Chapter 1

Produced by Angela

THE YOUNG PRIEST'S KEEPSAKE

By MICHAEL J. PHELAN, S.J.

Second Edition.

DUBLIN M. H. GILL AND SON, LTD. AND WATERFORD 1909

1st. Edition MAY, 1909. 2nd. -- Enlarged, NOV., 1909.

PREFACE

This little book is written in the hope that it may assist young priests and ecclesiastical students to meet the demands which the life before them has in store.

Works specially suited to the priest, the layman and the nun are happily abundant; but to the young man standing on the threshold of his career as a priest, how few are addressed. Yet it is while his character is in the formative stage, and his weapons are still in the shaping, that advice and direction are of most practical value.

The writer brings to his task only one qualification on which he can rely--his own personal experience.

After having gone through a long course of preparation in Irish ecclesiastical colleges, he lived for nearly thirteen years on the Australian mission, and is now completing a decade spent in giving missions and retreats in all parts of Ireland. Of the college, therefore, and of the foreign and home missions he can speak with whatever authority a long experience and ordinary powers of observation are supposed to give.

In dealing with the foreign mission he does not rely solely on his own judgment. Many matters here treated of he heard repeatedly discussed by priests abroad, who bitterly deplored that, while in college, they knew so little of the life before them, and regretted that there was then no kind friend to take them by the hand and show them what was in store when the day came for them to plunge into a life that was strange and entirely new. It is to be hoped that this modest volume will, in part at least, discharge the office of that friend.

It may appear, at first sight, that when writing the fourth chapter, "On Pulpit Oratory," the author had before his mind an elaborate discourse, such as is expected only on great occasions. This is not so.

It is true that the various parts of a sermon, when detailed in analysis, may seem, like the works of a watch spread out on a table, bewilderingly numerous and complex. But when we come to construct, it will be found that in synthesis the distracting number of small parts will disappear, to coalesce and form the few main principles on which either a sermon or a watch is built. These principles are essential to every discourse, no matter how brief. As the humble seven-and-sixpenny "Waterbury" requires its springs and levers equally with the hundred-guinea "repeater," so the twenty minutes' sermon, to be effective, must have a fixed plan and definite sequence as well as the more ambitious effort.

Most of these chapters were written originally for the "Mungret Annual," with a view to assist the apostolic students who are now, as priests, rendering such splendid service to the Church of God abroad. And it was the very generous reception accorded the articles in the ecclesiastical colleges that suggested the idea of presenting them in the more lasting form of a book.

Sacred Heart College, Limerick, _March_ 17, 1909, Feast of St. Patrick.

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION

The rapid sale of the first edition of this work surprised no one more than the author. It was not addressed to the public in general, but to a limited section; the price, while moderate, could not be called cheap; yet within a little over two months the entire edition was exhausted.

It is impossible to express my deep gratitude to the reviewers. From them the book met with a chorus of approving welcome, without even one jarring note. To all I now tender my grateful thanks; but the author of "My New Curate" has placed me under a special obligation for his thoughtful critique in the _Freeman's Journal_, and Ibh Maine for his friendly review in the _Leader_. Nor should I omit to thank the ecclesiastical colleges, that not only pardoned the blunt candour of some of the chapters, but gave the book a more than cordial reception.

The present edition includes two entirely new chapters--the two last--extending over 45 pages. It is hoped that the added matter will prove of as much interest as those chapters of the first edition which received such a hearty welcome.

College of the Sacred Heart, Limerick, _September_ 29, 1909, Feast of St. Michael.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER FIRST CULTURE: ITS NECESSITY TO A YOUNG PRIEST

CHAPTER SECOND ENGLISH: ITS NECESSITY TO A YOUNG PRIEST

CHAPTER THIRD SHOULD A YOUNG PRIEST WRITE HIS SERMONS?

CHAPTER FOURTH HOW SHOULD THE YOUNG PRIEST PREPARE HIS SERMONS?

CHAPTER FIFTH A SOPHISTRY EXPOSED--ADVICE GIVEN-- THEOLOGIAN AND PREACHER--THE DIFFERENCE

CHAPTER SIXTH THE ART OF ELOCUTION

CHAPTER SEVENTH THE DANGER OF THE HOUR. HOW TO MEET IT

CHAPTER EIGHTH THE YOUNG PRIEST'S ACTIVITIES

CHAPTER FIRST

CULTURE: ITS NECESSITY TO A YOUNG PRIEST

If you question any priest of experience and observation who has lived on the foreign mission, and ask him what constitutes the greatest drawbacks, what seriously impedes the efficiency of our young priests abroad, without hesitation he will answer--First, want of social culture; and, secondly, a defective English education.

To the first of these this chapter will be exclusively devoted, while the subject of English will be dealt with in the chapter to follow.

[Side note: The case stated]

One of the great disadvantages of living in an island is that we get so few opportunities of seeing ourselves as others see us. When you seriously attempt to impress the necessity of culture on the student preparing for the foreign mission he generally pities you. In his eyes culture is a trifle, suited perhaps to the serious consideration of ladies and dancing masters, but utterly unworthy of one thought from a strong-minded or intellectual man. But you tell him that without it the world will sneer at him. He then pities the world, and replies--"What do I care about the world's thoughtless sneer; have I not a priestly heart and a scholar's head?"

That reply, if he were destined to live in a wilderness, would be conclusive. An anchorite may attain a very high degree of sanctity and yet retain all his defects of character--his crudity, selfishness, vulgarity. While grace disposes towards gentleness it does not destroy nature. There is no essential connection between holiness and polished manners.

Nor does scholarship either require or supply culture. A mastery of the "Summa" will not prevent you from doing an awkward action. Dr. Johnson's learning was the marvel of his age, but his manners were a by-word. So, if your only destiny was to be a scholar or a hermit, manners need give you little trouble.

But your vocation is to be an apostle; to go out amongst men; to be the light for their darkness, the salt for their corruption; the aim and goal of your operations are human hearts. This being granted, are you not bound to sweep from your path every impediment that prevents your arm from reaching these hearts? But the most effective barrier standing between you and them is ill-formed manners.

The laws of good society, the refinement of gentlemanly culture may, from your standpoint, be the merest trifles; but they become no trifles when without them your right hand is chained from reaching human souls.

The only remaining question is, Does the world to-day place such a high value on good manners that if I go into it without them my efforts will be in a large degree neutralised? Entertain not a shadow of doubt on that point, such is the fact.

[Side note: Protestants and Catholics demand culture in the Priest]

Proud and pampered society will never bend its stubborn neck and submit itself to the guidance of a man who, judged by its own standard--the only one it acknowledges--is far from being up to the level; an object of contempt perhaps, at best of pity. In its most generous mood it is slow and cautious to take you on trust; its cold analysis searches you; your unplaned corners offend its taste; and except in every detail you answer to its rule and level you are disdainfully thrust aside.

Catholics, while they esteem a mere fop at his just value, expect their priest to rise above the sneers of the most censorious and, if possible, to challenge the respect of all. They are proud of their priest; and surely it is not too much to expect on his part that he will do his best not to make them ashamed of him.

Their Protestant neighbours know of this pride; and if they can but lay a finger on his evident defects they will glut their inborn hatred of the Church by hitting the Catholics on the sensitive nerve, by galling them by caricature and derision of the _gauche_ manners of the priest.

Protestant young men, too, will appeal to the pride of their Catholic companions; and an appeal to pride is generally a trump card. They will ask--"Is it possible that gentlemen could submit themselves to the guidance of a clergyman whose manners are unformed and whose English is marred by provincialisms and defective accent?"

In speaking of accents, let me say here I do not ask the young priest to commit the signal folly of attempting to ingraft an imported accent on his own native one. No! He should speak as an Irishman, but as an educated Irishman.

[Side note: By foreign Canons you will be judged]

The fatal mistake on the part of a young priest would be to take Irish opinion as the standard by which he will be judged outside Ireland. In Ireland we call these things trifles, because the people whose eyes are filled with the rich light of warm faith see the _priest_ alone, and are blind, or at least generously indulgent, to the defects of the _man_.

Reverse this, and you have the accurate measure by which you will be judged abroad. The _man_ and his defects alone are seen; the _priest_ and the sublimity of his state are entirely lost sight of. The world judges what it can understand--the _man_ alone. Hence the student preparing for the foreign mission may take this as an axiom:--_If people cannot respect you as a gentleman, on the non-Catholic world your influence is nil; and even on your own Catholic people it will sit very lightly_. But he replies-- "This is not logical, for a man may be an excellent priest, a good scholar, without social accomplishments." All that I admit, but age and experience will teach him that logic does not rule the world; some of its greatest actions could not bear the pressure of a syllogism. We must meet the world as it is, not as we would make it. Is it not you who show logical weakness in preparing for this ideal world that has no existence outside your own dreams and ignoring the world of hard facts you will have to face?

[Side note: No argument to be drawn from the Apostles]

You then appeal to facts and say, Look at the apostles. Let me answer--first, you do not attempt to imply that crudity was a help to them. If so, how? Now, the most you can say is that in spite of it they succeeded. But you forget that they had the gift of miracles, and a sanctity so evident that their passport was secure despite their defects.

Unless you can produce the same sanctity and miracles your argument falls to the ground. But to the statement itself--Were not the apostles men of manners? Some, it is true, before their call had little connection with schools, but we may rest assured that three years under such a teacher as they had did wonders. They must be dull indeed not to read the living lesson their Master's character daily taught. His tenderness, His courteous dignity, and gentle consideration for others were such that in a man we would say they almost bordered on weakness; this was the living model on which they daily gazed and pondered.

This Master then sent them forth to "all nations." They were to mix with the white-robed senators in Rome, and dispute with the highest intellects of polished Athens, to force an entrance into every circle of social life. Could we imagine God sending them forth to that task encumbered with defects that would paralyse their mission if not ensure its defeat.

We must also take into account the gifts of Pentecost. What a change these wrought! The Holy Spirit enriched their intellects and perfected their moral virtues; their trembling wills became braced as iron pillars. For what purpose? To prepare and equip them for their destined mission. Is it not natural to suppose that the same Divine Power swept their characters free from every impediment that could hamper their ministry? So the appeal to the apostles is gratuitous.

[Side note: Culture necessary for domestic life]

In dealing with this question a young priest is to consider more than his flock. Priests on the foreign mission live community life, in hourly contact with each other. You cannot realise the agony a man inflicts on others by coarse or unpolished manners. The toil of a priest's day is severe, but the hardest day is mere summer pastime compared with the crushing thought of having to turn home to a boorish companion. This living martyrdom reaches its most acute stage when, in society, a man is forced to witness a brother priest expose the raw spots of his character to the vitriolic cynicism of the scoffer.

But the importance of this subject is by no means exclusive to the foreign mission. In Ireland, of late, a spirit of criticism has shown itself, often exacting even to fastidiousness; so far from time being likely to blunt it, everything points to the probability of its edge growing sharper with years. And the young Irish priest of the future who dares to trample on the canons of good taste need expect scant mercy.

[Side note: To arms]

My advice to all ecclesiastical students is--search and see if unmannerly ways are ingrafting themselves into your character. If so, give them no quarter. Master an approved handbook, and during the recreations raise discussions on details of good manners. Ask your friends candidly to point out your defects. It is far easier to be admonished by one friend whose correction is swathed in soft charity than await till a dozen sneerers send their poisoned arrows to fester in your heart. In correcting yourselves and asking your friends to admonish you, it will assist you to pocket your pride, to remember that three such weighty issues as the efficiency of your ministry, the honour of the priesthood, and the comfort of your future home will in a large measure be influenced by the degree of social culture you carry out of college.

No man has greater need to fear than he who stands high in his class. When any habit becomes fixed it requires a high degree of humility and moral courage to root it out. But, intellectual pride, nourished by college triumphs, is up in arms. He scorns to be corrected or taught by a world he despises. Let me ask, did God give him these intellectual gifts for himself or as instruments by which to win souls back to their Father? The man who, rather than bend his own pride, allows his talents to become useless incurs an awful responsibility.

Stubbornly refuse to be corrected or to shape and polish your manners while in college, and one thing I absolutely promise you, with all the authority a long experience can give, that when you do go out from the college you will meet a master that will bend and break you. The roasting fire of the world's scorn will search the very marrow of your bones.

CHAPTER SECOND

ENGLISH: ITS NECESSITY TO A YOUNG PRIEST

Let me begin by asking one plain question--If all the scholastic wealth with which St. Thomas has enriched the world lay embedded in the mind of a Missionary priest: if he more than rivalled Suarez as a casuist, and Bellarmine as a controversialist, yet if he failed to acquire a mastery over the only instrument by which he could bring to bear the riches of his own intellect on the minds of those around him, of what value is all the wealth entombed within his head?

If he has acquired no command of the rich vocabulary, the graceful elegance of diction, the mysterious beauty of expression, the abundant illustration, the art of storing nervous vigour and living thought into crisp and pregnant terseness: if this one weapon, a finished English education, is not at his disposal, his knowledge, as far as others are concerned, is so much lumber: to the one spot alone--the Confessional--his efficiency is narrowed. The other fields of his ministry are deprived of the immense service this learning might afford.

Let us see how this works out in practice. The unctions of ordination are scarcely dry on your hands till you begin to realise what you never realised before--viz., that in the most literal sense of the word you belong to the Church Militant.

You go out from college, you are quickly confronted with opposition. At once your brain begins to hew arguments of massive solidity; had you but the skill with which to hurl them you would overwhelm the stoutest foe. This skill you have not got, you never mastered the sciences by which you could smite the aggressor. With rage you, perhaps for the first time, realise your own deficiency. Your arms are pinioned by helpless ignorance of the use of what should be one of the first weapons of the priest. Your thoughts now struggle for birth, but are fated to die stillborn, while the foe laughs you in the face.

Is this not a sad pity: _yet it is an everyday fact_.

There are sixty millions of Irish money lying in the banks throughout this country, yet the nation is perishing from atrophy, starving for want of commercial nourishment. If the gold now piled in banks were but circulated through the channels of industry, every limb of national life would pulse with new vigour, the remotest corner of the land would feel the influence of the golden current; so, within the mind of the priest may be hoarded treasures of deepest learning, but unless he has the art of minting and circulating through his parish the glittering coin of polished thought, though his brain be an _El Dorado_ of wealth, that parish will run into spiritual bankruptcy.

"You are the Light of the World," said Christ to His Apostles. The same, in effect, He will say to the young priest the day he sets out to continue the work they began; but how will that light, of which he is the bearer, reach the darkened world for which God has destined it if he neglects to arm himself with the light-diffuser: the only medium of communication between him and his people? Though the sun is poised in the firmament above us, this earth would remain for ever wrapped in midnight darkness were it not that there is an interposing medium--whatever it be--to waft to us its heat waves and carry its splendours to the tiniest nook and crevice. The language, its graces and powers, are for the priest the instruments by which darkened minds are illumined, by which the clear rays of living truth are flashed into their gloom.

The man that neglects to acquire a mastery of this instrument incurs a great responsibility.

The devil, too, has a message to deliver, a message of error; but at his command there are not only perverse intellects but all the elegance of polished language and all the persuasive graces of elocution.

[Side note: An illustration from everyday life]

Let me take an illustration from everyday life. A Catholic child under his father's roof has religion instilled into him. He goes to school, and here his knowledge is developed and enlarged. From the schoolroom he is transplanted into the world to strike roots if he can in stubborn soil and preserve his faith amidst the ice-chills of infidelity.

Foes beset him on every side. He turns to the public library. The infidel review is crisp in style, its arguments catchy, and the brilliancy of its diction captivates. The pages of the fashionable novel are strewn with the rose leaves of literature: the plot enthrals. The arguments of the free-thought lecturer are well reasoned, the sophistries artistically concealed, whilst his mastery over the graces of elocution holds his audience spell-bound.

The young man staggers. He now turns to where he should expect to find strength. Under the pulpit next Sunday is a mind where the mists of doubt are gathering and darkening. He looks up to the "Light of the World" to have these mists dispelled. Instead of seeing his foes battered with their own weapons he sees these weapons, that in every domain are conquering for the devil, here despised.

He is forced to listen, perhaps, to an exhibition of tedious crudity. He goes away disheartened; perhaps to fall.

Now, the solid theological knowledge in that preacher's head is more than sufficient to shatter the arguments of infidelity; the analytic power acquired during his college course would enable him to tear every sophistry to shreds; but the art of making both of these effective for the pulpit, the mastery of clear and nervous English, the elocution that sends every argument like a quivering arrow of light to its mark, these he neglected, or perhaps contemned.

This is our weak spot; here our position wants strengthening.

Sit by the fireside with that preacher and suggest the advisability of cultivating English and elocution. He replies: "I have two thousand souls to look after, sodalities to work up, schools to organise, and attend, perhaps, four sick calls in one night." No, _not now, but long years before_, he should have been trained. It is not on the battlefield, when the bugle is sounding the "charge," that the soldier should begin to learn the use of his weapons. In the college, and not on the field of action, is the place to acquire this science.

[Side note: A ruinous advice]

One of the most fatal directions ever tendered to Irish students is--devote all your college years to Classics, Philosophy, and Theology _exclusively_--these are your professional studies--and when you become a curate it will be time to master English and Elocution.

Analyse this and see what it means. Do not learn English or its expression till you are flung into a village without a soul to stimulate or encourage you; or, worse still, till you find yourself in the fierce whirl of an English or American city. "Wait till you are in the pulpit and then begin to learn to preach" is very like advising a man to wait till he is drowning and then it will be time enough to learn how to swim. Would any sane man give such an advice to an aspirant of the fine arts? What would be thought of the man who would say--"If you wish to become a good musician neglect to learn the scales till you come to your twenty-fifth year; or if it is your ambition to be a great painter, permit a quarter of a century to roll over your head before you learn how to hold the palette or mix the paints." The man that would tender such ridiculous advice would be laughed at. Yet it is not one whit more absurd than the transparent nonsense that has grown hoary from age, and passes unchallenged as a first principle.

It is often asked how is it that the Irish Church has remained so barren.

Eighty years have passed since the bells of the thatched chapels rang in Emancipation. During that time over three thousand talented priests are on the land; yet how small the number of works produced. Why such a miserable result? What has sterilised the intellects of these men? Mainly this fatal advice. How could we have literary tastes among the priests in their pastoral life when such tastes were either frowned down during their college career or postponed to a period when their cultivation became an impossibility.

[Side note: You must begin while young]

No man can become a preacher without becoming a writer first. I need not labour this proposition. A single quotation from the highest authority establishes it. When Cicero was asked the question--"How can I become an orator?" his one answer was-- "_Scribere quam plurimum_." The first step to oratorica eminence was--write as much as possible.