the efforts made by Charles X., from 1825 to 1827, to introduce the Jesuits and other male Orders aroused strong opposition, and the elections of 1827 settled the question definitely in the negative.1 The constitutional Government of Louis Philippe, from 1830 to 1848, showed itself persistently hostile ; but the Second Republic was more liberal, and the Second Empire ostentatiously sought the alliance of the Church. After the fall of Louis Napoleon, the reactionary Government of Marshal MacMahon continued this alliance, and the result was seen in the enormous growth of the regular Orders in wealth, members, and influence. This, after republicanism had been firmly established by the will of the people, became a serious menace to the tranquillity of the State, for by its vital principle monachism owes its allegiance first to the Holy See and secondarily to the land from which its members. are drawn. A long struggle ensued, commencing with the Ferry laws on education in 1879-a struggle in which the expatriation of the monastic Orders became merely an incident, and culminating in the separation of Church and State. The struggle thus has assumed the wider aspect of the internecine conflict between mediæval theocracy on the one side and civil and religious liberty on the other. The issue is still undecided, and it is not for us to predict the result.

Nor has this anti-monastic movement been confined to the Old World, for the example of Europe has been followed in many of the former Spanish colonies. Paraguay led the way, in 1824, by suppressing all monasteries as useless, and Brazil, in 1829, prohibited the entrance of men devotees, thus condemning the existing institutions to gradual extinction. Mexico, by a series of laws from 1856 to 1863, suppressed the religious Orders and confis

1 Dutibleul, Histoire des Corporations religieuses, pp. 411 sqq. (Paris, 1846).— Dupin, Droit ecclésiastique, pp. 285-98.

cated their property. New Granada was even more prompt, by legislation commencing in 1852 and culminating in 1863. Venezuela did the same in 1874. Ecuador in 1899 secularised all ecclesiastical property, and Nicaragua is understood to be preparing for similar action.

So general a movement in both hemispheres, by nations professing Catholicism, cannot be explained simply by greed for the overgrown possessions of the Church, although that has unquestionably borne its share in tempting governments to replenish their exhausted treasuries. It is an evidence that mediæval monasticism has outlived the influences which fostered its growth to such enormous proportions, and that, whatever may have been its services of old, they no longer correspond to the wants of the present sufficiently to justify its absorption of so large a portion of the resources and productive energies of society. It further indicates the convictions of statesmen that such corporations, dissociated from their environment by the vow of celibacy, having interests distinct from those of their fellow citizens, indissolubly bound together and owing allegiance, not to their own rulers but to a foreign chief, are politically as well as economically undesirable.

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.'

1 Noli metuere ne omnes virgines fiant; difficilis res est virginitas, et ideo rara,

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?1 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.

2

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 sub-diaconate at the age of twenty-two and the priesthood at twenty-five 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 ardour 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 lustful longings, and quia difficilis. Incipere plurimorum est, perseverare paucorum,-Hieron, adv. Jovin.

I. 36.

De Sacrament. Matrim. c. ix.

1 Concil. Trident. Sess. XXIV. 2 Concil. Trident. Sess. XXIII. De Reform. c. xii. The Abbé Chavard relates (Le Célibat des Prêtres, p. 269) that be once asked the directors of a seminary whether the age for assuming the burdens of the priesthood ought not to be postponed to the fortieth year, and he was told that the Church must have priests, and that there were few indeed who would submit to its conditions after the age of illusions was passed.

he recognises 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 à 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. 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.1

1 Possibly some insight into the moral status of the American priesthood may be obtained from the work of Father Müller, a zealous Redemptorist, which bears the approbation of Cardinal McCloskey and of the Redemptorist Superior. As regards chastity, he tells us that "God calls no man to any state or office without giving him at the same time the necessary graces" (Part II. p. 260). In spite of this he utters the warning, "The good priest should also beware lest he become too affectionate and familiar with some favourite niece or cousin, because she may easily become pitch and bird-lime" (Ibid. p. 278). One may gather from his long and fervid exhortation to beware of drink that intemperance is the besetting sin of the priesthood (Part IV. pp. 98-112), and he couples wine and women together in a manner to imply that the combination produces many blasted careers. "How many have renounced the priesthood altogether on account of women and drink? How many have apostatised and even turned preachers on account of women and

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.1 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 recognised 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. It is true that the severe virtue of St. Charles Borromeo refused to grant to a septuagenary priest a licence 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; but in modern times the Tridentine canon has been interpreted as allowing the residence of female servants or housekeepers, in view of the hardship of doing without domestics and the expense of employing men. In order

3

drink? How many have met an untimely end on account of women and drink?" (Part II. p. 275.) Müller's The Catholic Priesthood, New York, 1885.

1 Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse, Paris, 1883, p. 139. "Le fait est que ce qu'on dit des mœurs cléricales est, selon mon expérience, dénué de tout fondement. J'ai passé treize ans de ma vie entre les mains des prêtres, je n'ai pas vu l'ombre d'un scandale; je n'ai connu que de bons prêtres. La confession peut avoir, dans certains pays, de graves inconvénients. Je n'en ai pas vu une trace dans mon jeunesse ecclésiastique."

2 Concil. Trident. Sess. XXV. De Reform. cap. xiv.

3 Convent. Episcc. Mediolanens. ann. 1849 Sess. III. No. 18 (Collect. Lacens. VI. 717).-Concil. Roman. ann. 1725 Tit. XVI. c. iii. (ib. I. 372).