Why is it that a certain number of New England authors, whenever they can find an occasion or make an opportunity, are sure to cast a fling at monks and nuns and a celibate priesthood? Even the genial author, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, not to mention Whittier and others, from some yet unexplained cause, will turn bitter and his temper grow ruffled when he encounters in his literary excursions a monk or speaks of the celibate clergy of the church. There is no difficulty in acquitting such authors of intentional malice, but men so well bred and of such broad experience ought and do know better, and should not blot their otherwise pleasant pages with foul abuse.
But whence does this acrimony spring? Does it spring from the bully who strikes a victim, knowing himself safe from a return blow? or is it that the intellectual faculty of insight is lacking in these highly-gifted authors? Is this rancor to be attributed to their environment? or, finally, is it to be classified by some future clerical Darwin as an instance of Puritanical “inherited habit”? Be that as it may, Catholics ask no favors from the opponents of the church, but they have good reason to look for, and the right to demand, fair play, sound scholarship where scholarship is needed and claimed, and at least an average amount of intelligence.
These monks—and let us add also nuns, for their aim is identical—who have as a distinctive principle of life the resolve always to tend towards perfection, are not perfect and make no pretension to being saints, for although human nature is immanently good, there is notwithstanding much evil in the world, and no class of men or women, whoever they may be, is wholly free from the possibility of deviating from the path which leads to their true destiny. That there have been among monks and nuns hypocrites, fanatics, and those who have forgotten the sacredness of their calling and given public scandal everybody knows: “Canker vice the sweetest buds doth love.” Had these incurred the severe animadversion of the author of this essay, his abusive language might have passed unnoticed; but no qualification is made between innocent and guilty—the exemplary and scandalous, one and all, are passed upon as the same by a most unsparing and unjust sentence.
But not all free-religionists have read the history of the church and of the influence of monks upon civilization in the light of the author of this essay. We cannot forego the gratification of quoting a passage written many years ago by one, a speaker in this tenth annual meeting too, in which he gives a different estimate of the church and the monks in the precise period of which Mr. Alger has attempted to draw a rough sketch, it is true, but still his intention must have been to give a correct picture.
“Truly,” says the Rev. William Ellery Channing, “the church has been a quickening centre of modern civilization, a fountain of law and art, of manners and policy. It would not be easy to estimate how much of our actual freedom and humanity, of our cultivation and prosperity, we owe to her foresight and just acknowledgment of rights and duties. It is easy to ascribe to the cunning and love of power of priests the wonderful sovereignty which this spiritual dictator has exerted; but it is proof of surprising superficiality that these critics do not recognize that only sincere enthusiasm and truth, however adulterated by errors, can give such a hold upon human will. The Christian Church has been unquestionably the most dignified institution which the earth has seen.... Beautiful have been its abbeys in lonely solitudes, clearing the forests, smoothing the mountains, nurseries of agricultural skill amidst the desolating wars of barbarous ages, sanctuaries for the suffering. Beautiful its learned cloisters, with students’ lamps shining late in the dark night as a beacon to wandering pilgrims, to merchants with loaded trains, to homeless exiles—their silent bands of high-browed, pallid scholars watching the form of Science in the tomb of Ignorance, where she lay entranced. Beautiful its peaceful armies of charity, subduing evil with works of love in the crowded alleys and dens of cities, amid the pestilences of disease and the fouler pestilence of crime, and carrying the sign of sacrifice through nations more barren of virtues than the deserts which have bordered them.”
VI.—THE FREE-RELIGIONISTS AND THE MYSTICS.
Mr. Alger must have seen that his canvas up to this moment was overcharged with sombre colors, and to give it a vraisemblance he put in the following words:
“There has been another marked class of persons, in the extreme opposite sphere of life to those just described—a class nourished in the inmost bosom of the church itself—whose very important influence has acted in harmony with that of science, which seems so wholly contrary to it—acted to melt away dogmatism, free men from hatred and force and fraud, and join them in a heavenly enthusiasm of accord. I allude to the mystics, who cultivated the sinless peace and raptures of the inner life of devotion, absorption in divine contemplation, ecstatic union with God. Boundless is the charm exerted, incalculable the good done, in impregnating the finest strata of humanity with paradisal germs by Victor, Bonaventura, Suso, Tauler, Teresa, Behmen, Fénelon, Guyon, John of the Cross, and the rest of these breathing minds, hearts of seraphic passion, souls of immortal flame. This class of believers, devoted to the nurture of exalted virtue and piety, were the choicest depositaries of the grace of religion.”
The general reader would suppose that this “marked class of persons, in the extreme opposite sphere of life to those just described,” were not, of course, “monks.” But such is the fact, with the exception of two he mentions. Let us examine this list. Here is the first mystic, Victor. Victor! Who is he? Whom does the essayist mean? There was St. Victor of Marseilles, who suffered martyrdom under Diocletian, July 21, A.D. 303. He surely does not mean this Victor? Then there was the celebrated Abbey of St. Victor, near Paris, named after St. Victor of Marseilles, founded in the first year of the twelfth century; he cannot mean that? There is no telling, though. Then there was Hugh, born in Flanders, and Richard, a Scotchman, the latter a disciple of the former, both inmates of the monastery of St. Victor, both illustrious by their writings on mystical theology, and saintly men. Perhaps he means one of these, or both? Perhaps that is not his meaning. If it be, then his sentence should have run thus: Hugh of St. Victor, or Richard of St. Victor. Let us proceed; both of these were “monks.” St. Bonaventure, disciple of St. Francis, was a “monk.” John Tauler, a disciple of St. Dominic, another monk. St. Teresa, a nun, a “cloistered” nun, consequently as bad, at least, as a “monk.” Behmen? Behmen? Jacob Boehme. Oh! yes; a German, a shoemaker—not to his discredit—a Protestant, and mystical writer. O blessed saints in Paradise! do not, we beg, lay it to our charge of making you “acquainted with so strange a bed-fellow!” Then comes Fénelon the saintly archbishop, the friend, be it known, of monks and nuns. Now Mme. Guyon; it is singular that there is always a strange hankering among a class of Protestants after Catholic writers of suspected orthodoxy. St. John of the Cross is next, and the last, though not least, the Aquinas of mystical theology, a Carmelite, a “monk.” Now let us count up. But we have forgotten our beloved Swabian, Henry Suso, the Minnesinger of divine love; and he too was a Dominican, a “monk.” In sum—excluding, of course, the Protestant; for of him it cannot be said that he was “nourished in the inmost bosom of the church”—we have six “monks,” if you include both Hugh and Richard of St. Victor in the number, and one “cloistered” nun, all, without exception, “celibates,” of the eight examples selected by our author as “devoted to the nurture of exalted virtue and piety,” and “the choicest depositaries of the graces of religion!” Six out of eight—not a bad showing for monks and nuns “as the choicest depositaries of the graces of religion,” where a learned author has his pick, running over many centuries.