"Out of the Church of Rome there
is no salvation," is one of the doctrines which the priests of Rome have
to believe and teach to the people. That dogma, once accepted, caused me to
devote all my energies to the conversion of Protestants. To prevent one of those
immortal and precious souls from going into hell seemed to me more important
and glorious than the conquest of a kingdom. In view of showing them their errors,
I filled my library with the best controversial books which could be got in
Quebec, and I studied the Holy Scriptures with the utmost attention. In the
Marine Hospital, as well as in my intercourse with the people of the city, I
had several occasions of meeting Protestants and talking to them; but I found
at once that, with very few exceptions, they avoided speaking with me on religion.
This distressed me. Having been told one day that the Rev. Mr. Anthony Parent,
superior of the Seminary of Quebec, had converted several hundred Protestants
during his long ministry, I went to ask him if this were true. For answer he
showed me the list of his converts, which numbered more than two hundred, among
whom were some of the most respectable English and Scotch families of the city.
I looked upon that list with amazement; and from that day I considered him the
most blessed priest of Canada. He was a perfect gentleman in his manners, and
was considered our best champion on all points of controversy with Protestants.
He could have been classed also among the handsomest men in his time, had he
not been so fat. But, when the high classes called him by the respectable name
of "Mr. Superior of the Seminary," the common people used to name
him Pere Cocassier ("Cock-fighting Father"), on account of his long-cherished
habit of having the bravest and strongest fighting-cocks of the country. In
vain had the Rev. Mr. Renvoyze, curate of the "Good St. Anne," that
greatest miracle-working saint of Canada, expended fabulous sums of money in
ransacking the whole country to get a cock who would take away the palm of victory
from the hands of the Superior of the Seminary of Quebec. He had almost invariably
failed; with very few exception his cocks had fallen bruised, bleeding, and
dead on the many battlefields chosen by those two priests. However, I feel happy
in acknowledging that, since the terrible epidemic of cholera, that cruel and
ignominious passe temps has been entirely given up by the Roman Catholic clergy
of this country. Playing cards and checkers is now the most usual way the majority
of curates and vicars have recourse to spend their long and many idle hours,
both of the week and Sabbath days.
After reading over and over again that long list of converts, I said to Mr.
Parent: "Please tell me how you have been able to persuade these Protestant
converts to consent to speak with you on the errors of their religion. Many
times I have tried to show the Protestants whom I met that they would be lost
if they do not submit to our holy church, but, with few exceptions, they laughed
at me as politely as possible, and turned the conversation to other matters.
You must have some secret way of attracting their attention and winning their
confidence. Would you not be kind enough to give me that secret, that I may
be able also to prevent some of those precious souls from perishing?"
"You are right when you think that I have a secret to open the doors of
the Protestants, and conquer and tame their haughty minds," answered Mr.
Parent. "But that secret is of such a delicate nature, that I have never
revealed it to anybody except my confessor. Nevertheless, I see that you are
so in earnest for the conversion of Protestants, and I have such a confidence
in your discretion and honour, that for the sake of our holy church I consent
to give you my secret; only you must promise that you will never reveal it,
during my lifetime, to anybody and even after my death you will not mention
it, except when you are sure it is for the greatest glory of God. You know that
I was the most intimate friend your father ever had; I had no secret from him,
and he had none from me. But God knows that the friendly feelings and the confidence
I had in him are now bestowed upon you, his worthy son. If you had not in my
heart and esteem the same high position your father occupied, I would not trust
you with my secret."
He then continued: "The majority of Protestants in Quebec have Irish Roman
Catholic servant girls; these, particularly before the last few years, used
to come to confess to me, as I was almost the only priest who spoke English.
The first thing I used to ask them, when they were confessing, was if their
masters and mistresses were truly devoted and pious Protestants, or if they
were indifferent and cold in performing their duties. The second thing I wanted
to know was if they were on good terms with their ministers? whether or not
they were visited by them? From the answers of the girls I knew both the moral
and immoral, the religious or irreligious habits of their masters as perfectly
as if I had been an inmate of their households. It is thus that I learned that
many Protestants have no more religion and faith than our dogs. They awake in
the morning and go to bed at night without praying to God any more than the
horses in their stables. Many of them go to church on the Sabbath day more to
laugh at their ministers and criticize their sermons than for anything else.
A part of the week is passed in turning them into ridicule; nay, through the
confessions of these honest girls, I learned that many Protestants liked the
fine ceremonies of our Church; that they often favourably contrasted them with
the cold performances of their own, and expressed their views in glowing terms
about the superiority of our educational institutions, nunneries, ect., over
their own high schools or colleges. Besides, you know that a great number of
our most respectable and wealthy Protestants trust their daughters to our good
nuns for their education. I took notes of all these things, and formed my plans
of battle against Protestantism, as a general who knows his ground and weak
point of his adversaries, and I fought as a man who is sure of an easy victory.
The glorious result you have under your eyes is the proof that I was correct
in my plans. My first step with the Protestants whom I knew to be without any
religion, or even already well disposed towards us, was to go to them with sometimes
$5, or even $25, which I presented to them as being theirs. They, at first,
looked at me with amazement, as a being coming from a superior world. The following
conversation then almost invariable took place between them and me:
"'Are you positive, sir, that this money is mine?'
"'Yes, sir,' I answered, 'I am certain that this money is yours.'
"'But,' they replied, 'please tell me how you know that it belongs to me?
It is the first time I have the honour of talking with you, and we are perfect
strangers to each other.'
"I answered: 'I cannot say, sir, how I know that this money is yours, except
by telling you that the person who deposited it in my hands for you has given
me your name and your address so correctly that there is no possibility of any
mistake.'
"'But can I not know the name of the one who has put that money into your
hands for me?' rejoined the Protestant.
"'No, sir; the secret of confession is inviolable,' I replied. 'We have
no example that it has ever been broken; and I, with every priest in our Church,
would prefer to die rather than betray our penitents and reveal their confession.
We cannot even act from what we have learned through their confession, except
at their own request.'
"'But this auricular confession must then be a most admirable thing,' added
the Protestant; 'I had no idea of it before this day.'
"'Yes, sir, auricular confession is a most admirable thing,' I used to
reply, 'because it is a divine institution. But, sir, please excuse me; my ministry
calls me to another place. I must take leave of you, to go where my duty calls
me.'
"'I am very sorry that you go so quickly,' generally answered the Protestant.
'Can I have another visit from you? Please do me the honour of coming again.
I would be so happy to present you to my wife; and I know she would be happy
also, and much honoured to make your acquaintance.'
"'Yes, sir, I accept with gratitude your invitation. I will feel much pleased
and honoured to make the acquaintance of the family of a gentleman whose praises
are in the mouth of everyone, and whose industry and honesty are an honour to
our city. If you allow me, next week, at the same hour, I will have the honour
of presenting my respectful homage to your lady.'
"The very next day all the papers reported that Mr. So-and-So had received
$5, or $10, or even $25 as a restitution, through auricular confession, and
even the staunch Protestant editors of those papers could not find words sufficiently
eloquent to praise me and our sacrament of penance.
"Three or four days later I was sure that the faithful servant girls were
in the confessional box, glowing with joy to tell me that now their masters
and mistresses could not speak of anything else than the amiability and honesty
of the priests of Rome. They raised them a thousand miles over the heads of
their own ministers. From those pious girls they invariably learned that they
had not been visited by a single friend without making the eulogium of auricular
confession, and even sometimes expressing the regret that the reformers had
swept away such a useful institution.
"Now, my dear young friend, you see how, by the blessing of God, the little
sacrifice of a few pounds brought down and destroyed all the prejudices of those
poor heretics against auricular confession and our holy church in general. You
understand how the doors were opened to me, and how their hearts and intelligences
were like fields prepared to receive the good seed. At the appointed hour I
never failed from paying the requested visit, and I was invariably received
like a Messiah. Not only the gentlemen, but the ladies overwhelmed me with marks
of the most sincere gratitude and respect; even the dear little children petted
me, and threw their arms around my neck to give their sweetly angelic kisses.
The only topic on which we could speak, of course, was the great good done by
auricular confession. I easily showed them how it words as a check to all the
evil passions of the heart; how it is admirably adapted to all the wants of
the poor sinners, who find a friend, a counselor, a guide, a father, a real
saviour in their confessor.
"We had not talked half an hour in that way, when it was generally evident
to me that they were more than half way out of their Protestant errors. I very
seldom left those houses without being sure of a new, glorious victory for our
holy religion over its enemies. It is very seldom that I do not succeed in bringing
that family to our holy church before one or two years; and if I fail from gaining
the father or mother, I am nearly sure to persuade them to send their daughters
to our good nuns and their boys to our colleges, where they sooner or later
become our most devoted Catholics. So you see that the few dollars I spend every
year for that holy cause are the best investments ever made. They do more to
catch the Protestants of Quebec than the baits of the fishermen do to secure
the cod fishes of the Newfoundland banks."
In ending this last sentence, Mr. Parent filled his room with laughter.
I thanked him for these interesting details. But I told him: "Though I
cannot but admire your perfect skill and shrewdness in breaking the barriers
which prevent Protestants from understanding the divine institution of auricular
confession, will you allow me to ask you if you do not fear to be guilty of
an imposture and a gross imposition in the way you make them believe that the
money you hand they has come to you through auricular confession?"
"I have not the least fear of that," promptly answered the old priest,
"for the good reason, that if you had paid attention to what I have told
you, you must acknowledge that I have not said positively that the money was
coming from auricular confession. If those Protestants have been deceived, it
is only due t their own want of a more perfect attention to what I said. I know
that there were things that I kept in my mind which would have made them understand
the matter in a very different way if I had said them. But Liguori and all our
theologians, among the most approved of our holy church, tell us that these
reservations of the mind (mentis reservationes) are allowed, when they are for
the good of souls and the glory of God."
"Yes," answered I, "I know that such is the doctrine of Liguori,
and it is approved by the popes. I must confess that this seems to me entirely
opposed to what we read in the sublime gospel. The simple and sublime 'Yea,
yea' and 'Nay, nay' of our Saviour seems to me in contradiction with the art
of deceiving, even when not saying absolute and direct falsehoods; and if I
submit myself to those doctrines, it is always with a secret protest in my inmost
soul."
In an angry manner, Mr. Parent replied: "Now, my dear young friend, I understand
the truth of what the Rev. Messrs. Perras and Bedard told me lately about you.
Though these remarkable priests are full of esteem for you, they see a dark
cloud on your horizon; they say that you spend too much time in reading the
Bible, and not enough in studying the doctrines and holy traditions of the Church.
You are too much inclined also to interpret the Word of God according to your
own fallible intelligence, instead of going to the Church alone for that interpretation.
This is the dangerous rock on which Luther and Calvin were wrecked. Take my
advice. Do not try to be wiser than the Church. Obey her voice when she speaks
to you through her holy theologians. This is your only safeguard. The bishop
would suspend you at once were he aware of your want of faith in the Church."
These last words were said with such emphasis, that they seemed more like a
sentence of condemnation from the lips of an irritated judge than anything else.
I felt that I had again seriously compromised myself in his mind; and the only
way of preventing him from denouncing me to the bishop as a heretic and a Protestant
was to make an apology, and withdraw from the dangerous ground on which I had
again so imprudently put myself. He accepted my explanation, but I saw that
he bitterly regretted having trusted me with his secret. I withdrew from his
presence, much humiliated by my want of prudence and wisdom. However, though
I could not approve of all the modus operandi of the Superior of Quebec, I could
not but admire then the glorious results of his efforts in converting Protestants;
and I took the resolution of devoting myself more than ever to show them their
errors and make them good Catholics. In this I was too successful; for during
my twenty-five years of priesthood I have persuaded ninety-three Protestants
to give up their gospel light and truth in order to follow the dark and lying
traditions of Rome. I cannot enter into the details of their conversions, or
rather perversions; suffice to say that I soon found that my only chance of
success in that proselytizing work was among the Ritualists. I saw at first
that Calvin and Knox had dug a really impassable abyss between the Presbyterians,
Methodists, Baptists, and the Church of Rome. If these Ritualists remain Protestants,
and do not make the very short step which separates them from Rome, it is a
most astonishing fact, when they are logical men. Some people are surprised
that so many eminent and learned men, in Great Britain and America, give up
their Protestantism to submit to the Church of Rome; but my wonder is that there
are so few among them who fall into that bottomless abyss of idolatry and folly,
when they are their whole life on the very brink of the chasm. Put millions
of men on the very brink of the Falls of Niagara, force them to cross to and
from in small canoes between both shores, and you will see that, every day,
some of them will be dragged, in spite of themselves, into the yawning abyss.
Nay, you will see that, sooner or later, those millions of people will be in
danger of being dragged in a whole body, by the irresistible force of the dashing
waters, into the fathomless gulf. Through a sublime effort the English people
helped by the mighty and merciful hand of God, has come out from the abyss of
folly, impurity, ignorance, slavery, and idolatry, called the Church of Rome.
But many, alas! in the present day, instead of marching up to the high regions
of unsullied Gospel truth and light instead of going up to the high mountains
where true Christian simplicity and liberty have for ever planted their glorious
banners have been induced to walk only a few steps out of the pestiferous regions
of Popery. They have remained so near the pestilential atmosphere of the stagnant
waters of death which flow from Rome, that the atmosphere they breathe is still
filled with the deadly emanations of that modern Sodom. Who, without shedding
tears of sorrow, can look at those misguided ministers of the Gospel who believe
and teach in the Episcopal Church that they have the power to make their God
with a wafer, and who bow down before that wafer God and adore him! Who can
refrain from indignation at the sight of so many Episcopal ministers who consent
to have their ears, minds, and souls polluted at the confessional by the stories
of their penitents, whom in their turn they destroy by their infamous and unmentionable
questions? When I was lecturing in England in 1860, the late Archbishop of Canterbury,
then Bishop of London, invited me to his table, in company with Rev. Mr. Thomas,
now Bishop of Goulburn, Australia, and put to me the following questions, in
the presence of his numerous and noble guests:-
"Father Chiniquy, when you left the Church of Rome, why did you not join
the Episcopalian rather than the Presbyterian Church?"
I answered: "Is it the desire of your lordship that I should speak my mind
on that delicate subject?"
"Yes, yes," said the noble lord bishop.
"Then, my lord, I must tell you that my only reason is that I find in your
Church several doctrines which I have to condemn in the Church of Rome."
"How is that?" replied his lordship.
"Please," I answered, "let me have one of your Common Prayer
Books."
Taking the book, I read slowly the article on the visitation of the sick: "Here
shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if
he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession
the priest shall absolve him if he humbly and heartily desire it after this
sort: 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to His Church to absolve all
sinners who repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee thine
offenses: and, by His authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy
sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.'"
I then added: "Now, my Lord, where is the difference between the errors
of Rome and your Church on this subject?"
"The difference is very great," he answered. "The Church of Rome
is constantly pressing the sinners to come to her priests all their lifetime,
when we subject the sinner to this humiliation only once in his life, when he
is near his last hour."
"But, my lord, let me tell you that it seems to me the Church of Rome is
much more logical and consistent in this than the Episcopal Church. Both churches
believe and teach that they have received from Christ the power to forgive the
sins of those who confess to their priests, and you think yourself wiser because
you invite the sinner to confess and receive His pardon only when he is tied
to a bed of suffering, at the last hour before his death. But will your lordship
be kind enough to tell me when I am in danger of death? If I am constantly in
danger of death, must you not, with the Church of Rome, induce me constantly
to confess to your priests, and get my pardon and make my peace with God? Has
our Saviour said anywhere that it was only for the dying, at the last extremity
of life, that He gave the power to forgive my sins? Has He not warned me many
times to be always ready; to have always our peace made with God, and not to
wait till the last day, to the last hour?" The noble bishop did not think
fit to give me any other answer than these very words: "We all agree that
this doctrine ought never to have been put in our Common Prayer Book. But you
know that we are at work to revise that book, and we hope that this clause,
with several others, will be taken away."
"Then," I answered in a jocose way, "my lord, when this obnoxious
clause has been removed from your Common Prayer Book it will be time for me
to have the honour of belonging to your great and noble Church."
When the Church of England went out of the Church of Rome, she did as Rachel,
the wife of Jacob, who left the house of her father Laban and took his gods
with her. So the Episcopal Church of England, unfortunately, when she left Rome,
concealed in the folds of her mantle some of the false gods of Rome; she kept
to her bosom some vipers engendered in the marshes of the modern Sodom. Those
vipers, if not soon destroyed, will kill her. They are already eating up her
vitals. They are covering her with most ugly and mortal wounds. They are rapidly
taking away her life. May the Holy Ghost rebaptize and purify that noble Church
of England, that she may be worthy to march at the head of the armies of the
Lord to the conquest of the world, under the banners of the great Captain of
our Salvation.