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Show PROFESSIONAL CRITICS OF THE CATHOLIC CLERGY Rev. Father Thurston, S. J., in an article which he contributes to the current issue of The Month, writes: There is a certain group of historical writers, of whom Dr. H. C. Lea and Mr. G. G. Coulton are at present perhaps the best known representatives, who delight to proclaim in season and out of season sea-son that the Middle Ages were a period of deep moral corruption; that the celibacy of the clergy meant nothing in, practice but a piemium set upon inoontiiit nee, and that by the time the Refuvmaiion came the use of the confessional and tk practice of indulgences had so far usurped the place of con science' as to undermine completely the sense ot right and wrong. (I refer more particularly to such works as Dr. Lea's "History of Clerical Celibacy" Cel-ibacy" and Mr. Coulton's "From St. Francis to Dante" and his "Friar's Lantern.'") From this they, or their imitators, draw the inference that it is only in a married clergy and in the manly self-reliance self-reliance of Protestant or agnostic principles that any hope can be found of the moral regeneration of society at the present day. Undoubtedly medieval manners were often nigh to barbarous, and there were periods when grievous crimes and excesses were rampant amongst every class, among the clergy as well as among the laity. But the argumentation of the writers here spoken of is vitiated by one constant defect. They are determined de-termined to fix their eyes upon the evil of the Middle Mid-dle Age's, and they entirely or almost entirely ignore ig-nore the good. They recount in their most noisome noi-some details all the stories of depravity or cruelty which will bear quotation, but they tell us nothing of the purifying influences which were constantly at work side by side with the very worst of these corruptions. The people who gloat over the piquant scandals recorded by a Salimbine are apparently ap-parently quite ignorant of the healthy moral atmosphere at-mosphere that pervades the not lesslreal and human hu-man records preserved to us in the Magna Vita S. Hugonis," or the Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brake-londe. Brake-londe. We hear much in these indictments of the loose tales of Chaucer and Boccaccio, but nothing 1 of the genuine contrition manifested by both these writers for their ribaldry. |