Auricular Confession and Popish Nunneries Part 2

Pen. Why, yes; I like cousin A. or R. greatly.

Con. Did you ever like to sleep with him?

Pen. Oh, no.

Con. How long did these thoughts about men continue?

Pen. Not very long.

Con. Had you these thoughts by day, or by night?

Pen. By----!!!!!

In this strain does this reptile confessor proceed till his now half-gained prey is filled with ideas and thoughts, to which she has been hitherto a stranger. He tells her that she must come to-morrow again. She accordingly comes, and he gives another twist to the screw, which he has now firmly fixed upon the soul and body of his penitent.

Day after day, week after week, and month after month does this hapless girl come to confession, until this wretch has worked up her pa.s.sions to a tension almost snapping, and then becomes his easy prey. I cannot as I before stated, detail the whole process by which a Romish confessor debauches his victims in the confessional, but if curiosity, or any other motive creates in the public mind a desire to know all the particulars about it, I refer them to Antoine's Moral Theology, which I have read in the college of Maynooth, or to Den's treatise, "De _Peccatis_" which I have read in the same college, and in the same cla.s.s with _some of the Romish priests now in this country_, hearing confessions perhaps at the moment I write, and debauching their penitents, aye even in New England, the land of the pilgrims! In those books I have mentioned, they will find the obscene questions which are put by priests and bishops of the Romish church, to all women, young and old, married or single; and if any married man, or father, or brother, will, after the perusal of these questions, allow his wife, his daughter, or his sister, ever again to go to confession, I will only say that his ideas of morality are more vague and loose than those of the heathen or the Turk. Christian he should not be called, who permits these deeds in our midst. I beg here to lay before my readers an extract from a work, recently published in Paris, ent.i.tled, "Auricular Confession and Direction." The work is written by M. Michelet, one of the most distinguished writers in France. It has been noticed in the last number of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and in that admirably conducted press, the Boston Courier.

The following is given as the mysterious opening of the book:!!!!!

"The family is in question;

'That home where we would all fain repose, alter so many useless efforts, so many illusions destroyed.

'We return home very wearied--do we find repose there?

'We must not dissimulate--we must frankly confess to ourselves the real state of things. There exists in the bosom of society--in the family circle--a serious dissension, nay, the most serious of all dissensions.

'We may talk with our mothers, our wives or our daughters, on all those matters about which we talk with our acquaintances: on business, on the news of the day, but not at all on matters nearest the heart, on religion, on G.o.d, on the soul.

'Take the instant when you would fain find yourself united with your family in one common feeling, in the repose of the evening, round the family table; there, in your home, at your own hearth, venture to utter a word on these matters; your mother sadly shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, although silent, disapproves. They are on one side of the table, you on the other, alone.

'It would seem as if in the midst of them, opposite to you, sat an invisible man to contradict what you say.'

"The invisible enemy here spoken of, is the priest. The reviewer proceeds!!!!!

'The priest, as confessor, possesses the secret of a woman's soul; he knows every half-formed hope, every dim desire, every thwarted feeling.

The priest, as spiritual director, animates that woman with his own ideas, moves her with his own will, fas.h.i.+ons her according to his own fancy. And this priest is doomed to celibacy. He is a man, but is bound to pluck from his heart the feelings of a man. If he is without faith, he makes desperate use of his power over those confiding in him. If he is sincerely devout, he has to struggle with his pa.s.sions, and there is a perilous chance of his being defeated in that struggle. And even should he come off victorious, still the mischief done is incalculable and irreparable. The woman's virtue has been preserved by an accident, by a power extraneous to herself. She was wax in her spiritual director's hands; she has ceased to be a _person_, and is become a _thing_.'

"There is something diabolical in the inst.i.tution of celibacy accompanying confession. Paul Louis Courrier has painted a fearful picture of the priest's position as an unmarried confessor; and as Courrier's works are far less read than they deserve to be, we make no scruple of transferring his powerful sentences to our pages.

'What a life, what a condition is that of our priests'? Love is forbidden them, marriage especially; women are given up to them. They may not have one of their own, and yet live familiarly with all, nay, in the confidential, intimate privity of their hidden actions, of all their thoughts. An innocent girl first hears the priest under her mother's wing; he then calls her to him, speaks alone with her, and is the first to talk of sin to her, before she can have known it. When instructed, she marries; when married, he still confesses and governs her. He has preceded the husband in her affections, and will always maintain himself in them. What she would not venture to confide to her mother, or confess to her husband, he, a priest, must know it, asks it, hears it, and yet shall not be her lover. How could he, indeed? is he not _tonsured?_ He hears whispered in his ear, by a young woman, her faults, pa.s.sions, desires, weaknesses, receives her sighs without feeling agitated, and he is five-and-twenty!

'To confess a woman! imagine what that is. At the end of the church a species of closet or sentry-box is erected against the wall, where the priest awaits in the evening, after vespers, his young penitent whom he loves, and who knows it; love cannot be concealed from the beloved person. You will stop me there: his character of priest, his education, his vow.... I reply that there is no vow which holds good, that every village _cure_ just come from the seminary, healthy, robust, and vigorous, doubtless loves one of his paris.h.i.+oners. It cannot be otherwise; and if you contest this, I will say more still, and that is, that he loves them _all_, those at least of his own age; out he prefers one, who appears to him, if not more beautiful than the others, more modest and wiser, and whom he would marry; he would make her a virtuous, pious wife, if it were not for the Pope. He sees her daily, and meets her at church or elsewhere, and sitting opposite her in the winter evenings, he imbibes, imprudent man! the poison of her eyes!

'Now, I ask you, when he hears that one coming the next day, and approaching the confessional, and when he recognizes her footsteps, and can say, 'It is she;' what is pa.s.sing in the mind of the poor confessor?

Honesty, duty, wise resolutions, are here of little use, without peculiarly heavenly grace. I will suppose him a saint: unable to fly, he apparently groans, sighs, recommends himself to G.o.d; but if he is only a man, he shudders, desires, and already unwillingly, without knowing it, perhaps, he hopes. She arrives, kneels down at his knees, before him whose heart leaps and palpitates. You are young, sir, or you have been so; between ourselves, what do you think of such a situation? Alone most of the time, and having these walls, these vaulted roofs, as sole witnesses, they talk; of what? alas! of all that is not innocent They talk, or rather murmur, in low voice, and their lips approach each other, and their breaths mingle. This lasts for an hour or more, and is often renewed.

'Do not think I invent. This scene takes place such as I describe it; is renewed daily by forty thousand young priests, with as many young girls whom they love, because they are men, whom they confess in this manner, entirely _tete-a-tete_, and visit, because they are priests, and whom they do not marry, because the Pope is opposed to it.'

"The priest has the spiritual care of her he loves; her soul is in his hands. He is connected with her by the most sacred ties; his interest in her he disguises to himself under the cloak of spiritual anxiety. He can always quiet the voice of conscience by an equivoque. The mystic language of love is also the mystic language of religion, and what guilt is shrouded under this equivoque, the history of priestcraft may show.

_Parler l'amour c'est faire l'amour_, is a profound truth. From the love of G.o.d, it is easy to descend to the love of man; especially when this man is a priest, that is to say, a mediator between the woman and G.o.d, one who says, 'G.o.d hears you through me; through me he will reply.'

This man whom she has seen at the altar, and there invested with all the sacred robes and sacred a.s.sociations of his office; whom she has visited in the confessional, and there laid bare her soul to him; whose visits she has received in her _boudoir_, and there submitted to his direction; this man, whom she wors.h.i.+ps, is supposed to be an idea, a priest; no one supposing him to be a man, with a man's pa.s.sions!

"M. Michelet's book contains the proofs of what I have just said; but they are too numerous to quote. I shall only borrow from his work the pa.s.sages he gives from an unexceptionable authority, Llorente."

'Llorente, a contemporary, relates (t. hi., ch. 28. article 2, ed. 1817) that when he was secretary to the Inquisition, a capuchin was brought before that tribunal, who directed a community of _beguines_, and had seduced nearly all of them, by persuading them that they were not leaving the road to perfection. He told each of them in the confessional that he had received from G.o.d a singular favor: "Our Lord," he said, "has deigned to show himself to me in the Sacrament, and has said to me, Almost all the souls that thou dost direct here are pleasing to me, but especially such a one, (_the capuchin named her to whom he spoke_.) She is already so perfect, that she has conquered every pa.s.sion, except carnal desire, which torments her very much. Therefore, wis.h.i.+ng virtue to have its reward, and that she should serve me tranquilly, I charge thee to give her a dispensation, but only to be made use of with thee; she need speak of it to no confessor; that would be useless, as with such a dispensation she cannot sin." Out of seventeen _beguines_, of which the community was composed, the intrepid capuchin gave the dispensation to thirteen, who were discreet for some length of time; one of them, however, fell ill, expected to die, and discovered everything, declaring that she had never been able to believe in the dispensation, but that she had profited by it.

'I remember,' said Llorente, 'having said to him: "But, father, is it not astonis.h.i.+ng that this singular virtue should have belonged exactly to the thirteen young and handsome ones, and not at all to the other four, who were ugly or old?" He coolly replied, "The Holy Spirit inspires where it listeth."

'The same author, in the same chapter, while reproaching the Protestants with having exaggerated the corruption of confessors, avows that, "In the sixteenth century, the Inquisition had imposed on women the obligation of denouncing guilty confessors, but the denunciations were so numerous, that the penitents were declared dispensed from denouncing."'

I should not have laid the above extract before the public, were I not well aware that such is the extraordinary infatuation of Americans on the subject of Popery and confession, that they may suspect my statements of exaggeration. This alone could induce me to give more than my own a.s.sertion for the truth of my statements, as no writer upon Popery knows more, or can relate more of _Auricular Confession and Direction_, than I can myself, of my own knowledge, and from my own personal experience. I shall not, however, ask American Protestants to take my naked word for anything which I may say on Popery. I shall substantiate all I a.s.sert by proofs from history.

The t.i.tle of Christian land should not be given to this country, nor to any country, which legalizes inst.i.tutions where deeds of darkness are sanctioned, and the foul debauchers of our youth, of our wives and our sisters, find a shelter.

Shall the cowl shelter the adulterous monk in this land of freedom?

Are the sons of freemen required to countenance, nay, asked to build impa.s.sable walls around a licentious, lecherous, profligate horde of foreign monks and priests, who choose to come among us, and erect little _fortifications_, which they call nunneries, for their protection? Shall they own by law and by charter places where to bury, hidden from the public eye, the victims of their l.u.s.t, and the murdered offspring of their concupiscence? Beware, Americans! There are bounds, beyond which sinners cannot go. Bear in mind the fact that the same G.o.d who can limit the sphere of an individual's crimes, can also limit those of a nation.

You have flourished. Take heed lest you begin to decay before you come to full maturity; and I regret to say, that symptoms of this are now apparent. Already can I see the hectic flush of moral consumption upon the fair face of America. Already can I see a demon bird of ill omen plunging its poisoned beak into the very vitals of your national existence, stopping here, and stopping there only to dip his wings in the life streams of your national existence, with the sole view of giving its spread more momentum, until it encompa.s.ses the whole length and breadth, centre and circ.u.mference of your country.

Infidelity is now fast careering and sporting over the whole face of our land, and if history has not deceived us, and our own personal experience has not been vain, it never moves, it never travels, it never exists, unaccompanied by political as well as moral death. Look at ancient Rome, how it fell in its pride! Look at France--how often it has tottered and stumbled in its beauty! Look at England at the present moment,--see how she trembles even in her strength. Think you that all these things were brought about by the causes to which the world would attribute them? What signifies the Texas question in the sight of G.o.d?

What the Oregon difficulties? what the trade with China? what the repeal brawlings? Such things would have happened if our "mother's cat had but kittened, and we ourselves had ne'er been born."

The decay of nations, the fall of thrones, are brought about by infidelity, by national insults to the G.o.d of nations, by the sins of the people against the King of glory; and how can this country, deeply steeped as it is, and darkly stained as it is, with the crime of aiding Popery, idolatry, and auricular confession; how can it expect, I repeat the words, that the moral breezes of heaven should breathe upon her, and restore to her again that strong and healthy const.i.tution, which her ancestors have left to her sons? No, no. It cannot be. You must, as the lawyers would say, stand "rectus in _curia_," before your G.o.d. Withdraw your countenance and your support from Popery. Touch not the unclean thing. Then, and not until then, can you raise clean hands and pure hearts to the throne of G.o.d, and ask for a blessing upon the United States and its territories.

But it may be replied, all you say of Popery in the _old_ countries may be true, but it is a different thing altogether in the United States.

This is a great error on the part of Americans, and I feel it my duty to correct it if possible. I am not surprised that, Americans should entertain ideas of this kind. I was once partly of that opinion myself, and, as I stated in a former page, I determined to visit this new and free country, in the hope--alas! it was a vain one--of finding true religion, and purity of life, even in the Roman Catholic church. I remember well, having consulted a friend on the propriety of such a course, he strongly dissuaded me from it, a.s.suring me that I would find Popery here essentially the same that it was in Europe, with this difference only, that the crimes and private lives of priests and bishops were more grossly immoral, and, though indirectly, more effectually sanctioned by the laws of the land. This, however, did not satisfy me, and accordingly, having received from my then ecclesiastical superior, what in church parlance is called _an Exeat_, (the doc.u.ment is in my possession, if any one wishes to see it,) or, as American theologians would term it, "a regular dismission" from the church where I officiated, I arrived in New York, in Nov., 18----. But the reader may well judge of my disappointment, when I found, on my arrival there, not altogether such Romish priests and bishops as I had left behind me,--for many of them were gentlemen by birth, and paid some regard to public decency, even in their profligacies; but a set of coa.r.s.e, vulgar, half educated, I may say, half civilized, Irish and French brutes, most of whom might be seen daily lolling in grog-shops, and electioneering among the lowest dregs of society. I have met but one exception to this, and that was the Reverend Wm. Taylor, who was then in New York.

Having stated to Taylor my object in coming over, I shall never forget the sad and sorrowful smile which but dimly lit up his naturally kind and cheerful countenance. "My friend," said he, "all your hopes in coming to this country will be disappointed. You must not stay in this city. Go into the country. Go to Albany; you may there see less of those scenes from which you have fled; and as I perceive your introductions from Europe to De Witt Clinton, are numerous and of the best kind, you will find much pleasure in the society of that excellent gentleman, and make up your mind either to leave this country, or to retire from the Romish church altogether. The latter I will do myself, but not without an effort to correct the abuses of Popery." This effort he has made, as I have stated in my _Synopsis of Popery, as it was and as it is_; but he lacked moral as well as physical courage to carry it through.

I lost no time in retiring to Albany. The legislature of the State of New York was then commencing its annual session, and though an entire stranger, so high were my testimonials, both from the Romish bishops, as a priest, and from private individuals, as a man of honor and correct deportment, that I was unanimously elected chaplain to the legislature, without any application on my part for such an appointment. I will not allude to the flattering attentions which were paid to me by the people of Albany, during my residence among them, which was only about six months. The public presses in that city, while I was there, bear witness to the fact. Even the Roman Catholics, some of whom were native Americans, left nothing undone to render me happy. My salary was more than I desired, and more than I wanted of them. As a body, I have no complaint to make against them, so far as money was concerned. Why then, it will be said, did you leave them? This too is a sad tale. But, as some of them are now living, justice even to them demands that I should state the cause which forced me to leave them.

The Roman Catholics of Albany had, during about two years previous to my arrival among them, three Irish priests alternately with them, occasionally preaching, but always hearing confessions. I know the names of these men; one of them is dead, the other two living, and now in full communion in the Roman church, still saying ma.s.s and hearing confessions. As soon as I got settled in Albany, I had of course to attend to the duty of _auricular confession_, and in less than two months found that those three priests, during the time they were there, were the fathers of between sixty and one hundred children, besides having debauched many who had left the place previous to their confinement. Many of these children were by married women, who were among the most zealous supporters of those vagabond priests, and whose brothers and relatives were ready to wade, if necessary, knee deep in blood for the holy, _immaculate infallible church of Rome_. There is a circ.u.mstance connected with this, that renders the conduct of these priests almost frightfully atrocious. There are in many of the Roman Catholic churches, things, as Michelet properly calls them, like sentry-boxes, called confessionals. These are generally situated in the body of the church, and priests hear confessions in them, though the priest and lady penitent are only separated by a sliding board, which can be moved in any direction the confessor pleases, leaving him and the penitent ear to ear, breath to breath, eye to eye, and lip to lip, if he pleases. There were none of these in the Romish church of Albany, and those priests had to hear confessions in the _sacristy_ of the church.

This is a small room back of the altar, in which the Eucharist, containing, according to the Romish belief, the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, is kept, while ma.s.s is not celebrating in the chapel. This room is always fastened by a lock and key of the best workmans.h.i.+p, and the key kept by the priest day and night. This sacristy, containing the wafer, which the priests blasphemously adore, was used by them as a place to hear confessions, and here they committed habitually those acts of immorality and crime of which I have spoken.

These details must be unpleasant to the reader; but not more so than they are to me. I see not, however, any other mode in which I can give Americans anything like a correct idea of that state of society which must be expected in this country, should the period ever arrive when Popery and Popish priests shall be in the ascendant. There are portions of Europe, and of South America, where parents well know that the children, who take their name, whom they are obliged to support, are only their legalized, but not their legitimate offspring; but so entirely brutalized are their feelings and notions of morality by the predominance of Popery among them, that these things are considered matters of little moment. I saw an instance of this very recently at a place called Hailappa, in Mexico. I met there a gentleman, a man of wealth, some distinction, and one who had travelled a good deal. Knowing that I intended leaving the place next day, he said he would introduce me to two Dominican friars, who were going to Vera Cruz, and were to travel in the same stage with me. In the course of conversation I observed to him, that the reputation of Dominican friars and Jesuits for morality, was not good in some parts of Europe which I had visited, and I wished very much to know how it stood in Mexico. He frankly replied, in very good Latin,--a language more familiar to me than the Spanish, or perhaps any other,--"they are not considered as a body very moral men in Mexico, but these reverend gentlemen to whom I will introduce you, bear a high character for morality. They do not trouble their neighbors'

wives and daughters; they have for years kept their _female friends_, and provided for their children." "Are they married, sir?" said I; though I of course knew the reverse from the fact of their being priests. "Oh no, sir," replied my Mexican acquaintance; "our _holy church_ does not allow that, but they are _chaste_ men." "What do you mean by chast.i.ty?" said I. "Living an _unmarried_ life," answered he promptly. In the course of that evening, I met with a respectable American citizen, a native of New Jersey; I asked him whether he knew these priests, naming them. He told me he did; that one of them kept _three sisters_, the eldest not over twenty-five years old, and that _he had children by each of them_, but was still reputed a good priest, and was, as far as he could discover, one of the best of them. The next day I obtained an introduction to these worthies, and travelled with them to Vera Cruz. They were dressed in their appropriate garb of sanct.i.ty, the crown of their heads being shaved close, and bearing marks of sanctimoniousness. It is well known that in the city of Mexico, and throughout that sham republic, Romish priests live habitually and publicly with the mother and daughter at the same time.

These are the men, and their code of moral law is that which Americans are fostering and encouraging, by contributing their money to the building of convents and Romish chapels throughout the United States.

Previous to my leaving Albany, many overtures were made to me by Roman Catholics to continue among them; but I peremptorily declined. The reader may well imagine the awkwardness of my position, and state of my feelings on this occasion. I could give the people no reason for my leaving them; my lips were sealed, my hands were bound, my voice was silent. I saw many worthy families on the brink of ruin, and I could not put forth a hand to save them. I saw their children almost in the jaws of the lion, but I dared not warn them of their danger. I saw their foes, in the garb of friends and moral guides, leading them into the recesses of guilt and crime, and I dared not utter a warning cry. I knew all in the _confessional_, and of course I was silent. The only resource left me was to leave these scenes, where the occurrences which I have stated had taken place; and I accordingly decided to make another trial of Popery, by proceeding on to Philadelphia, a city which, at that time, was preeminently distinguished for the virtues and morality of its people.

I expected that in a community so remarkably distinguished for the observance of all law, human and divine, as the city of Penn was, that even Papist priests and Jesuits might, at least, observe the externals of correct deportment; and, full of better hopes and brighter prospects, I hastened among them, and was received with a cordiality and hospitality truly flattering. Fortunately for this people, they had no bishop for some time previous to my arrival. The diocese was under the superintendence of a Vicar-general, a Jesuit, I think from Switzerland, named De Barth. This reverend gentleman had been settled in the interior of the State; and having there a _housekeeper and some nieces_, to whom he was _attached_, he visited the city of Philadelphia but seldom; owing to this circ.u.mstance, and to the fact that three or four friars and one Irish curate, who was in the city, had their own way in everything, the Popish congregation was comparatively quiet. American Protestants knew nothing of their private lives, knew nothing of the plans and schemes which they were laying to entrap their children, by suppressing the reading of the Bible, to perpetuate amongst them the seeds of moral death. Here, at least, I expected to find Popery as I fancied it before I was ordained a priest. Notwithstanding what I had witnessed immediately after my ordination in Europe; and though the death-knell, which announced the departure to the grave of a young and virtuous friend, had scarcely ceased to reverberate in my ears; though the knowledge that a human soul was launched into eternity by Jesuit l.u.s.t and poison, and that within the walls of a nunnery, was yet fresh in my mind; though all that occurred in Albany, under my own eye, and witnessed by the testimony of my own senses, the one twentieth of which I have not even alluded to; I still expected that I might find Popery what my early education represented to me, or, at least, that I might contribute to render it so, in this free country, by casting to the winds the legends and silly traditions of the Romish holy fathers, and subst.i.tuting in their place the Word of G.o.d.

I little thought that there lived a Romish priest or bishop, who, in a land of free thought and n.o.ble deeds, such as this was then, would dare prohibit the circulation of the Word of G.o.d. I little dreamed that the first opposition I should meet in my efforts to circulate the Bible should be in Philadelphia. Who could even fancy that Papists were so devoid of prudence, or so utterly reckless of consequences, as to proclaim, in the city of Penn, we will have no Bible? Though I knew well that Popery boasts of being always the same, that it never changes, I also knew that the _infallible church_ always yielded to _expediency_; and I thought, as a matter of course, ===that Americans were too courageous, and too virtuous a people, to permit Papists to proceed so far, at that early period of American history, as to close up the fountain and the source even of their political existence as a nation, and consequently that I should meet with no opposition from Papists in any effort which might bear upon the face of it any evidence of my intention to advance the cause of morals. But I was mistaken. Americans were not then free. They are, not free now. They had, it is true, shaken off the yoke of foreign dominion, but even then they were tamely harnessing themselves in stronger chains to a heavier yoke; even then they were pa.s.sively submitting to the dictation of Rome, and to the insolent bravado of Irish priests and bishops. I repeat it; they were not free then. They made their country free, as we are told by history, but it was not for themselves they made it free. It was done for foreigners; it was done for Papists, for Jesuits, for Dominicans, and their courtesans, Popish nuns. The day is not far distant,--I may not live to see it, nor do I desire to witness it,--when some historian may well apply to Americans that sentence in Virgil, which that beautiful pastoral poet applied to the yoked oxen: "_Sic vos non vobis jujum feratis boves_" Well indeed may this be applied to Americans; they have borne the yoke, they have toiled with it upon their necks in cultivating their fair fields of freedom, but, like the poet's oxen, the crop is not theirs. It belongs to foreign Papists and their _lord_, the Pope, King of Rome. Nor should I be in the least surprised, if, in less than thirty years, that thing called the Host, made of flour and water, and converted, by the mumbling of a few Latin words by a priest, into the G.o.d of glory, should be conveyed through that city, under a canopy of satin, supported by Popish priests, and guarded by a file of Popish dragoons, preceded by a trumpeter, announcing its approach, in order that the populace may uncover their heads, and fall upon their knees to adore this G.o.d of Popish manufacture. Base idolatry! And history will say of Protestant Americans,--Base people, to tolerate such profanations among you!

But, on reflection, why blame Americans? They knew little or nothing of Popery, except from history, and, in some histories, the picture given had two sides to it. One was fair and seductive; the other was stern and true. The former was exhibited with industry and care. It was sought for and gazed at with pleasure. The latter had comparatively but few worldly attractions, had no admirers but the votaries of truth, and, alas!

they were but few. Under these circ.u.mstances, how were Americans to be blamed? Knowing them well, I cannot become their accuser, but I can, without any disrespect towards them, pity them, and mourn over the delusion under which they labor, even though that delusion should be in part well earned.