Notes And Quotes For Today        

Confession and The Church of Rome  –  II

(The following xerepts  are taken from the book “ The Priest, The woman, and the Confessional“, by Chiniquy. A converted Roman Catholic priest.)

…….But being absolutely unable to trample under their feet the laws of self-respect and decency, which God himself has impressed in their souls, they live in constant dread of eternal damnation. No human words can tell their desolation and distress, when at the feet of their confessors, they find themselves under the horrible necessity of speaking of things on which they would prefer to suffer the most cruel death rather than to open their lips, or to be forever damned if they do not degrade themselves forever in their own eyes, by speaking on materials which a respectable woman will never reveal to her own mother, much less to a man.

Many of those noble-hearted women, who alone with God, in a real agony of desolation and with burning tears, had asked God to grant them what they consider is the greatest favor, which was, to lose so much of their self-respect us to enable to speak as their confessors wanted them to speak, and then, hoping that they petition has been granted went again to the confession-box determined to unveil their shame before the eyes of that inexorable man! But when the moment had come for self-immolation, their courage fail, the knees trembled, their knees become pale as death, cold sweat poured from their pores. The voice of modesty and womanly self-respect was speaking louder than the voice of their false religion. And they had to go out of the confession box “unpardoned”. Nay, with the burden of a new sacrilege on their conscience.

Oh! how heavy is the yoke of Rome, how bitter is the mystery of the cross to those deluded and perishing souls? How gladly would they rush in to the blazing piles with the Brahmin women, if they could hope to see the end of their unspeakable miseries through the momentary tortures which would open to them the gates of a better life? We hereby do challenge the whole Roman Catholic priesthood, to deny that, the greater part of their female penitents remain a certain period of time, under this most distressing state of mind. Yes, by far the greater majority of women, at first, find it impossible to pull down the sacred barriers of self-respect which God Himself has built around their hearts and souls, as the best safeguard against the snares of this polluted world. These laws of self-respect are so clearly written in their conscience, and they are so well understood by them to be a most Divine gift, that, many prefer to run the risk of being forever lost by remaining silent.

It takes many years of effort on the part of the priests to persuade the majority of their female penitents to answer to questions, which even pagan savages would blush to mention among themselves. Many remain silent on these matters during the greater part of their lives, and some prefer to themselves into the hands of their merciful God, and die without submitting to the defiling ordeal, even after they have felt the poisonous stings of the enemy, rather than receiving their pardon from a man, as frail, as sinful as they are, if not more!  All the priests of Rome are aware of this natural disposition of their female penitents. There is not a single one of them who does not warn their confessors against that stern and general determination of the girls and married women never to speak against the Seventh commandment – thou shalt not commit adultery. Which all the theologians of Rome clearly well know that this is one of the greatest difficulties which the confessors have to contend with in the confessional-box.

The Roman Catholic woman guided by the honest instincts which God has given them, shrink from the snare that is put before them in the confessional-box; and that everywhere they struggle to nerve against the torture who is sent by the Pope, to finish their ruin and to make a shipwreck of their souls. Everywhere woman feels that there are things which ought never to be told, as there are things which ought never to be done, in the presence of the God of holiness.  Perhaps that the world has never seen a more terrible, desperate, struggle than the one which is going on in the soul of a poor trembling young woman, who, at the feet of that man, has to decide whether or not she will open her heart and her lips on those things which the infallible voice of God tell her never to reveal to any man?

She understands that to recite certain sins, even thought, is not less shameful and criminal than to do them; she hears the voice of God whispering to her ears, “ is it not enough that thou hast been guilty once, when alone in My presence, without adding to thine iniquity by allowing that man to know what should never have been revealed to him? Do you not feel that you make that man your accomplice, the very moment that you throw in to his heart an soul the mire of iniquities? He as weak as you are; he is  less a sinner than yourself: what has tempted you will tempt him; what has made you weak, will make him weak; what has polluted you will pollute him; what has thrown you in to the dust will throw him in to the same dust. 

Is it not enough that My eyes had to look upon your iniquities? Must my ears, listen today to your impure conversion with that man? Were that man as holy as my prophet David, may he not fall before the unchaste unveiling of the new Bathsheba? Were he as strong as Samson, may he not fin in you his tempting Delilah?Where he as generous as Peter, may be not become a traitor at the mid-servant’s voice?”

Perhaps the world has never seen a more terrible, desperate, solemn struggle than the one which is going on in the soul of a poor trembling young woman, who, at the feet of that man, has decided whether or not she will open her lips on those things which the infallible voice of God, united to the no less infallible voice of her womanly honor and self-respect, tell her never to reveal to any man!   Mr.Chiniquy in narrating his personal experience said, “How many times have I wept as a child when some noble-hearted and intelligent young girl, or some respectable married woman, yielding to the sophisms with which I, or some other confessor, had persuaded them to give up their self-respect, and their womanly dignity, to speak with me on matters on which a decent woman would never say a word with a man. They have told me their invincible repugnance, their horror of such questions and answers, and they have asked me to have pity on them. Yes I have often wept bitterly on, my degradation, when a priest of Rome.”

I had soon to silence the voice of my conscience, which was telling me, “ Is it not a shame that you, an unmarried man dare to speak on these matters with a woman? Do you not blush to put such questions to a young girl? Where is your self-respect? Where is your fear of God? Do you not promote the ruin of that girl by forcing her to speak with a man on such matters?”   To this guilty feeling and accusation of his conscious, he said he was compelled by the Popes, the moral theologians, and the councils of Rome, to believe that this warning voice of my merciful God was the voice of Satan; I had to believe in spite of my own conscience and intelligence, that it was good, nay, necessary, to put those polluting, damning question.

My infallible Church was mercilessly forcing me to oblige those poor, trembling weeping, desolate girls and women, to swim with me and all her priests in those water of Sodom and Gomorrah, under the pretext that their self-will would be broken down, their fear of sin and humility increased, and that they would be purified by our absolutions.  With what supreme distress, disgust, and surprise, we see, to-day, a great part of the whole Episcopal Church of England struck by a plague which seems incurable, under the name of Ritualism in bringing again, more or less openly the diabolical and filthy auricular confession among the Protestants of England, Australia and America.

                                              From The Peoples Gospel Hour Staff