The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional Part 12

"This my daughter promised to me.

"When my wife had recovered from her surprise, I told her.

"Madame, it is long since the priest is everything, and your husband nothing to you! There is a hidden and terrible power which governs you, it is the power of the priest: this you have often denied, but it can not be denied any longer, the Providence of G.o.d has decided, to day, that this power should forever be destroyed in my house, I want to be the only ruler of my family: from this moment the power of the priest over you is forever abolished. Whenever you go and take your heart and your secrets to the feet of the priest, be so kind as not to come back any more into my house as my wife."

This is one of the thousand and thousand specimens of the peace of conscience brought to the soul through auricular confession. I could give many similar instances, if it were my intention to publish a treatise on this subject, but as I only desire to write a short chapter, I will adduce but one other fact to show the awful deception practised by the Church of Rome when she invites persons to come to confession under the pretext that _peace_ to the soul will be the reward of their obedience. Let us hear the testimony of another living and unimpeachable witness about this peace of the soul, before, during, and after auricular confession. In her remarkable book "Personal experience of Roman Catholicism" Miss Eliza Richardson, writes, (Page 34 and 35.)

"Thus I silenced my foolish quibbling, and went on to the test of a convert's fervour and sincerity in confession. And here was a.s.suredly a fresh source of pain and disquiet, and one not so easily vanquished. "The theory had appeared, as a whole, fair and rational, but the reality, in some of its details, _was terrible_!"

"Divested, for the public gaze, of its darkest ingredients, and dressed up, in their theological works, in false and meretricious pretentions to truth and purity, it exhibited a dogma only calculated to exert a beneficial influence on mankind, and to prove a source of morality and usefulness.

_But oh, as with all ideals, how unlike was the actual!_"

"Here, however, I may remark, in pa.s.sing, the effect produced upon my mind by the first sight of the _older_ editions of "the Garden of the Soul". I remember the stumbling-block it was to me, my sense of womanly delicacy was shocked. It was a dark page in my experience, when first I knelt at the feet of a mortal man to confess what should have been poured into the ear of G.o.d alone. I cannot dwell upon this...."

"Though I believe my Confessor was, on the whole, as guarded as his manners were kind; at some things I was strangely startled, utterly confounded."

"The purity of mind and delicacy in which I had been nurtured, had not prepared me for such an ordeal; and my own sincerity, and dread of committing a sacrilege, tended to augment the painfulness of the occasion.

One circ.u.mstance especially I will recall, which my fettered conscience persuaded me I was obliged to name. My distress and terror, doubtless, made me less explicit than I otherwise might have been. The questioning, however, it elicited, and the ideas supplied by it, outraged my feelings to such an extent, that, forgetting all respect for my Confessor, and careless, even, at the moment, whether I received absolution or not, I hastily exclaimed, "I cannot say a word more," while the thought rushed into my mind, "all is true that their enemies say of them." Here, however prudence dictated to my questioner to put the matter no further; and the kind and almost respectful tone he _immediately_ a.s.sumed, went far towards effacing an impression so injurious. On rising from my knees, when I should have gladly fled to any distance rather than have encountered his gaze, he addressed me in the most familiar manner on different subjects, and detained me some time in talking. What share I took in the conversation, I never knew and all that I remember, was my burning cheek, and inability to raise my eyes from the ground.

"Here I would not be supposed to be intentionally casting a stigma upon an individual. Nor am I throwing unqualified blame upon the priesthood. _It is the system which is at fault_, a system which teaches that things, even at the _remembrance_ of which degraded humanity must blush in the presence of heaven and its angels, should be laid open, _dwelt upon, and exposed in detail_, to the sullied ears of a corrupt and fallen fellow-mortal who of like pa.s.sions with the penitent at his feet, is thereby exposed to temptations the most dark and dangerous. But what shall we say of woman?

Draw a veil! Oh purity, modesty! and every womanly feeling! a veil as oblivion, over the fearfully, dangerous experience thou art called to pa.s.s through! (page 37, and 38.")

"Ah! there are things that cannot be recorded! facts too startling, and at the same time, too delicately intricate, to admit a public portrayal, or meet the public gaze; But the cheek can blush in secret at the true images which memory evokes, and the oppressed mind shrinks back, in horror, from the dark shadows which have saddened and overwhelmed it. I appeal to converts, to converts of the gentler s.e.x, and ask them, fearlessly ask them, what was the first impression made on your minds and feelings by the confessional? I do not ask how subsequent familiarization has weakened the effects: but when acquaintance was first made with it, how were you affected by it? I ask not the impure, the already defiled, for to such, it is sadly susceptible of being made a darker source of guilt and shame;--but I appeal to the pure minded and delicate, the pure in heart and sentiment.

Was not your _first_ impression one of inexpressible dread and bewilderment, followed by a sense of humiliation and degradation, not easily to be defined or supported? (page 39.) "The memory of that time (first auricular confession) will ever be painful and abh.o.r.ent to me; though subsequent experience has thrown, even that, far into the back ground. It was my initiatory lesson upon subjects which ought never to enter the imagination of girlhood: my introduction into a region which should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with me, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with them for years, and I could not gainsay their statement.

"I was reluctant to believe more than I had experienced the proof, however, was destined to come in no dubious shape at a no distant day.... A dark and sullied page of experience was fast opening upon me; but so unaccustomed was the eye which scanned it, that I could not at all, at once, believe in its truth! And it was of hypocrisy so hateful, of sacrilege so terrible, and abuse so gross of all things pure and holy, and in the person of one bound by his vows, his position, and every law of his church, as well as of G.o.d, to set a high example, that, for a time, all confidence in the very existence of sincerity and goodness was in danger of being shaken, sacraments, deemed the most sacred, were profaned; vows disregarded, vaunted secrecy of the confessional covertly infringed, and its sanct.i.ty abused to an unhallowed purpose; while even private visitation was converted into a channel for temptation, and made the occasion of unholy freedom of words and manner. So ran the account of evil and a dire account it was. By it, all serious thoughts of religion were well nigh extinguished. The influence was fearful and polluting, the whirl of excitement inexpressible: I cannot enter into minute particulars here, every sense of feminine delicacy and womanly feeling shrink from such a task. This much, however, I can say that I, in conjunction with two other young friends, took a journey to a confessor, an inmate of a religious house, who lived at some distance, to lay the affair before him; thinking that he would take some remedial measures adequate to the urgency of the case. He heard our united statements, expressed great indignation, and, at once, commended us each to write and detail the circ.u.mstances of the case to the Bishop of the district. This we did; but of course, never heard the result. The reminiscences of these dreary and wretched months seem now like some hideous and guilty dream. It was actual familiarization with unholiest things! (page 63.)

"The romish religion teaches that if you omit to name anything in confession, however repugnant or revolting to purity, which you even doubt having committed, your subsequent confessions are thus rendered null and sacrilegious; while it also inculcates that sins of thought should be confessed in order that the confessor may judge of their mortal or venial character. What sort of a chain this links around the strictly conscientious I would attempt to portray, if I could. But it must have been worn to understand its torturing character! Suffice it to say that, for months past, according to this standard, I had not made a good confession at all! And now, filled with remorse for my past sacrilegious sinfulness, I resolved on making a new general confession to the _religieux_ alluded to.

But this confessor's scrupulosity exceeded everything I had, hitherto, encountered. He told me some things were mortal sins, which I had never before imagined could be such: and thus threw so many fetters around my conscience, that a host of anxieties for my first general confession was awakened within me. I had no resource then, but to re-make that, and thus I afresh entered on the bitter path I had deemed I should never have occasion again to tread. But if my first confession had lacerated my feelings, what was it to this one? Words have no power, language has no expression to characterise the emotion that marked it!

"The difficulty I felt in making a full and explicit avowal all that distressed me, furnished my confessor with a plea for his a.s.sistance in the questioning department, and fain would I conceal much of what pa.s.sed then, as a foul blot on my memory. I soon found that he made mortal sins of what my first confessor had professed to treat but lightly, and he did not scruple to say that I had never yet made a good confession at all. My ideas therefore became more complicated and confused as I proceeded, until, at length, I began to feel doubtful of ever accomplis.h.i.+ng my task in any degree satisfactorily: and my mind and memory were positively racked to recall every iota of every kind, real or imaginary, that might, if omitted, hereafter be occasion of uneasiness. Things heretofore held comparatively trifling were recounted, and p.r.o.nounced d.a.m.nable sins: and as, day after day, I knelt at the feet of that man, answering questions and listening to admonitions calculated to bow my very soul to the dust, I felt as though I should hardly be able to raise my head again!" (page 63.)

This is the peace which flows from auricular confession. I solemnly declare that except in a few cases, in which the confidence of the penitents is bordering on idiocy, or in which they have been transformed into immoral brutes, nine-tenths of the mult.i.tudes who go to confess, are obliged to recount some such desolate narrative as that of Miss Richardson, when they are sufficiently honest to say the truth.

The most fanatical apostles of auricular confession cannot deny that the examination of conscience, which must precede confession, is a most difficult task; a task which, instead of filling the mind with peace, fills it with anxiety and serious fears. Is it then only after confession that they promise such peace? But they know very well that this promise is also a cruel deception ... for to make a good confession, the penitent has to relate not only all his bad actions, but all his bad thoughts and desires, their number, and various aggravating circ.u.mstances. But have they found a single one of their penitents who was certain to have remembered all the thoughts, the desires, all the criminal aspirations of the poor sinful heart? They are well aware that to count the thoughts of the mind for days and weeks gone by, and to narrate those thoughts accurately at a subsequent period, are just as easy as to weigh and count the clouds which have pa.s.sed over the sun, in a three days storm, a month after that storm is over. It is simply impossible, absurd! This has never been, this will never be done.

But there is no possible peace so long as the penitent _is not sure_ that he has remembered, counted and confessed every past sinful thought, word and deed. It is then impossible, yes! it is morally and physically _impossible_ for a soul to find peace through auricular confession. If the law which says to every sinner: "You are bound, under pain of eternal d.a.m.nation, to remember all your bad thoughts and confess them to the best of your memory", were not so evidently a satanic invention, it ought to be put among the most infamous ideas which have ever come out from the brain of fallen man. For, who can remember and count the thoughts of a week, of a day, nay, of an hour of his sinful life?

Where is the traveller who has crossed the swampy forests of America, in the three months of a warm summer, who could tell the number of musquitoes which have bitten him and drawn the blood from the veins?

What should that traveller think of the man who, seriously, would tell him: "You must prepare yourself to die, if you do not tell me, to the best of your memory, how many times you have been bitten by the musquitoes, the last three summer months, when you crossed the swampy lands along the sh.o.r.es of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers?

Would he not suspect that his merciless inquirer had just escaped from a lunatic asylum?

But it would be much more easy for that traveller to say how many times he has suffered from the bitings of the musquitoes, than for the poor sinner to count the bad thoughts which have pa.s.sed through his sinful heart, through any period of his life.

Though the penitent is told that he must confess his thoughts only according to his _best_ recollection,--he will _never, never_ know if he has done his _best_ efforts to remember everything: he will constantly fear lest he has not done his _best_ to count and confess them correctly.

Every honest priest will at once admit that his most intelligent and pious penitents, particularly among women, are constantly tortured by the fear of having omitted to disclose some sinful deeds or thoughts. Many of them, after having already made several general confessions, are constantly urged by the p.r.i.c.king of their conscience, to begin afresh, in the fear that their first confessions had some serious defects. Those past confessions, instead of being a source of spiritual joy and peace, are, on the contrary, like, so many Damocles' swords, day and night suspended over their heads, filling their souls with the terrors of an eternal death! Sometimes the terror-stricken consciences of those honest and pious women tell them that they were not sufficiently contrite; at another time, they reproach them for not having spoken sufficiently plain on some things fitter to make them blush.

On many occasions, too, it has happened that sins which one confessor had declared to as venial, and which had long ceased to be confessed, another more scrupulous than the first would declare to be d.a.m.nable. Every confessor thus knows perfectly well that he proffers what is flagrantly false every time he dismisses his penitents, after confession, with the salutation:--"Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee."

But it is a mistake to say that the soul does not find peace in auricular confession: in many cases, peace is found. And if the reader desires to learn something of that peace, let him go to the grave-yard, open the tombs, and peep into the sepulchres. What awful silence! What profound quiet! What terrible and frightful peace! You hear not even the motion of the worms that creep in, and the worms that creep out, as they feast upon the dead carcase! Such is the peace of the confessional! The soul, the intelligence, the honor, the self-respect, the conscience, are there sacrificed. There they must die! Yes, the confessional is a veritable tomb of human conscience, a sepulchre of human honesty, dignity and liberty; the grave-yard of human soul! By its means, man, whom G.o.d hath made in his own image, is converted into the likeness of the beast that perishes; woman, created by G.o.d to be the glory and help-mate of man, is transformed into the vile and trembling slave of the priest. In the confessional, man and woman attain to the highest degree of popish perfection: they become as dry sticks, as dead branches, as silent corpses, in the hands of their confessors. Their spirits are destroyed, their consciences are stiff, their souls are ruined.

This is the supreme and perfect result achieved, in its highest victories, by the Church of Rome.

There is, verily, peace to be found in auricular confession--yes, but it is the peace of the grave!

CHAPTER IX.

THE DOGMA OF AURICULAR CONFESSION A SACRILEGIOUS IMPOSTURE.

Both Roman Catholics and Protestants have fallen into very strange errors in reference to the words of Christ: "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; _and_ whose soever _sins_ ye retain, they are retained." (St. John xx. 23.)

The first have seen in this text the inalienable attributes of G.o.d of forgiving and retaining sins transferred to sinful men; the second have most unwisely granted their position, even while attempting to refute their errors.

A little more attention to the translation of the 3rd and 6th verses of chapter xiii. of Leviticus by the Septuagint would have prevented the former from falling into their sacrilegious errors, and would have saved the latter from wasting so much time in refuting errors which refute themselves.

Every one knows that the Septuagint Bible was the Bible that was generally read and used by Jesus Christ and the Hebrew people, in our Saviour's days.

Its language was evidently the one spoken by Christ and understood by his hearers. When addressing his apostles and disciples on their duties towards the spiritual lepers to whom they were to preach the ways of salvation, Christ constantly followed the very expression of the Septuagint. It was the foundation of his doctrine and the testimonial of his divine mission to which he constantly appealed: the book which was the greatest treasure of the nation.

From the beginning to the end of the Old and the New Testament, the bodily leprosy, with which the Jewish priest had to deal, is presented as the figure of the spiritual leprosy, sin, the penalty of which our Saviour had taken upon himself, that we might be saved by his death. That spiritual leprosy was the very thing for the cleansing of which he had come to this world--for which he lived, suffered and died. Yes! the bodily leprosy with which the priests of the Jews had to deal, was the figure of the sins which Christ was to take away by shedding his blood, and with which his apostles were to deal till the end of the world.

When speaking of the duties of the Hebrew priests towards the leper, our modern translations say: (Lev. xiii. v. 6.) "They will p.r.o.nounce him clean"

or (v. 3d.) "They will p.r.o.nounce him unclean."

But this action of the priests was expressed in a very different way by the Septuagint Bible, used by Christ and the people of his time. Instead of saying, "The priest shall p.r.o.nounce the leper clean," as we read in our Bible, the Septuagint version says, "The priest shall clean (_katharei_,) or shall unclean (_mianei_,) the leper.

No one had ever been so foolish, among the Jews, as to believe that because their Bible said _clean_, (_katharei_) their priests had the miraculous and supernatural power of taking away and curing the leprosy: and we nowhere see that the Jewish priests ever had the audacity to try to persuade the people that they had ever received any supernatural and divine power to "cleanse" the leprosy, because their G.o.d through the Bible, had said of them: "They will cleanse the leper." Both priest and people were sufficiently intelligent and honest to understand and acknowledge that by that expression, if was only meant that the priests had the legal right to see if the leprosy was gone or not, they had only to look at certain marks indicated by G.o.d Himself, through Moses, to know whether, or not, G.o.d had cured the leper before he presented himself to his priest. The leper, cured by the mercy and power of G.o.d alone, before presenting himself to the priest, was only declared to be clean by that priest. Thus the priest was said, by the Bible, to "clean" the leper, or the leprosy;--and, in the opposite case, to "unclean." (Septuagint, Leviticus xiii. v. 3. 6.)

Now, let us put what G.o.d has said, through Moses, to the priests of the old law, in reference to the bodily leprosy, face to face with what G.o.d has said, through his Son Jesus, to his apostles and his whole church, in reference to the spiritual leprosy from which Christ has delivered us on the cross.

Septuagint Bible, Levit. xiii. New Testament, John xx., 23.

"And the Priest shall look on the "Whose soever sins ye remit, they plague, in the skin of the flesh, are remitted unto them; and whose and when the hair in the plague is soever sins ye retain, they are turned white, and the plague in retained."

sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him and UNCLEAN HIM (_mianei_). "And the Priest shall look on him again the seventh day, and if the plague is somewhat dark and does not spread on the skin, the Priest shall CLEAN HIM (_katharei_): and he shall wash his clothes and BE CLEAN," (katharos.)

The a.n.a.logy of the diseases with which the Hebrew priests and the disciples of Christ had to deal, is striking: so the a.n.a.logy of the expressions prescribing their respective duties is also striking.

When G.o.d said to the priests of the Old Law, "You shall clean the leper,"

and he shall be "cleaned," or, "you shall unclean the leper," and he shall be "uncleaned," He only gave the legal power to see if there were any signs or indications by which they could say that G.o.d had cured the leper before he presented himself to the priest. So, when Christ said to his apostles and his whole church, "Whose soever sins ye shall forgive, shall be forgiven unto them," He only repeated what Moses had said in an a.n.a.lagous case: He only gave them the authority to say when the spiritual lepers, the sinners, had reconciled themselves to G.o.d, and received their pardon from Him and Him alone, previous to their coming to the apostles.

It is true that the priests of the Old Law had regulations from G.o.d, through Moses, which they had to follow, by which they could see and say whether, or not, the leprosy was gone.

"If the plague spread not on the skin ... the priest shall clean him ...

but if the priest see that the scab spread on the skin, it is leprosy: he shall "unclean" him. (Septuagint, Levit. xiii. 3. 6.)