[The Origins of Contemporary France<br> Volume 6 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book
The Origins of Contemporary France
Volume 6 (of 6)

CHAPTER III THE CLERGY
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If some souls are timorous, they surrender themselves to him spontaneously and, more than this, they have recourse to him outside of his tribunal; he marks out for them the path they must follow, he guides them at every turn; he interferes daily, he becomes a director as was said in the seventeenth century, the titular and permanent director of one or of many lives.[5339] This is still the case at the present day, and especially for women and for all nuns; the central conception around which all Roman ideas turn, the conception of the imperium and of government, has here found its perfect accomplishment and attained to its final outermost limits.
There are now of these spiritual governors about 180,000, installed in the five regions of the world, each assigned to the leadership of about 1000 souls and as special guardian of a distinct flock, all ordained by bishops instituted by the Pope, he being absolute monarch and declared such by the latest council.

In the new Rome as in the ancient Rome, authority has gradually become concentrated until it has centered in and is entrusted wholly to the hands of one man.

Romulus, the Alban shepherd, was succeeded by Caesar Augustus, Constantine or Theodosius, whose official title was "Your Eternal," "Your Divine," and who pronounced their decrees "immutable oracles." Peter, the fisherman of Galilee, was succeeded by infallible pontiffs whose official title is "Your Holiness," and whose decrees, for every Catholic, are "immutable oracles" in fact as in law, not hyperbolically, but in the full sense of the words expressed by exact terms.

The imperial institution has thus formed itself anew; it has simply transferred itself from one domain to another; only, in passing from the temporal order of things to the spiritual order, it has become firmer and stronger, for it has guarded against two defects which weakened its antique model .-- One the one hand, it has provided for the transmission of supreme power; in old Rome, they did not know how to regulate this; hence, when an interregnum occurred, the many violent competitors, the fierce conflicts, the brutalities, all the usurpations of force, all the calamities of anarchy.

In Catholic Rome, the election of the sovereign pontiff belongs definitively to a college of prelates[5340] who vote according to established formalities; these elect the new pope by a majority of two-thirds, and, for more than four centuries, not one of these elections has been contested; between each defunct pope and his elected successor, the transfer of universal obedience has been prompt and unhesitating and, during as after the interregnum, no schism in the Church has occurred .-- On the other hand, in the legal title of Caesar Augustus there was a defect.


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