Twelve Years in a Monastery/Chapter X

by Joseph McCabe

CHAPTER X

COUNTRY MINISTRY

After four years’ experience of the life which has been described in the preceding pages, I was not unwilling to encounter some means of escape. Besides the uncongenial environment in which I found myself, my religious troubles had increased every year, until at length I found myself consciously speculating on the possibility of being ultimately forced to secede. The prospect was, naturally, very painful and alarming, and I was resolved to use every honourable means to avert it. However, in the increasing cares of the ministry I could not secure the necessary time for sustained study. I was relieved from monastic duties on account of my professorship, and also from parochial work: I never visited nor received visitors until the last six months. Still, as preacher, confessor, instructor, and professor, I was continually distracted and failing in health, and I eagerly grasped an opportunity of retiring from London which presented itself.

The authorities of our province had at length decided to take action for the improvement of our studies, and a resolution was passed for the erection of a new college for the preparatory classical studies. Hitherto the preparatory college had been a section of our friary at Manchester, and it has been explained how seriously the studies were hampered by that connection. There was a long and interesting struggle amongst the cabinet ministers of the fraternity on the subject; some (especially the one who was directly responsible for the old college) failing to perceive the necessity for a change, some opposing it simply because (as happens in much higher assemblies) they were on the opposition at the time. At length F. David gained their consent to the erection of a new college, and a second sharp struggle followed over the choice of a locality. Some contended that if it were not in a large town and supported by a large parish, it could not be maintained; some (with visions of an agreeable retreat occasionally from their arduous labours) advocated the seaside; others fought for the country. The latter was finally adopted, and F. David entrusted with discretionary powers to make a commencement.

F. David then deputed the task of finding a site to a friar who had the power of living with marvellous economy when circumstances required it. F. David had a large but vague idea that the college was ultimately to be connected in some undefined fashion with Oxford University: in fact, it had not been opened three months before he had, no doubt unconsciously, produced the impression in many quarters that it was just on the point of incorporation. However, no land could be obtained nearer than Buckingham, and there the friar established himself—buying half a field at about three times its value.

The friar lived in the vicinity during the progress of the building, which was erected principally on borrowed funds, as is usual with Roman Catholic institutions. Knowing that the financial prospects of the college were precarious, the good friar set himself to live with great economy and store up a little against the opening of the establishment. He had an excellent reputation for economy already: he knew all the halfpenny buses in London, and patronised shops where a cup of tea could be had for a halfpenny. However, he surpassed himself in Buckingham: he read by the light of a street lamp which shone in at his window (thus saving the cost of oil), had no servant, and achieved the fabulous feat of living on sixpence per day^[1] during a long period. Being forced at length to keep a lay-brother he chose a poor little ascetic who, he knew, was only too eager to find a superior who would allow him to starve himself on orthodox principles.

When at length it was deemed expedient to remove the zealous friar to another part of England, he had scraped together the respectable sum of 100l., which he left to his successor, who, accordingly, in recording his disappearance in the 'Annals' of the new college, added that he deserved great praise for the efficient state in which he left the mission. But the newcomer had quite a different theory of life: he agreed with Francis of Assisi that it was irreverent to make provision for the morrow, and so he philosophically made himself comfortable in the little cottage they had rented and religiously trusted to Providence for the future of the college. The income was also doubled through a kind of chaplaincy to the Comte de Paris which he undertook.

In the meantime the councillors were again at loggerheads over the choice of a rector. F. David had asked me to volunteer for the post, and, for the reasons already given, and from a sincere desire to help in reforming our studies, I did so. Subsequent proceedings, however, disgusted me to such an extent that for a time I refused to take it, and several authorities, knowing that I would now have to work it in face of much intrigue and secret opposition, wished to save me from it. I was finally appointed, and entered upon my duty willingly and with earnest and honest purpose. I had incurred the bitter but secret hostility of those who were ostensibly responsible for my financial success; I knew that the province was almost universally hostile to the new foundation; my parish, of some twelve miles in extent, contained only three poor Catholics; I had eight pupils who paid between them the sum of 80l. per annum—most of them paid nothing. I had now entered upon the troubled waters of ecclesiastical intrigue, and I give these details in practical illustration of that interesting topic.

Immediately after my arrival the councillors came to the college for inspection and a two days’ conference: they prudently sent me a ten pound note in advance. The conference was an interesting one; only one man, and he in a minor position, knew the cost of the building, the amount of debt upon it and annual interest to be met, and the expected source of its income. The others loudly proclaimed that they were going to demand full explanation, security, &c. &c., and that I should be left in perfect tranquillity over financial issues. For two days the little college resounded with loud but, unfortunately, inarticulate discourse. When the last meeting was over I saw by the smiles of the one and the frowns of the others that nothing had been done. I demanded instructions from the provincial, a worthy but obtuse man who had now, by some curious freak of diplomacy, reached—or rather been pushed into—the highest position. He replied blandly that there were no instructions to give me; the Definitorium very flatteringly gave me carte blanche. Was I superior of the monastery, such as it was, as well as rector of the college? Certainly: I was chief professor and rector, superior of the house, instructor of the lay-brothers, parish-priest—everything, and I was free to make any regulations, programme of study, discipline that I wished—even free to adopt or not the 'closure' (excluding ladies). I then asked what was the debt, interest, income, &c. I was told not to trouble myself about them; the interest was undertaken by one of the definitors, who also promised to supply any deficit in my income. I ascertained afterwards that neither he nor the others had any idea of the financial condition of the institution. I warned him that the definitor in question was known to be religiously anxious for my ruin and humiliation (for my spiritual good), and that he and his council could not, in any case, shift their responsibility in that fashion. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and departed; and I never saw him again.

Under such auspicious circumstances I opened the College of St. Bernardine in October 1895: if betting had been prevalent in our province—we did bet prayers sometimes—it would have been ten to one against my success. During the five months I remained, I received no help from the friar they had spoken of: at the end of that time he stood in my debt. I had not expected it, for I knew that he had another candidate waiting for the rectorship, and that he had openly expressed his intention of letting me come to grief in the position. However, other superiors very kindly and generously came to my assistance—very often simply out of opposition to him—and the initial difficulties were satisfactorily overcome. At my secession, a few months afterwards, the college prospered and its future was quite without anxiety.

I had one associate in teaching, a young and kindly but not very accomplished priest, so that a curious assortment of classes fell to my lot. I taught Latin Grammar, French, Euclid, Algebra, Physics, and a little Greek. And the difficulty of educating them was increased by my utter ignorance of the term they were to remain under me. I remonstrated with the authorities in vain: they were in utter discord themselves, and left everything to chance—some of them hoping the institution would fail. To enliven still further the monotony of our country life there was a revolt of the two servants or lay-brothers. They were both older than myself, selfish and unsympathetic, impatient of discipline: the authorities refused to remove them.

At the same time the bishop of the diocese was piteously calling my attention to the condition of the district, and putting a new charge on my shoulders. There was evidently more duplicity on this point. I was informed that there was no parish attached to the college; the bishop understood that there was, and had promised me a map of it. It mattered little, for the ‘parish’ would consist of an enormous extent of territory containing three Catholics known and three or four suspected. The town of Buckingham (containing 3,000 inhabitants) boasts of one Roman Catholic, who, in his rustic diplomacy, attended early service at the parish church and Mass afterwards at the college. Indeed, the whole diocese of Northampton is of the same character: it is the most extensive in England, and only contains a few thousand Catholics.

At Buckingham, of course, it was expected that we were going to re-kindle the light of the ancient faith without difficulty. My two predecessors had left glowing accounts of the ripeness of the harvest, and it was hoped that a congregation would soon be formed round the struggling college. However, I found that the easy tolerance and even cordiality of the townspeople had quite a different meaning. The presence of the French soi-disant Royal Family had done much to remove the unreasonable prejudice against Catholics which is found in many agricultural districts. Stowe House had been the chief support of the little town; when the Orleanist family departed after the death of the count, the town was prepared to receive with open arms any institution that would help to fill the void in its commerce. The college was erected just at that period, and, as its future was understood to be one of rapid and unlimited growth, it was warmly welcomed by the inhabitants, who, no doubt, religiously steeled their hearts at the same time against its assumed proselytising purpose. In fact, I found that one or two men who had been duly chronicled as likely to prove the first and easiest converts were confirmed Agnostics who had keenly enjoyed the simplicity of my predecessors. It was soon felt that I was not of a proselytising disposition—apart from the insecurity of my own position, I am afraid I never sufficiently realised the gravity of the condition of our Anglican neighbours—and the college worked in complete harmony with the clergy and laity of the vicinity.

Of my own diocesan colleagues I hardly made the acquaintance. The nearest priest of my own diocese was at a distance of twelve miles to the south; the next, fourteen miles to the north; and there, as elsewhere, the secular clergy do not fraternise with monks. I was now, however, bound to put in an appearance at the casuistry conferences which are held periodically, as has been explained. A diocese is divided into deaneries, and the rectors are summoned every month to a conference at the dean’s residence. A programme is printed for each year in which a ‘casus’—an incident for moral diagnosis and prescription—is appointed for each conference: a few questions are added which serve to elicit the principles of casuistry on which the ‘case’ must be solved. A priest is appointed to read the case, solve it, and answer the questions at each meeting; all are then invited by the dean or president to express their opinions in turn, and, as the ‘casus’ is usually very complicated, a long discussion generally follows.^[2] Nearly every point in casuistry is disputed, and arguments are abundant in the modern Latin manuals—Lehmkuhl, Ballerini, Palmieri, &c. The final decision rests with the president.

A conference in a populous diocese is a very exciting ceremony: rival schools of theology are represented, young priests are pitted against old ones, and the more ambitious are eager to make an impression. But at Northampton our conference was very tame and uninspiring. Only ten priests could be assembled out of a very wide territory, and they were far from being brilliant theologians. A desultory and not very instructive conversation ensued after the case had been read, and in the middle of it the bell rang for lunch, which seemed, of the two, to be the more important function for which we were convened.

The life of a priest in a country parish is usually very dull and monotonous: in our diocese it was not unlike the life of a foreign missionary, so few Catholics there were in the vast territory. I had one parishioner in the town, a poor ignorant creature whose faith was very closely connected with his works; another at a distance of four miles, who was a very doubtful acquisition to the Church; a third five miles off who patiently submitted to being called a Catholic; and a fourth, or rather an excellent family about eight miles off, who had been effectually scared from us by my predecessors: the three or four mythical Catholic harvestmen and washerwomen whom a diocesan tradition located somewhere within the limits of my twelve mile district I never met in the flesh. Most of the other priests in the diocese had rather more souls to provide for, but rarely sufficient to support themselves. They were poor and could not travel much; they had few parishioners with whom they could have congenial intercourse; they were widely separated from each other and had neither books nor inclination for study. The life of an Anglican clergyman in a small country parish is not enviable, but a priest has the additional disadvantage of no family and usually antipathetic neighbours.

When I had at length infused a certain amount of method into the college and of discipline into my small community, my thoughts reverted to the personal object I had in view in leaving London. Surprise is often expressed that the number of seceders from the Roman Catholic priesthood is not higher. Apart from the fact that few people know the number of seceders, as will appear presently, a slight reflection on two points, which have already received attention, will help to understand the matter. In the first place the philosophical and theological studies of the priest have been stunted, one-sided, and superficial; very few of them have continued the work at a university, and even there the work would again be narrow and superficial. They are plunged into active parochial work immediately after their ordination; they have no stimulus and little continuous time to study—except a little casuistry—on the other hand there is ample opportunity and pressing invitation to dissipate their time and wits in agreeable trivialities. Under such circumstances they feel disposed to regard Wellhausen and Kuenen (or even Sayce and Cheyne), Huxley and Spencer, Taine, Draper, and even Anglican divines, as so many literary hedgehogs. Their scholastic system was plausible enough when the professor urged it upon them, and they give no further thought to the subject. Add to this that most of them are Irish, and the happy buoyant Celtic temperament does not take religious doubt very seriously; no one knows into what depths of study and seas of trouble it may lead. In the educated layman, of course, the temperament is sceptical enough, though it is a careless, light-hearted scepticism, not obtrusive and not very consistent; in the priest the same disposition leads to a natural reluctance to take any steps that may lead to a violent dislocation, and to a habit of deprecating a Quixotic striving after mathematical precision and consistency of thought.

And if it happens that doubts do enter into the minds of the clergy (and in familiar intercourse with them one soon finds that they are not uncommon—I have sometimes heard priests openly express the most cynical scepticism) what time has the ordinary priest to make a sincere and protracted study of his opinions? With all my privileges and opportunities for study it cost me the better part of ten years of constant reading and thought to come to a final and reliable decision. The fact that the actual seceders from the Church are usually men who have had special opportunity and a well-known tendency for study is significant enough; the fact that few emerge from the ordinary ranks of the clergy with convictions firm enough to face the painful struggle of secession should not be surprising. Active external occupation banishes doubt from consciousness; to deliberately resort to it for that purpose would be dishonest; few men would subscribe to the Catholic rule, that doubt must be suppressed at once, yet it is the ordinary fate of the clergyman. I experienced a relief myself during the initial labours for my college, but once my work dropped into some kind of routine, the old questions reappeared, and I determined to answer them, cost what it might.

My doubts were of a philosophical and fundamental character. I had felt that, until the basic truths of religion were firmly assented to, the Anglican controversy had little interest for me, and even the Biblical question was of secondary importance. Accordingly most of my time from my first introduction to philosophy was spent, directly or indirectly, in the investigation of the problems of the spirituality and immortality of the soul, the existence and nature of God, and the divinity of Christ. I had read all the literature which was of any possible usefulness in forming my judgment, and I had been guided (as far as he could) by a man who is thought most competent for that purpose. I drew up on paper the points round which my doubts centred, and added from memory all the arguments I had met in my long researches. I was not influenced by hostile writers, for I had as yet read very little of them, and had been quite unmoved by them; and I had never discussed the questions with a man of opposite opinions. The sole question was, Is the evidence which I have collected satisfactory or not? During the Christmas vacation I studied it without interruption day and night, and finally I was compelled, with great pain and anxiety, to reject it.

The literature which I had studied during the preceding years was principally Latin and French. I had looked for evidence, naturally, in the vast arsenal of Catholic apologetics, and on these fundamental Christian and theistic propositions no better can be found. No philosophy has ever replaced, or ever will replace, the scholastic philosophy as a natural basis for theology. The philosophy of the Scotch school is only plausible in so far as it is Aristotelic; its characteristic elements are extremely unsatisfactory. Martineau is also unwittingly scholastic in his better passages, and he is too much disposed to that ‘extrarational’ proof which appealed to Mr. Romanes in his later years: for my part, I would not take a single serious step in this life on extra-rational proof, and I fail to see why it is a surer guide to the next. Thus I came to attach most importance to the schoolmen and the modern writers who adapt their principles to modern thought. I studied with extreme care St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, Scotus, Suarez, Vasquez, Pontius, Herinx, and a host of other veterans; also an infinity of smaller modern writers, Tongiorgi, Sanseverino, Lepidi, Pesch, Moigno, Zigliara, Rosmini, Lacordaire, Monsabré, &c.

Amongst English Catholic literature there was little to be read. In my younger days I had been taught to shelter myself under the authority of the great Newman: it was a few years before I found that that was rather a compromising position for a philosopher. There is an old adage in the schools that ‘in philosophy an authority is worth just as much as his arguments, and no more.’ Newman is the last guide in the world to choose in philosophical matters: the key to his line of thought is found in the inscription (epitaph, one feels tempted to say) of his one philosophical work, ‘The Grammar of Assent’—the inscription is a text from St. Ambrose, ‘Not by logic hath it pleased God to save His people.’ Newman was religiously penetrated with that edifying sentiment, hence it is not surprising to find how faithfully he acts upon it in constructing the existence of God and the divinity of Christ. His one witness to God’s existence is conscience (he says in one of his sermons that without it he would be an atheist), and under his ceaseless attentions conscience becomes a faculty which few ordinary human beings will recognise; his treatment of it is anything but scientific, it is highly imaginative and grossly anthropomorphic. The text from St. Ambrose is principally intended as a gauntlet for his rival, Dr. Ward; still it is true that Newman had a profound contempt for metaphysics, and, like most people who much despise it, had no knowledge whatever of that science. It is usually assumed that Newman was a traditionalist,^[3] but his poetical and unscientific method seems rather attributable to the effect of a wholesome dread of Kant; not that he shows evidence of intimate acquaintance with Kant’s ‘Critique,’ but he seems to have been vaguely convinced that Kant had undermined all metaphysical research, and his own unrivalled literary power enabled him to make a plausible defence of his opinions without the aid of philosophy. He is obviously no guide for a serious scientific mind.

His rival, Dr. Ward, also a prominent figure of the great Oxford movement, is the very antithesis of Newman. Newman used to speak contemptuously of the ‘dry bones’ of Ward’s logic, and evidently considered that his own works clothed them and made them more attractive. Ward was a keen dialectician, a subtle metaphysician, and a vigorous writer; his ‘Philosophy of Theism,’ a collection of essays, is the best English defence of the scholastic philosophy. Unfortunately he was not a man of ascetical temperament, and did not penetrate deeper than he could help into the regions of abstract thought. J. S. Mill was leading him to the critical points of the system in a famous controversy which closed prematurely by Mill’s death.

Dr. Mivart is the most influential living writer on the Roman Catholic side, and the most competent to discuss those great problems, ‘ever ancient and ever new,’ in the light in which they present themselves to the actual generation. Issuing, as he did, from the Darwinian school, it is but natural to expect from him a breadth of view and a seriousness of treatment which happily differentiate his works from those of the usual clerical apologists. Dr. Mivart, however, is not a metaphysician, hence his psychological criticism of Darwinism contents itself with the enumeration of striking points of difference between animal and human faculties which a deeper analysis glimpses, at least, the possibility of harmonising; and this is the only apologetic argument, repeated and enlarged in his successive works, which may be put to Mr. Mivart's credit as useful and original. On other points, such as the freedom of the will, the evolution of ethics, and the origin of the universe, he is conspicuously feeble; and he has a disposition to waste his strength upon the criticism of accidental phases and features of monism and agnosticism rather than upon their essential destructiveness.

Of the Jesuit writers and their series of volumes on scholastic philosophy sufficient has been already said: they have passed some brilliant criticism upon minor issues and aspects of opposing systems, but have made no serious effort to make their more important theses accessible to the modern mind by substituting some solider demonstration for the aerial structures of the schoolmen. Mr. Lilly belongs to the Platonic, sentimental, or semi-sceptical group of apologists. He also is much tainted with Kantism, and offers no solid satisfaction to minds of a severer cast. Like Plato, Kant, Newman, or Balfour, he seems to think it desirable that humanity should cling to certain opinions, and therefore seeks evidence in support of them. Of Cardinal Manning's apologetic efforts little need be said. He was a man of action, not of speculation—certainly not a philosopher. His cast of mind is well illustrated by his words to one who was urging certain scientific statements in conflict with Genesis: without listening to them he blandly replied, like the Anglican bishop whom Mr. Stead consulted about the statements of the higher critics:—'I don't believe them.'

I had now exhausted every possible means of confirming myself in my position, and failed to do so. Apart from the fact that, at that time, it seemed to me that the loss of a belief in immortality made life irremediably insipid, I had fearful practical difficulties to expect if I seceded. I had every prospect of success in my position, or, if I preferred, I could have passed to the ranks of the secular clergy without difficulty. I consulted many friends and strangers, and I was confirmed in my resolution to terminate my sacerdotal career, allowing a few months for possible change of thoughts. As the manner of my secession curiously illustrates certain features of Roman Catholic methods and the general question of secession, I describe it at some length in the following chapter.

1. The diet was bread, beer and coffee, and tinned meat. For feast-days he used a special meat which cost a penny per tin more.
2. The ‘casus’ are always in Latin: the following may serve as a specimen:—Titius steals a watch from the person of a cleric in church. This he sells to Caius, and nothing further is heard of him. The priest at length identifies his watch in the possession of Caius and claims it, satisfactorily proving it to be his property. Caius refuses to return the watch until his money is returned, and the thief cannot be traced.
   

   Q. 1. How many kinds of sacrilege are there?
   Q. 2. How many sins did Titius commit?
   Q. 3. How is the case to be solved?
   Such a case would provoke hours of controversy.

3. Traditionalism was an important heresy within the bounds of the Church, which was effectually extinguished. It reprobated entirely the use of reason in supra-sensible matters and advocated authority as the sole guide.