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 To make amends, and as compensation, the extraction is surer; the long process by which a child is withdrawn and instructed for the priesthood goes on and is finished with less uncertainty.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 rhetoric5270 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 exercises5273—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 mechanical5276; 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.

5201 (return)
[ Artaud, "Histoire de Pie VII.", I., 167.]

5202 (return)
[ 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."]

5203 (return)
[ So stated by Napoleon.]

5204 (return)
[ 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."]

5205 (return)
[ 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.]

5206 (return)
[ 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."]

5207 (return)
[ PrÆlectiones juris canonici habitÆ in seminario Sancti Sulpitii, 1867 (Par l'abbÉ Icard), I., 138. "Sancti canones passim memorant distinctionem duplicis potestatis qu 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.]

5208 (return)
[ 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.]

5209 (return)
[ Bercastel et Henrion, XIII, 524.]

5210 (return)
[ "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.)]

5211 (return)
[ 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.]

5212 (return)
[ 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.]

5213 (return)
[ 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.]

5214 (return)
[ "MÉmorial," July 31, 1816.]

5215 (return)
[ 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.]

5216 (return)
[ 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."]

5217 (return)
[ 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."]

5218 (return)
[ "Constitutio dogmatica prima de Ecclesia Christi," July 18, 1870. "Ejusmodi romani pontificis definitiones ex sese, non ex consensu EcclesiÆ irreformabiles esse." (ch. IV.)]

5219 (return)
[ 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..."]

5220 (return)
[ 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."]

5221 (return)
[ "Almanach national de 1889." (Among these four, one only belongs to a historic family, Mgr. de Deux-BrÉzÉ of Moulins.)]

5222 (return)
[ See "The Ancient RÉgime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. (Ed. Laffont I. pp. 53-43, 92-93, 218,219.)]

5223 (return)
[ 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.]

5224 (return)
[ Article 12.]

5225 (return)
[ "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.]

5226 (return)
[ 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."]

5227 (return)
[ An inferior class of priests, generally assigned to poor parishes.]

5228 (return)
[ AbbÉ Elie MÉric, ibid., p.448.]

5229 (return)
[ AbbÉ Elie MÉric, ibid., pp 392~403. (Details in support.)]

5230 (return)
[ 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.)]

5231 (return)
[ 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."]

5232 (return)
[ "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.]

5233 (return)
[ "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."]

5234 (return)
[ 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."]

5235 (return)
[ 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."]

5236 (return)
[ 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."]

5237 (return)
[ 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."]

5238 (return)
[ 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."]

5239 (return)
[ PrÆlectiones juris canonici habitÆ in seminario Sancti Sulpicii, III., p.146.]

5240 (return)
[ Émile Ollivier, ibid., I., 136.]

5241 (return)
[ 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.]

5242 (return)
[ "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!"]

5243 (return)
[ 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."]

5244 (return)
[ "Moniteur," session of March 11, 1865.]

5245 (return)
[ 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.]

5246 (return)
[ "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."]

5247 (return)
[ "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by AbbÉ Lagrange.—"Histoire du Cardinal Pie, ÉvÊque de Poitiers," by Mgr. Bannard.]

5248 (return)
[ 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.)]

5249 (return)
[ "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."]

5250 (return)
[ "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.]

5251 (return)
[ 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."]

5252 (return)
[ 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.)]

5253 (return)
[ "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."]

5254 (return)
[ PrÆlectiones juris canonici, II., 305 and following pages.]

5255 (return)
[ "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,]

5256 (return)
[ "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.]

5257 (return)
[ "La CharitÉ À Nancy," by AbbÉ Girard, p.87.—"Vie du Cardinal Mathieu," by Mgr. Besson, 2 vols.]

5258 (return)
[ December, 1890.]

5259 (return)
[ 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).]

5260 (return)
[ 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.]

5261 (return)
[ Imagine the impression this might have had on ambitious men dreaming of establishing their own faithful parties. (SR.)]

5262 (return)
[ AbbÉ Elie MÉric, in the "Correspondant" of January 10, 1890, p. 18.]

5263 (return)
[ "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.]

5264 (return)
[ There is a gradual suppression of the subvention in 1877 and 1853 and a final one in 1885.]

5265 (return)
[ 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.]

5266 (return)
[ Somewhat like television where he who controls this media controls the minds of the people. (SR.)]

5267 (return)
[ Circular letter (No. 53) of M. LÉon, archbishop of Rouen (1890), p. 618 and following pages.]

5268 (return)
[ 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.)]

5269 (return)
[ 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."]

5270 (return)
[ Old-fashioned name for the 11th grade in a French high school. (SR.)]

5271 (return)
[ "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.]

5272 (return)
[ 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?"]

5273 (return)
[ "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."]

5274 (return)
[ "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.]

5275 (return)
[ "Manreze du prÊtre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I., 82.]

5276 (return)
[ 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."]

5277 (return)
[ As with the "FrÈres des Écoles ChrÉtiennes," whose society has the most members.]

5278 (return)
[ "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.]

5279 (return)
[ 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.)]

5280 (return)
[ 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."]

5281 (return)
[ "Manreze du prÊtre," I., 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 91, 92, 244, 246, 247, 268.]

5282 (return)
[ Ibid. I., 279, 281, 301, 307, 308, 319.]

5283 (return)
[ Just like the believing faithful 20th century international revolutionary Marxist-communist. (SR.)]

5284 (return)
[ "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."]