Twelve Years in a Monastery/Chapter II
CHAPTER II
VOCATION
In pre-Rationalistic days a description of the means of recruiting the monastic orders (and the clergy generally) would have been simplicity itself. The vocation to that higher state was invariably attributed to a special interposition of Providence; the individual soul heard a Divine call, and had but to obey and be thankful for the choice. But in later years a remarkable tendency has developed, even in the sanctuary, to respectfully exclude Providence from the arrangement of sublunary matters. One or two successful revolutions helped men to realise that royalty was not a divine institution; Providence was exonerated from the control of the political world. Now, the economic world and the hierarchy of society seem in danger of being handed over to the play of ‘natural causes’; it is seriously doubted, even by many ecclesiastics, whether the distribution of wealth is an immutable divine arrangement after all. Even in sacred literature the divine influence is gradually fading from view; verbal inspiration is, of course, a hopeless fossil, and inspiration of any kind is growing alarmingly attenuated under the attentions of our modern Cheynes and Sayces. The God of Epicurus or of Victor Hugo is coming to the front in the vast modern Pantheon.
In individual actions also the psychological method of the modern historian, biographer, and novelist tends to reduce the operation of Divine grace to a minimum. St. Augustine, St. Francis, and St. Ignatius have been repeatedly exhumed from the religious catacomb and dissected, and their conversions have been reduced to the sphere of natural law. Auscultory hallucinations are now preferred to voices floating in the air, crying ‘Tolle, Lege’; dreams are more congenial than visions, and exalted ideas in a neurotic or hysterical temperament are calmly substituted, even by spiritual writers, for ‘voices speaking in the heart.’ ‘Vocations’ to a spiritual life are usually admitted to be susceptible of a satisfactory ‘human’ explanation; the providential agency is wisely presumed to have merely presided over the more immediate and tangible agencies.
But in treating of modern vocations there are few cases in which even the psychological method will find matter of interest and romance. Monasteries and nunneries are no longer refuges of converted sinners, of disgusted roués, of maimed knights-errant, and betrayed women. One does not need the pen of a Huysman to describe the souls en route to the higher life of the religious world. The sources from which monasticism draws its adherents to-day are much less romantic, and much less creditable, it must be confessed.
Nine-tenths of the religious and clerical vocations of the present day are conceived at the early age of 14 or 15. As a general rule the boy is struck with the desire of the priesthood or the monastery precisely as he is struck with the longing for a military career. His young imagination is impressed with the dignity and the importance of the priest’s position, his liturgical finery, his easy circumstances, his unusually wide circle of friends and admirers. The inconveniences of the office, very few of which he really knows, are no more formidable than the stern discipline and the balls and bayonets of the martial dreamer; the one great thorn of the priest’s crown—celibacy—he is utterly incapable of appreciating. So he declares his wish to his parents—if the course has not, even, been already suggested to him—and they take every precaution to prevent the lapse of his inclination. In due time, before the contaminating breath of the world can sully the purity of his mind, he is introduced into the seminary or monastery, where every means is employed to foster and strengthen his inclination until he shall have bound himself for life by an irrevocable vow.
Such is the ordinary growth of a vocation to the clerical state. There are, of course, exceptions, but they are proportionately infrequent; very rarely does a man of maturer age now seek admission into the cloister. Occasionally a ‘convert’ to Rome loses his balance and, in the first rush of zeal, plunges headlong into ascetical excesses. Sometimes a man of more advanced years will enter a monastery in order to attain the priesthood more easily; monastic superiors are not unwilling, especially if a generous alms is given to a monastery, to press a timid aspirant through the episcopal examinations (which are less formidable to religious), and then allow him, with a dispensation from Rome, to pass into the ranks of the secular clergy. And there are cases, too, it must be added, when a man becomes seriously enamoured of the monastic ideal, and seeks admission into the cloister; rarely, however, does his zeal survive the first year of practical experience.
Apart from such exceptional cases, monasteries and seminaries receive their yearly reinforcements from boys of from 14 to 15 years. Nothing could be more distant from the Roman Catholic practice than the Anglican custom of choosing the Church at an age of deliberation, during or after the university career. The Catholic priesthood would be hopelessly impoverished if that, the only honourable course, were adopted. The earliest boyish wish is jealously consecrated, for Catholic parents are only too eager to contribute a member to the ranks of the clergy, and ecclesiastical authorities are only too deficient in agreeable applications for the dignity; the result is that, instead of a boy being afforded opportunities of learning what life really is before he makes a solemn sacrifice of its fairest gifts, he is sedulously preserved from contact with it through fear of endangering his vocation. Too often, indeed, he is unduly influenced by the eagerness of his relatives, enters a seminary or convent for their gratification, and, if he has not the courage to return, to the disappointment and mortification of his friends, he bears for the rest of his life a shattered or depraved heart under his vestments of silk and gold. For it must be remembered that before he reaches what is usually considered to be the age of deliberation he is chained for life to his oar in the great galley—the bark of Peter—as will appear in the next chapter.
In the case of the present writer, there was happily not the faintest trace of undue family influence. Anxious as my parents were to see me in the ranks of the clergy, they were too humane even to manifest their eagerness, and they earnestly impressed upon me their desire for my return in case the new life should not suit me. Since, however, my vocation was of the normal kind, and may serve as a typical instance of monastic recruiting, it may be useful to describe it briefly.
My boyhood and early youth were spent under the shadow of the beautiful Franciscan church at Manchester. In spite, however, of the deep impression made upon me by the lovely Gothic edifice, and its imposing services, and the keen pleasure which I took in assisting in the sanctuary, I have a distinct recollection that up to the age of thirteen my mind was deliberately closed against the idea of entering the monastery. The friars frequently suggested the thought in playful mood, but I invariably repulsed their advances. At length a lay-brother[1] with whom I spent long hours in the sacristy exerted himself to inspire me with a desire to enter their Order. After many conversations I yielded to his influence, and conceived a desire for admission. In the meantime a violent quarrel had removed my family from the congregation, and seemed to have raised an insuperable obstacle on both sides. However, still haunting the neighbourhood, I was one day approached on the subject by the prefect of studies, confessed my willingness, and was subsequently admitted to preliminary studies.
Then, owing to the opposition of the superior of the monastery, I was cast adrift once more, and devoted myself, with little concern, to a preparation for the Civil Service. My name, however, was not forgotten at the monastery (to which the preparatory college was attached), and a new prefect of studies renewed the effort for my admission. I complied, after some hesitation, with an invitation to the monastery, and eventually it was arranged that I should be received as a pupil and aspirant to the monastic life. I had been conscious throughout of merely yielding to circumstances, to the advice and exhortation of my elders; there was no definite craving for the life on my part, certainly no ‘voice speaking within me’ to which I felt it a duty to submit. I do not, of course, mean to say that my subsequent profession was in any way a matter of constraint—once within the walls of the monastery my mind was seriously and deliberately formed (with whatever seriousness a boy of sixteen is capable of); I am merely describing the manner in which a religious ‘vocation’ is engendered. About the same time a Jesuit, the late F. Anderdon, S.J., made advances to me from another direction; and a third proposal was made to send me to the diocesan seminary to study for the secular clergy. There seem to have been no premonitory symptoms in my youthful conduct of the enfant terrible I was destined one day to become.
The ‘vocations’ of most of my fellow-students, and of my students in later years, were of a similar origin. They had either lived in the vicinity of a Franciscan convent or their parish had been visited by Franciscan missionaries. Already troubled with a vague desire for a sacerdotal career, the picturesque brown robe, the eventful life, and the commanding influence of the missionary—often, too, his suggestive words—had completed their vision. They felt a ‘vocation’ to the Order of St. Francis: their parents, if they were at all unwilling, were too superstitious to resist; the missionary was communicated with (after an unsuccessful struggle on the part of the parish priest to get the boy for the diocesan seminary), and the boy of thirteen or fourteen was admitted to the monastic college.
Other religious orders are recruited as a rule in a similar fashion. The more important bodies, Jesuits, Benedictines, and Dominicans, have more reliable sources of supply in their large public schools at Stonyhurst, Douai, and Downside: in such institutions the thoughts of the more promising pupils can easily be directed into the higher channels of religious aspiration by the zealous monks, without any undue influence whatever. But the ordinary congregations in England are sorely pressed for recruits—in fact, many of them were glad to accept the small fish that were cast back even from the net of the Franciscans. I have often heard their superiors lamenting England’s barrenness (Ireland furnishes most of the recruits). ‘It is all tea and coffee in this blessed city,’ I heard a Superior of the Servites lamenting, ‘we can get no religious vocations.’
Missionaries are the principal recruiting-sergeants. In fact the duty of the missionary is much more complex than appears at first sight. Besides holding the 'revival' services for the good of souls, he has several important functions to discharge for his monastery—the procuring of funds and the attraction of neophytes. Five pounds per week, besides a large amount of alms for masses to be said, is the lowest price a friar will accept for his pious services: and in proportion to his success in inspiring vocations will be his superior's thoughtfulness in appointing him to the more comfortable missions. For the modern missionary is not so insensible to the charms of hospitality as his mediæval forerunner.
The ranks of the secular clergy are recruited by similar methods. Large numbers of boys, usually of the middle and poorer classes, are drafted annually into the preparatory seminaries to be preserved jealously in their vocation if they have one, or inspired with one if they have not. Parents and parish priests are continually on the watch for symptoms of the Divine call, and in the case of clever quiet boys the wish is not infrequently father to the thought.
Finally, a word must be here said of the vocation of nuns: more will be said of them in the following chapter. It is true that the proportion of women who take the veil in maturer years is much larger than that of men; whatever may be their ultimate attitude it must be admitted that there is a large amount of earnestness and religious sincerity in the vocations of women. Still the number of young girls who are received into nunneries is lamentably high, and the anxiety shown by nun-teachers to inspire their pupils with a ‘vocation’ is extremely deplorable. They frequently request priests to secure aspirants for their congregations, and many a priest is tempted, out of desire to find favour at the convent (an important social distinction), to welcome the first word that his girl-penitents breathe in the confessional about a religious vocation. Many priests develop a perfect mania for sending their penitents to convents. For myself, in my hours of deepest faith I never found courage to send a girl to a nunnery: one girl, a penitent of mine, often solicited me about her vocation: I am thankful to say that I restrained her.
A conspicuous advantage of this system (from the ecclesiastical point of view), is that it affords time for a more extensive and systematic training. If other Christian sects—though they do not even impose an obligation of celibacy on their clergy—prefer the more honourable course of not extending any ecclesiastical sanction whatever to aspirants until they arrive at a deliberative age, they must and do suffer in consequence in the training of their ministry. The divinity lectures which the Anglicans follow are but a feeble substitute for the specialised education which their grave responsibility as religious teachers obviously demands; and in a large proportion of cases the theological training of Anglican curates begins and ends with such lectures. In later years, when contact with earnest readers impresses them with a due sense of their position, they are not infrequently heard to desiderate the systematic training of their Romanist rival. No doubt in point of general culture they are much superior to the average priest: one can often recognise the priest who has entered the sanctuary in a maturer age after secession from Anglicanism by that impalpable ‘culture’ which is the characteristic gift of our English Universities.
How it happens in praxi that the Catholic educational system produces such equivocal results will appear subsequently; in theory it is admirably constructed for the attainment of the ecclesiastical aim. Instead of merely adding a few lectures on current theological squabbles or patristic research to an ordinary liberal education, it takes the boy of thirteen or fourteen and arranges his whole curriculum up to the age of twenty-four, with a direct relation to his sacerdotal ministry. The course of training thus extends over a period of ten or eleven years under direct ecclesiastical control. The boy is handed over by his parents and transferred to the seminary or to a preparatory college in connection with it, where his education is at once undertaken by clerics. All the larger dioceses have their own seminaries, though at the present moment a warm controversy exists as to the advisability of amalgamation or continued separation.
The scheme is divided broadly, according to universal ecclesiastical usage, into three sections. The preliminary training consists of the usual course of classics and mathematics: the classics being more than usually expurgated (after an unsuccessful attempt, under Pius IX., to abolish them altogether), and the whole generously interlarded with spiritual and ascetical exercises. This stage extends over a period of five or six years on the average: at Ushaw it is continued up to the twentieth year, at Wonersh (the new seminary founded for the Southwark diocese by the able and estimable Father Byrne), it only occupies five years. To the ‘humanities’ succeeds a course of scholastic philosophy (of which more afterwards) which usually occupies two years, and which now usually includes a few carefully expurgated and commentated lessons on physical science—for ecclesiastics are beginning to take the bull by the horns (very gently, and with much soothing language). Finally the student is treated to a three years’ course of theology, passes a severe examination, and is admitted to ordination. The various stages will be described more in detail as the writer passed through them.
Such is the scheme of education of the Catholic priesthood all the world over, with but few local variations. The mendicant orders and the minor congregations generally corrupt and mutilate it: the larger seminaries and the more important orders expand it. The Jesuits have the longest and fullest curriculum, and their educational scheme has the highest reputation. In reality the curriculum of the Jesuit student is protracted mainly because he has to spend long periods in teaching, during which his own studies are materially impeded. And if we are to judge their philosophy by its fruits one hardly sees any occasion for unusual admiration: to one who is widely acquainted with the Jesuits it is painfully obvious that it turns out only a large number of uninteresting mediocrities. Although the Jesuits have the finest Catholic schools in the country, and it need not be said that they have practically their choice of boys from them, it is not evident that, as a body, they show any marked superiority over their less-dreaded colleagues. They have not a single pulpit orator; they have not one man eminent in science; the present Stonyhurst astronomer, highly and deservedly respected as he is, would hardly lay claim to that title. They have no great name in literature. If the reputation of the Jesuits, which is floating vaguely in the air, were to be carefully analysed it might possibly be traced to a dozen Jesuit pens and a hundred Jesuit tongues.
The Dominicans and Benedictines also conduct their preliminary studies in a creditable manner in their well-known colleges, but most of the other religious bodies are extremely negligent in that stage of education. Each religious order is, of course, responsible for the education of its own neophytes. For the religious orders—the regular or monastic clergy as opposed to the secular—do not fall directly under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese. Monks are irregular auxiliaries of the canonical army who are supposed to emerge occasionally from their mountain fastnesses to assist in the holy warfare. The monasteries of the same order in each land are grouped into a province, and the central authority, the provincial, exercises a quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over them. All the provinces are united under a common general at Rome, and there is a special Roman congregation to regulate the conflicts (not infrequent) of bishops and the monastic clergy. Hence monks have but few points of contact with episcopal authority, and indeed they are usually regarded with jealous suspicion by the bishop and the secular clergy. Cardinal Manning was known to cherish a profound antipathy to all religious orders except the Franciscan, and to the Franciscans he said with characteristic candour: ‘I like you—where you are (in East London).’ Indeed, nearly throughout England the monastic orders have been compelled to undertake parochial duties like the ordinary clergy.
However, the comparative independence of the monastic orders gives them an pportunity of modifying the scheme of education according to the pressure of circumstances, and the general result is extremely unsatisfactory. The low ideal of sacerdotal education which they usually cherish is largely explained by the strong foreign element pervading them. They have been founded, at no very remote date, by foreigners, and are still frequently reinforced from the Continent. And it will be at once conceded that the Continental priest (or even the Irish priest) does not attach a very grave importance to the necessity of culture. A priest has definite functions assigned him by the Church, and for their due fulfilment he needs a moderate acquaintance with liturgy, casuistry, and dogma: beyond, all is a matter of taste. Relying, in Catholic countries, upon the dogmatic idea and the natural reverence which his parishioners have for the priesthood, he does not concern himself with any ulterior means of conciliating and impressing them. The consequence is that a low standard of education is accepted, and those who have imported it into this country have been slow to realise the true condition of their new environment—to perceive that, in England at least, a clergyman must be a gentleman of culture and refinement. The effect is most clearly seen in a wanton neglect of classics. The Franciscan régime, at the time I made its acquaintance, may serve as a typical instance.
The preparatory college of the Grey Friars (for they retain the name in spite of the fact that they now wear the brown robe of their Belgian cousins) was, at that time, part of their large monastery at Manchester. Seraphic Colleges, as the Franciscan colleges are called (not with reference to the character of their inmates, but because St. Francis is currently named the 'Seraphic' Saint), are a recent innovation on their scheme of studies, on account of the falling-off of vocations amongst more advanced students. The college was not a grave incubus upon the time and resources of the friars at that period. One of their number, an estimable and energetic priest, whose only defect was his weakness in classics, was appointed to conduct the classical studies and generally supervise and instruct the few aspirants to the order who presented themselves. We numbered eight that year, and it may be safely doubted whether there was an idler and more mischievous set of collegiates in the United Kingdom. Our worthy professor knew little more of boys than he did of girls, and he had numerous ministerial engagements to fulfil in addition to his professorial duties. The rector of the college, a worthy and religious-minded but delightfully obtuse old Belgian friar, would have discharged his function equally well if he had lived on Mars.
In spite, however, of the discouraging circumstances we contrived to attain our object very rapidly. We were all anxious to begin our monastic career in robe and tonsure as soon as possible, and all that the order required as a preliminary condition was a moderate acquaintance with Latin—the language of the Liturgy. Our professor, indeed, had a higher but imperfectly grasped ideal: he added French and Greek to our programme. Physics and mathematics were unthought-of luxuries, and our English was left at its natural level—in most cases a rich and substantial Irish brogue; though at one time our professor inaugurated a course of Hebrew, learning the day's lesson himself on the previous evening. Still, taking advantage of the fact that I studied at my own home, and of the eccentric activity of my professor, I was enabled to present a list of conquests at the end of the year which at once secured my admission to the monastic garb. The list is a curious commentary on our modus procedendi: it comprised: (1) French Grammar and a modicum of French literature; (2) Greek Grammar, St. John's Gospel, one book of Xenophon, and a few pages of the Iliad!—which latter were crammed for the express purpose of disconcerting the examiner; (3) Latin Grammar, several lives from Nepos, two books of Cæsar, six orations of Cicero, the Catilina of Sallust, the Germania of Tacitus, the Ars Poetica of Horace, two books of Livy, two books of the Æneid, and fragments of Ovid, Terence, and Curtius. As I only remained at the college from June 1884 until May 1885 it will be recognised how much care and exertion were required in later years to correct the crudity of such a procedure.
Those were not the worst days of our Seraphic College. Our professor was an earnest and hard-working priest, though an indifferent scholar, an unskilful teacher, and burdened with many difficulties. But the time came when even less discretion was exercised, and not only were studies neglected but the youthful aspirants to the monastic life, living in a monastery, had more licence than they would have had in any college in England.
However, it is, perhaps, unprofitable to discuss an abnormal, rather than the normal, course of sacerdotal education. Ten years afterwards (two years ago) I was entrusted with the task of cleansing the Augean Stables, and the parting legacy I left to my colleagues was the solid foundation of a wiser and sounder system. But I pass on to my first acquaintance with the inner working of monastic life.
- ↑ The inmates of a monastery are divided into two sharply distinct categories, clerics (priests and clerical students) and lay-brothers. The latter are usually men of little or no education, who discharge the menial offices of the community. They are called lay-brothers in contradistinction to the students or cleric-brothers, who, however, familiarly go by their Latin name ‘Fratres.’