THE PRIEST IN THE TRENCHES

New Zealand Tablet, 4 July 1918, Page 7

THE PRIEST IN THE TRENCHES

■ ♦ (By J. Handing Fisher, S.J., in America.) Those who have had the pleasure of reading such books as Impression* de Guerre de Pretres Sol data, first published by Leonce de Grandmaison, S.J., in the Etudes, and later collected in two volumes under the same title, he. Vre tie stir !<■ Champ de Bataille, by Joseph-Papin Archambault, S.J., and other similar studies of the heroic part taken by the fighting French priest's have doubtless felt a thrill of satisfaction and admiration at the lessons of patriotism and courage given by these calumniated and persecuted victims of anti-clericalism. A conservative estimate has put it on record that out of the 30,000 priests called to service in the French armies more than 3000 have been killed, an extremely large proportion in itself; but the more remarkable from the fact that many of the enlisted priests, being too old or ill for service on the fighting line, have not come within the range of fire at all. Out of the 750 French members of the Society of Jesus fighting for France more than 15 per cent, have lost their lives, and of those still alive nearly 93 per cent, have been decorated. It is the same with the other religious and the secular clergy. These facts " should be remembered for future refutation of stock calumnies concerning the constantly exploited double allegiance of Catholics. In every phase of military service the French priests have signalised themselves: as chaplains, as officers, as privates, in the air, at the guns, in the trenches, as stretcher-bearers, and attendants in hos-

pitals. Incapacitated by wounds for further service in one branch of the army, they have passed to another, so indomitable has been their passion of self-sacrifice for the welfare and honor of their country. Speaking in an article in a recent number of Etudes, called "L Idee de Patrie," the editor makes the following comment: "The Etudes has already published, in its issue of December 20, 1915, an excellent article under the same title, written anonymously by Lieutenant J. Rullier, who was at that time convalescing from two severe wounds received in the war. Father Rullier found himself debarred from further service in the artillery ; accordingly he entered the flying corps, and it was a 3 a lieutenant in the aviation department that he met his glorious death for France on March 23, 1917." It is notes like the above that sadden but glorify the pages of the literature of the war. The priests have fallen in greater proportion to their numbers, perhaps, than any other class in France; and the reason is not far to seek. They have been eager to take on themselves the posts and the work most fraught with danger. A little incident, told without embellishment by Pore Antonin Eymieu, S.J., in his brochure, "En Face, de la Doulevr," is an apt and forceful illustration: "The captain said, 'Eight men are needed for a very perilous mission.' Eight men stepped out of the ranks. 'All priests!' was the comment of their comrades." The spirit of selfsacrifice, of never counting the cost of duty, long since a habit, the desire to make reparation for the sins of their country, and a love of France not dampened but rather intensified by expatriation and persecution, nerved their priestly hearts, where others blanched with fear. So it has been with the clergy as a whole. The record of their deeds of valor is written in gold. No one will deny that the example of their heroism, devotedness and purity of life has made them a spectacle to angels and to men. Their military service was a thing that should never have been forced on them, and vet God has known how to draw good out of evil. Through the merciful workings of Divine Providence they have exercised a powerful influence on their countrymen by the very fact that they left smoking guns to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, and laid aside dripping bayonets to lift their hand in absolution. It was their soldier-garb and their soldierdeeds which first disarmed suspicion and gave the lie to calumny, and enabled them to win their way to soldier-hearts. Anti-clerical hatred, which expressed itself so bitterly in the law of 1889. and was completed in the law of 1905, and which trusted to prevent, or at least to spoil, vocations to the priesthood by drafting ecclesiastics into the army, has proved, as a writer in the villa Cattolica remarks, a veritable vendetta. Contrary to sectarian expectations, religious oppression has diminished neither the number nor the zeal of the priests ; rather it has filled the ranks of the French army with unsuspected chaplains, who have been recognised, officially and otherwise, as the highest type of military valor and patriotism. Thus it has come to pass that the very means chosen by the French Government to wreck Christianity in the land which at heart is so thoroughly Catholic, has become one of the most potent instruments for that country's religious resurrection. This fact is testified to by a military chaplain quoted in the Dublin Review for October 1915: "How Providence loves to baffle all human calculations ! The politicians never guessed that by the law of the cures sac au dos they were going to give to the ministry of the priests a new field of action and means hitherto unknown by which they might reach men's souls. And yet it is this which has happened ; and the religious life now manifest in the French army is one of our firmest reasons for hoping that God will give us the victory and bring back the whole of France once more to the Christian traditions of its Catholic past." The French priests are everywhere, and as a con-

sequence incidents like the following, taken from the Dublin viae, and told by the Abbe 8., a sergeant in an Alpine Regiment, often take place: . " "We have just spent five days in the trenches. Well, the first evening my men said to me: 'Listen, you who are a cure, or nearly so, you must say the prayers for us. You may imagine with what joy I consented. So every evening I said the prayers aloud, and everybody answered." Another incident, related in the same number of the Dublin Review, gives an example of a still more sacerdotal form of ministry: "The regiment [the 29th infantry] was in the trenches and under heavy fire. Suddenly a priest from the Basque country, a corporal, leaped up on the bank, exposed to all the enemy's fire. They cried to him to come down, but he commanded silence with a gesture. '■Many of you,' he said, 'will never come back. T am going to give you absolution'. He knelt down, bis whole body exposed to the enemy. Every head in the whole trench was uncovered. With a voice that trembled a little he said the C'onfiteor. A bullet, whistled by his ear: he faltered a little, but. soon recovered himself, and finished steadily. Then he L'ave the absolution, and added : ' For your penance you will say with me three ' Our Fathers.' Calmly and with joined hands, he went through the prayers," still kneeling there, while the others repeated them with him. Then he dropped back into the trench, quickly enough this time, and the danger once over, began to laugh. Among his hearers there were several who felt more -inclined to cry." Such incidents could be multiplied indefinitely. One of the remarkable things about them is the ease with which the soldier assumes the dignity of his priesthood and uses his God-given authority to preach and rebuke, even his superior officers, and the reverence which is shown him in the exercise of his priestly functions. Once these are over he lapses back into a "trusted and popular comrade-in-arms. Such a state of affairs, impossible under normal conditions, and brought to pass by the iniquitous law which forces priests into the trenches and puts rifles into their anointed hands, is having a large share in the moral and religious regeneration of France. But when all this is said and recognised, and due allowance made for the undoubted fact, it still remains true that the fighting priest is an anomaly in the Church. The shedding of human blood is utterly alien to the sacerdotal character; it has never been permitted to priests except in the case of justifiable self-defence or as an act of military duty in a just war, when the law of the land requires of the priests service in the army. As is clear from the century-old discipline of the Church, the instruments of war have no rightful place in the hands of those destined or ordained to the ministry of souls. The priest's mission, like Christ's, is to lay down his own life for his flock, not to take the lives of others. Nor is this a matter of mere fitness or sentiment ; it is accurately provided for in the legislation of the Church. All those, who have killed or mutilated another or have mutilated or attempted to kill themselves incur irregularity, which means that they are permanently debarred, unless the Church lifts the irregularity, from the reception of Holy Orders ; from promotion to higher Orders : that is, from the priesthood if they be deacons, and from the episcopate if they be priests : and from the exercise of the functions conferred on them in ordination. This irregularity the new Code of Canon Law has been careful to retain, for we read in Canon 985 that irregularity is incurred by all those "who have committed voluntary homicide, . . . have mutilated themselves or others, or have attempted to take their own lives." At first sight it would appear that the French priests who are taking part in actual fighting fall under this canon. A moment's reflection, however, shows that such actions of theirs as result in the taking of human life are not wholly voluntary; on the contrary, they are done under compulsion." The matter is

clear from the established practice and teaching of the Church; but it has been made doubly clear by a recent decision of the Sacred Penitentiary, one of the three tribunals which, together with the Sacred Congregations, make up the Curia. Knowing the mind of the Church, but desirous to set at rest the anxieties of many priests subject to military service in his diocese, the Bishop of Verdun asked ■ some years ago for' an explicit answer to the question whether the priests, forced by the French law to take part in actual warfare, incurred irregularity In a decree,. approved by Pope Pius X. and dated May 18, 1912, the Sacred Penitentiary referred the Bishop to the teaching of approved authors, but went on to Ferreres, S.J., the noted Spanish canonist, commenting on this answer in the Razon y Fe for the same year, gives it as his opinion that, according to the teaching of approved authors, the French priests did not incur the irregularity. The Sacred Penitentiary, however, to set all doubts at. rest, was not content with referring to the teaching of approved authors, but, went on to say that should it happen that the priests did actually incur irregularity, they had, notwithstanding, the permission of the Holy See to receive and administer the Sacraments. The decision is a new evidence of the reasonableness of the Church : but the point to be insisted on is the fact that, although the Church tolerates, under certain conditions, active participation in war on the part of her priests, she regards such participation as wholly at variance with the sacerdotal character. That priests should be on the firing line as combatants is universally regretted and even those French writers who do homage to the/ excellent apostolic work done by priests in the field--for example,'A. Michel in the Revue Pratique </' A'polorjetique, for November, 1916, —nevertheless maintain that the same priests, except in certain extraordinary cases, could have done splendid work,, and more work with greater effectiveness, had they retained their soutanes as regular chaplains and been free to devote all their energies to their sacred calling, instead of'being obliged to snatch odd moments and chance opportunities for its exercise. How true this is appears from the single example of Cardinal Mercier, who has done more for the "cause of Belgium and the Allies than either he or countless others could have accomplished had they been forced to apply their efforts to the actual military defence of their country.