Chapter 8

We reply:--Look at our Confirmation classes, and at the admirable lives of the youth before they leave us. Neither of these weaken the contention. At the age a child is confirmed, he is incapable of reflective reason; his knowledge is three parts memory. It is between the Confirmation day and the twentieth year that the convictions and principles that guide a lifetime are formed. Yet, this is the precise period during which the young boy is permitted to starve.

Secondly, the good life of a person reared in a purely Catholic atmosphere is no guarantee of what he may become when transplanted to a country where the very atmosphere palpitates with doubt and denial.

[Side note: Activity III]

Here surely is a field that urgently demands a young priest's activities.

_Every young priest should be the eldest brother to the young men of the parish_, the repository of their confidence, the director of their sports, the organizer of their Feis; and when there is danger of angry passions running high or of drunkenness getting in among them, the curate's place is not the study, but the football field.

To such a curate it would be an easy task to organize the young men of the parish for a Sunday meeting during the four winter months, and give them a thorough course in "Catholic belief" or "Faith of Our Fathers."

This would be a distinct advantage not only to those who are leaving, but to those who remain. The Catholic mind of this country is now, by travel and reading, brought into constant contact with Protestant and infidel thought.

These meetings should wear as little of the appearance of a class as possible. Boys should be taught to look upon them as friendly meetings of brothers discussing the weapons with which to face the future: the session might appropriately close with an excursion or a social evening.

Now that we have treated emigration as a fact, let us turn to a few of the means by which it might be lessened.

[Side note: The Summer Swallow]

A constant source of temptation is the sight of the returned emigrant with flash jewellery, superior airs and stories of boasted wealth.

[Side note: Activity IV]

When summer brings these returned swallows, a spirit of discontent with their social surroundings seizes the youth. The priest's duty is to impress upon them that the bright side of the picture alone is presented to them: there is another side of awful darkness.

The successful one they see, but the fate of the submerged ninety-nine is hidden from their eyes.

Our people emigrate without a knowledge of skilled labour; they have to take the lowest occupations and bring up their children in vile surroundings: they are lost in shoals.

Had the youth of this country the writer's experience: did they see hundreds of their countrymen sleeping in the parks of Sydney, without the shelter of a roof and without knowing where to turn in the morning for a bit: could they hear the thirty-two accents of Ireland in the low streets of dens where souls and bodies rot, they would try their hands at a dozen means of winning honest bread before turning their faces towards the emigrant ship.

Could we but take the twenty-two thousand Irish-born convicts out of the jails of one city--New York--with their clanking fetters and arrow-branded jackets, and march them through the length and breadth of Ireland, and show the youth, that, if some wear bangles, others wear handcuffs, it would go far to cure the microbe of unrest.

Every tale of distress, failure and hardship abroad should be repeated in the Irish provincial journals. No effort should be spared to show the people, not one but both sides of the picture.

[Side note: Activity V Amusements]

One of the most important problems facing the young priest of to-day is:--How to organise healthy and sinless amusements for the people. Our skies are gloomy, our climate depressing, and the very dreariness of country life causes thousands to fly. Look at the groups of young men at the village corners, where is the hope or contentment in their looks?

[Side note: Goldsmith's Days]

I think you may challenge the world's literature for more wholesome pictures of rural pleasures than those mirrored in the "Deserted Village." They are not creations of the poet's fancy, but chronicles of facts that lived before his eyes. In them, you have the image of Ireland as she lived before the black shadow of '47 fell upon her. All went on in the open daylight, under the eyes of parents and friends.

"The young contended while the old surveyed."

Virtue was safe, tired hearts were cheered, and, whilst these sports flourished, few Irish boys or girls wanted to know the road to the emigrant ship.

Would it be possible to re-create the Ireland of Goldsmith's days?

[Side note: The Winter's Night]

One thing, however, is not outside the range of possibility--to persuade parents in rural districts to make some effort to brighten the lives of their children; to have all household work done two hours before bedtime, to have a bright fire on the hearth and a bright lamp on the table, and a plentiful supply of the Catholic Truth Society books, Catholic papers and periodicals always at hand. Many a poor boy and girl, whose thoughts to-day are turning to Sydney or New York as an escape from cheerless drudgery, would then read a new meaning into the word "home." No matter how toil presses during the day, the prospective two hours of brightness and pleasure cheers them.

"Give a man a taste for reading and the means of gratifying it," says Sir John Herschel,[1] "and you can hardly fail to make him a happy man, you place him in contact with the best society of every period of history--the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest and the purest characters that adorn humanity." A parent who cannot line his child's pocket with gold has in this simple plan a means of enriching his head with knowledge, and so sending him on the world armed. Self-respect would grow; the gross pleasures of the card-table or the public-house would lose their charm. Your own words would fall on ears steadily becoming more intelligent. The parish after five years would wear a new face.

[1] Eton Address

[Side note: Activity VI The country Schoolhouse]

Could not the young men be gathered once a week during the winter months, and the school house be converted into a literary, debating or lecture room?

If the young priest prepared one lecture a month, he might revolutionize the district by teaching the people how to organize and foster small industries or technical branches suited to the localities. There is wealth in the mushrooms on the field, the blackberries on the hedge, and the cresses by the stream. In other countries thousands are made by these unnoticed products. Why not here?

[Side note: Our Ruins]

When the summer comes, the curate could easily organize occasional bicycle excursions with the young men to some memorable Catholic ruin, in whose history he should be well made up. The saints and scholars who have glorified our annals are lying around our churches; we stumble over their graves for forty years sometimes, without enquiring who they were or what they did. I am aware there are laudable exceptions: they are, however, isolated. When the public wants to know anything about our monasteries, they often have to turn to the layman and even to the parson.

The small number of priests in the Archaeological Society is a striking reproach. One would think that our saints and their works were something to be ashamed of, since the natural guardians of their memories have practically abandoned them. This country is filled with catacombs. Every child should be made acquainted with the life of the leading saint, and the history of the most memorable ruin in the locality; those hoary prophets, now so mute, would then speak with tongues of fire out of the dim past, telling the story of our fathers' Faith and heroic achievements.

Let us now rise to a higher plane of the young priest's activities.

[Side note: Activity VII Literature]

It is a stupendous and a humiliating fact that, while this country is deluged with the writings of the sensualist and the infidel, there are over three thousand brainy priests upon the land, and the world of thought knows nothing of them.

[Side note: Cambridge and Oxford]

[Side note: First Premium Men]

When we read of brilliant students at Cambridge or Oxford, we naturally look forward to see them leaders of thought or action in their own land, and we are seldom disappointed. Our Irish colleges are discharging yearly swarms from their doors, many of them men with brilliant records. Who hears of them after? What have these first-class premium men, who gave such splendid promise, done with their gifts and knowledge? How little does the Irish Church owe them? The day the premium book was handed them, all serious effort died. They were content to rest for the remainder of their lives under the shade of their academic laurels.

The soldier is not satisfied with the triumphs of his recruit days. He knows that the purpose of his life then is not to gain a prize and stop at that, but to acquire efficient skill in the use of his weapons that he may become a living force on the future field of action.

The college is but the training ground, not the final goal; the real field of our activities lies outside its walls. Yet when the scholastic course closes these richly-gifted men dip below the horizon, and the world seldom hears of them again; the destructive wave that in its silent strength is covering the land receives no check from them; they are engraving no impression on the intellect of the day.

Our humiliation and surprise increase when we turn to the publisher's lists and see parsons, who have to prepare to meet critical audiences Sunday after Sunday, and are weighted with the cares of heavy families, holding leading places in every literary enterprise.

Now, if our young men set to work to popularise our native saints, and in their lives dig up the buried glories of our Catholic past, if each diocese produced even one crisp well-written life, what a splendid step in advance.

But the demand for our literary activities is far wider than the shores of Ireland.

[Side note: America and Australia]

The American and Australian Churches are daughters of this soil. We are proud of them; they are the frontier regiments of our fighting army; they are daily advancing Patrick's standard over fresh fields of conquest: but what help have we given them?

The present generation of priests there are builders. But, like the men on Jerusalem's walls, they have to grasp the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.

Protestantism in those lands is fast running to its final declension--naked infidelity. Now the infidel knows no rest; activity is the law of his existence. The buried ghosts of past heresies are resuscitated and draped in all the attractiveness of modern dress. The arsenal of error stored by every perverse genius from Arius to Tyndal is daily discharged into the Catholic ranks. There is scarcely a truth free from truculent assault.

It is hard to ask the men toiling in the glare of the camp fires, to fight the battles and manufacture the shells.

Now, all that is best of French Catholic intellect has been given to this cause for the past century. The priest who would devote a few winters to the holy toil of translating this into a shape suitable to the needs of our fighting millions would do an act of merit that God alone could measure. Yet what ammunition have we supplied to our brave soldiers? Scarcely a grain of shot.

[Side note: The Causes of Sterility]

Why this sterility? Why this barrenness? Is it our native lethargy or our native modesty? or the defective training of our colleges in neglecting to foster literary tastes?

We will not pause to enquire. That there is one sad cause is beyond all question--the bitterness of clerical criticism. The Irish priest who takes to the cultivation of letters ought to choose St. Sebastian for his patron saint; for he will have an arrow planted in every square inch of his body.

While we have no word of condemnation for the writers who are sucking the life-blood of Faith from our people, should one of ourselves show style in his sermons, or attach his name to a magazine article, the amount of mordant criticism he has to face is sufficient to make the stoutest heart sink.

The average Irish skull in the hands of a phrenologist will show a development of destructive bumps surpassed by none, but when he searches for constructive ones, a glass of no small magnifying power must come to his aid.

The habit of sneering criticism begins in the college and should be killed in its birth-place. The man who drops an icy or an acid word into the warm enthusiasm of a young heart commits a great crime. He may paralyse the purpose of a noble life. Let us reserve all our hard blows and hard words for Christ's enemies, and a cheerful encouragement to His friends should not cost us a drop of blood.

[Side note: The Task is Finished]

Here we pause, fully conscious of the incompleteness of our task. The many possible and profitable fields of the young priest's activities are no more than hinted at.

We are passing through a period of change: old landmarks are disappearing, but if the future is to be made secure, the priest of the present must cling to the people and teach them to cling to him. In the revival of their industries or their language, in the Feis or the hurling field, the priest should be the source of their inspiration and their controlling director.

Woe to the parish where the priest sits idly or sinks into dreamy lethargy while the people pass from him, away.

[Side note: Farewell]

The world is moving onward. Our world is willing just now that we move with and direct it. But how long, O Lord, how long? Let us remain stationary and it will move without us; and once lost, lost for ever.

A glance at the Continent should fire us to desperate efforts. You see the Church dashed to pieces in the seething vortex of destruction; in some countries honey-combed to rottenness, ready to totter and fall before the first outburst of Socialistic fury. The Press teems with ribald jeer and blatant blasphemy. The priesthood, a separate caste, hounded like lepers of old from the highways of public life, voiceless and despised--the apostate priest hailed with delight smothered in incense--the faithful priest lashed at the pillar of public scorn. O God, shall Ireland--the last fortress--follow?

That question is for us to answer: the shaping of the future lies in the hands of the living present.

Let listlessness prevail, and when an apostle of evil does arise, perhaps in the not distant future, he will appeal to the past for his justification.

He will tell the people, that for a full century three thousand four hundred priests were upon the land. Talent, leisure and unbounded trust were theirs. Yet, where are the literature, village libraries, social organizations, or other agencies of enlightenment promoted by them? Has not the country rotted and the emigrant ship been glutted? Away with them! Why cumber they the ground?

That day, please God, shall never come, if we sink deep into our souls the conviction that a great effort is required, and fling our hearts into it; that the ever increasing new needs and foes of to-day cannot be met with the antiquated weapons of the past; that the old rut must be abandoned and the new ground broken: then the future is secure. The old citadel of Catholic Christendom will continue a fortress, flying the old flag, towering above the Atlantic breakers with a strength impregnable and a Faith undimmed--a Pharos of spiritual splendour.

And when in other lands eyes grow dim with the mists of despair, they will look up and the light of a new-born hope will enkindle within them. And when hearts in other lands are sinking from repeated failure, they will pulse with the inspiration of a fresh courage when the story of our efforts and our triumphs is recalled.

THE END

PRESS NOTICES

"Every thoughtful mind amongst us, whether priest or layman, will thank the courageous writer who throws upon our insular prejudices the flashlights of other civilisations, and shows us certain defects which we can only neglect at our own peril. We hope that this little book will find its way to every student's desk in Ireland and abroad, and that its lessons will be taken to heart by professors and _alumni_ alike. It is worth reading if only for its style, which is far above that usually assumed by writers on similar subjects. But its chief value is in the deep insight it manifests as to the wants of the age and the necessary equipment of the young apostles of our race, whose mission will be to strange peoples and curious, though some times sympathetic, souls who are seeking the light and failing to find it. It is a book to be read with humility and a total absence of that mild conceit which refuses to accept any but domestic and partial criticism. The words are those of a thinker and an orator."-- Canon Sheehan in the _Freeman's Journal_.

"Anyone who has lived five years in Australia would advise every young priest coming to this country to have a copy of Father Phelan's admirable book in his luggage, and read it more than once. The young ecclesiastic coming hither who treats lightly the advice given him will find by-and-by that every line of the book is true; every priest who has lived a few years on the Australian mission will know already that it is so."--_Melbourne Advocate_.

"The Rev. M. Phelan, S.J., stresses the necessity of culture of mind and manners for young priests and seminarians. Father Phelan, himself a noted preacher, devotes several helpful chapters to the means of acquiring excellence in preaching. The book is brimful of valuable hints and helps, and their value is not diminished by the fact that the style is racy and readable throughout. The following is intended for Irish readers, but the advice has wider application:--'. . . He should not commit the signal folly of attempting to engraft an imported accent on his own; he should speak as an Irishman, but as an educated Irishman.' 'The Young Priest's Keepsake' should become a _vade-mecum_."--_America_.

"With considerable skill and plenty of plain speaking, Father Phelan gives some admirable advice to young priests in regard to the study of English and the composition and delivery of sermons. His experiences in Ireland and on the foreign missions are his claim to say what his opinion is, and his opinion is weighty. Father Phelan has wise counsels to give, and gives them in a most pleasing way. He is always bright, always interesting, and always instructive. His book deserves to be known to the clergy at large, and we wish it the circulation it deserves."--_Catholic Times_.

"This is, indeed, a very valuable book for the young priest. It is intended chiefly for those who are going on the foreign mission, and it would be well for them if they would take to heart the sound advice given to them here by a man of wide experience and great success in the missionary field. The first chapter on the necessity of culture and gentlemanly manners is alone worth the price of the book. Young priests have probably often heard of the necessity of writing their sermons, but I doubt if they ever had the advantage of having it put before them in such a practical and convincing fashion as that in which it is done by Father Phelan in his third chapter. The same notes of practical sound sense mark the chapters on 'Pulpit Oratory' and on 'Elocution.' Altogether, this book should be the _Keepsake_ of every young priest. It contains many things that will benefit priests, young or old, of every description. Father Phelan deserves our thanks as well as our congratulations on the success of his work."--_Irish Ecclesiastical Record_.

"A wonderful amount of practically useful advice, the matured fruit of vast missionary experience, seasoned by conscientious study and a fraternal longing to assist the young priest are the most salient features of this inimitably-written volume. The style is excellent. In crisp, accurate language every paragraph, every sentence even, tells exactly what the writer wishes to state, and no more. . . . The book has not appeared an hour too soon. . . . It is bound to be of immense service to Irish students, especially those preparing for a missionary life in foreign countries. . . . I take the responsibility of highly recommending Father Phelan's book to those for whose instruction and efficiency the work has been written."--The Author of "Innisfail" in _Sydney Freeman's Journal_.

"Father Phelan is a model of the ideas he advocates. His English is pure without being dull for a moment. He exemplifies his theories. If you are a preacher, or wish to be, if you are teaching rhetoric or learning rhetoric, if you are a seminarian or a friend of a seminarian, get this book for yourself or your friend."--_American Messenger_.

"Those who know Father Phelan as a preacher will not require to be told that his book is simple, solid, and practical, and that his method of exposition is lucid, homely, and vigorous. Purely literary effort has been no aim of the writer, and yet it would be hard to name a recent book which can be read with greater pleasure, for the charm of its style alone. The expression is cut down to the last necessary word, but every necessary word is there; every idea is expressed simply, but adequately, and with the finish and lustre of the diamond. . . . It would be interesting to the reader and a pleasure to the writer to quote from Father Phelan's work some of the many magnificent passages, but the book is so beautifully knit together, ideas follow each other in such logical sequence, that no selection could give an adequate impression of the work. But with an easy conscience I can recommend every clerical student, every young priest, and for that matter, old priests too, to procure a copy, confident that any reader who takes it up will read it through, as I have done, before laying it down, and feel the better for having done so."-- Ibh Maine in _The Leader_.

"The Rev. M. J. Phelan, S.J., says much that is sensible in his little volume. We are glad that he denounces 'the signal folly of attempting to engraft an imported accent on his own native one, which is sometimes done by the Irish priest in England with deplorable results. It is a useful little book, well printed and neatly bound."--(English) _Catholic Book Notes_.

"The title of a clerical _vade-mecum_ is scarcely too ambitious a one to give to 'The Young Priest's Keepsake'; a work which cannot but be regarded by all whose good fortune it will be to read it, as one of the most admirable works dealing with clerical life that has appeared in Ireland for many a day. The author, Rev. M. J. Phelan, S.J., bases his claim for a hearing upon a long experience as missionary priest, and upon the possession of ordinary powers of observation. Those who know Father Phelan rate his claims much higher. His fame as a preacher is spread throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. His wide and varied learning, his acute powers of observation, his keen sense of humour and sound practical judgment are common topics of conversation amongst a wide circle of friends. The fine flower and fruit ripened by constant study and wide experience are modestly displayed in this little book."--_Irish Independent_.