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But because you and I find this life the natural one
we have no right to insist upon it for the priest, or the
Sister of Charity, who takes voluntary vows of celibacy and poverty, and finds joy in keeping them. Nor
have we the right to try and tempt them to break their
resolutions. I do not believe it a sin for the man or
woman who has taken these vows without due understanding of all they implied, to abandon them.
I knew a young man who had been sent into
priesthood as deliberately as his brother was sent into
the army; he had nothing in his nature to make the
calling of a priest natural, or agreeable, or holy, and he
had everything to make him a devoted head of a family
and a good, shrewd business man. He fell in love and
married, and is doing the world a good service as a
kind husband and father and a charitable citizen to-day.
This is a thousand times better than if he were a
miserable, unhappy, discontented priest, carrying a
turbulent human heart filled with earthly desires under
his priestly robe. God has no punishment in store for
such a man, but He has penalties for those who live
false lives.
God will not be "angry" with the man who finds
he has made a mistake in his calling, but He will not
approve of the woman who goes about trying to convince the happy and faithful priest who rejoices in his
life of devotion to spiritual things that he is on the
wrong track.
This is not a high calling for a Protestant woman.
Were she to analyze her state of mind, she would
find it was stubbornness and love of power, rather
than constancy, which direct her thoughts so continually toward this man of God.
