whether the imputation is just or not. Frankly, I think that it is just, and that if it is not entirely reasonable it is at least the verdict of a sure instinct, and the Seminary may as well come in for its full share of responsibility since it has undertaken the major portion of the task.

At present the Seminary is in the dark. It has only the haziest possible notion of what it is trying to do. With all the proposals for reform, the adverse criticism, the puttering about details, the tinkering with curricula, no one seems to be in the slightest degree aware what the whole thing is about. It is always hard to begin at the beginning, but that is precisely what we shall have to do. First, to find out what is wrong. If it isn't laboring the obvious I should like to drive away at just this point that no one seems to know what we are really in for; that we haven't taken the trouble to begin at the beginning; that we are woefully lacking in definitions. No one, and least of all the Seminary, seems to know just what the Seminary is to do. What sort of product is it to turn out, or is it to turn out any sort of product at all?

It is somewhat irritating after demanding definitions that amount to constitution and by-laws immediately to propose them one's self, but perhaps I may irritate amiably. I am sure of the amiability as long as I can get a text from Father Carey, and so I begin with him. In his phrase "the poorest trained" there is a clue to the answer for the question "Why is a Seminary?" Let me proposè, quite dogmatically; it is the function of the Seminary to train Priests. Now the Seminary is simply not aware of this. It debates the question of Greek. I am keen for the retention of Greek, but think it simply irrelevant to the real matter in issue. We are to be so reformed that the Clergy -it is not yet decided whether they are to be Priests or

not-will attend to their correspondence promptly, and keep the parish registers, and submit intelligible reports in a businesslike way at the close of each fiscal year. There are to be vital lectures on vital topics, some attention paid to Psychology, and we are no longer to drift along in our cynical indifference to social problems. This is splendid, and yet I venture that having done all we are unprofitable servants.

In the first place we are to train, not to educate. A Seminary is not an auxiliary college. It is not its function, qua Seminary, to make learned men, nor cultured men, nor morally reformed men, but to equip men with a technical scientific equipment for a highly specialized craft. It is a pity that the word "Priestcraft" has fallen to such an evil estate. We have no word with which to replace it, and so, were I speaking wisdom among the perfect I should risk the invidious connotation and say bluntly that we are to give men a scientific equipment for the practice of Priestcraft.

I believe the emphasis on the idea of training in contradistinction to that of education will prove helpful when it comes to a question of the canonical requirements for Candidates for Holy Orders, realizing that the Canon necessarily determines the major part of the curriculum of any seminary. In fact, most if not all of the objections advanced against the present provisions, as long as they are regarded as a minimum, lose their force. The subjects required by canon are required antecedently by the nature of the case, and no amount of legislation can make it otherwise.

But the Seminary is to train Priests. Now I am in for another definition, and I venture again-this time very humbly: "A Priest is a man who offers sacrifice." Of course, he does a great many other things, but the essence

of Priesthood is in this character, this power to offer sacrifice. For the present purpose the definition must be expanded to include some characteristic ancillary functions, and we may say that the Priest maintains the daily corporate prayer of the Church, administers the Tribunal of Penance and other Sacraments appropriate to his Order, preaches, and under our American practice is normally charged with the cure of souls. The significance of the definition in its original form remains unchanged. It means that a Priest does a very special sort of work, a work that requires a training specialized in a very high degree, and in providing this training, this equipment, the Seminary finds its sole reason for being.

At first glance the statement that the Seminary is to train Priests suggests something negative. It means, for instance, that we are not primarily to train Deacons, nor pastors, nor administrators, nor social service experts, nor critics nor preachers.

The reference to Deacons tempts me to an excursion. Most of the proposals with regard to the Diaconate and the assumptions underlying our present practice strike me as so thoroughly academic. It has come, I cannot imagine how, to be considered highly meritorious to insist that no one be ordered Deacon until the end of his seminary course, the pretext alleged generally has something to do with not laying on of hands suddenly, or the value of discipline supposed to be involved in delay, or the advantages of a curacy with training under an experienced priest; just as though there were the slightest possibility of one Deacon out of twenty ever serving a curacy. As a matter of fact the great majority of Deacons are placed in charge of small parishes, and are, but for the fiction, given the cure of souls and charged with all the obligations of rectorship

without any means, of grace or otherwise, to discharge them. We are not training Deacons. Even if there were curacies enough to go around, the curate ought to be practicing his Priesthood and not a business that he is expected to abandon with his novitiate. It is, with just enough exceptions to prove the rule, thoroughly bad to have Deacons out of the Seminary. We should contemplate the giving of Deacon's Orders at the end of the middle year as representing the normal practice.

And now to return to the question of the curriculum of the Seminary, having made an act of faith in the present requirements as our minimum. To say that a Priest offers sacrifice is another way of saying that he ought to know how to say Mass. With one exception, the Seminaries make no provision for this. "Liturgics" means Proctor and Frere with some knowledge of the contents of the Book of Common Prayer. Ceremonial is not taught. Some students receive instruction from outside sources and some pick it up during the course of subsequent sacerdotal adventures. This is no trivial matter. One shudders at the thought of experimenting with the Blessed Sacrament, and yet that is precisely what we make necessary. The priestly behavior in matters pertaining to the ministry of the altar is perhaps the most potent teaching element we possess. This has nothing to do with questions of "High" and "Low Church," and the seminaries should arrange in a businesslike way to teach it as the science which it is. Of course, as a Catholic, I have a private objection to putting a premium on sacrilege.

The offering of sacrifice involves preparation. Now the Priest's personal spiritual preparation is, at least technically, not the affair of the Seminary, but preparation will include some external things, among them the Divine Of

fice and the Sacrament of Penance. With regard to the first, the Seminary must bring home some sense of obligation. The Clerk in Orders must be made to realize that he is bound to the daily recitation, and that this obligation is enforced by certain sanctions of a most serious character. He ought to have some conscience, too, about the duties common to the faithful, such as assistance at Masses of obligation even in vacation time.

It is difficult to trust one's self to touch on the topic of the quantity and quality of preparation we provide for the Priest as physician of souls. Here the Candidate must learn empirically or not at all. Again, with one exception, none of the Seminaries has ever suspected that the disease of sin can be or should be treated scientifically. What a nameless tragedy this system that can profess to equip clergy and can stamp with approval graduates ignorant even of the nature of the Seal of Confession. It is needless to say that the present condition is simply scandalous, and that the most crying need of the curriculum is for the addition of courses in Moral Philosophy, Moral Theology and Casuistry.

As for the course in Theology, sometimes labelled "Dogmatic Theology," is there any Seminary in the Anglican Communion where Theology is taught dogmatically? I yield this point in despair. Anything more than a pious wish is folly in our day.

A Priest is called upon to do many things other than those that pertain to the strict exercise of his Priesthood. The Epistle for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity is illuminating here, and I think that it has been meditated to advantage by the framers of our proposed new Canon. Heretofore we have worked on the assumption that the ministry meant one type of man engaged in one type of service-pas