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Show A COWLED SENSATIONALIST. General- of Franciscans Attacks Monastic Mon-astic Orders of France. (Western Watchman.) When the Franciscans elected Father Fleming their general in Rome some months ago we were very much surprised. sur-prised. He was an Irishman; and the order is largely German and Italian. Then, he was a man who had been mixed in many unpleasant controversies controver-sies and had made many personal enemies. ene-mies. He had been on both sides of every controversy that had convulsed the English speaking world for ten years. He was the spiritual adviser of Mivart, and at one time fully shared his most extreme views. He was the monk to whom the great English convert con-vert referred when he said that his opinions had been sanctioned by a man of a religious order who stood high in the councils of the Vatican. He was on both sides of the controversy on Americanism and was a violent partisan parti-san for and against what has come to be named "American liberalism." He j is a very clever man, and ranks high as a writer on literary and scientific subjects. He had not quite warmed the general's gener-al's chair when he launched upon the world the greatest sensation of his life. Last week he published a letter in one of the London papers which has caused more talk and pleased and disgusted more people than all his former performances per-formances in that line. We refer to his attack on the monastic orders in France. He declares that France is full of monks who are such only in name; being in fact business men, speculators and politicians who, use the prestige of the order to further their worldly enterprises and don't hesitate to compromise the church and the Holy Father when it suits the purpose of their worldly thrift. He says the French government is in great measure justified in its present attitude towards the orders, and that when the law of associations will have done its work the church in France and the orders themselves will be better off that before. be-fore. He is particularly severe on the orders for their monarchic sympathy and the underhand methods they employ em-ploy to advance the interests of the royalists, the legitimists and the Bona-parts. Bona-parts. The republic, he declares, is battling against the triple alliance of landed wealth, the orders and the aristocracy, aris-tocracy, i We do not know just how much truth there is in this broad indictment, and it may be that the picture is a little overdrawn. Still, if people say severe things about monks it is no proof that they are enemies of monasticism. Scholars have written against certain popes who would lay down their lives for the papacy. Men have grown elo-auent elo-auent over the ahuses of the clersrv who worshiped the priesthood and gloried in the achievement of the ministry min-istry in every age and under every sky. We don't conclude from Father Fleming's philippic that he is an enemy en-emy of the religious orders, or even of the orders he inculpates. But we would prefer to see the indictment in-dictment come from .a man who was not a monk; or if from a monk, we would rather see it placed before the authorities of the church and not read before the grand jury of the world. We think those monks should wash their dirty habits in private. Let every religious re-ligious order that needs reform begin by reforming itself, and leave the force of example to extend the reform into other religious bodies. The great abbey of St. Germain was spared even by the French revolution and was not devoted to the general destruction of religious houses until two monks of the order began to abuse each other in the public prints. The church has her own tribunal for the adjudication of clerical causes and for the correction of abuses of discipline. As a rule the orders were never doing better work than they are at present; they never stood so high in the esteem of Rome and the world. There may be abuses here and there, but they are incidental to all things human, and in the course of time Rome will put the ax of discipline dis-cipline to the root of the evil and it will disappear without unnecessary publicity or scandal. The holy father has shown himself equal to the emergency emer-gency on all occasions, and he will settle set-tle these disputes in which the orders are unpleasantly mixed quietly, lovingly loving-ly and effectually. |
