- Rights of the Church in relation to the State. -
Certainty and effects of a conflict. - Priests considered as State-
functionaries.- Principal stipulations of the law. - Obligations of
the oath. - The majority of priests refuse to take it. - The
majority of believes on their side. - Persecution of believers and
of priests.
There remained the corporate, ecclesiastic, and lay bodies, and,
notably, the oldest, most opulent, and most considerable of all the
regular and secular clergy. -- Grave abuses existed here also, for,
the institution being founded on ancient requirements, had not
accommodated itself to new necessities.[37] There were too many
episcopal sees, and these were arranged according to the Christian
distribution of the population in the fourth century; a revenue
still more badly apportioned -- bishops and abb?s with one hundred
thousand livres a year, leading the lives of amiable idlers, while
cur?s, overburdened with work, have but seven hundred; in one
monastery nineteen monks instead of eighty, and in another four
instead of fifty;[38] a number of monasteries reduced to three or to
two inhabitants, and even to one; almost all the congregations of
men going to decay, and many of them dying out for lack of
novices;[39] a general lukewarmness among the members, great laxity
in many establishments, and with scandals in some of them; scarcely
one-third taking an interest in their calling, while the remaining
two-thirds wish to go back to the world,[40] -- it is evident from
all this that the primitive inspiration has been diverted or has
cooled; that the endowment only partially fulfills its ends; that
one-half of its resources are employed in the wrong way or remain
sterile; in short, that there is a need of reformation in the body.
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