To believe is no easy matter. In spite of so many glaring proofs, Monseigneur Laurence had still some doubts and hesitated to act. His extremely learned faith, did not get over the ground so rapidly as did the faith of his simple-minded neighbors. God, who shows himself, so to speak, all at once to simple and ignorant souls, who cannot be enlightened by human studies, is sometimes pleased to impose a longer and more patient research on cultivated and highly-educated persons, who are capable of arriving at truth by the paths of labor, investigation and reflection. Like the Apostle Thomas, when he refused to believe the testimony of the other disciples and of the Holy Women, Monseigneur Laurence would have liked to have seen everything with his eyes and touched everything with his hands. Of a precise intellect, rather inclined towards the practical than leaning towards the ideal, and naturally distrustful of popular exaggerations, the Prelate was one of those who―by I know not what peculiar instinct―gave a cold reception to the passionate feelings of others, and willingly supposed that we are apt to be led astray by our emotions and deceived by our enthusiasm. Although, at times, he was deeply struck by so many extraordinary events, he was so afraid of affirming on slight grounds that they resulted from supernatural agency, that he might perhaps have run the risk of rejecting the idea altogether, or of only acknowledging it when too late, had not the grace of God tempered and confined within just limits that natural bent of his mind which we have just pointed out to our reader.
Not only did Monseigneur Laurence hesitate to pronounce his own judgment, but even to command an official investigation. Being a Catholic Bishop, and deeply imbued with the necessity of keeping up the external dignity of the Church, he was not without fears of compromising the gravity of this Mother of the human race, by launching her prematurely into the solemn examination of all these singular facts with which he had not himself a sufficient personal acquaintance, and which might, after all, have no foundation beyond the silly tales of a little shepherd girl, and the vain illusions of some poor fanatics.
There can be no doubt that the Bishop would never have advised the measures taken by the civil authorities, and they met with his decided disapprobation. But since the evil was done, was it not prudent to derive from it the incidental good which might be one of its results? Was it not wise―if by chance, the popular belief and account were erroneous―to leave this pretended supernatural fact to its own resources and to allow it to fight its own battle by itself against the hostile investigation and persecution of M. Massy, the Free-thinkers and Savants, who had formed a league together to overturn Superstition? It would be better, therefore, to wait and not to be in a hurry to engage in a conflict with the civil power, which might, perhaps, prove useless. “I deplore the measures now taken as much as you do,” the Bishop was wont to observe in his own private circle to those who urged him to interfere; “but not being charged with the police department, nor consulted by any of the authorities, I can but let things take their course. Everyone is responsible for his own acts. I have had nothing to do up to the present moment with the acts of the civil authorities as regards the Grotto, and congratulate myself on having done so. Later on, the ecclesiastical authorities will see if there is anything to be done.”
Actuated by this spirit of prudence and forbearance, the Bishop desired the Clergy of his diocese to urge the people to remain calm and to employ their influence to make them submit to the decree of the Prefect.
It appeared to the Bishop that the wisest part would be to avoid all disorder; not to create new embarrassments; to favor even, from a feeling of respect for the principle of Authority, the execution of the measures ordered by the local government, and to see what turn events might take.
Such were the views of Monseigneur Lawrence, as may be gathered from his correspondence at that period. Such were the considerations which determined his attitude and inspired his conduct.
Perhaps he would have reasoned very differently, had he possessed, at that time, the ardent faith of the multitude. But it was well that he reasoned and acted in this way; it was well that he did not yet believe. We subjoin some grave reasons.
If Monseigneur Lawrence, with the prudence required of him as Bishop, regarded the matter with an eye to the possibility of its being grounded on error, God, in his infinite clear-sightedness, regarded it only as connected with the immutable certainty of His acts and truth of His work. God willed that this work should undergo the proof of time, and should affirm its own claims by surmounting, without the assistance of any one, the painful barriers of persecution. Now, if the Churchman, the Bishop, had from the very first believed in the reality of so many Apparitions and Miracles, would he have been able to resist the generous impulses of his apostolic zeal, or hesitate, for one moment, to interfere energetically against the persecutions of the faithful, against the enemies of the work of God? If he had had entire faith in the fact that the Mother of God had really appeared in his diocese, demanding the erection of a temple to her own glory, and curing such as were sick, could he have balanced, for one single moment, between the will of the eternal Queen of Heaven and Earth and the paltry opposition of a Massy, a Jacomet or a Rouland? Certainly not. With such a faith in his heart, the Bishop, like St. Ambrose of old at Milan, could not but have started up, Cross in hand and Mitre on head, in the very teeth of the civil authorities. Publicly, at the head of the believers, undeterred by any fear of man, he would have gone to drink at the Divine Spring, to bend his knees before the Blessed Rock which the Virgin had sanctified by the touch of her feet, and to lay the first stone, in that wild spot, of a magnificent temple to the Immaculate Mary.
But in this defending the work of God in the Present, the Prelate would infallibly have weakened it for Futurity. The support which might have been afforded it in its commencement would have compromised it at a more advanced period, and laid it open to the suspicion of having emanated not from God but from men. The more the Bishop kept himself outside the movement and displayed a repugnance, nay hostility towards the faith of the people, the more the supernatural work displayed its strength, in triumphing without any external assistance, by its own resources, its intrinsic truth and innate force―in defiance of the animosity or withdrawal of all that, in this world, bears the name of power.
Providence had resolved that this should be so, and that the grand fact of the Apparition of the most Blessed Virgin, in the nineteenth century, should pass, like Christianity in its infancy, through trials and persecution. ‘It was, therefore, necessary, to carry out the divine scheme, that the Bishop, far from taking the initiative, should be one of the longest―I was going to say one of the hardest―to surrender, and should only yield at last, after all the rest, to the unexceptionable weight of the testimony adduced and the irresistible evidence of facts.
And for this cause was it that God, in His secret designs, had placed in the episcopal chair of the Diocese of Tarbes the eminent and guarded man whose portrait we have sketched? For this cause had it pleased Him to withhold from Monseigneur Laurence, in the commencement, faith in the reality of the Apparition, and to keep his mind in a state of doubt not withstanding so many astonishing events? It formed part of His heavenly plan, under such circumstances, to confirm in the Prelate that temporizing and prudent spirit with which He had so largely endowed him, and to leave to his episcopal wisdom that character of long hesitation and extreme deliberation which, in the midst of the general effervescence, was unintelligible to the multitude, though the future was destined to show to the eyes of all its admirable results and providential utility.
The people possessed the virtue of Faith, but their impatient ardor would have willingly urged the Clergy to interfere prematurely. The Bishop had the virtue of Patience, but his eyes were not yet opened to the truth of the supernatural work which was being accomplished before him, and forcibly striking everyone. Complete wisdom, and all things duly proportioned, were, as is always the case, in God alone, who was directing all events, and whose almighty hand was turning to the fulfillment of His object and tending to the immutable order of His designs the enthusiasm of the multitude and the hesitation of the Prelate.
It was the will of God that the Church, in the person of the Bishop, should abstain from taking any important part, and, keeping herself constantly aloof from the struggle, should appear at the last moment only to close authoritatively this grand debate and openly declare the Truth.
