," by Chris. Wordsworth, D.D., 1845. "There are not two bishops in

France who are not ultramontane, that is to say devoted to the interests

of the Roman See."]

[Footnote 5218: "Constitutio dogmatica prima de Ecclesia Christi,"

July 18, 1870. "Ejusmodi romani pontificis definitiones ex sese, non ex

consensu Ecclesiæ irreformabiles esse." (ch. IV.)]

[Footnote 5219: Ibid., ch. III. "Si quis dixerit romanum pontificem

habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel directionis, non autem

plenam et supremam potestatem juridictionis in universam Ecclesiam,

non solum in rebus quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis quæ ad

disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent; aut

etiam habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem hujus

supremæ potestatis, aut hanc ejus potestatem non esse ordinariam et

immediatam..."]

[Footnote 5220: Ibid., ch. III. "Aberrant a recto veritatis tramite

qui affirmant licere ab judiciis Romanorum pontificum ad oecumenicum

concilium, tanquam ad auctoritatem romano pontifice superiorem,

appellare."]

[Footnote 5221: "Almanach national de 1889." (Among these four, one only

belongs to a historic family, Mgr. de Deux-Brézé of Moulins.)]

[Footnote 5222: See "The Ancient Régime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. (Ed.

Laffont I. pp. 53-43, 92-93, 218,219.)]

[Footnote 5223: Cf. the history of the parliaments of Grenoble and

Rennes on the approach of the Revolution. Remark the fidelity of all

their judicial subordinates in 1788 and 1789, and the provincial power

of the league thus formed.]

[Footnote 5224: Article 12.]

[Footnote 5225: "The Revolution," Vol. I.--Abbé Sicard, "Les

Dispensateurs des bénéfices ecclésiastiques avant 1789."

("Correspondant" of Sep. 10, 1889, pp. 887, 892, 893.) Grosley,

"Mémoires pour servir l'histoire de Troyes," II, pp. 35, 45.]

[Footnote 5226: Abée Elie Méric, "Le Clergé sous l'ancien régime,"

I., p. 26. (Ten universities conferred letters of appointment on

their graduates.)--Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs," etc., p 876.--352

parliamentarians of Paris had an indult, that is to say, the right

of obliging collators and church patrons to bestow the first vacant

benefice either on himself or on one of his children, relations or

friends. Turgot gave his indult to his friend Abbé Morellet, who

consequently obtained (in June 1788) the priory of Thimer, with 16,000

livres revenue and a handsome house.--Ibid., p.887. "The bias of the

Pope, ecclesiastical or lay patrons, licensed parties, indultaires,

graduates, the so frequent use of resignations, permutations, pensions,

left to the bishop, who is now undisputed master of his diocesan

appointments, but very few situations to bestow."--Grosley, "Mémoires,

etc.," II., p.35. "The tithes followed collations. Nearly all our

ecclesiastical collators are at the same time large tithe-owners."]

[Footnote 5227: An inferior class of priests, generally assigned to poor

parishes.]

[Footnote 5228: Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., p.448.]

[Footnote 5229: Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., pp 392~403. (Details in

support.)]

[Footnote 5230: Abbé Richandeau, "De l'ancienne et de la nouvelle

discipline de l'Église en France," p. 281.--Cf. Abbé Elie Méric, ibid.,

ch. II. (On the justice and judges of the church.)]

[Footnote 5231: Mercur, "Tableau de Paris," IV.,chap. 345. "The flock no

longer recognize the brow of their pastor and regard him as nothing but

an opulent man, enjoying himself in the capital and giving himself very

little trouble about it."]

[Footnote 5232: "Le Monde" of Novem. 9, 1890. (Details, according to the

Montpellier newspapers, of the ceremony which had just taken place in

the cathedral of that town for the remission of the pallium to Mgr.

Roverié de Cabrières.]

[Footnote 5233: "Encyclopedie théologique," by Abbé Migne, ix., p.465.

(M. Emery, "Des Nouveaux chapitres cathédraux," p.238.) "The custom

in France at present, of common law, is that the bishops govern their

dioceses without the participation of any chapter. They simply call

to their council those they deem proper, and choose from these their

chapter and cathedral councillors."]

[Footnote 5234: Ibid., id.: "Notwithstanding these fine titles, the

members of the chapter take no part in the government during the life of

the bishop; all depends on this prelate, who can do everything himself,

or, if he needs assistants, he may take them outside of the chapter."

--Ibid., p. 445. Since 1802, in France, "the titular canons are

appointed by the bishop and afterwards by the government, which gives

them a salary. It is only the shadow of the canonical organization, of

which, however, they possess all the canonical rights."]

[Footnote 5235: Abbé André, "Exposition de quelques principes

fondamentaux de droit Canonique," p.187 (citing on this subject one

of the documents of Mgr. Sibour, then bishop of Digne).--"Since the

Concordat of 1801, the absence of all fixed procedure in the trial of

priests has left nothing for the accused to depend on but the conscience

and intelligence of the bishop. The bishop, accordingly, has been, in

law, as in fact, the sole pastor and judge of his clergy, and, except

in rare cases, no external limit has been put to the exercise of his

spiritual authority."]

[Footnote 5236: Émile Ollivier, "L'Église et l'État au concile du

Vatican," p 517.--Abbé André, ibid., PP.17, 19, 30, 280. (Various

instances, particularly the appeal of a rural curé, Feb. 8, 1866.) "The

metropolitan (bishop) first remarked that he could not bring himself to

condemn his suffragan." Next (Feb.20, 1866), judgment confirmed by

the metropolitan court, declaring "that no reason exists for declaring

exaggerated and open to reform the penalty of depriving the rector of

the parish of X--of his title, a title purely conferred by and revocable

at the will of the bishop."]

[Footnote 5237: Émile Ollivier, ibid., II.,517, 516.--Abbé André, ibid.,

p.241. "During the first half of the nineteenth century no appeal could

be had from the Church of France to Rome."]

[Footnote 5238: Émile Ollivier, ibid., I. p. 286.--Abbé André, ibid.,

p.242: "From 1803 to 1854 thirty-eight appeals under writ of error (were

presented) to the Council of State by priests accused.... Not one of the

thirty-eight appeals was admitted."]

[Footnote 5239: Prælectiones juris canonici habitæ in seminario Sancti

Sulpicii, III., p.146.]

[Footnote 5240: Émile Ollivier, ibid., I., 136.]

[Footnote 5241: Id., ibid., I., p. 285. (According to Abbé Denys,

"Études sur l'administration de l'Église," p. 211.)--Cf. Abbé André,

ibid., and "L'Etat actuel du clergé en France par les frères Allignol"

(1839).--This last work, written by two assistant-curés, well shows,

article by article, the effects of the Concordat and the enormous

distance which separates the clergy of to-day from the old clergy.

The modifications and additions which comport with this exposition are

indicated by Abbé Richandeau, director of the Blois Seminary, in his

book, "De l'ancienne et de la nouvelle discipline de l'Eglise en France"

(1842). Besides this, the above exposition, as well as what follows, is

derived from, in addition to printed documents, personal observations,

much oral information, and numerous manuscript letters.]

[Footnote 5242: "Manreze du prêtre," by the R. P. Caussette,

vicar-general of Toulouse, 1879., V. II.,p.523. (As stated by the

Abbé Dubois, an experienced missionary. He adds that these priests,

"transferred to difficult posts, are always on good terms with their

mayors,... triumph over obstacles, and maintain peace.")--Ibid., I.,

p.312. "I do not know whether the well-informed consciences of our

lords the bishops have made any mistakes, but what pardons have they not

granted! what scandals have they not suppressed! what reputations have

they not preserved! what a misfortune if you have to do with a court

instead of with a father! For the court acquits and does not pardon....

And your bishop may not only employ the mercy of forgiveness, but,

again, that of secrecy. How reap the advantages of this paternal system

by calumniating it!"]

[Footnote 5243: Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange, II.,p.43:

"Mgr. Dupanloup believed that pastoral removal was very favorable, not

to say necessary, to the good administration of a diocese, to the proper

management of parishes, even to the honor of priests and the Church,

considering the difficulties of the times we live in. Irremovability

was instituted for fortunate times and countries in which the people

fulfilled all their duties and in which the sacerdotal ministry could

not be otherwise than a simple ministry of conservation; at the present

day it is a ministry of conquest and of apostleship. The bishop,

accordingly, must dispose of his priests as he thinks them fit for this

work, according to their zeal and to their possible success in a country

which has to be converted." Against the official character and publicity

of its judgments "it is important that it should not make out of a

misfortune which is reparable a scandal that nothing can repair."]

[Footnote 5244: "Moniteur," session of March 11, 1865.]

[Footnote 5245: In the following Taine describes the centralization

and improvement of the Church administration which probably made many

socialist readers believe that the same kind of improvements easily

could be introduced into private enterprise at the same time making them

more determined to exclude children from the old families from all kinds

of leadership in the coming socialist state.]

[Footnote 5246: "The Ancient Régime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. "Memoires

inédits de Madame de....." (I am not allowed to give the author's name).

The type in high relief of one of these prelates a few years before the

Revolution may here be found. He was bishop of Narbonne, with an income

of 800,000 livres derived from the possessions of the clergy. He passed

a fortnight every other year at Narbonne, and then for six weeks he

presided with ability and propriety over the provincial parliament at

Montpellier. But during the other twenty-two months he gave no thought

to any parliamentary business or to his diocese, and lived at Haute

Fontaine with his niece, Madame de Rothe, of whom he was the lover.

Madame de Dillon, his grand-niece, and the Prince de Guémenée, the

lover of Madame de Dillon, lived in the same château. The proprieties of

deportment were great enough, but language there was more than free, so

much so that the Marquise d'Osmond, on a visit, "was embarrassed even

to shedding tears.... On Sunday, out of respect to the character of

the master of the house, they went to Mass; but nobody carried a

prayer-book; it was always some gay and often scandalous book, which

was left lying about in the tribune of the château, open to those who

cleaned the room, for their edification as they pleased."]

[Footnote 5247: "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange.--"Histoire du

Cardinal Pie, évêque de Poitiers," by Mgr. Bannard.]

[Footnote 5248: One could imagine the impression this text would have

made on Lenin and his plans to create an elite communist party once he

should take the power he dreamt of. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5249: "Moniteur," session of March 14, 1865, speech of

Cardinal de Bonnechose: "I exact full obedience, because I myself, like

those among you who belong to the army or navy, have always taken pride

in thus rendering it to my chiefs, to my superiors."]

[Footnote 5250: "Histoire du cardinal Pie," by M. Bannard, II.,p.690. M.

Pie left six large volumes in which, for thirty years, he recorded his

episcopal acts, uninterruptedly, until his last illness.]

[Footnote 5251: Ibid., II., p.135: "In the year 1860 he had confirmed

11,586 belonging to his diocese; in 1861 he confirmed 11,845."--"Vie de

Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé La Grange, I II., p. 19. (Letter to his clergy,

1863.) He enumerates what he had done in his diocese: "The parochial

retraites which have amounted to nearly one hundred; the perpetual

adoration of the Holy Sacrament established in all the parishes;

confirmation, not alone in the cantonal town but in the smallest

villages and always preceded by the mission; the canonical visit made

annually in each parish, partly by the archdeacon, partly by the dean,

and partly by the bishop;... the vicarships doubled; life in common

established among the parochial clergy; sisters of charity for schools

and the sick multiplied in the diocese and spread on all sides;

augmentation of everything concerning ecclesiastical studies, the number

of small and large seminaries being largely increased; examinations of

young priests; ecclesiastical lectures; grades organized and raised;

churches and rectories everywhere rebuilt or 'repaired; a great diocesan

work in helping poor parishes and, to sustain it, the diocesan lottery

and fair of the ladies of Orleans; finally, retraites and communions for

men established, and also in other important towns and parishes of the

diocese." (P. 46.) (Letter of January 26, 1846, prescribing in each

parish the exact holding of the status animarum, which status is his

criterion for placing a curé.) "The État de Pâques in his parish must

always be known while he is in it, before withdrawing him and placing

him elsewhere."]

[Footnote 5252: The drafters of the charter of the United Nations Staff

Rules had the same idea in mind when writing Regulation 1.2: "Staff

members are subject to the authority of the Secretary-General and to

assignment by him to any of the activities or offices of the United

Nations. They are responsible to him in the exercise of their functions.

The whole time of staff members shall be at the disposal of the

Secretary-General. The Secretary-General shall establish a normal

working week." The disciplinary means of which the bishops disposed are,

however, lacking in the United Nations secretariat. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5253: "Moniteur," session of March 14 1865. (Speech of

Cardinal de Bonnechose.) "What would we do without our monks, Jesuits,

Dominicans, Carmelites, etc., to preach at Advent and during Lent,

and act as missionaries in the country? The (parochial) clergy is not

numerous enough to do this daily work."]

[Footnote 5254: Prælectiones juris canonici, II., 305 and following

pages.]

[Footnote 5255: "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, 1890, I. vol.--"La

Charité à Angers," by Léon Cosnier, 1890, 2 vols.--"Manuel des

oeuvres et institutions charitable à Paris," by Lacour, I vol.--"Les

Congrégations religieuses en France," by Émile Keller, 1880, 1 vol,]

[Footnote 5256: "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," I., 506 (1853). "More than one

hundred free ecclesiastical establishments for secondary education have

been founded since the law of 1850."--"Statistique de l'enseignement

secondaire." In 1865, there were 276 free ecclesiastical schools for

secondary instruction with 34,897 pupils, of which 23.549 were boarders

and 11,348 day-scholars. In 1876, there were 390 with 46,816 pupils, of

which 33,092 were boarders and 13,724 day-scholars.]

[Footnote 5257: "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, p.87.--"Vie du

Cardinal Mathieu," by Mgr. Besson, 2 vols.]

[Footnote 5258: December, 1890.]

[Footnote 5259: Cf., in the above-mentioned biographies, the public and

political discourses of the leading prelates, especially those of M.

Mathieu (of Besançon), M. Dupanloup (of Orleans), Mgr. de Bonnechose (of

Rouen), and particularly Mgr. Pie (of Poitiers).]

[Footnote 5260: A fact told me by a lady, an eye-witness. In the

seventeenth century it is probable that Fénelon or Bossuet would have

regarded such a response as extravagant and even sacrilegious.]

[Footnote 5261: Imagine the impression this might have had on ambitious

men dreaming of establishing their own faithful parties. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5262: Abbé Elie Méric, in the "Correspondant" of January 10,

1890, p. 18.]

[Footnote 5263: "De l'État actuel du clergé en France" (1839), p.248, by

the brothers Allignol. Careers of every kind are too crowded; "only the

ecclesiastical is in want of subjects; willing youths are the only

ones wanted and none are found." This is due, say these authors, to

the profession of assistant-priest being too gloomy--eight years of

preparatory study five years in the seminary, 800 francs of pay with the

risk of losing it any day, poor extras, a life-servitude, no retiring

pension, etc.--"Le Grand Péril de L'Église en France," by Abbé Bougaud

(4th ed., 1879), pp 2-23.--"Lettre Circulaire" (No. 53) of Mgr.

Thiebaut, archbishop of Rouen, 1890, p.618.]

[Footnote 5264: There is a gradual suppression of the subvention in 1877

and 1853 and a final one in 1885.]

[Footnote 5265: Abbé Bougaud, Ibid., p. 118, etc.--The lower seminary

contains about 200 or 250 pupils. Scarcely one of these pays full board.

They pay on the average from 100 to 200 frs. per head, while their

maintenance costs 400 francs.--The instructors who are priests get 600

francs a year. Those who are not priests get 300 francs, which adds

12,000 francs to the expenses and brings the total deficit up to 42,000

or 52,000 francs.]

[Footnote 5266: Somewhat like television where he who controls this

media controls the minds of the people. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5267: Circular letter (No. 53) of M. Léon, archbishop of Rouen

(1890), p. 618 and following pages.]

[Footnote 5268: Had Hitler and Lenin read this, which is likely, then

they would have fashioned their youth party programmes accordingly!! The

Catholic faith in France today (in 1999) is nearly extinguished with

only 14 seminaries and only a few hundred young men yearly entering

these.(SR.)]

[Footnote 5269: Abbé Bougaud, ibid., p. 135. (Opinion of the archbishop

of Aix, Ibid., p. 38.) "I know a lower seminary in which a class en

quatrième (8th grade US.) of 44 pupils furnished only 4 priests, 40

having dropped out on the way.... I have been informed that a large

college in Paris, conducted by priests and containing 400 pupils, turned

out in ten years but one of an ecclesiastical calling."--"Moniteur,"

March, 14, 1865. (Speech in the Senate by Cardinal Bonnechose.) "With

us, discipline begins at an early age, first in the lower seminary and

then in the upper seminary.... Other nations envy us our seminaries.

They have not succeeded in establishing any like them. They cannot

keep pupils so long; their pupils enter their seminaries only as day

scholars."]

[Footnote 5270: Old-fashioned name for the 11th grade in a French high

school. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5271: "Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, I., 15,

17. "From 1786 onwards, plays written by the 'les philosophes,' by the

'Robertuis' and the Laon community; they were excluded from the great

seminary where they ought never to have been admitted." This reform was

effected by the new director, M. Emery, and met with such opposition

that it almost cost him his life.]

[Footnote 5272: M. de Talleyrand, "Mémoires," vol. i. (Concerning one of

his gallantries.) "The superiors might have had some Suspicion,... but

Abbé couturier had shown them how to shut their eyes. He had taught them

not to reprove a young seminarist whom they believed destined to a high

position, who might become coadjutor at Rheims, perhaps a cardinal,

perhaps minister, minister de la feuille--who knows?"]

[Footnote 5273: "Diary in France," by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. 1845.

(Weakness of the course of study at Saint-Sulpice.) "There is no regular

course of lectures on ecclesiastical history."--There is still at the

present day no special course of Greek for learning to read the

New Testament in the original.--"Le clergé français en 1890" (by an

anonymous ecclesiastic), pp.24-38. "High and substantial service is

lacking with us.... For a long time, the candidates for the episcopacy

are exempt by a papal bull from the title of doctor."--In the seminary

there are discussions in barbarous Latin, antiquated subjects, with

the spouting of disjointed bits of text: "They have not learned how

to think. .. Their science is good for nothing; they have no means or

methods even for learning.... The Testament of Christ is what they are

most ignorant of.... A priest who devotes himself to study is regarded

either as a pure speculator unfit for the government, or with an

ambition which nothing can satisfy, or again an odd, ill-humored,

ill-balanced person; we live under the empire of this stupid

prejudice,... We have archeologists, assyriologists, geologists,

philologists and other one-sided savants. The philosophers, theologians,

historians, and canonists have become rare."]

[Footnote 5274: "Journal d'un voyage en France," by Th. W. Allies,

1845, p.38. (Table of daily exercises in Saint-Sulpice furnished by Abbé

Caron, former secretary to the archbishop of Paris.)--Cf. in "Volupté,"

by Saint-Beuve, the same table furnished by Lacordaire.]

[Footnote 5275: "Manreze du prêtre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I.,

82.]

[Footnote 5276: Ibid., I., 48. "Out of 360 meditations made by a priest

during the year, 300 of them are arid." We have the testimony of Abbé

d'Astros on the efficacy of prayers committed to memory, who was in

prison for three years under the first empire and without any books. "I

knew the psalms by heart and, thanks to this converse with God, which

escaped the jailor, I was never troubled by boredom."]

[Footnote 5277: As with the "Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes," whose

society has the most members.]

[Footnote 5278: "Manreze du prêtre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I.,

9. The Manreze is the grotto where Saint Ignatius found the plan of

his Exercitia and the three ways by which a man succeeds in detaching

himself from the world, "the purgative, the illuminative and the

unitive." The author says that he has brought all to the second way,

as the most suitable for priests. He himself preached pastoral retreats

everywhere in France, his book being a collection of rules for retreats

of this kind.]

[Footnote 5279: Someone who, like me, have lived through the attempted

Communist conquest of the world, in Eastern Europe, in China, Korea,

Vietnam and other conquered territories, the terrible experiences of

those imprisoned in re-education camps, come to mind. Did Lenin have

Taine translated? Did Lenin and Stalin use this description of catholic

brainwashing as their model? We might never find out. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5280: One of these enduring effects is the intense faith of

the prelates, who in the 18th century believed so little. At the present

day, not made bishops until about fifty years of age, thirty of which

have been passed in exercises of this description, their piety has

taken the Roman, positive, practical turn which terminates in devotions

properly so called. M. Emery, the reformer of Saint-Sulpice, gave the

impulsion in this sense. ("Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, p.

115 etc.) M. Emery addressed the seminarians thus: "Do you think that,

if we pray to the Holy Virgin sixty times a day to aid us at the hour

of death, she will desert us at the last moment?"--" He led us into the

chapel, which he had decked with reliquaries.... He made the tour of it,

kissing in turn each reliquary with respect and love, and when he found

one of them out of reach for this homage, he said to us, 'Since we

cannot kiss that one, let us accord it our profoundest reverence!'...

And we all three kneeled before the reliquary."--Among other episcopal

lives, that of Cardinal Pie, bishop of Poitiers, presents the order of

devotion in high relief. ("Histoire du cardinal Pie," by M. Bannard,

II.,348 and passim.) There was a statuette of the Virgin on his bureau.

After his death, a quantity of paper scraps, in Latin or French, written

and placed there by him-were found, dedicating this or that action,

journey or undertaking under the special patronage of the Virgin or St.

Joseph. He also possessed a statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes which never

was out of his sight, day or night. "One day, having gone out of

his palace, he suddenly returned, having forgotten something--he had

neglected to kiss the feet of his Heavenly Mother."--Cf. "Vie de Mgr.

Dupanloup," Abbé Lagrange, I., 524. "During his mother's illness, he

multiplied the novenas, visited every altar, made vows, burnt candles,

for not only had he devotion, but devotions... On the 2d of January,

1849, there was fresh alarm; thereupon, a novena at Saint-Geneviève and

a vow--no longer the chaplet, but the rosary. Then, as the fête of Saint

François de Sales drew near a new novena to this great Savoyard saint;

prayers to the Virgin in Saint-Sulpice; to the faithful Virgin; to the

most wise Virgin, everywhere."]

[Footnote 5281: "Manreze du prêtre," I., 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 91, 92,

244, 246, 247, 268.]

[Footnote 5282: Ibid. I., 279, 281, 301, 307, 308, 319.]

[Footnote 5283: Just like the believing faithful 20th century

international revolutionary Marxist-communist. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5284: "Le clergé française en 1890" (by an anonymous

ecclesiastic), p. 72. (On the smaller parishes.) "The task of the curé

here is thankless if he is zealous, too easy if he has no zeal. In any

event, he is an isolated man, with no resources whatever, tempted by all

the demons of solitude and inactivity."--Ibid.,,92. "Our authority among

the common classes as well as among thinking people is held in check;

the human mind is to-day fully emancipated and society secularized."--

Ibid., 15. "Indifference seems to have retired from the summits of the

nation only to descend to the lower strata.... In France, the priest is

the more liked the less he is seen; to efface himself, to disappear is

what is first and most often demanded of him. The clergy and the nation

live together side by side, scarcely in contact, through certain actions

in life, and never intermingling."]