A Father in God

It is a very common accusation against the Catholic clergy that they lord it over God's inheritance, that they are domineering and peremptory; and I suppose it must be confessed that not only is such a charge occasionally true of individuals, but that it corresponds with some characteristic of that body as a whole; for this accusation is levelled, not only by the enemies of the Church, but even now and then by her own fractious children.

Now, I have lately had one or two opportunities for observing the bearing of the priest in this town, and as neither an enemy nor an adherent, but a moderately intelligent spectator, I cannot help feeling that I have witnessed a display of that characteristic temper, but that I am forced to

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interpret it not adversely but almost favourably. More than once I certainly noticed a brusque pereni|)toriness, but I am inclined to think that, so far as it was unfortunate, it arose not from a defect but an advantage.

For example, last Thursday I was taking tea with Father Thorpe; and as soon as he had finished he lit a cigarette. But he had not drawn more than a couple of whiffs before his rather slovenly maid came in to announce that Mrs. Johnson wished to see him. He nodded without saying anything, and went blandly on with his cigarette and his conversation. After about five minutes he ground out the red tobacco on to his saucer, finished his sentence in a very leisurely manner, rapped his fingers a little on the table, and asked me to excuse him a moment. He went into the next room, leaving the door half open behind him; and I am bound to say that unintentionally I caught a scrap or two of the conversation.

Now, Mrs. Johnson is, as I happen to know, about the most wealthy Catholic in this little provincial town; and she is not at all the kind of woman who would bear domineering from even an archangel. She is a large, severe creature, full, I should suppose, of self-regard, and certainly very capable in her way: and she is wealthy, I say, from our suburban standpoint; by which I mean that when she dines with the banker she drives both to and from his residence in a closed fly.

I could not hear what she said; and at first I could not hear what the priest said; then at last his voice sounded clear and distinct and slightly peevish.

*'My dear child, don't talk such nonsense."

I must confess that I smiled all over my face. Mrs. Johnson's age, I should suppose, is thirty-seven, and Father Thorpe's cannot be more than forty-one. Father Thorpe is a poor man; Mrs. Johnson is a rich woman. Yet the man called the woman a "child," and bade her not talk nonsense.

There was a little more murmuring of voices; then I heard a rustle of silk and the woman's voice, bland and grateful.

"Very well, Father, if you think so."

"I'll go and see him soon," said the priest, "and there must be an end of it. You understand, don't you.^"

Then in two minutes he was back again, and we went on talking as if nothing was the matter.

Now, I do not say that his keeping the lady waiting while he finished his cigarette, nor his cavalier treatment of what was probably a complaint of some sort, were either courteous or apostolic actions; but I do hold, from other things that I have noticed as regards his relations with his flock, that they sprang from a state of affairs that ouojht to be the envy of the rest of Christendom. A Catholic priest is more than a mere father in name; he is really and truly a parent to his people; he is human and peevish sometimes, like the rest of us; he is thoughtless occasionally, no doubt, and selfish, and brusque; but, when all is said and done, he is not in the least like a lawyer, who must be polite if he wishes to retain his clients, or a tradesman, who must be prompt and subservient if he desires to sell his wares. On the contrary, he is regarded, as I have said, as a father who has his moods like any one else, but who remains a father and retains his rights in spite of occasional shortcomings; he has authority to scold, as well as to forgive sins, and to say (sometimes quite unreasonably) that his word must be final, as well as to declare the counsel of God.

To this I know it may be plausibly answered that he has won this position by fear; that, since he is supposed to hold the keys of Heaven he is of course a dangerous man to quarrel with, and that the instance I have quoted is simply one more example of detestable priestcraft.

Yet the retort to that is perfectly easy, and falls under two heads, the general and the particular.

As rof]^ar(ls the general principle, I can only assure my fellow-Protestants that no priest could ever deny the sacraments or pretend to withhold <j;race of any sort from those who hap{)ened to be personally rude to him. If Mrs. Johnson had flounced out of the room and told her pastor to hold his tongue or mend his manners, nothing in the world would have happened, except perhaps an extreme astonishment and a possible loss of temper on the part of Father Thorpe. There would have been no bell, book, or candle rung, read, or extinguished on the following Sunday to the chastisement of Mrs. Johnson's soul.

And, as regards the particular instance under our attention, I can only say that to see, as I have seen, Father Thorpe in his school playground, is coincident with dismissing from the mind any suspicion that that clergyman rules by fear.

No: the solution lies a great deal deeper than that; it is to be found in the whole conception that the Catholic laity have formed of the functions of their pastor.

First, of course, since he is a priest he must be implicity obeyed and beHeved in the comparatively small sphere of faith and morals, though this does not involve the impossibility of appealing from him to his superior when his subject is in grave doubt. This power of appeal, however, is practically never exercised, owing to the admirable training and searching examinations through which every priest must pass — in these deep matters the priest knows his business, which is to declare not his original views, but the Faith of his Church.

But, secondly, since he is a real father to his flock, his influence, although only that of a fallible man, covers a very wide field. His boys will consult him as to their prospects of work; his girls will ask his advice as to their dealings with troublesome suitors. Often he may give faulty counsel, for he is acting in these things as an individual, not as a representative of Ecclesia Docens; but nevertheless that counsel is frequently sought and generally followed. Even when he is not consulted he occasionally intervenes, as when an Irish priest in Liverpool issues forth on Saturday nights with a hunting-crop kepi for that purpose in his passage, to disperse a howling mob of his excited children who are paying the wrong sort of attention to the officer of the Saxon law.

Now, I do not deny that this extraordinary influence is occasionally abused, and that priests, since they are human, will sometimes interfere where they ought not; but the danger is inseparable from every position of authority. Home-life is continually marred by the efforts or selfishness of a domineering father; yet few will be found to deplore paternal correction in general on account of these particular drawbacks; and, with regard to the Catholic priesthood, it may be asserted without doubt that for every one such over-stepping of the limits there can be quoted ten thousand instances where a mistake is avoided or a catastrophe averted because there was such a man in the presbytery who could be consulted without timidity and obeyed without question.

Does not such a man, after all, exactly meet a need that can hardly be met otherwise? Discretion and acquaintance with human nature have been worked into his very fibre through his studies in casuistry and his practice in the confessional: he has a knowledge of family life beyond that of most married persons, and this knowledge is impregnated with kindliness, not bitterness; he is sufficiently impressive to command confidence; he is indulgent through his very experience of weakness and sin; and, above all, he is pledged by the most solemn ties to support the cause of right and to foresee the occasions of wrong which a less highly trained man might not detect.

He is a kind of over-father, bound to support the parental authority of his elder sons, and the filial rights of his younger children, to balance, to decide, to warn, to encourage, to dissuade along those lines which he believes will be most conducive to the highest good of his clients in particular and of the whole community in general; and the highest proof of these assertions is to l)e found in the fact that his flock after all willingly yield to him the rights to which his position entitles him: mothers consult him about their sons, fathers about their wives, children about their home duties. It is a pleasant sight, 1 say, to see Father Thorpe go along the street; a butcher-boy grins in his face, calls him father, and lifts, not touches, his cap; he claps Jim upon the cheek, and Mary on the head; he bids Selina take out that unbecoming feather; frowns indulgently u{)on Tom at the corner by the public-house; and tells his dear child Mrs. Johnson "not to talk nonsense": and all that the Protestant world can do is to cry "priestcraft" and "Popery," and thank God that her ministers know their place better than that.

Lastly, how strange it is that this state of affairs should be brought a})out through the seminary training!

It has always been supposed, and indeed publicly stated by dignitary after dignitary of the Establishment, that what Englishmen wanted was a pastorate that consisted of religious men of the world who could meet their flocks upon equal terms; University men, gentlemen, public-school men — no others need apply. The seminary system continues to be denounced at every meeting convened for the discussion of clerical education; it is supposed that isolation, enforced prayer, precise regulation of time, separation from female society, even celibacy itself tends to produce an unreal temper of mind, a race of clergymen with their heads on one side and an unnatural speaking-voice, a ministry which may indeed perform sacerdotal duties with a correct deportment, but which is utterly incompetent to deal with men on equal terms, or to descend to the dusty arena of domestic and civil life.

Yet precisely the opposite appears to be the case. If I wish to smoke my pipe with a congenial clergyman, or to hear reasonable conversation on topics of the day, or to learn how to deal with a refractory child, or to discuss the advisability of attending a certain race-meeting; or if, on the other hand, I need a little brisk consolation, or have an unpleasant secret to reveal, or an inveterate habit to overcome, or a complicated moral problem to unravel, I should not dream of stepping across to the rectory or to the new vicarage of St. Symphorosa. In the former I should find a loud-voiced, thumping sort of a man, educated after a fashion at the University, and certainly a warm-hearted, generous soul, but also unable to understand my point of view or do anything but proclaim his own; in the latter an anaemic starveling — anaemic, it is true, by nature, and starveling by the grace of a mortified life — praiseworthy defects — who would do his utmost to raise my thoughts to higher things, and to induce me to come to his new oaken-lined vestry next Saturday and open my grief in his pale ear. On the other hand, I should unhesitatingly take my hat and go across to the Popish presbytery, where I should find a man who had spent ten years of his youth in a rigid seminary, but who had somehow emerged from it a man of the world in the best sense, neither a large-hearted bully nor a spiritual hypochondriac; one who will neither shout at me nor shrink from me, who will possibly drop his aspirates and be entirely ignorant of literature and art, but who will yet listen to what I have to say, understand me when I say it, and give me excellent advice. I am confident that he will hold his tongue, for he has no Eve to tempt him to indiscretion; he will wear no frown of absorption, for he has a thousand secrets more weighty than my own; he will not attempt to proselytize my soul, for, as he justly says, if the Catholic Church is right, it is I that will have to go to Hell, not he; — who will, in short, although he is two years my junior, be to me exactly what my father was twenty years ago; tell me frankly that I have been a fool, advise me how to repair my folly, and then be equally willing to talk about something else.

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Yes, yes; the (,'alliolic Cliurcli is jiniazingly adroit; she has managed to produee grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles, and men of the workl from seminaries. I have not an idea how she does it, unless her own exphmation of it is true — which is that the knowledge of God is the short cut to knowledge of man, that time spent in prayer is the most economical investment of a working hour, and that meditation on supernatural mysteries and familiarity with supernatural things confer an insight into ordinary affairs of common life that can be obtained in no other way: unless once more Christ's own words are to be taken literally, not metaphorically, and that when He said that those who for His sake renounced wives and children and brethren and lands, should find themselves treated as husbands and fathers and brothers in their turn, that they who lost their life should find it, that they w^ho took the lowest place should presently stand in the highest, and that the meek and the peacemakers should inherit the earth, be called the children of God, shine out as the light of the world, and be set up upon a high hill, a city that cannot be hid.

Yes; there is no doubt about it at all. If ever I find myself in serious trouble I shall go to a Catholic priest to extricate me from it....

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