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ALERDING, Bishop of Fort Wayne COPVmOHT, 1018 A. B. O'NEILL HAMMOND PRESS W> H. CONKCV COMPANr CHICAGO TO Z^t Verp jReb. ^ilhnt jfrnntaii, C. §^. C.» WHOSE CORDIAL ENCOURAGEMENT AS CONGENIAL FRIEND EVEN MORE THAN HIS HIGH APPHOVAL AS RE- LIGIOUS SUPERIOR HAS SWEETENED AND LIGifTENED THE LABOR OF ITS WRlilNG Tilts BOOK IS ATFEC TIONATELY W atcateb 1 / > i \ ■'' ' CONTENTS CHAPTER PAQB Foreword 7 I. American Priests and Foreign Missions 9 II. The Priest aiid the School 26 III. The Priest's Table 49 IV. The Fraternal Charity of Priests 66 V. Rubrical Odds and Ends (Queries at a Conference) 85 VI. Priestly Mortification Ill VII. The Priest and Non-Catho'us 131 VIII. The Prie t'« Housekeeper 150 IX. Living by the Gospel 167 X. The Rubrics of English 189 XL A Clerical Club-Nig^t 216 XII. The Priest and Social Problems 230 XIII. The Priest as Traveller 260 XIV. A Priestly Knight of Maiy 280 Illtl AUTHOR'S PREFACE (To Second Edition) TI^HEN the author's first book for the clergy, jy "Priestly Practice," went into a second edi- tion in less than six months after its appearance, his publishers somewhat complacently styled it "the clerical best-seller of 1914." The larger first edition of "Clerical Colloquies" was disposed of, in 1916, with equal rapidity; and, although the first edition of the present work was about twice as large as the initial issue of "Priestly Practice," the demand for another edition has come when the book is scarcely more than two months old. Or- ders for about one-fourth of the whole first edition were received indeed before the page-proofs of the volume were corrected,— a compliment obviously paid to the two works mentioned above rather than to the present book. While this exceptionally rapid sale is naturally welcome to both publishers and author, the latter at least is sUll more gratified by the uniformly laudatory tone in which such competent critics on both sides of the Atlantic as have thus far in pri- vate letters or public print expressed their opinion of the book have spoken of its merits and its worth The London Month is kind enough to say that the work "is characterized by the same soundness and moderation of view, the same wide reading and observation, and the same unforced humor as mark the author's previous brightly written vol- umes." America remarks that the author "has again made all priests his debtors," and adds- Father O'Neill's ideals are invariably high and eminently sensible, he talks fearlessly and plainly ir AUTHOR'S PREFACE > when occasion requires, while on a disputed ques- tion he is sure to be moderate and open-minded." The Rosary Magazine declares that: "Just because the author is never an extremist, this work will ap- peal mightily to the priest, who, finding at first time to read but one chapter, will most certainly make time to read all the others." Especially grateful to the author, and worth- while to his prospective readers, is the apprecia- tive critique with which the book has been hon- ored in the Ecclesiastical Review, with its conclud- ing hope, "We trust that Father O'Neill will find further matter for the composition of similar use- ful books for the clergy." Over in France a work of exceptional literary distinction is "crowned" by the French Academy. In this country the equiv- alent of such "crowning," in so far as clerical books are concerned, may well be the discriminating praise and cordial approbation of that Sir Hubert Stanley of the American priesthood, the Rev. Dr. Heuser. FOREWORD QHOULD any apology be needed for the publica- -J tion of this book, it may be found in the generous welcome accorded by prelates, priests, and press to "Priestly Practice," and "Clerical Col- loquies." Shortly after the appearance of the second volume, two years ago, the author received one day two kindly messages from distinguished members of the American hierarchv. One ran, "Don't be afraid to write a third oook"; the other! "Keep on writing books of this kind; you can do it, and we need them." The reviewers proved equally appreciative. "The American priest," wrote one, "has an intensely human side. Books written for his edification and instruction, generally by for- eigners, have as a rule overlooked this important consideration. It has been left to an American clerical writer to supply the want." "And, last of all," concludes another priest-editor, "the book touches upon precisely those points of the priestly life which, as a rule, are skimmed over or treated lightly in the Mterature destined for clerics." If any further encouragement was required to determine the author to make yet a third venture in the field of sacerdotal literature, it was fur- nished by a prelate of the Eternal City. In the course of a lengthy notice of the two books men- tioned above, the late editor of Rome wrote: "The author has now got into his stride, and it is to be hoped that he will yet give us more than one other bright, edifying, human book of the same kind, for there is a great dearth of them in the English language. . . . Obviously, there is plenty of scope left for other essays on kindred 7 8 FOREWORD topics, and those who have rf>ad these first two volumes will eagerly look forward to any others that Father Barry O'Neill may give us." Some of these kindred topics are treated in the present volume, and the author indulges the hope that their nature will prove as interesting and their discussion as readable as, his friends are pleased to assure him, are the substance and style of his previous books. Three of the chapters, indeed, have already successfully run the critical gauntlet; they have appeared in the Ecclesiastical Review, whose editor, not less kindly than scholarly, has consented to their reproduction. In view of such strictures on clerical imperfec- tions as the reader will occasionally find in the following pages, it may be well to sta*e that the author is far from arrogating to himself any such eminence in learning or such rectitude of conduct as would warrant his setting himself up as an authoritative censor of his brother priests. He disclaims any pretension, as he certainly has no right, to preach at any other cleric than one — the individual designated in Shakespeare's "I will chide no heathen in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults." Every man has the right to censure and deplore his past errors and mistakes; and if, in the mirror which the author holds up to himself, any of his readers think they discern their own features, that, he submits, is rather their misfortune than his fault. In any case, oremus pro invicem. A. B. O'N., C. S. C. Octave of the Epiphany, 1918. AMERICAN PRIESTS AND FOREIGN MISSIONS for they are white already to harvest.— /oA»: n-, ss. ' \nd ■eeing the multitude, He had compaasion on them: ,.««S^!7r®"^' °* the Catholic and Apostolic Church ought to n^HE average American priest, and especially the A naUve-born cleric racy of the soil, would prob- ably resent as a downright calumny the imputation that he is narrow, circumscribed in his views, illib- eral in his sympathies, and parochial in his acUvi- ties. With not a little complacency, and with more or less jusUce, he is apt to consider himself • 'te the reverse of all this. If he does not exactly .me himself on his notable breadth of view, his widespread interest, his large-hearted tolerance, and his unselfish generosity, he is at least free from any consciousness that he lacks these qualities, and IS accordingly fairly well satisfied with his attitude toward his friends and acquaintances and the world in general. Whether or not that satisfac- tion is really warranted is a question the discus- sion of which in these pages would perhaps be more futile than fruitful; but there can be nothing offensive in the suggestion that our average Ameri- can priest may profitably examine just how much broad-mindedness, interest, sympathy, and gen- erosity he habitually displays in connection with the Church's Foreign Missions. 10 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS s I Such an examination is peculiarly timely at present, because of the altered conditions of the Missions and their sources of supply since the out- break of the European War. For the past four years the Catholic press in all lands of both hem- ispheres has repeatedly called attention to a fact the obviousness of which might be supposed to render iteration superfluous : that the upkeep and the progress of the Foreign Missions for the next decade or so will be dependent, principally, on the aid received from America. No reader of this book needs to be told why this is the case. The dearth of men and money in those lands which have heretofore been the mainstay of the Church's evangelizing forces in pagan countries is an outstanding and lamentable fact of contempo- rary history; and it is more than probable that the dearth will for some years survive the conclu- sion of the war that has brought it about. The urgent need of America's assistance is accordingly manifest. As for the congruity, not to say the duty, of fur- nishing that assistance, no elaborate argument would s>:rr» to be necessary to convince any thoughtful cleric that the Foreign Missions have a quasi-right to expect American Catholics to con- tribute generously to their subsistence. vSThen our Saviour said to His Apostles, "Going, therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, . and behold I am with you all days even to the end of the world," He evidently laid upon His Church a charge that was to endure as long as FOREIGN MISSIONS ]] there remain on earth heathens to be evangelized. Ihis apostohc commission is addressed to the Church of to-day not less forcibly than to that of the first century, and to the Church in America not less directly than to the Church in France, Belgium, Italy, or Spain. The work of actually preaching and baptizing belongs of course to the missionary priests; but, as Cardinal Wiseman declared some sixty years ago, "Certainly the whole Church— including, therefore, the laity- have their part in this solemn duty: the Apostles themselvfs collected the alms of the first faithful, to enable themselves to carry it out." In a general way, then, the obligation of the Catholic clergy and laity of this country to do their part m the evangelization of the heathen is acknowledged by all priests: the desideratum is that it should be avowed, and discharged in a specific way by the individual pastor. The old adage that what is everybody's business is nobody's business is verified all too frequently in these Lnited States when there is question of aiding the Fcieign Missions. Not of course that there are not many priests who are acquitting themselves of their full duty in this matter; but it is probably true to say that such priests are the exception rather than the rule. If the average priest were as zealous in this good work as is the exceptional one, it is safe to assert that the financial contribu- tions to the Missions would be increased by several hundred per cent. Is it not worth while for this average priest to take thought of his personal responsibility in the matter, and visualize the 12 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS various practicable methods by which he may acquit himself of his individual, proportional share of an obligation certainly incumbent upon the American Catholic body as a whole? As has been said, our Foreign Missions are at present, and are likely to be for some years to come, in urgent need of men and money. In the mind of the present writer, there is no parish priest in the United States who, with a little good- will, cannot materially help in supplying them with both. As between the two requisites, while the first, men, is the more essential and in the long run absolutely indispensable, the second, money, is almost equally necessary and is far more speed- ily available. Pretermitting for the moment any consideration of the priest's effective activity in increasing the number of missionaries in the for- eign field, let us see how he may augment the resources of the actual workers in that field. The simplest and most direct method by which a pastor may lessen the burden of financial worry habitually borne by the foreign missionary is to organize in his parish branches of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Association of the Holy Childhood. The former organization, as most readers of this volume are doubtless aware, is an international association the purpose of which is to assist by prayer and alms CathoHc mis- sionary priests. Brothers, and Sisters engaged in spreading the Gospel in heathen and non-Catholic countries. Conditions of membership are of the simplest: the recitation of a daily prayer for the missions and a contribution of at least five cents FOREIGN MISSIONS 13 monthly to the general fund. The ordinary method for gathering the contribuUons is to form the association into bands of ten. of whom one acts as promoter These promoters turn over the oflfenngs to a local diocesan director by whom hey are forwarded to the general committee. Per- ^n^lr "^K *°" °^ '^^ ^«"«^« « y^««- «re called of at least forty dollars makes one a perpetual member. As for the Association of the Holv Child- hood, membership *herein entails on the"^part of children a monthly contribution of one cent, or a yearly one of twelve cents, and the daily recita- V'V^J """ ^"'^'" ^^*»» *he addition. "Holy Virgn Mary, pray for us and for the poo; pagan children." Should any clerical fln,.ncier Se inclmed to smile at the disproportion between a toe ForTJiV" • ^"^ ^O'-th-while assistance to the Foreign Missions, an eflFective check to his Zmtn ^^Z^^^ ^y *^' '*"*"'"^°* **^«t 'ome seven million children are enrolled in the Assoc aUon and that since its foundation in 1843 it has ^"ven to the Missions fully thirty-two million dollars and children ""'""' ^'°"* ^^«^*^^" ™"^*- "««- h.t^ ^'^S^'"" illustration of the intimate relation ollZT' ^^","u^^ contributions to the Missions and conversions of heathens is presented in the remark to PnThr?? ^ir/'j"'* ^" Hyderabad (Hindustan) o Father Hull. S. J., editor of the Bombay Exam- u^r: "Give me twenty-four dollars, and in a yeTr III give you five hundred Christians. How? Quite simply: that sum will pay a catechist for a year m 14 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS in which time he can instruct Ave hundred who are asking fir baptism." An additional incentive to priestly activity in securing funds for so excel- lent a purpose is the knowledge that Protestants are thoroughly alive to the relation we have men- tioned, that between money and conversions. A recent report of the United States branch of thr Society for the Propagation of the Faith, after stating that two-thirds of the Foreign Missions revenue has been cut off by the war, adds: "To make matters worse, Protestant missionaries, who are at all times one of the most powerful obstacles to the planting of the true Christian Faith, are increasing their efforts to supplant our priests and to take up the work which the latter may have to abandon for lack of resources. The receipts of the Protestant boards of Foreign Missions are larger than ever, and their activity abroad is increased in proportion." A pertinent commentary on the foregoing is the fact, vouched for by a Catholic journal of India, that Protestants made about as many converts in that country in one century, the nineteenth, as it took Catholics four centuries to reach, the adequate explanation being :^ "They have greater resources and utilize them." To return from this quasi-digression to the average American priest's attitude toward these societies that d-rectly aid the Foreign Missions: what genuine obstacle prevents him from estab- lishing in his parish branches of both the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Associa- tion of the Holy Childhood? Does he allege the multiplicity of home needs and the difficulty of FOREIGN MISSIONS 1 = »Iai»!"— « is iiot orderfd .iins< If less congruous .ilculciti ) to inancia diffi- Uilfes vou." is nil flceni a I .en providing for the upkeep of his o church, rectory, school, hall, etc? a only over-emphasizing the adage, " charity begins at home," and showii broad-minded and large-hearted thai in a zealous priest of God, but is ad is really a short-sighted policy increase, rather than diminish, his culties. "Give, and it shall be givt , „. one of the first principles of Gospel pru - his preaching it to his people by ^ . d ai. will undoubtedly be productive ot more ..e. results, even from a material standp* h will any narrow insistence on the dicti... the charity that begins at home— and al! Uk, ends there. The experience of all those priests who ujterest themselves and their parishioners in these socie- ties which we have mentioned may safoly be appealed to in support of the contention that, far from affecting unfavorably purely local religious or charitable works, affiliation with the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Association of the Holy Childhood stimulates the generosity of tne faithful and actually increases the revenues for home needs. As a Pennsylvania cleric has admirably put it in a letter to a missionary maga- zine : "That our parishes would never suffer from an increased zeal in the broader interests of the Universal Church is a consoling paradox which it is well to emphasize. It is not a question of jeal- ously husbanding resources; it is rather a question of arousing in the hearts of our people the unfath- 16 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS omable religious spirit which is too often allowed ?o lie dormant-that spirit which measures its gen- Iro Uy nTt by the size of another's contribution; but by the unlimited extent of the need It s a sDlendid object lesson for us parish P' csts that he ecilesia tic who was most closely identified wUh foreign mission work in England was U^e man who built the Westminster Cathedral, who Taved the day for religious schools in Parliament, and who organized the admirable system of child- re^iTe work that will continue to prove its excel lence for years to come." One consideration which should possess not a litUe weiglit in determining both a Pastor and his people to show themselves generous in aidmg the Society for the Propagation of tne Faith is that fl^ey themselves, as constituent members of the Srch in this country iiave received very sub^ slanUal benefits from that °r8«7^,^^^"\ ^"*^°2 to its directors in the name of the American hierarchy assembled at Baltimore ^-r the third national Council in 1884, Cardinal GiDbons said : "If the grain of mustard seed planted in the virgin soil of America has struck deep roots and grow nVo a gigantic tree, with branches stretching from the shores of the Atlantic ocean to the coast of he Pacific, it is mainly to the assistance rendered S your admirable Society that we are indebted for this blessing." That this tribute is not mere poetic l^vperboe but simple prosaic fact is clear from Msfir Freri's tabulated statement of the Society s recdpts and disbursements, contributed to the S c Encyclopedia. There we find that, up to FOREIGN MISSIONS 17 1910. inc».' . . while the United States had given to the Soc .y two and three-quarter million dol- lars, the Society had given to missions in America ten and three-quarter millions. Now that this country has graduated from the ranks of mission- ary lands (although seventeen dioceses in the South and the Far West still receive yearly alloca- tions from the Society), it is surely fitting that our pnests and people should do their part in paying off that debt. And if the pastors take the initia- tive. It is morally certain that the flock will readily lend their cooperation. It need hardly be stated that, apart from any affiliation with these foreign mission societies, a zealous priest who is big enough to think in terms of the universal Church can effectively aid the mis- sions by his personal contributions to particular projects that make a specific appeal to his sym- pathy, and by enlisting the active interest of his wealthy or :^t least well-to-do friends for the same good cr.u«.<. J,, ,qn, moreover, infuse genuine w&rmth aid ciiiiies^ness into his appeal to his people .. -nkr the collection for the Missions a notably n^v..rou^ : um, not an insignificant pittance. Financu; ass. !f ice, however, even the most liberal and bo..;iieous assistance, is neither the sole need of the Foreign Missions in our day nor the only way in which the Church in America can manifest her apostolic spirit in their regard Lack of money undoubtedly handicaps the activities of the missionaries and is a misfortune; but a dearth of missionaries paralyzes the work of evangeliza- 18 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tion and is a disaster. Funds for the workers in the foreign field cannot but be regarded as an urgent need; additional workers in that field may well be looked upon as an absolute necessity. Thoroughgoing zeal on the part of a parish priest who is imbued with a genuinely apostolic spirit can speedily amass some hundreds of dollars for missionary use ; but to provide a priest or Brother or Sister who will go to the field afar to devote life's energies to apostolic work is an achievement measurably harder and notably less expeditious. Once we grant the necessity of an end, however, reasonable trust in Divine Providence assures us that means for the successful accomplishment of that end can invariably be found by men of good will. If American missionaries are needed in Asia, Africa and the Southern Seas, as they undoubtedly are, then there arc, just as undoubtedly, ways and methods by which American boys and girls in suffi- cient numbers can be inspired with love for such a vocation and trained for the work which it neces- sarily entails. The first step was taken at Techny, 111., where the Fathers of the Divine Word, in 1909, established a Mission House for the exclusive train- ing of American boys and young men for the For- eign Missions, — although of course individual members of other religious orders and congrega- tions in this country have been going to the foreign field from time to time for decades past. Cor- responding to the work of the English Mill Hill Fathers and the priests of the French "Missions Etrangerts," a beginning was made, in 1910, at Maryknoll, N. Y., in the matter of providing Ameri- FOREIGN MISSIONS 19 .! can secular priests for the Foreign Missions. The progress of both Seminaries is a cause for legit- imate pride on the part of the zealous promoters of these excellent works, and a proof that no insuperable difficulties lie in the way of America's doing her full duty with respect to Christ's com- mission, "Going, therefore, teach ye all nations." Even a partial fulfilment of that duty will, how- ever, necessitate during the next few decades the establishment of more than two or three such semi- naries as Techny and Maryknoll in different parts of this great and still growing country: and there is no parish priest in the land so overburdened with work or so straitened in resources that he may not render effective aid both in furthering the prosperity of the institutions of Techny and Mary- knoll, and in fostering vocations that will justify the founding of several similar institutions. That vocations for the Foreign Missions are in this country at present sporadic, exceptional, few and far between, will scarcely be contested by any one whose interest in the subject has led him to make inquiries; that their existence in fairly large numbers should become in the near future a nor- mal outgrowth of the religious education imparted to our young people is a consummation not only devoutly to be wished, but, at least in the opinion of the present writer, entirely feasible, not to say comparatively easy to bring about. To speak first of the sporadic vocations existing here and there throughout the land, and the pastor's duty in con- nection therewith: young Catholics whom the grace of God is calling to a life of consecration ,•■ 20 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS : t^ I: and self-sacrifice have a quasi-right to learn from their parish i>riests that at Maryknoll, at Techny, and in various religious orders and congregations of the country, opportunities are afforded for the developments of their vocation, for a training spe- cifically designed to fit them for apostolic work in foreign fields. Nor will it argue very extraor- dinarj-^ zeal on the part of a pastor if, in a given case, he financially assists the aspirant to such a life in reaching the goal of his pious ambition. A little more generous employment, by the average priest, of good advice and material aid, of the pious word and the helping hand, would very prob- ably, even now, multiply fourfold the youthful Americans making ready for the glorious work of spreading Christ's Gospel in heathen lands. The exigencies of the time, however, call for something more than these relatively rare and exceptional and scattered vocations. What is imperatively needed is a measurably numerous band of youthful volunteers issuing from Catholic schools and colleges with the resolute desire to work for God where God is unknown. How can such a band, constantly increasing as the years go by, be brought into existence? By precisely the same means as have proved effective in other lands — in Ireland, France, and Belgium, to men- tion no others. The supernatural atmosphere must be imbibed by our young folk more habitually and in larger draughts than is the case at present. They must be taught from their earliest years that whole-hearted labor in the Lord's vineyard wher- ever situated, endurance of trials and sufferings I FOREIGN MISSIONS 21 • / i i for God's sake, holiness, sanctity, the desire of martyrdom evtii, are not abnormal manifestations of genuine Catholic life, nor mere ideals so lofty as to be unattainable by themselves. They must learn, as they will learn if properly instructed, to walk by faith rather than by sight, to discern the action of Providence, not the intervention of blind chance, in the various circumstances of their own lives, as in the bigger concerns of the world around them. They must in a word be thoroughly imbued with the idea that the things of eternity are, after all, the only things of supreme import to men and women, young or old. To become somewhat more specific: vocations to the Foreign Missions will abound in this country if our Catholic educators and our parish priests make due account of the spirit of romance and adventure and hei o worship which in some degree is found in all boys, and which in most boys exists in a notable degree. This spirit is naturally devel- oped and fostered by the literature especially designed for the young— tales of exciting adven- ture, of discovery and exploration, of martial glories and naval perils, of treasure islands and pirates' booty, of Western cowboys and metropoli- tan detectives, of "moving accidents by flood and field," of foreign travel and life in the open and thrilling risks and courted dangers and the whole long catalogue of the fiction-writer's devices. Now, there is nothing surer than that the career of many an American youth is practically determined by just such literature, or rather by the spirit of romance to which it caters. Of the thousands of 22 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS I young men under thirty who flocked to the colors at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, or on our entrance into the present world-conflict, how many were actuated by patriotism pure and simple, and how many by the love of adventure so characteristic of normal boyhood and youth! Is there any impossibility, or even any inherent difficulty, involved in supernaturalizing this adven- turous spirit in our Catholic young people? Sup- pose that at home and in school they are copiously supplied with the true stories of the heroes of our Faith, with the intensely interesting narratives of real adventures experienced by our foregin mis- sionaries, with the thrilling accounts of dangers confronted and death defied by the martyrs, not of the historical primitive Church, but of our own day — will not the baleful influence of hedonism, or belief in the supreme importance of securing a "good time" be eflfectively counteracted, and God's grace find a congenial soil in which to sow the seeds of an apostolic vocation? We have to-day "Livos of the Saints" that make Ihoroughly good, not merely goody-goody, reading for young folks — numbers of them 'ay he found in the catalogue of the London Ca Truth Socii*ty, and an increas- ing stock of bio^ . ; lies of neai aints as charming as they are edifying. We have, too, not only such specific Foreign Missions periodicals as The Illus- trated Catholic Missions, The Good Work, The Field Afar, and The Little Missionary, but a Mis- sions department of a colunm or two in most of our Catholic weeklies. And, in the matter of won- derful happenings and exciting events and terrify- l,W.A>IJri,.xl ^S^IE?!' J J.-ir« I FOREIGN MISSIONS 23 ing incidents and miraculous escapes, these "really truly" stories told by our missionaries immeasur- ably surpass the imaginative narratives of the fic- tionists. Now, it can hardly be doubted that concerted action on the part of priests and parents and teachers would create in the minds of our boys and girls genuine interest in such veritably Cath- olic literature, an interest which, just as "the appe- tite increases with eating," would grow with their growth and beneficently affect their whole future careers, even if it did not, as in many a case it presumably would, enkindle a noble desire for a life cf sacrifice on the foreign mission. It goes without saying, of course, that the fore- going paragraph will impress not a few readers as a piece of optimistic idealism, and the writer is quite prepared indeed to hear it characterized by ultra-practical clerics in some such terms as "pure poppycock and pietistic piffle." He maintains nev- ertheless that such a formation of the rising gen- eration of Catholics is neither impracticable nor particularly difTicult. One reason for this convic- tion is a consideration to which the average priest has perhaps not given all the attention or attrib- uted all the importance which it ^ery certainly merits: the effect of frequent and daily Com- munion on the children and adolescents of our day. Whether or not Pius X. foresaw the European War and its disastrous effects on the Foreign Missions, his action in confirming the decree Sacra Triden- tina Synodus, and in subsequently lowering the age at which children may be admitted to the Holy Table, assuredly facilitated the securing of Ameri- 24 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS can recruits to the ranks of the Church's apostolic laborers in lands beyond the ocean. To doubt that a deeper spirituality and a more ardent love of self-sacrifice will characterize a youthful genera- tion that has from childhood partaken daily of the Bread of Life would be constructively to ques- tion the beneficent action of the Eucharist on the development of the interior life or what we com- monly call growth in holiness. Given such spir- ituality, is it extravagant to assert that many a youth will be irresistibly drawn to a career which, just because of its acknowledged hardships and privations, appeals all the more strongly to his spirit of sacrifice? Let the clerical reader of this page hark back to his own boyhood, recall his own spirit (fostered by Communion only once a week or once a fortnight), and give his own answer to the question. There is yet another consideration which should not be lost sight of in any discussion of this sub- ject: efforts to discover and foster vocations to the Foreign Missions will almost inevitably increase the number of vocations to the priesthood for the home field; and that such vocations are needed is clear from the statements of numerous prelates, especially in the Western States. The congruous episcopal attitude toward the question is well expressed in the assurance given by Archbishop Mundelein to the Fathers of the Divine Word, at St. Mary's Mission House, Techny: "How glad I am that your school and novitiate are established in my diocese! True. I am in urgent need of men to carry on the work at home, but I will never put !&H9 jBPr IN :.\yi'U,^i. : I FOREIGN MISSIONS 25 an obstacle in the way of your obtaining vacations in this diocese, because I know that the young mis- sionaries who will go forth from your institution to devote themseNes to the salvation of the poor heathen in lar-away countries will call down Heaven's especial blessing on our work at home." What His Grace of Chicago says of his diocese may be said with fully as much propriety of any parish whose pastor interests himself and his people in the Foreign Missions : God's blessing will descend upon it, superabundantly rewarding even in this life both pastor and flock. I ^^^5^f^SC53B THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL Who grasps the child grasps the future.— FronW* Thompson. They that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars to all eternity. — Darnel: xii, S. Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know, it means teaching them to bthhve as they do not behave. — Buskxn. 'T^O discourse to the average American priest on ■■- the importance of Christian education would he an obvious instance of what up-to-date humor- ists are wont to call "the zero in occupations," a twentieth-century rendering of an idea that used to be phrased "carrying coals to Newcastle." Long before his ordination he heard and read so much about the fundamental importance of the subject, and since that period has supplemented his pre- vious knowledge by so much of his own thought and experience, that into the very warp and woof of his mentality there has entered this conviction: good, true education, the only form worthy of the name, is that which fits one to lead a good, moral. Christian life on earth, and thus prepare for a happy eternity. The purpose of the present essay is not, therefore, to rehash age-old principles, or reiterate such counsels about the training of chil- dren as both priests and bishops pe.iodically proffer to their people; but rather to suggest some practical considerations on the concrete work which it is the priest's duty, and no doubt his pleasure as well, to perform in connection with the school. 26 bS^SSSL-. '.'i/ar .^\w' THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 27 In so far as their educational activities are concerned, American priests would appear to fall naturally into three categories: those (the hap- piest) who have parish schools at which all their children are attendants; those who have their own schools, but a portion of whose young people attend the public schools; and, finally, those who for one reason or another have not yet been able to establish schools of their own. That this last class is more numerous than is generally supposed is a fact made painfully evident by the statistics incidentally given in our ofllcial Catholic Directory. An effective check indeed to the spread-eagleism or vaingloriousness in which some of us occasion- ally indulge when dilating upon "our magnificent system of parish schools" is the statement made by our most authoritative educationists and most rep- utable journals, that at least half the Catholic children of this country are non-attendants at parish schools. The oft-quoted dictum of the late Archbishop Spalding, that "tl: Greatest religious fact in the United States to-day is ihe Catholic school system, maintained without any aid by the people who love it," is perhaps true enough; but it does not mean that either intensively, or espe- cially extensively, the system has attained so approximatclv ideal a development that we are justified in resting content in smug complacency with the results already achieved. It is gratifying, no doubt, to read Dr. Turner's statement in the Catholic Encyclopedia, that the system "comprises over 20,000 teachers, over 1,000,000 pupils, repre- sents $100,000,000 worth of property, and costs over 28 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ! ! f 15,000,000 annually"; but any undue elation over these facts may well be qualified by this other statement, occurring in a paper read at a meeting of he Catholic Educational Association held a few years ago in St. Paul: "It seems that over half our Catholic children, perhaps fifty-five percent, are outside the Catholic schools." Later staUsUcs than Dr. Turner's give the number attending the parish schools as a million and a half; but they give the same number for Catholic children who lack the spiritually salubrious atmosphere and the beneficent formative influences of the genuinely Catholic school. To recognize such facts as these is in no way to disparage the really admirable results that have so far attended the laudable eff-orts to build up our school system; it is merely a reminder that very much remains to be done— and most of it by indi- vidual priests— before our educational conditions reach that degree of excellence which will warrant unmixed satisfaction therewith, and which they must reach if the Church's work in this country is to be Carrie^ on with the fullest possible efficiency. The splendiu record made by thousands of par- ishes in the matter of building and equipping suit- able schools shoii'^ not lead us to ignore the existence of thousands of other parishes in which there are not only no Catholic schools but no apparent prospects that the want will soon be sup- plied. A survey of the whole country need not perhaps engender any pessimistic thoughts regard- ing the outlook for our growing system; but any sacerdotal optimism concerning tha* outlook will THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 29 best be justified by each priest's doing his own allotted share of the work as effectively as he posrtibly can. To come to the nature of that work, and (o speak first of the pastor who belongs to what we have called the happiest of the three categories into which, for the purposes of this essay, all American priests may be divided, -the one whose parish school is attended by all his children. It goes without saying, of course, that such a pastor here and there may object to our characterization of his lot, may deem that lot anything but an envia- ble one. We can readily fancy hearing him (as a matter of fact, we remember hearing him) exclaim: "Happy! My dear fellow, if you had the job of looking after my school for six months, and knew from experience ever so little about the endless worry connected with finances, with teach- ers and pupils and parents, with the upkeep of the building and its furniture, etc., you'd be apt to call yourself, not happy, but miserable." That, how- ever, is most probably merely the expression of a passing mood. At heart he is, and has every right to be, thoroughly well satisfied that his parish church has its normal complement, the parish school; and his satisfaction is doubtless all the sweeter if the establishment of the school has entailed some such personal sacrifice as the giving up of his commodious rectory to the Sisters for their residence, while he temporarily betakes him- self to less comfortable quarters. And if he is, as we suppose him, fortunate enough to know that none of his young people are attending the public 30 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS 1 • school but arc all daily under his hand and eye, he can hardly compare his lot with that of his brother priest not all of whose children frequent his own class-rooms, still less with that of the school-less pastor none of whose little ones enjoy Catholic training, without thanking God heartily for very evident mercies. That these mercies are tempered with not a few trials and annoyances we have no intention of denying. A parish schoiil, oven be it ever so well organized, is a charge, and no light one, on any father of souls. It involves care and thought and the expenditure of considerable time, even when the Onancial conditions of the parish give no cause (as they frequently give all too much cause) for arxiety and worry. Just how much of his time n pastor should give to his school is a question that admits of a good deal of permissible, if not always profitable, discussion. In a free countr>' and about debatable matters, ever>- min is of course entitled to his own opinion; and as to this particular matter the present writer has in his time heard and read opinions diametrically opposed to each other, as far apart as light from darkness or North from South. Some pastors go so far as to main- tain that the priest should steer clear of his school altogether, consigning all that pertains to its activ- ities to the Brothers, Sisters, or lay teachers who have been engaged to conduct it; while at the other extreme, are disputants fully as dogmatic in asserting that the pastor should not only be familiar with all the details of his school's active life, but should himself be the prime mover in THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 31 directing those detuils. It is a case in which Ovid's medio tutissimus ibis seems clearly applicable. The golden mean lies between absolute non-inter- ference and perferN'id oniciousness. As against the position of those who hold that sole and exclu- sive charge should be left to tJie Brothers or Sis- ters, we have the directions of the third Plenary Council of Baltimore to the effect that the pastor shall not only organize a parish school, but shall familiarize himself with the principles and meth- ods of education in order properly to discharge his duties in connection therewith. And an ade- quate reply to those who would have the pastor become the school's be-all and do-all would s( in to be that his other pastoral duties do not p null such engrossing of his time. Few will be inclined to oppose the contention that the school which is being conducted by lay teachers needs, and should get, more of the pas- tor's supervision and co-operation than the one whose teachers are religious, Brothers or Sisters. While these latter are not always perhaps so thor- oughly competent as is desirable in the whole range of scholastic and pedagogical requirements, the presumption is decidedly in their favor; and as regards the really essential point, the dis- tinctive attribute that differentiates and sets off the parish from the public school — the Catholic atmosphere— the Brothers and Sisters are clearly the ideal teachers. If there be any justification for the pastor who visits his school rarely if at all, it is perhaps to be found in the fact that his children are under the control of devoted 32 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS religious. Yet the justification is not adequate. The utmost devotedness and competency on the part of his teachers cannot relieve him of his responsibility as spiritual father of the little ones of his flock. In the matter of religious instruction especially, the specific catechism lessons, it is advisable, if not imperative, for him to take a per- sonal interest in the matter — to do some of the teaching himself. At least once a week, if not more frequently, he should supplement the teach- ers' explanations and the usual question and answer routine by a familiar exposition of the doc- trine or doctrines that are being studied. Such personal instruction is a fortiori necessary if his school is conducted by lay teachers. In this latter case, indeed, he can hardly be said to be fulfilling his whole duty to his children unless he visits the school several times a week, if not daily, even should his visit mean simply a few brief moments spent in each of the class-rooms. As for the pastor's personal intervention in purely pedagogical matters concerning the secular branches, much will depend of course on his own equipment in pedagogical knowledge and his com- petency to select the best of the different methods advocated by various educationists. If, as is prob- ably the case with the average pastor, his knowl- edge of pedagogy is somewhat superficial rather than really profound, it will be the part of pru- dence for him to adopt a suggestive instead of an authoritative attitude in discussing the processes by which his teachers seek to achieve the desired resui *n directing "the young idea how to shoot." THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 33 Notwithstanding the so-called progressiveness of this country in most matters, and not least in matters educational, a judicious parish priest may well advise conservative rather than strictly up-to- date pedagogical methods. Fashions in teaching vary almost as much and as often as fashions in dress; and for both kinds Pope's rule is still a good one: Fie not the fii-st by whom tlio new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. As a case in point, it is altogether doubtful that the oldtime method of teaching orthography, by means of the spelling-book and "dictation," 'has been improved upon by any of the substitute or makeshift processes of recent years. Tiu "look" of an English word as written or printed, ,,ot the sound of it as uttered by the voice, is what the boy or girl needs to retain in the memory. Just here the writer may be permitted to pay a well-deserved tribute to the effectiveness of the instruction given in the average American parish school. It is part of my daily work to examine a considerable number of newspapers, religious and secular, published throughout the United States; and if there is one fact about education that is being continually forced upon my attention by one and all of these papers, it is that our Catholic schools, primary and secondary, are the most thor- ough in their methods, and the most efficient in securing worth-while concrete results, of all the educational institutions in the country. Hardly a week goes by in which I do not read of prize con- 141 34 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS 11 tests between the pupils of public and parochial schools, and in a large majority of cases the prizes go to our own boys and girls. Professional and business men in all our large cities periodically protest in the secular press against the woeful incompetency in orthography and arithmetic and elementary composition displayed by the grad- uates of the public high schools, and inquire why it is that the pupils of the Catholic Brothers and Sisters do so much better work. The outstanding reason would seem io be that in many public schools the teachers devote so much time to fads and "frills" and filigree that the necessary drilling in the fundamentals — what used to be known as "the three R's" — cannot be given, the result being that the pupils have a mere smattering of knowl- edge about many things more or less useful or ornamental, without a mastery of even the ele- ments of the simplest branches. Our religious teachers, on the other hand, have too much com- mon sense to be led astray by the grotesque educa- tional fashions of the hour; they teach the essen- tials and teach them thoroughly. As a rule, accordingly, the pastor need not per- haps display notable activity in the regulation of purely pedagogical matters when he has religious for teachers, and such cooperation as he does proffer them may best be given indirectly and by way of suggestion. Thero are many other points, however, as to which his action may and should be both direct and energetic. In the first place, it is his business to see that the school building itself and all its furniture and appurtenances are such THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 35 as, on the score of safety, cleanliness, comfort, and healthfulncss, measure fully up to the standard set by the public schools of his neighborhood. In the second place, it is his duty, as it is to his advan- tage, to secure a sufficient number of teachers, and thus avoid the all too common and ofttimes inex- cusable mistake of overcrowded classes. It is a glaring instance of false economy for a pastor to consign to one Sister a number of children whose effective training demands the attentive service of two Sisters, or even three. In this connection, it is pertinent to remind the pastor that his Sisters have been engaged to teach, not to act as sacris- tans, musicians, sodality leaders, janitors, etc. Five and a half or six hours spent in the class- room, with the additional time devoted to the cor- rection of written "exercises," constitute a good day's work for any woman, especially for one whu has to supplement that work by a number of spir- itual exercises and house-duties; and to ask, or even allow, her to do more is almost certainly to impair her efficiency as a teacher and thus in some measure defeat the very purpose for which she has been engaged. Some religious communities of which the writer has knowledge h. ve solved the Sister-sacristan problem by simply forbidding their teaching Sisters to have anything to do with the sacristy; and we believe their decision a wise one. Others whom we know permit their teachers to fill the office of sacristan, but it is under protest, energetic even if silent. What seems to be a reasonable plan in the matter is this: most of our teaching com- 36 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS munities have lay Sisters as well as teaching ones; and if a pastor is very anxious to have his sacristy looked after by a Sister, let him engage a special lay Sister for that purpose. In all probability her services could be secured for less than a teacher's salary because of her availability for much of the domestic work in the Sisters' home. The employ- ment of lay Sisters will not, however, solve the problem of looking after sodalities, preparing the children for the reception of the sacraments, giving religious instruction to Catholic children who attend the public schools, or conducting evening schools for working children— some or all of which services not a few short-sighted and incon- siderate pastors expect to be performed by their school Sisters. Now, even if the regular work of the teachers were not sufficient to exhaust all their available energy, it would still, we think, be inex- pedient to turn over to them either the conduct of the sodality or the religious instruction that serves as an immediate preparation for the reception of the sacraments. These are duties incidental to the pastoral charge, and cannot well be delegated to others than curates or assistants. As for supple- mentary' instruction or classes outside of the j- lar school hours, if the pastor and his assistants are too busy to attend to them, the sensible alter- native is to engage extra foachers for the purpose, and not impose such surplus labor on women who are already burdened with a full sufficiency -.f exhausting work. Anything like a due appreciation of that work can scarcely fail to lead a gentlemanly pastor to THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 37 be kindly and obliging to his Sisters in all his deal- ings with them. His arranging the hour for the children's Mass, and for hearing the Sisters' con- fessions, or giving them Communion, will take their greater convenience into consideration; and in deference to their religious regularity he will make it a point to be as punctual at such functions as would be the most exact of business men. Fifteen minutes before or after the appointed time may easily appear a smali natter to him; but it can readily disarrange a whole series of exercises in a religious house. Friendly visits to the Sisters in their recreation room, once a week or oftener, will not unduly tax a pastor's leisure, but will do much to encourage his teachers and promote gen- eral good-will and harmony. If the present writer may be permitted to suggest one topic that may frequently be discussed during such visits, it is the advisability, or rather the imperative neces- sity, of the Sisters' taking due care of their bodily health, and their consequent duty to devote some time daily to physical exercise in the open air. In serious or in jocular vein, or perhaps better in the half-fun-whole-earnest style, the pastor may well impress upon his teachers their obligation to give his children the best that is in them, the fullest efficiency of which they are capable, an efficiency clearly impossible unless they offset the dullness, weariness, and lassitude consequent on confine- ment in the class-room by oxygenating their blood, energizing their lungs, and invigorating their whole physical being in the simple, natural way of taking every day an hour or two of outdoor exer- cise, even if it be merely walking. 'ii 38 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS As for the pastor who belongs to our second category of American priests, those who have their own schools although all their children do not attend them, some of his duties are identical with those of the first class, and some others coincide with those of the third class; but there is one duty which is peculiarly his own. It is to endeavor by every means in his power to induce all his parish- ioners to send their children to the Catholic school. By explaining to his people the Church's idea of true education ; by enlarging on the very real dan- gers to which the genuine Catholicity of their sons and daughters is exposed in the non-rnligious atmosphere of the public school; and by dwelling on the explicit legislation of the Third Plenary Council at Baltimore, that a parochial school should be established in every parish within two years of the promulgation of the decree except where the bishop for grave reasons grants a delay — ^by such means as these he may hope eventually to withdraw from the public school those of his young people whom their misguided parents have sent there. One of his strongest arguments, it is needless to point out, will be his statemen* -as a rule an unchallengeable one— that his own school effects better results, even as regards the secular branches, than does its public competitor. In all that relates to his supervision of the school and his relatione with its teachers, our pastor of the second category is on all-fours with the priest of the first, of whom we have already treated. And with regard to the religious instruction to be given to those of his children who are pupils of the public THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 39 school, his case is similar to that of the school-less priest of the third category, of whom we have now to speak. The pastor who has no parish school is very sincerely to be pitied, and the less he recognizes himself as a fit object for that sentiment, the deeper the pity of which he is deserving. The overwhelming majority of such pastors are no doubt guiltless in the matter. With the best pos- sible will and the most energetic exertions they have been unable as yet to put their parish on the religious footing which genuinely Catholic life calls for and which the Baltimore Council has declared to be the norm or standard. They recog- nize that the lack of facilities for the distinctively Catholic training of their young people is a serious handicap to the efficiency of their ministry, and they pray as well as work for the day when the handicap will be removed. If there are, here and there throughout the country, occasional pastors whose lack of parochial schools is due principally to their own want of initiative and zeal and true priestly energj% they can scarcely blind themselves to the fact that their indolence or pusillanimity is reprehensible, and in no slight degree, since it is clearly preventing that ' tension of God's work the promotion of which is their bounden duty. Such exceptional priests need to be reminded that the true order, both as to date of 'erection and as to intrinsic importance, of the buildings in a given parish is, not "rectory, church, and school," but "church, school, and rectory." Whether or not, however, the non-existence of iB li I 40 SACERDOTAT SAFEGUARDS a pansh school be the pastor's fault, or only his misfortune, the concrete results with regard to his children are the same: they are deprived of advan- tages to which as members of the Church of God they have a quasi-right and which it is difficult to supply by any other system than daily attendance in Cathohc class-rooms. And yet, supplied in some measure they must be, if the young people are to be kept within Christ's fold and not be known a few years hence as "ought-to-be Catholics." The task of so forming them that their religion will ever remain a vital force in their lives is one that is conjointly incumbent on parents and pastors; and it is the obvious duty of these latter to see that both responsible parties m fully impressed with the rigorous nature of their obligations. If there is one priest who more than another has excellent reason for frequently addressing his people on the duties of parents to their children, and who may well take to himself in connection with that sub- ject St. Paul's advice to Timothy, "Preach the word : be instant in season, out of season : reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine," it is surely the pastor who sees the boys and girls of his parish subjected day after day and month after month to the certainly non-religious, and all too possibly contaminating, atmosphere of a public school. Apart from his indirect care of these children through his instructions to their fathers and mothers, it is ' uestionably the pastor's duty directly to inter e.:? in Lhe matter of their religious training, at least to the extent of seeing that they rT,*-:i«r**rM THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 41 receive a solid grounding in religious knowledge, that they know their catechism. Just what meas- ures he should take to bring about this result will depend on a variety of circumstances — on his liv- ing, for instance, in a city, a lar^jC town, a village, or in a rural district; but it may be asserted with- out much fear of denial by the most experienced clerics that the weekly Sunday School is of itself an inadequate measure, especially if the teachers in that school are lay persons instead of the pastor himself or his assistant. Just as the parents can- not shift to the pastor the responsibility of bringing up their children in a Christian way, the pastor cannot safely place on the shoulders of others, even if they be religious, the burden of instructing his young people in Catholic doctrine. Whenever and wherever it is at all feasible he must show himself a true spiritual father by personally pro- viding his children with their spiritual nourish- ment. That there are cases, and all too many of them, where such providing is not feasible is known to all who are familiar with conditions in most of our larger cities; and hence it becomes imperative that agencies other than the pastor and his assistants be employed in order that thousands on thousands of Catholic young people be kept Catholic. It may interest some readers of these pages to learn that one agency which is proving itself especially effective in this respect has been at work for five or six years in Chicago. In 1912 Father John M. Lyons, S. J., of the Holy Family Church in that city, aided by a band of zealous catechists, 42 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS obtained the permission of the late Archbishop Quigley to enter upon the work of instructing chil- dren who could not be reached by the parochial schools. Their initial success led to the speedy organization of 'The Catholic Instruction League," the main object of which is declared to be "to instruct in Christian Doctrine Catholic children whom the parochial schools cannot reach, and also working boys and girls and even adults who may be in need of such instruction. Free religious instruction is, therefore, the chief object of the league." Members of this excellent organization (many of whom, it appears, are Catholic teachers in the public schools) establish what are known as "Catechism Centers" in such urban or rural dis- tricts as offer a field for their activities, and under the direction of the pastor pursue their charitable and veritably blessed work. Full information con- cerning the League, its formation, and its methods may be secured by applying to the secretary, at 1080 West 12th St., Chicago, Illinois; and the pres- ent writer strongly recommends that such applica- tion be made by all pastors belonging to our second and third categories. The reference in the preceding paragraph to Catholic teachers in the public schools suggests the propriety of discussing, be it ever so briefly, the congruous attitude of the priest towards such of these schools as exist in his parish, and towards the whole system which they represent. To begin with, in theory and in law the public schools are non-sectarian; there is not the slightest valid rea- son why they should be allowed to become dis- "T7 -w*^^tf?i«s«iar k s-k-.^^^^.Mt^a THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 43 tinctivcly Protestant, any more than distinctively Jewish or distinctively Catholic. The > leinbers of our Church contribute their full quota to the edu- cational fund that supports the schools; and, hence on the traditional American principle, "no taxation without representation," are clearly entitled to a proportionate share of administrative oflices, seats on the school board, and positions on the teaching- staff. The refusal to engage for public school service a teacher duly qualified in every respect save that he oi* she is a Catholic, is concrete bigotry, patent injustice, and the direct opposite of the vaunted American "square deal." The attempt to identify the public school with this or that Protestant sect by holding graduating exer- cises — so-called baccalaureate sermons, etc. — in Protestant churches is essentially nothing else than brazen effrontery. And the not uncommon reply of the sectarian preacher to Catholic objectors to such action, "We allow you Catholics to run your own schools as you like: what business have you to meddle with ours?" is sheer puerility. Our obvious answer is: "The public schools are not yours any more than ours, since we help to support them. Our parish schools are exclusively ours, since we alone build them and provide for their upkeep. Do you build schools of your own and support them with your own, not public, money — and no Catholic will interfere with your method of conducting them." The foregoing principles are of course elemen- tary, but they are apparently ignored by a very large number of non-Catholics in our day; and a 44 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS parish priest may well see to it that in his own village or town or city district specific acts or habitual action in contravention of these principles be not allowed to pass Ithout vigorous p-otest. After all, manly assertion of one's indisf i; i .3 rights is a legitimate method of preserving one j own self-respect, and in the long run it will enforce the respect of others as well. As for the priest's public attitude towards the pubhc school system itself, considered as an Amer- ican institution, there is, and must necessarily be, diversity of opinion about the expediency of his opposing or denouncing it. We sav expediency, for as to his right to do so, we fancy that few will contest it. As an American citizen he has the privilege of criticizing, opposing, and seeking the abrogation of any law or legal creation which he considers inimical to the public welfare. As a patriotic citizen he clearly has the right— is it too much to say the duty?— to work by all lawful means for the overthrow of any institution the per- petuation of which he deems a menace to the true greatness of his country, its morality. That the public school system is such a menace in the opin- ion of Catholics was proven long ago by the very inception of our parochial school system; that it is such a menace in the estimation of an ever-increas- ing number of non-Catholics is clear from the establishment of denominational schools of their own by such churches as the Lutheran, the Episco- palian, Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, BapUst. and others. That much the same opinion is enter- tained by very many non-Catholic lay publicists is THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 45 evident to any one who keeps abreast of the best thought in the secular press. Here, for instance, is a citation from the New England Journal of Educa- tion: There is one Church which makes religion essential to education, and that is the Catholic Church, in which mothers teach their faith to the infants at the breast in their lullaby songs, and whose sisterhoods and brotherhoods and priests imprint their religion on souls as indel- ibly as diamonds mark the hardest glass. Thev ingrain their faith in human hearts when most plastic to the touch. Arc they wrong? Are they stupid? Are they ignorant, that thev found schools and colleges m which religion is taught? Not if a man be worth more than a dog, or the human soul, with eternity for dur-i- tion, is of more value than the span of animal existence for a day. Looking upon it as a mere speculative ques- tion, with their policy they will increase; with ours we shall decrease. We are no prophet, but it does seem to us that. Catholics retaming their religious education, and we our heathen schools, people will gaze upon Cathedral crosses all over New England when our meet- ing-houses will be turned into bams. Let them go on teaching religion to their children, and let us go on educating our children without recognition of God, and they will plant corn and train grape-vines on the unknown graves of Plymouth Pilgrims and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, and none will dispute their right of possession. Nor is profound dissatisfaction with the erst- while sacrosanct public school system confined to New England; it is found also in the Middle West. 46 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS In December, 1916, the Chicago Evening Mail pub- lished a vigorous editorial in which, after com- menting on the fact that "for two decades we have had dinned into our ears by theory-mad educators the claim that education — secular education — was the panacea for the ills of society," it gives the various causes assigned for American social and moral distempers, and concludes as follows: The mistakes underlying all these super- ficial proposals is that they are directed at syi.iptoms rather than causes. They under- take to rest morality on law and conventions. They do not take into account the spiritual being of man. They do not recognize that character and conscience are developed simul- taneously with the physical growth of the child. They ignore the century-proven fact that the basis of all true morality, justice, or- der, and progress is religion. Religion is the basic, fundamental, and positive necessity of the well-rounded character. The breakdown of the religious instruction of youth, the total secularization of their lives, the substitution of easjr conventions fc»* the fear of God, the con- fusion of refined paganism with culture, the failure of the home to place the compass of religion in the hands of the children— this and these are the true explanation of the causes and the cure. Religious training of the young is the foundation essential to all reform and lasting pro£[ress. And we mean a positive and not a negative religion. The only novel feature about the foregoing is the source from which it is taken. As an exposi- tion of Catholic doctrine on the subject, it is older THE PRIEST AND THE SCHOOL 47 than Thomas Aquinas or Augustine or Bernard; as the declaration of an American secular journal, it is to say the least an interesting sign of the times. There are not wanting other signs that the people of this country are rapidly losing much of that exaggerated admiration, not to say reverence, for the public school system which has come to them by tradition from the middle-nineteenth century. And surely not without reason. They know, for instance, that the report of a Commission recently appointed by the Mayor of Philadelphia is true of many more communities than the one investigated. Said the report : "So much vice was found among school children that the Commission reluctantly concludes that vice is first taught to the Philadel- phia child in the class-room. Sixty per cent of the school-girls interrogated turned out to have learned, before they were ten or eleven years old, a variety of bad habits." Submitted to the spiritual test of judging a tree by its fruits, our public school system can hardly be said to justify its continued existence. It is very largely responsible for the facts that one- fourth the people of this country do not believe in God; that only two-fifths of them are church-goers, while two-thirds are practically ignorant of all religion; that America enjoys the unenviable pre- eminence of leading the world in murder, and crime generally, as it does also in divorce; that socialism and syndicalism with sporadic anarchy are increasing to an alarming extent; and that race-suicide is being preached from the house-tops. Small wonder it is waning in public esteem since. 48 1 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS like the Veiled Prophet of Ispahan, the system, unveiled in its legiUmate products, discloses Mokanna-like unloveliness. The downright truth of the matter is that Horace Mann and the other and later upbuilders of our public school system constructed a civic Frankenstein which, lackirt the soul of education, religion, has developed to the country's positive detriment. All the more reason, this, why the Catholic clergy should be unremitting in their efforts to offset its dangers by providing for the religious training of each and all of the children confided to their pastoral charge. THE PRIEST'S TABLE T1m7 are as sick that surfeit with too much, m they that starve with nothing. — Shakespeare. An intelligent friend of mine recently remarked: "I think a man ought to eat what he wants to eat. "— ' • Yes, " I replied, ''provided he wants to eat what he ought to eat."— Peore* Eintting, M. D. B« not greedy in any feasting ... for in many meats there will be sickness, and greediness will turn to choler. By sur- futiiig many have perished: but he that is temperate shall proloaff life. — Eoelea. : xxxvii, Si-34. /^NE clerical adage that is safe never to become ^^ obsolete, or to lapse, at least in sacerdotal cir- cles, into innocuous desuetude, is: "After all, priests are men, not angels." As used by clerics, it is scarcely necessary to remark, the saying is not so much a disavowal of any pretensions to such qualities as in profane literature and in ordin;»ry conversation are commonly ascribed to angels — beauty, brightness, innocence, and unusual gra- ciousness of manner and kindliness of heart— as it is a denial of any freedom or exemption from the passions and appetites and temptations to which the average human being is subject. Yes; a priest is a man, not only in the zoological sense that he is "a featherless plantigrade biped mammal of the genus Homo," but in the theological one that he is "a rational animal"; and some of us are perhaps inclined to think that in our own case the last word of the theological dcfmition may well receive the greater emphasis. Without going so far as to endorse the opinion of the flippant essayist who 49 4 50 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS H asserts that "Man was created a little lower than the angels — and has been getting a little lower ever since," we are all acutely conscious that the animal part of us, our body, is a stubborn fact of which even the most aspiring and ascetic soul must per- force make considerable account. Not the least insistent and self-assertive organ of this material body of ours is the stomach, and accordingly one matter which neither the priest nor any other non- angelic, mundane being can afford to disregard is the question of food. If it were at all necessary to proffer any apol- ogy for discussing in such a volume as this so material, gross, vulgar, unesthetic and unascetic a subject as mere eating and drinking, one might take high philosophical ground and quote Plato to the effect that: "The man of understanding will be far from yielding to brutal or irrational pleasures — but he will always be desirous of pre- serving the harmony of the body for the sake of the concord of the soul." If the dictum of the Grecian philosopher be considered insufficient to indue the subject with congruous dignity, the fol- lowing somewhat grandiloquent paragraph of an American physician will perhaps b > thought ade- quate: "The history of man's diet is the history of the human race. It is the story of his evolve- ment from the lowest forms of savagery to his present pinnacle. It begins with the cave-dweller, gnawing with wolf -like fangs at a joint of raw bear-meat, and ends with the potentate drinking champagne from a golden chalice. It is the his- tory of oppression and tyranny, and of independ- THE PRIEST'S TABLE 51 ence and freedom; of political growth and conquest, and of barbarian invasion and desola- tion; of health and wealth; of poverty and disease." Putting aside both the philosopher and the phy- sician, however, we prefer to justify the appear- ance of the present essay in a book for priests on the entirely sufficient grounds sung by Owen Mere- dith: We may live without poetry, music, and art; We may live without conscience and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks. He may live without books— what is knowledge but grievingl He may live without hope— what is hope but deceivingi He may live without love— what is passion but piningt But whei-e is the man that can live without dining t It may be urged of course, and not without some specious force, that, granting the real impor- tance of the subject of food and nutrition, still, since the clerical stomach is not different from the layman's, the number of volumes that have already been written on the subject and the endless series of articles dealing with it that are constantly appearing in the magazines and newspapers give all necessary information thereon, and render quite superfluous any specific discussion of the priest's table as differentiated from any one else's. The point, however, is only partially well taken. In the matter of eating, and especially in that of abstaining from eating, the priest's life differs not a little from that of laymen, and hence there are some counsels peculiarly appropriate to him, though not of general applicability. The great 52 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS > I U I majority of priests, for instance, fast until about noon on Sundays and on occasional week-dnys because of their saying a late Mass. The neces- sity of such fasting may well affect their usual attitude toward food during the other days of the week. Many persons, most persons perhaps, call one of their three daily meals their favorite or best meal. They come to it with better appetite, and eat more abundantly than is the case at their other repasts. With some it is breakfast, with others the midday dinner, and with still others the eve- ning supper. Now, no matter how it may be with the layman, the cleric who has to fast on Sundays is surely making a dietetic mistake if he habitually takes a hearty breakfast on week-days. "The digestive system, when in proper running order," says Dr. Henry Smith Williams, "is wonderfully clocklike in its operations, and to disturb the regu- larity of its activities once in seven days is not conducive to health or happiness." Common sense, apart from any medical pro- nouncement, teaches the same lesson. It clearly stands to reason that the less sustenance I habit- ually take on ordinary mornings, the less derange- ment there will be when I take none at all on Sunday mornings, and accordingly the less danger of my suffering from headaches and other discom- forts experienced by very many priests who observe the dominical fast. It is pertinent to add that the change from a hearty breakfast to a light one, or even a very light one, can be effected with- out any considerable inconvenience. The stomach registers decided objections to irregularity in the THE PRIEST'S TABLE 53 treatment accorded to it; but, like most other organs of the body, it soon learns to accommodate itself to new habits that are not in themselves in- jurious. Those members of some of our religious orders who fast habitually every morning appar- ently enjoy as good health and are capable of as efficient service as those of us who like our "three square meals" a day; pnd veiy probably most read- ers of this page have learned from their personal experience during more than one Lenten season that after the first week or ten days, habitual fast- ing is conducive to general well-being rather than to physical discomfort or distress. As for another practical point in connection with the clerical table, a distinction must be made between such priests as live alone, or at least eat alone, and such as have permanent boarders in the persons of curates or assistants. If I am living by myself, it is clearly my right (within fhe bounds of Christian temperance) to eat and drink what- ever I like. If it is my duty to provide meals for others besides myself, it is just as clearly not my right to impose upon them my personal dietetic whims and caprices either as to the kind, or qual- ity, or quantity of the food to be taken. A pastor mav be thoroughly convinced that fruit and uncooked cereals, with a cup of coffee, constitute the best possible breakfast for any one, young or old; but his conviction does not warrant his with- holding from his robust assistant (who conceivably classes cereals with sawdust) the ham or bacon or chops or steak to which that young man has been accustomed and without which he feels insuffi- 54 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ciently nourished. So, too, with the variety recom- mended by all medical men in the matter of foods. The traditional French complaint, toujours per- drix (always partridges), is universally recognized as being well grounded. The most palatable and succulent dishes, if served day after day, will pall upon the appetite and become distasteful. Good roast beef is no doubt excellent food,, but even a pastor's especial fondness for it is iiardly a suffi- cient reason for his forcing it upon an assistant six or seven times a week. On the other hand, it is quite possible that assistants may be fully as whimsical about their diet as arc some pastors. It is not an unheard-of thing for a critical curate to complain of being half-starved at a table which is plentifully sup- plied with good, plain, substantial food, and to imply that porterhouse steak for breakfast and roast turkey for dinner should be the usual thing at least several times a week. In ail probability he was not accustomed to that sort of diet in his boyhood at home, and it is more than probable that he had to put up with a much simpler, less expensive regimen during his sojourn at college and seminary. Exceptional cases aside, a pastor is quite warranted in supposing that his table is adequately supplied when it is abundantly fur- nished with several of the nuhierous varieties of food that by the common consent of mankind have been voted wholesome. Altogether exaggerated importance is too often attributed to this dictum of Lucretius: "Different food is pleasant and nutritious for different creatures; that which to THE PRIEST'S TABLE 55 some is nauseous and bitter may yet to others seem passing sweet; and the discrepancy is so great that what to one man is food, to another is rank poison." While the statement contains no doubt a modicum of truth, it may well be qualified by this declaration of an oldtime American physician. Dr. Austin Flint: "I have never known a person to become a faddist regarding diet without also becoming a dyspeptic." This mention of faddists suggests a reference to the large number of people in both lay and clerical circles who deny themselves this, that, or the other kind of food because, as they say, it doesn't agree with them. A medical authority of considerable prestige in the scientific world, the Dr. Williams already quoted, thinks that this notion is very often a mistaken one. The particu- lar variety of food in question may have been taken at a time when anything would have dis- agreed with the eater, or it may have been taken in excessive quantity. "It is worth while," he says, "to make very sure before you deny yourself, on the ground of personal idiosyncrasy, what may really be a useful and pleasant article of food." Much the same thing is to be said of the refusal of many persons to take certain kinds of food because of a distaste for them. The distaste may be the result of some unpleasant experience under excep- tional circumstances. The present writer, for instance, conceived some years ago a genuine dis- gust for lobsters, and for a long time refused to partake of that excellent crustacean, simply be- cause of a visit paid to a lobster factory in which 56 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS I •■ I the sanitary conditions were not of the best and the stench was of the rankest. Let him hasten to add that an attempt to give him, as a boy, a dis- taste for his favorite berry by administering his periodical spring-time powders or pills through the medium of strawberry preserves resulted in ignominious failure. Yielding to aversions that may easily be overcome in the matter of food is a mistake, and very frequently one that entails con- sidfi'Bble inconvenience. To be able to eat with relish all kinds of common foods that are set be- fore him at home or elsewhere is not only a bless- ing for which priest or layman may well be thank- ful, but a capacity which the normally healthy individual may easily acquire. All general rules of course suffer exceptions, and so, while it is generally true that what is whole- some for one healthy person is wholesome for another, a man is not necessar'y i hypochondriac or a valetudinarian because he affirms that such or such an article of food does not agree with him, or that such another is distasteful to him. If his own experience, not infrequently repeated, has unequivocally taught him that hL indulgence in a particular dish invariably produces stomachic dis- orders, common sense dictates his avoidance of that dish. As to the whole question of diet, indeed, there is more truth than extravagance in the dic- tum: "At thirty-five a man is his own physician or a fool." When one has reached that age one's familiarity with the effects of this or that dietary on one's personal health and well-being ought to be a sufficiently safe guide in choosing the edibles that THE PRIEST'S TABLE 57 constitute one's meals. At the same time we should be chary of excluding from our bill of fare any staple article of food simply because, once or twice, and perhaps under exceptional conditions, it has affected us disagreeably. While the proof of the pudding may be in the eating, it can hardly be considered conclusive proof unless the particu- lar kind of pudding has been eaten more than once or twice or thrice. On the whole, however, priests, like other peo- ple, probably injure their internal economy, and, as a consequence, the efficiency of their labors, more by eating the things they like than by ab- staining from those they dislike. Scarcely if at all less than the laity, the clergy are concerned in this fact unanimously affirmed by the world's best physicians: "Gastronomic errors are among the most widespread of man's sins, and the penalties he pays therefor are from the nature of the case not merely expiative but retributory; not merely penitential, but punitive, since often 'the wages of sin is death.' " In so far as priests, and more par- ticularly middle-aged and elderly priests, are con- cerned, these gastronomic errors may be succinctly expressed in the statement that they partake too often of the wroilg kinds of food, and eat too much of the right kinds. Nor is there any intention whatever on the part of the writer, in making this statement, of implying that the clergy (himself included) are given to even the lesser degrees of the sin of gluttony. Most of our transgressions in this respect are errors of judgment rather than wilful violations of the moral law. That the 58 SACERPOTAl SAPEOrARp errors f re quasi-universal wou opinion nf standans dicteti aui assert that "we all « «t about a ti "Without gofntf in* > any lore discussion >f thf^ qui atita ues o^ nitr ^enous id no of the cori*'ct pi ipt tio^^ drates and fats in our mention some >utstiind ciples that shir ? la be tak- of determining vhat vi that both tliekjud ; i« *etn ) be the r ie' nee tl ?y '< -ch w it icchi U and jaiuatlve \ - itrug aous foods, or of proteins, carbohy- nary meals, we may ig common-sense prin- account of in the matter all eat. One of these is qu ntity of the food we Hi »n whc n t&iit the take should vary, omewhi according to the n ture of our habiiui* activiiies. The sedentary ngagec a mt ntal work and the day-laborer e exertioi is pv ely muscular evidently do equ'Vi thi same diet, and if they habitually the sime rJnd and quantity of food, one of wr Will be omiiiitting a gastroncr^ic sin. Father! arencr x lo 'tpends his forenoon between his ofli e j^nd his. ' .ay, attending to his corre- spondence, or reaumg, clearly does not need so full a dinner of meat, eggs, milk, cheese, or legu- mino^ vegetables as does his man Mike, whose f oF'-r m has been devoted io sawing wood, shovel- ing ual, or digging in the field or garden. And if nevertheless. Father Clarence indulges in so ' rty a dinner, elementary knowledge of physiol- should teach him that it is incumbent upon a to take a considerable amount of physical ercise before again sitting down to eat. It ought be axiomatic that, if the body is to be kept in a aealthy condition, some sort of nutritional equi- THE PRIEST'S TABLE 59 librium must be established, the' rliere should be some proportion between the oiuput of heat and energy and the intake of food, since, after all, the principal if m th« sole purpose of food is to replace in our Kxij the matter absorbed by the functions of life and the exertions of labor. It may prove not uninteresting to enumerate here several of the propositions which United States scientists commonly use as factors in com- puting the results of systematic dietary studies — propositions based largely upon experimental data. Given that a man at moderately active mus- cular work needs in a certain period thirty ounces of food, then a man at hard muscular work needs in the same period thirty-six ounces, one at light muscular work needs twenty-seven ounces, and one at a sedentary occupation needs only twenty- four ounces. On this basis the priest's man Mike, of the preceding paragraph, would need one and a half times as much dinner as the priest himself; and it would clearly be a ^•' ♦ 'c indiscret n for Father Clarence to revers ^rt ' one and a half times a -^ it is questionable whc exception to Franklin's la kind, since the improve v^i as much as nature reqi . > no good reason for douiii ac ^t; ni by innumerable medical piactitioii -s, thai every persn.n who in our day and country dies fi insufficient natritlon. starvation, there are at least a dozen or a stjore whose death is the indirect, and very often the direct, result of overeating. Vol- 60 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS taire is not an author who commends himself par- ticularly to clerical readers; but the most orthodox priest will hardly quarrel with these precepts of that arch-infidel : "Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. — Eat with moderation what you know u^ experience to agree with your constitution. -Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What can procure digestion? Exercise." Eating the wrong kind of food is not perhaps so prevalent a gastronomic error, among clerics or others, as eating too much of the right kinds; but it is an existent error, nevertheless. If we have not personally proved this in our own experi- ence (as in all probability most of us now and then have proved it), we have at least verified the statement in our observation of others. Memory forthwith supplies the present writer with several notable examples. To mention only one : Father Michael, an exemplary cleric of three and a quar- ter score years, had during a considerable number of those years been afQicted with stomach troubles. Reiterated experiences had convinced him that eating meat at his supper was the forerunner of inevitable distress throughout the night and the following day; and accordingly as a rule he ab- stained therefrom. Now and then, however, when his digestive apparatus had been functioning nicely for a week or two, and when on the supper-table there appeared a variety of meat to which he was partial — cold turkey or country sausage. Tor instance — he would allow himself to be persuaded to take "just a small piece, a mere mouthful." The THE PRIEST'S TABLE 61 said mouthful being consumed, he would remark : "Do you know, that is really delicious. I think I'll take a little more," and would proceed to do so, with considerable present satisfaction no doubt, but a satisfaction as short-lived as his subsequent discomfort was protracted. Who has not known such a dietetic blunderer? "We eat," writes a medical author, "not to supply our needs, but to satiate our appetites. We are woefully lacking in the strength of mind necessary to deny our- selves those things which experience has proved to be objectionable, much less to practise general and protracted self-denial, until grim admonition from within drives us thereto." It is worth while to remark that the men who, like Father Michael, receive this "grim admonition from within" immediately, or soon, after their making a gastronomic blunder, are on the whole more fortunate than some others who continue for years to commit dietetic mistakes without receiv- ing from their internal organs any decided protest. A recent writer on the smoking habit shrewdly declares that while excessive smoking, like glut- tony, is harmful, the fact that the former works immediately is a wise provision of nature, since discontinuance leads to recovery, while imn.od- erate eating tends insidiously to produce organic disturbances which may become irremediable before they are discovered, and may not yield to better counsel and improved habits. So true is this, that, of the thirty-five thousand Americans who, according to our government reports, annu- ally succumb to Bright's disease, fully one-half, it I 62 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS is stated, are unaware that they have the disease at all until it is too late to arrest its progress. Undue concern about one's health is of course to be deprecated; and there is without a doubt some- thing of truth in the familiar statement that the men who are always bothering about their physi- cal well-being and taking infinite precautions as to diet, exposure to draughts, the temperature of their living rooms, etc., are precisely those who are most frequently ailing; but, on the other hand, it is incontestable that many men, and not a few mid- dle-aged priests among them, habitually lead a life which, while not on the surface notably unsanitary, is nevertheless surely leading them to an untimely death. Those of us who in our fifth or sixth decade continue that habit of eating three hearty meals a day which we formed years ago when our physical activity was considerably greater than it is at pres- ent, may well reflect on this last word of the scien- tists on Bright's disease: "Nine times out of ten it is the result, more or less direct, of disorders in the digestive r ?\, and nine times out of ten these disorders ar oo' to too much eating and drinking, too much bcL ag over desks, and too little fresh air." Connected with our general subject there are one or two common fallacies that merit exposure. One of them is that an invariable relation of effect and cause exists between one's physical appear- ance and one's prowess with the knife and fork, that leanness, quasi-emaciation, skin-and-boneness, are always due to abstemiousness, while plump- ness of form and, a fortiori, obesity are certain THE PRIEST'S TABLE es signs of over-indulgence in the pleasures of the table. Leanness and its opposite are sometimes hereditary; and history as well as personal obser- vation proves that there have been, and are, obese saints and thin gluttons. St. Thomas Aquinas wr not particularly sylph-like in form, nor was tl at uncanonized nineteenth-century saint, the author of All for Jesus. A diocesan cleric, during a visit to a monastery in which one of his brothers was a religious, remarked one day: "Say, Tom, what a thoroughly mortified, saint-like, ascetic face your Father X. has!" — "Ascetic fiddlesticks," came the entirely frank if not very charitable reply, "he's the most confirmed dyspeptic crank in tlie Com- munity. Our real saint is Father L. over there in the comer, that rolypoly individual who looks like an over-fed alderman, and yet eats less in a week than Father X. does in a day." General rules re subject to so many exceptions that it is not always safe to apply them to particular cases. Another specious fallacy about eating, or diet- ing, is that persons who fast, either habitually or occasionally, take as much food at their one full meal as they would take in their three regular meals if they were not fasting. In all probability those who make this statement do not really believe it, themselves. In any case, priests who have frequent experience of fasting must know that the assertion is so far from being true that it is simply ridiculous. If it ever wears any color of truth, it must be in the case of the person who fasts only once in a long while, and whose sto-.^-..VIA > .V.^i FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIESTS 69 this commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God love also his brother. ... My little children, let us love not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth." The reader who has perused the foregoing para- graph need scarcely be "reminded of St. Jerome's story about the conduct and advice of the Beloved Disciple in his extreme old age. When too infirm to go to the church unless when carried there, he continually repeated to his disciples the counsel, "Children, love one another"; and when asked one day why he so constantly reiterated the same ad- vice, he replied, "Because it is the precept of our Lord, and this alone is sufficient, if well observed." That, lacking this, all else is insufficient, not only for the attainment of the perfection of one's state, but even for bare salvation, is unquestionable, as is clear from the writings of Apostles other than St. John. With peculiar appositeness, for instance, may a priest repeat the words of St. Paul: "If I speak wf» the tongues of men and of angels, and have not ^narity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have proph- ecy, and should know all mysteries and all knowl- edge, and if I should have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." The foregoing texts are known of course to all of us; they are as familiar as house- hold w^ords to our ears and minds; but it is quite possible that we have seldom, if ever, made a lanwi^ ^1 70 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS specific personal application of the principles therein laid down to our individual selves. Ser- mons on brotherly love and the vices opposed to it we have no doubt preached often enough; but it may be that the cap we skillfully constructed for a lay offender would have fitted our own head fully as snugly as his. Considered in its extensive applicability, the word "neighbor" designates every human being, without distinction of religion, race, age, sex, social standing, moral condition, or any other cir- cumstance such as in the eyes of the world may constitute a line of cleavage. In Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free." Here on earth our love is due to as apparently heterogeneous a mass of humanity as St. John describes in the Apocalypse, "a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and in sight of the Lamb." ft goes without saying, however, that while the bond of charity should unite us to all these, the union with some may legitimately be closer than with others. There is no transgression of the divine law in our loving relatives more than friends, friends more than acquaintances, acquaintances more than strangers, fellow-countrymen more than foreign- ers, or those of the household of the faith more than those outside the fold. On the contrary, the nearer we are brought to individuals or classes by natural or conventional ties, by similarity of occu- pation or habitual association, the greater the debt of charity we owe them. In so far as the clergj' »gi ■ . A. , '. ' ' '' r-^Sa - -^ J>1- Ji, ,1 '. ' ■ ' * . , ■■. .-^ . Ll ' JUfcJU.Hilj.i . FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIESTS 71 are specifically concerned, there would seem to be exceptional reason why the bonds of charity unit- ing them should be notably stronger than those which join together either the faithful generally, or, more particularly, the members of any other profession. By the ver>' terms of their ordination priests have entered into a more intimate alliance one with another than exists among lawyers, doc- tors, business men, authors, or artists. Enlisted in the most solemn possible manner in the army of Jesus Christ, beneath the royal standard of His Cross, they are in a very special sense brothers-in- arms, and reciprocally owe to one another such genuine affection as naturally exists among brothers in blood. To a doctor of the law, a rep- resentative of the world at large, Christ said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"; on His priests at the Last Supper He laid the burden of a more intensive affection: "The precept which I give you is, that you love one another as I have loved you." To come at length to the everyday actualities of sacerdotal life: the law of fraternal charity calls for genuinely cordial relations between a pas- tor and his curates. Of all the residences in the parish, the rectoi y, while necessarily lacking both the figures and the affections primarily associated with the idea of the Christian family — father, mother, children, with their concomitant condi- tions of conjugal, parental, and filial love — should none iht less be the one house in which more than in any other liabitually abide the peace, concord, mutual consideration, and bearing-one-another's- ^semmmm 72 SACERDOTAL SAPL . J ARDS burden spirit that characterize and bless the true Christian home. The ideal pastor stands to his curate in the relation of father or big brother according as the disparity of their respective years is great or small; and he is sincerely desirous that the younger man shall look upon him, not as an exacting and unsympathetic taskmaster, but as a kind-hearted and considerate senior partner in the business of ministering to the spiritual needs of the people. Without at all sacrificing t: h .ihority or the rights that are really his, he mai v h ,'u iixrade of that authority and is not fond of / ph'i^izing the rights, especially when the curate ( .invests no set purpose of infringing thereon. Wiin liu; larger measure of wisdom or common sense that usually comes with advancing years, he knows how to tol- erate youthful exuberance of spirits, and can make due allowance for the occasional mistakes that arise from impulsive energy or generous, if impru- dent, zeal. While mindful of his duly properly to train his assistant in the various works of the ministry, he relies for the success of that training more on the example he sots than on the orders he gives; and even when reproof becomes imperative administers it calmly, charitably, and in private, not passionately, harshly, and before others. As for the jun'or partner in the clerical firm, the qualities c.i xiftues which congruously char- acterize his I' ' rcourse with his ecclesiastical superior are, among others, interior reverriice externalized in outward marks of unfailinj; re- spect; obedience promptly rendered to express commands and even implied wishes; cordial coop- F RATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIESTS 73 eration in such parochial activiUei* as solicit the united forces of pastor and assistant; ready defer- ence in unimportant matters, and in the minor details of important ones, to the judgment of his elder; habitual willingness to oblige; a disposition to do more rather than less than his share of the harder sort of parish work; good natured accept- ance of such little jars and trills as are occasion- ally inevitable in the domestic economy of the best-managed household; and a cheerful optimism that laughs away small worries, overrides greater ones, and floods the rectory with moral sunshine. One consideration which may well facilitate the offices of fraternal cha.i'y by incre\sing the es- teem entertained for his pastor by a curate, espe- cially if the latter be a brilliant scholar and the former not overweighted with the learning of the books, is that the pastor is possessed of a scienct; not to be acquired by the keenest intellects in the most efficient seminaries or most famous universi- ties, a science unattainable by youth, mastered only in the school of the world where time and events p.re the preceptors, and one the acquisition of which entitles ev^n the dullest pastor to the uncon- ferred degree, Expirimtiae Doctor. "When I was young," said Johp Wesley in his later life, "I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me." We suspect that many u gray-haired pas- tor of our day is tempted to say of his quasi- omniscient assistant, in a paraphrase of Sydney .*;j.'/*Tr:'if*3L"-:!wew»' •is'-yrf- 74 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS If Smith on Macaulay, "I'd like to be as cocksure of anything as my curate is of everything." Next in warmth and strength to the fraternal charity displayed towards their housemates, is that which priests owe to the clerics of their neighbor- hood, the pastors and curates of adjacent parishes, fellow-members of their conference-circle, and the clergy of their diocese as a whole. The circum- stance that one meets such brethren less frequently than is the case with the members of one's own household sometimes renders the observance of the rules governing brotherly love comparatively easy. Meeting a man only occasionally, and for a relatively brief period, is quite a different matter from living with him day after day and month after month, especially if his defects of character are (like our own, no doubt) neither few nor neg- ligible. Even the most cross-grained, irritable, disputatious, or domineering cleric that ever mer- ited the rebuke of Ecclesiasticus, "Be not as a lion in thy house, terrifying them of thy household, and oppressing them that are under thee," is generally on his good behavior when he is visited by brother priests, or when he in turn visits them. His nor- mal self is for the nonce subdued, and he appears in the guise, or disguise, of an agreeable com- panion. Geniality, sympathetic interest, willingness to render service, cordial messages of congratulation or condolence on occasions of joy or sorrow, at- tendance at special functions in their church or school, appreciative recognition of favors received, recreative exercise taken together — these are some *«■ FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIESTS 75 of the usual manifestations of the fraternal charity we entertain for brother priests in our neighbor- hood, and such acts are frequently of more impor- tance to their, and our own, moral welfare than is always recognized by them or ourselves. As for our diocesan confreres in general, for the more numerous clergy of our State, and for the whole body of the priesthood in our country, our charity takes the form of unswerving loyalty to them in preference to the clerics of any other diocese. State, or country whatever. It would probably be superfluous to insist at any length on the point that it is not enough to have any kind of liking, affection, or fondness for our brother priests: our love for Ihem must be true charity. "If we love our neighbor," says St. Fran- cis de Sales, "because he does us good, that is, because he loves us and brings us some advantage, honor, or pleasure, this is what we call a love of complacency, and is common to us with the ani- mals. If we love him for any good that we see in him, that is, on account of beauty, style, amiability, or attractiveness, this is the love of friendship which we share with the heathens. . . . The true love which alone is meritorious and lasting, is that which arises from the charity which leads us to love our neighbor in God and for Ciod; that is, because it pleases God, or because he is dear to God, or because God dwells in him, or that it may be so." Needless to say, St. Francis does not con- demn friendship, or that natural attraction we feel for those whose tastes and inclinations are similar to our own. lie follows up the foregoing 76 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS statements with the remark: 'There is, however, no harm in loving him also for any honorable rea- son, provided we love him more for God's sake than for any other cause." Without at all impeaching the soundness of St. Francis* doctrine, a cleric of two or three decades* experience in sacerdotal environments might perhaps be excused for expressing a wish that, for any sake, priests should love one another better than they generally do. The love of purely human friendship, or even that of complacency, defective as it is, would seem to be immeasurably superior to either the mere negation of charity, absolute indifference, or, still more, the active opposite of charity, dislike, aversion, hatred. Are these terms too strong to associate with members of the Christian priesthood, professed followers and imitators of the loving and love-ordaining Redeemer? Read this passage from "Rules for the Pastors of Souls,'* and you will not think so: "Many children of Holy Clmrch have become luke- warm and indifferent, or have even lost their faith, because they could not understand how priests could daily approach the altar to celebrate the most holy mysteries and at the same time perse- cute one another with the bitterest hatred and animosity, and that for years together! Oh, the blindness and hard-heartedness of such priests!" A rare case, it may be, and painted perhaps in colors unduly dark; but one that differs in degree only from many another case with which most readers of this page cannot but be familiar. As a matter of fact, it is to be feared that our exemplifi- FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIESTS 77 cation of fraternal charity, in little things almost habitually, and occasionally in bigger things as well, fails to square with tho precepts of the Gospel and the resultant theories of the saints. We vio- late charity in a number of ways, and most fre- quently perhaps by detraction and by resenting injuries. Let a word or two be said of each such transgression of the law of love. If, in the lengthy catalogue of social vices, there is one that God threatens with dire punishments, one that is repeatedly anathematized in Holy Writ, one that theologians and spiritual writers never tire of denouncing, one that the moralists of all ages and all countries, pagan and Christian, have united in branding as an enormous evil, that vice is detraction, or the defamation of our neighbor. This vigorous and continuous denunciation is of course due to the gravity of the vice in itself and the deplorable consequences that almost invariably flow therefrom. And yet, notwithstanding this uni- versal condemnation, there is probably no sin so common, no vice so prevalent in all classes of society, not excepting the priesthood, as this same detraction. The prevalence is doubtless due to the extreme facility with which we commit the evil and to a certain impression as widespread (among the laity at least) as it is erroneous, that detraction is not a sin, or, anyway, is but a very light one. The specious argument that what every one does cannot be so very wrong is brought into requisi- tion to plead the cause of our vitiated inclinations, and the sanction of a corrupt world is employed as a gag to stifle the cries of our protesting conscience. 78 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS No priest needs telling that detraction is, in its nature, a grievous sin, a "sin unto death." SL Paul classes it with those crimes whose perpetrators are excluded from the kingdom of Heaven: he ranks detractors with adulterers, idolaters, and thieves. And his classification is borne out by many a text of Holy Writ. "Detractors are odious in the sight of God. . . . The slanderer is an abomination to men and an enemy to God. . . . The evil- whisperer and the double-tongued is accursed for he hath troubled many that were at peace. . . . The calumniator shall never see God. . . . God detesteth the evil speaker in His soul." To say that these texts apply only to such detractors as, with malice prepense, utter cal- umnies and slanders calculated to do grievous injury to their neighbor, and are quite irrelevant so far as the ordinary uncharitable talk of the clergy is concerned, is to enunciate, if not an out- and-out sophism, at least a near-fallacy. No theo- logian will deny that the sin admits of levity of matter; but most men of experience will agree that it is not always easy to determine, when there is question of evil speaking, just where is the boundary-line dividing the light from the grievous; and there is little if any exaggeration in saying that the line is frequently overstepped by many who, far from imagining that they have entered the region of mortal sin, scarcely fancy that they have traveled outside the territory of imperfections. It is proverbial that no man is a fair judge in his own cause, and it is accordingly quite possible that a priest, arraigning himself at the bar of conscience I FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIESTS 79 for the sin of uncharitable talk, may show himself notably more lenient than he appears to penitents accusing themselves of the same sin in the confes- sional. Our present discussion of the subject recalls an incident which, occurring as it did a good many years ago, impressed us in our salad days with the distorted views of not a few men concerniug the comparative gravity of different vices. During a desultory conversation among several clerics gath- ered in the writer's room one day, somebody broached this topic of the fraternal charity of priests. "A non-existent virtue," said the wag of the party. "Seriously, though," said Father B., a thoroughly exemplary pastor whose only failing was a naive and harmless egotism, really inherited rather than acquired, "seriously, though, is it not strange that so many priests should be uncharita- ble? Now, look at me. You never hear me making unkind remarks about my brother priests." — "For a darn good reason," exclaimed the wag aforesaid; "you're always talking about yourself." This sally was greeted with a general laugh, and Father B. was rather put out of countenance; and yet, as between him and a detracting cleric, Father B.'s status was clearly prefcrible. Vanity, dis- played in a love of praise and a fondness for speaking of ourselves, is doubtless sinful, but assuredly not so grievously so as slander or cal- umny. The vain man may be ridiculous, but "detractors are odious in the sight of God." More- over, many a man's freedom from vanity is merely the result of his pride, a much greater evil. His nBHm 80 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS self-contained saUsfaction with the excellence of what he is or has leads him to be indifferent to, if not to despise, the opinions entertained of him by others. One may easily be too proud to be vain. According to Ecclesiasticus, "pride is the begin- ning of all sin," and it requires no exceptional power of analysis or keenness of interior virion to recognize it as the specific root of all sins against fraternal charity— suspicions, rash judgments, unkindness, harshness, slander, calumny, envy, jealousy, haired, vindictivcne-s, revenge, and sim- ilar passions. What, for ini i. nee, but pride, inor- dinate esteem of ourselves, overweening self- conceit, auto-intoxication of the intellect, is at the bottom of our drawing for our special friends so unflattering a character, or caricature, of "that money-grabbing old crank," our pastor; "that ef- feminate young dude," our curate; or "that chuckle-headed ass and insufferable bore," our neighbor of the next parish? Is it merely to pass away the time and to entertain our auditors that we exaggerate his faults, minimize his virtues, put the worst possible construction on his actions, recount with gusto any incident that tells to his disadvantage, and suggest that unworthy or ques- tionable motives underlie his habitual conduct? Not at all. Our detraction springs in reality from our wounded self-love, from a secret sentiment of jealousy or envy that we are ashamed to acknowl- edge even to ourselves, from a latent spite we bear because of some real or fancied grievance, or, con- ceivably, from a purely malicious desire to lower him in the estimation of others. FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIE STS 81 It would be superfluous to remind priests of the utter puerility of the specious argument with which lay detractors often seek to justify or excuse their evil speaking: "Well, after all, 1 told only the simple truth." Damaging truth told of one's neighbor without reason or necessity is slander, and its retailer is "an abomination to men and an enemy to God." Nor need any cleric be reminded that, in the case of uncharitable talk, there is from the true to the false, from slander to calumny, but a single step — and a step so slippery that the aver- age evil-whisperer is very liable to take it. Who does not know that a single grain of fact hurtful to a priestly reputation will yield a quicker and more abundant crop than any other seed ever planted? Who has not seen a slight defect become transformed in the mouth of the detrac* . to a grievous fault, and. passing from one to another, grow to an enormous crime? Where is the priest so singularly blessed that he has altogether escaped the priestly gossip's tongue? Where the diocese so phenomenally charitable that it cannot furnish at least one or two clerical backbiters who are continually at work changing pigmies into giants and molehills into mountains? When shall we priests take to heart, ourselves, the lesson from Ecclesiasticus which we nre so fond of impressing upon our people : "Hast thou heard a word against thy neighbor? Let it die within thoc, trusting that it will not burst thee." Nor is it enough to shun active detraction: fraternal charity demands that we avoid passive participation therein as well. Talkers will refrain from evil-speaking only when listeners refrain from cvil-hcaring. 82 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Most arduous of all the forms of that hrolhorly love which is essential to the spiritual well-being of Christians generally, and of priests in particu- lar, is the forgiving of injuries, the manifestation of good-will and kindness towards those who have done us harm, who have been, or perhaps actually are, our secret or avowed enemies. Herein, as in no other circumstances, is evidenced the truth of that testing text, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another." The express command, "Love your ene- mies," bids human nature overcome its innermost self, and might well be considered impossible of execution did it not emanate from Him who prayed for His crucifiers, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Now, while self-deceit, even among the minis- ters of the altar, is as easy as breathing, as common as air, it must be well-nigh impracticable for a priest of God to delude himself as to the absolute necessity of his obeying the precept: "Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you; pray for them that persecute and calumniate you." There is no possible evading the patent sense and import of this declaration of the Holy Ghost: "If there- fore thou oflfervst thy gift at the altar, and there Shalt remember that thy brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and first go to be reconciled to thy brot'.icr; and then come and offer thy gift." The ver>' wording rT the text clothes it with peculiar appositeness to the men who ascend the altar every morning; and hence they, ^bove and beyond all other imitators TfU mgjmm FRATERNAL CHARITY OF PRIKSTS 83 of Christ, are inexcusable if they fail to observe the precept. Delusion as. to the meaning and intent of the law is, as has been sold, practically impossible in the case of pries's; but d' iasion as to one's fulfill- ment of the law is not only a 'together possible but altogether conimcn niu rq Christians in the world, and is not suflicieni' - ' c even among the servants of the sanctuary. Tlie assertion, "Oh, yes; I for- yrive him; I don't wish him any evil," is entirely in place on the lips of a priest, and no doubt sounds well; but if the speaker nevertheless preserves in his inmost heart an unconquered feeling of resent- ment or haired, an imperfectly repressed desire for revenge, an unmistakable disposition to rejoice over the humiliation or downfall of his enemy, no protestation of forgiveness, be it ever so emphatic, will alter the fact that he is really obeying, ncl the law of Christ, "Love your enemies," but the pre- Christian lex laUonis. "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." To declare, as some clerics have been known to do, that they forgive those ^ho have injured them but can never forget the injur;>-s. is of»en to falsify their own stalenunts. True, the law of fraternal charity does not prescribe the fo.'^etting of ^^]u- lies, their absolute erasu' e from the tablets of the memory, and such forgetting iiuiy indeed be quite beyond one's power to effect, in which case there is clearly no violation of charity ; but the emphasized declaration that we will never forget what our ene- mies have done to us may easily enough mean that our asserted forgiveness is merely a shallow pre- 84 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tense. "Let us love, not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth." As a fitting conclusion to a discussion of the brotherly love that should characterize all clerics, let a brief word be said in behalf of those priests who have most need of charity's tender and be- neficent offices, those who have been overtaken by misfortunes from which nothing but God's mercy has preserved many of ourselves, those who have fallen by the wayside. St. Vincent de Paul tells us our duty in their regard: "Let us endeavor to show ourselves full of compassion towards the faulty and the sinful. If we do not show compas- sion and charity to these, we do not deserve to have God show it towards us." The author will perhaps be pardoned for supplementing St. Vincent's coun- sel with some cognate advice written in his younger days in sonnet form and published under the title, "Judge Not": Be not alert to sound the cry of shame Shouldst thou behold a brother falling low : His battle's ebb thou seest, but its flow— The brave repulse, that heroes' praise mipht claim, Of banded foes who fierce against him came, His prowess long sustained, his yielding slow— Till this thou knowest, as thou canst not know, Haste not to brand with obloquy his fame. "Ji:dge not," hath said the Sovereign .Tudpe of all, Whose eye alone not purblind is nor dim,— Perchance a pwifter than f!iy brother's fall Hadst thou received from those who vanquished him : He coped, it may be, with unequal odds,— Be thine to pity ; but to judge him, God's. RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS QUERIES AT A CONFERENCE Trifles make perfection, but perfection itself is no trifle.— Michael Angela. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also In ttiat which i» greater. — Luke: xvi, 10. According to a prevalent sentiment, we should do away with the distinction between the preceptive rubrics (those which bind under pain of sin, mortal or venial according to the matter) and directive rubrics (those which are not binding in themselves, but state what is to be done in the form of an instruction or counsel). F Cabrol, O. 8. B., in Cath. KnoycL THE last quarterly ecclesiastical conference for the priests of the Clarenceville district of St. Egbert diocese had been looked forward to with unwonted interest by pastors and curates, and in consequence there was a full attendance of clerics when the session opened in the Parish Hall of the presiding Dean, Father Patterson. The prelim- inary formalities having been gone through with, the Dean made a statement sufficiently explana- tory of both the unusual interest and the lack of absentees. "It will be within the easy recollection of all of you, reverend fathers," he said, "that at our September conference we decided to make this present session something of a novelty in the way of these clerical meetings. It was delermined that, instead of having several papers read and dis- cussed, we should resolve ourselves into what may be termed a rubrical quiz-class. We all know that the average reader of our excellent Sacerdotal 85 MICROCOrY RESOIUTION TiST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I !r 14.0 2.2 2.0 ^ /APPLIED IIVMGE Inc ^^ 1653 East Main Street S\S Rochester. Ne« York 14609 USA ^S (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (716) 288 - 5989 - Fo» 86 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS !ji i I 1 Monthly is especially interested in its editor's an- swers to the various queries propounded by his numerous correspondents as to the correct prac- tice in some one or other of our multifarious rites and ceremonies; and the suggestion that at least one of our quarterly conferences might laudably be devoted to a similar purpose was, as you remember, greeted ^\lth applause and unanimously adopted. "As for our manner of procedure at this, the first session of the kind, I think our best plan will be for each member of the conference to put such questions as he has in mind or as may be suggested by cognate queries propounded by others, without any special regard to formal sequence or coordina- tion. Fathers Downey, Doyle, and Harris, who were appointed in September to serve as a Bureau of Information to-day, are no doubt ready to solve any rubrical problems submitted to them; and I, for one, expect to receive some interesting infor- mation from their answtis to our various queries. So much being said by way of preamble, I now declare the conference open for business. Fr. Ferguson. Just to start the ball rolling, 1 should like to ask something about the correct practice in genuflecting when one is giving Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. I don't know whether any other member of the confer- ence remarked the variations on that point ex- emplifieu during our last annual retreat, but I can vouch for it that no two of the four priests who gave Benediction during that week ob- served exactly the same ceremonies, To begin RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 87 with, should one genuflection, or two, be made before the priest goes up to the altar to unfold the corporal and open the tabernacle? Fr. Moran. That's an easy one, I should say. He makes only one, of course. Fr. Higgins. 'Tis yourself that's easy. Father Dan. He makes two, one before kneeling on the low- est step of the altar for a brief prayer, and another, after thai prayer, before going up to the altar. Isn't that so. Father Downey? Fr. Downey. Absolutely not. Father Higgins. No gen?'.flection is needed after the brief prayer said on his knees. The ceremonials say : "The priest rises, goes up to the altar," etc., with no mention of a genuflection between the two acts. Fr. Ferguson. And now, on arriving at the altar, should he genuflect at once, or only after open- ing the tabernacle? Fr. Browning. At once, I hope; otherwise, my practice is wrong. Fr. Downey. Your hope is vain, Fatner George. The first genuflection to be made on the plat- form of the altar follows the unfolding of the corporal and the opening of the tabernacle. Fr. Ferguson. And yet three of the four who gave Benediction during the retreat followed the incorrect practice of Father Browning. Fr. Crossway. Well, even so; there was no harm done. Genuflecting is an act of devotion, a good thing, and I fail to see why the pious sentiment that prompts the additional genuflection should be condemned. Dean Patterson. You arc surely not serious. '' 88 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS !', r ¥ if Father Crossway. You can scarcely be pre- sumptuous enough to advocate the setting aside of prescribed rubrics, or the performance of additional ceremonies, at the discretion of the individual priest. Such a principle would be utterly subversive of all order and harmony in the celebration of Holy Mass and other divine services. The pious sentiments of yourself and other priests of your way of thinking will be best displayed by your thorough knowledge and exact observance of all the rubrics which, as an accredited minister of God's altar, you are sup- posed to know. Fr. Ferguson. There's still another genuflection about which some variety of practice obtains, at least in this diocese of ours. When the Blessed Sacrament is taken from the tabernacle and placed in the monstrance, some priests, myself among the number, genuflect before putting the monstrance in the place of exposition; others omit that genuflection, contenting themselves with genuflecting (as I also do) after exposing the Blessed Sacrament, before descending the altar steps. Is the genuflection immediately before the exposition superfluous? Fr. Downey. Not at all; it is prescribed, and its omission is reprehensible. Fr. Temple. Since we are on the subject, I should like to ask just how the Benediction proper, the actual blessing of the people with the mon- strance, should be performed. I never enter- tained any doubts as to the correctness of my own method until one evening last month when RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 89 I attended Benediction in a church at Port Mayne. The officiating priest, turned towards the faithful, raised the monstrance as high as the full reach of his arms permitted, lowered it below his waist-line, raised it to the height of his breast, turned not only the monstrance but his body in a half circle towards the Epistle side, swung around in an almost complete circle to the Gospel side, came back to the center facing the people, and finally turned to the altar by his left, towards the Epistle side. Is there any authority for making the sign of the cross with the monstrance in that fashion? Fr. Doyle. No; I don'l think there is. Apart, how- ever, from his last act, turning to the altar by the Epistle side, a positive error, lis movements were exaggerations of the correct rites rather than out-and-out mistakes. The Baltimore Ceremonial is sufficiently explicit on the sub- ject. After stating that the priest, having cov- ered his hands with the extremities of the veil, takes hold of the monstrance at the highest part of its foot with his right hand, and at the lowest with his left, it continues: "Then he turns fo his right on the Epistle side towards the people, raises the monstrance as high as his eyes, brings it down lower than his breast, then raises it in a straight line as high as his breast, afterwards brings it to his left shoulder, and completes the circle, turning himself to the altar to his right, on the Gospel side." Fr. Ferguson. Pardon me. Father Doyle, but is there not authority for one variation from that 90 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS form? A good many priests, after turning the monstrance from the left shoulder to the riglit one, bring it back in front of the breast before completing the circle by turning to the altar on the Gospel side; and I fancy they have the sanc- tion of some rubricists for the practice. Fr. Doyle. You are quite right; they have. Wapelhorst says that the movement may be completed as described in the Baltimore Cere- monial, "vel potest ostensorium a dextro rursus reducere ante pectus ibique aliquantulum sis- tere, tunc gyrum perficiens super Altare coUo- care." And in support of his contention he cites a decree of the Sacred Congregation of '\ites. Fr. Moran. Before we finish with Benediction, will some member of our Bureau of Informa- tion kindly inform me whether there is any one definitely prescribed method of incensing, any exclusively correct way of swinging the censer? So far as my observation has gone, there is per- haps less uniformity with regard to that act than respecting most other of our doings at the altar. Fr. Harris. Well, if you ask me, I must say that I have read more directions about how not to incense than about the way to do it properly. For the incensation of the sacred offerings, the cross, and the altar at High Mass, there are of couree detailed instructions in the various cere- monials, with accompanying plates to lend ad- ditional clarity to the text; but not all rubricists tell us just how we should manipulate the RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 91 censer at Benediction. Wapelhorst states that we should swing the cnser, not six or nine times, but only thrice, with a slow movement, and with the briefest of pauses after each swing; but, so far as I know, he does not describe the process by which the swing, or throw, of the censer is effected. The Baltimore Ceremonial is more specific. In a footnote to its article on the functions of the censer-bearer, it explains the manner of incensing practiced in Rome and throughout Italy, "in well-regulated churches." While the instructions concern the censer- bearer in particular, I take it that they apply equally to all who do the incensing — among others, to the priest incensing the Blessed Sac- rament at Benediction. Let me quote: "To incense in a proper manner, having lowered the cover of the censer, he takes the top of the chains in his left hand, and brings it to his breast; with the fingers of his right hand he takes the chains close to the cover and brings it as high as his eyes; then he lowers it, and stretches his arm while he raises it again towards the one whom he is incensing, causing the censer to swing forward ; and then lowers it again towards himself. He will repeat the same ji often as he is to give throws, or swings." Fr. Temple. That may be the Roman manner, but 'tis not the French one, or at least not the man- ner described in a French ceremonial we used in my time at Laval. We were told to place the left hand holding the top of the chains on the breast, to raise the censer with the right M 92 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS hand to a level with the right shoulder, and then give three horizontal swings towards the person or object being honored. Fr. Downey. Yes, I have seen that method in practice, and I confess that it impressed me as being rather graceful than otherwise; but per- haps we had better conform to the style just de- scribed by Father Harris. While there would seem to be no strictly binding, hard and fast way prescribed for swinging the censer, still there are two faults pretty generally condemned most liturgical writers of my acquaintance, is the absence of swinging, properly so .ailed. To hold the top of the chains at one's })reast and simply raise the censer to the level of the eyes, hold it there a moment, and lower it, repeating these movements a second and a third time— that may appear reveren* and graceful enough, but it is not rubrical; it lacks the swing or throw. The other mistake is one of excess. It consists in making each of the prescribed three swings a double or a triple one, throwing the censer outward and upward with a one-twc, or a one-two-three, movement, thus producing the six or nine swings condemned by Wapel- horst. Fr. Crossway (in a loud aside to Fr. Moran). Strange all this diflference should be 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Fr. Downey. Perhaps the present is as opporl me a moment as I am likely to secure for a remark or two jt irrelevant to this afternoon's pro- RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 93 ceedings, and apparently not uncalled for in this gathering of clerics. It is a capital mistake for any priest, young or old, to flatter himself that his ignorance or imperfect knowledge of rubrics, even the minor or so-called directive rubrics, is other than discreditable to him. It is worse than a mistake, 'tis an absurdity, for him to imagine that such ignorance, so far from being shameful, is rather something to brag about and glory in, as connoting a big, broad- minded, liberal personage unhampered by the narrow, petty details made much of by smaller men. Slovenly carelessness or negligence in carrying out even the niceties of rubrical re- quirement, and quasi-contemptuous flippancy in talking about them, stamp a priest as a cler- ical Dogberry who needs no outside assistance in writing himself down an ass. If the greatest personages in civil life do not think it beneath them to obey the multitudinous prescriptions of social e iquette, if the highest officers in the army pride themselves on know- ing and observing the veriest minutiae of the military code, if the most eminent religious scruple to neglect the smallest details of their order's rule, surely it is altogether unbecoming in a priest of God to ignore or neglect or decry the regulations ordained by the Church for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, the adminis- tration of the sacraments, or other religious functions. The distinction between a careful observer and a careless contemner of the rubrics is not a negligible difference "'twixt 94 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS I'M I!' ( Tweedledum and Tweedlcdee," but just such a diiierencc as that between a gentleman and a boor, between a thoroughly-drilled soldier and a ludicrous member of the awkward squad. Dean Patterson. Well said. Father Downey. I endorse every word of your protest against ig- norance of the rubrics and constructive con- tempt of their prescriptions. Let us hope that your lesson will be taken to heart and that in future we may all be able to comment on any similar rebuke with fuller truth than at pres- ent: "Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung." Fr. Temple. I should like to ask whether the last word has yet been said in the matter of enter- ing the sanctuary for Mass when the sacristy is behind the altar. Father Mcriarty and I are particularly interested in the subject, but such authorities as we have consulted are opposed one to another in their decisions. Fr. Harris. I a: glad to be able to say that the last word on the subject has been said. As many of you doubtless remember, the Baltimore Cere- monial (edition of 1894) says: "When the sacristy is behind the altar of the church, the celebrant enters the sanctuary by the Epistle and leaves by the Gospel side." Wapelhorst, in the edition of 1887, said the same thing; but in the edition of 1905 reversed his ruling and de- clared that the entry should be by the Gospel, and the leaving by the Epistle, side. O'Cal- laghan (after Zualdi) upheld, in his edition of 1907, the contention of our Baltimore work, as RUBRICAL 00^3 AND ENDS 95 did Father Doyle, S. J., in a brochure published in 1914. Within the past year, however, the subject was discussed in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, and there was cited a specific decree stating that the celebrant should go to the altar by the Gospel side and return to the sacristy by the Epistle side. The confusion in the matter probably arose from the use of the words "right" and "left" as applied to the altar. The right-hand side of the altar is the same as the right-hand side of the Crucifix above it, or as the right-hand side of the priest when, standing it the altar, he faces th"* pie — that is, the Gospel side tr. Moriarhj. n delighted to learn that at least one di»pi!»t u point in the rubrical cotroversies of Fr. Tem*«* and loyself has been definitely !he Bureau can answer with id authority several q estiuns ask concerning the ( torium. when should the ciborium be ilk or silver or gold cloth veil? villi) it contains consecrated 'f sut -1 ho«*ts. * n nuslake to put the veil ^ hosts that are fo be settled, an« equal preci I am move*. In the first pi covered with i Fr. Downey. Om hosts, or parficl* Fr. Moriarty. Then on a ciborium con consecrated? Fr. Downey. I think to that: such a practi Fr. Moriarty. I thought in a convent chapel i weeks ago. I wasn'i to tell the Mother S 'K> question as I ^ the practice ■ Mass a few it nougii ny ground ^ri^r that i vss absc- lik 96 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUaUDS lutely wrong, but I did tell her that it was probably unri!^ rical, and that she had better advise her regular chaplain to look the matter up. Another point: given that, as a rule, a ciborium should be purified at the Mass at which it has been (.luptied, is there any very serious violation of rubrics in placing it, un- purified, in the tabernacle, to await purification at a subsequent Mas.«? I suppose of course that there exists some reason for such action — for instance, the desire to avoid delay v "?n one has an urgent sick-call, or when nnoti. priest who is pressed for time is waiting to say his Mass at our altar. Fr. Downey. While I doi ' ^emeni; v: that I have ever seen any ruling c- that specific point, I should be inclined to say that, on general principles, the action under the given circum- stances is quite allowable. Fr. Doyle. I am of the same opinion, and am pretty sure that it is shared by at least one rubrical authority, though I can't just now re- call his name. My remembrance of the point in question is somewhat "ivid because, two or three years ago, I was taken io task by an elderly priest for doing just that thing, placing an unpurified empty ciborium in the taberna- cle; and, a month or two later, I had the satis- faction of citing for his benefit a rubrical authority who said the action was quite right. Fr. Moriarty. My final question has to do with a point that perhaps admits of no controversy; but it will do no hanii to men* on it, anyway. T RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 97 At my daily Mass I have habitually from seventy-five to one hundred communicants, and I accordingly empiy two or three ciboriunis a week. I make it a practice not to fill the cibo rium I am about to consecrate quite full, to avoid the Hanger of some of the particles' over- flowing and dropping on the platform of the altar or the floor of the sanctuary. Now, when I open the tabernacle at Communion time and take out the ciborium enclosed therein, I find that it contains, sometimes three or four, some- times ten or twelve, and occasionally twenty or thirty hosts. In the last-mentioned case, I dis- tribute the particles from this (old) ciborium to the people, and then return to the altar for the (new) ciboriui.i whose contents have just been consecrated. In the first case, when only three or four I'aiUeles remain 'p .'le old cibc- rii'.m, I consume Hiem a )nce. Vhat I should lil e »o know is, whether, when the old ciborium contains ten or twelve consecrated hosts, it is altogether inadmissible for me to empty those particles into the new ciborium before going to the Communion rail. I have said that the point is perhaps not con- trovertible at all, because it seems to be com- pletely covered by the Roman lUtual, which says, in its chapter on the Blessed Sacrament: "Hostiae vcro scu particulae consecrandae sint recentes; et ubi eas consecraverit, veteres primo distribuat vel sumat." On the face of it, this prescription makes it a matter of obligation to distribute or consume the consecrated particles It h ;'!< I 98 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS in one ciborium before beginning to distribute those in the ciborium newly consecrated. From the context of the prescription, however, as from Lehmkuhl's comment on that prescrip- tion, it would seem that the sole reason for the regulation is the safeguarding of the law re- quiring the ; newal of the Sacred Species every eighth day. As there is no danger whatever of that law's being violated in the case of which I speak, I believe that the spirit of the Ritual's regulation would not be disobeyed if I emptied the ten or twelve particles from the old cibo- rium into the new one. What do you think of the matter. Father Downey? Fr. Downey. I think that, if you should put the case to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, your suggested practice might be authorized; but I should not care to advise that, in the meantime, you should go against the clear letter of the rubric in the Ritual. There is of course no question that our present practice of frequent and daily Communion puts a new face on the matter of frequently renewing the Sacred Species; there is far less danger now than there used to be of the ciborium's containing hosts consecrated longer than a week; and I have lit- tle doubt that some excellent priests actually follow the practice which you suggest, on the principle that the real object of the Ritual's rubric is attained; but, personally, I should not care to act on my own idea of common sense when such action runs directly contrary to a clearly expressed law of the Church. RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 99 Fr. Doyle. In other words, "safety first" is your view of tlie matter, Fatlier Downey; and, al- tliough some may tliinl; that your position is ultra-conservative, I am inclined to agree with you. The new conditions brought about by the new practice of frequent and daily Communion may cause a modification of the rubric in ques- tion, but, until it is modified, 1, for one, shall continue to observe it. Fr. Browning. Perhaps I am unduly naive in mak- ing the statement; but I don't agree with either of the last two speakers, in theory or in prac- tice. As a matter of daily fact, I habitually adopt the course suggested by Father Moriarty. The thing appears to me to be perfectly simple. The Ritual wants us to make sure that no conse- crated hosts are kept beyond eight days. Now, I am quite sure that, even if I emptied twenty- five or thirty hosts from the old ciborium into the new one before beginning the distribution to the people, all of them would be consumed within the required time. Then, why scruple about ten or twelve? So evidently permissible has the practice appeared to me, that I never even thought of consulting any one as to its allowableness. Dean Patterson. Well, you might do worse now. Father George, than consult some one — our ordinary, for instance — before continuing the practice. As you have heard, the contention opposed to yours is also perfectly simple. The Ritual forbids a certain action. Our duty is, not to hunt up reasons for setting its prescrip- * * 100 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tions at naught, but to obey those prescriptions as long as they remain in force. If we think they should be modified, it is our privilege to suggest as much to the proper authorities; but, in the meanwhile, it is best to conform to the law. Fr. Ferguson. To touch on a cognate point, what does our Bureau think of the use of a Com- munion card as a substitute for the Communion cloth, or an addition to that cloth? Fr. Harris. I prefer it as an addition to the cloth, the server of the Mass holding the card under the chin of the communicant. And I think it an excellent, not to say a necessary, thing, for the server, when the distribution is finished, to carry the card (holding it level) to the altar where the celebrant, tapping its edge on the cor- poral, may remove any minute particles that have possibly fallen upon it. Where only a card is used, as in convent chapels, and the number of communicants is large, such a quasi- purification of the card by the celebrant is a precaution that can scarcely be considered superfluous. Fr. Temple. Speaking of convent chapels : when, as is generally the case, there is no altar-boy to serve Mass, is it rubrical for the priest at the Lavabo to wash his hands, that is, the tips of his thumbs and forefingers, by dipping them into a finger bowl partially filled with water, instead of awkwardly pouring on them (and often enough on the altar-cloth or the linen RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 101 cover of the credence table as well) the water from the cruet? Fr. Doyle. If I remember well, that question was put a year or two ago to one of our ecclesias- tical monthlies, and the answer was that the use of a finger bowl or small glass dish in the given case is quite correct. The editor dis- claimed knowledge of any rubric forbidding it, and added that he knew of localities where, even when there U \. server, use is made of a glass bowl at the Liuabo. After all, the rubrical expression, "lavat manus," does not seem im- peratively to demand the pouring of the water from the cruet. Fr. Delaney. Apropos of saying Mass without a server, do our faculties, which permit us to celebrate "sine ministro," also allow us to say Mass when there is no one whatever except ourself present in the church or chapel in which it is said? I ask the question because of an experience I had last summer. I was visiting a -clerical friend in Canada. He invited me to say the regular six o'clock Mass in his stead, remarking that he would celebrate at an earlier hour. It developed, later on, that he was de- layed a little beyond his appointed hour, awaiting the appearance of his housekeeper. When he informed mc of this fact, I took it for granted that he wanted the housekeeper to act as a quasi-server, reading the responses, as do Sisters in convents, and told him that our facul- ties in this diocese allowed us to dispense with a server. He then stated that his faculties gave ■ ii^ 102 SACERDOTAL SAFEGJABDS him the same privilege, and that it was not the housekeeper's serving, but her mere presence, that he desired. He evidently doubted the licit- ness of his celebrating without the presence of at least one member of the faithful. The fifth of our faculties, that which permits us to cele- brate "an hour before daylight and an hour after noonday, without a server," etc., makes no mention of this particular point; so I should like to hear some opinions upon it. Fr. Crossway. As an offhand opinion, what's the matter with saying that, if we can say Mass without a server, a fortiori we can do so with- out an attendant? Fr. Temple. The principal matter with the state- ment is that it's not correct. Available attend- ants at Mass are far more numerous than are competent servers, and it is quite conceivable that the greater difficulty or inconvenience of securing a server might move Rome to allow a priest to dispense with his assistance, while still requiring the presence of some attendant at the Holy Sacrifice. Fr. Browning. Pardon me, but are you quite sure that Rome docs require such presence? If not, there is clearly no need of any special faculty authorizing the celebration of Mass under the given conditions. Fr. Downey. Oh, yes. Father Browning, a special faculty is needed, fast enough. The crux of the matter is whether the faculty permitting us to celebrate without a server includes permission to say a solitary Mass, that is, one at which no RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 103 »l one save the celebrant himself is present. I had occasion recently to look the matter up; and while I could gather nothing absolutely definite as to what is and is not permitted, I secured sufficient evidence to convince myself that Mass without a server and a solitary Mass are not interchangeable terms, and that our faculty allowing us to dispense at need with a server does not allow us to dispense with the presence at Mass of at least one of the faithful. O'Brien, in his "History of the Mass," de- votes a page to a discussion of the solitary Mass, but, beyond saying that it is still practiced to a great extent in missionary countries, he throws no light on the specific point I have men- tioned as the crux of the question. A scholarly friend of mine. Bishop M., whom I consulted on the matter, seemed to think that the privi- lege of celebrating "'sine ministro" involves the privilege of saying the solitary Mass. On the other hand, another friend. Archbishop S., in- formed me that the Church has always held in a certain abhorrence these solitary Masses, and referred me to Gasparri's "De Sarctissima Euchuristia," Vol. I, par. 645. As 1 see the book is among our works of reference here, let me quote: Anti(^uitus in ^ualibet Missa, clericis et praesertim diaconis sacerdoti inservioutibus, ipsi fideles Missae assistentes sacerdoti respon- debant; cujus disciplinae vesti^a habemus in Missa cum cantu celebrata. Deinde ad evitan- dum confusionem statutum est ut in Missa privata unus nomine omnium fldelium minis- f 104 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ' iM traret et responderet Postea monachi saccr- dotes Missas solitarias introduxerunt, quae scilicet solus sacerdos, ministrante ac prae- senti nemine, cclebrabat, eosque saeculares sacerdotes imitati sunt. Eas sacri canones prohibr^runt, quod praesertim absurdum esset in ea sacerdotem dicere: Dominus vobiscum, Sursiim corda, G ratios agamus, Qremus. Haec ratio gravis non est, sed canonica prohibitio nianet. My archiepiscopal friend says that there is no doubt that the Roman Pontiff ccuid dispense from this prohibition, but, while not presuming to decide whether, as a matter of fact, the fac- ulty of celebrating sine ministro does dispense from it, he inclines to take the negative view; and I agree with him. Fr. Doyle. Some one has said that one fact is worth a hundred theories; and here is a fact that throws considerable light on the point under discussion. A very few years ago, a missionary prelate, the Bishop of Natal, was visiting this country. In conversation with a friend of mine. Father H., this subject of the solitary Mass came up, and the Bishop pro- d'lced his faculties and showed my friend where the Propaganda had deleted the clause permitting the celebration of such Masses. It would accordingly seem that, in :ne first place, a specific permission to say the solitary Mass is required; and that, in the second place, a privilege denied to a missionary bishop is not likely to be granted to the bishops and priests of this country. RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 105 i i I 1^ Fr. Harris. Personally, I judge that fact to be con- clusive evidence that, while we may at need celebrate without a server, we cannot, without a special permission not contained in our ordi- nary faculties, iay Mass absolutely by our- selves with no one else present. Fr. Downey. Just let me add that the New Code of Canon Law states nothing specific on the point. I purpose, however, having the direct question put to the Sacred Congregation of Rites: Does the faculty to celebrate sine ministro accord permission to say a solitary Mass? In the meantime. Father Delaney's Canadian friend would seem to have been right in waiting for his housekeeper's appearance before beginning his Mass. Fr. Harris. It is doubtless a far cry from saying Mass without a server to saying Mass at sea; but the mention of our faculties reminds me of a communication sent to an ecclesiastical periodical two or three years ago by a corre- spondent who signed himself "Episcopus Meridionalis." I think I can trust my memory to quote his statements with textual exactness. He mentioned the following as decisions of the Sacred Congregation of Rites : "No bishop can give faculties for saying Mass on board ship to his priests." "The bishop of the port from which the ship sails cannot give faculties to a priest to say Mass on shipboard." "By a Decree of June 30, 1908, the Koly See has granted to our (American) bishops, and those of some other places, when going to or return- 106 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ing from Rome, the permission to say Mass on board ship, provided proper accommodations are afforded, and the sea is cahn, and a priest assists." I mention the matter as rather inter- esting, because some of us have heard priests speak of having celebrated Mass on the Atlantic, although they never said anything about hav- ing received faculties for that purpose even from their ordinary, to say nothing of higher authorities. Tis not improbable that an occa- sional traveling cleric imagines that, so long as he has not been suspended, he is at liberty to say Mass anywhere. Fr. Higgins. During a Solemn Requiem Mass at which I was present in an Eastern city last summer, I noticed the acolytes carrying candle- sticks with unlighted candles. Is there any sanction for that practice? Fr. Downey. None of which I have any knowl- edge. The direction that, at the Gospel, "non portantur lumina," means that the acolytes carry no candlesticks but stand one on each side of the subdeacon with hands joined. Fr. Crf>ssway. Is the biretta a constituent part of a priest's costume when he is about to say Mass? Fr. Doyle. In the sense that the rubrics expect him to wear it to and from the altar, yes. And habitual neglect to wear it when going to cele- brate the Holy Sacrifice borders very closely on a contempt that is seriously culpable. Fr. Hendricks. There's a point in the ceremonies proper to the Forty Hours that I should like to RUBRICAL ODDS AND ENDS 107 have authoritatively se'tled. Some three months ago I attended the opening of that devotion in the church of my friend, Father 0*Rourke, over in Lewisville, in our neighbor- ing State. As all the scaffolding, erected for the frescoing of his church's ceiling, had not been removed, he dispensed with the Proces- sion which normally follows the Mass of Expo- sition. I recognized the reasonableness of that omission, but I doubted the lawfulness of his also omitting the singing of the Pange Lingua. When I spoke to him about it, he justified the elimination of the hymn on the ground that the sole purpose of the Pange Lingua in the cere- mony was to occupy the time taken up by the Procession, and that the absence of the latter made the hymn superfluous. Was he rijht or wrong? Fr. Downey. Wrong, most decidedly. At the Mass of Exposition, as at that of Reposition, the Pange Lingua should be sung. Procession or no Procession. Fr. Temple. When the Forty Hours are being ob- served during Paschal x ime, should the Paschal Candle be lit at Solemn Mass? Fr. Downey. Not unless such lighting be a time- honored custom. Even in that case it should not be lighted during the Mass Pro Pace, or, according to a ruling of the Sacred Congrega- tion, at any other time when the color of the Mass is violet. The assigned reason is that the lighted Paschal Candle is a symbol of joy, inap- li 108 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS 1^ ii propriatc to a feast whose color is that of mourning, as is violet. Fr. Moriariy. Am I wrong in thinking that, when the opening of the Forty Hours takes place at the late Mass on Sunday, those who have gone to Holy Communion at an earlier Mass, that morning, may gain the indulgences? Fr. Downey. No; you are quite right. F^r that matter, even if they went to Confession and Communion on the day before, Saturday, they could gain the indulgences, provided 'hey made the requisite visits to the Blessed Sacrament during the exposition. Fr. Higgins. When a priest gives the blessing after Communion administered outside of Mass, does he kiss the altar? Fr. Doyle. No; when he replaces the ciborium in the tabernacle, he raises his eyes, extends and joins his hands, saying Benedictio Dei, etc., and at the word Patris he turns to the congregation and makes the sign of the cross. Fr. Crossway. Is the blessing always to be given when Communion is distributed outside of Mass? Fr. Doyle. Yes, except when the distribution takes place just before or just after a Requiem Mass. Fr. Ferguson. Is there not another exception. Father Doyle? If I give Communion be, re Mass in q convent chapel to Sisters who, I know, are to remain throughout the Mass, may I not omit the blessing? They are sure to receive the regular blessing before the last Gospel. Fr. Doyle. Most rubricists, I believe, say that you RUBRICAL ODDS / ^^ ENDS 109 the oxcf ion I a Vtasa i^ r lh( hv S icred 'on- ry propounded ounp inq icinn \l friend htre, ■ \\ hcth'T it '*s N> have a iM of a diflFcr- th»t 'ho .answer is a 'iif mixing on mv >\sh may omit it in that case; mentioned — just before or dead — is the only one mu< gregation in its answer to on the subject in 1892. Fr. Browning. My bashful Father Mullin, wants m« is ever permitted at a S chasuble of one color an< ent color. I've told hiii. foregone conclusion, th}»t of of colors is not permi d ; b getting my opinion corrobor. Fr. Downey. Possibly, Fathe merely insisting that you chuu^ for it needs changing. I kium some twenty odd years ago, wl Mass was celebrated with a red chasubl' (red being the color of the day) and white dalmatics. The bishop who permitted this deviati(ni from the normal usage afterwards consulted a rubri- cal authority about the licitness of the act, and was told that the Sacred Congregation, being asked about a case substantially the same, re- plied that the decision in such a matter was left to the prudence of the ordinary. Fr. Ferguson. May I suggest that our own very prudent ordinary, were he here this afternoon, would admit that our present session has been sufficiently long? Dean Patterson. That means of course. Father Dan, that you want a smoke. Well, possibly we all deserve one; so perhaps we had better he is )pinion, one case, TV a Pontifical 110 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS f adjourn. Before doing so, however, I want to express the great satisfaction I have experi- enced throughout this conference. I have found it most interesting, as well as most instructive: and I feel that I am speaking for all of you when I thank the members of our Bureau for the thorough efficiency they have displayed in answering the heterogeneous inquiries with which they have been beset. And now, the Sub tuum. PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION And thoy that are Christ '■ have crucified the fleeh with its vices and eoncupiicencefl. — OaL: v, t4. Whoever make* little account of exterior mortifications, alleg- ing that the interior are more perfect, shows clearly that be is not mortified at all, either exteriorly or interiorly. — St. Vincent d« Paul. Be on your guard when you begin to mortify your body by abetinence and fasting, lest you imagine yourself to be perfect and a sairt; for perfection does not consist in this virtue. It is only a help; a disposition; a means, though a fitting one, for the attainment of true perfection.— St. Jerome. WHILE it is a commonplace that human nature is much the same in all ages as in all climes, it is nevertheless a fact that specific instances of such identity or homogeneity are often looked upon, not as mere matters of course, bui as occur- rences really surprising. The precepts of the Gospel and the counsels of perfection were ob- ' lo;.''!" laid down for the Christians of all time, un<: ai- V asequently as applicable to us of the fNveitieth century as they were to any previous ger.rnijtp . That St. Vincent de Paul, for instance, in the seventeenth century, should treat his body with great austerity— chastising it with haircloth, iron chains, and leather belts armed with sharp points — this we accept as natural enough; but tiiat ill '^■if 112 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Father Leo, shot in 1908 at the altar of a church in a western city of the United States, should be found wearing these same instruments of corpora! mortification — this very probably impressed the most of us as being quite abnormal and out-of-the- way. Yet it is quite possible that the abnormality consisted rather in the tragic discovery of his aus- terity than in the austerity itself: there may be, though the world may never come to know it, many a Father Leo among the nineteen thousand secular and religious priests who are doing God's work in this country. That Christian asceticism indeed is not at all foreign to our modern world is clear from the lengthy roll of saints and near-saints catalogued in that inspiring volume, "Holiness of the Church in the Nineteenth Centur>'," a roll which, lengthy as it is, would undoubtedly be notably longer had the book's compilers shared God's knowledge of the secret sanctity of many of His servants. Nor should this surprise us. There is no reason to believe that either mere salvation, or perfect sanctification, is an easier matter to compass nowadays than was the case five or ten or fifteen centuries ago; and accordingly the ordinary means to its attainment that were in vogue in those far-off" periods may well be considered appropriate and timely in our own day. In the matter of morti- fication indeed, it is scarcely too much to say that it is peculiarly timely for all Christians, and espe- cially for priests, in this twentieth century, because the spirit of the age is diametrically op- posed thereto. If there is one characteristic which PRIESTLY MORTIFICATIOxN 113 I ' f s distinguishes present-duy society, both in the world at large and in our own country in particular, it is its acceptance of the doctrine of Aristippus and the Cyrenaic school of Greek philosophers — hedonism, the enthronement of pleasure as the highest good, belief in the supreme importance of "having a good time." The partial shattering of this belief in the case of not a few peoples may be placed to the credit of the European War, one instance in which God has shown how good may be drawn from evil. Now, there is nothing truer in the philosophy of everyday life than that all of us, clergy and laity, are acted upon by the spirit of our age. We imbibe it in the very atmosphere, in our reading of the books and the periodicals of the day, in our more or less immediate contact with club-life and social functions and political or educational gath- erings, in a hundred and one phases of the life that is being lived around us. Imperceptibly for the most part, but none the less surely, the influence of this age-spirit affects our point of view, our mental habits, and, unless we are ceaselessly upon our guard, our spiritual outlook and our daily routine. An excellent test by which to determine whether or not a priest has been deleteriously in- fluenced by the prevalent hedonism of our day is furnished by his attitude towards exterior morti- fications. If he is fond of stressing such Scriptural texts as, "Rend your hearts and not your gar- ments," of insisting particularly on interior sorrow for sin, of uttering such claptrap as "Fat your three meals a day, and fast from backbiting and 8 I i 114 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS 4ander," of implying that all external penances are exaggerations and extravagances — then it is tolerably safe to assume that the spirit of the age has warped his spiritual perceptions and played more or less havoc with his interior life. It may well be doubted whether there is any other subject connected with the spiritual side of life, or growth in holiness, about which men in- dulge in so much sophistical argument as about this exterior mortification. If, as Shakespeare says, "the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape," never perhaps does he exeri i.iat power so effectively as when he is persuading the com- fort-loving, sensual, natural man that mortification of the senses is akin to folly, that fasting is sui- cidal, and that harsh penances inflicted on the body are merely the fanatical excesses of per- verted piety. It goes without saying, of course, that no sane expounder of the spiritual life denies that moderation in all things is a virtue, or that mortification may be, and occasionally is, carried to excess; but it will hardly be asserted by any judicious observer of the times that voluntary suffering, or self-denial as to bodily comforts for God's sake, is so common in our day and genera- tion that the average Christian, priest or layman, needs to be warned against it. In point of fact it is to be feared that we have become so dom- inated by the easy-going, not to say luxury-loving, spirit of the world around us that comparatively few of us practice any exterior mortification at all. Yet Christ said to all, and especially, we may assume, to priests: "If any man will come after ■I mm b PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION llj T! Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me." And St. Paul conjures us : "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil con- cupiscences, covetousness, which is the service of idols." Of special significance to the clergy, be- cause peculiarly applicable to them, is this other word of the Apostle of the Gentiles: "But I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection : lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway." It may be taken for granted, then, that some degree of mortification is not only congruous to the sacerdotal character, but a necessary means to the acquisition of perfection, the state in which the priest is constituted and in which he is bound to sustain himself, persevering in it to the end of life. Ihe soundness of this doctrine is vouched for by the unanimous voice of the saints. "He who disregards mortification," declares St. Francis of Sales, "will never be able to raise his soul to the contemplation of God." St. Teresa remarks fhat "It is folly to suppose that God admits immor- tified souls to His friendship." And St. John of the Cross counsels us to give credit to no one who rejects penitential exercises, even were his doc- trine confirmed by miracles, ^t is quite true of course that many of these same saints advise against undue zeal in the matter of external morti- fications, deprecate their being looked upon as an end in themselves instead of a mere means to an end, and insist on the superiority of interior morti- fication — of the mind and heart, the judgment and 116 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS . lii' [ ■ will. It is to be observed, however, that in their day the tendency to go to extremes in austerity, to practice rigorous penitential exercises — frequent prolonged fasts, protracted vigils, the cilicium or hair shirt, the discipline, etc. — was notably more pronounced than it is in our modern era; and we may be permitted to surmise that, were they writ- ing for our times, they would lay more stress on the too common lack of exterior penances than on their excessive prevalence. To have done with generalities': what are some of the mortifications which it is incumbent on the twentieth-century priest to practice? In the first place, there are those which are inseparably con- nected with the performance of duty. Apart from the multitudinous mortifications involved in our willing obedience to the commandments of God and the precepts of His Church, the specific duties of our state in life furnish manifold occasions for genuine penance and self-denial. The habitual and serious performance of these duties — in the pulpit, the confessional, the sick-room, the school, the sodality, the young men's society, etc. — almost UP qrily entails more or less weariness, lassi- ti id fatigue In acquitting ourselves of some of iiein we are gumg against our grain, running counter to our tastes; while others are fulfilled only at the cost of our convenience or ease or sleep, and sometimes at the risk of our health or even our life. There can be no question as to the efficacy of such mortifications as these, provided only that they be accepted in the proper spirit, performed gladly for God's sake, vivified by a pure PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION 117 i intention. It is perhaps superfluous to remark that 3uch acts of self-abnegation as are involved in the strict performance of duties are far and away more meritorious than optional penances selected by our own free will. A kindly visit to a garrulous old parishioner who is bed-ridden is probably worth more in the sight oi Heaven than is a fast or an abstinence that is not obligatory; and the inconvenience attached to the preparation and delivery of a Lenten instruction may easily be a more efficacious penitential work than wear- ing a hair shirt for a day or taking the discipline, instead of a bath, at night. As for such priests as are members of religious orders or congregations, the faithful observance of the various points of their Rule with its multi- plied and minute prescriptions, gives ample oppor- tunity for well-nigh continuous mortification. The self-denial practiced in habitually and punctil- iously obeying such prescriptions, in unfailing attendance at the different exercises, in the ob- servance of silence where and when it is ordered, as in contributing one's share to the conversation during the time of recreation in common — this is e'.idently worth more from the penitential view- point than self-chosen exercises of piety or self- willed chastisement of the flesh. The whole round of duties in the religious life entails a i iiultiplicity of trials, little and great, which furnish excellent material for the practice of cifcctive mortification. Fidelity in accomplishing them, and superadded purit> of intention in their performance, constitute no insignificant portion of one's spiritual progress. tv 118 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS A second class of mortifications which priests in particular may congruously practice are those incidental to providential events and occurrences, "acts of God," as they used to be called in commer- cial contracts. Extremes of heat and cold, acci- dents of various kinds, serious illnesses or annoying indispositions, misfortunes overtaking relatives or friends, contrarieties of manifold species disturbing the serenity of our daily routine or delaying the progress of a cherished project — all such trials are raw material which we may use to our spiritual benefit or our spiritual detriment. By accepting them as coming from the hand of God, receiving them with perfect resignation, if not with positive gladness, we evince the true spirit of mortification that is meritorious unto eternal life; by bitterly repining at their occur- rence, lamenting the hardness of our lot, or pro- testing against the injustice of "fate," we manifest a spirit that is to be expected in a lover of the world rather than a servant of the sanctuary. As for the value of such trials as the foregoing, when properly accepted, St. Francis of Sales tells us: "The mortifications which come to us from God, or from men by His permission, are always worth more than those v;hich are the children of our own will; for it must be considered a general rule that the less our taste and choice intervene in our ac- tions, the more they will have of goodness, solidity, devotion, the pleasure of God, and our own profit." Not that St. Francis or any other master of the spiritual life deprecates the practice of entirely PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION 119 voluntary mortifications. On tlic contrary, they all recognize the legitimate role played by such penitential practices in the building up of the in- terior life, in one's progress towards perfection. While they animadvert occasionally on the arti- fices of the Evil One, who finds his profit in the extravagances of this or that penitent given over to immoderate indulgence in exterior mortifica- tions, they fail not to teach that it is the Spirit of God who most frequently suggests these corporal penances. Viewed in the light of practical reason, there is nothing at all unnatural or bizarre in a Christian's desire to perform such penances. Given one's genuine sorrow for sin committed, the impulse to give external expression to that sorrow in acts that entail suff'ering or sacrifice is quite as natural as is the impulse to express our love for a friend by proffering him gifts or other outward manifestations of aflfection. Interior sorrow for sin is of course the essential point, but it may be questioned whether any sorrow really deserving of the name is ever fully satisfied with such repara- tion of God's offended majesty as is solely com- prised in the performance of the "penance" imposed by one's confessor. Generous souls are assuredly not content therewith; they feel irre- sistibly impelled to supererogatory' works of expia- tion. In determining the specific nature of such works, due attention must as a matter of course be paid to one's veritable spiritual needs, the con- dition of one's health, and other such like pruden- tial considerations. A wise word on the subject i m ! K 120 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS .1:^ <• ' is this from Rodriguez: "The principal thing to which we have to turn our attention, that we may mortify it, and eradicate it from our hearts, is the predominant passion ; that is, the affection, in- clination, vice, or bad habit which reigns most in us, which makes us its captive, which brings us into greatest danger, and most frequently causes us to fall into grave transgressions. When the king is taken, the battle is won. And until we do this, we shall make no great advance in perfection.** An evident corollary of the principle thus laid down is that, if our predominant passion partakes more of the flesh than the spirit, as it not infrequently does, then the flesh should be made to suffer. Mor- tifying our will and judgment is always good and sometimes essential; but ^vhere the body has sinned the body should be punished. The punishment while real must be judicious. It is quite safe to say that any form of exterior mortification that endangers the health of a parish priest is to be avoided. His oflice as pastor of souls calls for the performance of a variety of duties the efficient accomplishment of which calls in turn for a state of health as approximately per- fect as he is capable of attaining. This considera- tion need not, however, discourage the pastor who craves the satisfaction of chastising his body. Even a limited knowledge of the lives of the saints is sufficient to convince one that, while a few of them went to extremes of austerity and practically ruined their health — a course of action which they themselves later on condemned — the overwhelm- ing majority of those canonized servants of God PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION 121 '■') practiced exterior mortifications that were hygienic not less than penitential. The truth is that Cath- olic asceticism, or the effort to attain true perfec- tion, very commonly produces results striven for by asceticism in the etymological sense of the word, "the discipline undergone by athletes while training." Mortification of the senses, a constit- uent part of the system, tends most frequently to improve rather than imperil the health. In the matter of fasting and abstinence, for instance, there is little if any doubt that the phys- ical well-being of the average priest in this coun- try would be promoted by his obeying the general law of the Church on that point, refusing to avail himself of the dispensations granted. Medical practitioners and medical journals of the highest prestige afiirm that, as a rule, Americans eat too much of all kinds of food, and particularly too much meat. The most authoritative medical periodical published in English says of the Lenten fast: "The Lent season gives the creature of more or less selfish or bad habits an excellent opportunity of relinquishing those habits for, at any rate, a certain period; and he may, and prob- ably will, receive a salutary and moral lesson wliich may induce him to lead a better and phy- siologically happier life. He may be poisoning himself, for example, by overindulgence in tobacco, alcohol, or even food: and he may find that as a result of his determination to give up these ex- cesses for a season, his mental and bodily activi- ties are improved, his health is altogether better, and so he is constrained to go on with the 'godly. m I wmai 122 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS righteous, and sober life.*" So, too, the Sun, of New York, speaking of the half-million people who in that city "adhere to the strictest rules of the Lenten observance," stated a few years ago; "Emi- nent doctors declare that the forty days of fasting as practiced here are of inestimable value to the health of the commun'^y that observe them." Without observing either the strict fast or the abstinence ordained by the Church for Lent and Advent and Ember Days and vigils, hovever, one may eflfectively mortify the appetite, and that, too, without appearing io do so in the eyes of those with whom we sit at table. We can give ''le appe- tite less than it craves; can deprive it of all or some of the condiments to which it is accustomed; can choose the less, rather than the more, palatable dishes set before us; can abstain from desserts partially or altogether. The man, be he priest or layman, who pooh-poohs such acts as these on the principle that they are mere trifles unworthy of the consideration of a big, broad-minded person- ality, is simply proving to a demonstration that his liritual perspective is a false one. Disregard of little things in the sphere of self-denial is a mis- take as pernicious as it is common. If the widow's mite m' lied the panegj'ric of our Lord, if the cup of cold water given in His name shall not go with- out its reward, if for every idle word we speak we shall have to render an account in the day of judgment, who shall say that any action, however small, that costs an cITort, that goes against our natural grain, that represents ever so slight a vic- tory over appetite or pission, is not, if done for PRIESTLY MCmTIFICATION 123 God's sake and in a penitential spirit, of positive merit in the sight of Heaven? "Unless you do penance," says our Lord, "you shall all likewise perish"; and so intimately is the idea of partial abstinence from food associated with genuine penance that St. Basil goes so far as to say, "Pen- ance without fasting is fruitless," It may be worth while to remark that, in the quotation just given, St. Basil used the word "fast- ing" in a more literal or specific sense than is commonly the case in Scripture or in the works of ascetic writers. The phrase, "fasting and absti- nence," in many such writings is employed as a generic term for all kinds of penance. As for penance itself, the sense in which the term is used in this essay is of course that given as its definition in the best of our dictionaries: sorro'v for sin shown by outward acts; self-punishment expres- sive of penitence or repentance; the suflTering to which a person voluntarily subjects himself, as by fasting, flagellation, self-imposed tasks, etc., as an expression of penitence. If considerable prom- inence is given in all treatises on mortification to fasting and abstinence in their proper sense, it is because their authors agree with this declaration of St. Vincent de Paul : "Mortification of the appe- tite is the A, B, C of the spiritual life. Whoever cannot control himself in this, will hardly be able to conquer temptations more difficult to subdue." Of one species of such temptations to which priests as well as laymen are subject, it is pertinent to remark that authoritative commentators of Holy Writ hold that it was of the demon of impurity m vm 124 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS I t I that our Lord said : "But this kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting." Other senses besides that of taste, however, need to be niortifled. Of one of these Rodriguez well says : "It is a common doctrine of the Saints I'liut one of the principal means of leading a good and exemplary life is modesty and custody of the eyes. For, as there is nothing so adapted to pre- serve devotion in a soul, and to cause compunction and edification in others, as this modesty, so there is nothing which so much exposes a person to relaxation and scandals as its opposite." There is too pronounced a tendency nowadays, even among the clergy, to look upon this custody of the eyes as a peculiarly feminine virtue, altogether con- gruous, to be sure, in Sisters and Catholic maidens, but rather effeminate in robust, common-sense men. Yet every priest nmst know, from the ex- perience of others, if not his own, that sin still enters by these windows of the soul, and that fail- ure to exercise control of the eyes is not infre- quently to expose one's self deliberately to dangerous occasions such as we are bound to avoid. "If any man offend not in word," says St. James, "the same is a perfect man." The priest- hood is, as wc have said, a state of perfection; but individual priests who measure up to this standard of St. James are probably not so numer- ous as the "autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa," and accordingly one bodily mem- ber that may very profitably be subjected to hab- itual and systematic mortification is that "unquiet PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION 125 evil, full of deadly poison," the tongue. St. Francis of Sales says that one of the things that keeps us at a distance from perfection is undoubtedly our speech, and he proffers this wholesome advice: "And since one of the worst ways of speaking is to speak too much, speak little and well, little and gently, little and simply, little and charitably, littlo and amiably." Just how common, not to say uni- versal, is one particular fault of the tongue, the making of uncharitable remarks, any reader may determine for himself by recalling how often, or rather how seldom, in his experience he has heard this tribute truthfully paid to a recently deceased cleric: "He was never known iu ii ter an unkind word about anybody." A good inany of us ver>' probably merit some such rebuke as was admin- istered to a loquacious penitent who asked his spiritual director for a hair skirt in order to mor- tify his flesh. "My son," said the director, laying his finger on his lips, "the best hair shirt is to watch carefully all that conies out at this door." Interior mortification, in other words, is prefer- able to external penances. And yet, as the two are not mutually exclusive, one may judiciously follow the advice : Do this, and don't neglect that. Apropos of interior repressions, this bit of doctrine from St. Francis of Sales is quite in harmony with what we have said of the value of little things in the spiritual life: "Above all, it is necessary for us to strive to conquer our little temptations, such as fits of anger, suspicions, jealousies, envy, deceit- fulness, vanity, attachments, and evil thoughts. For in this way we shall acquire strength to subdue greater ones." m ir ! ; i i 126 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS To return from this quasi-digression and re- sume our consideration of distinctively exterior penitential exercises: one mortification which many a priest would do well to practice is — spend- ing from fifteen to thirty minutes every morning in alternately reading and pondering a brief series of supernatural truths. "Mortification?" com- ments the reader. "Why, that's not mortification; 'tis meditation." Quite so; or, at least, 'tis the framework, the mechanical structure of medita- tion: and nevertheless if one is to believe a not uncommon assertion in clerical circles, it is to many priests a genuine mortification as well. In point of fact, actual neglect of daily meditation, and alleged inability to meditate as the pretext for such neglect, characterize a larger number of American priests than the devout reader of this page is apt to consider possible. Not ver>' many years ago the present writer was, to say the least, mildly surprised at this declaration of an experi- enced retreat-master who was mentioning the sub- jects he purposed discussing in his sermons and conferences to a body of several hundred dio- cesan priests : "I'm not going to talk to them about meditation; they won't make it, anyway." Making due allowance for the unquestionable exaggera- tion of the remark, the residue of truth which it contains is worth while considering— and deplor- ing. No amount of external activity, strenuous labor about the temporalities of his parish, or punctilious performance of all his pastoral duties, can compensate or indemnify a priest for the neg- lect of mental prayer. PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION 127 If the practice of daily meditation is regarded as a sort of bugbear by not a few clerics, it must be because they have confounded form with sub- stance, or mistaken the shell for the kernel. It should be obvious to any educated man that the statement, "I can't meditate," is in sober earnest- ness fully as nonsensical as the statement, "I can'i think." For, after all, that is essentially what medK tating means, thinking, or, as the prophet Jere- miah phrases it, "considering in the heart." Now, no priest presumably would care to have his men- tal calibre qualified in such terms as Sir Henry Irving once applied to an overbearing cross- examining barrister. The great actor, having begun his answer to a questic i by saying, "Well, I think — " was interrupted by ilie cross-examiner. "We don't want to hear what you think, sir; we want what you know." — "Pardon me," replied Sir Henry, "am I not allowed to think in answering these questions?" — "No, sir; decidedly not." — "In that case," said the actor incisively, "I may as well retire. I can't talk without thinking: I'm no law- yer." The priest who can coordinate his thoughts sufficiently well to hold a sane conversation, write a sensible letter, or preach a good sermon, can assuredly meditate, if only he has the will to do so. True, he may not rise to the heights of con- templation, be lost in ecstasy, or be carried like St. Paul to the tliird heaven; but, then, no masters of the spiritual life expect him to undergo such experiences. What they do expect of him, and what they declare he cannot safely neglect, is a daily private devotional act consisting in delib- 128 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS III erate reflection upon some spiritual truth or mys- tery, accompanied by acts of the affections and the will, especially the formation of resolutions as to future conduct. Books of set meditations, with their formal divi- sions of preludes, points, considerations, applica- tions, affections, resolutions, colloquies, and spir- itual nosegays, are meant to serve the purpose of helps, not hindrances, to mental prayer; and it is quite possible to meditate thoroughly well without having recourse to them at all. They are espe- cially useful, of course, to beginners; but even a beginner need not deem it essential to go sys- tematically and rigorously through all the three points provided for him. If a thought occurring in the first of those points, or even in the preludes, appeals to him in a special way and enchains his attention, he may profitably confine his reflection and pondering to the salutary ideas which it evokes and take practical resolutions in accordance therewith, without scruple about his neglecting the subsequent considerations set forth in the book. It is probably true to say, and it is consoling to think, that a good many priests who habitually fail to "make their morning meditation," do as a matter of fact meditate considerably at odd times during the day. Thinking seriously of God and the things oi" God, reflecting on the eternal truths, deliberating as to one's spiritual interests, putting fine's self in the presence of God and uttering a silent heart-cry for additional strength to be in the world and not of it, dwelling on some of the scenes in the passion of our Lord— all such action as this PRIESTLY MORTIFICATION 129 is, if not formal meditation, at least a substantial and commendable equivalent therefor, be it ac- complished where or when it may. And yet, the formal daily morning exercise in mental prayer is strongly to be recommended to all the clergy: at the very least it will be a meritorious exterior mortification. Much the same plea may be made for the priest's frequent — weekly, if not daily — perform- ance of the pious exercise known as "going round the Stations." The Way of the Cross is both an exterior mortification in itself and an incentive to other penitential practices. Performed with delib- erate thought and attention, the exercise may read- ily outvulue the most fervent meditation; and, even when interrupted by frequent distractions, can scarcely fail to exert a salutary influence on the soul of him who is with abundant reason called alter Christus. Priests like other men can be, and often are, inconsistent in a variety of ways; but it is doubtful that there exists such a living para- dox as a priest who habitually makes the Way of the Cross, and yet lives otherwise a tepid life. To mention just one other practice very gener- ally recommended to the clergy, and likely to be considered by those of them who have not yet adopted it a downright, unequivocal mortifica- tion — obedience to a detailed, individual rule of life is an approved aid to rapid progress in sacer- dotal perfection. Nor is the practice so negligible, at least in the opinion of some spiritual writers, as many a cleric is apt to consider it. In his preface to the life of St. John Baptist de Rossi, for 130 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS instance, the Bishop of Salford writes : "A rule of life is so necessary for a secular priest that, if he thinks because he is not a monk he may live with his mind all abroad, by impulse and without rule, or if he knows that he has not sufficient self- mastery to lead a life of rule by himself, let him be well assured that he has no vocation to be a secular priest, because his salvation will ever be in fearful jeopardy, and his fall may be heard of any day." The statement may be thought some- what exaggerated, but it certainly contains more truth than extravagance. "If you live according to rule," says St. Gregorj', "you live according to God," suggesting the inference that a rule is essen- tial to right living. In any case, a personal rule of life observed with fidelity is a conmiendable form of exterior mortiiication, of penitential exercises such as all priests have need of; and an excellent reason why a diocesan cleric should practice this specific kind of self-denial is that it makes him resemble the religious, of whom St. Bernard does not hesitate to say that, as compared with others, "he lives more purely, falls more rarely, rises more promptly, walks more cautiously, receives graces more abundantly, reposes more :urely, dies more hopefully, is cleansed more speedily, and is re- warded more plentifully." So may it be with every priest who gives due place in his scheme of life to works of exterior mortification ! THE PRIEST AND NON-CATHOLICS I became all things to all iikmi that I might save all. — I Cor.: ir, Sg. And other sheep 1 have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, an'; but with concrete heresy, THE PRIEST AND NON-CATHOLICS 133 actual heretical boys and girls and men and women, they have scarcely ever come in contact. Even as pastors, their problems regarding those residents in their parish who do not attend their church are in the main different from ours: the overwhelming number of such non-attendants are fallen-away Catholics, not Protestants by birth and training. Conditions in this country are obvioi'sly of quite another complexion. The great majority of young American priests have known and come into immediate contact with concrete Protestant- ism from their earliesl years. Not a few of them have sat on the same benches with Protestant boys and girls in the public schools, and all of them have probably mingled with Protestant friends and neighbors in the games and sports and pj rties and picnics and excursions and public celebrations and other social and business relations of co-dwell- ers in towns and villages and rural districts. In very few, if any, American communities is the re- ligious atmosphere entirely, or even prevailingly. Catholic; in the vast majority of them it is pre- ponderantly non-Catholic; and in an occasional district here anrt there, especially in the fjouth, it is avowedly aua-Catholic. Now, while this con- dition of affairs will be advocated by no one as in any sense an ideal condition for the full develop- ment of genuine CatholiC life and action, it can hardly be denied that it is not absolutely devoid of some slight compensating advantages to the Amer- ican priest whose boyhood, youth, and incipient manhood have been lived in subjection thereto. mm i;:''i 134 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS On the face of it, his comprehension of the point of view, the mentality, the prejudices, and the ig- norance (invincible or otherwise) of the average American Protestant is an asset that can easily be turned to good account in a work which every truly zealous priest should have at heart, the bring- ing into Christ's fold of those "other sheep" for whom as well as for ourselves the Precious Blood was shed on Calvary. It is a truism to say that ardent zeal, the apos- tolic spirit, the missionary longing to spread Christ's true Gospel is, or at least should be, a char- acteristic of every cleric ordained to the ministry of God's all ir. To the parish priest in the most Protestant town or village in the United States, not less than to the foreign missionary in Africa, India, or China, are applicable the words of St. James: "My brethren, if any of you err from the truth, and one convert him : he must know that he who causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way, shall save his soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins." In all prob- ability there is no Catholic parish in this country in which may not be found more than one or two non-Catholics whom a little effort on the part of the pastor would speedily bring into the Church, who are ready even now, given the occasion, to say to the priest, as Agrippa to Paul, "In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian"; and h V the pastor who in such a case can truth- fully Lcho St. Paul's reply: "I would to God that, both in little and in much, not only thou but also ail that hear me, this day, should become such as THE PRIEST AND NON-CATIIOLICS 13') I also am, except these bonds." Christ's commis- sion, "Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature," cannot be restricted in our day either to the workers in the foreign mission field, or to the preachers of missions to non-Catho- lics here at home: it is binding, in some degree at least, on all those who have received from Him the transcendent powers of offering Mass tind forgiv- ing sins. That a goodly number of our American clergy recognize the reality of this obligation and con- sistently strive to fulfil it is made evident by the muster-roll of converts credited to many of our dioceses from year to year. Hundreds of our pas- tors, more especially those in our larger towns and cities, habitually have under instruction classes of non-Catholics numbering from two or three to a dozen or a score. Here and there throughout the country is found an exceptionally zealous priest whose efforts for the conversion of his separated brethren meet with almost phenomenal success, or success which seems phenomenal to other ..'er- ics who either do not have, or do not profit by, the same opportunities of increasing the number of their parishioners. Granting that conditions vary considerably in different parts of the country, that the Protestant soil is in some of our States hard and sterile while in others it is rich and fruitful; granting, too, that the aptitude to influence non- Catholics and gradually win them, first, to take a sympathetic interest in our religion, and finally to embrace it, is notably less marked in some priests than in others, it may still be questioned whether In ■1 136 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS nil liliii a pastor who has exercised his ministry for ten or fifteen or twenty years without having to his credit a single convert to the faith, can flatter himself that he has done his full duty in the accomplish- ment of the second of the two great command- ments: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Lack of opportunity and lack of natural disposi- tions for the work may count for something in his failure to make conversions; but it will be profita- ble for him to probe his inner consciousness and inquire whether another factor in the failure has not been his lack of zeal. To insist, as such a pastor is likely to do, that the spiritual care of the Catholic flock specifically entrusted to his ministrations engrosses all his time and energy, that he has quite enough to do in looking after his own people without adding the supererogatory work of evangelizing outsiders, is to make what at first blush may appear a thor- oughly common-sense statement; but on examina- tion it will be found that while the statement contains something of truth, it holds a good deal more of fallacy. The implication that zeal in con- vert-making connotes any measure of neglect of a priest's proper parishioners is altogether erro- neous, is so fallacious i;a fact that in nine cases out of ten the true connotation is the direct antithesis of that implied. Almost invariably the priest who is unusually successful in winning those "without the walls" to enter the Church is a pastor noted for his spirit of self-sacrifice and devotedncss to his flock, an exemplary cleric in his habitual bear- ing and conduct, a never-failing friend to the poor . 1 ^T iLtf «■ J- a ia..LL. ' ia , THE PRIEST AND NON-CATHOLICS 137 and unfortunate, a frequent visitor to the sick and the afflicted, a wise and patient counsellor to those in difficulties, a veritable spiritual father to all those entrusted to his pastoral charge. It does not require much knowledge of human nature* in- deed, to understand that these very qualities, ex- emplified in his daily life, furnish an intelligible explanation of his success as a convert-maker. Whether or not he takes account of the fact, the priest in every American city, town, village, or rural district is a marked man; and the fewer im- perfections of any kind that are discernible in his life, the greater the assurance that some at least of his non-Catholic fellow-citizens will be im- pressed by the beauty of the religion which he lives as well as preaches. Quite apart from any question of conversions, it is eminently worth while for a priest to give some thought to the nature of the individual influ- ence which he exerts on the men and women in the little world around him. While it is probably true to say that if there is one petition which, less than another, the average mortal, priest or layman, need address to Heaven, it is the prayer attributed to a naive Scotch dominie : "O Lord, gie us a good conceit o' oursells," and while it is the part of wis- dom not to take oneself too seriously, not to be carried aw<^y by a sense of one's self-importance, it is neither absurd nor foolish for a priest to recog- nize that to the Catholic cleric with peculiar appro- priateness are addressed the words of St. Matthew: "You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid." Individual example 1'^ 138 SACKRDOTAL SAFEGFARDS il ■ : is a more poli-nt aginc-y for good or evil tiian the unreflecting a >. apt to consider it- •»nd no member of a community, certainly no p it •. is so insig- nificant that his principles and actio.K., his conver- sation and conduct, do not sway toward right or wrong some few at least of his fellow-citizens. "Even the weakest natures," says Smiles, "exer- cise sonu> influence upon those about them. The approximation of feeling, thought, and habit is constant, and the action of exampi? unceasing." What most laymen, and possibly a few priests, need to have persistently impressed upon their minds, as to this matter of individual influence, is the unquestionable truth that we shall be judged with regard not merely to the evil we have done, but also to the good which we have failed to do. Not to give a positively bad example is well enough as far as it goes, hut it clearly does not constitute the complete fulfilment of a cleric's duty to the people in the world about him. A priest's influ- ence on those with whom he comes habitually in contact, be they Catholic or Protestant, infidels or Jews, ought to be something more than simply innocuous; it should he positively, not to say ag- gressively, beneficent. A man of God, a true am- bassador of Christ, he should impress those not of the household of the faith in much the same way as Carlyle was impressed by the life-story of the twelf th-centur\' monk of St. Edmund's : The great antinne heart; how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and iepth! Heaven lies over him whereso* er hi goes or stands on E; --th; mak- THE PHIKST AND N()N < ATllOLlCS i:]!> iiig ull Kurtii a niyslic IViiipk- to him, the Hiirth's busiiuss all a kind or worship, (iliinpsi's ol" bright crcaluics Hash -n llu* com- mon sunlight; angels yet hover uoing (lod's messages among men: that rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand ol (io«l! Wontler, miracle encompass the man; he lives in an ele- ment of miracle; Ileavin's splendor over his head. Hell's darkness under his liit. A great law of duty, high as these two inlhiities, ilwarf- ing all else, annihilating all els(> making i'< yal Hichard as small as peasant Samson, smaller if need be! -The "inuiginalivc faculties'? "I\ude poetic ages"? The "primeval poetic element '? O for (lod's sake, giiod rea' of ours, very few priests overstep the congruous limits of the geniality and sociabilitv that should characterize their attitude mm THE PRIEST AND NON-CATHOLICS 143 toward their neighbors and acquaintances outside the fold; and the relatively negligible exceptions who do carry their fraternization and cordiality to extremes invariably learn by experience that their exaggerated unconventionalisni, their uuduly free and easy intercourse with Protestant neigh- bors, eventually defeats any laudable purpose they may have had in view in adopting it. It is well to remember that one may have a social tempera- ment, may be what American slang expressively terms "a good mixer," without at all compromising one's sacerdotal dignity or laying oneself open to the charge of unpriestly levity and frivolity. Be- tween the austere-visaged cleric who uniformly "keeps himself to himself" and keeps others at a distance, who is reserved and silent and severe in looks if not in words, whose brows are wrinkled with frowns oftener than his lips are wreathed with smiles, who in a word is distinctly unsocia- ble — between him and the flippant young curate or youthful pastor who rather alTects non-Catholic company and ostentatiously puts himself on the level thereof, who is apparently at some pains to show that his priestly character is no hindrance to his participation in the most worldly of sports or conversations, who tolerates in his presence the telling of questionable anecdotes or possibly nar- rates a few himself, who aspires in a word to the reputation of a man of the world rather than that of a man of God — between these two extremes, we say, there is a golden mean, a happy medium that is admirable, and is in fact admired by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. No intelligent 11 m 144 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Protestant expects a priest to conform to standards that are lower than the highest, and no intelligent priest will allow human respect, the desire for ap- plause, or the fear of ridicule to move him a hairbreadth from the hne of conduct which eccle- siastical law and clerical custom have prescribed for his guidance and practice; but without coming into conflict with any law or established custom a judicious cleric may do much to serve the eternal interests of his non-Catholic neighbors and the material temporal interests of himself and his pa- rishioners by maintaining amicable relations with such fellow-townsmen as are not of the household of the faith. No one familiar with the ordinary conditions in an American or a Canadian village or small town in which Catholics form only a fifth or sixth, possibly but a fifteenth or sixteenth, of the popu- lation needs to be told that the honor of God and His Church and the salvation of souls are best pro- moted by the pastor who combines affability and tact and good-will toward all with general culture, irreproachable conduct, and enlightened zeal. Genuinely cordial ' ?lations with the Protestant lawyers, doctors, busmess men, and even ministers of the community need militate in no way against the most loyal adherence to Catholic principles, or tend to the slightest minimizing of Catholic doc- trines. On the other hand, such relations will in a hundred and one different ways prove of unques- tionable utility in safeguarding (to take only the lowest ground) the civic rights and purely tem- poral interests of the Catholic flock. The non- THE PRIEST AND NON-CATHOLICS 145 Catholic editor, for instance, who habitually meets Father Murphy on the footing of pleasant ac- quaintanceship or the higher plane of real friend- ship, will refuse to lend his columns to the propagation of anti-Catholic appeals to local prejudice, and will hesitate about reproducing from other papers malicious attacks against the Church and her ministers generally. Friendly rela- tions with the Protestant physicians of the town re- move not a few difficulties which the pastor would otherwise encounter in his visits to the local hospi- tal, and ensure his knowledge of some necessary sick-calls that might otherwise escape his notice. Public spirit and intelligent interest in the activi- ties that make for the general prosperity and prog- ress of the community lead easily enough to the priest's nomination as a member of various boards — educational, charitable, commercial, or industrial; and his election thereto is a matter of no little import to himself and his parishioners. It has been said in the foregoing paragraph that the priest may congruously have cordial relations even with the non-Catholic ministers who are his fellow-citizens. While judicious and experienced clerics are not at all likely to question the truth of this assertion, it may be worth while for the sake of some of our immature or younger readers to fortify our position by the quotation of a couple of extracts from approved Catholic authors. In "Rules for the Pastors of Souls" we read: "As a priest, filled with lofty ideals and guided by ex- quisite refinement and social tact, you will cer- tainly not deny that degree of esteem and delicate 10 146 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ili consideration for the religious sentiments of those outside the Catholic Church which you claim for yourself. It betrays a mean soul, a narrow heart, and lack of moral maturity, to have the audacity to invade the sanctuary of another's religion with a wanton spirit. Even the pagans, who manifestly are given to a false religion, justly claim this ten- der consideration for their religious views and feelings." Somewhat different, this, from the theorj' and, alas! from the practice as well, of an otherwise thoroughly pious and exemplary pastor now deceased, with whom the present writer was acquainted a good many years ago. He appeared to know intuitively whenever a non-Catholic was present in his church, and on such occasions in- variably made it a point, no matter what was the specific subject of his sermon, to bring in the axiom, "Outside the Church no salvation," and to explain it as meaning, purely and simply, that all Protestants would go to hell for all eternity. Need- less to say, he did considerably more harm than good by thus unwittingly misrepresenting Catholic doctrine. The work quoted above is a translation from the German. Of greater interest and relevancy, perhaps, is the following passage from the charm- ing little volume, "Within My Parish," the chapters of which originally appeared in the Ecclesiastical Review: "My relations with the various Protes- tant ministers in town have been and are cordial and enduring. I have not been above learning from them in some matters of practical adminis- tration, and I like to think that my contact with THE PRIEST AND NON-CATIIOLICS 147 t" them may have been conducive to the breaking- down of a few of their inherited prejudices. In our discussions we most often take our stand upon opinions or doctrines held in common, rather than upon those about which we differ. I think no greater mistake has been made by Catholic contro- versialists than Ihe drawing of the nividious dis- tinction between the Catholic religion as true and Protestantism as false. The distinction really to be observed is between the Catholic religion as true and Protestantism as partly true. There is, as you perceive, a wide difference in the methods of attack. One, I fear, has served but to alienate further from the Church many good and sincere people; the other may be rendered capable of drawing many to Her." A useful, if not necessary, comment on the fore- going is that it behooves the pastor who cultivates cordial and friendly relations with ministers of the various sects in his city, town, or village, to see that his intellectual equipment is not allowed to deteriorate. The day of the crude, uneducated, often illiterate, Protestant preacher has practically passed away; and the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Congregationalist minister who is our neighbor and our possible friend may well be a thoroughly cultured, university-bred, versatile, widely-read, all-round scholar. It is accordingly incumbent on the priest who comes in contact with him, either in private or semi-public discus- sions, to have at his finger-tips, not only the old- time arguments in favor of the Church, but the correct answers to the latest sophistical conten- ! ill f I 148 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tions of rationalism, pseudo-science. Christian Science, New Thought, etc., etc. His reading must be up to date. While his familiarity with the handbooks commonly profTered to prospective con- verts may be taken for granted, he has not always perhaps at hand such useful books as "Catholic Flowers from Prote?*ant Gardens," "Tributes of Protestant Writers," "Outside the Walls," and sim- ilar collections of non-Catholic encomiums on Catholic doctrine, devotion, or practice. Most men who have had any experience in polemics are aware that a not ineffective controversial weapon is the authority of one of our opponent's recog- nized leaders aptly and tellingly quoted against the position taken by our opponent himself. Apart from their utility as auxiliaries in argumentation, such books, loaned or given to non-Catholic friends, can scarcely fail to weaken prejudice, lessen intolerance, and stimulate the Protestant mind to salutary cogitation. There is one other consideration worth while emphasizing in connection with the priest's atti- tude toward those of his friends, acquaintances, and fellow-townsmen who do not belong to the vis- ible body of the Church: he can pray for them, pray habitually and fervenUy. In Leo XIII's En- cyclical, Sapientiae Christianae, we read : "In the duties that join us to God and to the Church, the greatest thing to be noted is that in the propaga- tion of Christian truth every one of us should labor as far as lies in his power." Now, irrespective of the validity or the ineptitude of the grounds on which a given pastor may seek to justify his fail- THE PRIEST AND NON-CATHOLICS 149 ure to treat non-Catholics with the kindness and affability advocated in this chapter, he can assur- edly give no plausible reason for neglecting this charitable duty of prayer for those outside the fold. In his daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or in the privacy of his oratory at night prayer, he may fittingly voice the petition which the Church herself solemnly chants on Good Friday: "Let us also pray for heretics and schismatics: that our Lord and God would deliver them from all their errors, and vouchsafe to call them back to our holy Mother, the Catholic and Apostolic Church. .... Almighty and everlasting God, who savest all men, and desirest not that any should perish: look down on such souls as are deceived by the wiles of the devil; that, laying aside all heretical perverseness, the hearts of those who are in error may be converted, and may re- turn to the unity of Thy truth." This much at least, fervent and frequent prayer, would seem to be the minimum of apostolic effort congruous to the priest living among those "other sheep" whom Christ longs so ardently to see gathered into His own fold; but thrice happy the really zealous pas- tor who supplements fervent prayer by effective works, who treats his Protestant neighbors as friends whom he hopes to see become one day his spiritual children: he is taking long steps toward the eventual fulfilment of his hope, the realization of his priestly purpose in a glorious harvest of souls. ■f^J: 1 ! ' >, THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER Who shall find a valiant woman f Far and from the utter- most coasts is the price of her. — Proverbs: xxxl, 10. It has often been said — and by thoi '• in ly of the si >- sequt nt I'irty vc unit oi .^evi and Fathf t JenkiiiS v nt ii ^he 1 ise y,{ his t nity without v pr» .il t dization of iiis cherished hopes or a M^ - ttia Institute. And yt t, fly two decades before the K< n- tuckv cleric igiiated the question, there v )s ' neighboring Dominion a reii ms ed to solve in many places . '^ s country just such a problem .. ihe -ttle Sisters of the Holy Famii founded in tf inf lute des Cai. ada ^h had in u 'lit) Establisi .=* >rima ily to attend to the domes e onomy or houseiiold work of colleges conducted by the Fofhers of Holy Cross, the institute has wic tied iis scope with successive years until its mci hers are at present found charged with the 'luustkeepiig not only of \ rijus colleges and semin ies. but of archiepiscopal and episcopal reside! -es, and of rectories sufHciently important to reqii < the sei-vices of several of the Sisters. When the late Cardinal Falconio, as first Apostolic Delegate to Canada, resided in Ottawa, his house- keepers were members of this community; and he was ever afterwards a warm eulogist of their effi- ciency, religious simplicity, and common sense. On the occasion of one of his visits to Notre Dame during his term of office as Apostolic Delegate to this country, he was asked by the present writer whether the Little Sisters liad charge of his resi- dence in Washington. "No," iie replied, "and I » Founded at M^mramcook, New Brunswick, by Father Camtlle Lefebvre. C. S. C. and Sister Mary Leonle, of the Sisters of Holy Croas, Notre Dame, Indiana. Approved by Bishop La Rocque, of Sherbrooke, P. Q., the community now has Its Motherhouse and Novitiate In that prelate's episcopal see. THE PRIKT'S HOUSEKEEPER 153 miss them very much. My domestic aflfairs were J . ver looked after so satisfactorily as while I lived j 1 Ottawa." bimilar religious institutes, founded on this side of the Atlantic or imported from European countries, are rendering much the same services, at least as regards seminaries and colleges, in more than one diocese in Canada and the United States; and the employment of their members in such rectories or parish houses as need the services of three or four women would seem to be as near an approach to the ideal solution of the priests' housekeeping problem as is likely to be discovered. In so far as the overwhelming ma- jority of American pastors are concerned, however, such a solution is of course impracticable. What the average priest in this country needs is, in real- ity, not a housekeeper proper, a superintendent of several domestic servants, but rather a maid of all work— count* Rouncewc' H or less d One won, about all '^^ especial! '' all the \ ii 1 o no religiouh amun 'Ui fill such positions, entuiling the instead of in bands of severa average priest must look elsewhere for the cupply of his needs. As one of the prevalent hobbies, or fads, of our day is vocational training, perhaps the project of the Kentucky priest whom we ha^ n- f ine old Mrs. '■ the more r fe." der ' : it Oi vloualy. Its Sisters to ing separately gether; so our { ti 154 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tioned may be revived, and result in the organiza- tion of a quasi-religious society, a modified Third Order of some kind, that will furnish to the paro- chial clergy in bo*^ urban and rural districts such competent, economical, discreet "valiant women" as are desiraiiie in all priestly homes. In the meantime, the cleric who has been pro- moted from a curacy to a pastorate, and blithely prepares to set up housekeeping on his own ac- count, must fain make the best of conditions as he finds them, take what he can get rather than what he would prefer in the matter of a feminine auxiliary, and trust to Providence that his selec- tion may prove at least tolerable. It ought to be axiomatic that his choice should conform, so far as is at all possible, to the disciplinary regulations of the Church, the requirements of Canon Law, or, what comes to the same thing, the prescriptions of national ecclesiastical councils and the synods of his own diocese. It will simplify our summary rather than exhaustive treatment of the subject, and lend some adventitious importance to that treatment, if we transcribe forthwith the particular decree of the Third Plenarj' Council of Baltimore that deals with our specific topic : , ■ ! Quia satis non est nullum in clero admit- tere crimen, sed vel levissimam criminis sus- picionem procul arcere omnio oportet, Episcopos in Domino monemut., ut decreti Praedecessorum Nostrorum de clericorum cum mulieribus consortio executioni sedulo firmiterque invi^lent. "Volumus igitur impri- mis, ut saeculorium mulierum, nc suis quioem THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER 155 exceptis, consortio et familiaritate nimia ne utatur (sacerdos) ; neque eas, licet propinqua cognationc conjunctas, in eadem secum domo commorari sinat, nisi fuerint vita et moribus spectatissiniae, quaeque nuUo modo, sive directo, sive indirecto, se sacris muneribus gerendis aut rebus ecclesiae administrandis inimisceant. Oeconomam, ancillam, aliamve famulam nullam habeat, nisi quae sit niaturi- oris aetatis faniaque integerrima gaudeat. Nunquam coram illis aut propinquis, si quas apud se habeat, de gregis regimine, de eccle- siae negotiis, de parochianorum vitiis aut de- fectibus verba facial." (No. 164.) Praetcrea, ad multiplicis generis incommoda vitanda, Nostra facimus verba Patrum Concilii Plen. Hibernici apud Maynutiam, scil., "nullus paro- chus . . . retineat in domo sua familias afiinium aut consanguineorum. Quodsi in eadem domo cum parocho habitent ejus coad- jutores . . . volumus ut parochi in prae- dicta domo nullo modo consanguincas vel affines juniores retineant, nisi permittente Ordinario." (No. 126.) A study of the foregoing prescriptions, both as to the mature age of housekeepers and the ques- tion of having as inmates of a priest's house blood- relations or other kindred, may perhaps create, in the minds of experienced clerics fqmiliar with the conditions actually prevailing in many an Ameri- can presbytery, a doubt whether this particular decree is not "more honored in the breach than in the observance." As with another prescription of tb J Third Plenary Council, however — that call- ing for the establishing of a parish school within two years of the promulgation of the decree rela- r if 1-4 P 156 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tive thereto — major difficulties in the way of entire conformity to its provisions have doubtle»is icd Ordinaries to overlook some violations of the letter of the law. For that matter, many priests could probably plead with truth as an excuse or justifica- tion for such violation Shakespeare's saying, "Nature must obey necessity," or Rabelais* varia- tion thereof, "Necessity knows no law." The custom of having relatives, near or remote, as their housekeepers, or at least as inmates of their homes, is not only followed in practice by many of the American clergy, but is approved in theory by some accredited authors of clerical hand- books. Father Miiller, for instance, in part ii, vol- ume 1, of "The Catholic Priesthood" says: "Many good priests keep their relatives in the house with them. This custom no one can blame. A good mother or sister in the house is often an excellent safeguard." He adds, it is true, a caution : "The good priest should take care, however, that they arc .11.' domineering; that they are not tattlers or sea* <['); mongers; and especially that they do not give ^ andal." A rather obvious comment on this advice is, that if the priest, presumably cognizant of his relatives' characters and tendencies, foresees the danger of any such action on their part, he will best consult the interests of his parish, and his own as well, by seeing to it that they reside elsewhere than in the presbytery. It will prove much easier to keep mischief-making relations out of his house in the first instance than to remedy their mischief or rid himself of their presence when once their footing in the house has been established. THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER 157 The anonymous author of a German work, translated under the title, "Rules for the Pastor of Souls." by the Jesuit Fathers Slat' : and Ranch, is more cordial in his approval of the custom, and d^'ells at considerable length on its advantages. E /en at the risk of treating our readers to a twice- told tale, we subjoin a few extracts from the work : "It is quite in accordance with the inten- tions of our holy Mother the Church that priests should take a relation, especially a Eious mother or God-fearing sister, into their ouse. She is chiefly guided by the conviction that thereby the safety of your sacerdotal life is best guaranteed and that you are guarded against many temptations and dangers which you might incur if a stran'(er were to look after you. . . . Who couiu 'lave your truly griestiy dignity, your good reputation, and lamelessness m ever\' respect more at heart than a good mother or a virtuous sister? . . . If a mother or sister lives with you, the whole atmosphere of the presbytery will lose a good deal of its roughness, the natural con- sequence of a lonely life. They will compen- sate for the want of family life, as far as this is possible in your circumstances, and change a oreary presbytery into a charming and con- genial home. . .' . Mother and sister take the keenest interest in your welfare, your cares, and joys. Your happiness they make their own, and with your suflFering tney are equally concerned. . . .It is so natural and easy to them to con:ole and encourage you in the various troubU . nui trials of your vocation. . . . Finally, w'-o i tuild replace a mother or a sister when \t»u arc struck down by serious sickness? , . . Consider ■■ ii mii If 158 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS all this, having before your eyes no less your eternal than your temporal welfare, and you will find that as a rule you are best off wnen your pious mother or good sister looks after . your nouschold. Then in truth you may be envied; for God has bestowed on you a favor for which vou can never be sufficiently thankful." We have quoted at this length in order to pre- sent the case for the advocates of priests' relatives for priests' housekeepers with all due fairness, and not because we arc in thorough agreement with the cited author's opinions. We know a consid- erable number of experienced and exemplary clerics who, while admitting of course that the plan proffers many advantages, are fully convinced that these arc offset by so many practically un- avoidable drawbacks, inconveniences, annoy- ances, and hampering difficulties as to render it extremely doubtful that a priest is best off when his domestic affairs arc in charge of some one near and dear to him. And that something may be said for this latter view no judicious reader will deny. The good government of his parish should ob- viously be a matter of more import to a pastor than the comfort of his relatives or the satisfac- tion of his own natural affection for them. The priesthood is confessedly a life of sacrifice and renunciation. To the man who serves the altar, with more significance than to the generality of His followers, Christ says: "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." Filial affection is most commendable in priests as in others, but when a particular method of mani- THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER 159 festing that aftcction is, or is likely to be, inimical to the interests of God and the good of souls com- mitted to our charge, some other method (and available ones are never wanting) may well be preferred. Father Edward may be very fond of his sister Helen and anxious to provide for her comfort and happiness; and yet, if Helen happens to be somewhat older than himself and used to box his ears occasionally when he was a little fel- low, he may be pardoned for doubting whether in the long run as his housekeeper her reverence for his priestlv character would restrain her tendency to lord it over him, or "boss" him, as she used to do in h's youth. In such a case it is quite intel- ligible that he may prefer committing his house- hold management to some other priest's sister rather than to his own. We have no intention of minimizing the devot- edness shown to their priestly sons or brothers by many a self-sacrificing woman : the records of sacerdotal lives in the past and the example of numerous present-day mothers and sisters who are proving the veritable guardian-angels of good, hard-working priests forbid our making little of their merits and their virtues. It is no more than just, however, to remind the reader that the terms of the decree of the Baltimore Council, already quoted, clearly indicate that in the opinion of the Fathers of that Council there may well exist cases in which the absence of even near relatives from a pastor's house is more desirable than is their presence therein. If the happy personal experi- ence of the reader proves that his own is in no #1 ii it i i 160 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS sense such a case, then we heartily reecho the advice of the anonymous German author, and bid him thank God for an inestimable favor.* With the larger number of clerics throughout this country, howevi . the suitability of relatives for the position of priest's housekeeper is a purely academic question: they have no relatives avail- able for the office, and accordingly must make their choice from among strangers, women who are neither kith nor kin to them. That the choice is not always easy to make, or fortunate when made, needs no telling either to pastors themselves or to their friends. The inexperienced young pas- tor who sets himself to the task is most frequently taking chances in a lottery'. This difficulty of securing competent women for the management of clerical homes is apparently a cosmopolitan one. Here, for instance, is an edi- torial paragraph that appeared originally in the Catholic Press, of Sydney, N. S. W., and was quoted, as "fitting the situation to a nicety," by the Catholic Register of Toronto, Canada : "A woman who runs a servants' registry office in the city, talk- ing the other day of the different types of domestics who pass through her hands, said that all the sour- faced old failures who put their names on her books; the women who can neither cook, nor wash, nor sew with any degree of success; who 'can't abear' the sight of a child about the house; who are 1 The New Codex of Canon Law. published since this chapter was written, says (Can. i33. n): Elsdem rclericKsl Ilcct mm lllis tantuni miiMertbus cohabitai-e in (lulbus naturale foedus nihil mall permlttit suspicarl. quales sunt, mater, soror. amita et hulusmodl, aut a qutbus =Il!^i".* '"^"'ra honesta- c-.im prf^v.-ptlnrp aetate conJuneta, omncm suspiclonem amoveat. \Uik THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER 161 (i^ so cross-grained that anything in the shape of an order is regarded as an insult; and who can't agree with their mistresses on any question remotely con- nected with work, express the wish to become priests' housekeepers!" The Canadian editor piously ejaculates, "(lod help the poor priests!" and, not to be outdone by his Australian confrere, recounts some of his per- sonal experiences. "We know," he writes, "many excellent priests in this country who have difli- culty — if they are in the rural districts — in getting a housekeeper at all. The coterie always adver- tising as priests' housekeepers, or haunting the ('jors of hostels and presbyteries in the city with the desire to take charge of priests' houses, are certainly what one of our staflF calls another class of peculiar persons, 'incongruous comedians.' We have come honrc after a hard day's work to one of them and have been set down to a 'cabbage salad* as the chief piece of the dinner — when we felt that we could despatch a whole partridge; and this Barmecide feast was put up to us with a sang- froid that was imperturbable. This lady, for so she styled herself, came to us with a half dozen recommendations from priests — and went without any." While the paragraphs of both these clerical journalists may seem to savor somewhat of cari- oatnre, each suggests so general a likene^ , to their subjects as to make the latter easily recognizable by any reader of mature years and ordinary ex- perlvace. There is, it is true, another and entirely different type of priestly housekeepers, a type 11 ■■ 4- ' .r^ 162 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS which, if not so common as to prove the rule, is yet sufficiently in evidence to constitute a notable number of thoroughly admirable exceptions. We have all met them, either in our own homes (where possibly they have not always been duly appreciated), or in the presbyteries of brother priests whom, it may be, we have envied for the all-round proficiency and unobtrusive excellence of their domestic economy. Good cooks, econom- ical managers, capable laundresses and needle- women, prompt attendants on door-bell or tele- phone ring, tidy chambermaids, quick-handed waitresses, neatly dressed, serene in manner, re- served in speech, of inexhaustible patience and well-ordered piety, and knowing their place — such women are to be found in every diocese, and, ver- ily, "far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of them." Happy the cleric who enjoys the minis- trations of one of these : he may appropriately sing with David, Funes ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris, "The lines are fallen unto me in goodly places." As for the less adequately served cleric whose daily domestic worries prompt him to exclaim with St. Paul, "In all things we suffer tribulations," with- out being able to add the great Apostle's assertion, "but are not distressed," he is assuredly deserving of commiseration, all the more so if his ineffectual remonstrances to a self-willed, domineering, or capricious housekeeper have led him to yield pessi- mistic assent to the old-time quatrain : Where is the man who has the power and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's willt For if she will, she will, you may depend on't; And if she won't, she won't; so there's an end on't. iiSTTv^afcTTTB THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER 163 Such pessimism, commonly expressed by the rhet- orical interrogation. What's the use? is not to be commended. While a pastor should doubtless show all due consideration to his servants and treat them with the fullest measure of Christian charity and sacerdotal kindness, it is nevertheless incumbent upon him occasionally to make it un- mistakably clear to them that, after all, they are servants and that he is the master. As St. Paul wrote to Timothy, "If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?" If he chances to be of an ascetic tem- perament, prompt to seize occasions for morti- fication and self-denial, an incompetent house- keeper will unquestionably afford him ample opportunity to indulge to the full his liking for crosses, vexations, and trials of temper; and by accepting all these as merciful dispensations of Providence, he may clearly acquire considerable merit. The average priest, however, can scarcely be expected to allow his housekeeper to fill the role of a living discipline or hair shirt. He probably believes that his ministry furnishes him with a plentiful supply of unavoidable crosses, and that he is entitled to a certain degree of comfort and ease within the walls of his presbytery. There are some failings of housekeepers, in- deed, tolerance of which can be defended on no valid ground, whether of a pastor's forgetfulness of self, or his kindliness of heart, or his spirit of indifference. What concerns himself exclusivelj he may perhaps meritoriously overlook; what tends injuriously to affect his relations with his 164 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS people or to introduce discord into parish circles, he cannot conscientiously refrain from putting an end to. That his housekeeper serves him with a "cabbage salad" instead of a well-broiled steak, habitually fails to clearstarch his collars, period- ically upsets the papers and letters on his roller- top desk, and neglects to keep his cossack in good repair — all this he may, if he will, condone; but that she meddles with matters purely ecclesiastical, goes gossiping and tale-bearing from house to house, or entertains congenial scandal-mongers in the kitchen or her room — this, and such like con- duct, he is imperatively called upon to check, even should the checking necessitate his discharging the offender. There may be strong and suflicient rea- sons for a parish priest's disregarding the strict letters of the clause, "nisi quae sit maturioris aeta- tis," in the decree cited on a former page — the impossibility of securing one of canonical age, for instance; but there are none for the violation of this injunction regarding the secular inmates of a presbytery, "nullo modo, sive directo, sive indi- recto, se sacris muneribus gerendis aut rebus eccle- siae administrandis immisceant." It is perhaps obvious to remark that the aver- age priest's housekeeper is not likely to meddle with parish business or distinctively church mat- ters unless the pastor himself has imprudently broached such topics to her, or still more impru- dently discussed with her the character and con- duct, faults and failings, of the parishioners The normal Catholic woman, in ov out of a presbytery, will not gratuitously proffer counsel on matters THE PRIEST'S HOUSEKEEPER 165 purely ecclesiastical or administrative to pastor or curate; the exceptional few who are inclined to do so may very easily be put in their place if only the priest keeps his place also. "There are occasions," says Canon Keatinge, "when the priest is tired. He is alone, and time hangs heavily on his hands, and the habit easily grows of finding his way to the kitchen with or without an excuse. Be sure of it, he Is always welcome, but he will pay for it." Occasionally the process is reversed : instead of the pastor's making his way to the kitchen, the house- keeper makes her way to the office or study, quite possibly for a legitimate purpose which could be accompHshed in two or three minutes, but which serves as an excuse for a prolonged conversation neither necessary nor profitable to either of them. Discussing the general subject of the priest's attitude toward women, the English author just mentioned remarks that "two women in your house are better than one." Were there any need of demonstrating the judiciousness of the remark, one would merely have to quote the old-time rustic proverb: "Two is compaay; three is none." There was ■ substratum of sound philosophy in the ap- parently purely jocular reply of a clerical friend of ours to his Ordinary's comment on the youthful- ness of our friend's housekeeper. "Why," said the prelate, "she can't be more than twenty."— "But, you see, Bisliop," replied Father S., "1 have two young housekeepers, and their combined years give more than the canonical age." Beyond all ques- tion the danger of relaxation, remissness, impru- dences, or familiarities is much less when in the ,1 ' ^.i 166 SACERDOTAL .SAFEGUARDS presbyterj' there are several of "the devout female sex" than when pastor and housekeeper are its only inmates, solus cum sola. To guard against all such dangers as, given our human nature and the inevitable consetfucnces of original sin, are inherent in even our necessary intercourse with members of the other sex, we need to employ the nntural preservative- s If-respect, a becoming sense of our priestly o^Tni;*. iiibitual circumspec- tion, and uniform custt < \ at {'»<: eyes and tongue. And, to make assurance < < mtr safety doubly sur.. we must be assiduous iii \c.i*i and mental pr^rvcr, and sincerely devoted to the exemplar .' .<» guardian of the holy virtue, our Immaculate Mother Mary. LIVING BY THK GOSPEL. So also the Lord ordained that they who prearh the go«r«l should live by the gospel.— i Cor.: ix, 11. W.alth id the Conjurer V IVvil, Whom, when he thinks he hath, the Devil Ym'.v him. Gold thou mayst safely touch; but if it ftick Unto thy hamlH, it wonndeth to th*- i|uiek. — Georgt Herbert. Money never made a man happy y^-t, nor will it Ther'' is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a nun has, the more he wi.t-. Instead of filling a vacuum, i nmkcn ore. If it satisfies Oa. want, it doub'^s and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it: "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith." — Benjamin Franklin. «iy/rONEY'S the root of all evil; givo us some IVl more root," said big Father Meah-y with « whimsical smile, as he helped himself to a second cigar and cast a sidelong glance at Father O'Cal- laghan, who had just been inveighing against what he termed an altogether too common practice among priests, that of continually nagging the people about the coin of the realm. "Yora quotation's not straight, Mealey," re- marKcd Dean Morrison, in whose study the trio were sitting; "'tis the desire, or love, of money, not money itself, that St. Paul characterizes as the root of all evil: and history as well as our personal observation seems io bear him out in his asser- tion." "Yes; I know it," rejoined the first speaker; "but if Paul ever had a debt of forty thousand dollars hanging over him, as I ' ave on my new St. Ber- 1«7 t kl 168 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS nard's, he would probably have been of the same mind concerning money as was lago concerning wine, that it is *a good familiar creature, if it be well used.'" "That's rather begging the question we've been discussing. Father Mcaley," said Father O'Calla- ghan. "In the first place no one claims that money in itself is an evil, and, in the second, it won't do to assume that all pastors whose Sunday sermons are one-sixth Gospel and five-sixths money have so legitimate a reason for desiring it as you have." We have no intention of reporting the dialogue at further length, but the portion of it already given may serve as an introduction to a common- sense discussion of a subject that is not infre- quently treated at priests' retreats and is all too often a topic of conversation among some priests' parishioners. There are certain truths connected with the matter that are called in question by nobody. Even the most censorious critic of the "money-grabbing" priest does not deny, at least in theory, that the scriptural doctrine, "the laborer is worthy of his reward," is applicable to his pastor, or that the fulfilment of the fifth commandment of the Church requires the faithful to contribute to the pastor's support. No one takes issue with the doctrine which St. Paul taught to the Corinthians, that "those who preach the gospel should live by the gospel," although a good many commentators, clerical as well as lay, probably diflfer one from another in their interpretation of the word "live" in the oft-quoted text. 111 LIVING BY THE GOSPEL 169 Preachers of the gospel have an undoubted right to live by it; but live how? In decent pov- erty, in well-to-do comfort, or in quasi-luxury ? And just what constitutes each of these three states? Obviously, there is ample room for dif- ference of opinion among those who undertake to answer such questions, especially as to the con- stituents of poverty, comfort, and luxur\'. If one man's meat may be another man's poison, one man's competency may be another man's indigence. What a city pastor considers the bare necessities of life may readily appear the luxuries of opulence to a foreign missionary, or, for that matter, to many a home missionary in the poorer dioceses of our own country. Wealth and poverty are rela- tive terms; and the curate whose salary is only two hundred a year may for all practical purposes be richer than his pastor who annually draws five or six times that amount. In a general way, how- ever, the three states that we have mentioned— poverty, comfort and luxury— arc sufficiently dif- ferentiated to be recognizable by all; and it would be interesting to learn what are the real sentiments of our best Catholics— that is, our most pious, fer- vent, conscientious Catholics, as to which of the three is the most congruous state or condition for the priest. While rrcognizing no doubt that the ideal priest, the closest possible human imitator of the great high priest, Jesus Christ, would practice in dress and food uiid lodging that grade of poverty the example of which was set by our Lord and was followed by His Apostles, and while aware that 4- rr 1* ll I 170 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS all down the centuries there have been, as there are still, apostolic priests who have held and hold that ideal up to the admiration or, it may be, the scoffmg of the world, very few of even our most exemplary Catholics to-day would declare that such a degree of mortification is an essential con- dition in the life of a goo' treatment ac- corded to the fifth precept of the Church by the teacher in the Sunday-school. As the fulfilment of the precept, the contributing to the pastor's support, lacks the element of actuality so far as the children of the catechism class are concerned, the explanation usually given of this command- LIVING BY THE GOSPEL 173 inent or law of the Church is probably more super- ficial than thorough. Obedience thereto will not become a practical question for the class until the boys and girls become men and women, so the pre- cept docs not receive all the attention and insist- ence that is given to moral duties of more imme- diate interest and import to the young. All loo often, apparently, the meagre explana- tory' comments of the Sunday-school teacher re- main unsupplemented by intelligent reading and study in maturer years. In any case, account for it as we may, it is an undeniable fact that some Catholics cither ignore the gravity of the obliga- tion imposed upon them by this particular law of the Church, or, knowing full well the strictness of the obligation, deliberately and dishonestly shirk its fulfilment. That such persons form only a small minority of the faithful in any one parish or any one diocese of the country iri perhaps quite true; but their existence at all is an abuse which merits public condemnation. At the same time it is hardly fair to the exemplary parishioners who give freely and cheerfully of their means for all religious purposes that they should be forced to listen to such condemnation, instead of the Word of God, week after week from January to Decem- ber. Once a year, perhaps, in the course of a series of instructions on the tommandments of God and the precepts of the Church, a set sermon on the subject will be appropriate; and, as has been intimated already, it is likely to be all the more effectual because of the preacher's appearing in the character of an expositor of Christian doc- :| i\ 174 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS trine, not in the role of an importunate creditor or a nagging dun. As for the subject matter of such a sermon, no priest presumably needs suggestions as to what he should say. He will naturally point out that the precepts of the Church are veritable laws, strictly binding on all her subjects. A society established by Christ in order to lead men to Heaven, the Church has undoubted power to make such laws and regulafions « she judges necessary for her preservation, her ^r )sperity, and Hie attainment of the end for which sht- was instituted. The obliga- tion imposed by her tifth precept is as rigorous as that involved in any of the otliers; and, according- ly, the lay Catholic who does not contribute in pro- portion to his means to the support, the congruous maintenance, of his parish priest is a flagrantly dis- honest debtor. He is guilty of patent injustice and is unquestionably bound to nvike restitution, just as he would be were he t». refuse payment of a legitimate debt to his medical doctor. It may further be pointed out th.il the layman's obligation to pay his (piota of his pastor's salary is not de- rived from ecclesiastical law only; it is founded on the natural law and upon divine legislation as well. A parish priest's vocation obliges him to attend to the immediate service of God and the care of .souls. He is in consequence debarred from seeking the emoluments of other professions and of business pursuits. Now, the most < li- mentary conception of justice clearly teaches that, being so debarred, lu- has ever>' right to look for his support to those with whose spiritual welfare LIVING BY THK (JOSPKL 175 i^"i he is charged, and in wliose hohalf he habitually labors. That his right is aeknowK-dged by divine law is evident from the prescribed payment of tithes in the Old Testament, and from various passages in the New amon^ j)lhrrs, SI. Paul's dt'c- laration that "they who sirvc llu- altar partake with the altar." Ever so little amplification of the foregoing points should sullice to denM)nstrate lo the avoragi* congregation of Catholics that, in contributing their proportionate share to the regular sal.'.ry ot their pastor, they are performing an act. not of pure generosity, but of strictest justice, and that to neglect such contributing is l») incur not merely the reproach of meanness and parsimony, but the stigma of unequivocal dishonesty. Very few ' than the state of their church buildings, and the one charity in which some of them appear to be especiidly interested is that which begins at home. The mention of avarice in connection with priests may nt first blush appear strangely incon- gruous and entirely uncalled for. If llu re is on earth one man who, more than any other, should msm^'^mi ■mm LIVING BY THE GOSPEL 17 in Irom his education, his profession, his ingrained conviction, and his acquired knowledge of the humea heart, ho immune from tlic attacks of this sordid vice, thai man is surely he who has conse- crated 'Js ■ "" to the service of God, to the imita- tion o»' • i . U. Not of an ordained pri»st, hut of an ordi>."i> layman, does a secular writer declare: "There is, indeed, no more pitiahle wretch thin the man who has mortgaged himself, soul and body, tc Mammon— in whom the one giant passion for gold has starved every other affection; no more painful spectacle than to see a man dragging his manhood at the heels of his employment, losing life for the sake of the means of living, disregarding the celestial crown held over his head, and raking to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the earth. The poorest o( ib human beings is the man who is rich in gold, but iiilellecfually and spiritually bankrupt /n«(/mj« inter opes inops." And yet, one of the first twelve priests fell a prey to avarice, althoujii' his apostolic training had been personally direc(< ,r the most commendable zeal. To assume that a youthful curate will surely learn from his experi- enced pastor all that he needs U> know about money and accounts is to take for granted what is not always provable — that the pastor is competent to impart the knowledge. Nemo dat quod non hahet, and this plausible theory when reduced to practice not infreauently proves to be a case of the blind leading the blind. LIVING BY THE GOSPEL 185 A due regard for method and the cultivation of business-like habits not only facilitate a priest's work and diminish his worry in administering the temporalities of his parish, but are conducive to a rational priestly use of his money throughout his life, and, a not unimportant point, ensure the proper, or at least the definite, disposition of such fortune, little or great, as he leaves behind him when life is over. Even the ideally apostolic pastor whose love of holy poverty leads to his habitual giving of his means to works of charity may, and should, leave behind him at least one thing, a last will and testament. Archbishop Tillotson's re- mark is as timely in our day as it was i his, two hundred years ago: "There are two things in which men, in other things wise enough, do usu- ally miscarry; in putting off the making of their wills and their repentance till it is too late." Many a Catholic prelate since uie Anglican archbishop's time has emphasized the same point in conferences to his priests, impressing upon them the necessity of their making definite testamentary disposition of their personal belongings so as to avoid, at their death, contestation by their relatives as to what should be regarded as the property of Father Blank and what, that of the church or the parish. Most readers of this page can probably recall more than one instance in which the neglect of a priest to make a will led to much subsequent disedification, to bitter disputes, and even to costly lawsuits. The present writer re* .tnbers one par- ticular case which quite verified the dictum of a rather cynical author: "What you leave at your 5-i ; 186 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS death let it be without controversy, else the lawyers will be your heirs." The proper time for making a will, in the case of a priest or any one else, is of course the date or the day when he becomes possessed of property the disposal of which may occasion dispute should he die intestate. Curates as well as pastors may congruously have their last will and testament drawn up with all due legal formality. While curates, however, may die, pastors must; so it be- hooves the latter especially not to postpone the performance of so really important an act. As the average American priest's life terminates some- where between the half-century and the three-score mark, it is scarcely too much to say that a parish priest who has reached the age of fifty without having as yet made his will is grossly negligent and merits a not too gentle reprimand from his ordinary. Like most other duties that are easily performable but through negligence are left unful- filled, the longer the making of one's will is put off the greater grows the reluctance to making it at all, and the more serious the risk of its remaining for- ever unwritten. It is not enough, however, that a priest should in due time make his will; the proprieties demand that the will should be a priestly one, its provi- sions clearly showing that the testator was a man of God rather than a mere provident citizen of the world. The wealth that has come to a priest as a patrimony or a heritage on the death of parents or other relatives may appropriately enough per- haps be left in large part to other members of his LIVING BY THE GOSPEL 187 family or to friends; but such fortune as he has acquired during his priestly years and in virtue of his priestly office will most congruously, it would seem, be left for the most part to works of religion and charity. That such disposition of a pastor's money and other possessions impresses the Cath- olic mind as being eminently right and proper was made clear only a few months ago by the lauda- tory comments of our Catholic press on the model priestly will of a venerable New England pastor, as on that pastor's explanation of tb « "*le of his various bequests. "I realize," fc^ that I came to this parish a poor man; tha irjm the parish has come whatever of worldly goods I pos- sess; and that accordingly the parish or its re- ligious works should receive the great bulk of whatever I have to leav*" That not all clerics' wills are dictated by the like commendable motives may be inferred from the relative infrequency with which one finds sim- ilar cases reported in our Catholic papers. From two hundred and seventy-five to three hundred American priests die every year; at least several scores of them are presumably fairly well-off financially; but it is doubtful that a scant dozen of their last testaments deserve any such praise as the one instanced in the foregoing paragraph. The ordinary of a large American diocese, the majority of whose priests are certainly not poor men, not long ago spoke very plainly to his clergy on this subject, characterizing as an abuse a priest's be- queathing everything to relatives and nothing lo religious or charitable institutions, and intimating 188 SACKKDOTAL SAFE(JUAKDS that he might eventually feel called upon to de- mand a sight of a deceased priest's will before accepting an invitation to his funeral. On the whole, perhaps, he lives best by the (Jospcl who has least to bequeath to any one when the business of life is over. Deeds of gifts during one's lifetime arc usually better worth while, and are obviously less selfish, than are testamentary bequests— of goods one can no longer keep. The pockets of the poor and the mite-boxes for the missions are better receptacles for a priest's su- perfluous cash than are the safety-vaults of the bank. The man who at the very outset of his eccle- siastical life I xclaimed, Dominus pars h^'-.ditatis meae, and whose detachment from earthly goods was mnde a condition precedent to his becoming a veritable priest— "Every one of you that does not renounce all that he possesseth, can not be my disciple"— such a man may indeed become rich; but it behooves him to take exceptional care that he be not excluded from the scriptural benedic- tion: "Blessed is the rich man that is found with- out blemish, and that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasure." 1 THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH One of the fimt and most indiapensablo Rtudics of the priest is the mastery of his mother tongue. He shoulii aoquire »o thor- ough a knowledge of hia own language thr.t he may lie able to speak and write it to perfection. — Father Mach, S. J. . . . The Ep'^lish is simple, clear, and never jars or halts; and oh, how batand and practice them, without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the free- dom of habitudes and conversation with the best company of both sexes; and, in short, without wearing oflf the rust which he con- tracted while he was laying in a stock of learning. — Dr;iden. m i f. AT a gathering of priests in 0.1 American rec- tory a year or two 8^0, the subject of con- gruous clerical hobbies was introduced, and the study of some foreign language — French, or Ger- man, or Spanish — was advocated as an excellent occupation for an hour or two of the ordinary priest's daily leisure. An interesting discussion about the respective importance and merits of these alien tongues was interrupted by an inquiry addressed by the youngest to the oldest priest of the group: "Well, Father Tom, what language would you advise me to take up as mif hobby?" — "English, my dear boy," was the unhesitating reply. "English, by all means." As the youthful cleric who had asked the question considered himself 189 1' ell: 190 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS 1 fairly proficient in the use of his mother-tongue, he was a little taken aback by this intimation that the time and attention which he had devoted to the study of grammar and composition in school and college needed to be supplemented by addi- tional assiduous effort to master the laws govern- ing English speech; but, the more he reflected upon the matter, the stronger became his conviction that Father Tom's reply was not so much an offhand joke as a bit of really judicious advice. That the same advice may appropriately be given to mnny another young priest in this country is an assertion the truth of which is not likely to be called in question by the best speakers and writers in the ranks of our clergy, or by any one else whose linguistic or philologic learning quali- fies him to speak with authority on the subject. The statement that "Jhe proprieties and delicacies of English are known to few," may be more dis- putable nowadays than it was in Dryden's time; but that these niceties of our language are still unknown, or at least unpracticed, by the generality of authors and orators is clear from the pitifully small number of writers and speakers who have achieved such unquestioned distinction in the mastery of English as to warrant their being called models of style. To attempt any new definition of literary style would be futile. The rhetorical treatises, quota- tion-books, dictionaries of thought, etc., are full of varied expressions defining what at best must ever remain an elusive, largely undefinable, entity. "Proper words in proper places," says Swi I'M H ! THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 191 "make the true definition of a style." **If thought is the gold," remarks Dr. Brown, "style is the stamp which makes it current, and says under what king it was issued." Perhaps ' jrd Chester- field's definition is as good as most others. "Style," he says, "is the dress uf thouglits; let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would be if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters." Thought is the substance of a book or a discourse, style is the form; thought is the matter, style is the manner; thought is the literary tailor's material, style is the peculiar cut he gives it; thought is the literary chefs food in the raw, style is the cocking to which he subjects it; thought, in fine, is what one has to say, and style is how one says it. It is clear from the foregoin.<{ that style, far from being a negligible quantity, is a very impor- tant factor in the production of any composition, oral or written, that has genuine merit. Just as a good tailor can make a better-looking suit of clothes out of homespun than can an inferior sartor out of broadcloth; just as a good cook can prepare a more savory meal from scraps and rem- nants than can a poor one from a prime roast of beef — so can a stylist present commonplace thoughts with an attractiveness and effectiveness which a profounder and more original author, de- ficient in style, can never attain. The successful teacher must not only know his subject but have the secret of imparting his knowledge; and the I '■ >' ii f ti I';! i ill; ' ' V-i. ■i U I w 192 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS effective writer or speaker must not only have something worth while saying, but must know how to say it in a worth while way. It does not follow that the way in question, the manner of one's expression, should be out of the common, or conspicuous; on the contrary, the bet- ter the stvle, the less attention it draws to itself. The art that conceals art is indeed nowhere more necessary than in literary composition. All must appear easy, unlabored, natural. Yet, as Colton judiciously remarks: "Nothing is so difficult as the apparent ease of a clear and flowing style. Those graces which, from their presumed facility, encourage all to attempt to imitate them, are usu- ally the most inimitable." That was a rare com- pliment paid to Goldsmith by the man in the street, who, after reading "The Vicar of Wakefield," de- clared: "Well, I don't see anything remarkable about the style of the book. 'Tis quite simple; in fact, 'tis just the wav I'd write, myself, if I were given to that sort of thing." A century before "The Vicar" was published, the French writer, Pascal, told the secret of the pleasure we experi- ence in reading such authors as Goldsmith: "When we meet with a natural style we are surprised and delighted, for we expected to find an author, and have found a man." It is with the hope of slightly helping an occa- sional reader of this book to acquire something of this naturalness of style, to disclose in both his sermons and his published compositions less of the author and more of the man, that this chapter is written It may be well, before going further, to THE I UBRICS OF ENGLISH 193 forestall some of the more or less stereotyped criti- cisms wliicli tiie chapter will probably, and not altogetlicr unnaturally, p ovoke. In the first place, I disclaim unequivocally the arrogant assumption that I am either a critical authority on the English language, or an adept in its use. In the second place, I readily admit that this book as a whole, and even this particular chapter, will afford ample justification for the advice, Medice, cura teipsum— which same advice, by the way, might quite as justly be proffered to many an occupant of the pulpit: not all clerical sticklers for consistency in others invariably set a personal example of prac- ticing what they preach. It is perhaps fortunate for many of us that this saying, "Physician, heal thyself," however effective as a smart retort, has after all but little argumenta- tive force or weight. "A more foolish requisition," says Richard Grant White, "was never uttered. That a physician cannot heal himself is no ground for belief that his advice may not profit others; nor is even the fact that he is ailing evidence that he is ignorant of his condition or unable to better it." The fact is that the average man who gives advice about health, or morals, or writing, can probably say with more of truth than did St. Paul: "The good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that 1 do." If I am asked why I expose myself to Diderot's jest on Bcccaria, "He has writ- ten on style a work in which there is no style," the answer is twofold : I have been requested by several clerical correspondents to write some such chapter as this one; and an experience of twenty- is 194 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS five years in teaching grammar and rhetoric has made me passably familiar with the rubrics of our language and with a considerable number of con- crete distinctions between good English and bad. For the encouragement of such younger clerics as have reason to believe that their knowledge of English is superficial rather than thorough or pro- found, let it be said at once that English grammar is a much more interesting study for men of thirty or forty than for boys of thirteen or fourteen. "Of all the tasks of our school-days," says a philologist of note, "perhaps none was more repugnant to any of us than the study of grammar"; and his state- ment is probably true of all the boys, old and young, who have wrestled with the rules of "gram- mar and parsing," from the days of Lindley Mur- ray to those of Thomus W. Harvey. Who that knows his Dickens has not chuckled with enjoy- ment or roared with laughter over this delicious bit of burlesque parsing, in "Nicholas Nickleby"? — "Ah, it's me," said Mr. Squeers, "and me's the first person singular, nominative case, agreeing with the verb it's, and governed by Squeers understood; as a acorn, a hour; but when Uie h is sounded, the a only is to be used, as a 'and, a 'art, a 'ighway." Much of our enjoyment of the burlesque probably arises from the resemblance which the Yorkshire schoolmaster's ridiculous jumble bears to almost equally ludicrous instances of parsing, remem- bered from the days when we wore red-topped, coppered-toed boots, and rode our sleds "belly- gutter" down the hill behind the school-house. Grammar, however, is neither so dry nor so use- THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 195 less a study as we were wont in those day to call it. "The structure of language," sass Dr. Blair, "is extremely artificial; and there are few sciences in which a deeper or more refined logic is em- ployed than in grammar. It is apt to be slighted by superficial thinkers, as belonging to those rudi- ments of knowledge which were inculcated upon us in our earliest youth. But what was then incul- cated before we could comprehend its principles would abundantly repay our study in maturer years." If it be objected to the foregoing quotation that it is taken from an eighteenth century writer whose views may now be considered obsolete, the following passage, from an American philologist who died less than a quarter of a century ago, will perhaps impress the readei ,s being more authori- tative: "That the leading object of the study of English grammar is to teach the correct use of English is, in my view, an error, and one which is gradually becoming removed, giving way to the sounder opinion that grammar is the reflective study of language, for a variety of purposes, of which correctness in writing is only one, and a secondary or subordinate one— by no means unim- portant, but best attained when sought indirectly. It is constant use and practice, under never-failing watch and correction, that makes good writers and speakers; the application of di- rect authority is the most efficient corrective. Grammar has its part lo contribute, but rather in the higher than the lower stages of the work." ' 1 BB$entiala of ISngHsh Graximar, by Wiiliam DwSght Whltn-'y i 196 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Whether or not one agrees with this philologist as to the leading object of grammatical study, one cannot but admit that the views just quoted are in harmony with those of Dr. Blair on the utility and interest of such study for men of mature years. It is true, of course, that these views are apparently dissented from by several authors whose prestige entitles their opinion to some weight. We find Richard Grant White, for instance, speaking of "that absurd and utterly useless 'branch' of educa- tion, English grammar"; but as this qualification of the subject is found in a book entitled "Every- Day English," a companion volume to the same Mr. White's "Words and Their Uses," it is clear that he, too, considers the language itself (apart from cut-and-dried grammatical formulas) emi- nently worth one's attention and study. Mere nomenclature does not affect the main purpose of the man who wishes to learn how to speak and write good English and to avoid speak- ing and writing bad English. Whether the direc- tions which he is told to follow are called rules of grammar, prectpts of rhetoric, the demands of good usage, or what not, really matters little, pro- vided these directions be faithfully carried out. It is not always easy indeed, nor is it at all necessary, distinctly to limit the respective domains of gram- mar and rhetoric and build a line-fence between them; and it is practically impossible to enclose within hard and fast boundaries the territory claimed by good usage. Concerning such a sen- tence as, "Every man can at least speak on one subj^t with authority, and that is his normal THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 197 health," the question that matters is not so much whether the choice and collocation of the words violate rules of syntax or principles of rheioric, as whether the sentence is a good one; and the reconstruction of the sentence in this form, "Every man can speak with authority on at least one sub- ject, his normal health," is the main thing, far more important than the knowledge of any tech- nical or scientific reason why such reconstruction is required. Excellent English, it need hardly be said, is spoken and written by many persons who entireb; ignore not merely the niceties, subtleties, and technicalities of grammar and rhetoric, but even the elementary principles of these linguistic arts. The natural born orator and the unlettered conversaUonalist who "talks like a book" are char- acters to be met with in not a few American com- munities; but this fact proves merely that there are exceptions to the general rule that training and drilling in the use of words and in the combination of words into sentences must precede the acquisi- tion of any genuine proficiency in either speaking or writing good English. One phrase used in the foregoing paragraph, "the choice and collocation of words," is worth re- peating, both because in a large sense it defines style itself as viewed by Swift— "proper words in proper places"— and because in a narrower sense it declares the specific scope of the rest of this chapter— the application of some of the recognized rubrics, or rules, of oui language to the selection of individual words and to the construction of con- crete sentences. Obviously, our discussion o' both 'S . m 198 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS words and sentences must be partial and sugges- tive — rather than comprehensive and thorough; but, even so, it may stimulate interest in a very practical subject and possibly move a few readers to a reperusal of the books in which the treatment of that subject is detailed and complete. One of the oldest of similes is that which likens language to an army. From time immemorial writers have used such expressions as "the battle of the books," "serried ranks of words," "battalions of arguments," "regiments of pamphlets," and sim- ilar metaphorical phrases. It may be worth while to point out thai each term of the comparison, the army and language, has its unit, or standard quan- tity, by the repetition of which any quantity of thr same kind is measured. An administrative unit in the army is the smallest organized subdivision having a complete administration of its own; in the United States infantry it is the regiment. The corresponding unit of language is the sentence; and, just as the efficiency of the army as a whole defends on the ordered strength and skill and dis- cipline of the various regiments that compose it, so the effectiveness of language in composition — a sermon or a book, an editorial article or a cate- chetical instruction- largely dependent upon the perfection with whit, its sentences are con- structed. A regiment of infantry is subdivided into battalions, companies, platoons, sections, and squads; the typical sentence is made up of coordi- nate and sub-ordinate clauses, subjects and predi- cates, adjuncts and phrases: and. finally, as the squad consists of privates, so the least of these sentence-divisions is made up of words. THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 199 A priest's vocabulary, the sum or stock of words which he has at his command, is generally large enough for the adequate expression of his thoughts, either in the pulpit or at his writing-desk. The number and variety of his studies at school, at college, and at seminarj', and the multifarious reading that usually occupies some portion of his normal day have naturally impressed upon his memory such a suflficiency of verbal signs as enable him to express clearly any and all ideas of which he has a distinct conception. Of the younger American priest, indeed, it is probably true to say that his vocabulary is more copious than select. He is fond of introducing slang into his conversa- tion, and does not scruple to use colloquialisms m his sermons— neither of which practices is to be commended as consonant with sacerdotal dignity. An experienced curate may congruously enough advise a younger fellow-curate to desist from sar- casticallv criticising their common rector's capri- ciousness or parsimony, lest the rector's patience should give way and the critic come to grief; but the advice gains nothing in cogency from being phrased in such jargon as: "Say, kul, I-t me put you wise. You want to go slow on that knockmg stuff, or cut it out altogether. The old man is on to you and is about fed up with the lemons you keep handing him. Better play the soft pedal, son, or you'll find yourself up against it, for when the Daddy does cut loose, he's some verbal scrapper, believe me." Slang is most frequently an oflfense against propriety, rather than purity, of diction. The latter quality is thus defined: "An author's die- ■ !| i Ml 200 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS tion is pure when he uses such words only as belong to the idiom of the language in opposition to words that are foreign, obsolete, newly coined, or with- out proper authority." Now, all the words in the example of slang given above are, with the excep- tion of "scrapper," good English terms. Taken separately they are quite reputable, yet, as used in the example, they violate propriety of diction be- cause they are misapplied, or, as Campbell ex- presses the idea, "they are employed as signs of things to which use hath not affixed then." Purity of diction, on the other hand, is violated by the use of such words or phrases as : auto, photo, enthuse, flustratcd, complected, clutterly, slantin- dicular, solemncholly, gumption, whopper, to sui- cide, to size up, to back out of, tour de force, a la mode, adios, sub rosa, entre nous, nicht wahr, auf wiedersehen, etc., e.c. Should any reader be in- clined to question the propriety of calling the at- tention of clerics to such expressions as the fore- going, we beg to inform him that perhaps the most ludicrous word in the list, "solemncholly," ap- peared a few years ago in a serious poem, or "pome," published h a Catholic journal— and the poet was a priest. Impropriety of diction arises most frequently from the use of words in senses different from their real meanings. The pastor who declared to his congregation: "I will not demean myself by harping upon money," was guilty of faulty diction : he meant that he would not lower, degrade, or bemean himself. "Demean" is the equivalent of "behave." A much grosser error was that of the THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 201 cleric who bewailed his lot in being "illegible" for an irremovable rectorship. He did not state whether or not his handwriting was "eligible." It must have been inadvertence rather than igno- rance that was accountable for a retreat-master's advising a body of religious : "Always keep forag- ing ahead in the way of perfection." Conversely, it was probably pretentious ignorance, and not mere inadvertence, that led a country editor to write : "Celebrating Mass, preaching, administer- ing the sacraments, reciting the office, attending sick-calls— these are the ordinary avocations of the parish priest." He meant just the opposite of what he said. The duties or activities mentioned consti- tute the priest's vocation; his avocations are mat- ters which call him away from these duties. Some- thing of the same fondness for "elegant" words dominated that father whose son, being off for his summer holidays, was said to be "enjoying his vocation.'* Simpler and more common examples of this misuse of words occur in the substitution of "lay" for "lie," "stop" for "stay," "last" fcr "latest," "less" for "fewer," "kind of" for "rather' or "some- what," "visit with" for "visit," "tell him good-bye''^ for "bid him good-bye" or "say good-bye to him," and, as the old-time locution has it, "many others too numerous to mention." "You'd better lay down for a while and rest," said Father Grady to his curate.— "Thank you. Father," was the reply, "but when I lay down yesterday afternoon I couldn't sleep, so I think I shall not lie down today." The pastor's "lay" was wrong; the curate's, right. "On I -.11 202 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS my way to New York I stopped two days in Boston visiting with my uncle," is bad English. What the sper'"^ meant was: "On my way to New York Is. id at Boston, and stayed there two days visiting my uncle." "Did you hear my last ser- mon?" inquired a young priest of a friend. "I hope not," was the accurate reply, "but I heard your latest one." The distinction between "less" (referring to quantity) and "fewer" (having to do with number) was well observed by the physician who said to his portly patient: 'Take fewer meals and eat less at each, and in six months you will weigh less and have fewer complaints." In the latest book of one of our priest-noveiists occurs this sentence: "Still, it cannot be an easy life to be one of seven or eight Protestant ministers in such a small town." As the writer evidently means to emphasize the smallness of the town, and not its difference in this or that respect from other small towns, the concluding clause should be "so small a town." "Anyhow," said an indignant altar-boy the other day to a curate whose Mass he had served that morning, "you're not as nice as Father Callahan. He don't jump on a fellow for every lit' e break he makes." If the lad had a nicer, more precise knowledge of his mother- tongue, he would have said: "At any rate, you're not so kind as Father Callahan. He doesn't scold a boy for every little mistake he makes." After a negative, or a question implying a negative an- swer, the proper correlatives are so . . . as, not as . . . as; and "don't" is (colloquially) correct only when "do not" can be grammatically used in its place. THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 203 The misuse of even the smallest words, the least important parts of speech, may occasion notable mistakes in meaning. Placing, or omitting, the article "a" before "few," for instance, changes the sense of that word in an appreciable degree. If a pastor says to his people, "Few of you go to daily Communion," he is reproaching them, since he im- plies that scarcely any of them approach the Holy Table. If he says, "A few of you go to Holy Com- munion," he is complimenting those (a number worth mentioning) who do approach it. Among the testimonials published in an advertising cir- cular issued by an American vendor of altar wines, I find this rather strange statement: "I shall al- ways use your wine in the hereafter." The two superfluous little words "in the" give the sentence a meaning quite other than its author intended. The mistake probably arose from his having in mind two synonyms, "future" and "hereafter," and his writing the latter while thinking of the former. The mention of synonyms suggests a reference to another quality of diction, that which the rhet- oricians call precision. A word may be pure English, and may conform in a general way to the demands of propriety, without being precise, that is, without conveying the exact shade of meaning which best expresses the idea of the speaker or writer. "Do what I will, I cannot remembc ^ where I left my breviary," is an instance of lack of pre- cision. What we remember recurs to us without any effort; what is recalled to mind only after some effort has been made to recall it is recol- lected. We do not remember, we cannot recollect. i iJ m 204 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Limitations of space preclude even a summarized discussion, in this chapter, of precision in the use of words; but the reader may take it for granted that the study of English synonyms is not less at- tractive than it is important. Of all the text-books which it has been the present writer's lot to ex- pound in the class-room none was so generally popular among the students, or so thoroughly mastered for examination days, as "Graham's Synonyms." Even those boys to whom English was a foreign language invariably received a higher "note" for the subject. Synonyms, than for any other taught in the class. To come at length to the administrative unit of language in composition, the sentence: obviously, the primal, imperative requisite of such a unit is that it be intelligible, understandable; or, to use tlie phraseology of the rhetoricians, every sentence should at least be clear, even if it falls short of lucidity. The normal man speaks or writes in order to make himself understood by others. Vol- taire's sarcasm, "Men employ speech only to con- ceal their thoughts," carries a suggestion of truth only when it is applied to diplomi lists or to hu- morists; and the speech of even these classes must, to be effective, clearly express something, if it be only deception or nonsense. The humorous letter of recommendation given by a clerical friend of ours to a pair of import-mate youths of whom he knew next to nothing is a case in point: "These two young men will, in my estimation, be able to come up to the ordinary requirements of the work they may be competent to do." While quite as non- THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH committal as Lincoln's criticism, "For those who like this sort of book I think it is about the sort of book they'll like," the recommendatory sentence can scarcely be condt-mned as obscure or ambig- uous. In this respect it differs from verj' many sentences uttered by clerical speakers and printed in books written by clerical authors. If there is one rule the observance of which is of paramount importance in the expression of thought, and which is nevertheless violated more frequently perhaps than are most other rhetorical precepts, it is Quintilian's rule for clearness : Construct the sentence in such a way that its meaning not only may be understood, but cannot possibly be mis- understood. This rule needs no justification. Common sense approves its reasonableness, and daily experience demonstrates its utility. It is evident that a sen- tence may, without losing all its effectiveness, be long or short, loose or periodic, balanced or un- even, smooth-flowing or choppy, natural or pedantic, nervous or feeble; but, if it lacks per- spicuity or clearness, it fails to accomplish the essential purpose for which it has been constructed. It is a truism to say that there can be no clear writing without clear thinking, but the converse statement is perhaps disputable. There are per- sons who believe it quite possible (Roileau's opin- ion to the contrary notwithstanding)* to think clearly and yet write obscurely. We can hardly, they contend, brand as falsehood the assertion ,pti i iC» que Ton conceit blon s'enonce clalreraeat Et ICT mrtB iJwir Te dire arrfvtwt alBemfetit. kS^^ I f I fi 206 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS which we have frequently heard others make, if indeed we have not occasionally made it our- selves: "I know well enough what I mean, but I can't find the words that will exactly express it." Divergence of opinions as to this point does not, however, really affect the practical consideration that, in order to write clearly, one must have ac- quired, either directly by definite study, or indi- rectly by wide reading of the best authors and association with correct speakers, a fairly thor- ough knowledge of the rubrics of the language, familiar acquaintance with llie whole body of those laws — of grammar, of rhetoric, and of cur- rent usage — that determine what is, and what is not, good English. Now, these laws comprise a multiplicity of little details which, taken sep- arately, appear to be of slight importance or en- tirely negligible, but which in reality have much to do with the lucid style of a whole composition, as with the specific clearness of a single sentence. Grammatical details concerning the proper use and placing of pronouns cannot safely be disre- garded by any one who desires to avoid obscurity. The relation between nouns and their verbal sub- stitutes has indeed always been recognized as a stumbling-block to most writers; and the ability so to place pronouns and pronominal expressions that the words to which they refer cannot he mis- taken is less common, even among author f note, than is desirable. "When T hear a man get to his its." said William Cobbett, "I tremble for him"; and his sentiment seems to be warranted when we leflect that in "The 0"b: m» . ^LIM'iiilUJm ..Liil I. IJI i mmm 208 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS i i I J- "the pious youth," it may be possible to make this sentence clear, even while preserving the indirect narrative form; but, at best, such substitution would cause awkwardness or stiltedness. The preferable correction is made by recasting the sentence thus: "The pastor wrote to his ordinary: 'My dear Bishop, Father Brown, the curate whom you re- cently sent me, is very ascetic — unduly so, in my opinion. While his practices of mortification may not permanently injure his health, I fear that they will lessen the efficiency of his work as my assist- ant. As he does not heed my remonstrances, I should be obi ^ed if you would write him a kindly letter, advisi 7 him to eat more, sleep longer, and take plenty of outdoor exercise.' " A common error of careless writers (and their name is legion) is the use of "and which" to con- nect one clause with a previous one that contains no "which." "He laid down the law with cock- sure authoritativeness and dogmatic finality, a habit peculiar to pedagogues, and which is exas- perating to all sensible persons." The insertion of "which is" after "habit," or the striking out of "which is" before "exasperating" will remedy the mischief. The confusion that results from failure to give to every pronoun an antecedent to which the mind mav, or rather must, refer that pronoun is illustrated by the following ludicrous statement, auotod from the Woman's Home Companion: "Alfonso XIII was the son of Alfonso XII, who died, five months before he was born, at the age of twenty-eight." According to the construction, "he" refers of course to Alfonso XII instead of fi^^^^^^^^^^^R^HR -if Jl H l-.VT THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 209 Alfonso XIII, and, as a result, the former mon- arch's death is made to occur before Y .s birth. Notwithstanding the fact that good usage author- izes the locution "than whom," the word "than" is a conjunction, not a preposition; and therefore a pronoun following "than" is not necessarily in the objective case. "He can preach better than I, but adverse criticism annoys him more than me." "I'd rather face him than her, for she has a sharper tongue than he." "I" and "me" in the first of these sentences are correct forms, as are "her" and "he" in the second. "I liked his sermon the best of any of them." Both grammar and good usage demand "better than any other" or "best of all," or "better than all others." "That explanation of all others he should have avoided," is nonsense; an explana- tion simply cannot be one of all others. "Of all explanations that is the one he should have avoided," or, "That explanation, beyond all others, he should have avoided," is correct. One other reflection regarding the use of pro- nouns it may be worth while to set down. Tautol- ogy, or the repetition of the same word, is a far less grievous offense than is either obscurity or am- biguity. Dr. Campbell, in his "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says on this point: "It is easy to con- ceive that in numberless instances the pronoun *he' will be ambiguous, when two or more males happen to be mentioned in the same clause of a sentence. In such a case we ought always either to give another turn to the expression, or to use the noun itself, and not the pronoun; for when the repetition of a word is necessary it is not offen- 14 I 210 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS j Ji i i I. sive." The better plan is to alter the structure of the sentence in such a way as to avoid both ambi- guity and repetition; but if there must be a sacrifice of eupl.ony or else of clearness, there should be no hesitation in securing perspicuity rather than harmony, sense rather than sound. Few writers on English composition have failed to call attention to the fact that, as our language has scarcely any of those inflections which in other tongues, Latin and Greek, for instance, show the mutual relations of words, the order and colloca- tion of the elements of an English sentence must be looked after with especial care. In varying phraseology all our modern rhetoricians repeat the rule laid down by Dr. Blair: "A capital rule in the arrangement of sentences is, that the words or members most nearly related should be placed in the sentence as near to each other as possible; so as to make their mutual relations clearly appear." If, as we have seen, the observance of this rule is necessary in the case of pronouns, it is scarcely less important in that of adverbs, adverbial phrases, and similar modifying elements. The writer who has learned how to place in their ex- actly proper position such adverbs as only, wholly, at least, at all events, perhaps, indeed, in fact, and too, has mastered half the secret of constructing sentences that are clear. A pertinent observation concerning the use of some of these adverbs by priests is that the wrong position of the words matters less in spoken than in written sentences. In preaching a sermon our tone and emphasis frequently suffice to show ^2Pi\?cr ^•'•<'T:: '-■.,■ mi- ■' V, .J!lf.rt S^ .,* THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 211 clearly a reference which is not at all apparent when the words are set down in the same order in writing or in print. I only mentioned last Sun- day in speaking of tlu' sacrament of Penance one of the qualities of contrition," says the preacher; and the emphasis he gives to "one" indicates that it is the word to which "only" is meant to refer. His hearers understand him, and hence, for all practical purposes, his spoken sentence is clear. As printed above, however, it is not clear, at least not immediately so, to the reader. From its posi- tion, "only" seems to modify "mentioned," and we are led to expect some such subsequent clause as "I did not dwell upon," or "1 did not insist upon." Had the preacher said, "In speaking last Sunday on the sacrament of Penance, 1 mentioned one only of the qualities of contrition," his sentence would have been clear to the eye as well as to the ear. "Of the relative piety or indifference shown by the Catholics of our city you may judge for yourself from the statement that in two parishes only three hundred communicants daily approach the Holy Table." As spoken, that sentence may have been quite clear; as written, it is unmista'' '^ly ambig- uous. It contains praise or blamf 'rding as "only" is made to refer to "two pi . . es" or to "three hundred communicants." Nor can the faulty construction bo justified by saying that the placing of a comma after "only" will remove the ambiguity. Punctuiition is useful, but the sense of such a statement as the foregoing should not be left to the mercy of a comma, if the sentence is not recast, "only" should be replaced by "alone." 1 AT^rTI^SrjTi^TT^FTtt^ 212 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ; A rather fantastic use, or misuse, of a particular adverb appears at present to be coming into fash- ion, especially among such of the occasionally in- devout female sex as write "best sellers." It is the employment of "too" at the beginning of a sen- tence. "Too, he wan considered to be the hand- somest member of the group." "Too, she longed for the restfulness of the old home atmosphere." It is surely bad enough to begin an independent sentence with "however"; to give the same promi- nence to "too" is to take intolerable liberties with an inoffensive word. To find an equally grotesque misuse of the word, one has to recall the compli- mentary terms i-- which the three Highlanders re- ferred to the liquor proffered them by their laird : " 'Tis the best whiskey," declared Sandy, "I never drank in all my born days."— "So did I, neither," commented Aleck. And Jock corroborated both statements with, "Neither did I, too." "I haven't smoked all morning," said a cleric recently. "Neither have I," replied one of his hear- ers, but all the same I've enjoyed two cigars since breakfast." "I haven't all morning had a smoke," was the first speaker's meaning. "Dean Sullivan spoke of the suggestion that the Pope's proposals for peace might be rejected with absolute con- tempt." The meaning here is probably that the Dean spoke with absolute contempt of the sugges- tion mentioned; but the position of the modifying phrase seems to imply that the Pope's proposals might be contemptuously rejected. "I never expect to be a bishop," modestly affirms Father Byrnes. His presumable meaning is not what his phrase- THE RUBRICS OP ENGLISH 213 ology indicates : that, although he habitually thinks a good deal about the episcopal dignity, he does not ever admit the probability of his eventually wear- ing the purple. What he really intends to say is : "I have never expected, nor do I now expect, to be a bishop," or, more briefly, "I do not believe that I shall ever be a bishop." Some examples of the misplacement of "only" have already been given. The editors of the Standard Dictionary make a statement which should prove I'.n eff'ective substitute for numberless other examples: "Some years ago a critic showed that, by the principles of permutrtion. a short paragraph of a noted Eng- lish writer, containing several onlys, might have any one of about five thousand meanings," This chapter, however, has already grown to an inordinate length, and it must, therefore, even at the cost of symmetry and rounded-out complete- ness, be brought to a speedy conclusion. Needless to say, there are dozens of other linguistic rubrics of which no mention has been made in the preced- ing paragraphs — rules relating to such qualities of a sentence as unity, force, ease, and harmony; and, even with respect to clearness, what has been said is suggestive rather than in any sense exhaustive. A full treatise, not a mere chapter of a book, would be needed for the adequate discussion of words and sentences, even if little or no space were ac- corded to those larger structures of language in composition, the paragraph, the chapter, and the discourse or the book as a whole. Despite its manifold deficiencies, however, this essay will serve its essential purpose if it revives in even a I 3 214 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS few readers their possibly waning interest in the art of writing and stimulates thein to exercise addi- tional care in the expression of their thought. One other reflection is scarcely omissible. Cler- ical critics who deride attention to the minor points in the rubrics of English, like those who scoff at the little things in the rubrics properly so called, are unmistakably at fault. The slipshod, slovenly writer or speaker who brands any discrimination in the choice of words as purism, and pooh-poohs all care about placing words, phrases, and clauses in their proper positions as undue punctiliousness, is as illogical as he is apt to be overbearing. "After all, one must credit one's hearers or readers with some degree of intelligence," is a statement the truth of which no one is likely to call in question, but its truth does not furnish a vahd excuse for obscurity or ambiguity in the sentences addressed to such readers or hearers. Common sense, not less than grammar or rhet- oric, demands that the meaning of one's sentences not only may be, but must be, understood. The reason is clear, at least to all who have studied the philosophy of style, and especially to those who are familiar with Herbert Spencer's admirable discus- sion of the economy of attention. The gist o that discussion is contained in the following brief para- graph: "A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him requires part of this power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further pari; and only that part which remains can be used THE RUBRICS OF ENGLISH 215 for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and atten- tion can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived." It will perhaps be admitted by the readers of this book that the concluding words of the quotation consti- tute a fairly complete justification of this whole chapter. fWwewmnBPanRii !« AVPLi' tpn ''? - " *J!i ' i :: 11 i ! 1 ! i ^]^k.'JLiii^ ' Wf- A CLERICAL CLUB -NIGHT The flute ftnd the psaltery make a sweet melody, but a pleMaitt tongue is above them both. — Ecclut.: cl, tl. Misce stultitiam conciliis brevem, Dulce est desiper* in loco. — Horace. Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty with- out affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceited- ness, novel without falsehood.— SAofcc«peare. THE August meeting of the Dors Clnb* was unusually well attended, partly because the July meeting had been postponed in consequence of the recent death of the Ordinary of the diocese, and partly because several out-of-town members had come to Anyopolis for the Eucharistic Con- gress. The Club's quarters for the evening had been established in Dean O'Reilly's spacious study and smoking-room; and the Dean's vivacious assistant, Father Lavers, was just passing arouuu the cigars for the initial smoke when a chorus of welcoming voices greeted the entrance of the asso- ciation's president emeritus. Father John Regan. Thereafter : Dean O'Reilly. Welcome, Father John: you're well come indeed. I was beginning to fear I wouldn't have your help to-night in restraining the exuberance of some of our high-strung fellow-Dorsites here. Hogan and Dempsey, to say nothing of these younger chaps, McGarrigle, 1 An association of priests mentioned In one of the author's previous volumes, "Clerical Colloquies." 216 i*J'Y, ■■iP'^'/.:V'.\ ,,U..i,-.V,'J/'.^^^. rv A CLERICAL CLUB-NIGHT 217 Lavers A Co., are evidently expecting a boister- ous evening, while Eversley looks for all the world as if, like the war-horse in Job, "he sniell- eth the battle afar otf." Mgr. Eversley. Don't you believe him. Father John; we're all very peaceably inclined. Per- sonally, I'm simply anticipating some good stories from our friends from the rural districts. It has been some time since we've had Fathers Brawley and Hennessy at the Club together, Fr. John. Hello, Father Jerry. I didn't know you were in town. Why haven't you been up to the house? Fr. Brawley. I just got in an hour ago, Father John; and O'Connor insisted on my coming over here to meet all the fellows. I'll be up to see you before returning to St. Hubert, how- ever. In the meantime, how are Mrs. Dolan and Maggie and Tim? Fr.John. All well, though Tim complains occa- sionally of his "sciattcky." Mrs. Dolan will be delighted to see that they haven't starved you, out at St. Hubert. You're loo.ang stout and hearty, Jerry. Fr. Hogan. I say, Hennessy, what'*? the talk down 5'our way about our next bishop? Fr. Hennessy. Well, we are rather expecting to hear, any day, that our friend the Dean here has been notified of his appointment. Fr. hogan. I'm afraid that would be too good to be true. As the French say, 'tis the unexpected that always happens: and in all probability we'll get an outsider. ~^>%. ^JT^M 218 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Fr. Dempxey. I'm not so sure of that. It would be pretty hard to find men better fitted for the position than some of our own clerics; and I shall not be a bit surprised if our next bishop proves to be one of our diocesan brethren, or even one of our Club's members. Fr.Lavers. Thanks, ever so much, Fath».r Larry; but don't you think I'm a little young yet for so responsible an office? Fr. John. You're getting over your youth. Tommy ; but your inveterate solemnity and habitual taci- turnity spoil your chances so far as the purple is concerned. Joking aside, I suppose wc shall be getting news of the appointment very 'oon now. 'Tis over a month since the bishop's funeral. Fr. McGarn'gle. Six weeks, next Wednesday. As one reason given for adopting the new plan of episcopal appointments was the comparative quickness with which they could be made, I'm rather surprised that the announcement hasn't appeared already. Fr. O'Connor. Apropos of the new plan, what do the priests in your section of the diocese think of its merits, Brawley? Fr. Brawlei]. On the whole, their views are decid- edlv favorable. True, one or two of the con- snltors and irremovable rectors are a little dis- gruntled because of t ■ ; Vssencd importance in the matter of nam ' ^le bishop; but the general opinion seems to bo that the new plan will work out better than the old. Fr. Hoqan. By the way, Fversley, I had a visit the ' UajJ-r'-i-..^ R^BV^^ A CLERICAL CLUH-NIOHT 219 other day from the Vicar-Clcncral of Ncally- ville, and he ralher intimated that the new i\v- cree of tlie Consistorial Congregation is not too favorably hmked on by our bishops thcinsoivcs. What do you think? Mgr. Everslcy. There's nothing in it, Tim. In the first plaee, the original draft of the decree was sent to ever> bisli oj) in tlie country to inform him as to what was proposed, and to get his views concerning modifications which he might consider necessarv'; and a large majority of the prelates expressed themselves in favor of the change. In the second place, the advantages of the new plan are so patent that a man who has had experience of the disadvantages of the old style of proposing names of candidates for a vacant see can scarcely fail to acknowledge and approve them. Fr.Hennessy. What particular disadvantages, apart from occasional long delays in making the appointment, were inherent in the old plan? Mgr. Eversley. Well, one of them was pointed out in a document issued by the Congregation of the Consistory about seven years ago. It strictly forbade the publication of the names of the candidates and enjoined the utmost secrecy concerning the deliberations of the clergy and the bishops in selecting the terna. Fr.John. An excellent regulation, too. I remem- ber when, a good many years ago, it became generally known that the late Father Timmons' name headed the terna for the diocese of Tro- cario, and then the appointment went to a priest 220 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS from another diocese altogether, poor Timmons felt pretty bad. He couldn't get it out of his head that some reflection had been cast upon either his ability or his character, or both. Fr.Dempsey. Yes; and another disadvantage of the old system was that the new bishop almost invariably felt himself somewhat handicapped by his knowing, as of course he did, who had voted for him, and who against. It made his position a little delicate in a number of circum- stances, and occasionally restricted his full free- dom of action. There'll be none of that incon- venience under the new system. Dean O'Reilly. On the face of it, don't you think, the new method should commend itself to all of us. If we have the elementary good sense to credit Rome with knowing its own business pretty nearly as well as we profess to know ours, the presumption is certainly in favor of the new decree. Loyalty to the Church de- mands our willing adhesion to her disciplinary rulings, and censorious criticism of this par- ticular ruling is at least premature. Objectors may well wait until we see how the system works out in practice. Mgr. Everslej. And even if it doesn't work so well as Rome hopes it will, provision is made in the decree itself for the trial of some other plan. Its final clause states that the decree shall be in force "ad nutum Sedis Apostolicae." In the meantime, I think we may all rest assured that our next bishop, no matter where he may come from, will justify Rome's wisdom in selecting A CLERICAL CLUB-NIGHT 221 him. So far as I know, every prelate whose appointment in this country during the past quarter of a century came as a surprise, be- cause he was chosen outside the tenia, has invariably made good. Fr.Lauers. All of which is doubtless very inter- esting; but I have a hunch that Fathers Brawley and Hennessy didn't come over here to-night to talk shop, or listen to it, either. I move, accord- ingly, that we change the subject. Fr. McGarrigle. I second the motion — and declare it carried. What's the last good thing you've heard in the line of stories. Father Jerry? Fr. Brawley. Stories! What stories, save chest- nuts, do you suppose we get hold of out in the country? If you can stand a chestnut, how- ever, the best one I have come across in a long while is Francis Murphy's introduction to an after-dinner speech in London at a St. Patrick's Day banquet. "I'm American," said he, "by residence, English by language, Irish by extrac- tion, and half Scotch and half soda by choice." Fr.Lavers. That's all right, all right. Father Hennessy, what's your latest? Fr. Hennessy. Like Father Brawley's, the one I've enjoyed best of late months is not new. I pre- sume most of you have read it in Shane Les- lie's "The End of a Chapter." Tis about the challenge sent by the football captain of the Jesuit school, Beaumont, to the captain of Eton College. With charactf-'stic superciliousness, the Eton man asked: v^hat is Beaumont?" The answer "vras really worth while: "Beau- 222 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS mont is what Eton was — a school for Catholic gentlemen !" Fr. Galligan. Good for Beaumont : that was a su- perb retort. Speaking of retorts, by the by, a quiet old monk from St. Isidore's got otf a fairly good one down at Father Anderson's last week. About a dozen of us had been attending the closing of Anderson's Forty Hours, and were having a smoke and a chat in the rectory, after the services. Father Jack Quinn had been quizzing the religious for some time, and finally said: "You know. Father Dominic, you regu- lars take the vow of poverty and . ." — "And," interrupted the monk, "you seculars say you keep it. The remark is about as true nowa- days as it was when originally made — to a bare- footed friar in the thirteenth century by an Italian pastor who subsequently lost his parish because of his simoniacal practices." Jack didn't quiz the old man any more, you may be sure. Fr.Hogan. Not at all bad, and Quinn deserved what he got. That joke about the vow of pov- erty was blue-moldy when I was an altar-boy. I wonder, by the way, whether there is any other form of wit so generally popular, among intellectual people at least, as the clever rejoin- der, the bright repartee. I confess I enjoy it most, especially if 'tis unsullied by any taint of malice. Fr.Lavers. Give us a sample of the kind you prefer. Father Tim. Fr. Hogan. Well, take Charles Lamb's reply to the mm A CLERICAL CLUB-NIGHT 223 reproach of his superior in the India House, "You always come late to the ollice."— "Yes, but see how early I leave." Or Sydney Smith's an- swer to the doctor who reconunended him to take a walk on an empty stomach. "On whose?" inquired Sydney. Or the riposte of the Austrian journahst to his enemy wiiom he met in a narrow passage and who accosted him with, "I'll not make way to let a fool pass."— "But / will," said the journalist, pressing himseif against the wall. Fr. McGarrigle. What's the matter with the suffra- gette's reply to a heckler in her audience who sneeringly asked, "What would you do, madam, if you were a gentleman?" — "I'm not sure," she replied; "what would you do if you were one?" Fr. Dempsey. That recalls Boyle O'Reilly's de- lightful reply to a member of the Papyrus Club. Boyle was making a humorous speech one evening, and in the course of it ventilated some extravagant opinions. "That's not right; that's Irish," interrupted a fellow-member. "'Tis better to be Irish than be right," coolly replied O'Reilly; and he proceeded to get off some more delicious fooling. Fr. Hennessy. Just here is where the association of ideas comes in. The first connotation of "O'Reilly" in my mind is his poem on Wendell Phillips; and the thought of the great abolition- ist brings to mind his rather crushiprt retort to a Methodist minister. Do you all remember it? No? Well, Phillips had been lecturing on aboli- tion in a Western city one evening, and, the 224 SA'^IERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS j I! i following morning, was on a train going East. In the same car with him was a group of some twenty Methodist parsons who had been attend- ing a conference the day before. One of the ministers, a big, burly, black-whiskered fellow, learning from the conductor that the quiet gen- tleman in the rear seat was the Boston orator, accosted him with : "Ah, you're Wendell Phil- lips, are you, sir?" — "Yes, sir; that's my name."— "Well, sir, I was just thinking of writ- ing you a letter."— "I have no doubt I should have much pleasure in reading it," courteously replied Phillips. — "No, you wouldn't; no, you wouldn't, sir," said tho parson in an aggressive tone and so loudly as to attract the attention of all the passengers; "I was going to give you a piece of my mind, sir. I want you to under- stand that you've no business to come out West here talking abolition. We have no slaves here. Why don't you go down South and lecture?" — "You are a minister of the Gospel, are you not. sir?" mildly inquired Phillips.— "Yes, sir; I am." — "And it is your mission to save souls from hell, is it not?"— "Yes, sir; it is.— "Well, then, why don't you go there?" Fr. Lavers. About as polite a way of telling a man to go to Hades as ever I heard of. F: . Brawleij. By the way, wasn't it Wendell Phil- lips who said, in his lecture on "The Lost Arts," that there are only eleven original jokes in the world ? Fr. McGarrigle. Possibly, but you must remember that when he made that statement Bradley hadn't been created a Monsignor. mtmM A CLERICAL CLUB-NIGHT 225 Dean O'Reilly. Come, come, Father George; don't allow your wit to rout your charity. Father Piadley is an exemplary priest, and moreover — he is not here. Fr.McGarrigle. Oh, well, I wouldn't mind saying that to his face. Fr. Hogan. Then, let me tell you, young man, that you should mind. Old Sam Jolmson was quite right when he said that a man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down. Fr. Hennessy. Besides which. Father George, you should remember that what used to be called "twitting on facts" is not a very gentlemanly proceeding. There's a French saying that some one has turned into English, to the effect that The vilest of all cowards for whom contempt is felt Is the dastard verbal boxer who hits below the belt. Fr. McGarrigle. Enough said : I apologize. Tran- seat Bradley, Who knows any other good re- torts, ancient or modern? Fr. Lavers. Well, I've heard worse ones than Charlie Foley's come-back at the cross-eyed fel- low with whom he collided while turning a corner in Chicago. "Confound you," said the cross-eyed chap, "why don't you look where you're going?" — "Confound yourself," said Charlie, "why don't vou go where you're look- ing?" Fr. John. The repartee that has always impressed me as being a gem of pure wit is O'ConneU's IB L 226 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS i s amendment to the motion of the Orange mem- ber of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Massy-Massy. The motion was to tlie effect that, as "mass" was a popish word, "tide" should be substituted for it in English com- pounds, so that Christmas, Candlemas, etc., should be called "Christide," "Candletide," and so on. "I move in amendment," said O'Connell, "that the honorable gentleman set the example by styling himself, not Sir Thomas Massy-Massy, but Sir Thotide Tidy-Tidy." Dean O'Reilly. Well, my favorite is the reply, in the same House of Commons, of an Irish Na- tionalist to a bitter auti-Irish speech of Joe Chamberlain, away back in 1886. Chamber- lain was something over six feet in height, and, not being stout, looked still taller. He had broken with Gladstone and in this particular speech was especially vitriolic against Home Rule. No sooner had he taken his seat than an Irish member took the floor, beginning his reply with, "Mr. Speaker, the physical conformation of the gentleman who has just spoken, and the whole tenor of his speech, irresistibly remind me of a line in which a British poet describes the London Monument, which, he says, 'Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies.' " Fr. Lavers. A bully retort, indeed. Mgr. Eversley. "Facilis descensus Averno" : we're getting down to puns, I see. Fr. O'Connor. And why getting down to them, pray? Mgr. Eversley. Because the pun is admittedly an A CLERICAL CLUB-NIGHT 227 5 =3 inferior species of wit. The American autocrat says that, on the face of it, a pun is an insult to the person you are talking with. Fr. O'Connor. A mere literarj' trick to introduce a dozen puns of his own — the talk of total de- pravity being merely "deep raving," the cosine of Noah's ark, the Deluge being a "deal huger" than any modern inundation, etc. Fr. Lovers. Ton my word, O'Connor, you're com- ing out. But, say, Monsignor, do you mean to tell us that you've never heard a really good pun, one that yor. have thoroughly enjoyed? Mgr. Eversley. A good many people. Father Tom, hold that the worst puns are the best; and I confess I've heard some pretty bad ones. Of course there are exceptions to all rules, and I don't mind admitting that the Irishman's pun on "treason" is worth while. I'm reminded of it by the references just made to the House of Commons. A Nationalist who was making a red-hot anti-British speech was interrupted by an English member's crying out, "Treason, trea- son!" The Irish member replied: "The hon- orable gentleman should remember that 'trea- son' in England becomes 'reason' in Ireland, because of the absentee.' Fr. Galligan. A tce-hee giggl^ is in order, Lavers. Fr. Dempseif. For my part, I don't object to an occasional pun, especially if it be in verse. One that went the rounds of the press when I was a youngster always tickled my risibilities. You fellows still in your twenties may not have heard it. i 228 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS A famous American preacher Said the hen was a beautiful creature. The hen, upon that, Laid an eper in his hat, And thus did the Henry Ward Beecher. Dean O'Reilly. Well, Father Larry, if these young fellows have never heard that limerick be- fore, they are probably unacquainted with the equally venerable conundrum: Why is there no need of people's being hungry in the desert? Because of the sand which is there. How did the sandwiches come there? Ham and his descendants were bred and mustered there. Yes, but besides ham and bread and mustard, a perfect sandwich needs some bul.;r: how did they get the butter? Why, when Lot was driven out of Sodom, his wife was turned into salt, and all the family but her ran into the desert. Fr. Hennessy. Pretty rank, that; but 'tis no worse than one I came across the other day In a music journal. The skit runs: During the sermon one of the quartet fell asleep. "Now's your chants," said the organist to the soprano; "see if you canti- cle the tenor." — "You wouldn't dare duet," said the contralto. — "You'll wake hymn up," suggested the bass. — "I can make a better pun than that, as sure as my name's Psalm," remarked the bov who pumped the organ; but he said it solo that no one quartet. Fr. Lavers. O war !— or Sherman's syncmym there* fdr, bti! tile's the lunft! m :^n*!a''TBnB!*CBa?"^iBrr""a9 A CLERICAL CLUH-NIOIIT 229 Fr. Brawley. Sherman's characterization of war recalls the note sent by a young Egyptian to Lord Cromer during the hitter's sojourn in British Africa. Have you all heard it? The note was a complaint, and it began: "O hell! Lordship's face grow red when he hear quite beastly behavior of Public Works Department towards his humble servant." Fr. John. How many of you younger men, I won- der, can quote the original sentence, of which Sherman's over-quoted remark is only the terse abridgment? Fr. McGarrigle. Not 1, for one. Did any one, ! - fore Sherman, say that war is hell? Fr. John. Not in just that form of words, perhaps; but in the seventeenth century Lord Clarendon, the historian, wrote : "We cannot make a more lively representation and emblem to ourselves of hell, than by the view of a kingdom in war." Fr. O'Connor. So you think our American general was a plagiarist, do you? Fr.John. Oh, no; at least not a conscious one. What used to be called unconscious cerebration would account for his remark, and his boiling down the historian's dictum undoubtedly in- creased its vivacity and point. Fr. Hogan. We've traveled quite a distance from the retort or repartee; but before we leave the subject, here's a good imtance t has just come to my mind. Years ago,, v/hen Cardinal Taschereau used to share an evening walk with some of the fellows at Laval University, a friend of mine, Father M. of Prince Edward Island, 230 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS was cliatting one night out mi the recreation yard with two or three companions. The con- versation was in English. The Cardinal, hap- pening along, stopped and alter listening a moment, smilingly asked : "Do you think, Mr. M., that the good (iod understands English/^ "I don't see why He shouldn't, your Eminence," replied M.; "He hears more of it than of any other language." Rather neat, eh? Fr. Hennessy. That seminary reminiscence puts me in mind of a question I've been intending for some months past to ask vou. Father John; and, as it has to do with clerical wit, or alleged wit, this is perhaps the appropriate time for it. I presume you all saw, some time last year, that humorous abridgment of the breviary that ap- peared in several Catholic papers, did you not? [A chorus of "No," "Not 1." "What abridg- ment?" etc., being heard in reply, the speaker continued.] Well, I have the clipping in my wallet here, and, with your permission, I'll read it for you : RITUS BREVISSIMUS RECITANDI BRE- VIARIUM PRO ITINERANTIBUS ET SCRUPULOSIS. Dicatur Pater ct Ave. Deinde ABCDEFGHIJKL MNOPQRSTUVWXY. V. Per hoc alphabetum notum. R. Componitur Breviarium totum. Tempore Paschali. dicetur alleluia. Oremus. Deus, qui ex vigintiquatuor Uteris A CLERICAL CLUH-NKIHT 231 totain sacrum scri|)Uirnm el Broviarium isliid compoiii voluisti, jungo, (lisjuiige, ct accipe ex his viginli(|iiatuor Uteris malu- tinain cum laudiljus. primam, tertiam, sextam, nonam, vesperas el coinplelorium; per Chrislum Dommum noslrum. Amen. Signal se dicens: Sapienli pauca. V. In pace in i(lipsum. H. Dormiam el requiescam. Now, my qucslion. Father John, is as to the advisability of publishing this "comic" breviary in a Catholic journal. What do you think of it? Fr.John. I don't admire the editor's taste. Of course, the skit being in Latin, he may have thought that only the clergy would understand and enjoy it; but I doubt very much that even the clergy as a rule found it worth a hearty laugh. Possibly I am old-fashioned, but I dis- like humor that trenches upon the irreverent, as so much of our American humor does; and I certainly wouldn't care to translate your clip- ping for a lay friend. Fr. Hennessy. What's your opinion, Eversley ? Mgr. Eversley. Pretty much the same as Father John's. The skit is clever, of course, but parodying the breviary is hardly a legitimate form of humor for Catholic priests, especially in this rather irreverent age. Dean O'Reilly. I'm glad you added that last clause, Eversley, as I think that both you and Father John are inclined to be a little severe on the parody. To be judged with anything like fairness, it ought to be considered in its proper historic setting. Now, as I understand the mat- 282 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ter, the take-off which Hennessy has read to us is a survival from the ages of faith. In fact, I think the paper, in which I now remember see- ing it a year or so ago, mentioned that the parody was reproduced from a Benedictine re- view as a specimen of old-time monkish lit- erary recreations. The monks of old, like the Italian peasants oi to-day, in their childlike, if robust, faith, sometimes treated God and the Madonna with a freedom which would jar on the susceptibilities of modern American clerics. Personally, I feel quite sure that the parodist was fundamentally as reverent as the best of us, and that he chanted Matins at two o'clock in the morning with a whole-souled devotion that would shame a gcod many present-day reciters of the divine office. Mgr. Euersley. Your view puts the matter in a dif- ferent light. Dean; but it doesn't excuse the bad judgment of the editor who serves up the parody to twentieth-century readers. That, I believe, was the main point on which Father Hennessy wanted an expression of opinion. Fr. Hennessy. Yes; although, to be candid, I was inclined to censure the parodist also. O'Reilly's viewpoint, however, strikes me as being pretty sensible. Fr. Lavers. I object to our becoming unduly .sensi- ble on a club-night, so, before this meeting degenerates into a critical conversazione or a polemical conference, I suggest that McGarrigle should give us his latest comic song. Come on, George, I'll play your accompaniment .'-JiajL A CLERICAL CLUB-NIGHT 283 Fr. McGarrigle. Absolutely nothing doing. Tommy. I've a frog in my throat. Which reminds n-.r. by obvious connotation, of that bit of lingo you were reciting in Galiigan's room the other day. Substitute that for my song. Fr. John. Lingo? What have you been up to now. Tommy? Isn't your own language crude enough without adding jargon, or lingo, to your vocabulary? Fr. Lavers. Oh, but this is a very pathetic bit. Father John. Get out your handkerchief : you'll need it. Listen ! A frog he would a-wooinpr go, Sinf? 8orir bodily well-being. His social icf on is in - im- mendable and justitiab .^ onlv in so far ; 'nds spiri !nl interests of th flock targe. \iiy study, therefore, or hat ' rfere« wit the f jU per- pur( .act dotai sninistrations may well be lo' k( d upo as negligible, not ' bliga- tory. In the secon<" place, it ' altogCih* r bable that a considera 'e numboi o middit jed and elderly priests ali ady know much more about a good many of the subject nentioned in the fore- ^ling paragraph than the are generally credited with knowing bv he w< ,i at large, or, possibly, 1 ext-books constitute one )t excellent one, for the ac- conceming any science; illy means. One's general e's familiarity with the cur- nagazines and the discus- in the daily press, one's ctures on questions of the day, and itions with specialists or with the eveo bv then sci means, and n* d( ^uisition of k l>ut the ire no; and s }. readii ent . -ra^ »■ of i ajon Ol !' topi a«eiii da one' 248 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ordinary man in the street— all these are positive and not ineflf active means of storing the mind with worth-while information about social problems, as about many other matters having to do with con- crete humanity. A priest's reading on social topics is, moreover, far more likely to be instructive or educative than is similar reading on the part of laymen, because of the philosophic and theological training to which in his youthful manhood he was subjected in the seminary. The ethical and moral principles underlying all social action appeal to him more immediately, and he more readily de- tects and dissents from fallacious theories. Added to this is the personal contact of the pastor with concrete examples of no small number of these social problems, each of which has given him food for anxious thought, for specific study, and for con- sultation with friends of wider experience than his own. If, then, there are relatively few middle-aged priests who, in the realm of sociology, know every- thing about something and sometiiing about every- thing, there are probably still fewer who know nothing about most things and very litUe about anything: the great majority know something about most things and a good deal about some things. And this much is sufficient for the average priest. Neither the Sovereign Pontiffs who have counseled social action on the part of the clergy, nor the bishops of different countries who have' been most active in seconding the desires of the Holy See, nor the most eloquent pleaders for cler- ical social service in our own land, have had in THE PEIEST AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 249 view the transformation of the ordinary pastor into a sociologic specialist. Pius X's letter to the French bishops, advising the setting apart of some of their priests for expert training in social science, indi- cates the real desideratum, and the only one that is practically attainable. A diocese, several of whk ' is not really so laudable as we may like to consider it. THE PRIEST AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 253 It need hardly be said that, if many of the com- fortable and well-to-do cherish a more or less unreasonable prejudice against organized chari- ties, a still larger number of the beneficiaries of such charities look upon them with instinctive dis- like, not to say positive repugnance. Sturdy old Betty Higdon, in Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend," is a type not at all uncommon even in our own day of social conditions notably improved in many respects since the middle-nineteenth century. Her horror of lapsing into a state in which she would "come on the parish," to be committed to the poor- house as a permanent lodger, or even a "casual," finds its counterpart in the sentiments of many of our own poor and unfortunate, ". Then I get numbed," explained Betty to her friend, "thouaht and senses, till I start out of my seat, afcard that I'm a growing like the poor old people that they brick up in the Unions, as you may some- times see when tliry let >m out of the four walls to have a warm in the sun, crawling quite scared about the streets. . . . Trn'"""« "»^n i" his ZT' '°'''' .r'^"' " P"^*«^ '^ ^«^« to achieve results eminently worth while. Lacking such sup- port, a measurable amount of commendable, not to say necessarj'. work will assuredly be left un- done. Not all priests possess this personal mag- netism and those who are without it must do the best they can to supply its place by additional vork-and prayer. All priests, however, can, if they will, avoid in their relations wilb their lav helpers, be these \dpers young or old, men or women, one capitai .ault— the domineering spirit the tendency to plaj the role of dictator or auto- crat the obvious desire to be what has been inele- gantly, if expressively, called "the whole push " Ihe records of many a parish throughout this country are the graveyards of scores of societies done to death by the despotic officiousness of well- meaning priests who were consumed with a zeal not according to knowledge. While the scope of this chapter doe'? not admit of any detailed descripUon of the multifarious works in which the social action of the priest may display itself, it may be worth while to remark that the religious societies to be found in all well- organized parishes can be uUlized for social serv- 17 eiiAs. 258 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ice of various kinds. A present-day specialist in the work of the laity, Father Garesche, S. J., enu- merates, for instance, the following activities of committees in certain sodalities : "They are mak- ing a survey of the parish, organizing parish wel- fare sections, helping the poor and the sick, dis- tributing Catholic literature, assisting the missions, teaching Catechism, looking after friendless boys and girls, promoting sociability among Catholics, aiding the parish schools, and in many other ways acting as a zealous lay auxiliary to their pastors." An energetic pastor who has in his parish a St. Vincent de Paul Conference or a Holy Name So- ciety should, it would seem, be able similarly to widen the service of such an organization beyond the specific purpose for which it was established. Young men's institutes can readily be utilized for other work than the primary one of promoting the moral and physical well-being of the members — utilized, for instance, in efficiently aiding the pastor in his solution of the ofttimes arduous boy- problem. And so with other existing societies, clubs, circles, or guilds : each of them, with no det- riment to its particular aim, may be made service- able in one or another department ot the Catholic lay apostolate. To sum up : an exemplary priest of the present day can not well afford to ignore either the theory or the practice of social action. While such action is only secondary or supplementary to his spiritual ministrations, it is often so bound up with the re- ligious welfare of his people that to neglect it may easily be tantamount to a dereliction of pastoral THE PRIEST AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 259 duty, riie general knowledge of social science which he has casually acquired may commendably be increased by his reading such works as deal with the particular social problems existent in his parish; and the incidental social work which he liabitually performs in attending to his parish- ioners may laudably be augmented by definitely organized social service. Priestly zciil will lead him to avail himself of the help of the laity, and common sense will prevent his alienating such help by underrating its importance, checking its initiative, or obscuring its merit. "It is a great art," says Father Vermeersch on this point, "an art which requires self-effacement— not to be too much in evidence, but to encourage the initiative of others; to suggest useful proposals, and let others have the credit of their results." H ■-' II a THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER The travelled mind is the catholic mind, educated out of ez-'lu- ■ivenen and egotiam. — A. B. Aloott. The world is a great book, of which thej who nerer itir from home read onl/ a page.— iSt. Augustine. ... In journeying! often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from mj own nation, in perils from the gen- tiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea. — t Cor. : tl, t6. THE thoughtful reader of the new Codex of Canon Law us a whole, or of any notable por- tion thereof, cannot but be struck with the admir- able sanity, the common-sense judiciousness, and the forthright practicality evidenced in its various provisions. Nowhere else in the Code, perhaps, are these qualities more conspicuous than in the division which, quite naturally, proves especially interesting to priests, book second, "De Personis." And not the least admirable of the regulations set forth in this second book is canon 465, in virtue of which pastors are allowed to take an annual vaca- tion of two mo^iths, either continuous or inter- rupted, a privilege restricted only by the wise pro- vision that, when a pastor desires to .go away for more than a week, he must secure the acquiescence of his Ordinary and provide an approved priest for the care of his parish. It may not be necessary, but neither is it impertinent, to add that to this particular canon, not less than to any and all others in the new Code, are applicable these sentences of the reigning Pontiff in his Bull of promulgation, fiKr -uses THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 261 Providentissima Mater Eccletia: "AU enactments, constitutions and privileges whatsoever, even those worthy of special and individual mention, and cus- toms, even immemorial, and all other things what- soever to the contrary notwithstanding. Where- fore let no one violate or rashly oppose in any way this document of our constitution, ordinnnce, lim- itation, suppression, derogation, and expressed will." It means much, to some of us at any rate, that the wise old Church, taking account of her experi- ence throughout the centuries, and supplementing her previous legislation by specific statutes in har- mony with present-day conditions, has thus set the seal of her high approval on the principle of vaca- tiwis. Henceforth a priest's taking his holidays will be considered an entirely natural procedure, something to be done as a simple matter of course, and not a more or less abnormal measure, scarcely compatible with priestly zeal, undertaken in some- thing of an apologetic spirit, and justifiable only as a necessary preventive of imminent physicnl collapse or nervous breakdown. That a good many ecclesiastical and religious superiors have hitherto underestimated the importance of vaca- tions jn the life of a priest, and quite '= ierrated the value of periodical holidays in ncreasing the priest's efficiency in his appointed wo.k, is a slito- ment not likely, we think, to be called in question by any judicious cleric who has reached the fifth decade of his years. To speak of no others than the dead, we have personally known several Ordi- naries and religious superiors who, while admit- 262 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUAEDS ting in theory the benefits of vacations, commonly refused in practice to recognize the need of the benefits in particular cases. They did not agree (as the Church in the new Code does agree) with the paradoxical statement of that distinguished physician who declares that "A man can do a year's work in ten months; he may manage to get through it in eleven; but he cannot possibly do it in twelve." The necessity of annual holidays for pros- pective clerics has always of course been recog- nized by ecclesiastical authorities. As a boy and & young man, the future priest has in all Catholic countries enjoyed, every year, from six or seven to eight or ten weeks of freedom from study at college or seminary. Just why it should ever have been considered an abnormality and an extrava- gance for him to keep up this vacation-habit when once he had entered upon the active work of the ministry does not seem very clear. Given that he is a zealous and energetic pastor of souls — a supposition quite as likely to be true as is the assumption that in his seminary days he was a hard-working student, a priest would on the face of it appear to need as frequent and as lengthy intervals of rest and recreation in middle age as were granted to him in incipient manhood. Nor does the fact that a considerable number of clerics go on from year to year and even from decade to decade without taking a vacation constitute any valid argument against either the utility or the congruity of the practice. To a friend of ours, a religious priest who. after a quarter of a century THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER devoted to teaching, had been assigned to editorial work, and who, having spent three years at such work without a holiday, finally asked his superior for a month's vacation, this reply was made: "Vacation! What do you want one for? Look at Father So-and-So. He hasn't had a vacation in thirty years."— "Quite so," said our friend; "he has contracted the habit of doing without holidays, and habit, as we know, is second nature. You will kindly remember, however, that for thirty years as student and professor I've been in the habit of hav- ing two months of vacation every year, and my second nature is quite as strong as Father So- and-So's. Moreover, 'tis a question whether the good Father would not have done more and better work for the past three decades if he had taken a regular annual holiday of at least a few weeks." As a rule, and a rule that suffers not very many exceptions, the professional man, priest or other, who truthfully declares that he never feels the need of a vacation is simply asserting that he does not deserve one, that his habitual work is not hard enough, his customary activities not sufficiently strenuous to necessitate the periodical counter- poise of change or repose. The transition from doing very little to doing nothing at all really merits the name of intensified loafing or idleness rather than that of a well-earned holiday. To play well one must previously have worked well. No vacation save one which follows upon real and exhausting labor is capable of affording us any genuine joy or exhilaration. Weeks of rest after months of continuous and strenuous exertion are a delight: but 264 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS I ■ If all the year were playing boiidaya, To sport would be as tedious as to work. It is possible of course that the downright pastor who categorically condemns priestly vacations as a sheer waste of time, and who complacently bids you: "Look at me, sir; I haven't been away from my parish for six consecutive days in six limes that many years" — it is possible, we say, that he has been throughout these years an energetic, active laborer in the vineyard of the Lord; but it is not at all improbable that he has been vegetating rather than really living, in the sense that true living is activity; that he has habitually had, each week, a moderate amount of work during two or three days and an immoderate portion of leisure for the remaining lOur or five; and that both his parish and himself would have materially bene- fited by his occasionally getting out of the rut in wlrxh he quite unneccsscrily cabined and cribbed and confined himself. On the whole, however, the sacerdotal life in this countr>' is a busy one, and it is quite probable that more clerical vacations are really earned than are commonly taken. Not to take them when they are needed and possible is the reverse of wisdom, is false economy. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," whether Jack be a young lad of sixteen or an old boy of sixty. Not to provoke, on the part of the reader, the impatient inquiry: "What has all this to do with the indicated subject of the present chapter?" let us have done with comments on the genus vaca- tion, and confine our further remarks to one of its THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 265 species, travelling. Not all priests spend their vaca- tions in travelling, nor arc all travelling priests enjoying a holiday; yet it is safe to uay that the majority of such clerics as avail themselves of the privilege accorded them by canon 465 of the new Codex, and take a continuous vacation of two months, will devote the major portion of that period to journeys by land or voyages at sea, or to a combination of both. And their doing so will assuredly need no justification or apology. At this stage of the world's history and in this land of the preeminently strenuous life, it would be a ;ask of utter supererogation to multiply proofs and argu- ments in support of the contention that travel is both pleasant and useful, a legitimate recreation and a potent factor in the acquisition of true edu- cation and general culture. To speak first of its pleasantness: whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and hence the more complete the relaxation given to the weary priestly mind the better. The late E. H. Ilarrinian graphically sum- marized the philosopliy of holidays in a remark which he made on<' morning just as he was starting on a trip to Europe. "It's a regular vacation," said he to a reporter, "and the man who mentions busi- ness to me gets shot." This vigorous declaration was not of course meant to be accepted at the face value of the words themselves; the railway mag- nate was speaking figuratively; but the spirit that prompted the declaration was the proper spirit in which to set out upon a worth-while vacation. Business, one's regular work, should be as alien to the holiday-seeker «s is idle trifling to the busiest SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS man in business hours. This is one reason why ocean travel is so popuhir a form of vacation among priests, as among other professional men. Very many persons have learned by experience that the cares and anxieties of everyday life, the incessant worries attendant upon one's profession or calling are, for the most part at least, left behind and forgotten when once one has begun "to sail the seas over, to cross the wide ocean." To the really tired brain-worker, is there indeed any other form of recreation so thoroughly grateful as an ocean voyage in summer? The present writer, for one, has never found its equal. Where else can the nervously exhausted pastor, the worn-out college lecturer, or the utterly weary writer enjoy repose so complete, luxuriate in idleness at once so perfect and so healthful as on the mighty ex- panse that stretclies between the old world and the new? If, as physicians teach, the best vacation for the man who really needs one is that which affords the fullest change from his ordinary life- change of air and diet and ideas and scenery and people— what transition can compare with that from study, or office, or lecture-room to the breciy deck of a handsome liner gracefully gliding through summer seas? Who that has ever enjoyed it can think without longing of the pleasure and exhilaration and delicion.s rest in a voyage across the Atlantic? What luxury to recline at full lengtli in an adjustable steamer-chair on the sunny side of the saloon-deck, and note, between puffs of your post-prandial cigar, the ever-varying aspects of the multitudinous blue-black wavelets dancing THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 267 away on every hand to join the engirdling sky! What full so[)hers and moralists of all time. "He who never leaves his own country," says Goldoni, "is full of prejudice." "The use of travelling," declares Dr. 270 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Johnson, "is to rcgulaU' imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." "Nothing," afTirms Isaac Watts, "tends so niiicli to enlarge the mind as travelling. that is, making visits to other towns, cities, or countries beside those in which we were born and educated." "Rather see the wonders of the world abroad," advises Shakespeare, "than, living dully sluggardized at home, wear out thy vouth with shapeless idh'ness." It is true, no do b* that not all persons derive from travelhng the luii benefit it is calculated to bestow. "Men may change their climate," says Addison, "but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannoi ride or sail himself into common sense." Socrates said much the same thing when, on being told that an acquaintance was nothing improved by his travels, he rephed : "I can well believe it, for he took himself along with him." We have all, very probably, had occasion to verify the words of the Persian poet, "A traveller without observation is a bird without wings," and to note, with Cowper, IIow ranch a dunce that hath been sent (o roam Exct'ls a dmiee tliat hath been kept at home; but, due allowance being made for exception'^l cases, the general truth remains that, as Matthews phrases it, "Travel brushes away the contracted- ness, shakes off the one-sidedness, knocks out the nonsense, and polishes the manners of a man, more cflFectually than any other agency." Now, this truth has a more immediate bearing on Amer- icans generally, and on young American priests y THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 271 particularly, than is, we are inclined to think, com- monly realized by either the lay or clerical citizens of "this greatest country on earth." The tendency to confound patriotism with spread-eagleism, or with chauvinism, is not per- haps so pronounced among twentieth-century Americans as it was with their fathers and grand- fathers; it is less a national characteristic now- adays than when Dickens satirized it in his "Martin Chuzzlewit" and "American Notes"; but it can scarcely be denied that tlie tendency is even now, especially among the untravelled classes of our citizens, more common than judicious Amer- icans like to see it. Love of one's country, the passion which moves .» person to serve that coun- try, either in defending it from invasion or in pro- tecting its nghts and maintaining its laws and institutions that is a virtue entirely congruous and laudable; but it in no way entails or involves the vainglorious belief or the bombastic assertion that all other coimtries are infinitely inferior to one's own. Goldsmith's couplet. Slid) is the pntriols boast, wlicrp'er we roam, His first, best comili-j' ever is at home, is true, it is clear, in the subjective sense only. His home country cpiite naturally is, and should be, first in the patriot's affections, best loved of all countries; hui it detract nothing from the gen- uineness nf Ms !ovc to recognize that, objectively con: ;..i ■ xi, that ; ^me country may ?' v/c its limita- tioi ? and, as .or.ipared with other lands, may in a nuiv,L.^r o/ respects be neither first nor best. The 272 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS .■ i United States has a sufliciont number of natural and political advantages to warrant a reasonable degree of pride in her patriotic sons; but it is the merest absurd exaggeration to claim for her that she has reached the climax of national perfectibil- ity, or that she has "the brainiest men, the cleverest women, the smartest boys, and the prettiest girls in the universe." Now, the surest cure for national vanity is for- eign travel. Even a liberal education and llie wide reading which it supposes cannot fully sup- ply the lack of actual contact with the mhabitants of other lands than ours, or rid us completely of prejudices, misconceptions, and false opinions con- cerning the millions of people beyond our own territorial boundaries. What used to be called the Chinese cast of mind, a stupid contempt for every- tliing beyond the wall of llieir celestial empire, is bound in some degree to characterize the untrav- ellcd, the stay-at-l:'>mes — even the clerical stay-at- homes. To cite a common case: Father Johnson is a clever rnd energetic young priest, acting as curate in a city parish. He was born in a rural district, attended college in his own State, and pur- sutu his theological studies in i seminary some two nundred nii'es from his lioine. His travels thus far in his vpner have not rarrled him to more than two or three States immediately adjoining his own. In his parish work he comes in contact with a number of foreigners of different nationalities, all of them day-laborers, and most of them illit- erate, if not ignorant. Now, Father Johnson pre- sumably knows, theoretically, or he ought to know. i t THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 273 that these working men and women cannot be looked upon as fairly representative of the civiliza- tion or culture attained bv the respective races to which they belong, any more than the rowdies and "toughs" of New York or Chicago are representa- tive of American culture; yet his impressions and views of each of these races as a whole are safe to be colored, or rather sadly discolored, by his ob- servation of the unrepresentative individuals with whom he is familiar. The proof is, that a few years hence when the young priest visits the home- lands of these foreigners, ho will And himself aston- ished at the ( vidcnces of prosperity and culture and eminence in literature and art and science that greet him on every side. We have occasionally heard youthful American clerics, otherwise sane enough, oracularly setting forth the inferiority of Frenchmen and Italians and Spaniards with a supercilious air that would have been merely lu- dicrous had it not been pathetic. Without being at all conscious of the fact, they belonged to the class oi whom Rabelais says: "They seem to have lived all thefr life in a barrel and to have looked cut only at tht bung-hole." To many priests of course, ns to many laymen, travelling assumes the guise, not of a pleasant rec- reation or an opportunity for broadening one's culture, but of work pure and simple, an integral part of their appointed vocation. Preaching m's- sions and retreats, attending conventions of a dozen different varieties, assisting at Eucharistic Congresses, lecturing in behalf of some religious or social cause — these and the like occasions or cir- u MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I 1.25 Li |2.8 12-5 . i^ i^s 1^1^ 1^ ■«1 ^ 1^ II 20 b 1. ^ ib^i. i^' 1.4 II 1.6 ^ APPLIED INA^GE Inc ^5-^ 1653 East Main Slreel g*^ Rochester. New ^ork 14609 USA '.^ (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (''6) 288 - 5969 - Fax 274 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS i| li li m cumstances necessarily entail a considerable amount of journeying to and fro, both in one's own country and not infrequently in other lands as well. Such quasi-compulsory travelling is not in- variably a delight; often indeed, especially to the elderly cleric who has outlived the youthful love of adventure, it is an unmitigated nuisance. In some cases, no doubt, the essential difference between travelling for pleasure and travelling on business is much the same as the distinction made by the philosophical small boy between fun and work: "Fun is work that you haven't got to do, and work is fun that you've got to do." A little sane op- timism, such as should characterize all clerics, not only makes a virtue of necessity but knows how to transform a task into a pleasure, a necessary journey into a delightful outing. As for the personal behavior, deportment, usual practice, or general conduct most congruous to the travelling priest, opinions thereon will probably differ as widely as do individual characters and temperaments. Every one will admit that a cleric's attitude towards his travelling companions may sin in either of two ways: it may be too indiscrim- inately hail-fellow-well-met, or too reserved, stand- offish, and repellent. The proper attitude lies, as all will agree, midway between these extremes; and, on the whole, there is perhaps less danger of a priest's manifesting undue affabihty than of his holding himself too much aloof from those into whose company circumstances have thrown him. Apropos of sociability or friendliness in travellers, there is in one of Scott's novels a paragraph THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 275 which, apart from its autol)iographieal interest, is worth while thinking about. "For ourselves," writes Sir Walter, "we can assure the reader — and perhaps if we have ever been able to aft'ord him amusement, it is owing in a great degree to this cause — that we have never found ourselves in com- pany with the stupitlest of all possible comp nions in a post-chaise, or with the most arrant cumber- comer that ever occupied a place in the mail-coach, without flnding that, in the course of our conver- sation with him, we had some ideas suggested to us, either grave or gay, or some information com- municated in the course of our journey which we should have regretted not to have learned, and which we should be sorr>' to have immediately for- gotten." Substitute smoking-car and steamer-deck for post-chaise and mail-coach, and the foregoing will serve as an accurate account of the experience of many a traveller, clerical and lay, since Sir Wal- ler's time, of every traveller indeed who combines with ordinary culture a modicum of practical philosophy and cheerful coninion sense. Civility in one's intercourse with travelling companions, readiness to he addressed by and to converse with those in whose society we are to make a journey of hours or days, a geniality that knows how to dispense on occasion with the formality of a cere- monious introduction — these are qualities which, if not natural to a priest, should in our opinion be acquired by him if he is desirous or either deriving full benefit from his travels or improving the opportunities of doing good which his travelling affords him. I 276 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS Ml It may be quite unnecessary, but it can do no harm, to remark t' it one of the dangers of travel- ling, at least for the laity, is a tendency to consider one's self more or less emancipated from the strict letter of the law regulating the correctness and moral propriety of one's normal life. Even the clergy, perhaps, or at least the younger members of that body, may profitably take to heart the les- son conveyed in the following paragraph from a secular moralist: "There is nothing that a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavor- able to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of char- acter. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our v'^-tues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discov- ery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousiicss of increased power put forth in withstanding them." Needless to say, the doc- trine set forth in this quotation conflicts in no way with what has been asserted above concerning the advisability of a travelling priest's showing himself affable and courteous. His conscience and good habits are not at all involved in his avoiding brusqueness or churlishness of manner, or in his' cultivating pleasantly genial relations with the circle in which for the time being he is moving. A question sometimes discussed in connection with our subject is the relative advantage or dis- THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 277 advantage of a priest's travelling alone rather than in the company of a friend, or friends. What may at first blush appear to be the obvious conclusion — that it is not good for a traveller to be alone — will be found on consideration to be less indubitably correct than it is generally supposed to be. The preponderance of traditional practice is doubtless an argument in favor of having a companion, and the rules of religious orders commonly require the company of a socius. There is, moreover, the sat- isfaction, at least when one's companion is a brother priest, of knowing that in case of accidents one will not be deprived of spiritual succor. On the other hand, however, the company of a friend or of friends involves several unequivocal disad- vantages, or conditions looked upon as such by not a few travellers of experience. To begin with, if the ideal vacation means, as has been said, as complete a change as possible from one's ordinary life — a change of people and ideas as well as of scenery, diet, etc. — then the presence of a friend prevents the full enjoyment of the holiday. "Those who visit foreign nations," says Colton, "but asso- ciate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with travelled bodies, but untravelled minds." In the second place, unless one has th^" phe- nomenal good fortune of securing a travelling com- panion whose tastes, inclinations, turn of mind, dispositions, proclivities, and even idiosyncrasies, are identical with our own, this condition will fre- 278 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS U;l ii. qu ntly arise: either we shall have to fore^j our own pleasure to accommodate our friend, or ho will have to forego his to accommodate us. II would L-i uncourteous to insist on always having one's own way, and accordingly one makes sac- rifices on the altar of politeness. The supreme advantage of independent travelling, as distin- guished from either touring with a party or accom- panying a friend, is the privilege one enjoys of shaping one's course just as seems good on the spur of the moment, the freedom to alter and modify at will all pre-arranged plans, the con- sciousness that one may stop where one pleases and stay there as long as one pleases, irrespective of the likes or dislikes of anyone else. As for the objection that, when travelling alone, one is de- prived of the social intercourse, the periodical con- versations of which even the most self-centred individuals feel the need, the answer would seem to be that such deprivation is not at all compul- sory. Given the atfability advocated in this chapter, the solitary cleric may have all the con- versation he cares for as often as he feels inclined to indulge therein. In the final analysis, the degree of pleasure and profit which the priest derives from travelling depends perhaps on his approximation to the standard of "the good mixer." Not pleasure and profit, but their opposites accrue as a rule to the ultra-reserved clerics who immure themselves in "the Bastille of their rank," as some writer has happily described "that sort of shyness which men of dignified situation are apt to be beset with. ■«fcVEF THE PRIEST AS TRAVELLER 279 rather from not exactly knowing how far or with whom they ought to be familiar than from any touch of aristocratic pride." The dignity of the priesthood should of course be preserved at all times and in all places, by travelling clerics as by their stay-at-home brethren; but affability, prop- erly understood, never compromised any dignity really worthy of the name, and a genial disposi- tion is an asset which a priest, even while enjoying his vacation, can readily turn to the spiritual ad- vantage of the temporary acquaintances with whom he comes in contrct. To conclude with a rettection from the transcendentalist, Thoreau, although it might well be credited to Thomas a Kempis: "Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value" of home, and enables me to enjoy it better." ♦ p A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MARY Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation.— JfccItM.: xliv, 1. ♦i..J° "^® "'t *.!^." ^""^ I"*"y "^^ **>** "^ro K'***, and some men CoitoV^ ' ''"^ ™®° ***** ""* *^**' ^*** *°"* good.— ,««w" ^"^*f * """? " "l® ''^** '=*'°**«®^ t'^e right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns; and whose Oumn^ *"* °° ^''*"''' "** **° ^°^' " ""*'* unfaltering.— '"T^HE age of chivalry has gone!" The world ■■- is now older by a century and a quarter than when the lament was first called forth by the unhappy fate of France's fairest Queen; and dur- ing the intervening decades the "sophisters, economists, and calculators" whose spirit Burke disparaged have probably net grown either fewer m number or more sensitive to the dictates of lofty honor. Yet though our own age, judged by its more prominent and apparently its most sym- metrical expressions, deserves still less perhaps than that of Burke the distinctive epithet of "chiv- alrous," no sane observer of the undercurrents of modern life will affirm that men grow worse as the world grows older, or that the chivalric senti- ment has utterly perished. The outward manifestations of the sentiment have doubtless taken new and different forms. The knights of to-day energize in other fields than did their plumed and mail-clad predecessors of 280 A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MARY 281 centuries gone by; but lofty virtues and heroic deeds do still relieve the commonplaces of life; and even in this age of aggressive utilitarianism and frenetic Mammon-worship knights there are as valiant and as noble, as fearless and without reproach, as ever were the dauntless cavaliers who in the zenith of chivalry's golden day protected the helpless, succored the distressed, rescued captive damsels from embattled towers, applauded tales of high emprise at » rth'ir's Table Round, or envied pure Sir Galahu ' ' aseless quest of the Holy Grail. Nor ne^^ lact be accounted strange. Courtesy, valor, mi^f^aanimity, and love are as in- digenous to the human heart in these modern times as they were in the twelfth and thirteenth centu- ries; and She who proved the fountain-source that watend those fragrant flowers during chivalry's full noontide still aids and fosters their perfect growth in each of the successive generations that have learned to call Her blessed. The transcendent beauty of the Virgin-Mother was the initial inspiration of knighthood. The re- spectful enthusiasm for woman, which was the dominant note of chivalry while its glory lasted, was the direct outcome of devotion to the Immacu- late Mother of the world's Redeemer. 'The Virgin Mary," says a non-Catholic author, "was exalted by the Chujch to a central figure of devotion; and in her ele\ation, woman, from being associated with ideas of degradation and sensuality, rose into a new sphere, and became ♦he object of a rever- ential regard unknown to the proudest civilizations of the past." In the lady whose colors he wore. 282 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS whose virtues he extolled, and whose honor he defended, the Christian chevalier beheld a traein^j in outline, a faint and shadowy copy, of the Lady par excellence, the incomparable sovereign of his heart's veneration— Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Nor was his prowess less mighty, his achievements less noble, nor his fame less assured, when, as fre- quently happened, he proffered to this heavenly Mistress the full and undivided homage of his heart— giving of his love to no earthly maiden, and wearing no colors save the Virgin's own. Such a Knight of Mary, valiant, courteous, gentle— ever sensitive as to his Lady's honor, un- wearied throughout - lengthy life in voicing her praises, and successfu. oeyond most of his contem- poraries in promoting her glory— was the veteran ecclesiastic whose devotion to the Blessed Virgin these lines are meant, lovingly if inadequately, to record— Father Edward Sorin, lat- Superior Gen- eral of the Congregation of l.oly Cross, and founder of Notre Dame University. Were any apology needed for the inclusion of such a bio- graphical sketch in this volume, it would be found in the recent celebration of Notre Dame's Diamond Jubilee, and in the consideration— especially inter- esting in these days when the loyalty of citizens of alien birth is more or less generally suspected— that this European cleric ceased to be European from the moment he landed in the United States, and for a full half century tliereafter showed him- self, in fullest faith and patriotic love, in eloquent word and convincing deed, American of the Amer- icans. A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MARY 283 Born in France, a country which through all the vicissitudes of an eventful history has ever seemed to enjoy the predilection of Mary -a land where every province is dotted with her shrines, and 'vhere for upwards of a thousand years the echoes of lier pi'grinis' canticles have never ceased re- ounding — Edward Sorin imbihed at his mother's knee, in the Christian school which was tijc scene of his boyish studies, and in the very atmosphere of his native village, Ahuille, an especially tender love for the Mother of (lod, together with an utter and absolute confidence in her protecting care. In him this love and confidence, happily not uncom- mon in the innocent and ingenuous hearts o' the young, survived undimmed the dangerous period of adolescence; grew broader, deeper, and more firm in the busy years of youthful manhood; glowed with an ever-increasing intensity through- out a maturity of arduous labor and incessant sac- rifice; and still formed the dis. nguishing trait of his inner life when, crowned with the halo of four- score fruitful years, he told his beads on hiv, bed of death, and joyed in the thought of speedily greet- ing at long last — his Mother. His Mother! That phrase tells the whole story of Father Sorin's devotion to the Blessed Virgin — of the wealth of love he lavished upon her, the jealous care with which he guarded her interests, the magnificent enterprises which he undertook in her name and carried out to a successful issue for her greater glory. She was ever and always, in very truth, his Mother — one to whom at every stage of his earthly pilgrimage he looked for loving sym- 284 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS pathy; to whom he confided all \ns trials, cares, griefs, and woes with the certain assurance of ton- sequent solace; and whom on the other hand he never failed to associate with his joys, successes, and triumphs. In his eyes Mary was not only the Immaculate Virgin, incomparable in grace and dig- nity among all created beings; the Mother of the Incarnate Word, and as such to be reverenced with a worship inferior only to that accorded to God Himself; the Queen by a thousam! valid titles of men and angels, and therefore worthy of all loyal homage: she was, moreover, his own real Mother who regarded him as a darling son, to be loved and cared for, and soothed and comforted and pro- tected with a tenderness undreamt of by the fond- est maternal heart that has ever llirobbed on earth since Mary's exile ended on the day of her glorious Assumption. In this view of the reciprocal relations between the Blessed Virgin and himself, the subject of our sketch was practically as childlike in his eightieth year as in his eighth. Neither physical develop- ment, nor intellectual growth, nor the ceaseless activities of missionary and official life, availed to modify in the slightest degree his deep-rooted con- victions as to the significance of Our Lady's ma- ternity, and the import of the duties, obligations, rights, and privileges implied in that sweet title applicable to every individual of the Church's mil- lions, "child of Mary." The voice which, clear and strong, was wont in 1820 to repeat "Je vous salue, Marie" before the Virgin's altar in the modest chapel of Ahuill^, had grown lo^ id feeble seven A PRIESTLY KNIQHT OF MARY 285 decades later as it murmured, "Hai; Mary, full of grace," in the cathedral-like church at Notre Dame; but the greeting had lost nothing of its sim- plicity or its ( .ndor, and the heart of the aged patriarch proffered to his heavenly Mother a love as fresh and ardent as ever thrilled that of the innocent child. From boyhood to manhood, from manhood to old age, in brief, Edward Sorin took our Lord at His word. "Son, behold thy Mother," was to liim not a mere directive counsel given to St. John, nor yet a sweet privilege restricted to that Beloved Disciple; but a statement of fact that inti^^ately concerned himself personally, and a truth -' ncli ought materially to affect the whole course oi his private life and public conduct. That he never had reason to question the correctness of this view, or regret the boundless confidence in the Blessed Virgin which it naturally engendered, needs scarce- ly to be stated. His career in the United States furnishes overwhelming proofs (were any such necessary to confirm a doctrine universal among Catholics) that Our Lady never fails to justify the wisdom of those who confide in hei power and goodness, nor ever allows herself to be outdone in generosjty. The outlines of that career, coincident with the history of Notre Dame's humble foundation, rapid growth, and marvelous development, have been too recently sketched in the columns of the Amer- ican Catholic press to need extended recapitula- tion here. And yet, as illustrating the filial reliance of Father Sorin on the protecting care of 286 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS the Mother whom he loved so tenderly, and as emphasizing the congruousness of unlimited trust in the Blessed Virgin on the part of every priest of Ciod in the United States or elsewhere, the story of Notre Dame can scarcely be told too often. There is no member of the American clergy espe- cially, from the humblest rural curate to the rank- ing cardinal in our country's hierarcliy, who may not draw from its perusal abundant store of in- spiration and hope and courage for his individual labors in the vineyard of the Lord. It is emphat- ically a tale of deeds performed by men of faith; an account of herculean labors undertaken with an eye single to the glory of God and His gracious Mother; a record of zeal rewarded, of sacrifices blest, of supernatural love triumphant over every obstacle. Three-quarters of a century ago, when Father Sorin, a poor young foreign missionary priest, and half a dozen poor foreign missionary Brothers set- tled upon an uncultivated tract of forest land with naught but a little rude log-cabin to distinguish it from the merest sylvan wilderness, confidence in the Mother of God, supplemented by their individ- ual labors, was the only capital they had to invest in the arduous enterprise of founding in that West- ern country a shrine of religious education. No princely endowment of a million dollars, or a hun- dred thousand, or a tithe thereof, came to accel- erate their material prosperity; yet never did dol- lars and cents invested in a business venture yield such magnificent results as have sprung from their steadfast reliance on Our Lady's aid and their con- A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MARY 287 stant endeavors lo preserve Her favor. Much has been written of the wondrous development during the past half-century of the great metropolis of the Middle West; but, stupendous as has undoubtedly been the growth of the village by Lake Michigan that hu come to be Chicago, the ^ ilitical econ- omist, taking account of merely human resources, will find it an easier matter to explain that growth than to assign the causes of the marvelous trans- formation that has made of the barren wilderness on the banks of the St. Joseph River the most splendid sanctuary of Religion and Science to be found on this continent, if not in the whole world. The true explanation is beyond the economist: Notre Dame was built with "Hail Marys." It is certainly not strange that, looking upon the material evidences of the success which so abun- dantly crowned the faith and zeal of Father Sorin, men of eminence in church and state have repeat- edly averred that the University which he founded is both the grandest tribute offered to our Lady in the Western hemisphere and the worthiest monu- ment by which to perpetuate the memory of her Franco-American son. In truth, the material Notre Dame, the many acres of fields and campuses, lakes and groves, gardens and parterres; the star- crowned colossal statue of the Blessed Virgin dom- inating at a height of more than two hundred feet the golden dome of the central edifice; the adja- cent noble church, that treasure-house of religious art and beauty, from whose tower a brazen- throated giant booms out the Angelus with louder exultation than sounds from anv other belfrv in 288 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS the land; the number, variety, and thorough equip- ment of institutes of science and residence halls and religious dwellings scattered over this Amer- ican Oxford — these naturally impress the minds, and are apt to elicit the enthusiastic praises, of transient visitors to Our Lady's Indiana home. And yet, without minimizing in any degree the true significance of the noble University — fully acknowledging, on the contrary, both the capital importance of the Catholic education for which it stands, and the far-reaching beneficial influence of the thousands who have learned, and are learning, within its halls to combine practical virtue with intellectual development, it may well be questioned whether Father Sorin did not found a work still greater than the University, and establish his fore- most claim to the Blessed Virgin's favor, when, in 1865, he began the publication of The Ave Maria. "They who declare me shall have life everlasting," was the significant text of our Marian Knight's first sermon on the Lady of his choice; and, assuredly, through few other agencies in either hemisphere during the past half-century have Mary's dignity and prerogf. lives, her beauty and her glory, the quasi-omnipotence of her supplication and the un- fathomable depths of her compassionate tender- ness been declared so constantly and adequately, with such loving enthusiasm and persuasive insist- ence, as through the beneficent pages of that maga- zine "devoted to the honor of the Blessed Virgin," and wearing as its felicitous title the Angel of the Incarnations greeting to the Lily of Israel, the Judean Maiden "full of grace." A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MARY 289 While the present writer's editorial association with the magazine during half its lifetime nat- urally hampers his pen in writing of its merits, it will be permissible to quote here two, out of many hundred, tributes paid to its excellence by com- petent eulogists. The first is found in Archbishop Ireland's notable sermon on the occasion of Father Sorin's sacerdotal Golden Jubilee, in 1888. "How much he has done to extend through the country the sweet devotion to Mar>', I need not lose time in telling. Mary's journal. The Ave Maria, weekly goes from Notre Dame to scores of thousands of Christian homes in America; and hundreds of practices of piety are made common that other- wise would not be known, and ten thousand acts of love are uttered that Heaven otherwise would not have I ird. Of course, in the hurry of our American life, in the manifold labors which we are called on to undertake in the service of souls, the danger is lurking nigh that the interior life be forgotten and we become as sounding brass. A most effective remedy is devotion to Mary, with all its supernal fragrance, and all its sweet inspira- tions to piety and holiness." Not less cordial and laudatory are the words of a younger member oT the hierarchy, Archl.ishop Mundelein, in his ser- mon at the Diamond .Tubilee in 1917: "And not by preaching and teaching alone, but also by the printed word have Father Sorin and his sons ful- filled their mission in spreading the word of God in this Innd. Week after week, for more than fifty years, have they sent a message of praise to Our Lady's honor into every part of the English-speak- 10 ^ 290 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS ing world, and fittingly is it labeled Ave Maria. In these days when the aim of most journals seems to be rather to startle and to scold than to instruct and to entertain, when our nerves are shocked and our passions roused rather than our attention held and our humor challenged, The Ave Maria comes into our homes and into our hands like a honored guest, like a charming, gentle, well-bred lady, with its kindly humor, with its wholesome bits of wis- dom, with its interesting stories for young and old. It is one of our few journals that require no apol- ogy and no introduction, for once welcomed into a home, it finds its way into the heart, and is surely missed if it fails to return." It need hardly be said that the career of our priestly knight of Mary was not lacking in those trials and troubles and fiery ordeals with which Divine Providence seems pleased to strew the way of the strongest souls and the most efficient work- ers for His glory. Two outstanding afflictions in the history of Notre Dame merit a word of description. In 1854, only a dozen years after the foundation, there broke out an epidemic of cholera that ravaged the ranks of the community, carr\'ing off member after member with a rapidity and a violence that threatened the total extinction of the congregation in the United States. It was a trial calculated permanently to discourage any leader of less than heroic mold; but, indomitable in his zeal for God's glory, and supremely confident in the unfailing assistanc. of his Heavenly Mother, ither Sorin not only preserved his own courage but effectively rnllicd the drooping spirits of all his surviving co- A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MAKY 291 laborers, and the work of growth and expansion uninterruptedly went on. A quarter of century later, in 1879, a disastrous fire in a few hours reduced to ashes not only the main university structure but almost every other building in its immediate neighborhood. Apart from the destruc- tion of much that money could never replace, the financial loss, to a religious community, was tre- mendous; and the available insurance was trifling. The way in which the disaster was met serves to illustrate, better than could pages of analytic ex- position, the spirit which ever dominated the founder of Notre Dame and which he was emi- nently successful in instilling into his religious subjects. With whole-hearted devotedness and whole-souled devotion they worked and prayed — nay, rather, they prayed and worked. The first gift received by Father Sorin towards the building of a new university — it was a check for one thou- sand dollars — he sent to a priest in a distant city with a request for prayers and Masses in behalf of Notre Dame. Trust in Providence and in Our Lady was accompanied in those heartrending April days of 1879, as always in the history of Holy Cross, by untiring personal exertion on the part of all its members. Before the ashes of the old buildings were cold, the work of constructing the new ones was begun; and in September of the same year they were opened to a larger concourse of students than the fire had dispersed. Nothing has been said as yet of the growth, during the late Superior-General's term of office, of the Congregation of Holy Crof i^ this country; of 292 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS the multiplication of colleges and parochial schools, oft'shoots of Notre Dame; of the founda- tion of St. Mary's Academy (now a college as well), a worthy and noble sister of the University; or of the scores of other educational and charitable in- stitutions presided over by the zealous Sisters of Holy Cross, religious daughters who ever found in Father Sorin the wisest of counsellors and the staunchest of friends. Nor need special reference be made to any of these events in the career of our Knight of Mar>'. The remarkable fecundity of his labors, as evidenced in the development of Notre Dame, was equally a characteristic of ever}' enterprise that he undertook; and a very impor- tant factor in that fecundity vas assuredly his unhesitating reliance upon the aid of Her for whom, under God, ho lived and worked. How thoroughly convinced was Father Sorin himself that the major part of his success was di- rectly due to the auspicious favor of the Blessed Virgin need he told to none who ever conversed with him for fifteen minutes. Frankly and loyally, with no lurking reserve of complacent egoism or overweening self-conceit, his heart and lips gave to the Mother of God the glory of his triumphs; an > his own shortcomings he frequently attrib- uted fact that such triumphs were not a hun- dredfold greater. Did space allow, personal remi- niscences by the score, and extracts from his letters by the hundred, could be cited in confirmation of ail that has been written of his love of Mary, his unlimited confidence in her power and gracious- ness, nnd his boundless gratitude for the signal A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MARY 293 favors which she accorded him. Lying before us as we write is a printed volume of his Circular Letters, every- page of which gives oUxiucnt evi- dence on each of these points. Of only a very few of the passages which we have marked for quota- tion can we now avail oursclf, but even these few will suffice for our purpose and fully justify the title of this chapter. Writing to his community sixty-six years ago, at the completion of Notre Dame's first decade, he refers to his arrival in the district ten years be- fore, and relates this incident of his first hour in the snow-clad wilderness : "With my five Brothers and myself, I presented to the Blessed Virgin all those generous souls whom Heaven should be pleased to call around me on this spot, or who should come after me." That the offering was forthwith accepted, and blest to the giver, may be judged from the statement made in the sentence immediately following that which we have quoted: "From that moment I remember not a single in- stance of a serious doubt in my mind as to the final results of our exertions." Having enumerated a variety of occasions, "of which, I say it with a sen- timent of deep gratitude, our Blessed Mother has invariably availed herself to show us her tender and powerful assistance," he gives in the following lines the keynote of his character, and the secret which makes his whole career intelligible : "Hence it has become a second nature for us to recur freely to the Blessed Virgin, and to tell her with a child- like simplicity our fears, our hopes, our sorrows, our joys, our wants and desires, our gratitude and 294 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS iii II our love." Referring, further on in the same letter, to the manifold benefits which the community had already received from Heaven, he adds : "I would you were all prompted by a lively sense of justice, of humility, and of gratitude, often to repeat in the depths of your hearts : 'After God, we owe all this to the Blessed Virgin Mary.* " In a letter written twenty years later, in 1872, occurs this remark : "An experience of thirty years has taught me that even in this life God blesses human efforts surprisingly when the cause of His Holy Mother is interest jd in them." In 1880 he de- clares: "Indifference towards our biessed Mother would mean complete idiocy in me, or something worse than idiocy. She has marked too many days of my life with the indelible imprints of Her maternal love ever to leave me insensible." And such is the tenor of numberless paragraphs scat- tered through thousands of official and personal lellers written by this steadfastly loyal son of Mary, from the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in 1841, when he said his first Mass in the land of his adoption, to the vigil of All Saints, 1893, when hr passed away to the land of his love, the heavenly country which he ever deemed his only true home because therein his Mother dwelt. The use of that phrase, "the land of his adop- tion," suggests a word or two about one of Father Sorin's qualities to which brief reference has al- ready been made, his sturdy Americanism. It was foreshadowed by his first act upon landing in New York: he fell on his knees, and, as an earnest of unswerving fealt>' to the country of his choice. A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OF MAKY 295 devoutly kissed the soil. In a siinilur spirit he con- cluded his first letter to his religious superior with the words: "Here is the adoption of my i»*herit- ance; here will I dwell all the days of my life." No middle-aged reader of these pages needs to be told that a enaracteristic of the average foreign priest who came to this country in the early nineteenth century, and more especially of the foreign priest- educator, was a reverential and almost a sacred regard for the manners and methods, the rules and regulations, both pedagogic and disciplinary, which obtained in the land of his birth. Changes suggested by the novel conditions of a new country and the different mentality of a democratic people were either rejected entirely or adopted, if adopted at all, only after long decades of deliberation. Father Sorin was a conspicuous exception to this general rule. He seemed to imbibe at once the spirit of the country and the age, so far as that spirit was favorable to the interests of God and his Church; and both class-rooms and recreation grounds at Notre Dame sf on gave evidence that it was an American college, not a transplanted French one. At this late day it will scarcely be considered an indiscretion to narrate an incident that serves as a concrete illustration of this phase of our hero's character. One member of his faculty in the early years was a brilliant young French priest, his own nephew, whose otherwise estimable personality was slightly tainted with chauvinism, with an ex- aggerated devotion to his native France and a cor- responding disparagement of the United States. I 296 SACERDOTAL SAt riGUARDS Repeated admonitions having failed to remedy this defect. Father Sorin sent for him one day and said to him: "My dear Father, your sentiments are admirably suited to a French environment, but this is America. I have accordingly secured your pas- sage on the next transatlantic steamer, and you will sail for Paris this coming Saturday." No words of our own, however, could so ade- quately or so eloquently treat this portion of our theme as does the following page from a sermon already mentioned, that of Archbishop Irelar ' on the occasion of Father Sorin's fiftieth anniversary as a priest. We offer no apolog>' for quoting at some length, for much of the passage is as timely in 1918 as it was in 1888: I will be permitted, before I conclude, to note in Father Sorin's life a charajteristic that proves his high-mindedness and has contrib- uted in no small degrees to his success. It is his sincere and thorough Americanism. From the moment he landed on our shores he ceased to be a foreigner. At once he was an Amer- ican, heart and soul, as one to the manner born. The Republic of the United States never protected a more loval and more devoted citi- zen. He understood and appreciated our lib- eral institutions; there was in his heart no fondness for old regimes or worn-out legit- imism. For him the government chosen by the people was, as Leo aIII repeatedly teaches, the legitimate government, and to his mind the people had well chosen when they resolved to govern themselves. He understood and appre- ciated the qualities of mind and heart of the American people, and, becoming one of them, spoke to them and labored for them from their A PRIESTLY KNIGHT OP MARY 297 plane of thought and fashion, and he was un- derstood and appreciated by them. No one has the right to live as a citizen of America and remain in hi*- soul a foreigner, and, espe- cially, should no one remain un-A.mericau in America who represents the Church, for he may give to believe that the Church is un- American. We have often lost ground because we were Irish, or German, or French, rather than American. Mav there be among us no danger of the kind* in the future! Father Sorin, I thank you for your American patriot- ism, your love of American institutions. And here I will recall one act of your life for which American Catholics must needs be grateful to vou : it was the act of the priest as well as of the American. Civil war was upon the land; defenders of the Union were hurr\'- ing from North and West to the battlefield, and among them in goodly proportion brave Catholics. I will not discuss the cause; but it is a lamentable fact that few priests were sent to the front to minister to the soldiers. The fact must ever be regretted. Father Sorin's communitv was weak in numbers; the absence of one stopped important work at home. He sent forward six to serve as chaplains, two of whom. Fathers Corby and Cooney, are with us this moi-iing to tell of the need there was of priests among our soldiers, and of the great things done for religion by themselves and their fellow-chaplains. Father Sorin appealed to the Sisters of Holy Cross, and thev, brave as they were tender of heart, rushed South- ward to care for the wounded and soothe the pillow of the dying. Few things were done in the past half-century to break down more effectually anti-Catholic prejudice than the sending of our generous Sisters to the battle- 298 SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS it III fleld and the military hospitals. The soldiers venerated the Sisters, and never since have they ceased repeating their praises. There were other priests and other Sisters in the war: those oT Holy Cross made up the greater part of the roster;" none excelled them m dar- ing feat and religious fervor; no other order, no diocese, made, for the purpose, sacrifices as did that of Holy Cross. Father Sorin, you saved the honor of tlie Church. I speak from a special knowledge of the facts, and speak from my heart: and could the country's mar- tyrs speak from the silent earth at Gettysburg and a hundred other gory fields, their voices would reecho willi our own in your praise on this glorious anniversary. With these glowing words of panegyric we may fittingly bring this chapter to a close. Half a decade after the celebration of his golden jubilee. Father Sorin passed quietly away. His life is done; but the spirit in which he lived it survives in many a hundred, privileged to come in contact with his inspiring personality, and potently, if not always consciously, influenced by the atmosphere of faith which habitually surrounded him. "Great men grow greater with t^e lapse of time," and a later century will estimate his worth a»-d work more adequately far than can our own. The perspective of additional years is needed so to view him that he will assume his due proportions among the heroes of the Church in America; but this much at least even now is clear: In the most active and progressive region of an active and progressive land he taught the lesson that religious zeal can work still greater marvels than can the unhallowed A PRIESTLY KNI3HT OF MARY 299 ambition for wealth and power; that men of (loil are in no way debarred from being emphatically "men of their times"; and that in our day, as in tlu- Middle Ages, the knight who protTers his homage to the Queen of Virgins, wears her colors, and wields his lance in her cause, battles with prowess invincible, and even before he doft's life's armor reaps of his valor a reward exceeding great. INDEX U<- Page A. B. C of the spiritual life. 123 Abstinence, Faatlng and... 121 "Acts of Ood" as mortlflca- tlons ll** Adage, A clerical 49 Adverbs and adverbial phrases 210 Their collocation Important 210 Common errors in using. . 211 Affability, Scott on 141 St. Paul on 142 "All things to all men" 142 Altar, The right side of the. 95 American Priests and For. IhUssions 9 Americanism of Father Sorln 204 America's aid to Missions.. 10 Apostolic poverty 169 Apothegm, Sherman's 229 Aquinas. St. T h o ni a s. Physique of 63 Army, language as an 198 Ascetic, or dyspeptic? 63 Attention, Economy of 214 Attitude ' f travelling cleric. 274 Augustine, St., on travelling 259 Automobiles, Priests and. . . 234 Criticism of 235 Common-sense view of. . . 236 Ave Maria, The 288 Archbishop Ireland on 289 Archbishop Mundeleln on. 289 Aversion to certain foods... 56 Avarice and priests 176 Baccalaureate sermons, etc. 43 Bearing, A priest's 140 Benediction ceremonies 86 Betty Hlgdon a type 253 Bernard, St., on religious... 130 Bishop, Naming a 218 Blretta at Mass 106 Blair, Dr , on grammar IS." on arrangement of words. 21 Blunderer, A dietetic 61 Bolting one's food 64 Bookkeeping and priests... 183 Books, Some useful 148 Boys' spirit of romance 21 Breakfasts, Hearty and light 52 Page Breviary, The abridged 230 Brlght's disease, in America 61 Causes of 62 Brotherhood of man. The... 25G Candles, Carrying unlighted. 106 Canon 465 of the New Codex. 260 Carlyle on Abbot Samson... 138 Capital and labor 249 Catechism centres 42 Catholic atmosphere 31 Catholic Instruction League. 42 Censer, Swinging the 90 Cereals for breakfast 63 Charity of Priests, The Fraternal 66 Charity, St. John on 68, 69 of rectors and curates 72 Organized 251 Chauvinism and patriotism. . 271 Children, Catholic, in public schools 40 Chivalry still extant 280 Clb >-lum — When covered?... 95 Purification of 96 Emptying at Communion. 97 Circumabulatlng the slobe. . 269 Clearness of sentences 204 Better than harmony 210 Clerical Club-Night, A 216 Clerical handbooks compared 240 Collections for the Missions. 17 Colors of chasuble and dal- nxatics 109 Communion card 100 Communion outside of Mass. 108 Conference, Queries at a 85 Conslstorlal Congregation... 219 Conversions and money 13 Converts, Protestant, in India 14 Convert- makers 135 Cooks and civilized man 51 Cosmopolitan difficulty, A . . . 160 (^ouncll, Baltimore, on house- keepers 164 Critical curates 64 Critics of careful speech 214 Custody of the eyes 124 800 INDEX 301 Dally Communion and voca- tions J? Getting Into. 182 poverty ^*' love '^ epithets 80 77 78 "111 189 I>ebt, Decent Degrees' ot Detracting Detraction Fallacy about and vanity ^'» Diction. Impropriety of •■'J'-' EJxamples of faulty Dictation Diet. History of man's &" should vary with activities. 58 Dlfllculty. A cosmopolitan.. l«o of a flowing style l';|^ Diatasle for certain foods Dogberry. A clerioiU Dryden on English Eating, MortiOcatlon In 122 Economy of attention 214 Education, Christian -J> HusUin on -'' Educational zeal 30 Golden mean in 31 Emptying the (iborlum !*' English. The IHibrics of. Entering the sanctuary. Episcopal appointments. Epithets, Detracting S'^ Evening Mall. Chi., quoted. Experlentiae Doctor E^yes, Custody of the Faber. F;i(her, Physlaue of. Factors in dimoiii.s 1<>6 Francis de Sales, St., .m charity "^ Frankenstein, A civic Fraternal Charity of Priests The Frerl. Mgr.. quot.'d Friendly relations with prot estants "Frills" In 48 66 16 144 P4 218 4rt r.M OS r.'.» ir>2 schools 34 Gasparri on solitary Masses. Iu3 Gastronomic errors 5 ' C.elermann, Fath.r. quoted.. 213 Genutlectlng at I^enediction. S6 Gibbons, Card., on Prop, of the Faith Golden mean in friendliness, The Goldsmith's style, (^>mpli- ment to "Good mixer," On lieiim: a.. Gospel prudence Gospel, Living by the 167 Gossips. Priestly ""^i Gourmands and gourmets... C5 G ra mmar, an Interestliit; study i;*J Blair on I-*' . . . ins 16 143 192 15 Dr. W. D. Whitney on Richard Grant White on. 196 125 76 11.! 2;>f. ISl 55 Hair-shirt, The best Hatred among priests... Hedonism of the age Helping the tramp Heresy, Alistniel and crete Heretics. Material J3^ Hitting below the belt 22u Holidays, recognized as nor- mal ;; ' and second nature -B3 not needed by sonic cl.rles. 2«'.S Philosophy of U2 2r,5 I 302 INDEX Page Holy Childhood Association. 12 Its efficacy 13 Holy Cross chaplains In Civil War 297 Housekeeper, The Priest's.. 150 Hyderabad missionary quoted 13 Ideal teachers 31 Impropriety of diction 200 Examples of 201 Incensingr, Correct way of... 90 Mistakes in 92 Individual Influence 137 Insufllclency of the "pen- ance" 119 Ireland, Archbishop, Sermon of 296 Jenkins, Father, and house- keepers 151 John, St., on charity 68, 69 Journal of Education quoted. 45 "Judge Not" 84 Keeping one's place 165 Klntzlng, Dr., quoted 49 Knight of Mary. A Priestly. . 280 Laity's duty to For. Missions 11 Language as an army 198 Lavabo, Finger bowl at the. 100 Lay help in social work 255 Lent, Medical journal on 121 Leo, Father, Austerity of 112 Leo Xm and social ques- tions 244, 250 Letter of recommendation. A 204 Lex tallonis 83 Limerick, An ancient 228 Lingo, A bit of 233 Literature of the Mlsslon.s.. 22 lilterary style 190 Little Sisters of the Holy Family 152 Little things Important 122 Living by the Gospel 167 I>ove. Degrees of 70 lyove of First Christians. The 67 Lucretius on food and poison M Page Luxury in rectories 170 I vons, S. J., Father John i. 41 Mach, S. J., quoted 189 Mammon, Mortgaged to 177 Maryknoll, N. Y II Material heretics 131 Mass, The solitary 101 Mass at sea 105 Massy-Miassy, Sir Thomas.. 226 Meal, Favorite 52 Best clerical 66 Meddling with parish mat- ters 164 Meditation, as mortification. 126 Not difficult 127 Books of 118 Equivalent f r 128 Meredith, Ow i, on dining. . 51 Mlcawber's financial wisdom. ISl Ministers, The priest and. . . 145 Mission houses In IT. S 20 Money and conversions 13 Money-grabbing priests 168 Monstrance, Blessing with the 89 Moriarty, Bishop, quoted 177 Mortification, Priestly Ill necessary to salvation .... 115 Saints on 115 of religious 117 in eating 122 Motives of charity 75 Motor-car travelling 268 Mundelein, Abp., on Foreign Missions 24 on Ave Maria 289 Naming of bishops, The 218 National vanity. A cure for. . 272 Natal. Bishop of 104 Neighbor, Who is our 70 Notre Dame, Indiana 286 Ocean travel 266 Delights of 267 O'Connell and a bigot 226 On being the "whole pu.sh". . 257 O'Reilly. Boyle, on being Irish 228 INDEX 303 Organised charity "Outside the Church, etc." Pa»;e . . 251 Pa«e Its and Kor. Mls- at 131, ^46 Forty 107 Pange Lingua Hours Parental responsibility 40 Paradox. A consoling 15 Parsing, Burlesque 15*4 Paschal candle at Forty Hours !<'■' Pastor and pedagogy. The. . . 31 ••Penance," Insufficiency of the \\l Penance defined i23 Philadelphia schools 47 Phillips, Wendell 224 Plus X and For. Missions . . . on priests' social work Plato quoted Portrait, or caricalure, A Poverty, Apostolic Precision in use of words Precept of the Church, The fifth Instruction on Priests* generosity, Amer- ican Priest and the School, The. . Priests. Three categories of. without a parish school. . . . not angels and ministers ^^^ and business knowledge and charitable action 180 Priest and Non-Catholics. The Priest and Social Problems, The Priest as Traveller. The Priest's Ho\isekeeper. The. . . Priest's Table. The Priestly Knight of Mar>-. A Priestly Mortification HI Pronouns, Importance of Proper place of Errors in using 207. Prop, of the Faith, Purpose of the and the Church in U. S . . Protc sions ' * Prudence. Gospel 15 Public schools, not Protes- tant *' criticized ** Pinis 226 Quasi-luxury 1^9 Queries at ii Conference 85 Qulntilian on clearness 205 Railway travel 270 Record. A walking 269 Recreation. A literary 232 Red chasuble, white dal- matics 109 Relatives in priests* houses.. 1B6 Arguments for 1^7 Objections to 168 Religious, the ideal teachers. SI St. Bernard on 130 Repartees 22S Right side of the altar. The. . 95 Romance In boys 21 Rubrical Odds and Ends 85 Rubrics of English, The 189 Rubrics, receptive and di- rective *5 Flippant Ulk about ....... 93 Rule of life and secular priests, A 130 Rulas for the Pastort of Souls 145 Ruskln on education 26 Saints on Mortification. The. 115 Samson. Abbot l'* Sanctuary. Entering the 94 Scannell. Dr.. quoted 242 SrlKKl. The Priest and the.. 26 Schools. Public *2 School system. Catholic 27 not yet Ideal 28 Scott on affability 1*1 Sea, Mass at 1^^ ■l(\e, Seculars and a rule of life . ■ . 20f, Seminaries. Social studies In. 20S Shakespeare on surfeiting. .. Sherman's apothegm on war. 12 Sisters, as sacristans, etc. . . . 16 Pastoral appreciation of. . 23 245 50 160 169 203 172 174 9 26 27 39 49 1S4 131 239 259 150 49 280 130 244 49 229 35 36 304 INDEX Page 37 292 193 74 246 239 25S 101 103 271 Sisters, outdoor exercise of of Holy Cross In Civil Wax 297 Slang ^^* Smart retort discounted, A Smith, Sydney, on Macaulay. Social topics, A list of Social Problems, The Priest and Sodality work. Extension of. Solitary Mass, The G;isparrl on Solomon and "the new" 239 Sonnet, A ^* Sophistry about mortification 114 Serin, Father Edward 282 His devotion to Our Lady.. 283 His Americanism 297 Spread-eagleism and patriot Ism Snueers, Mr., as gramma- rian 19* Stations, Going around the.. 129 Style defined ^^O Surfeiting ^~ Superfluous m o n t- y. Best place for SwinRing the censer. . . Synonyms Table. The Priest's Talking at Table 64 Techny, Illinois ^^^ Terna, The 219 Text, A suggested 1 ' - Thompson, Francis, on the child Tlllotpon. Abp., on wills 185 Toleiance. An undue 163 Tongue. Mortification of the. 125 "Too." A fantastic use of... 212 Toujours perdrlx ^54 Tramp, Helping the Traveller, The Priest as.... Travol, T'ses of A danger of Independent Tribute, to Catholic schools An infrequent 125 Trifiop. Michael Angelo on.. **5 Page Undue tolerance. An 163 Unllghtcd candles ll^S Useful books. Some 1*8 Vacations Utility of Vanity, Detraction and Vegetating versus living Views of foreigners, Discol- ored Vincent de Paul, St., on charity on mortification of the ap- petite Vocabulary, A priest's Vocations for the Mis- sions 1^' How to secure them Voltaire on eating 188 90 203 49 2G 261 262 79 264 274 84 123 199 19 21 60 269 10 ■Walking War's effect, on For. Mis- sions, The Way of the Cross. The 129 Wesley, John, on cocksure- ness J^ Well-to-do comfort 1" White, R. Grant, on gram- mar "« ■^VTiitney, W. D., on gram- mar • ^^B Williams, Dr. H. S.. quoted 52, 55 Wills, Tillotson on 185 Time to make them 1|6 Priestly 1»» A model of i"' Wiseman. Tard., on Foreign Missions 9 Within IVIy Parish quoted... 146 162 252 259 270 27S 33 Woman's will, A Woman Elevated Through our L.ady 281 Young housekeepers 165 Young priests and extrava- gance 180 Zial in convert-making. Zorn in occupations 134 26 •:Sim: '<&> f^mttmw