The Priestly Vocation. Bernard Ward

The Priestly Vocation

only through the co-operation of nuns or good women living in the world, or of both. Hence innumerable occasions of treating with women will arise to which he is compelled by his very duty as a priest.

"All this is true. Still there is nothing in these modern circumstances to justify a departure from the reserve inculcated by the saints. Nay, these circumstances only the more strongly confirm the saying of the Imitation, 'we should have charity towards all, but familiarity is not expedient.' Charity is universal. Intimacy or familiarity is necessarily confined to a few. If a priest acts from charity, he will be ready to receive all and at all seasons. But if he follows natural inclination, he will necessarily waste on a few the time and heart that might have been given to many. . . .

"Still on the plea of the difference of their times from ours, it may be said that the reserve which they recommended and practised has become impossible for a priest at the present day. It may be alleged that he is indeed bound to avoid sin, and therefore all proximate occasions of sin, whether the danger be to himself or to others. But he must be natural in his behaviour towards women no less than towards men; otherwise his ministry will be to a great extent sterile and his confessional will be shunned. And after all, every Christian, it may be said, is bound to avoid sin. Why should a priest be more on his guard than an ordinary layman?

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1

Life of Cardinal Manning, ii. p. 784.

2

Ibid. p. 785

3

St. Matt. xix. 21.

4

St. Luke x. 42.

1

Life of Cardinal Manning, ii. p. 784.

2

Ibid. p. 785

3

St. Matt. xix. 21.

4

St. Luke x. 42.

5

Life of Wiseman, ii. p. 116.

6

i.e. The old Jesuit mission in Romney Terrace, afterwards Horseferry Road, now absorbed in the Cathedral parish. The letter was written on October 27, 1852.

7

Book I, xix. 3.

8

Ibid., xv. i.

9

Eternal Priesthood, p. 81.

10

Ibid., p. 104.

11

Ibid., p. 58.

12

Prov. xxx. 8.

13

Ps. lxxxi. 4, 12.

14

St. Luke vi. 20.

15

St. Matt. xix. 24, 26.

16

St. Luke xvi. 19, 25.

17

St. Luke xii. 20.

18

St. Mark x. 23.

19

The question of how to furnish one's rooms must be always a personal one for each priest to settle. To some, the advantage of an attractive room, artistically decorated, both as to furniture and pictures, may be a help towards their work, and induce them to spend time among their books which might otherwise be frittered away. But the effeminate or even luxurious method of furnishing that one has occasionally seen is hard to defend in a priest's room. Cardinal Vaughan ends his book on The Young Priest by this advice:—

"We have but one caution to offer, and that is, not to furnish your room as though it were a lady's boudoir. Indulgence in this kind of taste tells unfavourably upon a Priest's own character and stamps the man in the judgment of others" (The Young Priest, p. 34).

20

Ps. ciii. 23.

21

1 Cor. vii. 32, 33.

22

1 Cor. vii. 38.

23

St. Luke i. 25.

24

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.

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