Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/99

 of the meaning of philosophy; he confessed to me that it was because, like myself, he was tormented with religious doubt from an early age. Before he reaches the age of twenty-four the student has traversed the whole vast and profound system of scholastic philosophy and theology with its innumerable side-issues and controversies; he has his opinions formed upon every serious subject, and knows what to think of every philosophical and religious system that has ever been invented.

But the studies are not even conducted at the ages and with the intervals prescribed in ecclesiastical legislation; the scarcity of priests (the raritas vocationum of which the Pope speaks) induces authorities unduly to accelerate and curtail the course of higher study. Every diocese and nearly every monastic congregation in England is insufficiently manned; thousands of baptized Catholics are wholly neglected for want of priests, and I have known bishops to accept priests who had been practically expelled from other dioceses or congregations. It is true that scores of priests are sent to entertain the natives of Borneo, or bargain with their Anglican brothers over the facetious Ugandians, and that herculean efforts are made to touch the consciences of respectable Anglicans; the fact remains that in East London many thousands of poor Catholics have drifted for want of priests. Pressure and confusion in the seminaries and colleges is the inevitable result.