The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional Part 17

The Right Rev. Kenrick, late Bishop of Boston, United States, in his book for the teaching of confessors on what matters they must question their penitents, has the following, which I select among thousands as impure and d.a.m.nable to the soul and body:--

"Uxor quae, in usu matrimonii, se vert.i.t, ut non recipiat s.e.m.e.n, vel statim post illud acceptum surgit, ut expellatur, lethaliter peccat; sed opus non est ut diu resupina jaceat, quum matrix, brevi, s.e.m.e.n attrahat, et mox, arctissime claudatur" (vol. iii. p. 317).

"Puellae patienti licet se vertere, et conari ut non recipiat s.e.m.e.n, quod injuria ei immitt.i.tur; sed, exceptum, non licet expellere, quia jam possessionem pacificam habet, et haud absque injuria naturae ejiceretur"

(tom. iii. p. 317).

"Conjuges senes plerumque coeunt absque culpa, licet contingat s.e.m.e.n extra vas effundi; id enim per accidens fit ex infirmitate naturae. Quod si vires adeo sint fractae ut nulla sit seminandi intra vas spes, jam nequeunt jure conjugii uti" (tom. iii. p. 317).

Notes

[1] "To avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." (1 Cor. vii. 2.)

[2] A silver box containing consecrated bread, which is believed to be the real body, blood, and divinity of Jesus Christ.

[3] And remark that all their religious authors who have written on that subject hold the same language. They all speak of those continual degrading temptations; they all lament the d.a.m.ning sins which follow those temptations; they all entreat the priests to fight those temptations and repent of those sins.

[4] He is dead long ago.

[5] By the word _penitents_, Rome means not those who _repent_, but those who _confess_ to the priest.

[6] He died many years after when at the head of the Laval University.