Joseph McCabe

“ Sometimes they are women ‘with a history,’ which, in their morbid love of the secret conversation, they urge, freshly varnished and redecorated, upon every confessor they meet, and make him think that he has secured a Magdalen; frequently they are embryo novelists who deliberately concoct the most shameless stories in order to gratify their craving for that peculiar tête-à-tête which they have grown accustomed to in the confessional. ”

“ And it must be remembered that the subject of so much pain is often no real sin at all. The most unavoidable feelings and acts are confused with the most pernicious practices, and often regarded as ‘mortal sins.’
But a yet sadder category is the large number of girls who are actually corrupted by the practice of confession. Girls who would never dream of talking to their companions, even to their sisters or mothers, on certain points will talk without the least restraint to the priest. ”

“ No doubt a priest is often able to exert a good influence over his habitual penitent, but, on the other hand, large numbers of young people are encouraged in vice by the facility of absolution. I have been informed by penitents, on more than one occasion, that they have sinned more readily under the influence of the thought of confession. In certain monastic or quasi-monastic institutions the weekly confession to the chaplain does exercise a certain degree of influence, but even here nature has its revenge. ”

“ The attacks upon the confessional have usually defeated their own object by emphasizing too strongly the accidental rather than the inherent and essential evil of the institution. Dark stories—which may quite possibly be true as exceptional cases—are circulated in connection with it, and the impression is at once urged that such practices are a normal, or at least a large, part of what is hidden under the veil of secrecy. The generalisation is fatal, for the Catholic apologist has little difficulty in pointing out the impossibility of such a state of things ”

“ Whatever may be said of the general integrity of the priest’s life it may be safely admitted that the occasional transgressions of his vow in connection with the confessional have been grossly exaggerated. And one unfortunate feature of the excess is that it has withdrawn attention from the essential hideousness of the ‘tribunal of penance.’ For in point of fact nothing could be more degrading, to priest and penitent alike, than the practice of auricular confession. ”

“ They are bound to confess once every year; if they wish to pass as men of ordinary piety they confess every month or oftener; but in the whirligig of life the confessional is forgotten and has no influence whatever on their morality.
That the institution is a source of great power to the Church at large is easily understood: it creates a vast gulf between clergy and laity, and considerably accentuates the superiority of the former. ”

“ But within our own frontiers there is a large section of frequenters of the confessional, and a comparison of their average lives with those of their fellow citizens reflects no special credit upon their institutions as moral prophylactics. Liverpool and Glasgow are much more Catholic than Manchester or London: missionaries admit that they are much more immoral—setting apart the Parisian immorality of West London of which the missionary is blissfully ignorant. ”

“ It is bad enough for adult men and women to have to kneel weekly or monthly at the feet of a priest (usually one whom they know intimately) , and detail every unworthy thought and act into which they have been betrayed, but for girls and young women to discuss their inmost thoughts and feelings with a person of the opposite sex, is vicious and lamentable. If they are still of a refined character such a practice is a source of exquisite pain, and often leads either to duplicity or to actual debasement; if they are less refined already the temptation to abuse their condition is overpowering. ”

“ The temptation to conceal and the practice of concealing is so great that the Church commands the introduction of an extraordinary confessor every three months, and commands each monk or nun or cleric to present himself: in discharging that function I have not only met cases of long concealment, as might be expected, but I have known them to deliberately indulge their morbid tendencies in the prospect of my coming. ”

“ To compare Catholic countries against Protestant would be fruitless and unprofitable: there is not a country or city in the civilised world which has not its distinguished advocates for the title of ‘the most immoral.’ London, Christiania, and Berlin, if we must strike an average of opinions, are neither better nor worse than Paris, Rome, or Madrid. ”

“ If a priest learned from the confession of his servant that she had put poison in the wine he was to take for dinner, Catholic theology directs that he must not even change the bottle, but act precisely as if he had heard nothing. I never heard of a test case, though it is well known that there have been martyrs to the seal of confession. In minor matters, of course, the confessor interprets his obligation generously. ”

“ Unlike monastic life, the air of mystery and secrecy is a necessary evil of the confessional, and it is the characteristic which is most incentive to criticism. A Catholic layman cannot, of course, with delicacy enlarge upon his experience of the confessional, and, in any case, it would be too personal to be instructive or effective. No ex-priest has hitherto given his impressions of the institution ”

“ In the second place he is deprived of the power of absolving his accomplice—an attempt to do so is a sin reserved to the Pope, and, as every woman knows that such absolution is invalid, the misconduct is once more liable to come to the cognizance of the authorities. The second sin which is reserved to the Pope is a false denunciation of a confessor by a woman, so that one has a guarantee of the genuineness of such denunciations as are actually made. ”

“ The obligation of confessing commences at the age of seven years and is incumbent upon every member of the Church, clergy and laity alike, even on the pope, who has a simple harmless Franciscan friar serving him in that capacity. The theory is that the obligation of confessing commences when the possibility of contracting grave sin is first developed, and in the eyes of the Church of Rome the average child of seven is capable of meriting eternal damnation by its acts. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to add, in these enlightened days, that no money is ever exacted or received for absolution: the stories circulated by certain clerical travellers of lists of prices of absolution seen in Continental churches are entirely devoid of foundation—if any lists existed outside their heated imaginations they were probably lists of prices of chairs or of votive candles. ”

“ Confessions are also frequently heard at the private houses of the penitents. The Church does not sanction the practice with regard to people who are capable of attending church, but it is frequently necessary to hear the confessions of persons who are confined to bed. The priest is urged, in such cases, to leave doors open and take various precautions to avoid scandal, but those directions are seldom acted upon and would not be appreciated, as a rule, by the penitent herself. Cases are not unknown in which women have feigned or exaggerated illness for that purpose. ”

“ The conversation which ensues is much better imagined than described; for by some curious process of reasoning (assisted by the light of faith) the Church of Rome has deduced from certain words of Christ that the confessor must have a detailed knowledge of every serious transgression before he can give absolution.
Finally, there is a still more curious and pitiable category of victims of the sacrament of penance. A missionary priest who travels from parish to parish is often warned that he will get certain women to confession who must be handled very carefully ”

“ They are taught when young that such is the intention of Christ, that in the confessional every irregular movement (and to their vaguely disciplined moral sense the category embraces the whole of sexual physiology) must be revealed: they are reminded that nothing superfluous must be added, still that the sense of shame in the confessional must be regarded as a grave temptation of the evil one. ”

“ A girl will often try to fit in her less delicate transgressions between two common and more respectable peccadilloes, and only accuse herself in a general way of having been ‘rude,’ or immodest. No confessor can allow such a general accusation to pass: he is bound to recall her and question her minutely on the subject. ”

“ That indulgences are still practically sold cannot be denied for a moment: not that a written indulgence is now ever handed over for so much hard cash—such bargains have proved too disastrous to the Church—but papal blessings, richly indulgenced crosses and rosaries, &c., are well known rewards of the generous almsgiver. ”

“ Hence, in our own days, when the Church must provide a more rational basis for its tenets and institutions, the search for proofs of the divine institution of the practice is found to be more than usually difficult to the expert interpreters of the Church of Rome. ”

“ It may be added, too, that an ‘indulgence’ has no reference whatever to future sin, but is a remission of purgatorial punishment due to sin, already forgiven, which the Church of Rome believes herself empowered to give. ”

“ It is added in theological works that it is extremely imprudent to discuss such matters before seculars, but that is only part of the economia of the priest with regard to the laity, not a moral obligation. And amongst themselves priests discuss their interesting experiences very freely; the professor of casuistry is usually a man of wide experience who gives his students the full benefit thereof. ”

“ It may not be so directly productive of gross acts as is frequently supposed, but it has a corrosive, corruptive influence that marks it out as an object of horror to all save those who have been familiar with it from childhood. ”

“ The fact that from time immemorial ecclesiastical legislation has returned again and again to the question of priests’ servants is significant enough. The house to house visits of the priests, and the visits he receives, are also principally of ladies, for the priest is idle in the hours that the husband is employed. ”

“ Three or four hours continuous hearing I have found very exhausting, and a missionary has frequently to spend seven or eight hours per day in the box. Still there are many priests who manifest a positive predilection for the work, and they will sit for hours in their boxes waiting—one could not help comparing them to patient spiders—for the arrival of penitents. ”