Part 2

In the course of time the sons grew up, and their guardian purchased for both, in compliance with their wishes, and to gratify their youthful ambition, commissions in the army. The parting of these children, the breaking up of this fond trio of brothers and sister, was to the widowed mother another source of grief, and tended to concentrate, if possible, more closely all the fond affections of the mother upon her daughter. She became the joy of her heart. Her education while a child was an object of great solicitude, and having a fortune at her command, no expense was spared to render it suitable for that station in life, in which her high connections entitled her to move when she should become of age. The whole family were members of the Protestant church, as the Episcopal church is called in that country. As soon as the sons left home to join their respective regiments, which were then on the continent, the mother and daughter were much alone, so much so, that the fond mother soon discovered that her too great affection for her child and the indulgence given to her were rather impeding than otherwise her education. She accordingly determined to remove her governess, who up to this period was her sole instructress, under the watchful eye of the fond and accomplished mother herself, and send her to a _fashionable school for young ladies_. There was then in the neighborhood, only about twenty miles from this family, a _Nunnery_ of the order of Jesuits. To this nunnery was attached a school superintended by nuns of that order. The school was one of the most fashionable in the country. The nuns who presided over it, were said to be the most accomplished teachers in Europe. The expenses of an education in it were extravagantly high, but not beyond the reach of wealth and fashion. The mother, though a Protestant, and strict and conscientious in the discharge of all the duties of her church, and not without a struggle in parting with her child and consigning her to the charge of Jesuits, yielded in this case to the malign influence of _fashion_, as many a fond mother does even in this our own land of equal rights and far-famed, though mock equality--sent her beautiful daughter, her earthly idol, to the school of these nuns. Let the result speak for itself.

Up to the departure of the sons for the army, and this daughter for the nunnery, I had been ever from my infancy acquainted with this family, and had for them the highest respect and warmest attachment. The elder brother was about my own age, and only a few years between the eldest and the youngest child.

Soon after the daughter was sent to school, I entered the College of Maynooth as a theological student, and in due time was ordained a Roman Catholic priest by particular _dispensation_, being two years under the canonical age. An interval of some years passed before I had an opportunity of meeting my young friend again; our interview was under peculiar circumstances. I was ordained a Romish priest, and located where she happened to be on a visit. There was a large party given, at which, among many others, I happened to be present; and there meeting with my friend and interchanging the usual courtesies upon such occasions, she--sportively, as I then imagined--asked me whether I would preach her _reception sermon_, as she intended becoming a nun and taking the _white veil_. Not even dreaming of such an event, I replied in the affirmative. I heard no more of the affair for about two months, when I received a note from her designating the chapel, the day and the hour she expected me to preach. I was then but a short time in the ministry, but sufficiently long to know that up to the hour of my commencing to read Popish theology, especially that of _Dens_ and _Antoine de Peccatis_, I knew nothing of the iniquities taught and practised by Romish priests and bishops.

On the receipt of my friend's note, a cold chill crept over me; I anticipated, I feared, I trembled, I felt there must be foul play somewhere. However, I went according to promise, preached her reception sermon at the request of the young lady, and with the special approbation of the _Bishop_, whom I had to consult on such occasions.

The concourse of people that assembled on this occasion was very great. The interest created by the apparent voluntary retirement from the world of one so young, so wealthy and so beautiful, was intense, and accordingly the chapel in which 1 preached was filled to overflowing with the nobility and fashionables of that section of the country. Many and large were the tears which were shed, when this beautiful young lady cut off her rich and flowing tresses of hair. Reader, have you ever seen the description which Eugene Sue, in his Wandering Jew, gives of the lustrous, luxurious and rich head of hair worn by Charlotte De Cardoville, and shorn from her head by Jesuits, under the pretence that she was insane? If you have not, take the Wandering Jew, turn over its pages till you find it, and you will see a more accurate description of that shorn from the head of the young lady to whom I allude, than I can possibly give.

Turn back to the picture given by this same Eugene Sue, of the personal beauty, piety, charity, and many virtues of Mademoiselle De Cardoville, and you will have a correct portrait of this young lady of whom I speak. You may therefore easily judge, from her immolation upon the altar of fanaticism, or, more properly speaking, her personal sacrifice to the idol of Popish and Jesuit lust, the nature of that feeling which such an event must have produced in the mind of every Christian believer.

Having no clerical connection with the convent in which she was immured, I had not seen her for three months following. At the expiration of that time, one of the _lay sisters_ of the convent delivered to me a note. I knew it contained something startling.

These lay sisters among Jesuits, are spies belonging to that order, but are sometimes bribed by the nuns for certain purposes. As soon as I reached my apartments, I found that my young friend expressed a wish to see me _on something important_. I, of course, lost no time in calling on her, and being a priest, I was immediately admitted; but never have I forgot, nor can I forget, the melancholy picture of lost beauty and fallen humanity, which met my astonished gaze in the person of my once beautiful and virtuous friend. I had been then about eighteen months a Romish priest, and was not without some knowledge of their profligate lives; and therefore I was the better prepared for and could more easily anticipate what was to come. After such preliminary conversation as may be expected upon occasions of this kind, the young lady spoke to me to the following effect, if not literally so. I say _literally_, because so deep, and strong, and lasting was the impression made upon my mind, that I believe I have not forgotten one letter of her words.

"I sent for you, my friend, to see you once more before my death. I have insulted my God, and disgraced my family; I am in the _family way_, and I must die." After a good deal of conversation, which it is needless to repeat, I discovered from her confession the parent of this pregnancy, and that the _mother abbess_ of the convent advised her to take medicine which would effect abortion; but that she knew from the lay sister who delivered me the note, and who was a confidential servant in the convent, that the medicine which the mother abbess would give her should contain poison, and that the procuring abortion was a mere pretext. I gave her such advice as I could in the capacity of a Romish priest. I advised her to send for the bishop and consult him. "I cannot do it," said she. "My destroyer is my confessor." I was silent I had no more to say. I was bound by oath to be true to him. In vain did the noble sentiment even of the Pagan occur to me; a sentiment sanctioned almost by inspiration itself. It fled from my mind as smoke before the wind. I was one of the priests of the _infallible church_, and what was honor, what was honesty to me, where the honor of that infallible church was concerned? They were of no account; not worthy the consideration of a Romish priest for a second. The almost heavenly sentiment of the noble Pagan, "_Fiat justitia, mat coelum_," let justice be done even if the heavens were to fall, fled from my mind. I retired, leaving my friend to her fate, but promising, at her request, to return in a fortnight.

According to promise, I did return in a fortnight, but the foul deed was done. She was no more. The cold clay contained in its dread embrace all that now remained of that being, which, but a few months before, lived, and moved in all the beauty and symmetry of proportion; and that soul, once pure and spotless as the dew-drop of heaven, ere its contact with the impurities of earth, which a fond mother confided to the care of Jesuit nims, had been driven in its guilt and pollution into the presence of a just but merciful God. All, all, the work of Jesuits and Nuns!

This was the first check my Popish enthusiasm met with; and now for the first time did a doubt of the infallibility of the church of Rome enter my mind. After witnessing these events I could not help asking myself, can a church which sanctions and countenances such flagitious iniquities as I have just witnessed, be a Christian church? Can a body of men, who individually practise such deeds of blood, treachery and crime as those which I have seen, be, collectively, _infallible?_ Are these the men whom the Saviour commissioned, in a particular manner, to preach the gospel to every creature? Are these the men, as a body, with whom he promised to be always, even to the consummation of the world? Are these the men who collectively constitute an infallible church? If so, unprofitable indeed has been my life. It is high time to come out from among them; and if I cannot live the life of luxury and ease, of sin and crime which a Romish priest can live, let me, at least, live that of an honorable man, and a useful member of society.

These were some of my reflections; and accordingly, that evening, I called on the Right Reverend Protestant bishop of--------, with a view of making a public recantation of my belief in the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. But as chance would have it, he was out of town that week, and when next I made an effort to see him I found that effort in vain. I had not properly weighed the chains that bound me to Popery. I knew not their length, nor their strength. They were stronger than adamant, than steel. They were chains woven for me, in some measure, by beings that I loved. They were thrown around me and fastened to me by hands that I reverenced. They were the chains of early education. I could not break them; they were too strong for me. The force which alone could do this was the grace of God. This I had not. Until then I went about without faith in the world. I soon fell back, in a measure, into my former belief, but not without a resolution to examine more fully the nature of Popery itself, and the practices of its priests. It is well said, a drowning man will catch at straws. It occurred to me that, perhaps, all the crimes and iniquities committed by popes, priests and bishops, and sanctioned by the church of Rome, might be confined only to the old countries, where "use makes law," and that by leaving the old and coming to the new world, where the people made their own laws, and the human mind had its full swing, and thought is only bounded by its own interminable extent, I might find a different state of things. I fancied, at any rate, that man might worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without the interference, let or hindrance, save the inherent power and sovereignty of the people. I little supposed that a pure and enlightened people, such as Americans boast themselves, would sanction such institutions as those in which the young friend of whom I have spoken, lost her virtue, her honor and her life. But alas! how sadly have I been disappointed.

Europe is not the only portion of the world that contains legalized Sodoms. Its people are not the only people that support them. Its lawgivers are not the only men, nor its lawmakers the only ones, that make laws for them and give them charters. Its people are not the only people who contribute their time, their lands, their moneys, and who take almost from the necessaries of life, to support monk houses and nunneries, Jesuits and Dominicans. No, no. The new world, the new people, if I may say so, who boast of being the most enlightened people on the face of the earth,--these are the people who, in proportion to their number, contribute most to the support of Popish brothels, modestly called nunneries.

But it will be said that the young lady to whom 1 have alluded, has given no evidence of her being virtuous. As far as you tell us, she has made no resistance, and it is scarcely possible that one whom you have placed upon so high a prominence of virtue, could have so suddenly fallen into the depths of vice. This is all very plausible, and naturally to be expected from those who know nothing of _auricular confession_,--a Popish institution, one of the most ingenious devices ever invented by the great enemy of man, for the destruction of the human soul.

I am personally acquainted with several respectable Protestant Americans, both male and female, whose ideas of confession in the Romish church have often amused me, though not unaccompanied with feelings of grief and sorrow, at their unacquaintance with this, what may be called mantrap, or rather woman-trap in the Romish church.

American Protestants suppose that Popish confession means little more than that public confession of sin, which is made in all Protestant churches, or that which we individually make to Almighty God in our private chambers. Such may well inquire how this apparent sudden fall could have taken place. These inquiries will cease when I state that the young lady became a convert to Popery, and give my readers some idea of what _auricular confession_ is, and how it is made. Every Roman Catholic believes that priests have power to forgive sins, by virtue of which power any crime, however heinous, may be remitted. But in order to effect this, the sinner must confess to a priest each and every sin, whether of thought, word or deed, with all the circumstances leading to it, or following from it; and every priest who hears confessions, is allowed to put such questions as he pleases to his _penitent_, whether male or female, and he or she is bound to answer under pain of _eternal damnation_.

It is very difficult, I admit, to suppose that the daughter of a virtuous mother, and that mother a protestant too, brought up in the elegances of life, from her birth, breathing in no other atmosphere than that of the purest domestic morality, should be precipitated, in the short space of a year or two, from a state of unsullied virtue and innocence, to the veriest depth of crime; and it is a melancholy reflection to suppose a state of society, in which, by any combination of human events, the fond mother of a virtuous child could be made the instrument of that child's ruin. Such an event is scarcely possible in the eyes of Protestant Americans, and I feel a pride in believing, from my acquaintance with many of them, that if American mothers were aware of the existence of a society among them, whose object was to demoralize their children, shut out from them the noonday light of the gospel, and ultimately decoy them into the lecherous embraces of Romish priests and Jesuits; they would, to a woman, rise in their appropriate strength, and deliver our land from those legalized Sodoms called nunneries.

I will here take the liberty of showing them how the young friend to whom I have alluded, was debauched. The nunnery to which she was sent, as I have heretofore stated, had attached to it a _fashionable school_; all nunneries have such. The nuns who instruct in those schools in Europe, are generally advanced in years, descendants from the first families, and highly accomplished. Most, if not all of them, at an early period of life met with some disappointment or other. One perhaps was the daughter of some decayed noble family, reduced by political revolutions to comparative poverty, and now having nothing but the pride of birth, retired to a convent. She could not work, and she would not beg. Another, perhaps, was disappointed in love; the companion of her own choice was refused to her by some unfeeling, aristocratic parent. No alternative was left but to unite her young person with the remains of some broken-down debauchee of the nobility. She prefers going into a convent with such means as she had in her own right. Another, perhaps, like my young friend,--and this is the case with most of them,--was seduced, by some profligate priest while at school, degraded in her own eyes, unfitted even in her own mind to become the companion of an honorable man; seeing no alternative but death or dishonor, she goes into a convent. These ladies, when properly disciplined by Jesuits and priests, become the best teachers. But before they are allowed to teach, there is no art, no craft, no species of cunning, no refinement in private personal indulgences, or no modes or means of seduction, in which they are not thoroughly initiated; and I may say with safety, and from my own personal knowledge through the confessional, that there is scarcely one of them who has not _been herself debauched by her confessor_. The reader will understand that every nun has a confessor; and here I may as well add, for the truth must be told at once, that every confessor has a concubine, and there are very few of them who have not several. Let any American mother imagine her young daughter among these semi-reverend crones, called nuns, and she will have no difficulty in seeing the possibility of her immediate ruin. When your daughter comes among those women, they pretend to be the happiest set of beings upon earth. They would not exchange their situation for any other this side of heaven. They will pray. So do the devils. They will sing. So will the devils, for aught I know. Their language, their acts, their gestures, their whole conduct while in presence of thee scholars, or their visitors, is irreproachable.

The mother abbess, or superior of the convent, who invariably is the deepest in sin of the whole, and who, from her age and long practice, is almost constitutionally a hypocrite, appears in public the most _meek_, the most bland, the most courteous, and the most _humble_ Christian.

She is peculiarly attentive to those who have any money in their own right: she tells them they are beautiful, fascinating, that they look like angels, that this world is not a fit residence for them, that they are too good for it, that they ought to become nuns, in order to fit them for a higher and better station in heaven. Nothing more is necessary than to become a Roman Catholic and go to confession. Such is the apparent happiness, cheerfulness, and unalloyed beatitudes of the nuns, that strangers are pleased with them. They invariably make a favorable impression on the minds of their visitors. The inference is that they must be truly pious and really virtuous.

I had recently the honor of a conversation with a lady, who is herself one of the most accomplished and elegant women in the country, and who a few weeks previously had paid a visit to the Roman Catholic nunnery at--------, D. C. She spoke of the institution in the highest terms of commendation and was struck with the seeming content and cheerfulness of the lady managers, and could scarcely see why it was not a good place for the education of young ladies; but I will venture the assertion, that had this interesting lady known, as I do, the heartlessness with which crime was committed within its walls, she would fly from it, as from a den of thieves, or a city of plague. A peculiar coldness, a heartlessness not to be found elsewhere, nor under other circumstances, exists in Jesuit convents, to which order that of---------belongs. Nothing like it can be traced out in the records of the world's doings. And had I the talent to point it out,--could I fix it in a position, so as to stand out solitary and alone in its naked deformity, before heaven and before men,--instead of meriting the commendation of the accomplished mothers and daughters of our land, they would soon be left without support, and crumble to dust amid the brutalities which their silent walls alone have witnessed, and would proclaim to the world, had not the inanimate materials of which they are composed forbidden it.

When crimes are committed in open day, there is some palliation for them; but when committed in the dark, and in recesses ostensibly dedicated to virtue, they are marked with an atrocity, which God, or man, or woman cannot witness without shudders of horror. Such are those committed in Jesuit nunneries, and by those very Jesuit nuns who appear so happy, and so chaste, not only in the nunnery in--------, but in every nunnery throughout the world.

This it will be said, and has often been said, even by Christian mothers and Christian daughters, cannot be. They suppose that a sinner can never be happy, or even appear so. How little these people know of human nature! How perfectly unacquainted they are with the power of discipline, or force of education! Yet it would seem as if they should know better than to conclude hastily, that because nuns are cheerful and happy in appearance, they must be also chaste and virtuous. Many ol our American ladies have been in the East; some of them have been in Constantinople. I believe that one or two have visited the harem of the Emperor of Constantinople, and might have seen there numbers of ladies, accomplished in their own way, covered with crime and sin, yet cheerful and apparently happy. But show me the Christian lady, who ever witnessed this, that will not weep at the bare mention of the fact, that will not sigh for the conversion of the Turk and Mahomedan, who will not mourn the fate of her sisters--for sisters they are of the same family--thus degraded and still content:--all the result of circumstances, education and want of pure religion.

But these sympathizers with Turks, Mahomedans and Pagans have not a tear to spare for their sisters of the United States. Not a sigh escapes them for their relief. Not a dollar can they give to remove from our land that accursed thing, Popery--the primary and sole cause of all those evils. On the contrary, if Jesuits want to build a _nunnery_, the husband has no peace from his wife, the father from the daughter, the brother from the sister, the lover from his betrothed, until they make up money to build a nunnery for the _poor nuns_. Well, indeed, may I apply to such individuals the language of the Jesuit Rodin, in the Wandering Jew:--"_Fools, dolts, double dolts_." But Rodin was wrong. He was entirely premature in the use of these expressions; and I am not at all pleased with his depriving me of the opportunity of being first to apply those sweet-sounding terms to American Protestants,--a people who have done, and are still doing, more to merit them, than any other of the past or present age.