Chapter VI — Bishops ought to examine those to be initiated into sacred Orders above all upon their knowledge of the Gospels

I. One of the chief offices of Priests is the study of the holy Scriptures, as the divine Scripture itself declares in 2 Paralipomenon, chapter 19: And in Jerusalem also Josaphat appointed Levites, and Priests... and he charged them, saying... Every question that shall come to you concerning the law, concerning the commandment, concerning ceremonies, concerning justifications: shew it them, that they sin not against the Lord. The Church has established that Clerics are not to be admitted to sacred Orders unless they have a title, or a patrimony, whence they can live. To what end this? That, freed from the business of the world, they may be able to devote themselves more intently to the study of divine Scripture and to sacred things, as in the place cited, chapter 31, the divine Scripture itself prescribes: He commanded also the people that dwelt in Jerusalem, to give to the Priests, and the Levites their portion, that they might be able to attend to the law of the Lord.

II. What more? Before Bishops promote Clerics to the Priesthood, they pronounce this prayer, and beseech God, that meditating on thy law day and night, they may believe what they shall read, and teach what they shall believe. All craftsmen are examined upon the rules of their own art. The profession of Priests has annexed to it the study of holy Scripture: therefore trial must be made whether they are versed in this study. For how can they meditate the holy Scriptures day and night, if they are ignorant of them? In this our age Priests are more urgently bound to the study of the divine Scriptures: since, vernacular versions being forbidden to the Laity, it belongs to the Priests to explain the divine Scriptures to the people. For at the same time at which the Church took away vernacular readings from the unlettered, she decreed that Priests should devote their labor more intently to the holy Scriptures, that they might be the more apt for interpreting and expounding them.

III. Some Priests, when they must undergo the examination for hearing confessions, turn over and over the immense volumes of Diana, Bonacina, Tamburini, La Croix, and the Salmanticenses; they strive to commit to memory a medley of cases, distinctions, and disputations. With the whole searching of their mind they scrutinize the recent and the ancient Medullae, the Alphabets, the Promptuaries, the examinations of ordinands. What then? Will you disapprove their study? I do not disapprove it. But I say that Priests, and Pastors and directors of souls, ought first to be versed in the divine Scriptures, to meditate them, and to commit them more deeply to their mind. Grant me this: is not the life of Christians to be instituted and formed according to the norm of the divine Law? If those laws are unknown, how is the life of Christians to be recalled to their rule?

IV. The aforesaid Casuists, you will say, interpret the holy Law and the divine Scriptures. Is it indeed so? Scarcely does any divine text recur in their pages; and if some sacred testimonies are at times alleged, they are not rarely eluded by petty distinctions, by arbitrary interpretations, and by opinions more benign than is just. Now if the Priests themselves do not have an ascertained knowledge of the precepts and rules of the evangelical Law, by what way can they discover whether the aforesaid authors interpret them rightly or otherwise? Books of that kind, you rejoin, are approved. True enough. Are they on that account free from errors? From approved books have been culled the condemned theses. What of the fact that the Church herself has decreed that a doctrine is not therefore true and approved because it belongs to some approved author? Greatly are the Pastors of souls deceived if they believe that they can be excused by the authority of this or that Casuist, when they teach doctrines contrary to the divine Scriptures. Or are the Priests ignorant that Christ the Lord, the supreme Judge, will judge souls not at the tribunal of the Casuists, but at that of the Gospels?

V. It is not for all, you will rejoin, to interpret the Gospels. And further: must Parish priests, Confessors, and Theologians learn the Gospels by heart? There is no need that they commit all things to memory; but it is enough that they have the spirit of the Law and its commandments thoroughly examined, and, when difficulties occur, that they consult the sacred books and employ the graver interpreters, and first of all the holy Fathers of the Church. Parish priests and Confessors turn over the thick and immense volumes of Diana, Bonacina, Tamburini, Laymann, La Croix, the Salmanticenses, and Castropalao; with prodigious labor they commit to memory controversies, wranglings, distinctions, subdistinctions, definitions, divisions. Assuredly the divine precepts which are contained in the holy book of the new Testament, of Proverbs, of Wisdom, of Ecclesiasticus, are more easily learned than the interminable disputations of the said volumes. What of the fact that the quarrelsome disputations of these men are not rarely entangled, obscure, full of circumlocutions, hedged about with entanglements and cavils, which often excite anything rather than the fervor of divine love and the zeal of evangelical perfection? On the contrary, the evangelical precepts are splendid, perspicuous, easy; and they teach how to live rightly, not how to wrangle futilely. To this is added that God infuses the light for understanding the holy Scriptures into those who approach the meditation of them with a humble and docile heart. Those divine teachings of Proverbs and of Ecclesiasticus, the evangelical parables, and the epistles of Paul and of the other Apostles, and the single verses of holy Scripture, illuminate more than the innumerable disputations of men. Priests imbued with this knowledge of the holy Scriptures can also read the moral Theologians; because then they are excellently able to discern whether the opinions and judgments of these men are conformed to the evangelical doctrine.

VI. What? Do you dare to disapprove the custom, introduced so many years since, of examining Confessors and Parish priests upon the opinions which the Casuists dispute on both sides? Far be it from me to wish to disapprove customs which are good. With humble deference only do I suggest what seems to me best, and indeed necessary. But this very counsel of mine I submit to the judgment of Superiors and of the Wise. If, the usage which now obtains being abandoned, a new custom had to be introduced, a prodigious labor would have to be undergone, and great disturbance and confusion would ensue. All this is false. Does the reading and meditation of the holy Scriptures beget confusion? Nay rather, it takes away quarrels and intestine disagreements, and in place of disputations introduces the observance of the laws. But, to press the argument more strongly, I ask again: is the study of the Scriptures necessary for Priests, Pastors, and Directors of souls, or not? If you deny it, you gainsay the divine Scriptures. If you affirm it: then the custom must be corrected, and the competence of Pastors and Confessors must be explored in the holy Scriptures as well. The mere knowledge that this examination must be undergone would urge all who desire either to be initiated into the Priesthood, or to undertake the care of souls, or the burden of hearing confessions, to bend all their powers to the study of the Scriptures. Who would deny that Priests would turn out wiser and better-mannered if they spent the good part of that time which they wear away in reading and thoroughly learning the books of Diana, Bonacina, Tamburini, La Croix, and the Salmanticenses, in meditating the holy books? And if, in place of the Medullae, whether ancient or recent, they continually turned the pages of the Pauline epistles?

VII. And in what manner, you ask, ought this examination to be conducted? With the highest moderation and prudence. Let Clerics be asked how many are the books of the old Testament, how many of the new covenant, how many the epistles of Paul; some upon some parable of the Gospel, others upon the epistle to Timothy. Priests ought to be asked what is the spirit of the evangelical Law; what is the image of the Christian life; whether Christians are pressed by a precept of yearning after evangelical perfection; what these words signify: Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect; what these others: If thy eye... if thy hand scandalize thee, pluck it out, cut it off, etc.; He that doth not renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple; Lend, hoping for nothing thereby; It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Let them be asked how Saints Augustine and Chrysostom and the other Fathers interpret the testimonies praised and others like them: for these are the masters and the true interpreters of the Scriptures.

VIII. As to those things which regard ecclesiastical institutions, the Catechism of Trent, or the Roman Catechism, must be read; and upon it and upon the Council of Trent they must be examined more severely. When they have been instructed in such doctrine, they can also read the moral authors, especially concerning the ecclesiastical precepts and the other things which regard ceremonies and discipline.

To thee now, Christ Jesus, I turn my humble prayer. Fearful and confounded, I look up at thy most tremendous vengeance upon the sons of men. Trembling, I shudder at the spirit of slumber and of blindness, seized by which men walk the way of perdition; for I know this to be the most deadly of all punishments, which so many ages ago the Prophet Amos foretold in chapter 8: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I will send forth a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord... They shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. To such a pass of evils has the matter now come, that many neither seek nor find thy word, O Lord. They seek the word of men in the books of men; but they do not seek the word of God in the books of God. If Princes, Kings, Emperors were to write to us, and that in a familiar style; if they were to propose rewards; if they were to invite us to their royal palaces, to their thrones, there to reign with them — with what diligence, with what attention would such letters be read by us! And thy divine Scriptures, which are letters sent to us, and delivered to us — above all to us Priests — to be guarded, read, and explained, we neglect, we treat with disgust; nay, casting them aside, we delight in the acorns and refuse of men? The blindness is darker, and the punishment more deadly, than can be expressed by me in fitting speech. Awake, I beseech you, Priests of God, Pastors and Directors of souls, and in the spirit of contrition and humility seek the word of God in the books of God.