By 1861, in the next grade of schools, the religious orders had 55,151 male pupils, while those in the government institutions of similar class numbered only 63,291. In 1865 the whole number of children between the ages of 7 and 12 in France was 4,018,427; while, two years previous, out of 2,265,576 boys attending school, 443,732 were in institutions conducted by the religious orders, and of 2,070,612 girls, no less than 1,166,942, or more than half, were under the care of sisterhoods.

This enormous and rapidly increasing proportion shows how largely the coming generation is trained under monkish influences, and justifies the efforts made by the Ferry ministry, after the overthrow of the reactionary government of MacMahon, to check the growth of these schools. The religious orders are bound to a peculiar obedience to the Holy See; all other bonds, whether of family or of country, are as nothing in comparison. The monk who conscientiously regards his vows cannot be a citizen, or be fitted to train future citizens. The congregation, for instance, of the Frères de la Saintè-Croix is largely engaged in educating and furnishing teachers; and among the secret statutes of the order is one forbidding its members to admit the existence of any opinion, whether in politics, theology, or religion, contrary to the opinion of Rome.1599 What are the political opinions of Rome may readily be found in the Syllabus of 1864, among its anathemas directed against freedom of thought and of the press, against any liberty which threatens to abridge the temporal power of the hierarchy or to limit its absolute authority, and indeed against the simplest toleration in the matter of religious belief. That these are in fact the principles which govern education in clerical schools was shown during the debates on the Ferry laws in 1879, by M. Ferry, who had, after some difficulty, procured copies of text-books used in them, and who quoted from them passages praising feudal rights and reviling the Revolution, justifying the Inquisition and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, denouncing civil marriage as concubinage, alluding to religious toleration as a temporary necessity, and inculcating the doctrine of the submission of the state to the church. It needs no argument to show that institutions which teach such principles as these are not fit to be trusted with the training of those who are to constitute a self-governing Republic.

Nor was this the only evil arising from the successful efforts made by the church through its monastic legions to control the education of France. The enormous demand for recruits to fill the rapidly growing ranks of its army of teachers exceeded its capacity to provide suitable material, whether as regards mental or moral training. In its desire to favor the growth of clerical schools, the Second Empire waived in favor of the religious orders the rigorous examinations required of the laity as a condition precedent to employment as teachers. The supervision of the state being thus withdrawn, discretion was left with those whose unworldly duties can scarcely be supposed to render them competent judges, and that discretion has been necessarily much abused. It is related by Mdlle. Daubié, herself an instructress of high reputation, that when she was eight years old she was applied to, by a woman employed in tending cows, to teach her the catechism, and within a year she was surprised to find her whilom pupil suddenly reappear as a sister, duly authorized to teach. It is computed that, among the male religious employed in teaching, not more than one in ten has the brevet, which would be indispensable to them if they were laymen; while, of the sisters engaged in instruction, out of 8000 superiors of institutions, only about 1000 are brevetées, and, of their assistants, not more than one per cent. are so qualified.

If the mental qualifications of these educators were thus disregarded, their moral characters were equally relieved from proper scrutiny; and this, combined with the temptations inseparable from the celibate system, has not infrequently led to the most shocking results. The enormous influence of the ecclesiastical establishment, working upon the bureaus of the government, the officials of justice, and the press, was usually sufficient to prevent much public scandal under Louis Napoleon and Marshal MacMahon; but a list of the prosecutions reported in the newspapers from 1861 to April, 1879, collected by Dr. Wahu,1600 shows about fifty cases in which the male teachers had abused the children under their charge, many of these cases being of appalling turpitude. As eleven of these occurred during the first three months of 1879, it may reasonably be concluded that equal freedom on the part of the public prosecutors and the press during the previous eighteen years would have produced a vastly larger number of convictions; and not the least deplorable feature of the matter is that in more than one case the culprit had been previously transferred several times from one institution to another, giving grounds for the assumption that the authorities were cognizant of his wickedness, and preferred to allow him to spread contagion throughout different communities rather than incur the scandal of punishing him.

As illustrative of two phases of the subject, I may briefly refer to two cases from among a number which were brought to light in 1861, as the result of the efforts of a writer bold enough to brave the anger of the church, and who found a journal with the hardihood to second his efforts. One of these occurred at Saintes, in a school under the care of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes. Out of 300 boys, one hundred had been the victims of the monsters to whom they had been confided, and who enjoyed with a Satanic zest the corruption which they spread through so many households. The evil became rumored abroad, but no one dared to attack the members of so powerful an order, until an old soldier who held the post of gendarme found the evil in his family. Unused to prudence, he complained. The local board of supervision, afraid of compromising the “interests of religion,” endeavored to hush up the affair, but the prefect, fortunately, was of different temper, and took up the matter energetically. The guilty brethren disappeared, and their superior professed to know nothing about them, while the gendarme was soon afterwards dismissed from his post, and the matter passed over, leaving nothing behind it but a hundred ruined youths and corrupted families. The other case is that of Frère Cléonique at Jonsac, whose offences were too fully proved for denial, and whose counsel on his trial could only urge in palliation that the responsibility rested, not on his client, but on the system which employed such creatures and exposed them to temptations beyond their strength—“Gentlemen,” said he, “look at my client. What is he, after all? A clown, a goîtreux, almost a crétin; surely less than a man! He was herding flocks, when they undertook to persuade him that he had a call. A black gown was thrown on his shoulders, and, behold him in charge of a school! Such a nature could only attempt that career through pride and sloth. There he is, utterly untrained, ignorant of everything in life, and yet charged with teaching our children how to live!... Do you wonder that one day the beast awoke in that soul, into which nothing lofty had been instilled?... There he is before you, but who is really to blame; who is the criminal? Assuredly not this poor wretch, involved in the blindest ignorance, whom they drew from his obscurity, and to whom they taught nothing before confiding to him the grave responsibility of training youth.” It is satisfactory to add that this ingenious plea was unsuccessful, and that the brute was sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor—but he had been seven years at Jonsac, and his victims counted by the hundred.1601

It was during these prosecutions, in 1861, that Frère Philippe, the General of the “Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes,” was stimulated to issue a secret circular, in which, after alluding to two previous ones of the same nature sent out in 1854 and 1860, he said that the time had come to speak plainly about the “horrible disease which devours the Order,” and which, under the investigations then in progress, was leading one brother after another to prison, and was sowing scandal broadcast. But the prosecutions died away, and matters soon resumed their usual course. It is but two or three years since that the Bien-Public, in comparing the morality of the lay schools with those in charge of the church, was able to produce these statistics:—

Nor are these shocking cases confined to France. In 1873 a similar scandal was suddenly brought to light in the great Barnabite college at Monza, in Lombardy, where there were more than 300 students, many of whom were found to have been debauched by their instructors. The institution was promptly closed by the authorities, but the chief criminals, Father Stanislas Cereza, the principal, and Father Villa, one of his assistants, escaped, having prudently disappeared at the first rumors of the development.

It was, however, political considerations rather than moral ones which led the French cabinet, shortly after the fall of MacMahon had destroyed the alliance between church and state, to commence an attack on the clerical schools. The measure proposed in what were known as the Ferry laws was certainly not a sweeping one, for the seventh article, on which the struggle took place, simply provided that “no man can be allowed to direct an establishment of public or private teaching, of whatever order this establishment may be, if he belongs to a non-authorized religious congregation;” and an official list of the non-authorized congregations showed them to consist merely of 1502 Jesuits, 327 Dominicans, 222 Marists, 230 Benedictines, 193 Eudists, 65 Basilians, 22 Barnabites, 14 Oratorians, 91 members of the Congregation of St. Bertin, and 105 of the Congregation of the Sacré Cœur de Jésus. The measure, in fact, was aimed rather at the Jesuits than at the others; but clerical influence was as yet too strong, and after a discussion, which lasted for about nine months, this section of the law was rejected by the Senate. Jules Ferry accepted the defeat, but at once announced that the existing statutes against the Jesuits and other unauthorized orders would be enforced—a declaration which received the approval of the Chamber of Deputies. Within a fortnight, on March 31st, 1880, accordingly, two decrees were issued. The first of these expelled the order of the Jesuits from France, giving them until June 30th to dissolve, and allowing a further delay until August 30th for the closing of their schools and colleges, in order not to inconvenience the students by dispersing them before the usual period of vacation. The other decree called upon all non-authorized congregations within three months to take the necessary steps to obtain the verification and ratification of their statutes and regulations, and the legal recognition of their establishments, and promising that when this was done provisions for the male congregations should be made by special acts, while those for female communities should be by either special acts or by simple decrees. The enforcement of the existing laws was threatened against all which should neglect within the given period to apply for authorization with all the prescribed details. Now, the laws required that the superiors of all orders should be residents of France, and that all congregations should submit in spiritual matters to the jurisdiction of the episcopal ordinaries, while, in fact, the more important orders have foreign superiors and are independent of episcopal jurisdiction. It was distasteful in the last degree to submit to this, and the indisposition to do so was strengthened by the prospect that each congregation would come before the Chambers as the subject of a special debate, in which their regulations would be discussed, with very slender prospect of ultimately obtaining the desired permission, since a special act would confer on them the right to hold real-estate—a right which many members, even of the Catholic Right, were not prepared to grant them.

The result of the first decree was that at the dates appointed the Jesuit establishments and colleges were closed, with but a faint show of passive resistance; but, as the members were not personally exiled, a large portion of them remained, and their colleges were continued by placing over them as nominal principals influential laymen under their control.

The second decree struck at 5917 members of unauthorized congregations. Its execution was postponed in hopes that the bodies thus threatened would endeavor to comply with the law, but the only concession they were willing to make was by putting forth a declaration containing a public act of submission to the constitution and a resolution to take no part whatever in public or political matters. At last, in November, 1880, the government found itself obliged to employ force, and the establishments were closed by the police, aided where necessary by the military. A general system of passive resistance had been organized; doors had to be violently broken open, and the inmates carried out through jeering or sympathizing crowds. The popular feeling, in fact, had been worked upon as far as possible, and at some places, as at Lyons, civil conflict seemed for a moment to be imminent, while at Turquoing (Nord) even blood was shed; but on the whole the crisis passed away with much less disturbance than had been anticipated. Since then the growing strength of republicanism throughout France, unimpeded by clerical and reactionary efforts, shows how much slighter a hold the religious orders had on the popular mind than had been supposed, and how mistaken had been Napoleon III. in regarding an alliance with the church as a necessity for the preservation of his dynasty. In fact, there has been no banishment of individuals nor expropriation of property. Though the unauthorized congregations have been dissolved, in accordance with laws which date back to the Ancien Régime, the members retain their property, enjoy all the rights of citizenship, and can perform Mass in the churches near their convents—indeed, the aristocracy, which naturally affiliates with them, has rather made a point of offering them ostentatious hospitality.

The effort to separate education from clericalism still continues. The execution of the decrees was accompanied by the adoption of laws establishing government colleges for women and providing free primary education, and, March 24th, 1882, there was passed an act rendering education compulsory. For nearly nine months there had been hot debate between the Deputies and the Senators over an amendment of Jules Simon’s, that instruction should be given in the public schools on the duties of the pupils “towards God and towards their country,” but the elections of January, 1882, deprived the clericals of their power, the Senate receded from the amendment, and the education provided for by the act is to be purely secular.

It may safely be assumed that France will not abandon the institutions thus established to attacks by the priesthood such as the Belgian clergy habitually make upon the public schools of that kingdom. In a parliamentary debate, February 22, 1881, on this subject, it was stated, without contradiction, that the curés were in the habit of refusing communion not only to the children who attend these schools, but also to their parents and grandparents, uncles, and aunts—in fact, admission to communion under the circumstances is the exception and refusal is the rule. Even threats are made to withhold baptism from future infants, the sacrament is denied to dying parents, and wives are urged to withdraw from all sexual relations with their husbands. When spiritual weapons are insufficient, more carnal means are employed by efforts to ruin the business of the disobedient by a system of “Boycotting,” which is sometimes successful; and the enthusiastic curé of Virginal admitted that he had pronounced it to be a less offence to commit murder than to vote for a Liberal, because Liberalism is heresy.1602 When such is the spirit of the church at the present day, French republicanism may be pardoned for desiring to limit its control over popular education.

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.1603 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?1604 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.

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 subdiaconate at the age of 22 and the priesthood at 251605—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 ardor 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 sins and transgressions, and he recognizes 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 a 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, the laborers are few and hardly worked, and the position is not one to attract those who might seek a life of sloth and indulgence. 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.

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.1606 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 recognized 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.1607 It is true that the severe virtue of St. Charles Borromeo refused to grant to a septuagenary priest a license 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;1608 but in modern times the Tridentine canon has been interpreted as allowing the residence of female servants or house-keepers, in view of the hardship of doing without domestics and the expense of employing men. In order to meet the Tridentine caution to avoid suspicion, efforts have sometimes been made to define a minimum “canonical” age for these women, varying from thirty to fifty years, but usually placed at forty—a palliative which, as might be expected, accomplishes little, even when, as is not always the case, the rule is observed more scrupulously than by the device of dividing the canonical age and keeping two girls of twenty.1609

Few priests, it may be assumed, have the self-denial to live without this female companionship, which is permitted by the church as a matter of course. Indeed, the census-paper officially filled in at the Vatican and returned in January, 1882, stated the population of the palace to be 500, of which one-third were women. While, of course, it does not follow that the relations between these women and the grave dignitaries of the papal court may not be perfectly virtuous, still, considering the age at which ordination is permitted, it would be expecting too much of human nature to believe that, in at least a large number of cases among parish priests, the companionship is not as fertile of sin as we have seen it to be in every previous age since the ecclesiastic has been deprived of the natural institution of marriage. The “niece” or other female inmate of the parsonage throughout Catholic Europe still excites the smile of the heretic traveller, and is looked upon as a matter of course by the parishioner, while the prelates, content if open scandal be avoided, affect to regard the arrangement as harmless, knowing that it serves as a preventive of more flagrant and more public trouble, though the fact that this companionship is made the subject of discussion and regulation at virtually every council or synod or episcopal convention held by the church shows that privately it is recognized as a necessary evil at best. Yet the old sophistry is not forgotten, which proves that such sin is less than the infraction of ecclesiastical laws. In a tract in favor of celibacy, published at Warsaw in 1801, with the extravagant laudation of the authorities, argument is gravely made that as priestly marriage is incestuous, such adultery is vastly worse than simple licentiousness, the latter being only a lapse of the flesh, while marriage would be schism and arrogant disobedience, involving sin of a far deeper dye.1610

It would, of course, be vain to expect, at the present day, from the rulers of the church, the outspoken candor of the Middle Ages, when evils were denounced openly and in the coarsest terms. In those days councils could speak, because none but those connected with the church were likely to be cognizant of their proceedings; while, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the immorality of ecclesiastics was so notorious that no harm could arise from admitting it in the efforts made for its correction. In modern times, however, when an external veil of decency is to be maintained before the eyes of antagonistic critics, when scandal is, of all things, to be avoided, and when the proceedings of ecclesiastical bodies are carefully revised at Rome, before they are allowed to become public, with the consciousness that they may be spread by the press before a world of hostile mockers, ready to jeer at the woes of the church, only the most guarded allusions can be made to such subjects, and these only when the case is urgent. When, therefore, we see that almost every council held in modern times has deemed it necessary to insist on the supreme importance of preserving chastity—lying, swearing, stealing, and other sins not being even alluded to; when the caution against undue familiarity with women, even devotees, is constantly urged; and when the relations between the priest and his servant are frequently indicated by directions that he must not admit her to companionship at the table, or on walks and journeys, and especially not in visiting fairs and merrymakings, it would be difficult not to recognize under this guarded phraseology an admission of the actual relationship existing between the good pastors and their female inmates, and a friendly warning, si non caste saltem caute.1611

It is not often that we can obtain an inside view of these matters, especially from a source that is at once well informed and not hostile, but such a view, confirming the worst suspicions, is afforded by an indignant remonstrance addressed, in 1832, to Monseigneur Sterckx, Archbishop of Mechlin, by the Abbé Helsen, who for twenty-five years had been a popular preacher in Brussels.1612 The abbé calls upon his prelate to enforce the Tridentine canon by banishing the women who are universally inmates of the houses of priests, and thus put a stop to the sin and the scandal which destroy the influence of the church and spread immorality among the faithful. Even the bishops and dignitaries of the church are not spared, and the archbishop himself is summoned to dismiss the “Petronilla” who had accompanied him from the curacy of Bouchout to the cathedral of Antwerp, and from Antwerp to the metropolitan seat of Mechlin.1613 Throughout this plain-spoken epistle the author assumes as a matter of course not only that the relations between the clergy and their servants are guilty, but that they are so recognized by every one—so notorious, indeed, as to need no proof—and, as a natural consequence, he regards the priesthood as a source of infection destructive to public morals. The cure is to be found in putting a stop to these irregular unions—“If women were forever banished from the houses of ecclesiastics vowed to celibacy, I think we should not see so great a number of prostitutes who ply their trade at night in our great cities, nor so many illegitimate children who curse their destiny as they multiply more and more around us. We ridicule the Seraglio of the Grand Turk and the polygamy of the Moslem, but they too, on their side, ridicule the infinite number of strumpets with whom Christian Europe is deluged, and the custom of keeping as many concubines as can be afforded. Whence comes to us this shameful trade, so hurtful to society, which is found under our religion more than under any other? We dare not doubt that it is the result of our own misconduct; we dare not accuse only the heretics and the philosophers of modern times; no, no! the most poisonous spring is in us, among us, with us, and it will not dry up without us. Let us blush to our eye-balls; let us hide ourselves from public sight! Oh for the times and the virtues of the primitive church! Why come ye not again?”1614 That this sort of scarcely veiled concubinage is, in fact, a fruitful source of prostitution can scarcely be doubted if, as Helsen asserts, the ordinary custom is, when one of these priest’s servants becomes pregnant and cannot be saved by a prudent absence, to dismiss her and take another, perhaps younger and more attractive; and that this may occur repeatedly without the ecclesiastic being subjected to any special annoyance or supervision—unless, indeed, he is so ill-advised as to take pity on the unfortunate girl and refuse to send her away. In that case he becomes a public concubinarian, liable to the canonical penalties, with which he is sometimes disciplined. As Helsen indignantly exclaims, “Would the Mahometans tolerate such infamy in their fakirs and dervishes? The Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus in their bonzes? The pagans in their Vestals? Our ancestors in their Druids? Even the Jews and Protestants have blushed for it, since they advise their Rabbis and ministers to marry rather than thus to contaminate themselves.”1615 Helsen does not fail to allude to the public familiarity of these servants with their employers—the familiarity condemned in almost the same words by many of the councils cited above—and it would seem the extreme of Pyrrhonism to doubt that almost universal concubinage is tolerated, even where on the surface there are no public scandals to attract the attention of the malicious.

Testimony of the same nature exists as to Italy, where the upheaval of the last quarter of a century has created discussion and brought forth statements of facts and opinions which reveal to some extent the internal condition of the church. That immorality should be prevalent would seem to be inevitable, if only from the overgrown number of the clergy, which has been fostered by the ambition of the church. In Rome itself, by the census of July 1st, 1867, there were no less than 7404 ecclesiastics of both sexes, in a population of 215,573, or one to every 29 inhabitants of all ages. In the Pontifical States, prior to their absorption by the Kingdom of Italy, the proportion was one to every 55 of the population. In Northern Italy, embracing the Pontificate, the Duchies, Lombardo-Venetia and Piedmont, there was one to every 140; while in the whole of Italy, exclusive of the Pontificate, in 24,231,860 souls there were 174,001 ecclesiastics, showing a proportion of one to 239. These numbers are so wholly beyond the spiritual needs of the people that it is evident that an ecclesiastical career must be sought by thousands who have no vocation for a life of abstinence and self-denial; while even among those who are induced in the fervor of youth to bind themselves by the irrevocable vow of chastity, there must be other thousands who find too late that they have over-estimated their strength. That passions thus denied their appropriate relief in the institution of marriage should degenerate often into brutal license, is too natural to excite special wonder.1616

It would be difficult to restrain the appetites of so vast a body as this even with the most determined vigilance on the part of prelates and in the presence of the sternest popular feeling, but both of these elements of repression may safely be assumed to be lacking. The scandal of the Countess Lambertini, whose suit for a share of the estate of her father, Cardinal Antonelli, has for ten years been before the Roman courts, would seem to show that even the virtues of Pius IX. were powerless to eradicate the license which has been traditional in the papal court; and when a theological manual, which is still largely used as a text-book in Catholic seminaries, coolly states that in Italy lust is not regarded as disgraceful,1617 though we may hope that the standard of morality has improved since it was written, yet we cannot expect to find in the people of which such a statement could be made, the virtue that would hold to strict account a priesthood whose example has been one of the efficient means of its degradation. That there is no restraining influence would in fact appear from the consensus of opinion of all who have had an opportunity of forming a judgment.

An address purporting to emanate from sixteen bishops to Cardinal Catarini, begging for an enlargement of the questions to be discussed in the Vatican Council, assumes the rule of celibacy to be the cause, not only of heresy and schism, but of scandal to the people and of disgrace to the church. It speaks of the disgusting trials which are perpetually coming before the tribunals, making the priestly garb a source of shame to its wearers, and leading the people to regard them, not as the flower of the soldiers of Christ, but as a colony sprung from Sodom.1618 The Archbishop of Tarento, Giuseppe Capecelatro, has had no scruple in urging the abrogation of the canon in order to reduce the immense number of bastards whose existence disgraces the church.1619 In a similar mood, D. Marco Petronio, a priest of Pirano, in Istria, declares that the boasted chastity of the priesthood has filled the church with demons in place of angels, who lead their flocks to ruin by their acts and example,1620 and Panzini describes the church as a brothel filled with men ruined by the attempt to deprive them of marriage. When the latter, indeed, was on his trial before the Inquisition, he asserted that in consequence of the canon, there were daily committed in Rome itself more than twenty thousand mortal sins, and the advocate of the Holy Office, D. Giuseppe Cipriani, contented himself with quietly responding, “Perhaps not so many.”1621 We may therefore feel confident that there is no exaggeration in the remarks of the Rev. William Chauncy Langdon, who had ample opportunities of observation during his long residence in Italy as agent of the American Episcopal Church—“I learned to regard a priest, who had lived all his mature life, openly and faithfully with a woman to whom he had not of course been married; by whom he had children now grown up, and for all of whom he was faithfully providing—with a relative respect as one who had greatly risen above the morality of his church, and of the society around him, and whose life really might be considered, on the dark moral background behind him, a source of relative light.”1622

We have here an example of the tolerated concubinage which Helsen describes as universal under the interpretation put upon the Tridentine canons. It would seem that it ought to be in some degree a safeguard against worse offences and more public scandals, as a kind of substitute for marriage; but unlawful indulgence weakens the power of resistance to temptation and hardens the conscience to sin. In spite, therefore, of this practical relaxation of the canons, we see the old troubles of the relations between spiritual directors and their fair penitents continue to vex the pious. As we have seen with the less delicate matter of the female companions of the clergy, the councils of modern times are not likely to be outspoken with regard to such a subject, but the frequency with which they reiterate commands that the confessions of women shall not be heard, save in case of infirmity, except in church; that when heard elsewhere it shall always be with open doors, and that in church the confessional shall be in a spot publicly visible, with a grating between the confessor and his penitent; that before and after sunset the lamps shall always be lighted, with other similar precautions, shows that the risk is fully recognized and requires constant watchfulness.1623 Helsen, in fact, alludes to the scandals of the confessional as a cause of its avoidance by the faithful and as contributing powerfully to the growth of religious indifference;1624 and that these scandals exist is not a mere matter of conjecture or inference. If it were so, there would be no need for reiterating the prohibitions against the absolution by confessors of their fair partners in guilt, which is still occasionally found to be necessary by modern councils;1625 nor would Pius IX. in 1866 have felt himself obliged to declare that the power granted to bishops to absolve in cases reserved to the Pope shall not in future extend to offences reserved for papal absolution by Benedict XIV.’s Bull “Sacramentum Pœnitentiæ.” In fact, the crime of “solicitation” must have become notoriously frequent before the Congregation of the Inquisition of Rome could have felt impelled, in 1867, to put forth an Instruction addressed to all archbishops, bishops, and ordinaries, complaining that the constitutions on the subject did not receive proper attention, and that in some places abuses had crept in, both as to requiring penitents to denounce guilty confessors, and as to the punishing of confessors guilty of solicitation. It therefore urged the officials everywhere to greater vigor in investigating such offences and gave a summary of the practice of the Inquisition in regard to these matters, supervision over which, it will be remembered, was confided to the Holy Office by the Bulls of Pius IV. and Gregory XVI. From this it appears that when such a denunciation is received, it is the custom of the Inquisition to order the accused to be watched, and not to prosecute him unless he is the subject of three separate accusations. When this number has been reached, a special court is convened whose business it is to examine whether there may not be some special enmity on the part of the accusers. Failing this, the accused is then examined under oath, care being taken not to reveal the names of the accusers nor to violate the seal of the confessional. If the transgressor confesses or is convicted, he is deprived forever of the faculty of hearing confessions and must abjure the heresy implied in his crime; but the severer punishments decreed by Gregory XV. of degradation from holy orders and delivery to the secular arm are not to be inflicted. Those who voluntarily confess without being denounced, even though they may subsequently be denounced, are allowed to escape with a suitable penance and are ordered merely not to hear subsequently the confessions of those whom they have solicited; confession after denunciation, but before trial, also diminishes the penalty. The utmost secrecy is enjoined on all concerned, who are to be sworn to silence, and so great a stress is laid on this that even priests are required to take the oath on the Gospels. The accuser is not to be asked whether she consented to the solicitation, and if she voluntarily makes such a statement it is not to be entered in the proceedings of the case. After the trial is finished, moreover, the whole is to be consigned to oblivion.1626 In view of this nervous anxiety for secrecy, and the tenderness manifested throughout to the offender, it is surely not uncharitable to conclude that scandal is more feared than sin in these matters.

Possibly the abuses of the confessional may be less frequent now than they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet it is evident that they are still quite prevalent enough to require a much more efficient system of repression than they are at all likely to receive. It is true that the questions put to the penitent by the confessor are divested of the extremity of brutal coarseness prescribed by Bishop Burckhardt, but they are still sufficiently suggestive to be revolting to the pure-minded, and dangerous in no small degree to those who are likely to lapse.1627

What in reality is the extent of these abuses can only be a subject of conjecture. Their very nature causes them to be scrupulously concealed not only by the principals, but by those who may incidentally find themselves wronged, and the church itself exerts all its influence to shield the guilty and suppress the scandal. How powerfully and how unscrupulously its influence is exerted to this end may be judged from a few examples. In 1817, at Availles, in France, the sacristan complained to the mayor that his daughter was received every night by the curé, to the scandal of the people. The mayor thus invited entered the priest’s house suddenly one night and found the girl in dishabille, hidden in a corner. He drew up an official statement of the facts and forwarded it to the authorities, and the response to this was his summary dismissal from office on the ground of having violated the domicil of the curé and increased the scandal.1628 More recent than this is the notorious case of the Abbé Mingrat, who while curé of Saint-Opre, near Grenoble, got into trouble by seducing one of his penitents, but was saved from prosecution and transferred to Saint-Quentin. Here he established relations with a devout young married woman, which ended in his cutting her in pieces with his pocket-knife and throwing the fragments into the river Isère. Even yet no action would have been taken had not the mayor of the place insisted, but Mingrat was enabled to escape to Savoy, where he was provided for as a persecuted saint.1629 Similarly, in 1877, the Abbé Debra, condemned at Liège in default, for no less than thirty-two offences, was, after proper seclusion in a convent, given a parish in Luxembourg by the Bishop of Namur.1630 In the case of the Abbé Mallet, which occurred in 1861, the church was unable to save the culprit from punishment, but did what it could to conceal his crimes from the faithful. As a canon of Cambray, he seduced three young Jewish girls and procured their confinement in convents under pretext of laboring for their conversion. One of his victims lost her reason in consequence of her sufferings, and the court of Douay condemned him to six years at hard labor—a sentence which was announced by an orthodox journal thus—“M. le chanoine Mallet de Cambrai, accusé de détournement de mineurs pour cause de prosélytisme religieux a été condamné à six ans de reclusion”—where the skilful use of the masculine “mineurs” and the characterization of his offence as religious proselytism elevate the worst of criminals into a martyr for the faith.1631 It is quite within the bounds of probability that, as such a martyr, he may, since the expiration of his sentence, have been enjoying, in some cure of souls, the opportunity of repeating his missionary experiments.

It is evident from these various causes that the criminal records can give only the barest suggestion as to the extent of crimes thus committed in secret by a class shielded by influences so powerful. The records of the ministère de la justice, moreover, are not in France open to the public, and the only mode of obtaining even an approximate idea of the number of prosecutions in these cases is to gather them from the journals in which they chance to appear as items of news. An attempt to effect this has been made by Dr. Wahu, and though, from the nature of the case, necessarily imperfect, it affords some interesting and suggestive statistics. His list extends from the beginning of 1861 to April, 1879, and is thus tabulated:—