"Your accounts are properly audited, no doubt?"
"To a great extent, yes."
"But not invariably? You trust much to the honesty and the financial ability of individual clerks? We do not presume for a moment that there is any systematic malversation of trust. You have had a lesson on that subject."
"Lesson?"
"Yes: in 1886: after the notorious Carvale Case, when the infatuated imbecility of the Gaelic and Pictish bishops was shewn to render them undesirable as trustees, the clergy simply dare not stray into illegal paths. Oh no. But are the clergy actually capable of financial administration?"
"As capable, I suppose, as other men."
"Priests are not 'as other men.' However, We take it that you all believe yourselves to have acted conscientiously. We also take it that, in view of the power and influence which the position of trustee affords, your clergy eagerly become trustees and are unwilling to submit to supervision or to criticism. That is quite human. We entirely disapprove of it."
"But what would your Holiness have?"
"We cannot say it in one sentence. You must collect Our mind from Our conduct as well as from our words. We entirely disapprove of the clergy competing for or using any secular power or dominance whatever, especially such power as inheres in the command of money. The clergy are ministers—ministers—not masters. And as to the other charge—'the gross injustices which are of daily occurrence'?"