Change in the habits and ways of the bishop.—His origin,age, capability, mode of living, labor, initiative,undertakings, and moral and social ascendancy.5245
In order to make troops march, a staff, even a croisier, is not enough; to compulsory subordination voluntary subordination must be added; therefore, legal authority in the chief should be accompanied with moral authority; otherwise he will not be loyally supported and to the end. In 1789, this was not the case with the bishop; on two occasions, and at two critical moments, the clergy of the inferior order formed a separate band, at first at the elections, by selecting for deputies curés and not prelates, and next in the national assembly, by abandoning the prelates to unite with the Third Estate. The intimate hold of the chief on his men was relaxed or broken. His ascendency over them was no longer sufficiently great; they no longer had confidence in him. His subordinates had come to regard him as he was, a privileged individual, sprung from a another stock and furnished by a class apart, bishop by right of birth, without a prolonged apprenticeship, having rendered no services, without tests of merit, almost an interloper in the body of his clergy, a Church parasite accustomed to spending the revenues of his diocese away from his diocese, idle and ostentatious, often a shameless gallant or obnoxious hunter, disposed to be a philosopher and free-thinker, and who lacked two qualifications for a leader of Christian priests: first, ecclesiastical deportment, and next, and very often, Christian faith.5246
All these gaps in and discrepancies of episcopal character, all these differences and distances (which existed before 1789), between the origins, interests, habits, and manners of the lower and the upper clergy, all these inequalities and irregularities which alienated inferiors from the superior, have disappeared; the modern régime has leveled the wall of separation established by the ancient régime between the bishop and his priests. At the present day he is, like them, a plebeian, of common extraction, and sometimes very low, one being the son of a village shoemaker, another the natural son of a poor workwoman, both being men of feeling and never blushing at their humble origin, openly tender and respectful to their mothers,—a certain bishop lodging his mother, formerly a servant, in his episcopal palace and giving her the first seat at his table among the most honored and noblest of his guests.5247He is "one of fortune's officers," that is to say, a meritorious and old officer.5248According the "Almanac" of 1889, the three youngest are from forty-seven to forty-nine years of age; all the others are fifty and over; among the latter, three fourths of them are over sixty. As a general rule, a priest cannot become a bishop short of twenty or twenty-five years' service in lower or average grades; he must have remained in each grade a longer or shorter period, in turn vicar, curé, vicar-general, canon, head of a seminary, sometimes coadjutor, and almost always have distinguished himself in some office, either as preacher or catechist, professor or administrator, canonist or theologian. His full competence cannot be contested, and he enjoys a right to exact full obedience; he has himself rendered it up to his consecration; "he boasts of it," and the example he proposes to his priests is the one he has himself given.5249On the other hand, his moderate way of living excites but little envy; it is about like that of a general of division, or of a prefect, or of a high civil functionary who, lacking personal fortune, has nothing but his salary to live on. He does not display, as formerly, confessionals lined with satin, kitchen utensil of massive silver, hunting accoutrements, a hierarchical staff of major-domos, ushers, valets, and liveried lackeys, stables and carriages, lay grand-seigniors, vassals of his suzerainty and figuring at his consecration, a princely ceremonial of parade and homage, a pompous show of receptions and of hospitalities. There is nothing but what is necessary, the indispensable instruments of his office: an ordinary carriage for his episcopal journeys and town visits, three or four domestics for manual service, three or four secretaries for official writings, some old mansion or other, cheaply repaired and refurnished without ostentation, its rooms and bureaus being those of an administrator, business man, and responsible head of a numerous staff; in effect, he is responsible for a good many subordinates, he has a good deal to attend to; he works himself, looking after the whole and in detail, keeping classified files by means of a chronological and systematic collection,5250like the general director of a vast company; if he enjoys greater honors, he is subject to greater exigencies; assuredly, his predecessors under the ancient régime, delicate Epicureans, would not have wished for such a life; they would not have considered the benefit worth the effort.
Even when old, he draws on his energies; he officiates, he preaches, he presides at long ceremonies, he ordains seminarians, he confirms thousands of children,5251he visits one after another the parishes in his diocese; often, at the end of his administration, he has visited them all and many times. Meanwhile, shut up in his episcopal cabinet, he is constantly inspecting these four or five hundred parishes; he reads or listens to reports, informs himself on the number of communicants, on what is required in worship, on the financial state of the fabrique, on the attitude of the inhabitants, on the good or bad dispositions of municipal counselors and mayors, on the local cause of dissension and conflict, on the conduct and character of the curé or vicar; each resident ecclesiastic needs guidance or maintenance between intemperate zeal and inert lukewarmness, evenly balanced according as parishes and circumstances vary, but always in a way to prevent false steps, to turn aside mistakes, to humor opinion, to stop scandals. For the entire life of the clergyman, not only his public life but again his personal, domestic, private life, belongs to and concerns the Church:5252there must be no evil reports, even without foundation, on his account; if these occur, the bishop summons him to headquarters, warns him, admonishes him, and, without unburdening himself by handing the matter over to a responsible tribunal, he alone passes judgment after personally conducting the investigations, suffering the worries, and carrying out the painful, painstaking labor always attendant on direct absolute power. Likewise, in relation to his upper and his lower seminary: here are two indispensable nurseries of which he is the head gardener, attentive to filling annual vacancies and seeking proper subjects for these throughout his diocese, ever verifying and cultivating their vocations; he confers scholarships; he dictates rules and regulations; appoints and dismisses, displaces and procures as he pleases, the director and professors; he takes them, if he chooses, out of his diocese or out of the body of regular clergy; he prescribes a doctrine to them, methods, ways of thinking and teaching, and he keeps his eye, beyond his present or future priests, on three or four hundred monks and on fourteen hundred nuns.
As to the monks, so long as they remain inside their dwellings, in company together and at home, he has nothing to say to them; but, when they come to preach, confess, officiate or teach in public on his ground, they fall under his jurisdiction; in concert with their superior and with the Pope, he has rights over them and he uses them. They are now his auxiliaries assigned to or summoned by him, available troops and a reinforcement, so many chosen companies expressly ready, each with its own discipline, its particular uniform, its special weapon, and who bring to him in following a campaign under his orders, distinct aptitudes and a livelier zeal. He needs them5253in order to make up for the insufficiency of his local clergy in arousing the spirit of devotion in his parishes and in enforcing sound doctrine in his seminaries. Now, between these two forces a common understanding is difficult; the former, adjuncts and flying about, march in front; the latter, holding the ground and stationary, look upon the new-comers as usurpers who lessen both their popularity and their fees; a bishop must possess great tact as well as energy to impose on both bodies of this clergy, if not an intimate union, at least mutual aid and a collaboration without conflict.—As to the nuns,5254he is their ordinary, the sole arbiter, overseer and ruler over all these cloistered lives; he receives their vows, and renders them free of them; it is he who, after due inquiry and examination, authorizes each entrance into the community or a return to society, at first each admission or novitiate, and next each profession of faith or assumption of the veil, every dismissal or departure of a nun, every claim that one makes, every grave act of severity or decision on the part of the superior. He approves of, or appoints, the confessor of the establishment; he maintains seclusion in it, he draws tighter or relaxes the observances; he himself enters its doors by privilege of his office, and, with his own eyes, he inspects its régime, spiritual and temporal, through a right of control which extends from the direction of souls to the administration of property.
To so many obligatory matters he adds others which are voluntary, not alone works of piety, those relating to worship, propaganda, diocesan missions, catechizing adults, brotherhoods for perpetual adoration, meetings for the uninterrupted recital of the rosary, Peter's pence, seminary funds, Catholic journals and reviews-but, again, institutions for charity and education.5255In the way of charity, he founds or supports twenty different kinds, sixty in one diocese alone, general and special services, infant nurseries, clubs, asylums, lodging-houses, patronages, societies for helping and placing the poor, for the sick at home and in the hospitals, for suckling infants, for the deaf and dumb, for the blind, for old men, for orphans, for repentant prostitutes, for prisoners, for soldiers in garrison, for workmen, apprentices, youths, and quantities of others. In the way of education, there are yet more of them—works which the Catholic chiefs have most at heart; without these, it is impossible in modern society to preserve the faith in each new generation. Hence, at each turning-point of political history, we see the bishops benefiting by the toleration or warding off the intolerance of the teaching State, competing with it, erecting alongside of its public schools free schools of its own, directed or served by priests or religious brotherhoods;—after the suppression of the university monopoly in 1850, more than one hundred colleges5256for secondary education; after the favorable law of 1875, four or five provincial faculties or universities for superior instruction after the hostile laws of 1882, many thousands of parochial schools for primary instruction.
Foundation and support, all this is expensive. The bishop requires a great deal of money, especially since the State, become ill-disposed, cuts off clerical resources as much as possible, no longer maintains scholarships in the seminaries, deprives suspicious desservans of their small stipends, eats into the salaries of the prelates, throws obstacles in the way of communal liberalities, taxes and over taxes the congregations, so that, not merely through the diminution of its allowances it relieves itself at the expense of the Church, but again, through the increase of its imposts, it burdens the Church for its own advantage. The episcopacy obtains all necessary funds through collections in the churches and at domiciles, through the gifts and subscriptions of the faithful; and, every year, it needs millions, apart from the budget appropriation, for its faculties and universities in which it installs largely paid professors, for the construction, location and arrangement of its countless buildings, for the expenses of its minor schools, for the support of its ten thousand seminarists, for the general out-lay on so many charitable institutions; and it is the bishop who, their principal promoter, must provide for this, all the more because he has often taken it upon himself in advance, and made himself responsible for it by either a written or verbal promise. He responds to all these engagements; he has funds on hand at the maturity of each contract. In 1883, the bishop of Nancy, in need of one hundred thousand francs to build a school-house with a work-room attached to it, mentions this to a number of persons assembled in his drawing-room; one of these puts his hand in his pocket and gives him ten thousand francs, and others subscribe on the spot to the amount of seventy-four thousand francs.5257Cardinal Mathieu, during his administration, archbishop of Besançon, thus collects and expends four millions. Lately, Cardinal Lavigerie, to whom the budget allows fifteen thousand francs per annum, wrote that he had spent eighteen hundred thousand francs and had incurred no debt.5258—Through this initiative and this ascendancy the bishop becomes a central social rallying-point; there is no other in the provinces, nothing but so many disjointed lives, juxtaposed and kept together in an artificial circle prescribed from above; so that a good many of these, and of most consideration, gravitate to and group themselves, especially since 1830, around this last permanent center and form a part of its body; he is the sole germinating, vivifying, intact center that still agglutinates scattered wills and suitably organizes them. Naturally, class and party interests incorporate themselves additionally along with the Catholic interest which he represents, and his ecclesiastical authority becomes a political influence; besides his secular and regular clergy, over and beyond the two thousand five hundred exemplary or directorial lives which he controls, we see behind him an indefinite multitude of lay adhesions and devotedness. Consequently, every government must take him into their calculations, and all the more because his colleagues stand by him; the episcopacy, banded together, remains erect in face of the omnipotent State, under the July monarchy as claimants of free instruction and under the second empire in support of the temporal power of the Pope.—In this militant attitude, the figure of the bishop is fully unveiled; the titular champion of an infallible Church, himself a believer and submissive; his voice is extraordinarily proud and defiant;5259in his own eyes, he is the unique depository of truth and morality; in the eyes of his followers, he becomes a superhuman personage, a prophet of salvation or of destruction, the annunciator of divine judgments, the dispenser of celestial anger or of celestial pardon; he rises to the clouds in an apotheosis of glory; with women especially, this veneration grows into enthusiasm and degenerates into idolatry. Towards the end of the second empire an eminent French bishop, on a steamboat on Lake Leman, taking a roll of bread from his pocket, seated himself alongside of two ladies and ate it, handing each of them a piece of it. One of them, bowing reverently, replied to him, "At your hands, my lord, this is almost the holy communion!"5260
The subordinates.—The secular clergy.—Its derivation andhow recruited.—How prepared and led.—The lower seminary.—The higher seminary.—Monthly lectures and annual retreat.—The Exercitia.—The Manreze du Prêtre.—The curé in hisparish.—His rôle a difficult one.—His patience and correctconduct.
A clergy submissive in mind and feeling, long prepared by its condition and education for faith and obedience, acts under the sway of this sovereign and consecrated hand.5261Among the 40,000 curés and desservans "more than 35,000 belong to the laboring class of workmen and peasants,"5262not the first class of peasants, but the second class, the poorer families earning their daily bread and often with a good many children. Under the pressure of the ambient atmosphere and of the modern régime, the others keep back their sons, retaining them for the world and denying them to the Church; ambition, even low down on the scale, has developed itself and changed its object. No longer do they aspire for their sons to become a curé but a school master, a railroad employee, or a commercial clerk.5263It was necessary to go descend further, a lower stratum has to be attained, in order to extract from it the priests that are lacking.
Undoubtedly, at this depth, the extraction was more expensive; the family cannot afford to pay for the child's ecclesiastic cal education; the State, moreover, after 1830, no longer gives anything to the lower seminary, nor to the large one after 1885.5264The expenses of these schools must be borne by the faithful in the shape of donations and legacies; to this end, the bishop orders collections in the churches in Lent and encourages his diocesans to found scholarships. The outlay for the support and education, nearly gratis, of a future priest between the ages of twelve and twenty-four is very great; in the lower seminary alone it costs from forty to fifty thousand francs over and above the net receipts;5265facing such an annual deficit, the bishop, who is responsible for the undertaking, is greatly concerned and sometimes extremely anxious. To make amends, and as compensation, the extraction is surer; the long process by which a child is withdrawn and instructed for the priesthood goes on and is finished with less uncertainty. Neither the light nor the murmur of the century finds its way to these low depths; nobody ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper; vocations can here shape themselves and become fixed like crystals, intact and rigid, and all of a piece; they are better protected than in the upper layers, less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less risk of being disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism, by modern ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as elsewhere, interfere with their silent internal workings.5266When the choir-boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns to his parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor. Stone upon stone and each stone in its place, his faith builds up and becomes complete without any incoherency in its structure, with no incongruity in the materials, without any hidden imbalance. He has been taken in hand before his twelfth year, when very young; his curé, who has been instructed from above to secure suitable subjects, has singled him out in the catechism class and again at the ceremony of confirmation;5267he is found to have a pious tendency and a taste for sacred ceremonies, a suitable demeanor, a mild disposition, complacency, and is inclined to study; he is a docile and well-behaved child; whether an acolyte at the altar or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the chasuble properly; all his genuflexions are correct, they do not worry him, he has no trouble in standing still, he is not excited and diverted, like the others, by the eruptions of animal spirits and rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is open to cultivation, if grammar and Latin can take root in it, the curé or the vicar at once take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis or nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or the seventh grade, and then he enters the lower seminary.5268
This is a school apart, a boarding-house of picked youths, an enclosed hot-house intended for the preservation and development of special vocations. None of these schools existed previous to 1789; at the present day(in 1885), they number 86 in France, and all the pupils are to become future priests. No foreign plants, no future laymen, are admitted into this preparatory nursery;5269for experience has shown that if the lower seminary is mixed it no longer attains its ecclesiastical purpose; "it habitually turns over to the upper seminary only the bottom of the classes; those at the top seek fortune elsewhere". But if, on the contrary, "the lower seminaries are kept pure, the entire rhetoric5270class continues on into the upper seminary; not only do they obtain the bottom of the classes but the top."—The culture, in this second nursery, which is prolonged during five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so under the ancient régime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in the glass letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the younger sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced into it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the episcopacy. During the vacations,5271fairy scenes and pastorals were performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the Great Mogul," and the "Shepherds in Chains"; the seminarians took great care of their hair; a first-class hair-dresser came and waited on them; the doors were not regularly shut: the youthful Talleyrand knew how to get out into the city and begin or continue his gallantries.5272From and after the Concordat, stricter discipline in the new seminaries had become monastic; these are practical schools, not for knowledge, but for training, the object being much less to make learned men than believing priests; education takes precedence of instruction and intellectual exercises are made subordinate to spiritual exercises5273—mass every day and five visits to the Saint-Sacrament, with one minute to half-hour prayer stations; rosaries of sixty-three paters and aves, litanies, the angelus, loud and whispered prayers, special self-examinations, meditation on the knees, edifying readings in common, silence until one o'clock in the afternoon, silence at meals and the listening to an edifying discourse, frequent communions, weekly confessions, general confession at New-year's, one day of retreat at the end of every month after the vacations and before the collation of each of the four orders, eight days of retirement during which a suspension of all study, morning and evening sermons, spiritual readings, meditations, orisons and other services from hour to hour;5274in short, the daily and systematic application of a wise and steadily perfected method, the most serviceable for fortifying faith, exalting the imagination, giving direction and impulse to the will, analogous to that of a military school, Saint-Cyr or Saumur, to such an extent that its corporeal and mental imprint is indelible, and that by the way in which he thinks, talks, smiles, bows and stands in your presence we at once recognize a former pupil of Saint-Sulpice as we do a former pupil of Saumur and of Saint-Cyr. Thus graduated, an ordained and consecrated priest, first a vicar and then a curé desservant, the discipline which has bound and fashioned him still keeps him erect and presenting arms. Besides his duties in church and his ministrations in the homes of his parishioners, besides masses, vespers, sermons, catechisings, confessions, communions, baptisms, marriages, extreme unctions, funerals, visiting the sick and suffering, he has his personal and private exercises: at first, his breviary, the reading of which demands each day an hour and a half, no practical duty being so necessary. Lamennais obtained a dispensation from it, and hence his lapses and fall.5275Let no one object that such a recitation soon becomes mechanical5276; the prayers, phrases and words which it buries deep in the mind, even wandering, necessarily become fixed inhabitants in it, and hence occult and stirring powers banded together which encompass the intellect and lay siege to the will, which, in the subterranean regions of the soul, gradually extend or fortify their silent occupation of the place, which insensibly operate on the man without his being aware of it, and which, at critical moments, unexpectedly rise up to steady his footsteps or to save him from temptation. Add to this antique custom two modern institutions which contribute to the same end. The first one is the monthly conference, which brings together the desservans curés at the residence of the oldest curé in the canton; each has prepared a study on some theme furnished by the bishopric, some question of dogma, morality or religious history, which he reads aloud and discusses with his brethren under the presidency and direction of the oldest curé, who gives his final decision; this keeps theoretical knowledge and ecclesiastical erudition fresh in the minds of both reader and hearers. The other institution, almost universal nowadays, is the annual retreat which the priests in the diocese pass in the large seminary of the principal town. The plan of it was traced by Saint Ignatius; his Exercitia is still to-day the manual in use, the text of which is literally,5277or very nearly, followed.5278The object is to reconstitute the supernatural world in the soul, for, in general, it evaporates, becomes effaced, and ceases to be palpable under the pressure of the natural world. Even the faithful pay very little attention to it, while their vague conception of it ends in becoming a mere verbal belief; it is essential to give them back the positive sensation, the contact and feeling. To this end, a man retires to a suitable place, where what he does actively or passively is hourly determined for him in advance—attendance at chapel or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest—in short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations and overcome him with spiritual impressions; immediately around him, impressions of the same kind followed by the contagion of example, mutual fervor, common expectation, involuntary emulation, and that overstrained eagerness which creates its object; with all the more certainty that the individual himself works on himself, in silence, five hours a day, according to the prescriptions of a profound psychology, in order that his bare conception may take upon itself body and substance. What-ever may be the subject of his meditations, he repeats it twice the same day, and each time he begins by "creating the scene," the Nativity or the Passion, the Day of Judgment or Hell; he converts the remote and undefined story, the dry, abstract dogma, into a detailed and figured representation; he dwells on it, he evokes in turn the images furnished by the five senses, visual, audible, tactile, olfactory, and even gustatory; he groups them together, and in the evening he animates them afresh in order that he may find them more intense when he awakes the next morning. He thus obtains the complete, precise, almost physical spectacle of his aspirations; he reaches the alibi, that mental transposition, that reversal of the points of view in which the order of certainties becomes inverted, in which substantial objects seem to be vain phantoms and the mystic world a world of substantial reality.5279—According to persons and circumstances, the theme for meditation differs, and the retreat is prolonged for a shorter or longer period. For laymen, it generally lasts for three days only; for the Brethren of the Christian Schools it is eight days annually, and when, at the age of twenty-eight, they take their vows in perpetuity, it lasts thirty days: for the secular priests, it lasts a little less than a week, while the theme on which their meditations are concentrated is the supernatural character of the priest. The priest who is confessor and ministrant of the Eucharist, the priest who is the savior and restorer, the priest who is pastor, preacher and administrator—such are the subjects on which their imagination, assisted and directed, must work in order to compose the cordial which has to support them for the entire year. None is more potent; that which the Puritans drank at an American camp-meeting or at a Scotch revival was stronger but of less enduring effect.5280
Two different cordials, one reinforcing the other, are mixed together in this drink, both being of high flavor and so rank as to burn an ordinary mouth. On the one hand, with the freedom of language and the boldness of deduction characteristic of the method, the sentiment of the priest's dignity is exalted. What is the priest?"He is, between God who is in heaven and the man who tries to find him on earth, a being, God and man, who brings these nearer by his symbolizing both.5281.. I do not flatter you with pious hyperboles in calling you gods; this is not a rhetorical falsehood.... You are creators similar to Mary in her cooperation in the Incarnation.... You are creators like God in time.... You are creators like God in eternity. Our creation on our part, our daily creation, is nothing less than the Word made flesh itself.... God may create other worlds, he cannot so order it that any act under the sun can be greater than your sacrifice; for, at this moment, he reposes in your hands all that he has and all that he is.... I am not a little lower than the cherubim and seraphim in the government of the world, I am far above them; they are only the Servants of God, we are his coadjutors.... The angels, who behold the vast riches passing through our hands daily, are amazed at our prerogative.... I fulfill three sublime functions in relation to the god of our altars—I cause him to descend, I administer his body, I am his custodian... . Jesus dwells under your lock and key; his hours of reception begin and end through you, he does not move without your permission, he gives no benediction without your assistance, he bestows nothing except at your hands, and his dependence is so dear to him that, for eighteen hundred years, he has not left the Church for one moment to lose himself on the glory of his Father."—On the other hand, they are made to drink in full draughts the sentiment of subordination, which they imbibe to their very marrow.5282"Ecclesiastical obedience is... a love of dependence, a violation of judgment.... Would you know what it is as to the extent of sacrifice? A voluntary death, the sepulcher of the will, says Saint Climaque.... There is a sort of real presence infused into those who command us...." Let us be careful not to fall "into the crafty opposition of liberal Catholicism.... Liberalism, in its consequences, is social atheism.... Unity, in Roman faith, is not sufficient; let us labor together in the unity of the Roman spirit; for that, let us always judge Rome with the optimism of affection.... Each new dogmatic definition produces its own advantages: that of the Immaculate Conception has given us Lourdes and its truly oecumenical wonders."
Nothing of all this is too much, and, in the face of the exigencies of modern times, it scarcely suffices. Now that society has become incredulous, indifferent or, at the least, secular, the priest must possess the two intense and master ideas which support a soldier abroad among insurgents or barbarians, one being the conviction that he is of a species and essence apart, infinitely superior to the common herd; and the other is the thought that he belongs to his flag, to his chiefs, especially to the commanding general, and that he has given himself up entirely to prompt obedience, to obeying every order issued without question or doubt.5283Thus, in that parish where the permanent curé was once installed, especially in the rural districts,5284the legal and popular governor of all souls, his successor, the removable desservant, is merely a resident bailiff, a sentry in his box, at the opening of a road which the public at large no longer travel. From time to time he hails you! But scarcely any one listens to him. Nine out of ten men pass at a distance, along a newer, more convenient and broader road. They either nod to him afar off or give him the go-by. Some are even ill-disposed, watching him or denouncing him to the ecclesiastic or lay authorities on which he depends. He is expected to make his orders respected and yet not hated, to be zealous and yet not importunate, to act and yet not efface himself: he succeeds pretty often, thanks to the preparation just described, and, in his rural sentry-box, patient, resigned, obeying his orders, he mounts guard lonely and in solitude, a guard which, for the past fifteen years, (from 1870-1885) is disturbed and anxious and becoming singularly difficult.
5201 (return)[ Artaud, "Histoire de Pie VII.", I., 167.]
5202 (return)[ Comte d'Haussonville, "L'Église romaine et le premier Empire, IV.,378, 415. (Instructions for the ecclesiastical commission of 1811.) "The Pope exercised the authority of universal bishop at the time of the re-establishment of the cult in France.... The Pope, under the warrant of an extraordinary and unique case in the Church, acted, after the Concordat, as if he had absolute power over the bishops." (Speech by Bigot de Préameneu, Minister of Worship, at the national council, June 20, 1811.) This act was almost universal in the history of the church, and the court of Rome started from this sort of extraordinary act, passed by it at the request of the sovereign, in order to enforce its ideas of arbitrary rule over the bishops."]
5203 (return)[ So stated by Napoleon.]
5204 (return)[ Bossuet, "OEuvres complètes, XXXII.", 415. (Defensio declarationis cleri gallicani, lib. VIII, caput 14).—"Episcopos, licet papæ divino jure subditos, ejusdem esse ordinis, ejusdem caracteris, sive, ut loquitur Hieronymus, ejusdem meriti, ejusdem, sacerdotii, collegasque et coepiscopos appelari constat, scitumque illud Bernardi ad Eugenium papam: Non es dominus episcoporum, sed unus ex illis."]
5205 (return)[ Comte Boulay (de la Meurthe), "les Négociations du Concordat," p. 35.—There were 50 vacancies in 135 dioceses, owing to the death of their incumbents.]
5206 (return)[ Bercastel and Henrion, XIII., 43. (Observations of Abbé Emery on the Concordat.) "None of the past Popes, not even those who have extended their authority the farthest, have been able to carry such heavy, authoritative blows out, as those struck at this time by Pius VII."]
5207 (return)[ Prælectiones juris canonici habitæ in seminario Sancti Sulpitii, 1867 (Par l'abbé Icard), I., 138. "Sancti canones passim memorant distinctionem duplicis potestatis quâ utitur sanctus pontifex: unam appelant ordinariam, aliam absolutam, vel plenitudinem potestatis... . Pontifex potestate ordinaria utitur, quando juris positivi dispositionem retinet.... Potestatem extraordinariam exserit, quando jus humanum non servat, ut si jus ipsum auferat, si 1egibus conciliorum deroget, privilegia acquisita immutet.... Plenitudo potestatis nullis publici juris regulis est limitata."—Ibid., I, 333.]
5208 (return)[ Principal Concordats: with Bavaria, 1817; with Prussia, 1821; with Wurtemburg, Baden, Nassau, the two Hesses, 1821; with Hanover, 1824; with the Netherlands, 1827; with Russia, 1847; with Austria, 1855; with Spain, 1851; with the two Sicilies, 1818; with Tuscany, 1851; with Portugal (for the patronat of the Indies and of China), 1857; with Costa Rica, 1852; Guatemala, 1853; Haiti, 1860; Honduras 1861; Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and San Salvador, 1862.]
5209 (return)[ Bercastel et Henrion, XIII, 524.]
5210 (return)[ "Adstantibus non judicantibus."—One of the prelates assembled at the Vatican, Nov. 20, 1854, observed that if the Pope decided on the definition of the Immaculate Conception... this decision would furnish a practical demonstration... of the infallibility with which Jesus Christ had invested his vicar on earth." (Émile Ollivier, "L'Église et l'État au concile du Vatican, I., 313.)]
5211 (return)[ Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., 105. (Circular of Pius VII., February 25, 1808.) "It is said that all cults should be free and publicly exercised; but we have thrown this article out as opposed to the canons and to the councils, to the catholic religion."—Ibid., (Pius VII. to the Italian bishops on the French system, May 22, 1808.) "This system of indifferentism, which supposes no religion, is that which is most injurious and most opposed to the Catholic apostolic and Roman religion, which, because it is divine, is necessarily sole and unique and, on that very account, cannot ally itself with any other."—Cf. the "Syllabus" and the encyclical letter "Quanta Cura"of December 8, 1864.]
5212 (return)[ Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution révolutionnaire dans le departement du Doubs," X., 720-773. (List in detail of the entire staff of the diocese of Besançon, in 1801 and in 1822, under Archbishop Lecoz, a former assermenté.—During the Empire, and especially after 1806, this mixed clergy keeps refining itself. A large number, moreover, of assermentés do not return to the Church. They are not disposed to retract, and many of them enter into the new university. For example ("Vie du Cardinal Bonnechose," by M. Besson, I., 24), the principal teachers in the Roman college in 1815-1816 were a former Capuchin, a former Oratorian and three assermentés priests. One of these, M. Nicolas Bignon, docteur ès lettres, professor of grammar in the year IV at the Ecole Centrale, then professor of rhetoric at the Lycée and member of the Roman Academy, "lived as a philosopher, not as a Christian and still less as a priest." Naturally, he is dismissed in 1816. After that date, the purging goes on increasing against all ecclesiastics suspected of having compromised with the Revolution, either liberals or Jansenists. Cf. the "Mémoires de l'abbé Babou, évêque nommé de Séez," on the difficulties encountered by a too Gallican bishop and on the bitterness towards him of the local aristocracy of his diocese.]
5213 (return)[ Cf. the "Mémoires de l'abbé Babou, évêque nommé de Séez," on the difficulties encountered by a too Gallican bishop and on the bitterness towards him of the local aristocracy of his diocese.]
5214 (return)[ "Mémorial," July 31, 1816.]
5215 (return)[ Both systems, set forth with rare impartiality and clearness, may be found in "L'Église et l'Etat au concile du Vatican," by Émile Ollivier, I., chs. II. and III.]
5216 (return)[ Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., p. 14. (Letter of M. d'Avian, archbishop of Bordeaux, October 28, 1815.) "A dozen consecutive Popes do not cease, for more than one hundred and thirty years, improving that famous Declaration of 1682."]
5217 (return)[ Ernile Olliver, ibid., I. 315-319. (Declarations of the French provincial councils and of foreign national and provincial councils before 1870.)—Cf. M. de Montalembert, "Des Intérets Catholiques," 1852, ch. II. and VI. "The ultramontane doctrine is the only true one. The great Count de Maistre's ideas in his treatise on the Pope have become commonplace for all Catholic youth."—Letter of Mgr. Guibert, February 22, 1853. "Gallicanism no longer exists."—"Diary in France," by Chris. Wordsworth, D.D., 1845. "There are not two bishops in France who are not ultramontane, that is to say devoted to the interests of the Roman See."]
5218 (return)[ "Constitutio dogmatica prima de Ecclesia Christi," July 18, 1870. "Ejusmodi romani pontificis definitiones ex sese, non ex consensu Ecclesiæ irreformabiles esse." (ch. IV.)]
5219 (return)[ Ibid., ch. III. "Si quis dixerit romanum pontificem habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel directionis, non autem plenam et supremam potestatem juridictionis in universam Ecclesiam, non solum in rebus quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis quæ ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent; aut etiam habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem hujus supremæ potestatis, aut hanc ejus potestatem non esse ordinariam et immediatam..."]
5220 (return)[ Ibid., ch. III. "Aberrant a recto veritatis tramite qui affirmant licere ab judiciis Romanorum pontificum ad oecumenicum concilium, tanquam ad auctoritatem romano pontifice superiorem, appellare."]
5221 (return)[ "Almanach national de 1889." (Among these four, one only belongs to a historic family, Mgr. de Deux-Brézé of Moulins.)]
5222 (return)[ See "The Ancient Régime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. (Ed. Laffont I. pp. 53-43, 92-93, 218,219.)]
5223 (return)[ Cf. the history of the parliaments of Grenoble and Rennes on the approach of the Revolution. Remark the fidelity of all their judicial subordinates in 1788 and 1789, and the provincial power of the league thus formed.]
5224 (return)[ Article 12.]
5225 (return)[ "The Revolution," Vol. I.—Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs des bénéfices ecclésiastiques avant 1789." ("Correspondant" of Sep. 10, 1889, pp. 887, 892, 893.) Grosley, "Mémoires pour servir l'histoire de Troyes," II, pp. 35, 45.]
5226 (return)[ Abée Elie Méric, "Le Clergé sous l'ancien régime," I., p. 26. (Ten universities conferred letters of appointment on their graduates.)—Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs," etc., p 876.—352 parliamentarians of Paris had an indult, that is to say, the right of obliging collators and church patrons to bestow the first vacant benefice either on himself or on one of his children, relations or friends. Turgot gave his indult to his friend Abbé Morellet, who consequently obtained (in June 1788) the priory of Thimer, with 16,000 livres revenue and a handsome house.—Ibid., p.887. "The bias of the Pope, ecclesiastical or lay patrons, licensed parties, indultaires, graduates, the so frequent use of resignations, permutations, pensions, left to the bishop, who is now undisputed master of his diocesan appointments, but very few situations to bestow."—Grosley, "Mémoires, etc.," II., p.35. "The tithes followed collations. Nearly all our ecclesiastical collators are at the same time large tithe-owners."]
5227 (return)[ An inferior class of priests, generally assigned to poor parishes.]
5228 (return)[ Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., p.448.]
5229 (return)[ Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., pp 392~403. (Details in support.)]
5230 (return)[ Abbé Richandeau, "De l'ancienne et de la nouvelle discipline de l'Église en France," p. 281.—Cf. Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., ch. II. (On the justice and judges of the church.)]
5231 (return)[ Mercur, "Tableau de Paris," IV.,chap. 345. "The flock no longer recognize the brow of their pastor and regard him as nothing but an opulent man, enjoying himself in the capital and giving himself very little trouble about it."]
5232 (return)[ "Le Monde" of Novem. 9, 1890. (Details, according to the Montpellier newspapers, of the ceremony which had just taken place in the cathedral of that town for the remission of the pallium to Mgr. Roverié de Cabrières.]
5233 (return)[ "Encyclopedie théologique," by Abbé Migne, ix., p.465. (M. Emery, "Des Nouveaux chapitres cathédraux," p.238.) "The custom in France at present, of common law, is that the bishops govern their dioceses without the participation of any chapter. They simply call to their council those they deem proper, and choose from these their chapter and cathedral councillors."]
5234 (return)[ Ibid., id.: "Notwithstanding these fine titles, the members of the chapter take no part in the government during the life of the bishop; all depends on this prelate, who can do everything himself, or, if he needs assistants, he may take them outside of the chapter." —Ibid., p. 445. Since 1802, in France, "the titular canons are appointed by the bishop and afterwards by the government, which gives them a salary. It is only the shadow of the canonical organization, of which, however, they possess all the canonical rights."]
5235 (return)[ Abbé André, "Exposition de quelques principes fondamentaux de droit Canonique," p.187 (citing on this subject one of the documents of Mgr. Sibour, then bishop of Digne).—"Since the Concordat of 1801, the absence of all fixed procedure in the trial of priests has left nothing for the accused to depend on but the conscience and intelligence of the bishop. The bishop, accordingly, has been, in law, as in fact, the sole pastor and judge of his clergy, and, except in rare cases, no external limit has been put to the exercise of his spiritual authority."]
5236 (return)[ Émile Ollivier, "L'Église et l'État au concile du Vatican," p 517.—Abbé André, ibid., PP.17, 19, 30, 280. (Various instances, particularly the appeal of a rural curé, Feb. 8, 1866.) "The metropolitan (bishop) first remarked that he could not bring himself to condemn his suffragan." Next (Feb.20, 1866), judgment confirmed by the metropolitan court, declaring "that no reason exists for declaring exaggerated and open to reform the penalty of depriving the rector of the parish of X—of his title, a title purely conferred by and revocable at the will of the bishop."]
5237 (return)[ Émile Ollivier, ibid., II.,517, 516.—Abbé André, ibid., p.241. "During the first half of the nineteenth century no appeal could be had from the Church of France to Rome."]
5238 (return)[ Émile Ollivier, ibid., I. p. 286.—Abbé André, ibid., p.242: "From 1803 to 1854 thirty-eight appeals under writ of error (were presented) to the Council of State by priests accused.... Not one of the thirty-eight appeals was admitted."]
5239 (return)[ Prælectiones juris canonici habitæ in seminario Sancti Sulpicii, III., p.146.]
5240 (return)[ Émile Ollivier, ibid., I., 136.]
5241 (return)[ Id., ibid., I., p. 285. (According to Abbé Denys, "Études sur l'administration de l'Église," p. 211.)—Cf. Abbé André, ibid., and "L'Etat actuel du clergé en France par les frères Allignol" (1839).—This last work, written by two assistant-curés, well shows, article by article, the effects of the Concordat and the enormous distance which separates the clergy of to-day from the old clergy. The modifications and additions which comport with this exposition are indicated by Abbé Richandeau, director of the Blois Seminary, in his book, "De l'ancienne et de la nouvelle discipline de l'Eglise en France" (1842). Besides this, the above exposition, as well as what follows, is derived from, in addition to printed documents, personal observations, much oral information, and numerous manuscript letters.]
5242 (return)[ "Manreze du prêtre," by the R. P. Caussette, vicar-general of Toulouse, 1879., V. II.,p.523. (As stated by the Abbé Dubois, an experienced missionary. He adds that these priests, "transferred to difficult posts, are always on good terms with their mayors,... triumph over obstacles, and maintain peace.")—Ibid., I., p.312. "I do not know whether the well-informed consciences of our lords the bishops have made any mistakes, but what pardons have they not granted! what scandals have they not suppressed! what reputations have they not preserved! what a misfortune if you have to do with a court instead of with a father! For the court acquits and does not pardon.... And your bishop may not only employ the mercy of forgiveness, but, again, that of secrecy. How reap the advantages of this paternal system by calumniating it!"]
5243 (return)[ Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange, II.,p.43: "Mgr. Dupanloup believed that pastoral removal was very favorable, not to say necessary, to the good administration of a diocese, to the proper management of parishes, even to the honor of priests and the Church, considering the difficulties of the times we live in. Irremovability was instituted for fortunate times and countries in which the people fulfilled all their duties and in which the sacerdotal ministry could not be otherwise than a simple ministry of conservation; at the present day it is a ministry of conquest and of apostleship. The bishop, accordingly, must dispose of his priests as he thinks them fit for this work, according to their zeal and to their possible success in a country which has to be converted." Against the official character and publicity of its judgments "it is important that it should not make out of a misfortune which is reparable a scandal that nothing can repair."]
5244 (return)[ "Moniteur," session of March 11, 1865.]
5245 (return)[ In the following Taine describes the centralization and improvement of the Church administration which probably made many socialist readers believe that the same kind of improvements easily could be introduced into private enterprise at the same time making them more determined to exclude children from the old families from all kinds of leadership in the coming socialist state.]
5246 (return)[ "The Ancient Régime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. "Memoires inédits de Madame de....." (I am not allowed to give the author's name). The type in high relief of one of these prelates a few years before the Revolution may here be found. He was bishop of Narbonne, with an income of 800,000 livres derived from the possessions of the clergy. He passed a fortnight every other year at Narbonne, and then for six weeks he presided with ability and propriety over the provincial parliament at Montpellier. But during the other twenty-two months he gave no thought to any parliamentary business or to his diocese, and lived at Haute Fontaine with his niece, Madame de Rothe, of whom he was the lover. Madame de Dillon, his grand-niece, and the Prince de Guémenée, the lover of Madame de Dillon, lived in the same château. The proprieties of deportment were great enough, but language there was more than free, so much so that the Marquise d'Osmond, on a visit, "was embarrassed even to shedding tears.... On Sunday, out of respect to the character of the master of the house, they went to Mass; but nobody carried a prayer-book; it was always some gay and often scandalous book, which was left lying about in the tribune of the château, open to those who cleaned the room, for their edification as they pleased."]
5247 (return)[ "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange.—"Histoire du Cardinal Pie, évêque de Poitiers," by Mgr. Bannard.]
5248 (return)[ One could imagine the impression this text would have made on Lenin and his plans to create an elite communist party once he should take the power he dreamt of. (SR.)]
5249 (return)[ "Moniteur," session of March 14, 1865, speech of Cardinal de Bonnechose: "I exact full obedience, because I myself, like those among you who belong to the army or navy, have always taken pride in thus rendering it to my chiefs, to my superiors."]
5250 (return)[ "Histoire du cardinal Pie," by M. Bannard, II.,p.690. M. Pie left six large volumes in which, for thirty years, he recorded his episcopal acts, uninterruptedly, until his last illness.]
5251 (return)[ Ibid., II., p.135: "In the year 1860 he had confirmed 11,586 belonging to his diocese; in 1861 he confirmed 11,845."—"Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé La Grange, I II., p. 19. (Letter to his clergy, 1863.) He enumerates what he had done in his diocese: "The parochial retraites which have amounted to nearly one hundred; the perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament established in all the parishes; confirmation, not alone in the cantonal town but in the smallest villages and always preceded by the mission; the canonical visit made annually in each parish, partly by the archdeacon, partly by the dean, and partly by the bishop;... the vicarships doubled; life in common established among the parochial clergy; sisters of charity for schools and the sick multiplied in the diocese and spread on all sides; augmentation of everything concerning ecclesiastical studies, the number of small and large seminaries being largely increased; examinations of young priests; ecclesiastical lectures; grades organized and raised; churches and rectories everywhere rebuilt or 'repaired; a great diocesan work in helping poor parishes and, to sustain it, the diocesan lottery and fair of the ladies of Orleans; finally, retraites and communions for men established, and also in other important towns and parishes of the diocese." (P. 46.) (Letter of January 26, 1846, prescribing in each parish the exact holding of the status animarum, which status is his criterion for placing a curé.) "The État de Pâques in his parish must always be known while he is in it, before withdrawing him and placing him elsewhere."]
5252 (return)[ The drafters of the charter of the United Nations Staff Rules had the same idea in mind when writing Regulation 1.2: "Staff members are subject to the authority of the Secretary-General and to assignment by him to any of the activities or offices of the United Nations. They are responsible to him in the exercise of their functions. The whole time of staff members shall be at the disposal of the Secretary-General. The Secretary-General shall establish a normal working week." The disciplinary means of which the bishops disposed are, however, lacking in the United Nations secretariat. (SR.)]
5253 (return)[ "Moniteur," session of March 14 1865. (Speech of Cardinal de Bonnechose.) "What would we do without our monks, Jesuits, Dominicans, Carmelites, etc., to preach at Advent and during Lent, and act as missionaries in the country? The (parochial) clergy is not numerous enough to do this daily work."]
5254 (return)[ Prælectiones juris canonici, II., 305 and following pages.]
5255 (return)[ "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, 1890, I. vol.—"La Charité à Angers," by Léon Cosnier, 1890, 2 vols.—"Manuel des oeuvres et institutions charitable à Paris," by Lacour, I vol.—"Les Congrégations religieuses en France," by Émile Keller, 1880, 1 vol,]
5256 (return)[ "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," I., 506 (1853). "More than one hundred free ecclesiastical establishments for secondary education have been founded since the law of 1850."—"Statistique de l'enseignement secondaire." In 1865, there were 276 free ecclesiastical schools for secondary instruction with 34,897 pupils, of which 23.549 were boarders and 11,348 day-scholars. In 1876, there were 390 with 46,816 pupils, of which 33,092 were boarders and 13,724 day-scholars.]