FEAST OF ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY, PATRON OF THE SECULAR CLERGY OF ENGLAND, _December_ 29, 1917. CONTENTS PREFACE CONFERENCE I. THE PRIESTLY VOCATION II. THE PRIESTLY VOCATION (continued) III. POVERTY IV. CHASTITY V. OBEDIENCE APPENDIX ON OBEDIENCE AT THE SEMINARY VI. THE RELIGIOUS EXERCISES OF THE PRIEST VII. THE PRIEST'S PASTORAL WORK VIII. THE PRIEST'S PASTORAL WORK (_continued_)--THE LITURGY IX. THE PRIEST'S PASTORAL WORK (_continued_)--PREACHING X. THE RECREATIONS OF A PRIEST XI. THE RECREATIONS OF A PRIEST (_continued_) XII. THE ANNUAL HOLIDAY XIII. THE PERIODICAL RETREAT XIV. THE PRIEST IN SICKNESS--AND IN DEATH THE PRIESTLY VOCATION CONFERENCE I THE PRIESTLY VOCATION IT is well known that one of the great aims of Cardinal Manning during his long episcopate, and perhaps the one of his works which has left the most permanent impression behind it, was to raise the tone and status of his diocesan clergy. For many reasons connected with our Catholic history, the level at which the average secular priest in the days of the Vicariates aimed left something to be desired. When we read the story of penal times, and realise the kind of life that an ordinary priest had to live, it is not surprising that the tone and quality of mind which we somewhat vaguely designate under the name of the "Ecclesiastical spirit," should not have been largely developed. We are not speaking now of the time of actual persecution. In the days when a priest had to go about his duties in the continual risk of being apprehended and cast into prison, and being condemned on trial to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the heroism of his life, and the manner in which he had to be almost continuously braving personal danger in his search after souls, would undoubtedly have taken the place of much training and prayer in sanctifying his soul. But with the relaxation of active persecution, came an imminent danger which showed itself throughout the dreary eighteenth century, and during the first half of the nineteenth. There was no longer any fear of violence, and even the depressing penal laws invented after the Revolution of 1688 gradually lost their vitality and ceased to be enforced. But the spirit engendered by these laws lasted longer than the laws themselves, and when the English clergy found themselves able to live the normal life of a secular priest, some stimulus was required to revive in them the spirit of their state, which had been so long obscured by the necessity of hiding their priesthood.