Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/95

Rh orders, where the vow of celibacy has already been pronounced, these ceremonies are comparatively unimportant, but to the secular student the subdiaconate is a fateful step; the vow is made by taking a step forward in the sanctuary at the invitation of the bishop, and many a student has withdrawn at the last moment. The ceremony of ordination is long and tiresome; it contains many beautiful prayers and much impressive symbolism, but many rites also which are grotesque survivals of former days and much superfluous reading. The bishop reads (generally in a rapid mumbling tone, for they are not now expected to be understood), a series of exhortations to the candidates, who rarely understand a word of his muttered Latin; and, as in the Anglican consecration service, he addresses and interrogates the people present—but, more prudently than his Anglican brother, he does so in the same inaudible Latin.

Two years are supposed to elapse between the diaconate and the priesthood, but we received the three major orders within the same six months. Ecclesiastical laws can always be dispensed by Rome in unusual circumstances, and the extraordinary extent to which clerical regulations are over-ruled and dispensed at the present day gives one the impression that the Church has fallen upon very extraordinary times.