There are several imposing ceremonies
at the ordination of a priest; and I will never forget the joy I felt when the
Roman Pontiff, presenting to me the Bible, ordered me, with a solemn voice,
to study and preach it. That order passed through my soul as a beam of light.
But, alas! those rays of light and life were soon to be followed, as a flash
of lightning in a stormy night, by the most sudden and distressing darkness!
When holding the sacred volume, I accepted with unspeakable joy the command
of studying and preaching its saving truth; but I felt as if a thunderbolt had
fallen upon me when I pronounced the awful oath which is required from every
priest: "I will never interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to
the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers."
Many times, with the other students in theology, I had discussed the nature
of that strange oath; still more often, in the silence of my meditations, alone
in the presence of God, I had tried to fathom the bottomless abyss which, it
seemed to me, was dug under my feet by it, and every time my conscience had
shrunk in terror from its consequences. But I was not the only one in the seminary
who contemplated, with an anxious mind, its evidently blasphemous nature.
About six months before our ordination, Stephen Baillargeon, one of my fellow
theological students, had said in my presence to our superior, the Rev. Mr.
Raimbault: "Allow me to tell you that one of the things with which I cannot
reconcile my conscience is the solemn oath we will have to take, `That we will
never interpret the Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of
the Holy Fathers! We have not given a single hour yet to the serious study of
the Holy Fathers. I know many priests, and not a single one of them has ever
studied the Holy Fathers; they have not even got them in their libraries! We
will probably walk in their footsteps. It may be that not a single volume of
the Holy Fathers will ever fall into our hands! In the name of common sense,
how can we swear that we will follow the sentiments of men of whom we know absolutely
nothing, and about whom, it is more probable, we will never know anything, except
by mere vague hearsay?"
Our superior gave evident signs of weakness in his answer to that unexpected
difficulty. But his embarrassment grew much greater when I said: "Baillargeon
cannot contemplate that oath without anxiety, and he has given you some of his
reasons; but he has not said the last word on that strange oath. If you will
allow me, Mr. Superior, I will present you some more formidable objections.
It is not so much on account of our ignorance of the doctrines of the Holy Fathers
that I tremble when I think I will have `to swear never to interpret the Scriptures,
except according to their unanimous consent.' Would to God that I could say,
with Baillargeon, `I know nothing of the Holy Fathers: how can I swear they
will guide me in all my ways?' It is true that we know so little of them that
it is supremely ridiculous, if it is not an insult to God and man, that we take
them for our guides. But my regret is that we know already too much of the Holy
Fathers to be exempt from perjuring ourselves, when we swear that we will not
interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to their unanimous consent.
"Is it not a fact that the Holy Fathers' writings are so perfectly kept
out of sight, that it is absolutely impossible to read and study them? But even
if we had access to them, have we sufficient time at our disposal to study them
so perfectly that we could conscientiously swear that we will follow them? How
can we follow a thing we do not see, which we cannot hear, and about which we
do not know more than the man in the moon? Our shameful ignorance of the Holy
Fathers is a sufficient reason to make us fear at the approach of the solemn
hour that we will swear to follow them. Yes! But we know enough of the Holy
Fathers to chill the blood in our veins when swearing to interpret the Holy
Scriptures only according to their unanimous consent. Please, Mr.Superior, tell
us what are the texts of Scripture on which the Holy Fathers are unanimous.
You respect yourself too much to try to answer a question which no honest man
has, or will ever dare to answer. And if you, one of the most learned men of
France, cannot put your finger on the texts of the Holy Bible and say, `The
Holy Fathers are perfectly unanimous on these texts!' How can we, poor young
ecclesiastics of the humble College of Nicolet, say, `The Holy Fathers are unanimously
of the same mind on those texts?' But if we cannot distinguish today, and if
we shall never be able to distinguish between the texts on which the Holy Fathers
are unanimous and the ones on which they differ, how can we dare to swear before
God and men to interpret every text of the Scriptures only according to the
unanimous consent of those Holy Fathers?
"By that awful oath, will we not be absolutely bound to remain mute as
dead men on every text on which the Holy Fathers have differed, under the evident
penalty of becoming perjured? Will not every text on which the Holy Fathers
have differed become as the dead carcass which the Israelites could not touch,
except by defiling themselves? After that strange oath, to interpret the Scripture
only according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers, will we not be
absolutely deprived of the privilege of studying or preaching on a text on which
they have differed?
"The consequences of that oath are legion, and every one of them seems
to me the death of our ministry, the damnation of our souls! You have read the
history of the Church, as we have it here, written by Henrion, Berrault, Bell,
Costel, and Fleury. Well, what is the prominent fact in those reliable histories
of the Church? Is it not that the Church has constantly been filled with the
noise of the controversies of Holy Fathers with Holy Fathers? Do we not find,
on every page, that the Holy Fathers of one century very often differed from
the Holy Fathers of another century in very important matters? Is it not a public
and undeniable fact, that the history of our Holy Church is almost nothing else
than the history of the hard conflict, stern divisions, unflinching contradictions
and oppositions of Holy Fathers to Holy Fathers?
"Here is a big volume of manuscript written by me, containing only extracts
from our best Church historians, filled with the public disputes of Holy Fathers
among themselves on almost every subject of Christianity.
"There are Holy Fathers who say, with our best modern theologians St. Thomas,
Bellarmine and Liguori that we must kill heretics as we kill wild beasts; while
many others say that we must tolerate them! You all know the name of the Holy
Father who sends to hell all the widows who marry a second time, while other
Holy Fathers are of a different mind. Some of them, you know well, had very
different notions from ours about purgatory. Is it necessary for me to give
you the names of the Holy Fathers, in Africa and Asia, who refused to accept
the supreme jurisdiction we acknowledge in the Pope over all churches? Several
Holy Fathers have denied the supreme authority of the Church of Rome you know
it; they have laughed at the excommunications of the Popes! Some even have gladly
died, when excommunicated by the Pope, without doing anything to reconcile themselves
to him! What do we find in the six volumes of letters we have still from St.
Jerome, if not the undeniable fact that he filled the Church with the noise
of his harsh denunciations of the scriptural views of St. Augustine on many
important points. You have read these letters? Well, have you not concluded
that St. Jerome and St. Augustine agreed almost only on one thing, which was,
to disagree on every subject they treated?
"Did not St. Jerome knock his head against nearly all the Holy Fathers
of his time? And has he not received hard knocks from almost all the Holy Fathers
with whom he was acquainted? Is it not a public fact that St. Jerome and several
other Holy Fathers rejected the sacred books of the Maccaabees, Judith, Tobias,
just as the heretics of our time reject them?
"And now we are gravely asked, in the name of the God of Truth, to swear
that we will interpret the Holy Scriptures only according to the unanimous consent
of those Holy Fathers, who have been unanimous but in one thing, which was never
to agree with each other, and sometimes not even with themselves.
"For it is a well-known fact, though it is a very deplorable one, for instance,
that St. Augustine did not always keep to the same correct views on the text
"Thou art Peter, and upon that rock I will build My church.' After holding
correct views on that fundamental truth he gave it up, at the end of his life,
to say, with the Protestants of our day, that `upon that rock means only Christ,
and not Peter.' Now, how can I be bound by an oath to follow the views of men
who have themselves been wavering and changing, when the Word of God must stand
as an unmoving rock to my heart? If you require from us an oath, why put into
our hands the history of the Church, which has stuffed our memory with the undeniable
facts of the endless fierce divisions of the Holy Fathers on almost every question
which the Scriptures present to our faith?
Would to God that I could say, with Baillargeon, I know nothing of the Holy
Fathers! Then I could perhaps be at peace with my conscience, after perjuring
myself by promising a thing that I cannot do.
"I was lately told by the Rev. Leprohon, that it is absolutely necessary
to go to the Holy Fathers in order to understand the Holy Scriptures! But I
will respectfully repeat today what I then said on that subject.
"If I am too ignorant or too stupid to understand St. Mark, St. Luke and
St. Paul, how can I be intelligent enough to understand Jerome, Augustine and
Tertullian? And if St. Matthew, St. John and St. Peter have not got from God
the grace of writing with a sufficient degree of light and clearness to be understood
by men of good-will, how is it that Justin, Clemens and Cyprian have received
from our God a favour of lucidity and clearness which He denied to His apostles
and evangelists? If I cannot rely upon my private judgment when studying, with
the help of God, the Holy Scriptures, how can I rely on my private judgment
when studying the Holy Fathers? You constantly tell me I cannot rely on my private
judgment to understand and interpret the Holy Scriptures; but will you please
tell me with what judgment and intelligence I shall have to interpret and understand
the writings of the Holy Fathers, if it be not with my own private judgment?
Must I borrow the judgment and intelligence of some of my neighbours in order
to understand and interpret, for instance, the writings of Origen? or shall
I be allowed to go and hear what that Holy Father wants from me, with my own
private intelligence? But again, if you are forced to confess that I have nothing
else but my private judgment and intelligence to read, understand and follow
the Holy Fathers, and that I not only can but must rely on my own private judgment,
without any fear, in that case, how is it that I will be lost if I make use
of that same private and personal judgment when at the feet of Jesus, listening
to His eternal and life-giving words?
"Nothing distresses me so much in our holy religion as that want of confidence
in God when we go to the feet of Jesus to hear or read His soul-saving words,
and the abundance of self-confidence, when we go among sinful and fallible men,
to know what they say.
"It is not to the Holy Scriptures that we are invited to go to know what
the Lord saith: it is to the Holy Fathers!
"Would it be possible that, in our Holy Church, the Word of God would be
darkness, and the words of men light!
"This dogma, or article of our religion, by which we must go to the Holy
Fathers in order to know what `The Lord saith,' and not to the Holy Scriptures,
is to my soul what a handful of sand would be to my eyes it makes me perfectly
blind.
"When our venerable bishop places the Holy Scriptures in my hands and commands
me to study and peach them, I shall understand when he means, and he will know
what he says. He will give me a most sublime work to perform; and, by the grace
of God, I hope to do it. But when he orders me to swear that I will never interpret
the Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers,
will he not make a perjured man of me, and will he not say a thing to which
he has not given sufficient attention? For to swear that we will never interpret
anything of the Scriptures, except according to the unanimous consent of the
Holy Fathers, is to swear to a thing as impossible and ridiculous as to take
the moon with our hands. I say more, it is to swear that we ill never study
nor interpret a single chapter of the Bible. For it is probable that there are
very few chapters of that Holy Book which have not been a cause of serious differences
between some of the Holy Fathers.
"As the writings of the Holy Fathers fill at least two hundred volumes
in folio, it will not take us less than ten years of constant study to know
on what question they are or are not unanimous! If, after that time of study,
I find that they are unanimous on the question of orthodoxy which I must believe
and preach, all will be right with me. I will walk with a fearless heart to
the gates of eternity, with the certainty of following the true way of salvation.
But if among fifty Holy Fathers there are forty-nine on one side and one only
on the opposite side, in what awful state of distress will I be plunged! Shall
I not be then as a ship in a stormy night, after she has lost her compass, her
masts, and her helm. If I were allowed to follow the majority, there would always
be a plank of safety to rescue me from the impending wreck. But the Pope has
inexorably tied us to the unanimity. If my faith is not the faith of unanimity,
I am for ever damned. I am out of the Church!
"What a frightful alternative is just before us! We must either perjure
ourselves, by swearing to follow a unanimity which is a fable, in order to remain
Roman Catholics, or we must plunge into the abyss of impiety and atheism by
refusing to swear that we will adhere to a unanimity which never existed."
It was visible, at the end of that long and stormy conference, that the fears
and anxieties of Baillargeon and mine were partaken of by every one of the students
in theology. The boldness of our expressions brought upon us a real storm. But
our Superior did not dare to face or answer a single one of our arguments; he
was evidently embarrassed, and nothing could surpass his joy when the bell told
him that the hour of the conference was over. He promised to answer us the next
day; but the next day he did nothing but throw dust into our eyes, and abuse
us to his heart's content. He began by forbidding me to read any more of the
controversial books I had brought a few months before, among which was the celebrated
Derry discussion between seven priests and seven Protestants. I had to give
back the well known discussion between "Pope and Maguire," and between
Gregg and the same Maguire. I had also to give up the numbers of the Avenir
and other books of Lamenais, which I had got the liberty, as a privilege, to
read. It was decided that my intelligence was not clear enough, and that my
faith was not sufficiently strong to read those books. I had nothing to do but
to bow my head under the yoke and obey, without a word or murmur. The darkest
night was made around our understandings, and we had to believe that that awful
darkness was the shining light of God! We rejected the bright truth which had
so nearly conquered our mind in order to accept the most ridiculous sophisms
as gospel truths! We did the most degrading action a man can do we silenced
the voice of our conscience, and we consented to follow our superior's views,
as a brute follows the order of his master; we consented to be in the hands
of our superiors like a stick in the hands of the traveler.
During the months which elapsed between that hard fought, through lost battle,
and the solemn hour of my priestly ordination, I did all I could to subdue and
annihilate my thoughts on that subject. My hope was that I had entirely succeeded.
But, to my dismay, that reason suddenly awoke, as from a long sleep, when I
had perjured myself, as every priest has to do. A chill of horror and shame
ran through all my frame in spite of myself. In my inmost soul a cry was heard
from my wounded conscience, "You annihilate the Word of God! You rebel
against the Holy Ghost! You deny the Holy Scriptures to follow the steps of
sinful men! You reject the pure waters of eternal life, to drink the waters
of death."
In order to choke again the voice of my conscience, I did what my Church advised
me to do I cried to my wafer god and to the blessed Virgin Mary that they might
come to my help, and silence the voices which were troubling my peace by shaking
my faith.
With the utmost sincerity, the day of my ordination, I renewed the promise that
I had already so often made, and said in the presence of God and His angels,
"I promise that I will never believe anything except according to the teachings
of my Holy and Apostolic Church of Rome."
And on that pillow of folly, ignorance, and fanaticism I laid my head to sleep
the sleep of spiritual death, with the two hundred millions of slaves whom the
Pope seem at his feet.
And I slept that sleep till the God of our salvation, in His great mercy, awoke
me, by giving to my soul the light, the truth, and the life which are in Jesus
Christ.