ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5599, 4 February 1879, Page 7

ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

A French cleric, the Abbe Bougeaud, in a pamphlet called “The Great Peril of the Church,” recently complained of the difficulty experienced in procuring ecclesiastical recruits, pointing out how first the upper and then the middle classes of France had deserted the seminaries, with the result that there are now hundreds of parishes without priests. The Abbe attributes this to the scanty provision made for the clergy by the State. Another abbe, however, who signs himself “ Faustulus” now comes forward with a different view of the question. " Faustulus” does not think that young men are deterred from entering the Church through want of faith or bad pay, but because the Church has fallen into disrepute. What he says is this : —“ If the public conscience were to see in the clergy a corporation of men as enlightened as virtuous, aiding and - guiding the age in its progressive march, instead of endeavouring to hinder its advance and force it back, the priesthood would occupy a very different position.” According to “ Faustulua,” the two great faults of the priest of today are ignorance and servility; he isfis little instruction and no firmness of character. The great object in the seminaries is to inculcate “ Vesprit ecclesiastique by a system of regulations and exercises which damage theintellect, quench imagination, narrow idea&, and corrupt the judgment.” The principal questions studied relate to absolution to be refused or accorded to heretics, and other unprofitable points of casuistry. No time is devoted to Biblical studies or to modem science. The instruction given has not moved, in fact, since the reign of Louis XIII.; and the consequence is that the village schoolmaster knows much more nowadays than the parish priest. At the same time the cure is the slave of his bishop. Under all the circumstances one can hardly wonder at young men eschewing the seminaries. —Pall Mall Gazette.