through our hands daily, are amazed at our prerogative. . . . I
fulfill three sublime functions in relation to the god of our altars -
I cause him to descend, I administer his body, I am his custodian. . .
. Jesus dwells under your lock and key; his hours of reception begin
and end through you, he does not move without your permission, he
gives no benediction without your assistance, he bestows nothing
except at your hands, and his dependence is so dear to him that, for
eighteen hundred years, he has not left the Church for one moment to
lose himself on the glory of his Father." - On the other hand, they
are made to drink in full draughts the sentiment of subordination,
which they imbibe to their very marrow.[82] "Ecclesiastical obedience
is . . . a love of dependence, a violation of judgment. . . . Would
you know what it is as to the extent of sacrifice? A voluntary death,
the sepulcher of the will, says Saint Climaque. . . . There is a sort
of real presence infused into those who command us. . . ." Let us be
careful not to fall "into the crafty opposition of liberal
Catholicism. . . . Liberalism, in its consequences, is social
atheism. . . . Unity, in Roman faith, is not sufficient; let us labor
together in the unity of the Roman spirit; for that, let us always
judge Rome with the optimism of affection. . . . Each new dogmatic
definition produces its own advantages: that of the Immaculate
Conception has given us Lourdes and its truly œcumenical wonders."

Nothing of all this is too much, and, in the face of the exigencies of
modern times, it scarcely suffices. Now that society has become
incredulous, indifferent or, at the least, secular, the priest must
possess the two intense and master ideas which support a soldier
abroad among insurgents or barbarians, one being the conviction that
he is of a species and essence apart, infinitely superior to the
common herd; and the other is the thought that he belongs to his flag,