The Priestly Vocation. Bernard Ward
was on His breast at the Last Supper, who stood beneath the Cross, and received the commission to be the guardian of our Lady during the remainder of her sojourn on this earth, according to tradition practised this virtue throughout his life in all its fulness, so that the Church on his feast day calls out, "Valde honorandus est beatus Joannes, quis upra pectus Domini in coena recubuit; cui Christus in cruce matrem virginem virgini commendavit"; and again, "Diligebat eum Jesus quoniam specialis praerogativa castitatis ampliori dilectione fecerat dignum: quia virgo electus ab ipso, virgo in aevum permansit. In cruce denique moriturus huic matrem suam virginem Virgini commendavit, quia virgo electus ab ipso, virgo in aevum permansit."
These thoughts might easily be developed; but it is unnecessary, as— theoretically at least—we are all familiar with the idea. Nevertheless, there is often a danger that we may lose sight of its essence—that we may look upon celibacy as a mere disciplinary law of the Church, made for prudential reasons, and our duty as merely to abstain from every thought or act which may endanger its observance— to look on celibacy, in short, as a negative rather than a positive precept, forbidding us to do this or that, but not adding anything very special to our daily spiritual life, beyond absence of sin. Yet this gives one a very inadequate idea of what should be to us a most positive virtue, affecting our whole lives, giving to the priesthood our greatest glory, and to our lives the note of heroism.
Now the positive side of the virtue of celibacy is in theory plain enough, at least in its main outline. Woman was created to be man's helpmate, and she fulfils her calling in the first place by her power of sympathy. There is no human sympathy like that of a woman, and granted that it is used within proper limits and restrictions, it is one of the greatest helps which man can have in meeting the troubles and storms of life. The care and sympathy of his mother in youth, of his wife in the heyday of life, of his daughters in old age, are the most valuable helps to many a man of the world, to enable him to face with success the difficulties of his state. In like manner when he wants counsel and advice he turns to that sex who have specially the gift of entering into another's difficulties and helping him through them.
The essence of celibacy is that when we seek sympathy and counsel in our troubles and trials, or our work, and in all the affairs of life, we turn not to human sympathisers, but to those whom we know by faith—to our Lord in the Tabernacle, to His mother, to our patron saints, to our guardian angel, etc. The sympathy we get differs from that which is to be obtained in the world in the first place in the absence of the feeling of sense, which is the first and easiest remedy and that which we should look for as the natural accompaniment of sympathy in the world. This does not mean that it is less real: on the contrary, it is far more real and more powerful. If a priest is sent any great trouble or anxiety, and instead of seeking human consolation and guidance, goes straight into his Church, to pour out his soul in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, or before the altars or statues of our Lady or the Saints, he will come forth strengthened in spirit, and having received the gift of counsel in a far higher degree than would ever have been the case had he had recourse to the solace and company of a wife or family or relations. And this counsel and strength will increase in degree in proportion as he has banished from his life the ordinary sensible consolations to be obtained from human sympathy.
He does not on this account love his family and his friends less; on the contrary, he loves them more, though in a different and more mortified manner. The relations between a priest and his family must be essentially different from what they were when he was a layman. His pleasure in being in their company, the joy of their society, has to be restricted and curtailed; often for long years—as in the case of foreign missionaries—he may be cut off from them altogether; but his true charity towards them, his wish for their highest good, his readiness to sacrifice himself for them are not less but far greater than before, and both he and they have the consolation of knowing the power of his prayers to help them.
The great exemplar of this virtue, St. Aloysius, may be quoted as a special example. Of him it is written that he even denied himself the sensible consolation of his mother's countenance, and his detachment from all the consolations of sense were such that we can hardly realise. Yet he speaks confidently of his affection for his family and friends. He declared that he offered daily to Almighty God in one hand his relations and worldly friends, in the other his fellow members of the Society of Jesus, and that both were continually in his mind.
In such a matter as this it is not suggested that we should aim at the height of chastity practised by St. Aloysius. The particular degree of reserve alluded to above, however admirable in him—and the fact that the Church records it with approval in the official lessons on his feast is sufficient proof of this—would be in us not only affectation, but wholly unsuited to the conditions in which we live. Nevertheless, we have to imitate the same spirit in our measure and our social intercourse with our family must be limited both in degree and in character. The very fact of the sensible sympathy being so strong between mother and son, or between brother and sister, is one of the reasons—and not the least of them—why the Synods of Westminster prohibit a priest's female relatives from living in his house, without special circumstances to justify it, lest such close intercourse might draw the heart away from that higher kind of sympathy which we seek from Almighty God in prayer.
We should in fact be exceedingly foolish if we were to limit our aspirations to the avoidance of those things in which there might be a danger of leading us into sin. That is indeed the minimum to which we are all bound; but there are degrees in this virtue, and we can all of us aim at a higher detachment from sensible consolations than that to which we are bound under sin, and the higher we can put the practice of this virtue, the nearer we shall get to Almighty God, and the greater will be the power of our prayers.
From consideration of our relations with our own family, we proceed to the question of our attitude to members of the other sex generally and the need of strict limitation and mortification in this matter. In discussing this question, we shall appeal to the authority of a small brochure, privately printed some forty years ago, by one who can speak with as great authority as any man living or dead, on the practice of the virtue in circumstances of the present day in this country. 24 It will be worth our while to study what he says in considerable detail.
He begins by quoting in favour of the rules he lays down some widely different authorities, such as St. Augustine, Thomas á Kempis, St. Ignatius and St. Francis de Sales. These great men lived at different epochs, amidst different surroundings, and in different circumstances. Their types of piety differed widely from one another. If, then, we find that they are all agreed in recommending a particular line of conduct, a very strong presumption is created in favour of their recommendation.
He continues:—
"[Our duty] is indeed all summed up in the one word of the Imitation, 'Be not familiar with any woman.' This familiarity is the one thing which according to all is to be avoided. And if we ask what precisely is meant by the word, we may say that at least it means, as regards the external conduct of a priest, the avoidance of long or frequent intercourse with women, even by letters; as regards his heart, a firm purpose never to seek consolation or recreation in female society; and, finally, it means that the counsel nunquam solus cum sola should be as far as possible the rule of daily life. Of course this rule is observed so long as he is in the sight of others or is easily visible. Priests are bound by vow to celibacy, and as a consequence the saints quoted above regard them as bound in prudence to treat with women on business only, and never to look on them as companions or intimate friends."
A little further on he anticipates possible objections based on the condition of modern society, especially in this country. He writes:—
"We are compelled to look at the world as it is, and it cannot be denied that in an English-speaking society a priest is expected to do much more than administer the sacraments and preach or catechise. There is always a great deal of mental as well as bodily misery to be met with. This misery is much increased in the English-speaking world by differences in religion, by the circumstances connected with conversions to the faith and the persecutions to which these give occasion. On the other hand, centuries of persecution have created in our Catholic laity generally a larger and deeper confidence than is perhaps to be found in other countries. By their very nature women are inclined to lean on others. What more natural than that
After this lapse of time, there seems no reason to conceal the name of the writer, who was the Rev. Robert Whitty, S.J. He was in many respects a remarkable man. Educated chiefly in Ireland, he finished his course at St. Edmund's College, where he remained some years as a Professor; then at a comparatively early age he became Cardinal Wiseman's Vicar-General, which post he held during the exciting times of the so-called Papal Aggression in 1850. A few years later he joined the Society of Jesus, in which he afterwards became Provincial, and then English Consulter to the General. Certainly no man has a better right than he to speak on the subject before us.