Confessional

“ If you call me a degraded man, because my soul, my mind and my heart were, as your own are to-day, plunged into the deep waters of iniquity which flow from the confessional, I confess 'Guilty!' I was degraded and polluted by the confessional just as you and all the priests of Rome are. ”

“ 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 it is not Nature's generous impulses, its tender yearnings, its noble aspirations, that the stricken conscience pours into the confessor's ear. The strugglings and writhings of the soul, the convulsive efforts to cast off an insupportable burden, to escape from an insufferable anguish, to find rest for itself in its weariness, peace for its warring passions, an answer and a solution to its doubts,—these are the events of the confessional. ”

“ I know nothing more corrupting than the law which forces a female to tell all her thoughts, desires, and most secret feelings and actions to an unmarried priest. The confessional is a school of perdition. ”

“ Miss —— remains so long in the confessional-box! they receive the holy communion so frequently; they both speak so eloquently and so often of the admirable piety, modesty, holiness, patience, charity, of their incomparable spiritual Father!
Every one congratulates them on their new and exemplary life; and they accept the compliment with the utmost humility, attributing their rapid progress in Christian virtues to the holiness of their confessor. He is such a spiritual man! ”

“ There is a burden on you that you can neither shake off nor bear as you wish. I know the cause of your trouble, and I hope you will not find fault with me if I help you to recover from that disagreeable mental condition. You have heard in the confessional the history of many great sins, but I know that this is not what troubles you. You are all old enough in the confessional to know the miseries of poor human nature. ”

“ In any other place than a confessional to talk about self at any length is an error; in the confessional it is a virtue. The truth is that pious Roman Catholic women find happiness in the confessional and try the patience of the priests by minute accounts of trifling or imaginary sins. No doubt confession places an immense power in the hands of the Church, but at an incalculable cost of patience. It is not felt to weigh unfairly on the laity, because the priest who to-day has forgiven your faults will to-morrow kneel in penitence and ask forgiveness for his own. ”

“ I will not say that some of those married ladies, who go to confession, are not virtuous women, but I will unhesitatingly say, that many of them have been ruined in the confessional, that they run a fearful risk in going there at all, and as it is truly said, "he that loves the danger, shall perish therein." ”

“ I do not see in the confessional so much an oppressive institution as a convenience for both parties. The woman gets what she wants,—an opportunity of talking confidentially about herself; and the priest gets what he wants,—an opportunity of learning the secrets of the household. ”

“ Read every day and all night, and when you are a man full grown, you will smile at the excesses of your contemporaries, at their divorces and disgraces. You will stand aloof like a second Aurelius, coining austere aphorisms and mocking the weakness of your unlearned fellows. Why are priests generally so inept in the confessional? ”

“ Thus the confession may be said to be made in public, for the rite is most frequently performed when there is a crowd assembled, so that persons nearest to the confessional can often distinctly hear much of what passes between the confessor and his penitent. Now, only consider the situation of a woman observed, at least, by so many witnesses, who, even though they do not hear her words, can, by the alteration of her features and visage, understand what emotions of mind she is enduring whilst undergoing the painful process. ”

“ More than once I have seen women fainting in the confessional-box, who told me, afterwards, that the necessity of speaking to an unmarried man on certain things, on which the most common laws of decency ought to have for ever sealed their lips, had almost killed them! ”

“ To suppose that, in the generality of cases the confessor can resist the temptations by which he is daily surrounded in the confessional, that he will constantly refuse the golden opportunities which offer themselves to him, to satisfy the almost irresistible propensities of his fallen human nature, is neither wisdom nor charity ”

“ 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. ”

“ The adaptation of the confessional to prepare the way for seduction and adultery may be comprehended by the following extract from the "Synopsis of Popery" by the same author. "Do any of these families," asks he, "know the questions which a priest puts to their families at the confessional? ”

“ It is offensive only to those whose hearts are so hardened as to blunt the sting of remorse. Confession is Christianity using its moral power to correct and perfect the individual. In the confessional the minister of God is continually coming in contact with hearts in which reigns an idol that he overthrows, a bad practice that he causes to cease, or some injustice that he has repaired. ”

“ The impressions forced upon my mind, far from being peculiar to myself, are shared by every Catholic Priest throughout the world charged with the care of souls. The testimony of ten experienced confessors ought, in my estimation, to have more weight in enabling men to judge of the moral tendencies of the confessional than the gratuitous assertions of a thousand individuals who have no personal experience of it, but who draw on their heated imaginations or on the pages of sensational novels for the statements they offer. ”

“ Here, by the way, the reader may advert to the fact that the confessional, of which mention is made, never comes in as part of the external means of moral development; nor is a superior ever the confessor of those under his charge, except when desired to be so by the free choice of the subordinate himself. ”

“ That the modesty of women should be placed on the rack in the confessional by a bachelor priest, full of curiosity as well as sanctity, and torn and lacerated, under the awful sanctions of the Almighty, is indeed a dreadful thought. ”

“ At first, in spite of herself, but soon with a real sensual pleasure, that fallen angel will think, when alone, on what she has heard and what she has said in the confessional-box. In spite of herself, the vilest thoughts will at first irresistibly fill her mind; and soon the thoughts will engender temptations and sins. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Would that respectable lady go any more to confess to that man if, after her confession, she could hear him lamenting the continual, shameful temptations which assail him day and night, and the damning sins which he has committed on account of what she has confessed to him? ”

“ The girls consider it an honor for themselves to associate with him. The opportunity is very favorable for him, for he is watched over by no jealous wife; and, as the father confessor and priestly adviser, he has opportunity at discretion to be alone with the women.8 The confessional must especially be a perilous rock for them. ”

“ We need not attempt to measure the comparative value of preaching and of hearing confessions. They are incommensurable. Each has its own proper character. But many have a great zeal and promptness to preach who are slow and tardy to sit in the confessional. ”

“ Well, then, how is it possible that our confessors dare to take away from us that holy, divine coat of modesty and self-respect? Has not Almighty God Himself made with His own hands that coat of womanly modesty and self-respect that we might not be to you and to ourselves a cause of shame and sin? ”

“ Most of them go to confess at the church of the Jesuits, who are glad to hear the cock-and-bull story invented by the student, and to cultivate his friendship by an easy penance and a liberal tone. This ingenuous young man of course despises the confessional. ”

“ This making your mother your confessor will not only keep you out of trouble, and give you light and direction along lines where you otherwise will be as blind as a young puppy, but it is good for you in a far more important way—a far profounder way. I have always been impressed with the wonderful understanding of human nature and the needs of it which the institution of the confessional in the Catholic Church reveals. "No man liveth to himself alone." ”

“ Good sense ought to make objectors remember that priests have mothers and sisters and relations whom they love; and priests would be the first to prevent these beloved ones from the demoralizing influences which enemies ignorantly attribute to the confessional. ”

“ There is a good number of Confessionals within them; and at one of these I saw, for the first time, two women, kneeling, in the act of confession to the same priest. "C'est un peu fort," observed our guide in an under-voice, and with a humourous expression of countenance! ”

“ But this is just the way the spiritual physician, with whom the devil enslaves and corrupts women, acts. When the fair, honest, and timid spiritual patient has come to her confessor, to show him the little sore she has on the small finger of her soul, the confessor is bound in conscience to suspect that she has other sores,—secret, shameful sores! ”

“ 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! ”

“ You would very likely call me a scoundrel for daring to question the honesty and purity of such holy men. You would perhaps go as far as to contend that it is utterly impossible for them to be guilty of such sins as are alluded to in the above question; that never such shameful deeds have been perpetrated through confession. And you would, maybe, emphatically deny that your confessor has ever said or done anything that might lead you to sin or even commit any breach of propriety or modesty. ”

“ There are fathers and mothers who don't like much to see their daughters alone with a man, behind a curtain, and who would certainly tremble for their honor and virtue if they knew all the abominable mysteries of confession. ”

“ But those shrewd casuists know too well that by such frank confession, they would soon lose their hold on Catholic populations, especially on women, by whom, through confession, they rule the world. They much prefer to keep their gripe on benighted minds, frightened consciences, and trembling souls. ”

“ But let us come to my first lesson in Auricular Confession, No! No words can express to those who have never had any experience in the matter, the consternation, anxiety and shame of a poor Romish child, when he hears his priest saying from the pulpit, in a grave and solemn tone; "This week, you will send your children to confession. Make them understand that this action is one of the most important of their lives, that for every one of them, it will decide their eternal happiness or ruin. ”

“ There they will see, with their own eyes, that, as a general thing, the confessor has more women to serve him than the Mormon prophets ever had. Let them read the memoirs of one of the most venerable men of the Church of Rome, Bishop de Ricci, and they will see, with their own eyes, that the confessors are more free with their penitents, even nuns, than husbands are with their wives. ”

“ There is nothing which she likes so much as to speak of his good qualities, his patience, his piety, his charity, she longs for the day when she will again go to confess, and pass a few hours by the side of that angelic man, in opening to him all the secrets of her heart, and in revealing all her ennuis. ”

“ When the day of going to confess comes, instead of being sad and uneasy and bashful, as she used to be formerly, she feels pleased and delighted to have a new opportunity of conversing on those matters, without impropriety and sin to herself; for she is now fully persuaded that there is no impropriety, no shame, no sin, nay, she believes, or tries to believe, that it is a good, honest, Christian, and godly thing to converse with her priest on those matters. ”

“ It requires the utmost charity in the confessors to prevent those unfortunate slaves of their secret passions from making sacrilegious confessions and communions. With the greatest prudence and zeal, he must question them on those matters; beginning with the smallest sins, and going, little by little, as much as possible, by imperceptible degrees, to the most criminal actions. ”