Part 3

I find, though I have not the merit of intending it, that I am strictly performing my promise to my readers, viz., that I will go entirely upon my own hook, pay no attention to order, style, or to what critics may say, but give them my ideas at random of things and facts, just as I saw them, and precisely as they struck me at the time. This, I must confess, is rather a Tristramshandish mode of writing, particularly to Americans, who are a most precise, systematic and business people; but it is a free country, and, as the poet said, "_Cur ego invidior si pauca querere possim_" &c.

But to return to the causes which induced me to leave the Romish church.

The young lady of whom I have spoken in a previous page, was sent to school, as I have stated, to a Popish nunnery. She was a Protestant when she entered; so are many young ladies in this country when they enter similar schools. The nuns immediately set about her _conversion_. The process by which such things are done is sometimes slow, but always sure. It is often tedious, but never fails; though the knowledge European Protestants have of such institutions, renders the process of conversion more tedious than in this land of freedom and Popish humbuggery. The work of her conversion proceeded with the usual success, until she finally joined the Romish church. The next step, in such cases, is to choose a _confessor_. This is done for the young convert by the mother abbess of the nuns; and now commences the ruin of the soul and the body of the hitherto guileless, guiltless scholar, and convert from Protestant _heresy_. She goes to confession; and recollect, American reader, that what I here state is "_Mutata fabula de te ipso narratur_." Every word of what I am about to state is applicable to you. This confession is, literally speaking, nothing but a systematic preparation for her ruin. It is said that there is, among the creeping things of this earth, a certain noxious and destructive animal, called Anaconda. It is recorded of this animal, foul, filthy and ugly as he is, that when he is hungry, and seizes upon an object which he desires to destroy and subsequently devour, he takes it with him carefully to his den, or place of retreat. There, at his ease, unseen and alone with his prey, he is said to cover it over with slime, and then and there swallow it. I now declare, most solemnly and sincerely, that after living twenty-five years in full communion with the Roman Catholic church, and officiating as a Romish priest, hearing confessions, and confessing myself, I know not another reptile in all animal nature so filthy, so much to be shunned, and loathed, and dreaded by females, both married and single, as a Roman Catholic priest, or bishop, who practises the degrading and demoralizing office of _auricular confession_.

Let me give American Protestant mothers just a twilight glance at the questions which a Romish priest puts to those females, who go to confession to him, and they will bear in mind that there is no poetry in what I say. It contains no undulations of a roving fancy; there is nothing dreaming, nothing imaginative about it; it is only a part of a drama in which I have acted myself. I may truly say of all that occurs in Popish confession, "_Quorum magna pars fui_."

The following is as fair a sketch as I can, with due regard to _decency_, give of the questions which a Romish priest puts to a young female, who goes to confession to him. It is, however, but a very brief synopsis. But first let the reader figure to himself, or herself, a young lady, between the age of from twelve to twenty, on her knees, with her lips nearly close pressed to the cheeks of the priest, who, in all probability, is not over twenty-five or thirty years old--for here it is worthy of remark, that these young priests are extremely zealous in the discharge of their sacerdotal duties, especially in hearing confessions, which all Roman Catholics are bound to make under pain of eternal damnation. When priest and penitent are placed in the above attitude, let us suppose the following conversation taking place between them, and unless my readers are more dull of apprehension than I am willing to believe, they will have some idea of the _beauties of Popery_.

Confessor. What sins have you committed?

Penitent. I don't know any, sir.

Con. Are you sure you did nothing wrong? Examine yourself well

Pen. Yes; I do recollect that I did wrong I made faces at school at Lucy A.

Con. Nothing else?

Pen. Yes; I told mother that I hated Lucy A. and that she was an ugly thing.

Con. (Scarcely able to suppress a smile in finding the girl perfectly innocent) Have you had any immodest thoughts?

Pen. What is that, sir?

Con. Have you not been thinking about men?

Pen. Why, yes, sir.

Con. Are you fond of any of them?

Pen. Why, yes; I like cousin A. or R. greatly.

Con. Did you ever like to sleep with him?

Pen. Oh, no.

Con. How long did these thoughts about men continue?

Pen. Not very long.

Con. Had you these thoughts by day, or by night?

Pen. By----!!!!!

In this strain does this reptile confessor proceed till his now half-gained prey is filled with ideas and thoughts, to which she has been hitherto a stranger. He tells her that she must come to-morrow again. She accordingly comes, and he gives another twist to the screw, which he has now firmly fixed upon the soul and body of his penitent. Day after day, week after week, and month after month does this hapless girl come to confession, until this wretch has worked up her passions to a tension almost snapping, and then becomes his easy prey. I cannot as I before stated, detail the whole process by which a Romish confessor debauches his victims in the confessional, but if curiosity, or any other motive creates in the public mind a desire to know all the particulars about it, I refer them to Antoine's Moral Theology, which I have read in the college of Maynooth, or to Den's treatise, "De _Peccatis_" which I have read in the same college, and in the same class with _some of the Romish priests now in this country_, hearing confessions perhaps at the moment I write, and debauching their penitents, aye even in New England, the land of the pilgrims! In those books I have mentioned, they will find the obscene questions which are put by priests and bishops of the Romish church, to all women, young and old, married or single; and if any married man, or father, or brother, will, after the perusal of these questions, allow his wife, his daughter, or his sister, ever again to go to confession, I will only say that his ideas of morality are more vague and loose than those of the heathen or the Turk. Christian he should not be called, who permits these deeds in our midst. I beg here to lay before my readers an extract from a work, recently published in Paris, entitled, "Auricular Confession and Direction." The work is written by M. Michelet, one of the most distinguished writers in France. It has been noticed in the last number of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and in that admirably conducted press, the Boston Courier.

The following is given as the mysterious opening of the book:!!!!!

"The family is in question;

'That home where we would all fain repose, alter so many useless efforts, so many illusions destroyed.

'We return home very wearied--do we find repose there?

'We must not dissimulate--we must frankly confess to ourselves the real state of things. There exists in the bosom of society--in the family circle--a serious dissension, nay, the most serious of all dissensions.

'We may talk with our mothers, our wives or our daughters, on all those matters about which we talk with our acquaintances: on business, on the news of the day, but not at all on matters nearest the heart, on religion, on God, on the soul.

'Take the instant when you would fain find yourself united with your family in one common feeling, in the repose of the evening, round the family table; there, in your home, at your own hearth, venture to utter a word on these matters; your mother sadly shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, although silent, disapproves. They are on one side of the table, you on the other, alone.

'It would seem as if in the midst of them, opposite to you, sat an invisible man to contradict what you say.'

"The invisible enemy here spoken of, is the priest. The reviewer proceeds!!!!!

'The priest, as confessor, possesses the secret of a woman's soul; he knows every half-formed hope, every dim desire, every thwarted feeling. The priest, as spiritual director, animates that woman with his own ideas, moves her with his own will, fashions her according to his own fancy. And this priest is doomed to celibacy. He is a man, but is bound to pluck from his heart the feelings of a man. If he is without faith, he makes desperate use of his power over those confiding in him. If he is sincerely devout, he has to struggle with his passions, and there is a perilous chance of his being defeated in that struggle. And even should he come off victorious, still the mischief done is incalculable and irreparable. The woman's virtue has been preserved by an accident, by a power extraneous to herself. She was wax in her spiritual director's hands; she has ceased to be a _person_, and is become a _thing_.'

"There is something diabolical in the institution of celibacy accompanying confession. Paul Louis Courrier has painted a fearful picture of the priest's position as an unmarried confessor; and as Courrier's works are far less read than they deserve to be, we make no scruple of transferring his powerful sentences to our pages.

'What a life, what a condition is that of our priests'? Love is forbidden them, marriage especially; women are given up to them. They may not have one of their own, and yet live familiarly with all, nay, in the confidential, intimate privity of their hidden actions, of all their thoughts. An innocent girl first hears the priest under her mother's wing; he then calls her to him, speaks alone with her, and is the first to talk of sin to her, before she can have known it. When instructed, she marries; when married, he still confesses and governs her. He has preceded the husband in her affections, and will always maintain himself in them. What she would not venture to confide to her mother, or confess to her husband, he, a priest, must know it, asks it, hears it, and yet shall not be her lover. How could he, indeed? is he not _tonsured?_ He hears whispered in his ear, by a young woman, her faults, passions, desires, weaknesses, receives her sighs without feeling agitated, and he is five-and-twenty!

'To confess a woman! imagine what that is. At the end of the church a species of closet or sentry-box is erected against the wall, where the priest awaits in the evening, after vespers, his young penitent whom he loves, and who knows it; love cannot be concealed from the beloved person. You will stop me there: his character of priest, his education, his vow.... I reply that there is no vow which holds good, that every village _cure_ just come from the seminary, healthy, robust, and vigorous, doubtless loves one of his parishioners. It cannot be otherwise; and if you contest this, I will say more still, and that is, that he loves them _all_, those at least of his own age; out he prefers one, who appears to him, if not more beautiful than the others, more modest and wiser, and whom he would marry; he would make her a virtuous, pious wife, if it were not for the Pope. He sees her daily, and meets her at church or elsewhere, and sitting opposite her in the winter evenings, he imbibes, imprudent man! the poison of her eyes!

'Now, I ask you, when he hears that one coming the next day, and approaching the confessional, and when he recognizes her footsteps, and can say, 'It is she;' what is passing in the mind of the poor confessor? Honesty, duty, wise resolutions, are here of little use, without peculiarly heavenly grace. I will suppose him a saint: unable to fly, he apparently groans, sighs, recommends himself to God; but if he is only a man, he shudders, desires, and already unwillingly, without knowing it, perhaps, he hopes. She arrives, kneels down at his knees, before him whose heart leaps and palpitates. You are young, sir, or you have been so; between ourselves, what do you think of such a situation? Alone most of the time, and having these walls, these vaulted roofs, as sole witnesses, they talk; of what? alas! of all that is not innocent They talk, or rather murmur, in low voice, and their lips approach each other, and their breaths mingle. This lasts for an hour or more, and is often renewed.

'Do not think I invent. This scene takes place such as I describe it; is renewed daily by forty thousand young priests, with as many young girls whom they love, because they are men, whom they confess in this manner, entirely _tete-a-tete_, and visit, because they are priests, and whom they do not marry, because the Pope is opposed to it.'

*****

"The priest has the spiritual care of her he loves; her soul is in his hands. He is connected with her by the most sacred ties; his interest in her he disguises to himself under the cloak of spiritual anxiety. He can always quiet the voice of conscience by an equivoque. The mystic language of love is also the mystic language of religion, and what guilt is shrouded under this equivoque, the history of priestcraft may show. _Parler l'amour c'est faire l'amour_, is a profound truth. From the love of God, it is easy to descend to the love of man; especially when this man is a priest, that is to say, a mediator between the woman and God, one who says, 'God hears you through me; through me he will reply.' This man whom she has seen at the altar, and there invested with all the sacred robes and sacred associations of his office; whom she has visited in the confessional, and there laid bare her soul to him; whose visits she has received in her _boudoir_, and there submitted to his direction; this man, whom she worships, is supposed to be an idea, a priest; no one supposing him to be a man, with a man's passions!

"M. Michelet's book contains the proofs of what I have just said; but they are too numerous to quote. I shall only borrow from his work the passages he gives from an unexceptionable authority, Llorente."

'Llorente, a contemporary, relates (t. hi., ch. 28. article 2, ed. 1817) that when he was secretary to the Inquisition, a capuchin was brought before that tribunal, who directed a community of _beguines_, and had seduced nearly all of them, by persuading them that they were not leaving the road to perfection. He told each of them in the confessional that he had received from God a singular favor: "Our Lord," he said, "has deigned to show himself to me in the Sacrament, and has said to me, Almost all the souls that thou dost direct here are pleasing to me, but especially such a one, (_the capuchin named her to whom he spoke_.) She is already so perfect, that she has conquered every passion, except carnal desire, which torments her very much. Therefore, wishing virtue to have its reward, and that she should serve me tranquilly, I charge thee to give her a dispensation, but only to be made use of with thee; she need speak of it to no confessor; that would be useless, as with such a dispensation she cannot sin." Out of seventeen _beguines_, of which the community was composed, the intrepid capuchin gave the dispensation to thirteen, who were discreet for some length of time; one of them, however, fell ill, expected to die, and discovered everything, declaring that she had never been able to believe in the dispensation, but that she had profited by it.

'I remember,' said Llorente, 'having said to him: "But, father, is it not astonishing that this singular virtue should have belonged exactly to the thirteen young and handsome ones, and not at all to the other four, who were ugly or old?" He coolly replied, "The Holy Spirit inspires where it listeth."

'The same author, in the same chapter, while reproaching the Protestants with having exaggerated the corruption of confessors, avows that, "In the sixteenth century, the Inquisition had imposed on women the obligation of denouncing guilty confessors, but the denunciations were so numerous, that the penitents were declared dispensed from denouncing."'

I should not have laid the above extract before the public, were I not well aware that such is the extraordinary infatuation of Americans on the subject of Popery and confession, that they may suspect my statements of exaggeration. This alone could induce me to give more than my own assertion for the truth of my statements, as no writer upon Popery knows more, or can relate more of _Auricular Confession and Direction_, than I can myself, of my own knowledge, and from my own personal experience. I shall not, however, ask American Protestants to take my naked word for anything which I may say on Popery. I shall substantiate all I assert by proofs from history.

The title of Christian land should not be given to this country, nor to any country, which legalizes institutions where deeds of darkness are sanctioned, and the foul debauchers of our youth, of our wives and our sisters, find a shelter.

Shall the cowl shelter the adulterous monk in this land of freedom? Are the sons of freemen required to countenance, nay, asked to build impassable walls around a licentious, lecherous, profligate horde of foreign monks and priests, who choose to come among us, and erect little _fortifications_, which they call nunneries, for their protection? Shall they own by law and by charter places where to bury, hidden from the public eye, the victims of their lust, and the murdered offspring of their concupiscence? Beware, Americans! There are bounds, beyond which sinners cannot go. Bear in mind the fact that the same God who can limit the sphere of an individual's crimes, can also limit those of a nation. You have flourished. Take heed lest you begin to decay before you come to full maturity; and I regret to say, that symptoms of this are now apparent. Already can I see the hectic flush of moral consumption upon the fair face of America. Already can I see a demon bird of ill omen plunging its poisoned beak into the very vitals of your national existence, stopping here, and stopping there only to dip his wings in the life streams of your national existence, with the sole view of giving its spread more momentum, until it encompasses the whole length and breadth, centre and circumference of your country.

Infidelity is now fast careering and sporting over the whole face of our land, and if history has not deceived us, and our own personal experience has not been vain, it never moves, it never travels, it never exists, unaccompanied by political as well as moral death. Look at ancient Rome, how it fell in its pride! Look at France--how often it has tottered and stumbled in its beauty! Look at England at the present moment,--see how she trembles even in her strength. Think you that all these things were brought about by the causes to which the world would attribute them? What signifies the Texas question in the sight of God? What the Oregon difficulties? what the trade with China? what the repeal brawlings? Such things would have happened if our "mother's cat had but kittened, and we ourselves had ne'er been born."

The decay of nations, the fall of thrones, are brought about by infidelity, by national insults to the God of nations, by the sins of the people against the King of glory; and how can this country, deeply steeped as it is, and darkly stained as it is, with the crime of aiding Popery, idolatry, and auricular confession; how can it expect, I repeat the words, that the moral breezes of heaven should breathe upon her, and restore to her again that strong and healthy constitution, which her ancestors have left to her sons? No, no. It cannot be. You must, as the lawyers would say, stand "rectus in _curia_," before your God. Withdraw your countenance and your support from Popery. Touch not the unclean thing. Then, and not until then, can you raise clean hands and pure hearts to the throne of God, and ask for a blessing upon the United States and its territories.

But it may be replied, all you say of Popery in the _old_ countries may be true, but it is a different thing altogether in the United States. This is a great error on the part of Americans, and I feel it my duty to correct it if possible. I am not surprised that, Americans should entertain ideas of this kind. I was once partly of that opinion myself, and, as I stated in a former page, I determined to visit this new and free country, in the hope--alas! it was a vain one--of finding true religion, and purity of life, even in the Roman Catholic church. I remember well, having consulted a friend on the propriety of such a course, he strongly dissuaded me from it, assuring me that I would find Popery here essentially the same that it was in Europe, with this difference only, that the crimes and private lives of priests and bishops were more grossly immoral, and, though indirectly, more effectually sanctioned by the laws of the land. This, however, did not satisfy me, and accordingly, having received from my then ecclesiastical superior, what in church parlance is called _an Exeat_, (the document is in my possession, if any one wishes to see it,) or, as American theologians would term it, "a regular dismission" from the church where I officiated, I arrived in New York, in Nov., 18----. But the reader may well judge of my disappointment, when I found, on my arrival there, not altogether such Romish priests and bishops as I had left behind me,--for many of them were gentlemen by birth, and paid some regard to public decency, even in their profligacies; but a set of coarse, vulgar, half educated, I may say, half civilized, Irish and French brutes, most of whom might be seen daily lolling in grog-shops, and electioneering among the lowest dregs of society. I have met but one exception to this, and that was the Reverend Wm. Taylor, who was then in New York.

Having stated to Taylor my object in coming over, I shall never forget the sad and sorrowful smile which but dimly lit up his naturally kind and cheerful countenance. "My friend," said he, "all your hopes in coming to this country will be disappointed. You must not stay in this city. Go into the country. Go to Albany; you may there see less of those scenes from which you have fled; and as I perceive your introductions from Europe to De Witt Clinton, are numerous and of the best kind, you will find much pleasure in the society of that excellent gentleman, and make up your mind either to leave this country, or to retire from the Romish church altogether. The latter I will do myself, but not without an effort to correct the abuses of Popery." This effort he has made, as I have stated in my _Synopsis of Popery, as it was and as it is_; but he lacked moral as well as physical courage to carry it through.