Part 22

Before I enter on the disgusting subject of auricular confession, let me give the reader an idea of how it is made. And lest it may be questioned whether the form I herein give is correct, I shall give it first in Latin, and then in English, and appeal to any Roman Catholic priest or bishop in the world, whether so far I misstate or misrepresent facts. The following is the form:

"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti beatas Marias semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Johanni Baptistæ, Sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis et (tibi Pater) quia peccavi nimis cogitatione verbo et opere (pectus) mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, beatum Michaelum Archangelum, beatum Johannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes sanctos et (Pater) orane pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum."

Translation of the Above:

"I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, father, that I have sinned exceedingly, both in thought, in word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech the blessed Mary ever virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, and you father, to pray to our Lord God for me."

Such is the form of confession made by every Roman Catholic who goes into a confessional box, or who in any other place confesses to a priest.

It is not my intention here, to show that no such form of confession as the above was ever used in the Christian Church for more than half a century after its establishment. The whole prayer of this confession is an innovation unknown to the early Christians. It is an impure deposit in the sacred fountains of Christianity, thrown into them and mixed up with them, by the unclean hands of the Romish Popes and priests. Who or which of the primitive Christians, was ever known to pray to saints? Name him, Papists, and I will give you credit for the discovery. You contradict yourselves and some of your most fundamental doctrines in praying to saints. Even the Council of Trent, which you consider infallible, goes no farther than to say,--"It is good and profitable to invoke the prayers of the saints." And how do you, Popish priests, justify yourselves in imposing on your deluded people, the idolatrous practice of praying to saints? Answer the question yourselves. As I stated before, it is not my intention here, to enter into the merits or demerits of your form of confession. I shall confine myself, almost exclusively, to pointing out some of the fatal consequences to society, of introducing such a practice as that of auricular confession, amongst any people. The reader will pardon me, if I quote largely from Michellet, an admirable writer of the present day, and which cannot fail to be very satisfactory to the reader, from the fact, that he is a Roman Catholic and, of course, entitled to credit, as it is not to be presumed that any man will bear witness against himself or against the doctrines which he avowedly professes. The language of Michellet is beautiful, as the Protestant Quarterly Review expresses it He gives a graphic portraiture of a French wife. The reader will keep in mind that Michellet is a Frenchman, that he looks upon France as the world and that therefore his portraiture of a French wife, is a portraiture of any woman in the same position. The fact that Michellet's work is approved of by the Quarterly Review, of the American Protestant Association, is the highest encomium that can be passed upon it. The Review is edited by the Rev. Rufus Griswold, one of the most elegant, chaste and beautiful writers of the day, and whose commendation Michellet's work could not have, were it not eminently entitled to it We have few such writers among our American controversialists as the Rev. Mr. Griswold, and I know not that I am hazarding truth, when I say, that we have not a more patriotic citizen, a more accomplished scholar, nor a more humble and devoted Christian. I shall here quote from Mr. Griswold's translation of Michellet, page 287 of the Quarterly Review of the American Protestant Association.

"When I think of all that is contained in the words _confession, direction_,--those little words, that great power, the most complete in the world,--when I essay to analyze all that is in it,--I am alarmed. It appears to me that I am descending by an infinite spiral line, a deep and dark mine. I have had pity heretofore for the priest; now, I dread him. We must not be alarmed, we must look it in the face. Let us frame with simplicity the language of the confessor." The reader must suppose here, a priest sitting in the confessional with a young lady kneeling by his side, 2 whose lips almost press his. I know by experience, having often myself heard confessions, that this is the exact position of the parties. The lady is supposed, by Michelet--and he supposes so correctly--to be addressed by the priest in the following words. 'God hears thee; hears thee through me; by me God will reply to thee; but thou tremblest, thou darest not tell to this terrible God thy weak and childish acts.' (The reader will not forget here, that the young lady penitent and the priest are both young.) 'Well, then, tell them to thy father, a father has a right to know the secrets of his child,--an indulgent father who wishes to know them in order to absolve them. He is a sinner, like thyself; has he the right then to be severe? Come then, child, come and speak. That which thou hast never dared to whisper in thy mother's ear, tell me; who will ever know it?' Then, among sighs from the swelling, throbbing breast, the fatal word mounts the lips; it escapes and is concealed. He who has heard it has acquired a great advantage, which he will preserve. God grant that he does not abuse it He who has heard it--be careful--is not wood, the black oak of the old confessional; he is a man of flesh and blood. And this man now knows of this woman what the husband has never known in the long outpouring of the heart by night and day. That which a mother does not know--who believes that she knows her entirely, having held her so often naked on her knees--this man knows; he will know. Do not fear that he forgets; if the avowal is in good hands so much the better, for it is forever. She also knows well that she has a master over her inmost thoughts. She will never pass before that man without lowering her eyes. The day on which this mystery was made common, he was very near her; she felt his presence. Seated above her, he weighed her down by an invisible ascendancy. A magnetic force conquered her, for she did not wish to speak, and yet she spoke in spite of herself. She was fascinated, like the bird before the serpent.

Up to this point there was, perhaps, no art on the side of the priest. The force of things did all; that of the religious institution and that of nature. As a priest he received her at his knees, at the listening box. Then, master of her secret, of her thought,--of the thought of a woman,--he was discovered himself to be a man; and without wishing it--without perhaps knowing it--he has placed on her, feeble and disarmed, the heavy hand of a man. And the family now! the husband! who will dare to say that his situation is the same as before? Every one who reflects, knows very well, that thought is, in a person, that which most controls him. The master of the thoughts is he to whom the person belongs. The priest holds the soul as soon as he has the dangerous gauge of the first secrets, and he will hold it faster and firmer. An entire division is made between the husband and wife, for now there are two; the one has the soul, the other the body. Note, that in this division, one of the two has everything; the other, if he keeps anything, keeps it by grace. Thought, from its very nature, is dominant, absorbing. The master of the thought, in the natural progress of his sway, will go on constantly subjecting the part which remains to the other.

It will be already much, if the husband, widowed of the soul, reserves the involuntary, inert, and dead possession.

Humiliating thing, only to obtain your own but by permission and indulgence! to be seen, followed into the most intimate intimacy, by an invisible witness, who regulates you, and assigns to you your part--to meet in the street a man who knows better than yourself your most secret acts and weakness,--who humbly salutes you, turns aside and laughs.

Who can read the above extract from Michelet on auricular confession, without fancying that it is nothing more than one of those effusions with which rich fancies like his frequently abound? Men unacquainted with anything but the ordinary business of life, cannot fancy, much less realize, truth in the above. Is there even a Roman Catholic to be found, who can realize or believe the fact, that while he supposes himself the only possessor of his wife,--that she is his own--heart and soul--whole and undivided, yet is not so? It is well perhaps for those who have the misfortune to be Roman Catholics themselves, or equally unfortunate in having Roman Catholic wives, that they have no idea of the influence which a Roman Catholic Confessor has over woman. Could any man live in happiness or enjoy the pure blessings of matrimony, if he knew that all the intimacies and secrets, which existed between him and his wife, were far better known to the priest to whom the wife confesses, than to himself? It is well then perhaps, after all, that while such reptiles as Popish confessors are allowed a place in society, that the secrets of the confessional should be confined to themselves alone.

But there is no untruth in the beautiful extract which I have taken from Michelet The picture which he gives is neither over-drawn or over-colored. The wife who goes to confession, is, in reality, more the wife of the priest than the wife of her married husband. Her soul is the priest's, her thoughts are the priest's, and the priest controls all her actions. How beautifully has Michelet expressed the priest's control over her "He has placed on her, feeble and disarmed, the heavy hand of a man."

Many instances of the influence which the priest exercises over married women in the confessional have come to my own knowledge, while I was a Popish confessor. The reader will bear with me while I relate one or two, from hundreds, which I have witnessed in the course of my life.

In the year 1822, and in the city of Philadelphia, an elegant carriage, with servants in livery, drove up to my door, in Fourth street, between Walnut and Spruce, where I then lived; and a lady, dressed in the extreme of fashion, unceremoniously stepped up to my door and opened it without rapping, announcing herself a stranger who wished to see me on particular business. I knew, almost by intuition, what this particular business was. I asked no questions and of course received no answers. The lady, however, said she wanted to confess and get absolution. My duty was plain, I was a Popish priest But you have not the worst of it yet, reader; so far, there was nothing evil in the matter save the infatuation of the lady in believing that a man could forgive her sins, and my worse than infatuation and weakness in believing that I had such power. The substance of this confession was the following, which fully verifies the truth of Michelet's statement This lady had been in the habit of going to confession to a Popish bishop, who lived in a neighboring state, and frequently had criminal intercourse with him, going to his room whenever he directed her, under pretence of going to confession, though at the time she was a married woman. It will be asked why she came to me. The reason was this: her paramour being a bishop, was unwilling to have his crimes known to any priest in his own diocese, and directed her to come to another; and believing, as all Catholics do, that one priest can forgive sins as well as another, she selected me, as I was then comparatively a stranger in the country. But the worst of the tale is not told yet. That part of it which corroborates the statement of Michelet remains still to be heard.

Soon after the departure of this lady from my house, an English gentleman, with whom I had the pleasure of an acquaintance some years previously in London, and with whom I occasionally dined at a well-known and fashionable boarding-house, not far from my own house, called on me and insisted that I should dine with him that day, holding out as a particular inducement the pleasure of introducing me to a lady and gentleman of the highest respectability, whom I should meet at dinner. I accordingly went to dine; and the reader may imagine my surprise at finding the very identical lady who had been at confession with me a few hours before, and her husband--the respectable lady and gentleman to whom my friend promised an introduction. Respectable they truly Were, as far as this world is capable of appreciating respectability; and happy they were also, to all appearance; but was not Michelet right in saying of a woman who goes to confession to a priest, "_She will never pass before that man without lowering' her eyes?_" Could that lady pass before me without lowering her eyes? or could I, if hardened in the iniquitous practice of hearing confession much longer than I was then, pass that lady without lowering mine? Did I not, as Michelet expresses it, "hold the soul" of that lady? Did I not, were I iniquitously disposed, as her bishop was, hold her body also? But when I looked at the husband of this lady--the elegant, accomplished, and gentlemanly husband--when I reflected on his humiliating position--when I reflected that this elegant man was widowed, not only of the soul, but partly of the body, of his beautiful, and as I can easily fancy, once innocent and virtuous wife, by a Popish bishop in the confessional, I could almost have cursed the hour that gave me birth in a land of Popery. My very soul froze within me, and I almost regretted that God in his mercy had not made me something else than a being who could have broken the cords of that pure and unmingled love between that elegant man who sat before me, and his once elegant and virtuous wife. Humiliating indeed, as Michelet said, must be the condition of that man whose wife goes to the confessional. When he walks the streets, he is met by the confessor of his wife, who, as Michelet properly says again, "salutes him humbly, turns aside, and laughs." O, how true this is! and would to God I could brand it upon the heart of every man whose wife goes to confession. Is it true that God lives? is it true that the earth moves? is it true that man has a soul? is it true that mind is not matter? is it true that the sun rises and sets? O! it is still more true, if possible, that there are such things as Popish priests--saints in appearance, but demons in practice,--who laugh at the ruin and division they have made between man and wife. I do not know that I was ever so lost to every feeling of honor, when a Romish priest, as, when I passed through the streets, to laugh at the husband whose wife was persuaded and fascinated away from him in the confessional; but I have often walked the streets with Romish priests, in Europe especially, where Popery predominates, and there is no sort of amusement upon those occasions which they enjoy more than calling each other's attention to some of their neighbors, as they pass along, and whispering into each other's ears, "Look at that gentleman; how fond he seems, of his wife. It was yesterday she was at the confessional with me; poor fool!" This chit-chat terminates in a hearty laugh, all at the expense of the husband. The reader, I trust, will not think me tedious, if I give him another instance of the evils of Popish confession. It will be borne in mind that the fact which I am about to state is not taken from history, though history abounds with similar cases. It is one within my own knowledge.

A short time previous to my coming to this country, and soon after my being installed as confessor in the Romish Church, I became intimately acquainted with a Popish family of great respectability. This family consisted of a widowed father and two daughters and never in my life have I met two more interesting young ladies than the daughters were. These ladies lived not far from the church where I officiated, and were frequently in the habit of going to mass to my church, and calling upon me when service was over, to take breakfast with them at their father's house. This custom of having young ladies call upon Roman Catholic clergymen to accompany them home to breakfast after mass is over, is very prevalent in Europe, among the most fashionable members of the Popish Church; it is particularly so in the city of------, where I then officiated, and where the melancholy circumstance which I am about to relate took place. The father of the two young ladies to whom I have alluded, was a gentleman of about the age of fifty-five, distinguished for his charity and benevolence. He was wealthy; and whenever any object which might advance the good of his fellow beings was suggested or proposed, he was among the first to advocate and support it. His influence and his money were never wanting, when either could promote the happiness of his fellow beings. It may easily be imagined that the daughters of such a gentleman were well educated and accomplished. It may also be supposed that their home, being a home of plenty and abundance, was one of peace, happiness, charity, and domestic love. It was truly so, when I had the honor of first knowing the family. But the serpent found its way into this little garden of happiness.

In less than two months after my first visit to this family, at their peaceful and hospitable breakfast table, I observed the chair which had been usually occupied by the elder of the two sisters, occupied by the younger, and that of the latter vacant I inquired the cause, and was informed by the father that he had just accompanied her to the coach which left that morning for Dublin, and that she went on a visit to the sister of the Rev. B. K. I, of course, made no further observations, but I suspected that something was wrong; I also knew full well, that whatever the cause was, I should learn the particulars of it in my capacity as confessor. As time advanced, I made the usual inquiries for this young lady, who was then only about eighteen years old. The answers were such as any one acquainted with the world might expect, and entirely satisfactory to all who knew nothing of the iniquitous practices encouraged and fostered in the Romish confessional.

I will here pass over an interval of about three months. A detail of the private occurrences in any particular family can have no general interest. At or about the expiration of that period, the younger sister complained of indisposition, and it was found necessary to send her also on a visit to Dublin.

Now the whole truth broke upon me at once. I knew there was foul play somewhere, and soon enough did the fact in all its particulars come to my ear. It seems that both the daughters of whom I have spoken, went to a school attached to the Ursuline Nunnery in the city of--------. The confessor, whose duty it was to hear the confessions of the pupils of this institution, was one Rev. Mr. B. K., a friar of the Franciscan order, who, as soon as his plans were properly laid, and circumstances rendered matters ripe for execution, seduced the elder lady; and finding that the fact could no longer be concealed, arranged matters with a friend in Dublin, so that the victim of his iniquity might be concealed and privately supplied with all the usual attendants which her situation required.

She was confined at the house of his friend, and her illicit offspring given to the managers of the Foundling Hospital in Dublin.

But the most horrible part of the story remains yet to be told. No sooner was this elder lady provided for, than this incarnate demon, B. K., commenced the seduction of the younger lady. He succeeded, and ruined her, too. But there was no difficulty in providing for them; both became nuns. And here, you people of Massachusetts in particular, be it known to you, fathers and mothers, who have sent your daughters to be educated in the Ursuline Convent, Charlestown, Massachusetts--I mean that which you felt it your duty to pull down, a few years ago, and which was situated upon Mount Benedict--that both these nuns held high stations in the convent which you pulled down, and that at the very period of its destruction. Pools, "dolts, double dolts," as the Jesuit Rodin calls all who contribute to the support of Popish nunneries, are you not ashamed of yourselves? Are females who have been the prostitutes of priests in foreign countries, and who in nine cases out of ten continue to be so here, the only teachers competent to instruct your daughters? Are there no American ladies--no Protestant ladies--capable of teaching your children? Must American parents go to Europe, and take from the 546 purlieus of Popish convents, instructors for their children? A poor compliment to American Protestant ladies, and a sad commentary it is upon the total ignorance of American theologians respecting Popish morals in Europe.

Here we have a case in point This is not an old lie, as Popish priests and their supporters call all accusations against them; it is a new one, if a lie at all; it is one which I know myself, and can prove. I knew these nuns personally, before they came to this country. I was acquainted with them before they became nuns. I saw them in the convent at Mount Benedict. They were great favorites of Bishop Fenwick.

They were spoken of by some of the first families in the city of Boston, as models of piety; and to my own knowledge, two or three young ladies--and these the daughters of New England Protestants--were counselled by their mothers to take particular notice of the manners of those two nuns in particular, and imitate them, as nearly as possible. Nor can any one be surprised or scandalized, if I acknowledge my weakness in stating that I could not resist an involuntary impulse to laugh at them "in my sleeve." Does Bishop Fenwick desire the names of these two nuns? It is true, they might be Magdalens, but "_credat Judeas Apella, sed non ego_."

When these things are permitted in the very centre of New England--when they are permitted to exist in the enlightened city of Boston--the capitol of a State whose people, as a body, I may venture to say, are not equalled in the world, for intelligence and general information--what can save the people of the United States from corruption, and from gradually declining into its very depth? When the impure waters of Popery are permitted to flow into our lakes and fresh streams, must not all be contaminated, in time? Must not the atmosphere of our freedom be impregnated with immorality, disease, and final death? What, under these circumstances, can save us? God alone may do it He alone can do it, and he will do it; but we must ask him for his interposition; we must humbly pray that he would save us, for he has promised us nothing without asking for it And so sure as we ask him in a proper spirit, we shall receive. He has himself made us this promise--the word of the Great I AM is pledged--He will redeem it.