If my children cannot be regularly baptized, they are not Christians; if extreme unction cannot be administered to my dying mother, she sets out on the long journey without the viaticum; if I am married by the mayor only, my wife and I live in concubinage; if I cannot confess my sins, I am not absolved from them, and my burdened conscience seeks in vain for the helping hand which will ease the too heavy load; if I cannot perform my Easter duties, my spiritual life is a failure; the supreme and sublime act by which it perfects itself through the mystic union of my body and soul with the body, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, is wanting .-- Now, none of these sacraments are valid if they have not been conferred by a priest, one who bears the stamp of a superior, unique, ineffaceable character, through a final sacrament consisting of ordination and which is conferred only on certain conditions; among other conditions, it is essential that this priest should have been ordained by a bishop; among other conditions, it is essential that this bishop[3178] should have been installed by the Pope.
Consequently, without the Pope there are no bishops; without bishops no priests; without priests no sacraments; without the sacraments no salvation.

The ecclesiastical institution is therefore indispensable to the believer.

The canonical priesthood, the canonical hierarchy is necessary to him for the exercise of his faith .-- He must have yet more, if fervent and animated with true old Christian sentiment, ascetic and mystic, which separates the soul from this world and ever maintains it in the presence of God.

Several things are requisite to this end: * First, vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, that is to say, the steady and voluntary repression of the most powerful animal instinct and of the strongest worldly appetites; * Next, unceasing prayer, especially prayer in common, where the emotion of the prostrate soul increases through the emotion of the souls that surround it; in the same degree, active piety, meaning by this the doing of good works, education and charity, especially the accomplishment of repulsive tasks, such as attending the sick, the infirm, the incurable, idiots, maniacs and repentant prostitutes; * Finally, the strict daily rule which, a sort of rigorous and minute countersign, enjoining and compelling the repetition of the same acts at the same hours, renders habit the auxiliary of will, adds mechanical enthusiasm to a serious determination, and ends in making the task easy.
Hence, communities of men and of women, congregations and convents, these likewise, the same as the sacraments, the priesthood and the hierarchy, form a body along with belief and thus constitute the inseparable organs of faith.
Before 1789, the ignorant or indifferent Catholic, the peasant at his plow, the artisan at his work-bench, the good wife attending to her household, were unconscious of this innermost suture.

Thanks to the Revolution, they have acquired the sentiment of it and even the physical sensation.