testified the exact contrary to me. Instantly I wrote, inviting them to explain the discrepancy. It was the Long Vacation. In reply, the President averred inability to understand my diocesan's statement: advised me to change my diocese; and volunteered an introduction to the Bishop of Lambeth, in which he declared that my talents and energy (I am quoting again) would make me a very valuable priest. The Vice-president declined to add anything to what he already had told me. A dark man, he was, who hid inability under a guise of austerity. The Professor of Dogmatic Theology said that he never had been asked for, and never had volunteered, an opinion. The Professor of Moral Theology, who was my confessor, said the same; and, further, he superintended my subsequent correspondence with my bishop. You will mark the intentions of that act of his. However, all came to nothing. The Bishop of Claughton refused to explain, to recede, to afford me satisfaction. The Bishop of Lambeth refused to look at me, because the Bishop of Claughton had rejected me. It was my first introduction to the inexorability of the Roman Machine, inexorable in iniquity as in righteousness." "Did you form any opinion at this juncture?" the cardinal inquired, waving a white hand. [Pg 28] [Pg 28] "I formed the opinion that someone carelessly had lied: that someone clumsily had blundered; and that all concerned were determined not to own themselves, or anyone else but me, to be in the wrong. A mistake had been made; and, by quibbles, by evasions, by threats, by every hole-and-corner means conceivable, the mistake was going to be perpetuated. Had the case been one of the ordinary type of ecclesiastical student, (the hebete and half-licked Keltic class I mean,) either I furiously should have apostatized, or I mildly should have acquiesced, and should have started-in as a pork-butcher or a cheesemonger. But those intellectually myopic authorities were unable to discriminate; and they quite gaily wrecked a life. Oh yes: I formed an opinion; and I very freely stated it." "I mean did you form any opinion of your own concerning your Vocation?" "No. My opinion concerning my Vocation, such as it was and is, had been formed when I was a boy of fifteen. I was very fervent about that time. I frankly admit that I played the fool from seventeen to twenty, sowed my wild oats if you like. But I never relinquished my Divine Gift. I just neglected it, and said 'Domani' like any Roman. And at twenty-four I became extremely earnest about
Prev.
Back
Top