The result of the first decree was that at the dates appointed the Jesuit establishments and colleges were closed, with but a faint show of passive resistance; but, as the members were not personally exiled, a large portion of them remained, and their colleges were continued by placing over them as nominal principals influential laymen under their control.
The second decree struck at 5917 members of unauthorized congregations. Its execution was postponed in hopes that the bodies thus threatened would endeavor to comply with the law, but the only concession they were willing to make was by putting forth a declaration containing a public act of submission to the constitution and a resolution to take no part whatever in public or political matters. At last, in November, 1880, the government found itself obliged to employ force, and the establishments were closed by the police, aided where necessary by the military. A general system of passive resistance had been organized; doors had to be violently broken open, and the inmates carried out through jeering or sympathizing crowds. The popular feeling, in fact, had been worked upon as far as possible, and at some places, as at Lyons, civil conflict seemed for a moment to be imminent, while at Turquoing (Nord) even blood was shed; but on the whole the crisis passed away with much less disturbance than had been anticipated. Since then the growing strength of republicanism throughout France, unimpeded by clerical and reactionary efforts, shows how much slighter a hold the religious orders had on the popular mind than had been supposed, and how mistaken had been Napoleon III. in regarding an alliance with the church as a necessity for the preservation of his dynasty. In fact, there has been no banishment of individuals nor expropriation of property. Though the unauthorized congregations have been dissolved, in accordance with laws which date back to the Ancien Régime, the members retain their property, enjoy all the rights of citizenship, and can perform Mass in the churches near their convents—indeed, the aristocracy, which naturally affiliates with them, has rather made a point of offering them ostentatious hospitality.
The effort to separate education from clericalism still continues. The execution of the decrees was accompanied by the adoption of laws establishing government colleges for women and providing free primary education, and, March 24th, 1882, there was passed an act rendering education compulsory. For nearly nine months there had been hot debate between the Deputies and the Senators over an amendment of Jules Simon’s, that instruction should be given in the public schools on the duties of the pupils “towards God and towards their country,” but the elections of January, 1882, deprived the clericals of their power, the Senate receded from the amendment, and the education provided for by the act is to be purely secular.
It may safely be assumed that France will not abandon the institutions thus established to attacks by the priesthood such as the Belgian clergy habitually make upon the public schools of that kingdom. In a parliamentary debate, February 22, 1881, on this subject, it was stated, without contradiction, that the curés were in the habit of refusing communion not only to the children who attend these schools, but also to their parents and grandparents, uncles, and aunts—in fact, admission to communion under the circumstances is the exception and refusal is the rule. Even threats are made to withhold baptism from future infants, the sacrament is denied to dying parents, and wives are urged to withdraw from all sexual relations with their husbands. When spiritual weapons are insufficient, more carnal means are employed by efforts to ruin the business of the disobedient by a system of “Boycotting,” which is sometimes successful; and the enthusiastic curé of Virginal admitted that he had pronounced it to be a less offence to commit murder than to vote for a Liberal, because Liberalism is heresy.[1602] When such is the spirit of the church at the present day, French republicanism may be pardoned for desiring to limit its control over popular education.
It only remains for us to consider what is the present effect of celibacy on the moral condition of the church, and whether it has succeeded, after fifteen centuries of fruitless effort, in at last obtaining a priesthood whose chastity is more than nominal. At the commencement of the struggle, the great apostle of asceticism, St. Jerome, calmed the fears of those who dreaded a diminution of population from the spread of vows of continence, by assuring them that few would be found to persevere to the end in a task so difficult as the maintenance of virginity.[1603] Has, then, human nature changed during the interval, and has the church been justified in its assertion at the council of Trent that God would not withhold the gift of chastity from those who rightly seek it, or permit us to be tempted beyond our strength?[1604] It is certainly not so easy to answer this question now, as we have seen it in former ages, when men were more plain-spoken and less decent, when offences against morality were committed more openly, and when they were denounced both by the church and its enemies with a distinctness of utterance unfit for modern ears. Yet it is not impossible to find some evidence bearing on the question which may enable the impartial inquirer to arrive at a conclusion.
The church is unquestionably violating the precept “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” when, in its reliance that the gift of chastity will accompany ordination, it confers the subdiaconate at the age of 22 and the priesthood at 25[1605]—or even earlier by special dispensation—and then turns loose young men, at the age when the passions are the strongest, trained in the seminary and unused to female companionship, to occupy a position in which they are brought into the closest and most dangerous relations with women who regard them as beings gifted with supernatural powers and holding in their hands the keys of heaven and hell. Whatever may have been the ardor with which the vows were taken, the youth thus exposed to temptations hitherto unknown, finds his virtue rudely assailed when in the confessional female lips repeat to him the story of sins and transgressions, and he recognizes in himself instincts and passions which are only the stronger by reason of their whilom repression. That a youthful spiritual director, before whom are thrown down all the barriers with which the prudent reserve of society surrounds the social intercourse of the sexes, should too often find that he has over-estimated his self-control, is more than probable.
This, of course, is merely a priori reasoning, and of itself proves nothing, except the extreme imprudence of a system which applies fire to straw and assumes that combustion will not follow. Doubtless there are cases in which the assumption is justified by the result—whole countries, indeed, where scandals are few. In Ireland, for instance, we rarely hear of immoral priests, though such cases would be relentlessly exposed by the interests adverse to Catholicism, and the proverbial chastity of the Irish women may be both a cause and a consequence of this. In the United States, also, troubles of the kind only come occasionally to public view; but here, again, the church is surrounded by antagonistic churches, the laborers are few and hardly worked, and the position is not one to attract those who might seek a life of sloth and indulgence. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the extreme care with which the church avoids scandal renders it impossible for one not within the pale to ascertain what may really be the relations between ecclesiastics and the female servants whom, as we shall see, they are permitted to keep in their houses.
In lands where Catholicism is dominant I fear that there can be little doubt as to this, although Ernest Renan, a witness of unquestionable impartiality, whose clerical training gave him every opportunity of observation, declares emphatically that he has known no priests but good priests, and that he has never seen even the shadow of a scandal.[1606] In spite of the Nicæan canon, on which the rule of celibacy has virtually rested, the church, after a struggle of more than a thousand years, was forced to admit the “subintroducta mulier” as an inmate of the priest’s domicile. The order of Nature on this point refused so obstinately to be set aside, that the Council of Trent finally recognized women as a necessary evil, and only sought to regulate the necessity by forbidding those in holy orders from keeping in their houses or maintaining any relations with concubines or women liable to suspicion.[1607] It is true that the severe virtue of St. Charles Borromeo refused to grant to a septuagenary priest a license for more than a year for the residence of a sister equally aged, and forced him to apply annually for its renewal; it is also true that the council of Rome, in 1725, allowed the residence of women only within the first and second degrees of kindred;[1608] but in modern times the Tridentine canon has been interpreted as allowing the residence of female servants or house-keepers, in view of the hardship of doing without domestics and the expense of employing men. In order to meet the Tridentine caution to avoid suspicion, efforts have sometimes been made to define a minimum “canonical” age for these women, varying from thirty to fifty years, but usually placed at forty—a palliative which, as might be expected, accomplishes little, even when, as is not always the case, the rule is observed more scrupulously than by the device of dividing the canonical age and keeping two girls of twenty.[1609]
Few priests, it may be assumed, have the self-denial to live without this female companionship, which is permitted by the church as a matter of course. Indeed, the census-paper officially filled in at the Vatican and returned in January, 1882, stated the population of the palace to be 500, of which one-third were women. While, of course, it does not follow that the relations between these women and the grave dignitaries of the papal court may not be perfectly virtuous, still, considering the age at which ordination is permitted, it would be expecting too much of human nature to believe that, in at least a large number of cases among parish priests, the companionship is not as fertile of sin as we have seen it to be in every previous age since the ecclesiastic has been deprived of the natural institution of marriage. The “niece” or other female inmate of the parsonage throughout Catholic Europe still excites the smile of the heretic traveller, and is looked upon as a matter of course by the parishioner, while the prelates, content if open scandal be avoided, affect to regard the arrangement as harmless, knowing that it serves as a preventive of more flagrant and more public trouble, though the fact that this companionship is made the subject of discussion and regulation at virtually every council or synod or episcopal convention held by the church shows that privately it is recognized as a necessary evil at best. Yet the old sophistry is not forgotten, which proves that such sin is less than the infraction of ecclesiastical laws. In a tract in favor of celibacy, published at Warsaw in 1801, with the extravagant laudation of the authorities, argument is gravely made that as priestly marriage is incestuous, such adultery is vastly worse than simple licentiousness, the latter being only a lapse of the flesh, while marriage would be schism and arrogant disobedience, involving sin of a far deeper dye.[1610]