Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

“ But there, in that confessional-box, I was not the servant of Christ, to follow His divine, saving words, and obey the dictates of my honest conscience. I was the slave of the Pope! I had to stifle the cry of my conscience, to ignore the inspirations of my God! There, my conscience had no right to speak; my intelligence was a dead thing! The theologians of the Pope, alone, had a right to be heard and obeyed! I was not there to save, but to destroy; for, under the pretext of purifying, the real mission of the confessor, often in spite of himself, is to scandalize and damn the souls. ”

“ How many times I have wept as a child when some noble-hearted and intelligent young girl, or some respectable married woman, yielding to the sophisms with which I, or some other confessor, had persuaded them to give up their self-respect, their womanly dignity, to speak with me on matters on which a decent woman would never say a word with a man! They told me of their invincible repugnance, their horror of such questions and answers, and they asked me to have pity on them. Yes! I often wept bitterly on my degradation when a priest of Rome! ”

“ Apostles and disciples of Christ, wherever you will hear, on this land of sin and misery, the cry of the Prodigal Son: "I will arise and go to my Father" every time you see him, not at your feet, but at the feet of his true Father, crying: "Father I have sinned against thee," unite your hymns of joy to the joyful songs of the angels of God; repeat into the ears of that redeemed sinner the sentence just fallen from the lips of the Lamb, whose blood cleanses us from all our sins; say to him, "Thy sins are forgiven." ”

“ The Gospel says that the husband is to his wife what Christ is to His Church! Is it not, then, a most sacrilegious iniquity for a wife to look to another rather than to her own husband for such advice, wisdom, strength, and life, as he is entitled, qualified, and ready to afford? As no other has the right to her love, so no other man has any right to her absolute confidence. As she becomes an adulteress the day that she gives her body to another man, is she any the less an adulteress, the day that she gives her confidence and trusts her soul to a stranger? ”

“ But if those honest attempts, on the part of some well-meaning popes, to punish the confessors who destroy the purity of their penitents, have failed to touch the guilty parties, they are, in the good providence of God, infallible witnesses to tell to the world that auricular confession is nothing else than a snare to the confessor and his dupes. Yes, those Bulls of the popes are an irrefragable testimony that auricular confession is the most powerful invention of the devil to corrupt the heart, pollute the body, and damn the soul of the priest and his female penitent! ”

“ O, mothers and daughters, instead of going to the priest for pardon and salvation, go to Jesus, who is so pressingly inviting you, and the more so as you have more need of divine help and grace. Even if you are as great a sinner as Mary Magdalene you can, like her, wash the feet of the Saviour with the flowing tears of your repentance and your love, and like her, receive the pardon of your sins. ”

“ On one side, the nations who allow the woman to be degraded and enslaved at the feet of the confessor—France, Spain, Romish Ireland, Mexico, &c., &c.—are, there, fallen into the dust, bleeding, struggling, powerless, like the sparrow whose entrails are devoured by the vulture. On the other side, see how the nations whose women go to wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb are soaring up, as on eagle wings, in the highest regions of progress, peace, and liberty! ”

“ The confessor has become the only infallible ruler in the conquered place—nay, he has become its only God—for it is in the name of God that he has besieged, stormed, and conquered it, it is in the name of God that, hereafter, he will speak and be obeyed.
No human words can adequately give an idea of the irreparable ruin which follows the successful storming and unconditional surrender of the once so noble fortress. The longer the resistance has been, the more terrible and complete is the destruction of its beauty and strength ”

“ The more auricular confession is practised, the more the laws of public and private morality are trampled under feet. The husband wants his wife to be his—he does not, and could not, consent to share his authority over her with anybody: he wants to be the only man who will have her confidence and her heart, as well as her respect and love. And so, the very moment that he anticipates the dark shadow of the confessor coming between him and the woman of his choice, he prefers silently to shrink from entering into the sacred bond ”

“ In spite of herself, she admits that there is real danger in confession, both for the woman and for the priest; that willingly or otherwise, and sometimes both unawares, they lay for each other dangerous snares. The Church of Rome, as if she had an evil conscience for allowing her priest to hold such close and secret converse with a woman, on such delicate subjects, keeps, as it were, a watchful eye on him while the poor misguided woman is pouring in his ear the filthy burthen of her soul ”

“ The only feelings I have are of supreme compassion and pity. I do not reveal these awful things to make the world believe that the priests of Rome are a worse set of men than the rest of the innumerable fallen children of Adam. No, I do not entertain any such views; for, everything considered and weighed in the balance of religion, charity, and common sense—I think that the priests of Rome are far from being worse than any other set of men who would be thrown into the same temptations, dangers and unavoidable occasions of sin. ”

“ But what a wretched life that of those exceptional noble souls, which Rome keeps in the dark dungeons of her superstition! They read in all their books, and hear from all their pulpits, that if they conceal a single sin from their confessors they are for ever lost! But, being absolutely unable to trample under their feet the laws of self-respect and decency which God Himself has impressed in their souls, they live in constant dread of eternal damnation. ”

“ In the confessional every thing is corruption of the lowest grade. There, the girl's thoughts, lips, hearts and souls are forever polluted. Do I need to prove you this? No! for though you have given up, long since auricular confession, as below the dignity of man, you have not forgotten the lessons of corruption which you have received from it. Those lessons have remained on your souls as the scars left by the red hot iron upon the brow of the slave to be a perpetual witness of his shame and servitude. ”

“ But the priest of Rome is bound, by the most ridiculous and impious oath of celibacy, to remain ignorant of the very things which are the daily objects of his inquiries, observations, and thoughts! The priest of Rome has sworn never to taste of the fruits with which he feeds, his imagination, his memory, his heart, and his soul day and night! The physician is honest in the performance of his duties; but the priest of Rome becomes in fact a perjured man every time he enters the confessional-box. ”

“ But the betrayed husband knows nothing of the dark mysteries of auricular confession; the duped father suspects nothing; a cloud from hell has obscured the intelligence of both, and made them blind. It is just the contrary: husbands and fathers, friends and relations, feel edified and pleased with the touching spectacle of the piety of Madam and Miss ——. In the village, as well as in the city, every one has a word to speak in their praise. Mrs. —— is so often seen humbly prostrated at the feet, or by the side, of her confessor! ”

“ Thus it is that that stupendous imposture, the dogma of auricular confession, does completely destroy all the links, the joys, the responsibilities, and divine privileges of the married life, and transforms it into a life of perpetual, though disguised, adultery. It becomes utterly impossible, in the church of Rome, that the husband should be one with his wife, and that the wife should be one with her husband: a "monstrous being" has been put between them both, called the confessor! ”

“ The unfortunate woman who lives an immoral life knows her profound misery; she often blushes and weeps over her degradation; she hears from every side voices which call her out of those ways of perdition. Almost at every hour of day and night the cry of her conscience warns her against the desolation and suffering of an eternity passed far away from the regions of holiness, light, and life. ”

“ All the notions of modesty, purity, and womanly self-respect and delicacy, are set aside and forgotten to propitiate the god of Rome. In the confessional the woman is told, and she believes, that there is no sin for her in hearing things which would make the vilest blush—no sin to say things which would make the most desperate villain of the streets of London to stagger—no sin to converse with her confessor on matters so filthy that if attempted in civil life would for ever exclude the perpetrator from the society of the virtuous. ”

“ The wife, then, has two lords and masters, whom she must love, respect, and obey. Will she not give the best part of her love, respect, and submission to the one who is as much above the other as the heavens are above the earth? But as one cannot serve two masters together, will not the master who prepares and fits her for an eternal life of glory, certainly be the object of her constant, real, and most ardent love, gratitude, and respect, when the worldly and sinful man to whom she is married will have only the appearance or the crumbs of those sentiments? ”

“ If Christ has not come to deceive the world through His Apostle, must not the wife go to her husband for advice? Ought she not to expect from him, and him alone, after God, the light she wants and the consolation she is in need of? Is it not to her husband, and to him alone, after God, she ought to look in her days of trial for help? Is it not under his leadership alone she must fight the battle of life and conquer? ”

“ Husbands and fathers, who rightly value the honor of your wives and daughters more than all treasures, who consider it too precious a boon to be exposed to the dangers of pollution, and who would prefer to lose your life a thousand times than to see those you love most on earth fall in the snares of the seducer, read once more and ponder what your church asks the priest after he has heard your wife or daughter in confession: "Have you not, either during or after confession, done or said anything with a diabolical intention of seducing your female penitents?" ”

“ Every one knows that the spiritual slavery and degradation of the Irish woman has no bounds. After she has been enslaved and degraded, she, in turn, has enslaved and degraded her husband and her sons. Ireland will be an object of pity; she will be poor, miserable, riotous, blood-thirsty, degraded, so long as she rejects Christ, to be ruled by the father confessor planted in every parish by the Pope. ”

“ 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 passions 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! ”

“ But what are the priests of Rome doing in the confessional? Do they not pass the greatest part of their time in questioning females, old and young, and hearing their answers, on those very matters? If it were a crime, punishable by law, to present those questions in a book, is it not a crime far more punishable by law to present those very things to married and unmarried women through the auricular confession? ”

“ The poor, unprotected girl is thus thrown into the power of the priest, soul and body, to be examined on all the sins she may ignore, or which, through shame, she may conceal! On what boundless sea of depravity the poor fragile bark is launched by the priest! On what bottomless abysses of impurities she will have to pass and travel, in company with the priest alone, before he will have interrogated her on all the sins she may ignore, and which she may have concealed through shame!! ”

“ But, as it is through woman that the Pope wants to conquer the world, it is supremely important that he should enslave and degrade her by keeping her at his feet as his footstool, that she may become a passive instrument in the accomplishment of his vast and profound scheme.
In order perfectly to master women in the higher circles of society, every confessor is ordered by the Pope to learn the most complicated and perfect strategy. ”

“ After twenty-five years of hearing the confessions of the common people and of the highest classes of society, of the laymen and the priests, of the grand vicars and bishops and the nuns, I conscientiously say before the world that the immorality of the confessional is of a more dangerous and degrading nature than that which we attribute to the social evil of our great cities. The injury caused to the intelligence and to the soul in the confessional, as a general rule, is of a more dangerous nature and more irremediable, because it is neither suspected nor understood by its victims. ”

“ Perhaps the world has never seen a more terrible, desperate, solemn struggle than the one which is going on in the soul of the poor trembling young woman, who, at the feet of that man, has to decide whether or not she will open her lips on those things which the infallible voice of God, united to the no less infallible voice of her womanly honour and self-respect, tell her never to reveal to any man! ”