The Young Priests Keepsake | Page 4

spirit of criticism has shown itself,
often exacting even to fastidiousness; so far from time being likely to
blunt it, everything points to the probability of its edge growing sharper
with years. And the young Irish priest of the future who dares to
trample on the canons of good taste need expect scant mercy.
[Side note: To arms]
My advice to all ecclesiastical students is--search and see if
unmannerly ways are ingrafting themselves into your character. If so,
give them no quarter. Master an approved handbook, and during the
recreations raise discussions on details of good manners. Ask your
friends candidly to point out your defects. It is far easier to be
admonished by one friend whose correction is swathed in soft charity
than await till a dozen sneerers send their poisoned arrows to fester in
your heart. In correcting yourselves and asking your friends to
admonish you, it will assist you to pocket your pride, to remember that
three such weighty issues as the efficiency of your ministry, the honour
of the priesthood, and the comfort of your future home will in a large
measure be influenced by the degree of social culture you carry out of
college.
No man has greater need to fear than he who stands high in his class.

When any habit becomes fixed it requires a high degree of humility and
moral courage to root it out. But, intellectual pride, nourished by
college triumphs, is up in arms. He scorns to be corrected or taught by a
world he despises. Let me ask, did God give him these intellectual gifts
for himself or as instruments by which to win souls back to their Father?
The man who, rather than bend his own pride, allows his talents to
become useless incurs an awful responsibility.
Stubbornly refuse to be corrected or to shape and polish your manners
while in college, and one thing I absolutely promise you, with all the
authority a long experience can give, that when you do go out from the
college you will meet a master that will bend and break you. The
roasting fire of the world's scorn will search the very marrow of your
bones.
CHAPTER SECOND
ENGLISH: ITS NECESSITY TO A YOUNG PRIEST
Let me begin by asking one plain question--If all the scholastic wealth
with which St. Thomas has enriched the world lay embedded in the
mind of a Missionary priest: if he more than rivalled Suarez as a casuist,
and Bellarmine as a controversialist, yet if he failed to acquire a
mastery over the only instrument by which he could bring to bear the
riches of his own intellect on the minds of those around him, of what
value is all the wealth entombed within his head?
If he has acquired no command of the rich vocabulary, the graceful
elegance of diction, the mysterious beauty of expression, the abundant
illustration, the art of storing nervous vigour and living thought into
crisp and pregnant terseness: if this one weapon, a finished English
education, is not at his disposal, his knowledge, as far as others are
concerned, is so much lumber: to the one spot alone--the
Confessional--his efficiency is narrowed. The other fields of his
ministry are deprived of the immense service this learning might
afford.
Let us see how this works out in practice. The unctions of ordination

are scarcely dry on your hands till you begin to realise what you never
realised before--viz., that in the most literal sense of the word you
belong to the Church Militant.
You go out from college, you are quickly confronted with opposition.
At once your brain begins to hew arguments of massive solidity; had
you but the skill with which to hurl them you would overwhelm the
stoutest foe. This skill you have not got, you never mastered the
sciences by which you could smite the aggressor. With rage you,
perhaps for the first time, realise your own deficiency. Your arms are
pinioned by helpless ignorance of the use of what should be one of the
first weapons of the priest. Your thoughts now struggle for birth, but
are fated to die stillborn, while the foe laughs you in the face.
Is this not a sad pity: yet it is an everyday fact.
There are sixty millions of Irish money lying in the banks throughout
this country, yet the nation is perishing from atrophy, starving for want
of commercial nourishment. If the gold now piled in banks were but
circulated through the channels of industry, every limb of national life
would pulse with new vigour, the remotest corner of the land would
feel the influence of the golden current; so, within the mind of the
priest may be hoarded treasures of deepest learning, but unless he has
the art of minting and