Carmen Ariza Part 5

But, it may be asked, during the eight years of Jose's course in the seminary, did his tutors not mark the forces at work in the boy's soul? And if so, why did they not urge his dismissal as unfit for the calling of the priesthood?

Because, true to his promises, and stubbornly hugging the fetish of family pride, the boy gave but little indication during the first four years of his course of the heretical doubts and disbeliefs fermenting within his troubled mind. And when, after the death of his father and its consequent release of the flood of protest and mental disquiet so long pent up within him, the uncle returned to Rome with the lad to advise his instructors to bring extra pressure to bear upon him in order to convince him of the truths upon which the Church rested, Jose subsided again into his wonted att.i.tude of placid endurance, even of partial acceptance of the religious tutelage, and seldom gave further sign of inner discord. Acting upon the suggestions of the uncle, Jose's instructors took special pains to parade before him the evidence and authorities supporting the claims of Holy Church and the grand tenets upon which the faith reposed. In particular were the arguments of Cardinal Newman cited to him, and the study of the latter's Apology was made a requirement of his course. The writings of the great Cardinal Manning also were laid before him, and he was told to find therein ample support for all a.s.sumptions of the Church.

Silently and patiently the boy to outward appearance acquiesced; but often the light of his midnight candle might have revealed a wan face, frowning and perplexed, while before him lay the Cardinal's argument for belief in the miraculous resuscitation of the Virgin Mary--the argument being that the story is a beautiful one, and a comfort to those pious souls who think it true!

Often, too, there lay before him the words of the great Newman:

"You may be taken away young; you may live to fourscore; you may die in your bed, or in the open field--but if Mary intercedes for you, that day will find you watching and ready. All things will be fixed to secure your salvation, all dangers will be foreseen, all obstacles removed, all aid provided."

And as often he would close the book and drop his head in wonder that a man so humanly great could believe in an infinite, omnipotent G.o.d amenable to influence, even to that of the sanctified Mary.

"The Christ said, 'These signs shall follow them that believe,'" he sometimes murmured, as he sat wrapped in study. "But do the Master's signs follow the Cardinals? Yet these men say they believe. What can they do that other men can not? Alas, nothing! What boots their sterile faith?"

The limitations with which the lad was hedged about in the _Seminario_ quite circ.u.mscribed his existence there. All lay influences were carefully excluded, and he learned only what was selected for him by his teachers. Added to this narrowing influence was his promise to his mother that he would read nothing proscribed by the Church. Of Bible criticism, therefore, he might know nothing. For original investigation of authorities there was neither permission nor opportunity. He was taught to discount historical criticism, and to regard anarchy as the logical result of independence of thought.

He was likewise impressed with the fact that he must not question the official acts of Holy Church.

"But," he once remonstrated, "it was by an ec.u.menical council--a group of frail human beings--that the Pope was declared infallible! And that only a few years ago!"

"The council but set its seal of affirmation to an already great and established fact," was the reply. "As the supreme teacher and definer of the Church of G.o.d no Pope has ever erred, nor ever can err, in the exposition of revealed truth."

"But t.i.to Cennini said in cla.s.s but yesterday that many of the Popes had been wicked men!"

"You must learn to distinguish, my son, between the man and the office. No matter what the private life of a Pope may have been, the validity of his official acts is not thereby affected. Nor is the doctrine of the Church."

"But,--"

"Nay, my son; this is what the Church teaches; and to slight it is to emperil your soul."

But, despite his promises to his mother and the Archbishop, and in despite, too, of his own conscientious endeavor to keep every contaminating influence from entering his mind, he could not prevent this same t.i.to from a.s.siduously cultivating his friendship, and voicing the most liberal and worldly opinions to him.

"_Perdio_, but you are an ignorant animal, Jose!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the little rascal one day, entering Jose's room and throwing himself upon the bed. "Why, didn't you know that the Popes used to raise money by selling their pardons and indulgences? That fellow Tetzel, back in Luther's time, rated sacrilege at nine ducats, murder at seven, witchcraft at six, and so on. Ever since the time of Innocent VIII.

immunity from purgatory could be bought. It was his chamberlain who used to say, 'G.o.d willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he should pay and live.' Ha! ha! Those were good old days, _amico mio_!"

But the serious Jose, to whom honor was a sacred thing, saw not his companion's cause for mirth. "t.i.to," he hazarded, "our instructor tells us that we must distinguish--"

"Ho! ho!" laughed the immodest t.i.to, "if the Apostolic virtue has been handed down from the great Peter through the long line of Bishops of Rome and later Popes, what happened to it when there were two or three Popes, in the Middle Ages? And which branch retained the unbroken succession? Of a truth, _amico_, you are very credulous!"

Jose looked at him horrified.

"And which branch now," continued the irrepressible t.i.to, "holds a monopoly of the Apostolic virtue, the Anglican Church, the Greek, or the Roman Catholic? For each claims it, and each regards its rival claimants as rank heretics."

Jose could not but dwell long and thoughtfully on this. Then, later, he again sought the graceless t.i.to. "_Amico_," he said eagerly, "why do not these claimants of the true Apostolic virtue seek to prove their claims, instead of, like pouting children, vainly spending themselves in denouncing their rivals?"

"_Prove them!_" shouted t.i.to. "And how, _amico mio_?"

"Why," returned Jose earnestly, "by doing the works the Apostles did; by healing the sick, and raising the dead, and--"

t.i.to answered with a mocking laugh. "_Perdio, amico!_ know you not that if they submitted to such proof not one of the various contestants could substantiate his claims?"

"Then, oh, then how could the council declare the Pope to be infallible?"

t.i.to regarded his friend pityingly. "My wonder is, _amico_," he replied seriously, "that they did not declare him _immortal_ as well.

When you read the true history of those exciting days and learn something of the political intrigue with which the Church was then connected, you will see certain excellent reasons why the Holy Father should have been declared infallible. But let me ask you, _amico_, if you have such doubts, why are you here, of all places? Surely it is not your own life-purpose to become a priest!"

"My life-purpose," answered Jose meditatively, "is to find my soul--my _real_ self."

t.i.to went away shaking his head. He could not understand such a character as that of Jose. But, for that matter, no one ever fathoms a fellow-being. And so we who have attempted a sketch of the boy's mentality will not complain if its complexity prevents us from adequately setting it forth. Rather shall we feel that we have accomplished much if we have shown that the lad had no slight justification for the budding seeds of religious doubt within his mind, and for concluding that of the const.i.tution of G.o.d men know nothing, despite their fantastical theories and their bold affirmations, as if He were a man in their immediate neighborhood, with whom they were on the most intimate terms.

In the course of time Jose found the companionship of t.i.to increasingly unendurable, and so he welcomed the formation of another friendship among his mates, even though it was with a lad much older than himself, Bernardo Damiano, a candidate for ordination, and one thoroughly indoctrinated in the faith of Holy Church. With open and receptive heart our young Levite eagerly availed himself of his new friend's voluntary discourses on the mooted topics about which his own thought incessantly revolved.

"Fear not, Jose, to accept all that is taught you here," said Bernardo in kindly admonition; "for if this be not the very doctrine of the Christ himself, where else will you find it? Among the Protesters?

Nay, they have, it is true, hundreds of churches; and they call themselves Christians. But their religion is as diverse as their churches are numerous, and it is not of G.o.d or Jesus Christ. They have impiously borrowed from us. Their emasculated creeds are only a.s.sumptions of human belief. They recognize no law of consistency, and so they enjoy unbridled license. They believe what they please, and each interprets Holy Writ to suit his own fantastical whims."

"But, the Popes--" began Jose, returning again to his troublesome topic.

"Yes, and what of them?" replied his friend calmly. "Can you not see beyond the human man to the Holy Office? The Holy Father is the successor of the great Apostle Peter, whom our blessed Saviour appointed his Vicar on earth, and const.i.tuted the supreme teacher and judge in matters of morals. Remember, _Jesus Christ founded the Catholic religion_! He established the Church, which he commanded all men to support and obey. That Church is still, and always will be, the infallible teacher of truth, for Jesus declared that it should never fall. Let not Satan lead you to the Protesters, Jose, for their creeds are but snares and pitfalls."

"I know nothing of Protestant creeds, nor want to," answered Jose. "If Jesus Christ established the Catholic religion, then I want to accept it, and shall conclude that my doubts and questionings are but the whisperings of Satan. But--"

"But what, my friend? The Popes again?" Bernardo laughed, and put his arm affectionately about the younger lad. "The Pope, Jose, is, always has been, and always will be, supreme, crowned with the triple crown as king of earth, and heaven, and h.e.l.l. We mortals have not made him so. Heaven alone did that. G.o.d himself made our Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church superior even to the angels; and if it were possible for them to believe contrary to the faith, he could judge them and lay the ban of excommunication upon them."

Jose's eyes widened while his friend talked. Was he losing his own senses? Or was it true, as his lamented father had said, that he had been cast under the spell of the devil's wiles? Had he been foreordained to destruction by his own heretical thought? For, if what he heard in Rome was truth, then was he d.a.m.ned, irrevocably!

"Come," said his friend, taking his arm; "let us go to the library and read the _Credo_ of the Holy Father, Pius the Fourth, wherein is set forth in detail the doctrinal system of our beloved Church. And let me urge you, my dear young friend, to accept it, unreservedly, and be at peace, else will your life be a ceaseless torment."

Oh, that he could have done so! That he could have joined those thousands of faithful, loyal adherents to Holy Church, who find in its doctrines naught that stimulates a doubt, nor urges against the divine inst.i.tution of its gorgeous, material fabric!

But, vain desire! "I cannot! I cannot!" he wailed in the dark hours of night upon his bed. "I cannot love a G.o.d who has to be prayed to by Saints and Virgin, and persuaded by them not to d.a.m.n His own children!

I cannot believe that the Pope, a mere human being, can canonize Saints and make spiritual beings who grant the prayers of men and intercede with G.o.d for them! Yes, I know there are mult.i.tudes of good people who believe and accept the doctrines of the Church. But, alas!

I am not one of them, nor can be."

For, we repeat, the little Jose was morbidly honest. And this gave rise to fear, a corroding fear that he might not do right by his G.o.d, his mother, and himself, the three variants in his complex life-equation. His self-condemnation increased; yet his doubts kept pace with it. He more than ever distrusted his own powers after his first four years in the seminary. He more than ever lacked self-confidence. He was more than ever vacillating, hesitant, and infirm of purpose. He even at times, when under the pall of melancholia, wondered if he had really loved his deceased father, and whether it was real grief which he felt at his parent's demise.

Often, too, when fear and doubt pressed heavily, and his companions avoided him because of the aura of gloom in which he dwelt, he wondered if he were becoming insane. He seemed to become obsessed with the belief that his ability to think was slowly paralyzing. And with it his will. And yet, proof that this was not the case was found in his stubborn opposition to trite acquiescence, and in his infrequent reversals of mood, when he would even feel an intense, if transient, sense of exaltation in the thought that he was doing the best that in him lay.

It was during one of these lighter moods, and at the close of a school year, that a great joy came to him in an event which left a lasting impress upon his life. Following close upon a hurried visit which his uncle paid to Rome, the boy was informed that it had been arranged for him to accompany the Papal Legate on a brief journey through Germany and England, returning through France, in order that he might gain a first-hand impression of the magnitude of the work which the Church was doing in the field, and meet some of her great men. The broadening, quieting, confidence-inspiring influence of such a journey would be, in the opinion of Padre Rafael, incalculable. And so, with eager, bubbling hope, the lad set out.

Whatever it may have been intended that the boy should see on this ecclesiastical pilgrimage, he returned to Rome at the end of three months with his quick, impressionable mind stuffed with food for reflection. Though he had seen the glories of the Church, worshiped in her matchless temples, and sat at the feet of her great scholars, now in the quiet of his little room he found himself dwelling upon a single thought, into which all of his collected impressions were gathered: "The Church--Catholic and Protestant--is--oh, G.o.d, the Church is--not sick, not dying, but--_dead_! Aye, it has served both G.o.d and Mammon, and paid the awful penalty! And what is left?

_Caesarism_!" The great German and British nations were not Catholic.

But worse, the Protestant people of the German Empire were sadly indifferent to religion. He had seen, in Berlin, men of family trying to resell the Bibles which their children had used in preparation for confirmation. He had found family worship all but extinct. He had marked the widespread indifference among Protestant parents in regard to the religious instruction of their young. He had been told there that parents had but a slight conception of their duty as moral guides, and that children were growing up with only sensuous pleasures and material gain as their life-aims. Again and again he was shown where in whole districts it was utterly impossible to secure young men for ordination to the Protestant ministry. And he was furnished with statistics setting forth the ominous fact that within a few years, were the present decline unchecked, there would be no students in the Protestant universities of the country.

"Do you not see in this, my son," said the Papal Legate, "the blight of unbelief? Do you not mark the withering effects of the modern so-called scientific thought? What think you of a religion wherein the chief interest centers in trials for heresy; whose ultimate effect upon human character is a return to the raw, primitive, immature sense of life that once prevailed among this great people? What think you now of Luther and his diabolical work?"

The wondering boy hung his head without reply. Would Germany at length come to the true fold? And was that fold the Holy Catholic Church?

And England--ah! there was the Anglican church, Catholic, but not Roman, and therefore but a counterfeit of the Lord's true Church.

Would it endure? "No," the Legate had said; "already defection has set in, and the prodigal's return to the loving parent in Rome is but a matter of time."

Then came his visit to the great abbey of Westminster, and the impression which, to his last earthly day, he bore as one of his most sacred treasures. There in the famous Jerusalem Chamber he had sat, his eyes suffused with tears and his throat choked with emotion. In that room the first Lancastrian king long years before had closed his unhappy life. There the great Westminster Confession had been framed.