The more auricular confession is practised, the more the laws of public and private morality are trampled under feet. The husband wants his wife to be _his_--he does not, and could not, consent to share his authority over her with anybody: he wants to be the _only_ man who will have her confidence and her heart, as well as her respect and love. And so, the very moment that he antic.i.p.ates the dark shadow of the confessor coming between him and the woman of his choice, he prefers silently to shrink from entering into the sacred bond; the holy joys of home and family lose their divine attractions; he prefers the cold life of an ignominious celibacy to the humiliation and opprobrium of the questionable privileges of an uncertain paternity.

France, Spain, and many other Roman Catholic countries, thus witness the mult.i.tude of those bachelors increasing every year. The number of families and births, in consequence, is fast decreasing in their midst; and, if G.o.d does not perform a miracle to stop those nations on their downward course, it is easy to calculate the day when they will owe their existence to the tolerance and pity of the mighty Protestant nations by which they are surrounded.

Why is it that the Irish Roman Catholic people are so irremediably degraded and clothed in rags? Why is it that that people, whom G.o.d has endowed with so many n.o.ble qualities, seem to be so deprived of intelligence and self-respect that they glory in their own shame? Why is it that their land has been for centuries the land of b.l.o.o.d.y riots and cowardly murders? The princ.i.p.al cause is the enslaving of the Irish women, by means of the confessional. Every one knows that the spiritual slavery and degradation of the Irish woman has no bounds. After she has been enslaved and degraded, she, in turn, has enslaved and degraded her husband and her sons. Ireland will be an object of pity; she will be poor, miserable, riotous, blood-thirsty, degraded, so long as she rejects Christ, to be ruled by the father confessor planted in every parish by the Pope.

Who has not been amazed and saddened by the downfall of France? How is it that her once so mighty armies have melted away, that her brave sons have so easily been conquered and disarmed? How is it that France, fallen powerless at the feet of her enemies, has frightened the world by the spectacle of the incredible, b.l.o.o.d.y, and savage follies of the Commune? Do not look for the causes of the downfall, humiliation, and untold miseries of France anywhere else than in the confessional. For centuries has not that great country obstinately rejected Christ? Has she not slaughtered or sent into exile her n.o.blest children, who wanted to follow the Gospel? Has she not given her fair daughters into the hands of the confessors, who have defiled and degraded them? How could women, in France, teach her husbands and sons to love liberty, and die for it, when she was herself a miserable, an abject slave? How could she form her husbands and sons to the manly virtues of heroes, when her own mind was defiled and her heart corrupted?

The French woman had unconditionally surrendered the n.o.ble and fair citadel of her heart, intelligence, and womanly self-respect, into the hands of her confessor long before her sons surrendered their sword to the Germans at Sedan and Paris. The first unconditional surrender had brought the second.

The complete moral destruction of woman by the confessor in France has been a long work. It has required centuries to bow down, break, and enslave the n.o.ble daughters of France. Yes; but those who know France know that that destruction is now as complete as it is deplorable. The downfall of woman in France, and her supreme degradation through the confessional, is now _un fait accompli_, which n.o.body can deny; the highest intellects have seen and confessed it. One of the most profound thinkers of that unfortunate country, Michelet, has depicted that supreme and irretrievable degradation in a most eloquent book, "The Priest, The Woman, The Family;" and not a voice has been raised to deny or refute what he has said. Those who have any knowledge of history and philosophy know very well that the moral degradation of the woman is soon followed, everywhere, by the moral degradation of the nation; and the moral degradation of the nation is very soon followed by ruin and overthrow.

That French nation had been formed by G.o.d to be a race of giants. They were chivalrous and brave; they had bright intelligences, stout hearts, strong arms, and a mighty sword. But as the hardest granite rock yields and breaks under the drop of water which incessantly falls upon it, so that great nation had to break and to fall into pieces under, not the drop, but the rivers of impure waters which for centuries have incessantly flowed in upon it from the pestilential fountain of the confessional. "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach, to any people." (Proverbs xiv.)

Why is it that Spain is so miserable, so weak, so poor, so foolishly and cruelly tearing her own bosom, and reddening her fair valleys with the blood of her own children? The princ.i.p.al, if not the only, cause of the downfall of that great nation is the confessional. There, also, the confessor has defiled, degraded, enslaved women, and women in turn have defiled and degraded their husbands and sons. Women have sown broadcast over their country the seeds of that slavery, of that want of Christian honesty, justice, and self-respect with which they had themselves been first imbued in the confessional.

But when you see, without a single exception, the nations whose women drink the impure and poisonous waters which flow from the confessional sinking down so rapidly, do you not wonder how fast the neighbouring nations, who have destroyed those dens of impurity, prost.i.tution, and abject slavery, are rising up? What a marvellous contrast is before our eyes! On one side, the nations who allow the woman to be degraded and enslaved at the feet of the confessor--France, Spain, Romish Ireland, Mexico, &c., &c.--are, there, fallen into the dust, bleeding, struggling, powerless, like the sparrow whose entrails are devoured by the vulture. On the other side, see how the nations whose women go to wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb are soaring up, as on eagle wings, in the highest regions of progress, peace, and liberty!

If legislators could once understand the respect and protection they owe to woman, they would soon, by stringent laws, prohibit auricular confession as contrary to good morals and the welfare of society; for, though the advocates of auricular confession have succeeded to a certain extent in blinding the public, and in concealing the abominations of the system under a lying mantle of holiness and religion, it is nothing else than a school of immorality.

I say more than that. After twenty-five years of hearing the confessions of the common people and of the highest cla.s.ses of society, of the laymen and the priests, of the grand vicars and bishops and the nuns, I conscientiously say before the world that the immorality of the confessional is of a more dangerous and degrading nature than that which we attribute to the social evil of our great cities. The injury caused to the intelligence and to the soul in the confessional, as a general rule, is of a more dangerous nature and more irremediable, because it is neither suspected nor understood by its victims.

The unfortunate woman who lives an immoral life knows her profound misery; she often blushes and weeps over her degradation; she hears from every side voices which call her out of those ways of perdition. Almost at every hour of day and night the cry of her conscience warns her against the desolation and suffering of an eternity pa.s.sed far away from the regions of holiness, light, and life. All those things are often so many means of grace, in the hands of our merciful G.o.d, to awaken the mind and to save the guilty soul.

But in the confessional the poison is administered under the name of a pure and refreshing water; the deadly wound is inflicted by a sword so well oiled that the blow is not felt; the vilest and most impure notions and thoughts, in the form of questions and answers, are presented and accepted as the bread of life! All the notions of modesty, purity, and womanly self-respect and delicacy, are set aside and forgotten to propitiate the G.o.d of Rome. In the confessional the woman is told, and she believes, that there is no sin for her in hearing things which would make the vilest blush--no sin to say things which would make the most desperate villain of the streets of London to stagger--no sin to converse with her confessor on matters so filthy that if attempted in civil life would for ever exclude the perpetrator from the society of the virtuous.

Yes, the soul and the intelligence defiled and destroyed in the confessional are often hopelessly defiled and destroyed. They are sinking into a complete, an irretrievable perdition; for, not knowing the guilt, they will not cry for mercy--not suspecting the fatal disease that is being fostered, they will not call for the true Physician. It was evidently when thinking of the unspeakable ruin of the souls of men through the wickedness culminating in the "Pope's confessors," that the Son of G.o.d said:--"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." To every woman, with very few exceptions, coming out from the feet of her confessor, the children of light may say:--"I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, but thou art dead!" (Revelations iii.)

n.o.body has yet been, nor ever will be, able to answer the few following lines, which I addressed some years ago to the Rev. Mr. Bruyere, Roman Catholic Vicar-General of London, Canada:--

"With a blush on my face and regret in my heart, I confess, before G.o.d and man, that I have been like you, and with you, through the confessional, plunged twenty-five years in that bottomless sea of iniquity, in which the blind priests of Rome have to swim day and night.

"I had to learn by heart, like you, the infamous questions which the Church of Rome forces every priest to learn. I had to put those impure, immoral questions to old and young females who were confessing their sins to me.

These questions--you know it--are of such a nature that no prost.i.tute would dare to put them to another. Those questions, and the answers they elicit, are so debasing that no man in London--you know it--except a priest of Rome, is sufficiently lost to every sense of shame as to put them to any woman.

"Yes, I was bound, in conscience, as you are bound to-day, to put into the ears, the mind, the imagination, the memory, the heart and soul of females, questions of such a nature, the direct and immediate tendency of which--you know it well--is to fill the minds and the hearts of both priests and female penitents with thoughts, phantoms, and temptations of such a degrading nature, that I do not know any words adequate to express them.

Pagan antiquity has never seen any inst.i.tution so polluting as 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.

You may deny that before the Protestants; but you cannot deny it before me.

My dear Mr. Bruyere, if you call me a degraded man because I have lived twenty-five years in the atmosphere of the confessional, you are right. I was a degraded man, just as yourself and all the priests are to-day, in spite of your denegations. 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.

"It has required the whole blood of the great Victim, who died on Calvary for sinners, to purify me; and I pray that, through the same blood, you may be purified also."

If the legislators knew the respect and protection they owe to women--I repeat it--they would by the most stringent laws prohibit auricular confession as a crime against society.

Not long ago, a printer in England was sent to jail and severely punished for having published in English the questions put by the priests to the women in the confessional; and the sentence was equitable, for all who will read those questions will conclude that no girl or woman who brings her mind into contact with the contents of that book can escape from moral death. But what are the priests of Rome doing in the confessional? Do they not pa.s.s the greatest part of their time in questioning females, old and young, and hearing their answers, on those very matters? If it were a crime, punishable by law, to present those questions in a book, is it not a crime far more punishable by law to present those very things to married and unmarried women through the auricular confession?

I ask it from every man of common sense, What is the difference between a woman or a girl learning those things in a book, or learning them from the lips of a man? Will not those impure, demoralizing suggestions sink more deeply into their minds, and impress themselves more forcibly in their memory, when told to them by a man of authority, speaking in the name of Almighty G.o.d, than when read in a book which has no authority?

I say to the legislators of Europe and America: "Read for yourselves those horrible, unmentionable things;" and remember that the Pope has 100,000 priests whose princ.i.p.al work is to put those very things into the intelligence and memory of the women whom they entrap into their snares.

Let us suppose that each priest hears the confessions of only five female penitents (though we know that the daily average is ten). It gives us the awful number of 500,000 women whom the priests of Rome have the legal right to pollute and destroy every day!

Legislators of the so-called Christian and civilized nations, I ask it again from you, Where is your consistency, your justice, your love of public morality, when you punish so severely the man who has printed the questions put to the women in the confessional, while you honour and let free, and often pay the men whose public and private life is spent in spreading the very same moral poison in a much more efficacious, scandalous and shameful way, under the sacrilegious mask of religion?

The confessional is in the hands of the devil what West Point is to the United States, and Woolwich is to Great Britain, a training of the army to fight and conquer the enemy. It is in the confessional that 500,000 women every day, and 182,500,000 every year are trained by the Pope in the art of fighting against G.o.d, by destroying themselves and the whole world, through every imaginable kind of impurity and filthiness.

Once more, I request the legislators, the husbands, and the fathers in Europe, as well as in America, to read in Dens, Liguori, Debreyne, in every theological book of Rome, what their wives and their daughters have to learn in the confessional.

In order to screen themselves, the priests of Rome have recourse to the following miserable subterfuge:--"Is not the physician forced," they say, "to perform certain delicate operations on women? Do you complain of this?

No; you let the physicians alone; you do not abuse them in their arduous and conscientious duties. Why, then, do you insult the physician of the soul, the confessor, in the accomplishment of his holy, though delicate, duties?

I answer, first, The art and science of the physician are approved and praised in many places of the Scriptures. But the art and science of the confessor are nowhere to be found in the holy records. Auricular confession is nothing else than a most stupendous imposture. The filthy and impure questions of the confessor, with the polluting answers they elicit, were put among the most diabolical and forbidden actions by G.o.d Himself the day that the Spirit of Truth, Holiness, and Life wrote the imperishable words,--"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth" (Eph. iv.

29).

Secondly, The physician is not bound by a solemn oath to remain ignorant of the things which it will be his duty to examine and cure. But the priest of Rome is bound, by the most ridiculous and impious oath of celibacy, to remain ignorant of the very things which are the daily objects of his inquiries, observations, and thoughts! The priest of Rome has sworn never to taste of the fruits with which he feeds, his imagination, his memory, his heart, and his soul day and night! The physician is honest in the performance of his duties; but the priest of Rome becomes in fact a perjured man every time he enters the confessional-box.

Thirdly, If a lady has a little sore on her small finger, and is obliged to go to the physician, for a remedy, she has only to show her little finger, allow the plaister or ointment to be applied, and all is finished. The physician _never_--no, never--says to that lady, "It is my duty to suspect that you have many other parts of your body which are sick; I am bound in conscience, under pain of death, to examine you from head to foot, in order to save your precious life from those _secret_ diseases, which may kill you if they are not cured just now. Several of those diseases are of such a nature that you never dared perhaps to examine them with the attention they deserve, and you are hardly conscious of them. I know, madam, that this is a very painful and delicate thing for both you and me, that I should be forced to make that thorough examination of your person, but there is no help; I am in duty bound to do it. But you have nothing to fear. I am a holy man, who has made a vow of celibacy. We are alone; neither your husband nor your father will ever know the secret infirmities I will find in you; they will never even suspect the perfect investigation I will make, and they will, for ever, be ignorant of the remedy I will apply."

Has any physician ever been authorized to speak or act in this way with any of his female patients? No; never! never!

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!

Yes, he is bound, nine times in ten; and he is _always allowed_ to suppose that she does not dare to reveal them! Then he is advised by the Church to induce her to let him search every corner of the heart, and of the soul, and to inquire about every kind of contaminations, impurities, secret and shameful unspeakable matters! The young priest is drilled in the diabolical art of going into the most sacred recesses of the soul and the heart, almost in spite of his penitents. I could bring hundreds of theologians as witnesses to what I say.--But it is enough just now to cite three.

"Lest the Confessor should indolently hesitate in tracing out the circ.u.mstances of any sin, let him have the following versicle of circ.u.mstances in readiness:

"Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando. Who, which, where, with whom, why, how, when." (Dens, vol. 6, p. 123. Liguori, vol. 2, p.

464.)

The celebrated book of the Priests, "The Mirror of the Clergy," page 357, says:

"Oportet ut Confessor solet cognoscere quid quid debet judicare. Deligens igitur inquisitor et subtilis investigator sapienter quasi astute interrogat a peccatore quod ignorat, vel verecundia volit occultare."

"It is necessary that the Confessor should know everything on which he has to exercise his judgment. Let him then, with wisdom and subtility, interrogate the sinners on the sins which he may ignore, or conceal through shame!"

The poor, unprotected girl is thus thrown into the power of the priest, soul and body, to be examined on all the sins she may ignore, or which, through shame, she may conceal! On what boundless sea of depravity the poor fragile bark is launched by the priest! On what bottomless abysses of impurities she will have to pa.s.s and travel, in company with the priest alone, before he will have interrogated her on all the sins she may ignore, and which she may have concealed through shame!! Who can tell the sentiments of surprise and shame and distress, of a timid, honest young girl, when, for the first time, she is initiated to infamies which are ignored even in houses of prost.i.tution!!!

But such is the practice, the sacred duty of the spiritual physician. "Let him (the priest confessor) with wisdom and subtlety interrogate the sinner on the sins he may ignore or conceal with shame."

And there are 100,000 men, not only allowed, but petted, and often paid by the governments to do that, under the name of the G.o.d of the Gospel!

Fourthly, I answer to the sophism of the priest, When the physician has any delicate and dangerous operation to perform on a female patient, he is _never_ alone; the husband, or the father, the mother, the sister, or some friends of the patient are there, whose scrutinizing eyes and attentive ears make it _impossible_ for the physician to say or do any improper thing.

But, when the poor deluded spiritual patient comes to be treated by her so-called spiritual physician, and shows him her diseases, is she not alone--shamefully alone--with him? Where are the protecting ears of the husband, the father, the mother, the sisters, or the friends? Where is the barrier interposed between this sinful, weak, tempted, and often depraved man and his victim?

Would the priest so freely ask _this_ and _that_ from that married woman, if he knew that the husband could hear him? No, surely not; for he is well aware that the enraged husband would blow out the brains of the villain who, under the sacrilegious pretext of purifying the soul of his wife, is filling her honest heart with every kind of pollution and infamy.

Fifthly, When the physician performs a delicate operation on one of his female patients, the operation is usually accompanied with pain, cries, and often with bloodshed. The sympathetic and honest physician suffers almost as much pain as his patient; those cries, acute pains, tortures, and bleeding wounds make it morally impossible that the physician should be tempted to any improper thing.

But the sight of the spiritual wounds of that fair penitent! Is the poor depraved human heart really sorry to see and examine them? Oh, no! it is just the contrary!

The dear Saviour weeps over those wounds; the angels are distressed at the sight. Yes. But the deceitful and corrupt heart of man, is it not rather apt to be pleased at the sight of wounds which are so much like the ones he has himself, so often been pleased to receive from the hand of the enemy?