Predictions, as a rule, are idle, and yet it would appear entirely safe to assume that those who look forward to a change in the policy of the church as regards the enforcement of celibacy among its ministers are prompted rather by their wishes than by judgment, or by knowledge of the influences at work. It matters little what may be the aspirations of the vast body of men who form the working ecclesiastical force—the humble priests and curés upon whom it depends for its support among the populations. The autocratic theocracy, founded in the dark ages, and strengthened by the council of Trent, received its final and irrevocable shape when the church submissively adopted the Vatican decree, which declared “that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals, to be held by the universal church, by the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the church. But if any one—which may God avert—presume to contradict this definition let him be anathema.”[1587] It would be futile to imagine after this that any pressure could be brought to bear upon the Roman curia sufficient to induce a change in its immemorial policy—a change, moreover, which would overwhelm it with the bitterest humiliation by contradicting all its teachings since the days of St. Jerome. What was so unbendingly refused to all the princes and nearly all the clergy of Catholic Christendom in the doubtful days of the Reformation will not be granted now, when, despite the destruction of the temporal power in Italy, the spiritual influence of the church is as great as ever, and it sees the results of its policy in the rapidly extending area of its domination. When Pius IX. could boast that during his single pontificate he had founded twenty-nine metropolitan sees and one hundred and thirty episcopal dioceses, there would seem to be no valid reason, from the stand-point of the Vatican, for an act so revolutionary as the abrogation of celibacy, which would convert its janizaries into householders, with human interests dissociated from those of the church-militant.
The monastic orders have not escaped the innovating spirit of the nineteenth century. In Spain, the revolutionary cortes of 1820 enacted a law suppressing all the existing monastic foundations, excepting the Knights of Malta and the Hospitalarios de San Juan, and further prohibiting the founding of new institutions and the administering of vows; but when in 1823 the constitutional government fell under French bayonets, the Orders reëstablished themselves and took a bloody revenge upon their persecutors. Again in 1836 the government of Isabella II. undertook the same task, excepting the Padres de las Escuelas Pias, the Hospitalarios de San Juan, and the Clerigos de la Mision, but the attempt was short-lived; as was also that of 1868 under the Republic. In the Netherlands, a series of laws adopted between 1818 and 1826 forbade the admission of novices in the contemplative orders, which, being of no public utility, had no claim for recognition; and irrevocable vows, moreover, were declared illegal. In 1820 a similar effort was made in Naples, but it was unsuccessful. In the New World still more sweeping reforms have been undertaken. Thus Paraguay, in 1824, suppressed all monasteries as useless; Brazil, in 1829, prohibited the entrance of new devotees in the existing foundations, thus condemning them to gradual extinction; and in 1851 New Grenada not only expelled the Company of Jesus and forbade the establishment of any Order professing the doctrine of passive obedience, but threw open the doors of all religious establishments, and promised legal protection to those who should abandon them. Ten years later it suppressed them altogether, and in 1874 its example was followed in Venezuela.[1588] In 1849, one of the first acts of the Roman Republic was to liberate all monks and nuns from obedience to their vows; and in 1853 Cavour suppressed all the monastic houses of the Kingdom of Sardinia, applying their property to the improvement of the clergy, in spite of the superstitious fears excited by the almost simultaneous deaths of several members of the royal family. After the formation of the Kingdom of Italy, the law of June 28th, 1866, completed the suppression of all the religious houses, pensioned or subsidized their members, and confiscated their property. This process of secularization was rapidly carried out, and early in 1867 the journals reported that nearly all the inmates of the monasteries were dispersed, some of them returning to their families, some of them accepting refuge offered by the charitable, but most of them clubbing together and hiring houses in which to live as of old. Two exceptions, indeed, were made in the enforcement of the law. Monte Casino, the venerable mother of western monachism, was spared, and provision made for its maintenance as a national monument; while Savonarola’s convent of San Marco was similarly favored, rather perhaps because of its frescoes than of its historical associations. Against all this the church of course protested vigorously, pronouncing the suppression of the orders and the secularization of their possessions to be null and void; but the readiness with which purchasers were found to give even more than the appraised value of the property, shows how futile was resistance to the tendency of the age.
So great a social revolution was of course not effected without much of individual suffering, which, in some cases at least, was not diminished by the methods adopted in enforcing the law. The fact that in 1856, 8000 monks petitioned Pius IX. for secularization, shows that the ideas of the age had penetrated into some of the monasteries, but in the greater number of cases the inmates were naturally averse to the change. Panzini, who can assuredly not be regarded as a prejudiced witness, speaks with bitter indignation of the files of soldiery sent to drive from their houses the terrified nuns, who were thrown upon the world without the means of subsistence or the training to earn a livelihood, while their vows precluded them from marrying or from worldly employment. Even the private fortunes brought by them in many cases to their convents shared the common fate of confiscation, and they sought in vain to have their dowers restored to them.[1589] It is impossible not to feel sympathy for those whose misfortune consists in having been born too late, and who are made to expiate the sins of a system which they have reverently received from their forefathers. The student of the past, moreover, may be pardoned a feeling of regret at the destruction of the venerable institutions which, for a thousand years, fostered the religious growth of Christendom; but the civilization which they rendered possible has outgrown them. In the history of development it is inevitable that Zeus should dethrone his father Cronos; and the progress of humanity demands the removal of that which has outlived its usefulness, and has become only a stumbling-block in the path of human improvement.
Pius IX. himself had felt the need of some measure of reform in the religious orders, but was powerless to enforce it. It is asserted that before his early liberal tendencies had become completely eradicated, on his return from Gaeta, he entertained the idea of rendering life in common indispensable in all monastic institutions, of substituting for the irrevocable vow one which should be renewable at a fixed interval, and of deferring all ordinations to the priesthood until the applicant should have entered on his 36th year. These sensible measures, however, were opposed so strenuously by all the officials that the Pope gave way—the General of the Franciscans even proclaiming vehemently that they would assuredly result in the destruction of all the religious orders.[1590] It would seem that Pius eventually, in this respect as in others, fell completely into the hands of the ultra-conservatives, for though in 1857 he defined that the simple vow of the novitiate should not be taken before the age of 16, and that the irrevocable vow should be deferred until the accomplishment of a novitiate of three years, yet the following year he decreed that the simple vow of the novice was irrevocable, except by papal dispensation, unless, indeed, the general of the order should see fit to expel the postulant.[1591] It is remarked, moreover, that while he not infrequently exercised his dispensing power in releasing worthy applicants from the vows of poverty and obedience, he never absolved them from that of chastity;[1592] though it is not unreasonably urged that all enlightened legislation holds engagements, even in matters of trifling import, to be invalid when made by minors, while the church permits, and even incites, children in their sixteenth year to enter into obligations the nature of which they are unable to appreciate, and then unyieldingly exacts of them the rigid execution of the rash promise, under pain of eternal damnation.
Yet, notwithstanding these successive shocks, monasticism has rarely been more flourishing or more vigorous than of late years. Warned by the successive secularization of its temporalities in one country after another, the church has learned to give to the monastic system the direction in which its evils are least sensibly felt, its benefits to humanity are greatest, and the influence which it is capable of exerting is most serviceable to the hierarchy. Though at times mistaken in the spirit of the age; though often misled by pride, by ambition, and by avarice, the Roman church has missed its aim and mistaken its vocation, yet, upon the whole, it has manifested that adaptation to the wants of successive generations which is the real secret of its power and the condition of its success. Clearly recognizing the scant toleration which our hard-working nineteenth century has for holy idleness and unproductive sanctity, it moulds its institutions to meet the necessities of the age. It no longer glories in new and fantastic forms of worship or insane feats of asceticism—not the pillar of Stylites, the poverty of Francis, or the thong of the Flagellants[1593]—but it seeks to organize systems by which the beneficence of the many may be efficiently administered by the trained labor of the few. It endeavors no longer to agglomerate around idle communities the wealth which could only pander to their vices, but rather to render useful by associated action the benevolent self-abnegation which in other communions is apt to be lost or frittered away for lack of judicious organization and direction. When thus the vow of celibacy is uttered, not in the hope of a life of ease and sensual indulgence, not in the pride of Pharisaical holiness, not in the lust of exaggerated maceration, not in the hope of purchasing by solitude and mortification the favor of an all-merciful Creator, but for the single-minded purpose of devoting a life to elevating fellow-creatures from degradation or to relieving their physical and mental miseries, no one can deny that institutions which in their wantonness of prosperity accomplished so much of evil possess fruitful germs of good to be developed through adversity and tribulation.
The results of this wise policy have shown themselves especially in France and Belgium. When, in 1625, St. Vincent de Paul founded the Order of the Sisters of Charity, he accomplished a work which was destined to prove as useful to the church as the mendicant and preaching orders which resuscitated it in the thirteenth century, or the Company of Jesus, which enabled it to set bounds to the Protestant Reformation. It was a return to the primal and vital principles of Christianity, which bound anew the peoples to the hierarchy and bridged over the all but impassable gulf between them.
This tie, so delicate and yet so firm, proved lasting. Even amid the horrors of the Revolution, when conventual vows were forbidden, and the monastic orders were scattered ruthlessly abroad, the gentle virtues and the tireless ministrations of the Sisters of Charity won for them respect and toleration from the cruel fanatics who respected and tolerated nothing else. When, even under the Concordat of 1801, the reëstablishment of monastic orders was strictly forbidden, and those which endeavored timidly to organize themselves under the names of Pères de la Foi, Victimes de l’Amour de Dieu, Cœur de Jésus, etc., were broken up in 1804 without ceremony,[1594] exceptions were made in favor of the charitable associations of females, the missionary societies of Saint-Esprit and the Lazaristes, and the brotherhood of the Écoles Chrétiennes. The missionary societies proved to be a focus of reactionary intrigue, which the First Empire was powerful enough to crush. They were accordingly suppressed in 1809, but at the same time an imperial decree placed under the fostering care of Madame Lætitia the women who devoted themselves to works of charity and mercy. Annual appropriations for their support were regularly made, and, thus favored, they prospered amazingly. The religious activity of the people seemed to flow in this channel with redoubled force from its long retention, and in the eight years from 1807 to 1815 there were no less than 1261 congregations authorized—an average of 157 per annum. At the same time the state refused to recognize the right of any person to abstract himself irrevocably from society. The law wisely prohibited engagements for life in any service, and this was held applicable to the religious congregations, in which, by the decree of 1809, the period of engagement was limited to five years.[1595]
In spite of the favor shown to the charitable associations, the prejudice against the monastic system was still so strong that the Restoration, with all its reactionary tendencies, did not dare to run counter to the convictions of the people. The law of 1809 forbidding male congregations was never repealed, and the most that the Bourbons ventured openly to do was to authorize a few by special decree, such as the Lazaristes, the Missions Etrangères, &c. Meanwhile the female congregations continued to increase; a general law was enacted in May, 1825, providing for their authorization under definite provisions, and between 1815 and 1830, 643 new ones were officially recognized. The efforts made from 1825 to 1827, under Charles X., to introduce the Jesuits and other male orders gave rise to lively agitation, and the elections of 1827 settled the question definitely in the negative.[1596] The Revolution of 1830 put an end for the time to all hope of reëstablishing the monastic system in France, and a law in 1834 specially affirmed the application of Art. 291 of the Penal Code, directed against unauthorized associations, to those for religious purposes. The constitutional government of Louis Philippe showed itself persistently hostile to monachism. It is true that in 1840 Lacordaire succeeded in obtaining sufferance for his order of Dominicans, but this was exceptional; and even towards the female orders the policy of the monarchy was repressive. During the eighteen years of its existence, but fourteen authorizations for founding new congregations were granted, while the Jesuits, who had ventured to enter the kingdom without permission, were formally expelled in 1845 after a severe parliamentary struggle. The Second Republic was more liberal, and the Second Empire ostentatiously sought the alliance of the church. The Loi Falloux, in 1850, seemed to recognize the existence of male orders, and advantage was immediately taken of a vague phrase to assume their legality. At length, in 1852, a law was passed regulating, by a general form, the incorporation of all religious societies, and under this their growth was amazingly rapid—none the less so, perhaps, because they were not even required by the authorities to observe the law and go through the formality of procuring authorizations. In 1827 there were but 20,943 female devotees, while the number of males under conventual vows was too insignificant for computation,[1597] and under the monarchy of July the growth was exceedingly small. In 1861 these had increased to 17,776 males and 90,343 females, and in 1877 to 22,207 males and 127,000 females.
In Belgium the figures are equally startling. In 1856 that little kingdom had 2383 monks and 12,247 nuns—a total of 14,630—an enormous proportion in so small a population, enabling the clergy, as has more than once been seen, almost to control the elections.