Charred Wood

"Yes," answered the priest thoughtfully, "Ruth is like a daughter to me. And it is a strange feeling for a priest to have--that he has someone looking up to him and loving him in that way. Though a priest is constituted the same as other men, long training and experience have made his life and mental attitude different from those of men of more worldly aspirations. A priest is bound to his work more closely than is any other person in the world. Duty is almost an instinct with him. That is why he seldom shines in any other line, no matter how talented he may be. Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin almost had to unfrock themselves in order to become statesmen. Cardinal Wolsey left a heritage that at best is of doubtful value--not because he was a priest as well as a lord chancellor, but because as lord chancellor he so often forgot that he was a priest. There are many great priest-authors, but few of them are among the greatest. A priest in politics does not usually hold his head, because politics isn't his place. There are priest-inventors; but somehow we forget the priest in the inventor, and feel that the latter title makes him a little less worthy of the former--rather illogical, is it not? The Abbot Mendel was a scientist, but it is only now that he is coming into his own; and how many know him only as Mendel, forgetting his priestly office? Liszt was a cleric, but few called him Abbé. A priest as a priest can be nothing else. In fact, it is almost inevitable that his greatness in anything else will detract from his priesthood. Now the Church, my dear Mark, has the wisdom of ages behind her. She never judges from the exceptions, but always from the rule. She gets better service from a man who has sunk his temporal interests in the spiritual. She is the sternest mistress the ages have produced; she wants whole-hearted service or none at all. I like thinking of Ruth as my daughter; but I am not averse, for the good of my ministry, to having someone else take the responsibility from off my shoulders."

"But," said Mark, "how could a wife and children interfere with a priest's duties to his flock?"

"The church does not let them interfere," answered Father Murray. "She holds a man to his sworn obligations taken in marriage. A husband must 'cleave to his wife.' How could a priestly husband do that and yet fulfill his vow to be faithful to his priesthood until death? His wife would come first. What of his priesthood? Besides, a father has for his children a love that would tend to nullify, only too often, the priest's obligations toward the children of his flock. A man who offers a supreme sacrifice, and is eternally willing to live it, must be supremely free. In theory, all clergymen must be prepared to sacrifice themselves for their people, for 'the Good Shepherd gives up his life for his sheep.' In practice, no one expects that except of the priest; but from him everyone expects it."