Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/484

 PRIESTHOOD

418

PRIESTHOOD

ZeilaUer der christl. Kirche (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1902) ; Bruders, Die Ver/assung der Kirche von den ersten Jahrzehnten der apostolischen Wirksamkeil bis zum Jahre 176 nach Chr. (Mainz, 1904); Knopf, Das nachapostoliscke Zeitalter (Leipzig, 1905); Batiffol, L'egli&e naissanle et l« Caiholicisme (2nd ed., Paris, 1908); Harnack, Entstehung umi Entwickelung der Kirckenver/assung und des Kirch- enrechts (Leipzig, 1910). For special treatment of the views of St, Jerome, consult: Blondel, Apologia pro sententia Hieronymi de episcopis et presbyteris (Amsterdam, 1646) ; Konig, Der kaiho- lische Priesler vor 1500 Jahren: Priester und Priestertum nach Hieronymus (Breslau. 1S90); Sanders, Etudes sur S, Jirdme (Paris. 1903), 296 sqq.; Tixehont. Hist, des dogmes, II (Paris, 1909). On clerical training see bibliography under Seminary.

IV. What the Catholic Priesthood has done FOR Civilization. — Passing entirely over the super- natural blessings derived by mankind from the prayers of the priesthood, the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, and the administration of the sacraments, we shall confine ourselves to the secular civilization, which, through the Catholic priesthood, has spread to all nations and brought into full bloom religion, morality, science, art, and industry. If religion in general is the mother of all culture, Christianity must be acknowledged as the source, measure, and nursery of all true civilization. The Church, the oldest and most successful teacher of mankind, has in each cen- turj- done pioneer service in all departments of culture. Through her organs, the priests and especially the members of the religious orders, she carried the light of Faith to all lands, banished the darkness of pagan- ism, and with the Gospel brought the blessings of Christian morality and education. What would have become of the countries about the Mediterranean during the epoch of the migration of the nations (from 375) if the popes, bishops, and clergy had not tamed the German hordes, converted them from Arianism to Catholicism, and out of barbarism evoh-ed order? What Ireland owes to St. Patrick, England owes to St. Augustine, who, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, brought not only the Gospel, but also a higher moral- ity and culture. While the light of Christianity thus burned brightly in Ireland and Britain, part of Ger- many was still shrouded in the darkness of paganism. Bands of missionaries from the Island of Saints now brought to the continent the message of salvation and established new centres of culture. Charlemagne's great work of uniting all the German tribes into an empire was only the glorious fruit of the seed sown by St. Boniface of Certon (d. 755) on German soil and watered with the blood of martyrs. The Church of the Middle Ages, having now attained to power, con- tinued through her priests to propagate the Gospel in pagan lands. It was missionaries who first brought to Europe news of the existence of China. In 1246 three Franciscans, commissioned by the pope, appeared in audience before the emperor of the Mongols; in 1306 the first Christian church was built in Peking. From the Volga to the Desert of Gobi, the Franciscans and Dominicans covered the land with their missionary stations. In the sixteenth centurj- the zeal of the older orders was rivalled by the Jesuits, among whom St. Francis Xavier must be accorded a place of hon- our; their achievements in the Reductions of Para- guay are as incontestable as their great services in the United States. As for the French colonies in America, the American historian Bancroft declares that no notable city was founded, no river ex-plored, no cape circumnavigated, without a Jesuit showing the way. Even if Buckle's one-sided statement were true, viz. that culture is not the result of religion, but vice versa, we could point to the work of Catholic missionaries, who are striving to lift the savages in pagan lands to a higher state of morality and ci\-ilization, and thence to transform them into decent Christians.

In the wake of religion follows her inseparable com- panion, morality; the combination of the two forms is the indispensable preliminary condition for the con- tinuation and vitality of all higher civilization. The decadence of culture has always been heralded by a

reign of unbelief and immorality, the fall of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution furnishing conspicuous examples. What the Church accom- plished in the course of the centuries for the raising of the standard of morahty, in the widest sense, by the inculcation of the Decalogue, that pillar of human society, by promulgating the commandment of love of God and one's neighbour, by preaching purity in single, married, and family life, by waging war upon superstition and evil customs, by the practice of the three counsels of voluntary poverty, obedience, and perfect purity, by holding out the "imitation of Christ" as the ideal of Christian perfection, the rec- ords of twenty centuries plainly declare. The history of the Church is at once the history of her charitable activity exercised through the priesthood. There have indeed been waves of degeneracy and immorality sweeping at times even to the papal throne, and re- sulting in the general corruption of the people, and in apostasy from the Church. The heroic struggle of Gregory VII (d. 1085) against the simony and incon- tinence of the clergj' stands forth as a fact which restored to the stale-gro^NTi salt of the earth its earlier strength and flavour.

The most wretched and oppressed classes of human- ity are the slaves, the poor, and the sick. Nothing is in such harsh contrast to the ideas of human per- sonality and of Christian freedom as the slavery found in pagan lands. The efforts of the Church were at first directed towards depriving slavery of its most repulsive feature by emphasizing the equality and free- dom of all children of God (cf. I Cor., vii, 21 sqq.; Philem., 16 sqq.), then towards ameliorating as far as possible the condition of slaves, and finally towards effecting the abolition of this unworthy bondage. The slowness of the movement for the abolition of slavery, which owed its final triumph over the African slave- traders to a crusade of Cardinal Lavigerie (d. 1892), is explained by the necessary consideration of the economic rights of the owners and the personal welfare of the slaves themselves, since a bold "proclamation of the rights of man" would simply have thrown millions of helpless slaves breadless into the streets. Emancipation carried with it the obligation of caring for the bodily needs of the freedmen, and, whenever the experiment was made, it was the clergy who un- dertook this burden. Special congregations, such as the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians, devoted them- selves exclusively to the liberation and ransom of prisoners and slaves in pagan, and especially in Mohammedan lands. It was Christian compassion for the weakly and languisliing Indians which sug- gested to the Spanish monk, Las Casas, the unfor- tunate idea of importing the strong negroes from Africa to work in the American mines. That his idea would develop into the scandalous traffic in the black race, which the historj' of the three succeeding cen- turies reveals, the noble monk never suspected (see Slavery).

As to the relief of the poor and sick, a single priest, St. Vincent de Paul (d. 1660), achieved more in all the branches of this work than many cities and states combined. The services of the clergy in general in the exercise of charity cannot here be touched upon (see Charity and Charities). It may however be noted that the famous School of Salerno, the first and most renowned, and for many centuries the only medical faculty in Europe, was founded by the Benedic- tines, who here laboured partly as practitioners of medicine, and partly to furnish a supply of skilled physicians for all Europe. Of recent pioneers in the domain of charity and social work may be mentioned the Irish "Apostleof Temperance", Father Theobald Matthew and the German "Father of Journeymen" (Gcseltcnvater), Kolping.

Intimately related with the morally good is the idea of the true and the beautiful, the object of science and