Chapter V: Part 5

"Enter into a London chapel on a Sunday when not even the few attempts at magnificence which our poverty permits us are displayed. Let it be in the depths of the City, in an old-fashioned chapel, with Protestant pews. Here the church has no beauty that one should desire her. No organ peals, and no sweet-toned choir chants. Yet there is a marvel which kings and prophets thirsted to see and did not see. They throng to the altar; the priest in a low voice repeats the blessed words and gives to each his God. No saints are there, but good ordinary Christians, fearing God in the midst of the world; some are even great sinners who have just been cleansed in the sacrament of Penance. The same scene goes on all over even this heretical land. No glorious bells ring out over the length and breadth of England, from spire and steeple, to announce the adorable sacrifice, but in our great wicked towns you may count the communicants by tens of thousands. In Birmingham and Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester, they are crowding to receive their Lord. The same blessed work is going on in lowly country missions scattered up and down the country, where a few worshippers still congregate to worship the God of their fathers, in venerable chapels under the roof of Catholic gentlemen, the descendants of martyrs, where the Blessed Sacrament has found a refuge through centuries of persecution." [6]

But the priest will have to conduct many services which are only partly liturgical, or not liturgical at all. Of such a nature is the ordinary Sunday evening service at most of our churches, or the weekday Benedictions, meetings of Confraternities, etc. Here again there is room for improvement in the manner they are conducted. Many a priest "gabbles" the prayers--especially the Hail Marys of the Rosary--in a manner which makes them quite inaudible, and is a real hindrance to the people joining. It conveys the idea that he is discharging a duty for the sake of his people, without any idea of praying himself. Yet surely the prayers which are good enough for them are good enough for him; and in truth there is no more moving or devotional sight than that of a priest praying together with his people. The practice of utilising the time during Benediction to say Office is regrettable if only for this reason--that it destroys the community of prayer between priest and people, and he loses the grace of the Congregational Act. At the Eucharistic Congress in 1908, when the people assembled at each side of the street in their thousands, one of the most touching sights was the arrival of groups or congregations led by their priests, reciting the Rosary or other devotions or singing hymns with him. No more vivid representation could be imagined of the good shepherd leading his flock, as is customary in southern or mountainous countries, which formed one of the best known of the parables of our Lord.

There is certainly a need for more variety in our popular evening services: people get tired of the perpetual Rosary, sermon and Benediction; but until something better is forthcoming, we must make the best of what we have. Evening services are comparatively new in other countries besides England, as formerly there was no satisfactory means of lighting the churches, and there is now room for their development. In some smaller churches Night Prayers are an agreeable variety: the Cure of Ars used to say them with his people every evening. There is something to be said also for the old English devotion of the Jesus Psalter; and in Lent, Stations of the Cross are usually popular. But on the whole, there is a want of suitable variety in the first part of the service. For the concluding part, nothing could be more beautiful than the Benediction service, which has crystallised itself into a definite form for this country.

Finally, it is worth while to put in a word in favour of an effort to keep the church open all day. The importance of this practice has been emphasised not only in our own Synods of Westminster, [7] but also in the new Codex, [8] which orders it for at least several hours each day. With us there are sometimes difficulties in the way, especially when the presbytery is at a distance from the church. Sometimes, however, these difficulties are unduly magnified. Even the danger of occasionally losing a few shillings from the collection boxes would seem to be not too great a price for satisfying the devotion of so many who long to visit the Blessed Sacrament from time to time. A Catholic church should have as its characteristic that it is _alive_; and even when no service is going on, the daily life of the church shows itself. Time was, and not so many years ago, when a church left open would run the risk of being maliciously desecrated: and that is probably in part at least responsible for the bad tradition in some of our churches in this respect; but it is to be hoped that we have got past that danger by now.

[1] That is, not as a rule. In the days of the so-called "shilling opera" at Warwick Street, some of the Italian type of masses were in vogue.

[2] As an extreme example of the opposite spirit and the decay of liturgical sense may be quoted that of a church a few years ago on Palm Sunday, which fell that year on March 16, the only music being at the distribution of the Palms, when the people sang the hymn "Glorious St. Patrick." On another occasion at quite a large church, one Maundy Thursday, falling that year a few days after March 19, and within the supposed Octave of St. Joseph, when we came hoping to find _Tenebrae_, instead there were popular devotions before the statue of St. Joseph, which in consequence of Passiontide, was covered with a purple veil, but had lights burning before it.

[3] About half a century earlier a system of English psalm-singing was introduced by some of the gentry in their chapels. Owing to the nature of its origin--for it was at a time when the laity were in opposition to their Bishops and adopted the name "Cisalpines"--these English psalms did not at that time receive Episcopal sanction; but they were not forbidden, and were in use in some chapels down to comparatively modern times. In the home of Cardinal Vaughan at Courtfield, in Herefordshire, they were in regular use. In his youth he learnt to love them, and when Bishop of Salford he introduced something similar in his Cathedral, with considerable success; and the experiment was copied elsewhere. When he came to London as Archbishop, he tried to introduce them there; but they were not taken up, and are now rarely heard anywhere. Nevertheless, the "Come let us adore"--an adaptation of the _Venite exultemus_--found its way into the Manual of Prayers and has thus secured a permanent place among our devotional exercises.

[4] The practice in some few churches of having votive Vespers of our Lady every Sunday has little to recommend it. They are in truth private devotions, and ought to be sung as such, without any liturgical accessories. If there is, as often, a celebrant in cope, either he will be vested in a colour incongruous to the season--as, for example, a white cope in Lent or Advent, or even on a green Sunday--or, what is worse, he will be celebrating the office of our Lady in green, red or purple, which is still more incongruous. Moreover, since the reform of the Calendar under Pius X, the proper liturgical psalms at Vespers are nearly always the same, which removes the difficulty which used to drive people to votive Vespers of our Lady, in days when the liturgical Vespers were so various and complicated.

[5] So the _Motu Proprio_ of Pius X provides. In the case of children's masses the singing of English hymns seems to be sanctioned by custom.

[6] P. 403. (Ed. Duffy. 1903.)

[7] "Ad hanc devotionem magis magisque fovendam, vehementer optandum est ut Ecclesiae aditus vel continuo diu, vel si ruri sit, per aliquot horarum spatium fidelibus pateat; et doceantur omnes amantissimum Salvatorem in Ss. Eucharistia latentem invisere, adorare, ac fervidis precibus supplicare, animamque simul communione spirituali refocillare" (_I Westmonast_. xviii. 9).

[8] "Ecclesiae in quibus Sanctissima Eucharistia asservatur, praesertim paroechiales, quotidie per aliquot saltem horas fidelibus pateant" (Canon 1266).

CONFERENCE IX

THE PRIEST'S PASTORAL WORK (_continued_)

PREACHING

LET us begin this Conference by propounding a question for consideration. The preaching of the Word of God is a sacred part of the priest's pastoral work, and not the least sacred part of it. Yet the average priest speaks of it as though it were a task irksome in itself, to be got through somehow or other, and always a nuisance. If anyone is available and is kind enough to replace him in the pulpit, or if he gets off by the timely arrival of a Bishop's pastoral, he is unreservedly pleased. It is true that he is usually a hard-worked man, and that if he gets off any of his work, it is a relief to him; but in the case of a sermon he is far more relieved than in any other case. Does this look as if he appreciated at its true value the pastoral work of preaching the Word of God?

In order to get a true answer to this question, we shall probably not be far wrong in seeking it in the personal history of the individual priest as preacher, to see whether he has imperceptibly learnt an inadequate view of his office.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that his early sermons were simply a struggle against breaking down. He was naturally nervous the first few times that he found himself in so novel a position, standing before a congregation all listening to his words. In order to nerve himself up for the occasion, he has taken no small trouble in writing out in full his discourse and committing it to memory. His chief anxiety is lest his memory should fail him--which sooner or later it is sure to do, not once, but often, and he is anxious as to what will happen the first time that this shall occur. He gets through his first sermon, and is then anxious about his secondhand so on. Very soon he finds that it is practically impossible for him to write out all his sermons, and he contents himself with an analysis; for as time goes on, he is acquiring a certain facility in expressing himself _ex tempore_, and the frequency of his sermons is gradually curing him of nervousness. Perhaps the first time that he lost the thread of his discourse he covered his difficulty better than he might have hoped, and this helps to give him confidence. Then sooner or later it will occur that some unexpected pressure of work--a sick call on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning, let us say-- prevents him from preparing his sermon at all in a systematic way, and he finds himself face to face with the duty of preaching with only a few minutes to collect his thoughts. With commendable trust in Providence, he says a fervent prayer for Divine assistance, boldly ascends the pulpit, and perhaps surprises himself at the facility with which he discharges his task. Would that he always bore in mind that if our Heavenly Father helps us in a special way when we have to speak for Him and His kingdom on the pressure of an emergency, this does not dispense us from using ordinary means on a future occasion when the emergency has passed away. It was for such occasions--when the Apostles were to be delivered up to the hands of their enemies--and for those occasions only that He told them to "take no thought of how or what to speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak." [1]

If we may venture to give a natural explanation, it would be that we all have a certain class of thoughts in our mind which, under the influence of sudden or strong stimulus, take shape in words. If we trust to these time after time, we shall, to say the least, lay ourselves open to great monotony and self-repetition in our preaching. And this is what often occurs as a young priest gradually gains confidence, and begins to think that he can preach without serious or long preparation.

The above description might be continued, but enough has been said for the present purpose, which is to call attention to this point. At the beginning the priest's preaching has been a struggle to get through without breaking down. When he has been sufficiently long at it for this danger to have passed away, he still has the practical feeling--his aim is to fill up the requisite amount of time with respectably good matter, so as to discharge his duty. It has hardly at all come before him in the light of a privilege to speak the Word of God, a source of grace to himself as well as to others, an expression of his own spiritual thoughts put forth for the benefit and instruction of those entrusted to his pastoral charge; and this is to a large extent responsible for the want of fervour and of soul and interest in his sermons.

It is always easier to state an evil than to suggest a remedy; but it is something towards the desired end if we are able to diagnose the true cause of our difficulty. The conclusion urged is that it is not enough to insist on an elaborate direct preparation; on a scientific knowledge of the way to order a discourse; on rules of elocution and rhetoric; highly desirable as some of these may be. Still less would one ask a priest to write and learn all his sermons, which even if practically possible, is not in any way desirable. The true remedy is rather to teach our young priests the spiritual side of preaching, to train them to look on the sermon as part of their pastoral office. If this view is planted in their minds at the outset of their priestly career, it will grow rapidly and strongly, as by actual contact with their parishioners they feel their own power for good in the pulpit, and see before their eyes their people growing and living on the strength of words heard in their sermons. It is this consciousness which will elevate the duty in their minds from an irksome task to that of one of the most privileged of their pastoral duties.

In this point of view we see the key of the remark often made that the remote preparation for preaching is more important than the proximate. By the remote preparation is meant the priest's daily life, his union with God, his supernatural views of the things of this world, and the acquiring of his store of thoughts from his prayer, his meditation, his spiritual reading, and, not least important, his pastoral work among the poor, the sick and the dying. "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." [2] If the truths of faith are so vividly present to us that God's dealings with mankind are as things we have actually seen and heard, we shall long that others may share our privilege, and we shall feel the greatest joy in instructing them in Christ's Name. But if this spirit be wanting, all human eloquence will be of no avail. The value of the sermon is the reflection of the life of the preacher.

In considering the question of reading and study in preparation for the pulpit, we naturally turn first to the two-fold branches of Scripture and Dogma as that which will help chiefly to give substance and backbone to our sermons.

It is astonishing how little use many preachers make of the inspired Word of God, containing as it does in itself not only the essence of all religious history and dogma, but so many of the words of Christ Himself. Limiting our observations to the Gospels alone, it is an extraordinary grace we have received in having such full records of His words and acts at least during His public life. This in itself enables us to have a real personal knowledge and love of our Redeemer. We should expect our sermons to be full of His words and sayings, His parables, His illustrations, the example of His works; and that all our moral lessons should be illustrated and driven home by His words. Yet in practice we hear sermon after sermon with no more than a few texts from Scripture scattered through them, and these often isolated and without their context; and when we find a preacher really familiar with our Lord's life and words, we comment on it as quite remarkable.

It is probable that this is largely due to our habit of quoting isolated texts in support of dogmatic truths, and our very reverence for them as the inspired Word has led us to rest on the actual words and to lose sight of their general context. Very probably also Cardinal Manning's remark may be true, that since the sixteenth century there has been a tendency to over-strictness against the popular use of the Scriptures as a sort of recoil or reaction against Protestantism. At the present day, however, there is happily a reaction against this in all countries, and a movement in favour of circulating at least the New Testament more freely in the vernacular. With us we can date it from the issue of the sixpenny New Testament by Burns and Gates, and the Penny Gospels of the Catholic Truth Society; but the cheap Gospel texts in the vernacular which have appeared in some other countries--notably those issued by St. Luke's Society in Rome itself--have outdone anything we have in England.

One of our chief and foremost duties then is to familiarise ourselves with the words and actions of our Lord in English. There are many texts with which we are familiar in Latin, but we seldom make use of them because of the labour of turning them into English in the middle of a sermon, when our mind is already intently occupied. Let us know them in English for the sake of our people whom we wish to instruct. As to how this is best done opinions may differ. Some recommend learning texts by heart so as to have them always at hand. Others would find this method too mechanical, and would prefer to trust to their own reading of and meditation on the Gospels to bring about the desired result. They would argue that he will have more command over texts that he has used and pondered over than over those he has simply learnt by heart.

It is wonderful how the simple quoting of Gospel words elevates our sermons. The people want the words of our Lord, His acts, His parables, the lessons He intended to teach; they want to hear of the collateral setting of His life, the gradual development of His work, the kind of people He was teaching, and so forth. Then they should hear the teaching of St. Paul, his words to his converts, his warnings against abuses, his doctrinal and disciplinary instructions. Then also they like to hear from time to time some of the Old Testament--either the history of God's chosen people, or the beauties of the Messianic prophecies--of Isaias and others; or the psalmody of David; or the Sapiential books of Solomon; or the works of Jeremias and the other prophets. Mere memory work will not do all this for us; we must ourselves be accustomed to think of the Gospels, to meditate on our Lord's words, to see the meaning of His parables, and so forth. Here is prayer enough and work enough to last us a lifetime, and be continually bearing fruit.

Now we come to direct preparation of our sermon. Undoubtedly the only way at the beginning is to write it out, learn it and deliver it from memory. But this laborious process is only a means to an end. It will in the first instance help the priest through his initial shyness and diffidence in speaking of God and holy things in public; and it will lay the foundation for the methodical composition of a discourse. For he will soon learn the sequence of ideas which sound at first artificial, though eventually they become part of the instinct of the preacher-- text, introduction, statement, development, explanation, illustration, peroration, etc. But it bears the same relation to preaching that the old autumn manoeuvres did to war. His sermons in future will not be written out: in the present hard-worked state of our clergy, it would be impossible; and in any case, it would be ineffective. A sermon written and repeated by heart _must_ sound unreal and dead. [3] As Cardinal Manning puts it, "The written word is what we thought when we wrote it; the spoken sermon is what we think at the moment of speaking. It is our present conviction of intellect and feeling of heart: it is therefore real, and felt to be real by those who hear it." [4]

It is not intended to discourage a careful preparation, so far as circumstances will permit; quite the contrary. But it will not be of the nature of writing a set discourse. It will be a far more simple preparation. Cardinal Manning instances the preaching of the Apostles. "We cannot," he says, "conceive these messengers of God labouring to compose their speech, or studying the rules and graces of literary style. The records of their preaching in the New Testament are artless and simple as the growths of nature in the forest, which reveal the power and beauty of God. Their words and writings are majestic in their elevation and depth and pathos and unadorned beauty, like the breadth and simplicity of the sea and sky. Their whole being was pervaded by the divine facts and truths, the eternal realities of which they spoke." [5]

Let us fix our ideas by a definite instance. In all St. Paul's career there was no one sermon which would have needed greater care than his sermon at Athens. He had to speak to a highly educated audience, of people without belief even in God, most of them eaten up with pride, listening to him with a supercilious curiosity; and he knew that for most of them his sermon would be the one opportunity of their lifetime. If any sermon of his would have needed previous thought and preparation, it would have been this one. Of course we have no authority for saying how much preparation he gave to it. We can well imagine his carefully thinking over what he was going to say, thinking of his initial outburst about the Unknown God, carefully considering his line of argument about the Resurrection of our Lord, his reference to the Greek poet with whom both he and they were familiar, and so forth. But equally we most assuredly cannot for a moment imagine him writing out and learning his discourse. Had he done so, it would have lost all its force and reality. Any gain in the artificial rhetoric, or the choice of words, or the like would have been far more than compensated for by the hollowness and want of fervour _hic et nunc_. Other instances might be adduced and the same reasoning applied to them: St. Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, St. Stephen's speech to his murderers, and many others. From internal evidence we can see that these were thought out and prepared beforehand; but we cannot even imagine their having been written out and committed to memory.

Our future preparation may perhaps be something of this kind. First we have to fix on our subject--not always the easiest part of our work. Let us suppose that on reading through the Sunday Gospel some aspect of it or some incident in it appeals to us from a particular point of view, and that point we decide to develop. Possibly something we have read in the past occurs to mind, and we get out a book--or perhaps several books--to suggest to us a few ideas. Then the first stage of our work is done.

The next process is to think. We have to make the ideas our own, and develop them according to the bent of our own minds. This cannot easily be done as we sit at our desks. Thoughts will not come to order. Developing a subject in one's mind is a gradual process, and takes time. It can well be done as we walk from place to place, or exercise any light employment. It is specially suitable to do it as we go about our pastoral work. The words we use in our visits to members of our flock are the reflection of our mind and will bear close resemblance to our words in the pulpit. If we find plenty to say, and are conscious of the consolation we give by saying it to the poor individually, why should it not be so likewise when we address them from the pulpit?

In order to complete our preparation, we must then sit at our desk and write out the substance of our thoughts and put them in methodical order. We should also look up the texts of Scripture on which we rely, and frequently the context will suggest further thoughts. All this will vary between man and man, and between day and day. Some will write long notes, others short. On some days thoughts come easily, on others only with difficulty. Some people may find it useful to write a fair copy when the matter has been rearranged, others will arrange their matter methodically at the outset, and so forth. When we have done this, we can leave the sermon to the time, presumably not far distant, when we are going to preach it.

In the case of many of our less formal sermons, the delivery follows close on the first preparation, and even that has to be much curtailed. Such are the few words which we deliver to Holy Family meetings, or other Confraternities, and short addresses at weekday evening services. The Sunday catechetical instruction forms a subject by itself, and the idea that it can be efficiently performed with little or no preparation should be strongly deprecated. It is an opportunity of doing great things for the children, and implanting in their minds ideas which will last them through life, and often be, as it were, their sheet-anchor to keep them to their religion in after years, in times of stress and temptation, or call them back to it if they have unhappily fallen away. The responsibility of such an opportunity is great, and no trouble should be too great to secure its effective performance.

We now come to the time of the sermon's delivery. To some the quarter of an hour immediately before ascending the pulpit is the most important part of the preparation; to all it is an important part. It is essential that we should begin with our mind full of our subject. A very little practice will enable us to feel at home in the pulpit once we have begun, and we shall soon acquire self-command and power to collect our thoughts there. Nevertheless, we shall often forget many things which we have thought of during our preparation, while other thoughts will suggest themselves in most unexpected fashion. A celebrated French preacher once said that he had never ended a sermon without finding that he had omitted most of what he had intended to say, and said much that he had not intended. [6] It matters not: what matters is that when the priest is speaking he should be full of his subject, earnest, enthusiastic, speaking straight from his heart, and above all things zealous for the good of his hearers.

Then let his declamation be simple, earnest, natural. The inflated and artificial style of oratory, current until almost modern times, would to-day be wholly out of place. At best it was ill-suited to so lofty a purpose, and St. Alphonsus only followed the lead of many saints and others in warning the preacher against the style it naturally led to. The present simplicity of taste is far more in keeping with the sacredness of the work. Let the priest say what he means and mean what he says, and the intrinsic force and sacredness of his words will be better than all rhetoric. Above all, let there be no affectation of manner or self-consciousness, which does so much to mar the effect of a sermon. By all means, however, let him practise clearness of utterance. It is very trying to a congregation to sit before a preacher whom they cannot hear; and especially when such happens through the preacher's neglect of the ordinary rules of elocution. Nor does it usually require any greater effort on the part of the preacher to make himself intelligible. Clearness does not always necessitate loudness, nor is it always achieved by it. A careful utterance in a suitable pitch is really all that is required; and the people should be spared the annoyance of listening to a preacher who clips his words, or only partially pronounces them, or drops his voice so that the last syllable of a word or the last word of a sentence is inaudible: all these faults make it an effort to follow him. And if there is any weakness in the initial _h_ or the final _g_ of a word, the effect is far from pleasing. In order to draw fruit from a sermon, one wants to be able to follow it _without effort_, and to be undisturbed by fault or peculiarities of enunciation. These ends cannot be attained unless the preacher will take some trouble; but with a little trouble it can easily be done. Nevertheless, it often is _not_ done. [7]

The preacher should likewise make an effort to get over his natural shyness and disinclination to use his hands. This will go of its own accord as soon as he has had sufficient practice to feel at home in the pulpit. We do not wish to gesticulate so much as the French priests do-- it is not in accordance with the genius of our people; and what is suitable in one country is out of place in another. Still less do we want any forced or unnatural gesticulation. At first we should do with very little. Many Englishmen do always with very little. But in most cases, it comes natural after a time to use the hands, and when it is natural, it increases greatly the force of our words.

A few remarks should be made as to the length of time at which to aim. It is safe to say that the pressure of modern life calls for shorter sermons than our fathers were accustomed to. The practice of five-minute sermons at the Sunday low masses, which first emanated in systematic form from the Paulists of New York, is now fairly common, and of great service to those who cannot attend the principal mass on Sundays. But the curtailing of the chief sermon may easily be overdone. People will never venture to complain of the shortness of a sermon, but in truth one of eight or ten minutes does not satisfy them, nor allow time to develop the matter properly. It may be admitted, however, that shortness is a fault on the right side, and people would not now tolerate the length of sermon that used to be imposed on them. As a general rule, it would be well to be under twenty minutes rather than over, unless the occasion be an important one, with a special preacher, who may allow himself longer. This applies to the chief sermons only; that at the evening service on a weekday, or at Holy Family or Confraternity meetings or the like would naturally be shorter; eight or ten minutes might in many cases be enough. The length of time that we can hold their attention will of course vary somewhat from day to day. One is able to tell at once when the listeners are getting weary. But even when we are conscious that this is so, there may be more good done than we are aware of. Frequently such has afterwards come to our knowledge; in numerous other cases it may have occurred without our knowing it.

Moreover, the good done by a sermon depends on what has been said in the body of the discourse. A good beginning or a good ending may round it off as a literary composition; but they will not appreciably affect the value of the sermon from the point of view of gaining souls. The same applies to the methodical development of the subject throughout. It is useful to aim at it, but if we fail to attain it, or go astray from the scheme we had made out, no great harm is done. What is important is that whatever we say should come from our heart, and that we should be so united to God as to fulfil our Lord's words, "It is not you that speak, but the spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." [8] This is the way to reach the hearts of our congregation, and to make our sermon in truth part of our pastoral work.

[1] St. Matt. x. 19.

[2] Acts iv. 20.

[3] That is, an ordinary parish sermon. In the case of a sermon on some special occasion this remark must be modified. Such sermons partake of the nature of a pronouncement, and it is important that the language should be carefully weighed, and no point of importance omitted. They usually find their way into print, and are therefore addressed to a larger and different audience besides that in the church, and must be treated on a different footing.

[4] _Eternal Priesthood_, p. 187.

[5] _Ibid_., p. 179.

[6] Perhaps a remark may be here made respecting the eventuality which from time to time occurs to every preacher. All those who have been in the pulpit are familiar with the sudden feeling of blank coming over the mind, and the momentary complete forgetfulness of the scheme of the sermon. The great thing on such an occasion is not to stop. Once one stops to think, ideas go further away, the silence and expectancy of the congregation become oppressive, and the pause seems interminable: it is a question whether we shall ever recover ourselves at all. Whatever happens, one must not stop. One can repeat what one has just said in slightly different words, or give forth any religious sentiment, or the like: this gives time for thought and conditions favourable for thinking, and ordinarily one's ideas will return in plenty of time. And only those who have themselves had experience in preaching are likely to detect what is happening. One can occasionally notice even the most experienced preachers losing their thread in this way, and it is worth noting as an antidote to discouragement.

[7] A similar remark applies to the notices, and the Epistle and Gospel, which are sometimes read with quite painful carelessness. This is a point which many laymen feel very much.

[8] St. Matt. x. 20.

CONFERENCE X

THE RECREATIONS OF A PRIEST

IN the rules of every religious order are to be found special provisions with respect to recreation. These are both positive and negative. On the one hand there is usually a daily recreation which all take in common; and besides this, there are other times on feast days or other occasions when the ordinary rule of silence is relaxed and recreation by conversation is possible. On the other hand there are the negative rules, that a subject must not seek recreation outside his monastery, and must not go out for social intercourse with his neighbours without the leave of his superior, for which he must adduce a good reason.

The prominence attached to such regulations shows the important place which the subject holds in the life of the Order or Congregation. With the secular clergy this is no less so; and as is so often the case in comparing the two states, we find that the secular priest has in one sense a harder task, for he has no limitations of rule to guide him and no superior at hand to counsel him. He has to depend on his own strength of will and his own judgment.

But at the beginning of his priestly career, he has even greater difficulty, for it comes at a time when he has just thrown off the restrictions of seminary life, and also when he is reaching the fulness of his manhood. The world which has been kept from him to a great extent up to then now seems to open out and smile before him. It used to be a frequent question to seminarists, "How soon do you hope to be out?" Now he has come out. He is at once made much of by his new parishioners, who shower upon him invitations to lunch, dinner, supper, or other social gatherings. He needs no small self-control to avoid being carried off his legs at the outset, and being drawn into a daily life such as he never looked forward to when picturing to himself the priesthood.

His personal freedom also tends to increase the difficulty of his state. He has no wife or family to think of, he is alone, and is for the first time in the enjoyment of outward liberty, for his actual priestly duties can in the majority of cases be postponed or adjusted or even omitted to facilitate his recreation. It is very easy for his boy's outlook on life, which he should have put away before entering philosophy, to persist in considerable measure not only during his seminary course, but even after he has begun his career as a priest. Such an attitude is simply to take anything pleasurable or attractive which comes in his way, provided it is not sinful, and to enjoy it.

The state of the newly ordained priest in this respect is vividly depicted by Cardinal Manning:--[1]

"To a priest who enters for the first time upon the sacerdotal life the first danger is the loss of the supports on which he has so long been resting in the seminary. As in the launching of a ship, when the stays are knocked away, it goes down into the water, thenceforward to depend on its own stability; so a priest going out from the seminary into the field of his work has thenceforward to depend under God upon his own stedfastness of will. The order, method and division of time and of work; the sound of the bell from early morning through the day till the last toll at night; the example and mutual influence and friendship of companions in the same sacred life; and still more the nature, counsel and wise charity of superiors--all these things sustain the watchfulness and perseverance of ecclesiastical students until the day when invested with the priesthood, they go out from the old familiar walls and the door is closed behind them. They are in the wide world, secular as the Apostles were--that is, in the world for the world's sake, not of it, but at war with it; of all men the least secular, unless they become worldly, and the salt lose its savour."

A little later he continues:--

"A life of unlimited liberty is encompassed with manifold temptations. A priest coming out of a seminary needs fellowship, and he often seeks it in society. He does not as yet know the character of those about him, or the reputation of the homes to which he is invited. Before he is aware he is often entangled in relations he would not have chosen and in invitations which, if he had the courage, he would refuse. People are very hospitable and pity a priest's loneliness and like to have him at their tables. Sometimes the best of people are least circumspect and most kindly importunate in their invitations. How shall a young and inexperienced mind hold out against these facilities and allurements to relaxation, unpunctuality, self-indulgence and dissipation? The whole of a priest's life may be determined by his first outset. He has been in it too short a time either to gain or to buy experience."

It is not meant to be inferred that all social invitations should be refused and all intercourse with one's neighbour avoided. Such would be both impossible and undesirable. Nor, indeed, can it be allowed that such invitations are by any means always accepted from motives of recreation at all. Such is of course often the case; but often it is not. In many instances the priest may be fulfilling a duty of charity, or finding a means of spreading his pastoral work, and the recreation may be a secondary consideration, or may even be absent altogether. Indeed, as a priest gets into years he will find more and more that many of his duties will bring all that is necessary for him in the way of recreation without his seeking it by any special act; and this even though he has to face much which is dull or unattractive or monotonous to him. The late Canon Oakeley, in his lectures at St. Thomas's Seminary so far back as the year 1870, lays stress on this point:--[2]

"A priest," he writes, "especially in some of the less populous missions, will soon find that social intercourse with his parishioners is quite as often a duty of charity as a means of personal recreation. He must either refuse invitations altogether, or participate in some festivities which will tax his good nature and exercise his self-denial quite as much as many of his severer duties. He may have to sit out a dull dinner-party, with uncongenial companions, on a hot day in summer. He may have to carve a round of beef for thirty hungry children at a Christmas party. He may have to adapt himself to the tastes and manners of the poorer members of his flock at some rural entertainment where his presence will tend to promote innocent mirth and to check dangerous excesses. On these and similar occasions he will find it necessary to put a restraint on his natural inclinations, in order to confer on those for whose happiness he is responsible that especial gratification which good Catholics of every class derive from the sympathy and society of their priest."

Yet, apart from duties of charity, _some_ recreative society can lawfully and advisably be sought in the houses of the laity; but it should be strictly under control and subject to narrow limits. Above all things, a priest must not be a slave to it, so as to be driven by human respect often to accept invitations which his reason may tell him to be inordinate. A priest should not be a pleasure-seeker; and if he is not ready to deprive himself of much society which has an attractive appearance, for the sake of his work and for the recollection of his life, it is an unfailing sign of the loss of the priestly spirit. But precisely what limits to lay down for himself, cannot be stated in general terms, for it depends not only on a priest's own personality and temperament, but also on the circumstances in which he is placed. Canon Oakeley, however, adds one restriction which should certainly be adhered to, for we live in an ill-natured world, and our best friends are ready to be captious in their fault-finding:--

"The priest in society," he writes, "must never forget that he is a priest. Even if he forgets it, others will not. The ambiguous jest, the anecdote of questionable propriety, the loose and unguarded manner, with other such indications of the unpriestly character, will be remembered and perhaps quoted against him when the evening is over, and when its warping influences have given way to calmer thoughts and cooler judgments. The same persons who in the spirit of hospitable good nature have placed in his way the inducements to those excesses which at least weaken morality, if they do not occasion scandal, will be among the first to criticise the indiscretions to which they have helped to give rise. The demeanour of a priest in society should always be marked by humility, modesty, courtesy and prudence. He should be swift to hear and slow to dogmatise. He should avoid arguments except when necessary for the vindication of truth; and when thus necessary, he should maintain his side with meekness and in the spirit of charity."

There is one kind of social intercourse that should be an unmixed good, and often is so--the meeting with our fellow clergy. It is difficult to get them together for merely social gatherings; but any part of their work which brings them across their fellow priests is to both parties a source of strength as well as recreation. One of the great advantages of the monthly Theological Conference is that it brings groups of clergy together and is often made the occasion of a dinner or other social gathering. In like manner, not the least of the benefits which the Clergy Fund confers on its members is the bringing together of all the clergy of the South of England once a year to spend an evening in each other's society.

Even gatherings of the clergy, however, are not without their abuses. The sight of a party of priests playing at cards hour after hour, till late at night, with its usual accompaniments, is happily more rare than it once was; but it is hardly obsolete even yet. Of course there is nothing in itself wrong in a game of cards, or in playing for money, provided the stakes are low; but it is well known as leading to much abuse. The excitement is of an unhealthy kind, and whether one is winning or losing, it is difficult to break off when a suitable hour arrives. Indeed, the whole question of card-playing needs treating with caution; both because it so often leads to what is undesirable, and because the recreation it affords is at best out of proportion to the time consumed. After a long session one ends less fresh than one began. A game of whist, or to some extent bridge, in which considerable skill is required, rests on a somewhat different footing: but even of that we should be wise to exercise a careful control.

From the social side of a priest's life, one naturally turns to that which has most influence on him when he is alone and which will include the chief part of his solitary recreation--his reading. To say that much of the success or failure of his priestly life will depend on the proper direction of his reading is merely to say what is obvious. Leaving out of account his directly spiritual exercises, he will undoubtedly have a large amount of time on his hands which may be most usefully employed in reading, and which otherwise will be simply wasted. A certain proportion of this may be solid work, such as theological or other study, necessitating close application. A mathematician may utilise his powers by studying problems or other matter, which stimulates and improves his mind. But there must be a large amount of time left when the mind is too tired for serious exertion, and this can be profitably devoted to reading of a lighter nature.

The first idea that occurs to one is novels. In past times a stricter view obtained about novel reading than seems to be the case to-day. There is no doubt that a purely sensational novel is a powerful instrument for the loss of time, and it engenders an unhealthy craving for excitement of an undesirable type. A novel which is chiefly read for the excitement of its plot is beyond all doubt the priest's enemy, and a greater and stronger enemy than many realise. Such novels exist to-day in large numbers, and are sold at low prices. Perhaps for that reason they are not spoken of with much respect, and being of a generally low order, are less likely to ensnare us than those of a generation or two ago. This of course does not apply to classical novels, such as Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, etc., nor to many modern novels by standard authors. But there are many to which it does apply. Even the best novels are permeated with worldly ideals, and the mainspring of the story always turns upon love affairs, which even to a Christian in the world should not be the exclusive motive of life. Nevertheless, if such books are read with care and discrimination, much recreative as well as educational thought can be obtained from them without any serious instilling of wrong principles.

The general subject of novels, however, is too long and complex to discuss here. We can perhaps get a little more practical on that of newspapers. To a priest a certain amount of newspaper reading is not only desirable, but necessary to keep him in touch with the world in which he lives and works. To know what is going on politically, the forces at work in Parliament, the agitations through the country, the relations of capital to labour, the lives and deaths of distinguished men, is essential to the conditions of modern life. Would that newspaper reading stopped there! Alas, many of the principles are unconsciously imbibed and are detrimental to the priestly spirit. This is no new evil. So far back as about the year 1836, Dr. Newsham of Ushaw wrote to Dr. Wiseman, as he then was, Rector of the English College at Rome, deploring the newspaper as the source of much of the want of ecclesiastical spirit among the clergy of his day:--[3]

"I will say to you frankly that there is a very great want of a spirit of piety, faith and religion in our clergy. It is useless to investigate the cause of this. I will say briefly that it has probably in good measure arisen from the great majority of the missionaries being young men, from the little control that has been exercised by the Bishops for many years over their young priests on the mission, and probably above all from the spirit of the times which is incessantly infused into the mind of a young man by our abominable newspapers. In fact, a greater pest, a more efficient weapon of the devil does not exist in the world than the English newspapers. Their pernicious effect on the minds of our young ecclesiastics has been observed and lamented by many others as well as myself."

At the present day the evil is of course emphasised by the great profusion of cheap newspapers, and as a rule the cheaper the paper, the lower the style and setting. And a further evil has arisen of reading those parts of them which give a momentary excitement. The little paragraphs are a potent time-waster. Even during the war, the evening papers contain much that is not really of any permanent importance about it, but out of war-time we became familiar with any number of small tit-bits which may beguile the time of a business man returning home from his work, but which are unworthy of the attention of a serious-minded priest. Yet the paper became so full of them that even important news, such as the proceedings of Parliament, became relegated to a back page, or even got omitted altogether.

If we want to see a priest at his worst, we cannot think of a better opportunity than after breakfast on a winter's morning, if we can find him, as we sometimes can, spending an hour or two of the most valuable time of the day, when he is best fitted for work, in sitting before the fire reading the newspaper and smoking pipe or cigarette.