describes as universal under the interpretation put upon the
Tridentine canons. It would seem that it ought to be in some degree
a safeguard against worse offences and more public scandals, as a
kind of substitute for marriage; but unlawful indulgence weakens the
power of resistance to temptation and hardens the conscience to sin.
In spite, therefore, of this practical relaxation of the canons, we
see the old troubles of the relations between spiritual directors and
their fair penitents continue to vex the pious. As we have seen with
the less delicate matter of the female companions of the clergy, the
councils of modern times are not likely to be outspoken with regard to
such a subject, but the frequency with which they reiterate commands
that the confessions of women shall not be heard, save in case of
infirmity, except in church; that when heard elsewhere it shall always
be with open doors, and that in church the confessional shall be in
a spot publicly visible, with a grating between the confessor and
his penitent; that before and after sunset the lamps shall always
be lighted, with other similar precautions, shows that the risk is
fully recognized and requires constant watchfulness.[1623] Helsen, in
fact, alludes to the scandals of the confessional as a cause of its
avoidance by the faithful and as contributing powerfully to the growth
of religious indifference;[1624] and that these scandals exist is not
a mere matter of conjecture or inference. If it were so, there would
be no need for reiterating the prohibitions against the absolution by
confessors of their fair partners in guilt, which is still occasionally
found to be necessary by modern councils;[1625] nor would Pius IX. in
1866 have felt himself obliged to declare that the power granted to
bishops to absolve in cases reserved to the Pope shall not in future
extend to offences reserved for papal absolution by Benedict XIV.’s
Bull “Sacramentum Pœnitentiæ.” In fact, the crime of “solicitation”
must have become notoriously frequent before the Congregation of the
Inquisition of Rome could have felt impelled, in 1867, to put forth
an Instruction addressed to all archbishops, bishops, and ordinaries,
complaining that the constitutions on the subject did not receive
proper attention, and that in some places abuses had crept in, both as
to requiring penitents to denounce guilty confessors, and as to the
punishing of confessors guilty of solicitation. It therefore urged the
officials everywhere to greater vigor in investigating such offences
and gave a summary of the practice of the Inquisition in regard to
these matters, supervision over which, it will be remembered, was
confided to the Holy Office by the Bulls of Pius IV. and Gregory XVI.
From this it appears that when such a denunciation is received, it
is the custom of the Inquisition to order the accused to be watched,
and not to prosecute him unless he is the subject of three separate
accusations. When this number has been reached, a special court is
convened whose business it is to examine whether there may not be some
special enmity on the part of the accusers. Failing this, the accused
is then examined under oath, care being taken not to reveal the names
of the accusers nor to violate the seal of the confessional. If the
transgressor confesses or is convicted, he is deprived forever of the
faculty of hearing confessions and must abjure the heresy implied
in his crime; but the severer punishments decreed by Gregory XV. of
degradation from holy orders and delivery to the secular arm are not to
be inflicted. Those who voluntarily confess without being denounced,
even though they may subsequently be denounced, are allowed to escape
with a suitable penance and are ordered merely not to hear subsequently
the confessions of those whom they have solicited; confession after
denunciation, but before trial, also diminishes the penalty. The utmost
secrecy is enjoined on all concerned, who are to be sworn to silence,
and so great a stress is laid on this that even priests are required to
take the oath on the Gospels. The accuser is not to be asked whether
she consented to the solicitation, and if she voluntarily makes such
a statement it is not to be entered in the proceedings of the case.
After the trial is finished, moreover, the whole is to be consigned
to oblivion.[1626] In view of this nervous anxiety for secrecy, and
the tenderness manifested throughout to the offender, it is surely not
uncharitable to conclude that scandal is more feared than sin in these
matters.
Possibly the abuses of the confessional may be less frequent now
than they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet it
is evident that they are still quite prevalent enough to require a
much more efficient system of repression than they are at all likely
to receive. It is true that the questions put to the penitent by the
confessor are divested of the extremity of brutal coarseness prescribed
by Bishop Burckhardt, but they are still sufficiently suggestive to be
revolting to the pure-minded, and dangerous in no small degree to those
who are likely to lapse.[1627]
What in reality is the extent of these abuses can only be a subject of
conjecture. Their very nature causes them to be scrupulously concealed
not only by the principals, but by those who may incidentally find
themselves wronged, and the church itself exerts all its influence to
shield the guilty and suppress the scandal. How powerfully and how
unscrupulously its influence is exerted to this end may be judged
from a few examples. In 1817, at Availles, in France, the sacristan
complained to the mayor that his daughter was received every night
by the curé, to the scandal of the people. The mayor thus invited
entered the priest’s house suddenly one night and found the girl in
dishabille, hidden in a corner. He drew up an official statement of
the facts and forwarded it to the authorities, and the response to
this was his summary dismissal from office on the ground of having
violated the domicil of the curé and increased the scandal.[1628]
More recent than this is the notorious case of the Abbé Mingrat, who
while curé of Saint-Opre, near Grenoble, got into trouble by seducing
one of his penitents, but was saved from prosecution and transferred
to Saint-Quentin. Here he established relations with a devout young
married woman, which ended in his cutting her in pieces with his
pocket-knife and throwing the fragments into the river Isère. Even
yet no action would have been taken had not the mayor of the place
insisted, but Mingrat was enabled to escape to Savoy, where he was
provided for as a persecuted saint.[1629] Similarly, in 1877, the Abbé
Debra, condemned at Liège in default, for no less than thirty-two
offences, was, after proper seclusion in a convent, given a parish
in Luxembourg by the Bishop of Namur.[1630] In the case of the Abbé
Mallet, which occurred in 1861, the church was unable to save the
culprit from punishment, but did what it could to conceal his crimes
from the faithful. As a canon of Cambray, he seduced three young Jewish
girls and procured their confinement in convents under pretext of
laboring for their conversion. One of his victims lost her reason in
consequence of her sufferings, and the court of Douay condemned him to
six years at hard labor—a sentence which was announced by an orthodox
journal thus—“M. le chanoine Mallet de Cambrai, accusé de détournement
de _mineurs_ pour cause de prosélytisme religieux a été condamné à six
ans de reclusion”—where the skilful use of the masculine “mineurs” and
the characterization of his offence as religious proselytism elevate
the worst of criminals into a martyr for the faith.[1631] It is quite
within the bounds of probability that, as such a martyr, he may, since
the expiration of his sentence, have been enjoying, in some cure of
souls, the opportunity of repeating his missionary experiments.
It is evident from these various causes that the criminal records
can give only the barest suggestion as to the extent of crimes thus
committed in secret by a class shielded by influences so powerful. The
records of the _ministère de la justice_, moreover, are not in France
open to the public, and the only mode of obtaining even an approximate
idea of the number of prosecutions in these cases is to gather them
from the journals in which they chance to appear as items of news. An
attempt to effect this has been made by Dr. Wahu, and though, from the
nature of the case, necessarily imperfect, it affords some interesting
and suggestive statistics. His list extends from the beginning of 1861
to April, 1879, and is thus tabulated:—
1861 3 cases.
1862 2 ”
1863 1 ”
1864 1 ”
1866 2 ”
1867 3 ”
1868 3 ”
1869 3 ”
1872 10 ”
1873 6 ”
1875 5 ”
1876 1 ”
1877 16 ”
1878 35 ”
1879 (Jan. to April) 19 ”
In all 110 cases, of which nearly one-half were brethren connected with
educational institutions, referred to above.
The earlier years of this list must be necessarily imperfect, and,
indeed, M. Charles Sauvestre has given details of nine cases occurring
in schools in 1861,[1632] all which have escaped Dr. Wahu, but, even
making allowance for the impossibility of hunting up all the fugitive
records of the past, the increase during recent years is not to be
regarded as indicating an increase of immorality. It rather proves
how powerful were the forces protecting the church and repressing
publicity under the Second Empire. The absence of cases in 1870-1 is
probably attributable to the preoccupations of the Franco-Prussian
War and its consequent troubles. While the presidency of M. Thiers,
in 1872, yielded 10 cases, the reactionary government of Marshal
MacMahon showed but 12 cases in four years. After the fall of MacMahon
the number rapidly increases, the first four months of 1879 affording
no less than 19 cases. Whether, since then, this rate of progression
has been maintained I have no means of knowing, but it is to be hoped
that the breaking up of the unauthorized orders, and the increased
vigilance of the authorities, aided by an aroused public sentiment,
have led to a decrease in the dismal record. One deplorable feature
of many of these cases is the large number of victims frequently
represented in a single prosecution, and that the perpetrator had often
been afforded the opportunity of continuing his crimes in successive
situations. Thus, in the affair of the Abbé Debra, at Liège, in 1877,
there were 32 offences charged against him; and, of those occurring
in the single year 1878, frère Marien was condemned for no less than
299, frère Mélisse, at Saint-Brice, for 50, frère Climène at Candé,
Mazé, and Martigné-Ferchaud, for 25, and frère Adulphe at Guipry,
Saint-Meloir-des-Ondes, and Pleurtuit, for 67.
It would be a libel on human nature to assert that this catalogue of
sin does not represent more than an average of wickedness, and the
responsibility for the existence of so shocking a condition of morality
must, at least in part, be attributed to the rule of celibacy, for
there is nothing in the status of the church in France to attract to
it those who seek merely a career of sloth and self-indulgence. The
income of the parish priest in France only averages about 1100 francs
per annum, and his position, in a vast majority of cases, is wholly
insecure, being dependent altogether upon the pleasure of his bishop,
who can dismiss him at any moment and thus deprive him of all means
of livelihood. In 1866, out of a total of 33,707 priests in service,
only 3715 held preferment of which they could not be thus deprived at
the whim of their superiors.[1633] A profession so poorly rewarded,
subjected to discipline nominally so severe, and held under such a
tenure, can scarce be expected to draw to its ranks men of character
and position; and in fact, the Bishop of Poitiers, in 1877, made in
a pastoral letter the humiliating avowal that the better and more
intelligent classes as a rule avoided the church, which was compelled
to find its recruits among the children of peasants and laborers. This
is confirmed by a work entitled “Le grand péril de l’église de France,”
issued in 1879 by the Abbé Bougaud, Vicar-General of Bishop Dupanloup
of Orléans, by which it appears that the districts which furnish the
most recruits are those which are most ignorant, and that, as education
increases, the willingness to enter the church diminishes. Moreover,
not only is this the case, but even the numbers of the secular clergy,
necessary for the ministrations of religion, are deficient. In his
own diocese of Orléans there were 180 priests lacking, and in that of
Troyes there were 100 parishes without curés; and though the want of
qualified ministers was daily increasing, the pupils in the seminaries
were diminishing, and it seemed impossible to fill the void.[1634]
While some allowance must of course be made for the character of the
material thus pressed into service, this fact only increases the
responsibility of those who persist in subjecting youths fitted neither
by nature nor training to the tremendous strain of enforced celibacy in
a career which surrounds them with the most dangerous temptations.
* * * * *
Irrespective of questions of morality, the rule of celibacy in modern
society is harmful to the state in proportion as it contributes to the
aggrandizement of those who enforce it. A sacerdotal caste, divested
of the natural ties of family and of the world, with interests in
many respects antagonistic to the communities in which its members
reside, with aims which, from the nature of the case, must be for
the temporal advancement of its class, is apt to prove a dangerous
element in the body politic, and the true interests of religion, as
well as of humanity, are almost as likely to receive injury as benefit
at its hands, especially when it is armed with the measureless power
of confession and absolution, and is held in strict subjection to a
hierarchy. Such a caste would seem to be the inevitable consequence
of compulsory celibacy in an ecclesiastical organization such as that
of the Catholic church, and the hierarchy based upon it can scarce
fail to become the enemy of human advancement, so long as the priest
continues to share the imperfections of our common nature. How little
the aims of that hierarchy have changed with the lapse of ages may
be seen in the pretensions which it still advances, as of old, to
subject the temporal sovereignty of princes and peoples to the absolute
domination of the spiritual power. The temper of Innocent III. and
Boniface VIII. is still the leading influence in its policy, and the
opportunity alone is wanting for it to revive in the nineteenth century
the all-pervading tyranny which it exercised in the thirteenth. Even
the separation of church and state is condemned as a heresy, and as
the state is denied the privilege of defining the limits of its own
authority, and as the right of the church to use force is asserted, it
would be difficult to set bounds to the empire which is its rightful
heritage, and of which it is deprived by the irreligious tendencies of
the age.[1635]
Yet, in spite of this antagonism to the spirit of modern society and
civilization, it would be futile to anticipate the downfall of the
church, or even any marked modification in its general organization or
teaching. It arose out of a necessity in human development. With all
its aberrations, it has been, perhaps, the most efficacious of agencies
for the improvement and civilization of man, and it will not disappear
or undergo any essential change until the necessity for its existence
shall have passed away in the elevation of mankind. The human race
is not yet prepared for independence in religious and moral thought,
and the masses in many lands will long require to be controlled with
the awful authority claimed for an infallible church, and will find
inexpressible comfort in that implicit faith which throws upon another
the burden of sin and the responsibility of salvation. The church thus
is doing its work, and has its work to do. We may, indeed, look forward
hopefully to the time when the diffusion of education and the growth
of intelligence will enable man to throw off the trammels which still
are requisite to his well-being and well-doing, and will seek and obey
his Creator without an intermediary, but that time is yet far off, and
until it comes Latin Christianity has a mission from which it cannot be
spared.
NOTE.
A Catholic reviewer of my first edition has assured me that I am in
error in assuming clerical celibacy to be a point of faith in his
church. To use his own words—“The writer is mistaken when he calls the
celibacy of the clergy a point of faith. It never was more than a point
of discipline, as is keeping the fasts and other commandments of the
church, which may be modified by the same authority which prescribed
them.” That it may, even as a point of faith, be abrogated by the same
authority which defined it, I do not doubt, for everything is possible
to a General Council guided by an infallible Pope; that it may now be
occasionally represented and even treated as a point of discipline, I
think quite possible and shall not undertake to dispute, seeing that
the Greek discipline is tolerated in that portion of the Greek church
which admits the supremacy of Rome,[1636] but that the council of Trent
intended to make it a point of faith and did so make it is susceptible
of the plainest demonstration. Any one who will read the Tridentine
canons (ante, pp. 536-7) will see that their form is purely doctrinal
and not disciplinary. If this be questioned, I may refer to Chr.
Lupus, whose orthodoxy and accuracy in such matters no good Catholic
can doubt, and who informs us, what indeed is self-evident, that the
council of Trent classified its anathemas of faith as canons, and
its regulations of discipline as decrees of reformation—“Sacrosancta
Tridentina synodo fidei anathematismos, canones; morum autem regulas
appellet decreta reformationis” (App. ad Synod. Chalced. Art. I.—Opp.
II. 248), and the anathemas on the subject will be found classed under
the title “Doctrina de Sacramento Matrimonii,” followed by disciplinary
regulations under the rubric “Decretum de Reformatione Matrimonii.” The
form of the canons in fact tells its own story. The dread anathema,
the final and highest condemnation of the church (“Anathema est æternæ
mortis damnatio et non nisi pro mortali debet imponi crimine et illi
qui aliter non potuerit corrigi”—Grat. Decret. P. II. Caus. XI. Q. iii.
c. 41) is directed, not against him who actually marries, but against
those who assert that all may marry who have not the gift of chastity;
and the same condemnation is pronounced on those who hold that marriage
is preferable to celibacy. It is therefore treated purely as a matter
of belief, the mere discussion of which is practical heresy. This
was the form adopted by the council throughout in defining points of
faith, as, for instance, in treating of Original Sin, which no one will
pretend to be a matter of discipline—“Si quis per Jesu Christi Domini
nostri gratiam quæ in baptismate confertur, reatum originalis peccati
remitti negat ... anathema sit” (Sess. V. de Peccat. Orig. c. 5). Any
one believing in the validity of priestly marriage is therefore not
merely a contemner of a point of discipline but a heretic, and it is
simply a libel on the good fathers of Trent to assert that they would
anathematize as worthy of perpetual perdition a simple theoretical
opinion on a matter of discipline.
Their intentions, moreover, as to this, are rendered indisputable by
the answer of Pius V. in 1561, just before the final meeting of the
Council, to the demand of Charles IX. for the concession of the cup
to the laity. The pontiff states that he had considered that point
and the marriage of the clergy to be matters of law, and therefore
capable of alteration by due authority, but that, on expressing this
opinion in the last conclave, he had been stigmatized as a Lutheran
(Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. IV. 734). This is confirmed by
the remarks of Fra Paolo on the canon which pronounces the anathema
on those who deny that a non-consummated marriage is dissolved by the
vow of either spouse (Sess. XXIV. de Sacram. Matrim. c. vi.), where
he alludes to the surprise caused by making it a point of faith—“Nel
sesto anathematimismo del Matrimonio restarono molti ammirati che fosse
posto per articolo di fede” (Ist. del Concil. Trident. Lib. VIII.—Ed.
Helmstadt. II. 382).
The same view continued long to be upheld as orthodox. It would be
difficult to find a work published under auspices more authoritative
than Andreas Forster’s “De Cœlibatu Clericorum Dissertatio,” a thesis
publicly read in the University of Dillingen in 1782, printed by
authority, and dedicated to Pius VI. At that time there were serious
efforts making, in the bosom of the church itself, to overthrow the
rule of celibacy, and there was no hesitation on the part of the
ecclesiastical rulers to avow the full purport of the Tridentine
canons. Forster accordingly does not scruple to declare the truth as
to the orthodox doctrine, nor was exception taken to his assertion by
the authorities whose imprimatur the volume bears. The condemnation
of those, he says, who rashly assert that marriage can be contracted
by those in orders or bound by solemn vows of chastity is a dogma
of faith, while the definition that virginity is better than
matrimony is a dogma of morals—“Pro certo nos tenemus et ab omnibus
Catholicis tenendum esse firmiter adserimus, Ecclesiam in laudato
consilio recte omnino definiisse ... melius esse ac beatius manere in
virginitate aut cœlibatu quam jungi matrimonio. Recte porro damnasse
eos qui matrimonium a clericis in SS. Ordinibus constitutis, vel a
regularibus castitatem solemniter professis, valide posse contrahi
temere adsererent. Et hoc ultimum ad Dogma Fidei, illud prius ad
Dogma Morum proculdubio pertinet” (op. cit. § xxxi. Dilingæ, 1782).
In full accordance with this was the line of argument adopted by the
advocates of the church in 1831, when it became necessary to overrule
the decision which had authorized the marriage of the priest Dumonteil.
They represented that to permit the civil marriage of a priest was, in
fact, to persecute the church, because “qui veut une religion la veut
avec ses dogmes, et la chasteté du prêtre est un de ceux de l’église
Catholique” (Bouhier de l’Écluse, de l’État du Prêtre en France, p. 31).