The Mystical Element of Religion. Friedrich von Hügel

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СКАЧАТЬ practical plainness, the kind and degree of extraordinary interior acts and habits which were to be, in large part, her form of the “Mind of the Church.” For it is indeed certain that the special characteristic of the Catholic mind is not, necessarily, universally and finally, the conception and practice of sanctity under the precise form of the devotional spirit and habits special to the particular part or period of the Church in which that individual Catholic’s lot may be cast. What is thus characteristic, is the continuous and sensitive conviction that there is something far-reaching and important beyond the Church’s bare precepts, for every soul that aims at sanctity, to find out and to do; that this something (sc. the Church’s mind) is, always and for all, presumably, the most fervent form and degree of the devotional temper and habits of the Church, as practised in that time and country; and that it is for God Himself, if He so pleases, to indicate to the soul that He now wants its fervour to consist in an observance of the Church’s precepts and spirit under a form and with an application partially different from the most fervent practice of the ordinary devotions of that time and place, though this new observance will be no less costing or heroically self-renouncing than the other. And this He does usually by slow, often simply cumulative and indirect, but always solid, painful, and practically unmistakable, because unsought, means and experiences,—all these attained to well within the Church. For the Church’s life and spirit, which is but the extension of the spirit of Christ Himself, is, like all that truly lives at all, not a sheer singleness, but has a mysterious unity in and by means of endless variety. Even at any one moment that spirit expresses itself in numerous variations, by means of various races, rites, orders, schools, and individuals. And yet not the sum-total of all these simultaneously present variations is ever as rich as is the sum-total of that spirit’s successive manifestations in the past. Nor once more can this latter sum be taken as anticipating all the developments and adaptations which that ever-living spirit will first occasion and then sanction in His special organ, the Church. Catherine’s particular, divinely impelled substitute for the ordinary devotional practice shall be described later on.

      IX. Catherine and Indulgences.

      A further peculiarity, somewhat analogous to the one just examined, seems to have characterized her devotional practice—in this case, throughout her convert life. It had therefore, perhaps, best be described in this place.

      1. The assertions of the “Vita.”

      Three items of information are furnished by the Vita, on one and the same half-page.

      (1) “She had such a hatred of self,” says the Vita, “that she did not hesitate to pronounce this sentence: ‘I would not have grace and mercy, but justice and vengeance shown to the malefactor.…’”

      (2) “For this reason it seemed that she did not even care to gain the Plenary Indulgences. Not as though she did not hold them in great reverence and devotion, and did not consider them to be most useful and of great value. But she would have wished that her own self-seeking part (la sua propria parte) should rather be chastized and punished as it deserved, than to see it pardoned (assoluta), and, by means of such satisfaction, liberated in the sight of God.”

      (3) “She saw the Offended One to be supremely good, and the offender quite the opposite. And hence she could not bear to see any part of herself which was not subjected to the divine justice, with a view to its being thoroughly chastized. And hence, so as not to give this part any hope of being liberated from the pains due to it, she abstained from the Plenary Indulgences and also from recommending herself to the intercessions of others, so as ever to be subject to every punishment and condemned as she deserved.”[74]

      2. Three points to be noted here.

      Here I would note three things.

      For one thing, there can be no serious doubt as to the authenticity of the saying that opens out this group of communications and as to the substantial accuracy of the two parallel, and (I think) mutually independent, reports as to her practice: since the saying belongs to the class of short declarations given in oratio directa, which we shall find to be remarkably reliable throughout the Vita; and the reports testify to something so unusual, so little sympathetic to the hagiographical mind, so much in keeping with the remainder of her doctrine and practice, that we cannot believe them misinformed. The author of the Dialogo evidently fully accepted these three passages, when, in about 1549, she paraphrases them thus: “She therefore made no account of her sins, with respect to their punishment, but only because she had acted against that Immense Goodness”; “She found herself to be her who alone had committed all the evil, and alone she wanted to make satisfaction, as far as ever she could, without the help of any other person.”[75]

      For another thing, we have absolutely final contemporary documentary evidence of the importance attached by herself both to Indulgences, and the gaining of them (at least by other people), and to Masses and prayers for the Dead, inclusive of herself when she should be gone. For as to Indulgences, we have entries in the Cartulary of the Hospital (under the dates of March 11, April 10, May 29, and August 23, 1510) of various considerable sums, amounting in all to over £300, paid by the Hospital, at the first date, for Catherine’s nephew Francesco, at all the other dates for herself, for the withdrawal of a suspension of the Indulgences attached to the Hospital Church, and for the transference, in that year, of the day appointed for their acquisition. Both these matters were carried out in Rome by means of Catherine’s second nephew, Cardinal Giovanni Fiesco. This, it is true, is evidence that only covers the last six months of her life.

      But as to Masses and Prayers for her own soul after death, we have (1) her second Will, of May 19, 1498, where she leaves one share in the Bank of St. George (£100) to the Observant Franciscans of the Hospital Church, “who shall be bound to celebrate Masses and Divine Offices for the soul of Testatrix”; (2) her Codicil, of January 5, 1503, where she leaves (in addition) £3 apiece to two Monasteries “for the celebration of Masses for her own soul”; (3) her third Will, of May 18, 1506, which confirms all this; and (4) her last Will, of March 18, 1509, where she leaves £3 each to three Monasteries, which are each to “celebrate thirty Masses for her soul,” £3 to a fourth Monastery for Prayers for her soul, and £25 to the Franciscans of the Hospital Church for the celebration of Masses to the same effect.[76]

      The reader will at once perceive that these facts are fully compatible with the attitude so emphatically ascribed to her in the Vita, only if we take these latter statements as expressive of certain intense, emotional moods; or of some relatively short penitential period; or of what she did and felt with regard to herself alone and for whilst she was to live here below, not of what others should do for themselves at all times and for herself when she was gone.

      And finally, we know exactly how and why the doctrine and practice described in those passages in the Vita were accepted by the Congregation of Rites, as forming no obstacle to her canonization. Pope Benedict XIV, in his great classical work on Beatification and Canonization, says, “After I had ceased to hold the office of Promoter of the Faith,” (the date will have been between 1728 and 1733,) “I know that a controversy arose as to the doctrine of a certain Beata, with regard to the truth of which it was possible to have different opinions.” And after giving this Beata’s doctrine and practice as these are presented by Catherine’s Vita, and citing the arguments used against their toleration, he proceeds: “But the Postulators answered (1) that this Beata had not omitted to gain Plenary Indulgences from any contempt for them, since her veneration for them was demonstrated by most unambiguous documents” (no doubt Cardinal Fiesco’s action, in her name and at her expense, in Rome in 1510, is meant); “(2) that it is the doctrine of very many theologians, that those do not sin, who do not labour to gain Indulgences because they desire to make satisfaction in their own persons in this world or to suffer in the next; СКАЧАТЬ