Morning journal and courier., 1880-01-21
Ignorance of French Priests.
Basis of the Claim to MOnopoiize Edu.
 cation.
[From the London News. ]

cation.
 From the London News.l
 In ali academical centres there is a good deal of conjecture as to what the impending Parliamentary session may bring forth in the way of an Education bill. It speaks well for the inbred righteousness of Frenchmen that one should hear much sympathy expressed for the clergy even among men who profess to be Liberals. One would think that priests and monks, to say nothing of nuns, had been subjected to cruel slight and were about to undergo grievous Wrong-the simple fact being that M. Ferrys bill proposes that the State should exact some guarantees in future as to the proficiency of persons in holy orders, whether the secular or regular, who desire to teach the young. Such guarantees will ap- pear the more necessary when one examines what sort of persons French priests lay brothers, and monks habitually are and when one has the moral courage candidly to admit the fact that more ignorant corporation than that which these pious people form in the ag- gregate does not exist. Comparing them with the members of other educated profes- sions-doctors, officers lawyers architects, engineers, chemists, or even with journalists their standard of general attainments is so low that, supposing one were to draw at haz- ard the names of 10 priests out of the O. 900 in France, and pitt them against an equal number drawn by lot from any of the other professions the chances are hundred to one that the priests would be nonplussed in con- petitive examination. Intelligent friends of the Church are the first to admit this wide- spread ignorance, so that others may bear witness to the fact without fear. The learned Vicar General of the Diocese of Orleans, the Abbe Bougaud, has written a pamphlet to bewail the low condition to which the Church has fallen by reason of it's priests being no longer recruited from among the upperclasse g. but almost entirely from the peasantry; Car dinal Bonnechose, of Rouen, (himself an edu- cated man, for he was distinguished advocate before becoming priest, has in more than one printed charge to his clergy exhorted them to study in order that they may place themselves on a level with well-tauRht lay men Cardinal Guibert, of Paris, in an out science taught in the seminaries was mere chiIdishness and the new Archbishop of Amiens, while he was Bishop of Gan, declar- ed that he had not priest in his diocese who could bandy words successfully on any point of politics with a country doctor. year or two ago, when M. Ernest Renan came for ward as a candidate for the Academy, the ranks of the upper clergy were in vain search ed for Christian champion who could stand forth against the ''infdel, and in the end the Catholics were fain to rally their votes round M. Wallon, who is a Protestant, and who, by the way, got defeated in the contest It would be unfair to say that there are no men of talent among the French clergy, but at the present moment there are no men of world wide, or even national, fame. Among that huge number of priests-among SC, ,o0O men who enjoy more facilities for study than any other class of persons-there is not Bishop OF priest who is renowned as 6 historian. poet, writer, arcbmologist, mathematician, or exponent of natural science. Nay, since the death of Mgr. Dupanloup, the Church has not one frst -class orator.