He produced, that is to say, with astonishing fluency all those arguments that were common in the mouths of the more serious anti-clericals of the beginning of the century—the increase of Religious Orders, the domineering tendency of all ecclesiastics in the enjoyment of temporal power, the impossibility of combating supernatural arguments, the hostility of the Church to education—down even to the celibacy of the clergy. He paused for breath as they turned out of the great gateway.
Father Jervis laughed aloud and patted him on the arm.
"My dear Monsignor, I can't compete with you. You're too eloquent. Of course, I remember from reading history that those things used to be said, and I suppose Socialists say them now. But, you know, no educated man ever dreams of such arguments; nor indeed do the uneducated! It's the half-educated, as usual, who's the enemy. He always is. The Wise Men and the shepherds both knelt in Bethlehem. It was the bourgeois who stood apart."
"That's no answer," persisted the other.
"Well, let's see," said the priest good-humouredly. "We'll begin with celibacy. Now it's perfectly true that it's thought almost a disgrace for a man not to have a large family. The average is certainly not less than ten in civilized nations. But for all that a priest is looked upon without any contempt at all. Why? Because he's a spiritual father; because he begets spiritual children to God, and feeds and nourishes them. Of course to an atheist this is nonsense; and even to an agnostic it's a very doubtful benefit. But, my dear Monsignor, you must remember that these hardly exist amongst us. The entire civilized world of to-day is as absolutely convinced of Heaven and Grace and the Church, and the havoc that Sin makes not only as regards the next world but in this—so absolutely convinced that he understands perfectly that a priest is far more productive of general good than a physical father possibly can be. It's the priest who keeps the whole thing going. Don't you see? And then, in a Catholic world, the instinct that the man who serves the altar should be without physical ties—well, that's simply natural."
"Go on. What about education?"
"My dear friend," said Father Jervis. "The Church controls the whole of education, as she did, in fact, up to the very time when the State first took it away from her and then abused her for neglecting it. Practically all the scientists; all the specialists in medicine, chemistry, and mental health; nine-tenths of the musicians; three-quarters of the artists—practically all those are Religious. It's only the active trades, which are incompatible with Religion, that are in the hands of the laity. It's been found by experience that no really fine work can be done except by those who are familiar with divine things; because it's only those who see things all round, who have, that is to say, a really comprehensive intuition. Take history. Unless you have a really close grasp of what Providence means—of not only the End, but the Means by which God works; unless you can see right through things to their Intention, how in the world can you interpret the past? Don't you remember what Manners said about Realism? We don't want misleading photographs of externals any more. We want Ideas. And how can you correlate Ideas, unless you have a real grasp of the Central Idea? It's nonsense."
"Go on with the other things."
"There's a lot more about education. There's the graduated education we have now (entirely an ecclesiastical notion, by the way). We don't try to teach everybody everything. We teach a certain foundation to every one—the Catechism, of course, two languages perfectly, the elements of physical science, and a great deal of history. (You can't understand the Catechism without history, and vice-versa); but after that we specialize. Well, the world understands now——"
"That's enough, thank you. Go on with the other things."