Chapter XLVIII
MY VISIT TO CHICAGO IN 1851—BISHOP VANDEVELD—HIS PREDECESSOR POISONED—MAGNIFICENT PRAIRIES OF THE WEST—RETURN TO CANADA—BAD FEELINGS OF BISHOP BOURGET—I DECLINE SENDING A RICH WOMAN TO THE NUNNERY TO ENRICH THE BISHOP—A PLOT TO DESTROY ME.
The journey from Detroit to Chicago, in the month of June, 1851, was not so pleasant as it is to-day. The Michigan Central Railroad was completed then only to New Buffalo. We took the steamer there and crossed Lake Michigan to Chicago, where we arrived the next morning, after nearly perishing in a terrible storm. On the 15th of June, I first landed, with the greatest difficulty, on a badly wrecked wharf, at the mouth of the river. Some of the streets I had to cross in order to reach the bishop’s palace were almost impassable. In many places loose planks had been thrown across them to prevent people from miring in the mud and quicksands.
The first sight of Chicago was then far from giving an idea of what that city has become in 1886. Though it had rapidly increased in the last ten years, its population was then not much more than 30,000. The only line of railroad finished was from Chicago to Aurora, about forty miles.
The whole population of the State of Illinois was then not much beyond 200,000. To-day, Chicago alone numbers more than 500,000 souls within her limits. Probably more grain, lumber, beef and pork are now bought and sold in a single day in Chicago than were then in a whole year.
When I entered the miserable house called the “bishop’s palace,” I could hardly believe my eyes. The planks of the lower floor, in the dining-room, were floating, and it required a great deal of ingenuity to keep my feet dry while dining with him for the first time. But the Christian kindness and courtesy of the bishop, made me more happy in his poor house than I felt, later, in the white marble palace built by his haughty successor, C. O’Regan.
There were then in Chicago about 200 French Canadian families, under the pastorate of the Rev. M. A. Lebel, who, like myself, was born in Kamouraska. The drunkenness and other immoralities of the clergy, pictured to me by that priest, surpassed all I had ever heard or known.
After getting my promise that I would never reveal the fact before his death, he assured me that the last bishop had been poisoned by one of his grand vicars in the following way. He said, the grand vicar, being father confessor of the nuns of Loretto, had fallen in love with one of the so-called virgins, who died a few days after becoming the mother of a still-born child.
This fact having transpired, and threatening to give a great deal of scandal, the bishop thought it was his duty to make an inquiry and punish his priest, if he should be found guilty. But the grand vicar, seeing that his crime was to be easily detected, found that the shortest way to escape exposure was to put an end to the inquest by murdering the poor bishop. A poison very difficult to detect was administered, and the death of the prelate soon followed, without exciting any surprise in the community.
Horrified by the long and minute details of that mystery of iniquity, I came very near returning to Canada, immediately, without going any further. But after more mature consideration, it seemed to me that these awful iniquities on the part of the priests of Illinois was just the reason why I should not shut my ears to the voice of God, if it were His will that I should come to take care of the precious souls He would trust to me. I spent a week in Chicago, lecturing on temperance every evening, and listening during the days to the grand plans the bishop was maturing, in order to make our Church of Rome the mistress and ruler of the magnificent valley of the Mississippi, which included the States of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Mississippi, etc. He clearly demonstrated to me, that once mistress of the incalculable treasures of those rich lands, through the millions of her obedient children, our church would easily command the respect and the submission of the less favored states of the east.
My zeal for my church was so sincere that I would have given, with pleasure, every drop of my blood, in order to secure to her such a future of power and greatness. I felt really happy and thankful to God that He should have chosen me to help the pope and the bishops realize such a noble and magnificent project.
Leaving Chicago, it took me nearly three days to cross the vast prairies, which were then a perfect wilderness, between Chicago and Bourbonnais, where I spent three weeks in preaching and exploring the country extending from the Kankakee river to the south-west towards the Mississippi.
It was only then that I plainly understood the greatness of the plans of the bishop, and that I determined to sacrifice the exalted position God had given me in Canada to guide the steps of the Roman Catholic emigrants from France, Belgium and Canada towards the regions of the west, in order to extend the power and influence of my church all over the United States.
On my return to Chicago, in the second week of July, all was arranged with the bishop for my coming back in the autumn, to help him to accomplish his gigantic plans.
However, it was understood between us that my leaving Canada for the United States would be kept a secret till the last hour, on account of the stern opposition I expected from my bishop.
The last thing to be done, on my return to Canada, in order to prepare the emigrants to go to Illinois, rather than any other part of the United States, was to tell them through the press the unrivaled advantages which God had prepared for them in the west. I did so by a letter, which was published not only by the press of Canada, but also in many papers of France and Belgium. The importance of that letter is such that I hope my reader will bear with me in reproducing the following extracts from it.
MONTREAL, CANADA EAST.
August 13th, 1851.
It is impossible to give our friends, by narration, an idea of what we feel, when we cross for the first time the immense prairies of Illinois. It is a spectacle which must be seen to be well understood.
As you advance in the midst of these boundless deserts, where your eyes perceive nothing but lands of inexhaustible richness, remaining in the most desolating solitude, you feel something which you cannot express by any words.
Is your soul filled with joy, or your heart broken with sadness? You cannot say. You lift up your eyes to heaven, and the voice of your soul is chanting a hymn of gratitude. Tears of joy are trickling down your cheeks, and you bless God, whose curse seems not to have fallen on the land where you stand: “Cursed is the earth in thy work; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”
You see around you the most luxuriant verdure; flowers of every kind, and magnificence above description.
But, if in the silence of meditation, you look with new attention on those prairies, so rich, so magnificent, you feel an inexpressible sentiment of sadness, and addressing yourself to the blessed land, you say: “Why art thou so solitary? Why is the wild game alone here to glorify my God?”
And if you continue to advance through those immense prairies, which, like a boundless ocean, are spreading their rolling waves before you, and seem to long after the presence of man, to cover themselves with incalculable treasures, you remember your friends in Canada, and more particularly those among them who, crushed down by misery, are watering with the sweat of their brow a sterile and desolated soil, you say:
“Ah! if such and such of my friends were here, how soon they would see their hard and ungrateful labors changed into the most smiling and happy position.”
Perhaps I will be accused here, of trying to depopulate my country, and drive my countrymen from Canada to the United States.
No! no. I never had so perverse a design. Here is my mind about the subject of emigration, and I see no reason to be ashamed of it, or to conceal it.
It is a fact that a great number (and much greater than generally believed) of French Canadians are yearly emigrating from Canada, and nobody regrets it more than I do; but as long as those who govern Canada will not pay more attention to that evil, it will be an incurable one, and every year Canada will lose thousands and thousands of its strongest arms and noblest hearts, to benefit our happy neighbors.
With many others, I had the hope that the eloquent voice of the poor settlers of our eastern townships would be heard, and that the government would help them; but that hope has gone like a dream, and we have now every reason to fear that our unfortunate settlers of the east will be left to themselves.
The greatest part of them, for the want of roads to the markets of Quebec and Montreal, and still more by the tyranny of their cruel landlords, will soon be obliged to bid an eternal adieu to their country, and with an enraged heart against their haughty oppressors, they will seek in the exile to a strange land the protection they could not find in their own country.
Yes! If our Canadian government continues a little longer to show the same incomprehensible and stupid apathy for the welfare of its own subjects, emigration will increase every year from Canada to swell the ranks of the American people.
Since we cannot stop that emigration, is it not our first duty to direct it in such a way that it will be to the poor emigrants as little injury as possible?
Let us do everything to hinder them from going to the large cities of the United States.
Drowned in the mixed population of American cities, our unfortunate emigrating countrymen would be too much exposed to losing their morality and their faith.
Surely there is not another country under the heavens where space, bread, and liberty are so universally assured to every member of the community, as the United States. But it is not in the great cities of the United States that our poor countrymen will soonest find these three gifts. The French Canadian who will stop in the large cities, will not, with a very few exceptions, raise himself above the unenviable position of a poor journeyman.
But those among them who will direct their steps towards the rich and extensive prairies of Bourbonnais, will certainly find a better lot.
Many in Canada would believe that I am exaggerating, were I to publish how happy, prosperous and respectable is the French Canadian population of Bourbonnais.
The French Canadians of Bourbonnais have had the intelligence to follow the good example of the industrious American farmers in the manner of cultivating the lands.
On their farms as well as those of their neighbors, you will find the best machinery to cut their crops, to thresh their grain.
They enjoy the just reputation of having the best horses in the country, and very few can beat them for the number and quality of their cattle.
Now, what can be the prospects of a young man in Canada, if he has not more than $200? A whole life of hard labor and continued privation is his too certain lot. But, let that young man go directly to Bourbonnais, and if he is industrious, sober and religious, before a couple of years he will see nothing to envy in the most happy farmer in Canada.
As the land he will take in Illinois, is entirely prepared for the plow, he has no trees to cut or eradicate, no stones to move, no ditch to dig, his only work is to fence and break his land and sow it, and the very first year the value of the crop will be sufficient to pay for his farm.
Holy Providence has prepared everything for the benefit of the happy farmers of Illinois.
That fertile country is well watered by a multitude of rivers and large creeks, whose borders are generally covered with the most rich and extensive groves of timber of the best quality, as black oak, maple, white oak, burr oak, etc.
The seeds of the beautiful acacia (locust), after five or six years, will give you a splendid tree.
The greatest variety of fruits are growing naturally in almost every part of Illinois; coal mines have been discovered in the very heart of the country, more than sufficient for the wants of the people. Before long, a railroad from Chicago to Bourbonnais will bring our happy countrymen to the most extensive market, the Queen city of the west—Chicago.
I will then say to my young countrymen who intend emigrating from Canada: “My friend, exile is one of the greatest calamities that can befall a man.
“Young Canadian, remain in thy country, keep thy heart to love it, thy intelligence to adorn it, and thine arms to protect it.
“Young and dear countrymen, remain in thy beautiful country; there is nothing more grand and sublime in the world than the waters of the St. Lawrence. It is on those deep and majestic waters that, before long, Europe and America will meet and bind themselves to each other by the blessed bonds of an eternal peace; it is on its shores that they will exchange their incalculable treasures. Remain in the country of thy birth, my dear son. Let the sweat of thy brow continue to fertilize it, and let the perfume of thy virtues bring the blessing of God upon it.
“But, my dear son, if thou hast no more room in the valley of the St. Lawrence, and if, by the want of protection from the Government, thou canst not go to the forest without running the danger of losing thy life in a pond, or being crushed under the feet of an English or Scotch tyrant, I am not the man to invite thee to exhaust thy best days for the benefit of the insolent strangers, who are the lords of the eastern lands. I will sooner tell thee, ‘go my child,’ there are many extensive places still vacant on the earth, and God is everywhere. That Great God calleth thee to another land, submit thyself to His Divine Will.
“But, before you bid a final adieu to thy country, engrave on thy heart and keep as a holy deposit, the love of thy holy religion, of thy beautiful language and of the dear and unfortunate country of thy birth.
“On thy way to the land of exile, stop as little as possible in the great cities, for fear of the many snares thy eternal enemy has prepared for thy perdition.
“But go straight to Bourbonnais. There you will find many of thy brothers, who have erected the cross of Christ; join thyself to them, thou shalt be strong of their strength; go and help them to conquer to the Gospel of Jesus those rich countries, which shall, very soon, weigh more than is generally believed, in the balance of the nations.
“Yes, go straight to Illinois. Thou shalt be not entirely in a strange and alien country. Holy Providence has chosen thy fathers to find that rich country, and to reveal to the world its admirable resources.
“More than once, that land of Illinois has been sanctified by the blood of thy ancestors.
“In Illinois, thou shalt not make a step without finding indestructible proof of the perseverance, genius, bravery and piety of thy French forefathers.
“Go to Illinois, and the many names of Bourbonnais, Joliet, Dubuque, La Salle, St. Charles, St. Mary, etc., that you will meet everywhere, will tell you more than my words, that that country is nothing but the rich inheritance which your fathers have found for the benefit of their grandchildren.”
C. CHINIQUY.
I would never have published this letter, if I had foreseen its effects on the farmers of Canada. In a few days after its appearance, their farms fell to half their value. Every one, in some parishes, wanted to sell their lands and emigrate to the west. It was only for want of purchasers that we did not see an emigration which would have surely ruined Canada. I was frightened by its immediate effect on the public mind. However, while some were praising me to the skies, for having published it, others were cursing me, and calling me a traitor. The very day after its publication, I was in Quebec, where the bishops of Canada were met in council. The first one I met, was my Lord De Charbonel, Bishop of Toronto. After having blessed me, he pressed my hand and said:
“I have just read your admirable letter. It is one of the most beautiful and eloquently written articles I ever read. The Spirit of God has surely inspired every one of its sentences. I have, just now, forwarded six copies of it to different journals of France and Belgium, where they will be republished and do an incalculable amount of good, by directing the French-speaking Catholic emigrants towards a country where they will run no risk of losing their faith, with the assurance of securing a future of unbounded prosperity for their families. Your name will be put among the names of the greatest benefactors of humanity.”
Though these compliments seemed to me much exaggerated and unmerited, I cannot deny that they pleased me, by adding to my hopes and convictions that great good would surely come from the plan I had of gathering all the Roman Catholic emigrants on the same spot, to form such large and strong congregations; that they would have nothing to fear from heretics. I thanked the bishop for his kind and friendly words, and left him to go and present my respectful salutations to my Bishop of Montreal, my Lord Bourget, and give him a short sketch of my voyage to the far west. I found him alone in his room, in the very act of reading my letter. A lioness, who had just lost her whelps, would not have looked upon me with more angry and threatening eyes than that bishop did.
“Is it possible,” he said, “Mr. Chiniquy, that your hand has written and signed such a perfidious document? How could you so cruelly pierce the bosom of your own country, after her dealing so nobly with you? Do you not see that your treasonable letter will give such an impetus to emigration that our most thriving parishes will soon be turned into solitude? Though you do not say it, we feel at every line of that letter, that you also will leave your country, to give help and comfort to our natural enemies.”
Surprised by this unexpected burst of bad feelings, I kept my sang froid, and answered:
“My lord, your lordship has surely misunderstood me, if you have found in my letter any treasonable plan to ruin our country. Please read it again, and you will see that every line has been inspired by the purest motives of patriotism, and the highest views of religion. How is it possible that the worthy Bishop of Toronto should have told me that the Spirit of God Himself had dictated every line of that letter, when my good bishop’s opinion is so completely opposite?”
The abrupt answer the bishop gave to these remarks, clearly indicated that my absence would be more welcome than my presence. I left him, after asking his blessing, which he gave me in the coldest manner possible.
On the 25th of August, I was back at Longueuil, from my voyage to Quebec, which I had extended as far as Kamouraska, to see again the noble-hearted parishioners, whose unanimity in taking the pledge of temperance, and admirable fidelity in keeping it then, had filled my heart with such joy.
I related my last interview with Bishop Bourget to my faithful friend Mr. Brassard. He answered me:
“The present bad feelings of the Bishop of Montreal against you, are no secret to me. Unfortunately the low-minded men who surround and council him, are as unable as the bishop himself, to understand your exalted views in directing the steps of the Roman Catholics towards the splendid valley of the Mississippi. They are beside themselves, because they see that you will easily succeed in forming a grand colony of French-speaking people in Illinois. Now, I am sure of what I say, though I am not free to tell you how it came to my knowledge; there is a plot somewhere to dishonor and destroy you, at once. Those who are at the head of that plot, hope that if they can succeed in destroying your popularity, nobody will be tempted to follow you to Illinois. For, though you have concealed it as well as you could, it is evident to every one now, that you are the man selected by the bishops of the west to direct the uncertain steps of the poor emigrants towards those rich lands.”
“Do you mean, my dear Mr. Brassard,” I replied, “that there are priests around the Bishop of Montreal, cruel and vile enough to forge calumnies against me, and spread them before the country in such a way that I shall be unable to refute them.”
“It is just what I mean,” answered Mr. Brassard. “Mind what I tell you; the bishop has made use of you to reform his diocese. He likes you for that work. But your popularity is too great, to-day, for your enemies; they want to get rid of you, and no means will be too vile or criminal to accomplish your destruction, if they can attain their object.”
“But, my dear Mr. Brassard, can you give me any details of the plots which are in store against me?” I asked.
“No! I cannot, for I know them not. But be on your guard; for your few, but powerful enemies, are jubilant. They speak of the absolute impotency to which you will soon be reduced; if you accomplish what they so maliciously and falsely call your treacherous objects.”
I answered; “Our Saviour has said to all His disciples; ‘In the world, ye shall have tribulations. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ I am more determined than ever, to put my trust in God and fear no man.”
Two hours after this conversation, I received the following from the Rev. M. Pare, secretary to the Bishop:
TO THE REV. MR. CHINIQUY,
Apostle of Temperance.
MY DEAR SIR:—My lord Bishop of Montreal would like to see you upon some important business. Please come at your earliest convenience.
Yours truly,
JOS. PARE, Secretary.
The next morning I was alone with Monseigneur Bourget, who received me very kindly. He seemed at first to have entirely banished the bad feelings he had shown in our last interview at Quebec. After making some friendly remarks on my continual labors and success in the cause of temperance, he stopped for a moment, and seemed embarrassed how to resume the conversation. At last he said:
“Are you not the father confessor of Mrs. Chenier?”
“Yes! my lord. I have been her confessor since I lived in Longueuil.”
“Very well, very well,” he rejoined, “I suppose that you know that her only child is a nun, in the Congregation Convent.”
“Yes! my lord, I know it,” I replied.
“Could you not induce Mrs Chenier to become a nun also?” asked the bishop.
“I never thought of that, my lord,” I answered, “and I do not see why I should advise her to exchange her beautiful cottage, washed by the fresh and pure waters of the St. Lawrence, where she looks so happy and cheerful, for the gloomy walls of the nunnery.”
“But she is still young and beautiful; she may be deceived by temptation when she is there, in that beautiful house, surrounded by all the enjoyments of her fortune,” replied the bishop.
“I understand your lordship. Yes, Mrs Chenier has the reputation of being rich; though I know nothing of her fortune, she has kept well the charms and freshness of her youth. However, I think that the best remedy against the temptations you seem to dread so much for her, is to advise her to marry. A good Christian husband seems to me a much better remedy against the dangers, to which your lordship alludes, than the cheerless walls of a nunnery.”
“You speak just as a Protestant,” rejoined the bishop, with an evident nervous irritation. “We remark that, though you hear the confessions of a great number of young ladies, there is not a single one of them who has ever become a nun. You seem to ignore, that the vow of chastity is the shortest way to a life of holiness in this world and happiness in the next.”
“I am sorry to differ from your lordship, in that matter,” I replied. “But I cannot help it, the remedy you have found against sin is quite modern. The old remedy offered by our God Himself, is very different and much better, I think.
“‘It is not good that man shall remain alone, I will make a help-mate for him,’ said our Creator in the earthly paradise. ‘And to avoid fornication, let every man have his wife, and let every woman have her husband,’ said the same God, through His apostle Paul.
“I know too well how the great majority of nuns keep their vows of chastity, to believe that the modern remedy against the temptations you mention, is an improvement on the old one found and given by our God!” I answered.
With an angry look, the bishop replied:
“This is Protestantism, Mr. Chiniquy. This is sheer Protestantism.”
“I respectfully ask your pardon for differing from your lordship. This is not Protestantism. It is simply and absolutely the ‘pure word of God.’ But, my lord, God knows that it is my sincere desire, as it is my interest and my duty, to do all in my power to deserve your esteem. I do not want to vex nor disobey you. Please give me a good reason why I should advise Mrs. Chenier to enter a monastery, and I will comply with your request the very first time she comes to confess.”
Resuming his most amiable manner, the bishop answered me:
“My first reason is, the spiritual good which she would receive from her vows of perpetual chastity and poverty in nunnery. The second reason is, that the lady is rich; and we are in need of money. We would soon possess her whole fortune; for her only child is already in the Congregation Convent.”
“My dear bishop,” I replied, “you already know what I think of your first reason. After having investigated that fact, not in the Protestant books, but from the lips of the nuns themselves, as well as from their father confessors, I am fully convinced that the real virtue of purity is much better kept in the homes of our Christian mothers, married sisters, and female friends, than in the secret rooms, not to say prisons, where the poor nuns are enchained by the heavy fetters assumed by their vows, which the great majority curse when they cannot break them.
“And for the second reason, your lordship gives me to induce Mrs. Chenier becoming a nun, I am again sorry to say, that I cannot conscientiously accept it. I have not consecrated myself to the priesthood to deprive respectable families of their legal inheritance in order to enrich myself, or anybody else. I know she has poor relations who need her fortune after her death.”
“Do you pretend to say that your bishop is a thief?” angrily rejoined the bishop.
“No, my lord! By no means. No doubt, from your high standpoint of view, your lordship may see things in a very different aspect, from what I see them, in the low position I occupy in the church. But, as your lordship is bound to follow the dictates of your conscience in everything, I also feel obliged to give heed to the voice of mine.”
This painful conversation had already lasted too long. I was anxious to see the end of it; for I could easily read in the face of my superior that every word I uttered was sealing my doom. I rose up to take leave of him, and said: “My lord, I beg your pardon for disappointing your lordship.”
He coldly answered me:
“It is not the first time, though I would it were the last, that you show such a want of respect and submission to the will of your superiors. But, as I feel it is a conscientious affair on your part, I have no ill-will against you, and I am happy to tell you that I entertain for you all my past esteem. The only favor I ask from you, just now, is that this conversation may be kept secret.”
I answered: “It is still more to my interest than yours to keep this unfortunate affair a secret between us. I hope that neither your lordship, nor the Great God, who alone has heard us, will ever make it an imperious duty for me to mention it.”
“What good news do you bring me from the bishop’s palace?” asked my venerable friend, Mr. Brassard, when I returned, late in the afternoon.
“I would have very spicy, though unpalatable news to give you, had not the bishop asked me to keep what has been said between us a secret.”
Mr. Brassard laughed outright, at my answer, and replied:
“A secret! a secret! Ah! but it is a gazette secret; for the bishop has bothered me, as well as many others, with that matter, frequently, since your return from Illinois. Several times he has asked us to persuade you to advise your devoted penitent, Mrs. Chenier, to become a nun. I knew he invited you to his palace, yesterday, for that object.”
“The eyes and the heart of our poor bishop,” continued Mr. Brassard, “are too firmly fixed on the fortune of that lady. Hence, his zeal about the salvation of her soul, through the monastic life. In vain I tried to dissuade the bishop from speaking to you on that subject, on account of your prejudices against our good nuns. He would not listen to me. No doubt you have realized my worst anticipations; you have, with your usual stubbornness, refused to yield to his demands. I fear you have added to his bad feelings, and consummated your disgrace.”
“What a deceitful man that bishop is,” I answered indignantly. “He has given me to understand that this was a most sacred secret between him and me; when I see, by what you say, that it is nothing else than a farcical secret, known by the hundreds who have heard of it.
“But please, my dear Mr. Brassard, tell me, is it not a burning shame that our nunneries are changed into real traps, to steal cheat and ruin so many unsuspecting families? I have no words to express my disgust and indignation, when I see that all those great demonstrations and eloquent tirades about the perfection and holiness of the nuns, on the part of our spiritual rulers, are nothing else, in reality, than a veil to conceal their stealing operations. Do you not feel that those poor nuns are the victims of the most stupendous system of swindling the world has ever seen?
“I know that there are some honorable exceptions. For instance, the nunnery you have founded here, is an exception. You have not built it to enrich yourself, as you have spent your last cent in its erection. But you and I are only simpletons, who have, till now, ignored the terrible secrets which put that machine of the nunneries and monkeries in motion. I am more than ever disgusted and terrified, not only by the unspeakable corruptions, but also by the stupendous system of swindling which is their foundation stone. If the cities of Quebec and Montreal could know what I know of the incalculable sums of money secretly stolen through the confessional to aid our bishops in building the famous cathedrals and splendid palaces, or to cover themselves with robes of silk, satin, silver and gold; to live more luxurious than the Pashas of Turkey, they would set fire to all those palatial buildings; they would hang the confessors who have thrown the poor nuns into these dungeons, under the pretext of saving their souls, when the real motive was to lay hands on their inheritance and raise their colossal fortunes. The bishop has opened before me a most deplorable and shameful page of the history of our church. It makes me understand many facts which were a mystery to me till to-day. Now I understand the terrible wrath of the English people in the days of old, and of the French people more recently, when they so violently wrenched from the hands of the clergy the enormous wealth they had accumulated during the dark ages. I have condemned those great nations till now. But, to-day, I absolve them. I am sure that those men, though blind and cruel in their vengeance, were the ministers of the justice of God. The God of heaven could not, forever, tolerate a sacrilegious system of swindling, as I know, now, to be in operation from one end to the other, not only of Canada, but of the whole world, under the mask of religion. I know that the bishop and his flatterers will hate and persecute me for my stern opposition to his rapacity. But I do feel happy and proud of his hatred. The God of truth and justice, the God of the gospel, will be on my side, when they attack me. I do not fear them; let them come. That bishop surely did not know me, when he thought that I would consent to be the instrument of his hypocrisy, and that, under the false pretext of a delusive perfection, I would throw that lady into a dungeon for her life, that he might become rich with her inheritance.”
Mr. Brassard answered me: “I cannot blame you for your disobeying the bishop, in this instance. I foretold him what has occurred; for I knew what you think of the nuns. Though I do not go as far as you in that, I cannot absolutely shut my eyes to the facts which stare us in the face. Those monkish communities have, in every age, been the principal cause of the calamities which have befallen the church. For their love of riches, their pride and laziness, with their other scandals, have always been the same.
“Had I been able to foresee what has occurred inside the walls of the nunnery I built up here, I never would have erected it. However, now that I have built it, it is the child of my old age; I feel bound to support it to the end. This does not prevent me from being afflicted when I see the facility with which our poor nuns yield to the criminal desires of their too weak confessors. Who could have thought, for instance, that that lean and ugly superior of the oblates, Father Allard, could have fallen in love with his young nuns, and that so many would have lost their hearts on his account. Have you heard how the young men of our village, indignant at his spending the greater part of the night with the nuns, have whipped him, when he was crossing the bridge, not long before his leaving Longueuil for Africa? It is evident that our bishop multiplies too fast those religious houses.
“My fear is that they will, sooner than we expect, bring upon our Church of Canada the same cataclysms which have so often desolated her in England, France, Germany and even in Italy.”
The clock struck twelve just when this last sentence fell from the lips of Mr. Brassard. It was quite time to take some rest. When leaving me for his sleeping room, he said: “My dear Chiniquy, gird your loins well, sharpen your sword for the impending conflict. My fear is that the bishop and his advisers will never forget your wrenching from their hands the booty they were coveting so long.
“They will never forgive the spirit of independence with which you have rebuked them.
“In fact, the conflict is already begun; may God protect you against the open blows, and the secret machinations they have in store for you.”
I answered him: “I do not fear them. I put my trust in God. It is for His honor I am fighting and suffering. He will surely protect me from those sacrilegious traders in souls.”
Chapter XLIX
THE PLOT TO DESTROY ME—THE INTERDICT—THE RETREAT AT THE JESUITS’ COLLEGE—THE LOST GIRL, EMPLOYED BY THE BISHOP, RETRACTS—THE BISHOP CONFOUNDED, SEES HIS INJUSTICE, MAKES AMENDS—TESTIMONIAL LETTERS—THE CHALICE—THE BENEDICTION BEFORE I LEAVE CANADA.
The first week of September, 1851, I was hearing confessions in one of the churches of Montreal, when a fine-looking girl came to confess sins, whose depravity surpassed anything I had ever heard. Though I forbade her twice to do it, she gave me the names of several priests who were the accomplices of her orgies. The details of her iniquities were told with such cynical impudence that the idea struck me, at once, that she was sent by some one to ruin me. I abruptly stopped her disgusting stories by saying: “The way you confess your sins, is a sure indication that you do not come here to reconcile yourself to God, but to ruin me. By the grace of God, you will fail. I forbid you to come any more to my confessional. If I see you again among my penitents, I will order the beadle to turn you out of the church.”
I instantly shut the door of the small aperture through which she was speaking to me.
She answered something which I could not understand. But the tone of her voice, the shaking of her hands and head, with her manner of walking, when she left the confessional, indicated that she was beside herself with rage, as she went to speak a few words to a carter who was in the church preparing himself to confess.
The next evening, I said to Rev. Mr. Brassard that I suspected that a girl was sent to my confessional to ruin me.
He answered: “Did I not warn you sometime ago that there was a plot to destroy you? I have not the least doubt but that that girl was hired to begin that diabolical work. You have no idea of my anxiety about you. For I know your enemies will not shrink from any iniquity to destroy your good name, and prevent you from directing the tide of emigration from Canada to the valley of the Mississippi.”
I replied “that I could not partake of his fears; that God knew my innocence and the purity of my motives; He would defend and protect me.”
“My dear Chiniquy,” replied Mr. Brassard, “I know your enemies. They are not numerous, but they are implacable, and their power for mischief knows no limits. Surely, God can save you from their hands; but I cannot share your security for the future. Your answer to the bishop, in reference to Mrs. Chenier, when you refused to send her to the nunnery, that he might inherit her fortune, has, forever, alienated him from you. Bishop Bourget has the merited reputation of being the most revengeful man in Canada. He will avail himself of the least opportunity to strike you without mercy.”
I answered: “Though there should be a thousand Bishops Bourget to plot against me, I will not fear them, so long as I am in the right, as I am to-day.”
As the clock struck twelve, I bade him good night, and ten minutes later I was sound asleep.
The following days I went to deliver a course of lectures on temperance to several parishes south of Laprairie, till the 28th of September, after which I came back from St. Constant to rest, for a few days, and prepare to start for Chicago.
On my arrival, I found on my table a short letter from Bishop Bourget, telling me that, for a criminal action, which he did not want to mention, committed with a person he would not name, he had withdrawn all my priestly powers and interdicted me.
I handed the letter to Mr. Brassard and said: “Is not this the fulfillment of your prophecies? What do you think of a bishop who interdicts a priest without giving him a single fact, and without even allowing him to know his accusers?”
“It is just what I expected from the implacable vengeance of the Bishop of Montreal. He will never give you the reasons of your interdict, for he knows well you are innocent, and he will never confront you with your accusers; for it would be too easy for you to confound them.”
“But is not this against all the laws of God and man? Is it not against the laws of the church?” I replied.
“Of course it is,” he answered; “but do you not know that, on this continent of America, the bishops have, long ago, thrown overboard all the laws of God and man, and all the laws of the church, to rule and enslave the priests?”
I replied: “If it be so, are not Protestants correct when they say that our church has rejected the Word of God, to follow the traditions of man? What can we answer them when they tell us that our church has no right to be called the Church of God? Would the Son of God have given up his life on the cross to save men, that they might be the property of a few lawless tyrants, who should have the right to take away their honor and life?”
“I am not ready to answer those puzzling questions,” he answered, “but this is the fact. Though it is absolutely against all the laws of the church to condemn a priest without showing him his guilt, and confronting him with his accusers, our modern bishops, every week, condemn some of their priests without specifying any fact, or even giving them the names of their accusers.”
“Mind what I tell you,” I replied. “I will not allow the bishop to deal with me in that way. If he dares to trample the laws of the gospel under his feet to accomplish my ruin, and satisfy his vengeance, I will teach him a lesson that he will never forget. Thanks be to God, it is not the gory cross of the bloody Inquisition, but the emblem of the British Lion which I see there floating on the tower, to protect our honor and life in Canada. I am innocent; God knows it. My trust is in Him; He will not forsake me. I will go immediately to the bishop. If he never knew what power there is in an honest priest, he will learn it to-day.”
Two hours later, I was knocking at the bishop’s door. He received me with icy politeness.
“My lord,” I said, “you already know why I am in your presence. Here is a letter from you, accusing me of a crime which is not specified, under the testimony of accusers whom you refuse to name! And before hearing me, and confronting me with my accusers, you punish me as guilty! You not only take away my honor, with that unjust sentence, but my life! I come in the name of God, and of His Son, Jesus Christ, to respectfully ask you to tell me the crime of which I am accused, that I may show you my innocence. I want to be confronted with my accusers, that I may confound them.”
The bishop was, at first, evidently embarrassed by my presence; his lips were pale and trembling, but his eyes were dry and red, like the tiger’s eyes in the presence of his prey. He answered:
“I cannot grant your request, sir.”
Opening, then, my New Testament, I read:
“Receive no accusation against a priest, except under two or three witnesses” (1st Tim. v: 19). I added: “It was after I had heard this voice of God, and of His holy church, that I consented to be a priest. I hope it is not the intention of your lordship to put aside this Word of God and of His church. It is not your intention to break that solemn covenant made by Christ, with His priests, and sealed with His blood?”
With an air of contempt and tyrannical authority, which I had never suspected to be possible in a bishop, he answered:
“I have no lesson of Scripture or canonical law to receive from you, sir, and no answer to give to your impertinent questions. You are interdicted! I have nothing to do with you.”
These words, uttered by the man whom I was accustomed to consider as my superior, had a strange effect upon me. I felt as if awakening from a long and painful dream.
For the first time, I understood the sad prophecies of the Rev. Mr. Brassard, and I realized the horror of my position. My ruin was accomplished. Though I knew that that high dignitary was a monster of hypocrisy, injustice and tyranny, he had, among the masses, the reputation of a saint. His unjust sentence would be considered as just and equitable by the multitude over whom he was reigning supremely. At a nod of his head, the people would fall at his feet and obey his commands to crush me. All ears would be shut, and all hearts hardened against me. In that fatal hour, for the first time in my life, my moral strength and courage failed me. I felt as if I had just fallen into a bottomless abyss, out of which it was impossible to escape. What would my innocence, known only to God, avail me, when the whole world would believe me guilty? No words can give an idea of the mental torture of that horrible hour.
For more than a quarter of an hour not a word was exchanged between the bishop and me. He seemed very busy writing letters, while I was resting my head between my hands, and shedding torrents of tears. At last, I fell on my knees, took the hands of the bishop in mine, and, with a voice half choked with sighs, I said: “My lord, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the presence of God, I swear that I have done nothing which could bring such a sentence against me. I again implore your lordship to confront me with my accusers, that I may show you my innocence.”
With a savage insolence, the bishop withdrew his hands, as if I had contaminated them, and said, after rising from his chair:
“You are guilty; go out of my presence.”
A thousand times since, I have thanked my God that I had no dagger with me, for I would have plunged it into his heart. But, strange to say, the diabolical malice and dishonesty of that depraved man, suddenly brought back my former self-respect and courage. I at once took the stern resolution to face the storm. I felt, in my soul, that giant strength which, often, God Himself implants in the breast of the oppressed when he is in the presence of his merciless tyrants. It seemed that a flash of lightning had passed through my soul, after having written in letters of fire on the walls of the palace: “Mystery of iniquity.”
Relying entirely on the God of truth and justice, who knew my innocence and the great perversity of my oppressor, I left the room, without saying a word, and hastened back to Longueuil, to acquaint the Rev. Mr. Brassard with my firm resolution to fight the bishop to the end. He burst into tears when I told him what had occurred in the bishop’s palace.
“Though innocent, you are condemned,” he said. “The infallible proof of your innocence, is the cruel refusal of allowing you to be confronted with your accusers. Were you guilty, they would be too glad to show it, by confounding you before those witnesses. But the perversity of your accusers is so well known that they are ashamed of giving their names. The bishop prefers to crush you under the weight of his unmerited reputation for justice and holiness; for very few know him as we do. My fear is that he will succeed in destroying you. Though innocent, you are condemned and lost. You will never be able to contend against such a mighty adversary.”
“My dear Mr. Brassard, you are mistaken,” I replied. “I never was so sure of coming out victorious from a conflict as to-day. The monstrous iniquity of the bishop carries its antidote with itself. It was not a dream I saw when he so ignominiously turned me out of his room. A flash of lightning passed before my eyes and wrote, as if on the walls of the palace, ‘Mystery of iniquity!’ When Canada, the whole of Christendom, shall know the infamous conduct of that dignitary; when they shall see the ‘mystery of iniquity,’ which I shall stamp upon his forehead, there will be only one cry of indignation against him! Oh! if I can only find out the names of my accusers! How I will force that mighty tyrant to withdraw that sentence, at double quick.
I am determined to show, not only to Canada, but to the whole world, that this infamous plot is but the work of the vile male and female slaves by whom the bishop is surrounded.
“My first thought was to start immediately for Chicago where Bishop Vandeveld expected me.
“But I am resolved not to go until I have forced my merciless oppressor to withdraw his unjust sentence. I will, immediately, go to the Jesuit College, where I propose spending the next eight days in prayer and retreat.
“The Jesuits are the ablest men under heaven to detect the most hidden things. I hope they will help me to unearth that dark mystery of iniquity, and expose it to the world.”
“I am glad to see that you do not fear the terrible storm which is upon you, and that your sails are so well trimmed,” answered Mr. Brassard. “You do well in putting your trust in God, first, and in the Jesuits afterwards. The fearless way in which you intend to meet the attacks of your merciless enemies, will give you an easy victory. My hope is that the Jesuits will help you to find out the names of your false accusers, and that you will make use of them to hurl back in the face of the bishop the shame and dishonor he had prepared for you.”
At six P. M., in a modest, well-lighted and ventilated room of the Jesuit College, I was alone with the venerable Mr. Schneider, its director.
I told him how the Bishop of Montreal, four years before, after giving up his prejudices against me, when I had left the oblate, had earnestly supported me in my labors. I acquainted him also with the sudden change of those good feelings into the most uncontrollable hatred, from the day I had refused to force Mrs. Chenier to become a nun, that he might secure her fortune. I told him also how those bad feelings had found new food in my plan of consecrating the rest of my life to direct the tide of the French Catholic emigration towards the Mississippi valley. I exposed to him my suspicions about that miserable girl I had turned out from my confessional. “I have a double object in view,” I added:
“The first, is to spend the last eight days of my residence in Canada in prayer. But my second is, to ask the help of your charity, wisdom and experience in forcing the bishop to withdraw his unjust sentence against me. I am determined, if he does not withdraw it, to denounce him before the whole country, and to challenge him, publicly, to confront me with my accusers.”
“If you do that,” answered Mr. Schneider, “I fear lest you not only do an irreparable damage to the Bishop of Montreal, but to our holy church also.”
I replied: “Our holy church would indeed suffer an irreparable damage, if she sanctioned the infamous conduct of the bishop; but this is impossible.”
“You are correct,” rejoined the Jesuit. “Our holy church cannot sanction such criminal conduct. She has, hundreds of times, condemned those tyrannical and unjust actions, in other bishops. Such want of common honesty and justice will be condemned everywhere, as soon as it is known. The first thing we have to do, is to find out the names of your accusers. I have not the least doubt that they are the blind instruments of Machiavelist plots against you. But those plots have only to be brought to light, to vanish away. My impression is, that the miserable girl you have so abruptly and so wisely turned out of your confessional, knows more than the bishop wants us to find out, about the plots. It is a pity you did not ask her name and residence. At all events, you may rely on my efforts to persuade our bishop that his personal interest, as well as the interest of our holy religion, is, that he should speedily withdraw that sentence, which is a nullity by itself. It will not be difficult for me to show him that he has fallen into the very pit he has dug under your feet. He has taken a position against you which is absolutely untenable. Before your retreat is at an end, no doubt he will be too happy to make his peace with you. Only trust in God, and in the blessed Virgin Mary, and you have nothing to fear from the conflict. Our bishop has put himself above all the laws of man and God, to condemn the priest he had himself officially named: ‘the Apostle of Temperance of Canada.’ There is not a single man, in the church, who will allow him to stand on that ground. The 200,000 soldiers you have enrolled under the holy banners of temperance, will force him to retract his too hasty and unjust sentence.”
It would be too long to repeat here all the encouraging words which that wise Jesuit uttered.
Father Schneider was a European priest, who was in Montreal only since 1849. won my confidence, the very first time I met him, and I had chosen him, at once, for my confessor and adviser. The third day of my retreat, Father Schneider came to my room earlier than usual, and said:
“I have worked hard the last two days, to find out the name and residence of the carter to whom that miserable girl spoke in the church, after you had turned her out of your confessional, and I have it. If you have no objection I will send for him. He may know that girl and induce her to come here.”
“By all means, dear father,” I answered, “do it without losing a moment.”
Two hours later, the carter was with me. I recognized him as one of those dear countrymen whom our society of temperance had transformed into a new man. I asked him if he remembered the name of the girl who, a few days before, had spoken to him in the church, after going out of my confessional.
“Yes sir! I know her well. She has a very bad name, though she belongs to a respectable family.”
I added: “Do you think you could induce her to come here, by telling her that a priest, in the Jesuit College, wants to see her? But do not give her my name.”
He answered: “Nothing is more easy. She will be here in a couple of hours, if I find her at home.”
At three P. M., the carter was again knocking at my door, and said, with a low voice:
“The girl you want is in the parlor; she has no idea you are here, for she told me that you were now preaching in St. Constant. She seems to be very angry against you, and bitterly complains against your want of courtesy, the very first time she went to confess to you.”
“Is it possible that she told you that?” I replied.
“Yes sir! She told me that to explain her terrible excitement when coming out of your confessional, the other day; she then requested me to drive her home. She was really beside herself, and swore that she would make you pay for your harsh words and rude manner towards her. You will do well to be on your guard with her. She is one of the most depraved girls of Montreal, and has a most dangerous tongue, though to the shame of our holy religion, she is daily seen in the bishop’s palace.”
I immediately went to Father Schneider, and said: “My dear father, by the mercy of God, the girl we want to see is in the parlor. By what I have just heard from the carter who drove her, I have not the least doubt but that she is the one employed by the bishop to slander me, and get a pretext for what he has done. Please come with me to witness my innocence. But, take your gospel, ink, paper and pen with you.”
“All right,” answered the wise Jesuit.
Two minutes later we were in her presence.
It is impossible to describe her dismay, when she saw me. She came near fainting. I feared she should not be able to utter a word.
I spoke to her very kindly, and ran to get a glass of cold water, which did her good.
When she recovered, I said to her, with a tone of mixed authority and kind firmness: “You are here in the presence of God and two of his priests. That great God will hear every word which will fall from your lips. You must speak the truth. You have denounced me to the bishop as guilty of some great iniquity. You are the cause of my being interdicted. You, alone, can repair the injury you have done me. That injury is very great; but it can be easily repaired by you. In the presence of that venerable priest, say whether or not, I am guilty of the crime you have brought to my charge!”
At these words, the unfortunate girl burst into tears. She hid her face in her handkerchief, and with a voice half-suffocated with sighs, she said:
“No sir! You are not guilty.”
I added: “Confess another thing. Is it not a fact that you had come to my confessional more with the intention of tempting me to sin, than to reconcile yourself to God?”
“Yes sir!” she added, “this was my wicked intention.
“Continue to tell the truth, and our great and merciful God will forgive you. Is it not to revenge yourself for my rebuking you, that you have brought the false accusations to the bishop in order that he might interdict me?”
“Yes sir! that is the only reason I had for accusing you.”
After Father Schneider had made four copies of those declarations, signed by him as witness, and after she had sworn on the gospel, I forgave her the injury she had done me, I gave her some good advice and dismissed her.
“Is it not evident,” I said to Father Schneider, “that our merciful God never forsakes those who trust in him?”
“Yes, I never saw the interposition of God so marvellously manifested as in this perfect deliverance from the hands of your enemies. But, please tell me why you requested me to make four copies of her sworn declaration of your innocence; was not one sufficient?” asked Mr. Schneider.
I answered: “One of those copies was for the bishop; another will remain in your hands, Mr. Brassard will have one, and I need one for myself. For the dishonesty of the bishop is so evident to me, now, that I think him able to destroy the copy I will send him, with the hope, after its destruction, of keeping me at his feet. If he does that new act of iniquity, I will confound him with the three other authentic copies which will remain. Besides, this unfortunate girl may die sooner than we expect. In that case, I would find myself again with the bishop’s knife on my throat, if I had no other retractation to the perjured declaration which he has persuaded her to give him.”
“You are right,” replied Father Schneider, “now the only thing for you to do is to send that retractation to the bishop, with a firm and polite request to retract his unjust sentence against you. Let me do the rest with him. The battle is over. It has been fierce, but short. However, thanks be to God, you have a most complete victory over your unjust aggressors. The bishop will do all in his power, no doubt, to make you forget this darkest page of his life.”
The shrewd Jesuit was correct, in his previsions. Never did any bishop receive me with so many marks, not only with kindness, but I dare say of respect, than Bishop Bourget, when, after my retreat, I went to take leave of him, before my departure from Canada to the United States.
“I trust, my lord,” I said, “that, to-day, I can hope to possess the confidence and friendly feelings of your lordship?”
“Certainly, my dear Mr. Chiniquy, certainly; you possess my full confidence and friendship. I dare say more; you possess my most sincere gratitude, for what you have done in my diocese.”
I answered: “I am much obliged to your lordship for this expression of your kind feelings. But, now, I have two new favors to ask from your lordship. The first, is a written document expressive of those kind feelings.
“The second, is a chalice from your hands to offer the holy sacrifice of mass the rest of my life.”
“I will grant your request with the utmost pleasure,” answered the bishop; and without losing a moment, he wrote the following letter, which I reproduce here, on account of its importance.
TRANSLATION.
MONTREAL. OCT. 13TH, 1851.
SIR:—You request me to give you permission to leave my diocese in order to go and offer your services to the Bishop of Chicago. As you still belong to the Diocese of Quebec, I think you ought to address yourself to my lord of Quebec, to get the extract you want. As for me, I cannot but thank you for what you have done in our midst; and in my gratitude towards you, I wish you the most abundant blessing from heaven. Every day of my life, I will remember you. You will always be in my heart, and I hope that on some future day, the providence of God will give me some opportunity of showing you all the feelings of gratitude I feel towards you.
I remain, your most obedient servant,
✠IGNACE.
Bishop of Montreal.
REV. C. CHINIQUY.
Though that letter was a most perfect recantation of all he had said and done against me, and was of immense value to me in such circumstances, the bishop added to its importance by the exceedingly kind manner in which he handed it to me.
As he was going into another room he said:
“I will give you the silver chalice you want, to offer the holy sacrifice of mass the rest of your days.”
But, he came back and said:
“My secretary is absent, and has the key of the trunk which contains those vases.”
“It makes no difference, my lord,” I replied, “please order your secretary to put that chalice in the hands of Rev. Mr. Brassard, who will forward it, with a box of books which he has to send me to Chicago, next week.”
The bishop very kindly promised to do so; and he fulfilled his promise. The next day, the precious gift was put in the hands of Mr. Brassard, in presence of several priests.
It was sent, the following week, to Chicago, where I got it, and that fine silver chalice is still in my possession.
I then fell on my knees, and said:
“My lord, I am just leaving Canada for the Far West, please give me your benediction.”
He blessed me and pressed me to his heart with a tenderness of a father, saying:
“May God Almighty bless you, wherever you go and in everything you do, till the end of your life.”
Chapter L
ADDRESS PRESENTED ME AT LONGUEUIL—I ARRIVE AT CHICAGO—I SELECT THE SPOT FOR MY COLONY—I BUILD THE FIRST CHAPEL—JEALOUSY AND OPPOSITION OF THE PRIESTS OF BOURBONNAIS AND CHICAGO—GREAT SUCCESS OF THE COLONY.
Though I had kept my departure from Canada as secret as possible, it had been suspected, by many; and Mr. Brassard, unable to resist the desire that his people should give me the expression of their kind feelings, had let the secret slip from his lips, two days before I left. I was not a little surprised, a few hours before my taking leave of him, to see his whole parish gathered at the door of his parsonage, to present me the following address.
TO THE REV. FATHER CHINIQUY.
VENERABLE SIR:—It is only three years since we presented you your portrait, not only as an expression of our gratitude for your labors and success in the cause of temperance in our midst, but also as a memorial, which would tell our grandchildren the good you have done to our country. We were, then, far from thinking that we were so near the day when we would have the sorrow to see you separating yourself from us.
Your unforeseen exit from Canada fills us with a regret and sadness, which is increased by the fear we have, that the reform you have started, and so gloriously established everywhere, will suffer from your absence. May our merciful God grant that your faithful co-laborers may continue it, and walk in your footsteps.
While we submit to the decrees of providence, we promise that we will never forget the great things you have done for the prosperity of our country. Your likeness, which is in every Canadian family, will tell to the future generations, what Father Chiniquy has done for Canada.
We console ourselves by the assurance that, wherever you go, you will raise the glorious banners of temperance among those of our countrymen who are scattered in the land of exile. May those brethren put on your forehead, the crown of immortality, which you have so well deserved for your noble work in our midst. Signed
L. M. BRASSARD,
Priest and Curate.
H. HICKS, Vicar.
AND 300 OTHERS.
I ANSWERED:
GENTLEMEN:—I thank you for the honor you do me by your address. But allow me to tell you, that the more I look upon the incalculable good resulting from the Temperance Reform I have established, nearly from one end of Canada to the other, the more I would deceive myself, were I to attribute to myself the whole merit of that blessed work.
If our God has chosen me, his so feeble servant, as the instrument of his infinite mercies towards our dear country; it is because he wanted us to understand that He alone could make the marvellous change we see everywhere, and that we shall give all the glory to Him.
It is more to the fervent prayers, and to the good examples of our venerable bishops and curates, than to my feeble efforts, that we owe the triumph of temperance in Canada; and it is my firm conviction that that holy cause will lose nothing by my absence.
Our merciful God has called me to another field. I have heard his voice. Though it is a great sacrifice for me to leave my own beloved country, I must go to work in the midst of a new people, in the distant lands of Illinois.
From many parts of Europe and Canada, multitudes are rushing towards the western territories of the United States, to secure to their families, the incalculable treasures which the good providence of God has scattered over those broad prairies.
Those emigrants are in need of priests. They are like those little ones of whom God speaks in his Word, who wanted bread and had nobody to give them any: “I have heard their cries, I have seen their wants.” And in spite of the great sacrifice I am called upon to make, I must bless the Good Master, who calls me to work in that vineyard, planted by his own hands, in those distant lands.
If anything can diminish the sadness of my feelings, when I bid adieu to my countrymen, it is the assurance given me by the noble people of Longueuil, that I have in Canada many friends whose fervent prayers will constantly ascend to the throne of grace, to bring the benedictions of heaven upon me, wherever I go.
C. CHINIQUY.
I arrived at Chicago on the 29th of October, 1851, and spent six days with Bishop Vandeveld, in maturing the plans of our Catholic colonization.
He gave me the wisest advice with the most extensive powers which a bishop can give a priest, and urged me to begin, at once, the work, by selecting the most suitable spot for such an important and vast prospect.
My heart was filled with uncontrollable emotions when the hour came to leave my superior and go to the conquest of the magnificent State of Illinois, for the benefit of my church.
I fell at his knees to ask his benediction, and requested him never to forget me in his prayers. He was not less affected than I was, and pressing me to his bosom, bathed my face with his tears, and blessed me.
It took me three days to cross the prairies from Chicago to Bourbonnais. Those prairies were then a vast solitude, with almost impassable roads. At the invitation of their priest, Mr. Courjeault, several people had come long distances to receive and overwhelm me with the public expressions of their joy and respect.
After a few days of rest, in the midst of their interesting young colony, I explained to Mr. Courjeault that, having been sent by the bishop to found a settlement of Roman Catholic emigrants, on a sufficiently grand scale to rule the government of Illinois, it was my duty to go further south, in order to find the most suitable place for the first village I intended to raise. But to my unspeakable regret, I saw that my proposition filled the heart of that unfortunate priest with the most bitter feelings of jealousy and hatred. It had been just the same thing with Rev. Mr. Lebel, at Chicago.
The very moment I told him the object of my coming to Illinois, I felt the same spirit of jealousy had turned him into an implacable enemy. I had expected very different things from those two priests, for whom I had entertained, till then, most sincere sentiments of esteem. So long as they were under the impression that I had left Canada to help them increase their small congregations, by inducing the emigrants to settle among them, they loaded me, both in public and private, with marks of their esteem. But the moment they saw that I was going to found, in the very heart of Illinois, settlements on such a large scale, they banded together to paralyze and ruin my efforts. Had I suspected such opposition from the very men on whose moral help I had relied for the success of my colonizing schemes, I would have never left Canada, for Illinois. But it was now too late to stop my onward march. Trusting in God alone for success, I felt that those two men were to be put among those unforeseen obstacles which Heaven wanted me to overcome, if I could not avoid them. I persuaded six of the most respectable citizens of Bourbonnais to accompany me, in three wagons, in search of the best site for the center of my future colony. I had a compass, to guide me through those vast prairies, which were spread before me like a boundless ocean. I wanted to select the highest point in Illinois for my first town, in order to secure the purest air and water for the new emigrants.
I was fortunate enough, under the guidance of God, to succeed better than I expected, for the government surveyors have lately acknowledged that the village of St. Anne occupies the very highest point of that splendid state.
To my great surprise, ten days after I had selected that spot, fifty families from Canada had planted their tents around mine, on the beautiful site which forms to-day the town of St. Anne.
We were at the end of November, and though the weather was still mild, I felt I had not an hour to lose in order to secure shelter for every one of those families, before the cold winds and chilly rains of winter should spread sickness and death among them. The greater part were illiterate and poor people, without any idea of the dangers and incredible difficulties of establishing a new settlement, where everything had to be created. There were, at first, only two small houses, one 25 by 30, and the other 16 by 20 feet, to lodge us.
With the rest of my dear emigrants, wrapped in buffalo robes, with my overcoat for my pillow, I slept soundly, many nights on the bare floor, during the three months which it took to get my first house erected.
Having taken the census of the people on the first of December, I found two hundred souls, one hundred of whom were adults. I said to them:
“There are not three of you, if left alone, able to prepare a shelter for your families, this winter; but if, forgetting yourselves, you work for each other, as true friends and brethren, you will increase your strength tenfold, and in a few weeks, there will be a sufficient number of small, but solid buildings, to protect you against the storms and snow of the winter which is fast coming upon us. Let us go to the forest together and cut the wood, to-day; and to-morrow we will draw that timber to one of the lots you have selected, and you will see with what marvellous speed the house will be raised, if your hands and hearts are perfectly united to work for each other, under the eyes and for the love of the merciful God who gives us this splendid country for our inheritage. But before going to the forest, let us kneel down to ask our Heavenly Father to bless the work of our hands, and grant us to be of one mind and one heart, and to protect us against the too common accidents of those forests and building works.”
We all knelt on the grass, and, as much with our tears as with our lips, we sent to the mercy-seat a prayer, which was surely heard by the One who said, “Ask and you will receive,” and we started for the forest.
The readers would scarcely believe me, were I to tell them with what marvellous rapidity the first forty small, but neat houses were put up on our beautiful prairies.
Whilst the men were cutting timber, and raising one another’s houses, with a unity, a joy, a good-will and rapidity, which many times drew from me tears of admiration, the women would prepare the common meals. We obtained our flour and pork from Bourbonnais and Momence, at a very low price; and, as I was a good shot, one or two friends and I, used to kill, every day, enough prairie chickens, quails, ducks, wild geese, brants and deer, to feed more people than there were in our young colony.
Those delicious viands, which would have been welcomed on the table of the king, and which would have satisfied the most fastidious gourmand, caused many of my poor, dear emigrants to say:
“Our daily and most common meals here, are more sumptuous and delicate than the richest ones in Canada, and they cost almost nothing.”
When I saw that a sufficient number of houses had been built to give shelter to every one of the first emigrants, I called a meeting and said:
“My dear friends, by the great mercy of God, and in almost a miraculous way, (thanks be to the unity and charity which have bound you to each other till now, as members of the same family,) you are in your little, but happy homes, and you have nothing to fear from the winds and snow of the winter, I think that my duty now is to direct your attention to the necessity of building a two-story house. The upper part will be used as the school-house for your children on week days, and for a chapel on Sundays, and the lower part will be my parsonage. I will furnish the money for the flooring, shingles, the nails and the windows, and you will give your work gratis to cut and draw the timber and put it up. I will also pay the architect, without asking a cent from you. It is quite time to provide a school for your children; for in this country, as in any other place, there is no possible prosperity or happiness for a people, if they neglect the education of their children. Now, we are too numerous to continue having our Sabbath worship in any private house, as we have done till now. What do you think of this?”
They unanimously answered:
“Yes! after you have worked so hard to give a home to every one of us, it is just that we should help you to make one for yourself. We are happy to hear that it is your intention to secure a good education for our children. Let us begin the work at once.”
This was the 16th of January, 1852. The sun was as warm as on a beautiful day of May in Canada. We again fell upon our knees to implore the help of God, and sang a beautiful French hymn.
The next day, we were seventy-two men in a neighboring forest, felling the great oaks; and on the 17th of April, only three months later, that fine two-story building, nearly forty feet square, was blessed by Bishop Vandeveld.
It was surmounted by a nice steeple, thirty feet high, in which we had put a bell, weighing 250 pounds, whose solemn sound was to tell our joys and sorrows over the boundless prairies.
On that day, instead of being only fifty families, as at the last census, we numbered more than one hundred, among whom more than 500 were adults. The chapel which we thought, at first, would be too large, was filled to its utmost capacity on the day of its consecration to God.
Not a month later, we had to speak of making an addition of forty feet more, which when finished, six months later, was found to be still insufficient for the accommodation of the constantly increasing flood of immigration, which came, not only from Canada, but from Belgium and France. It soon became necessary to make a new center, and expand the limits of my first colony; which I did, by planting a cross at l’Erable, about fifteen miles southwest of St. Anne, and another at a place we call St. Mary, twelve miles southeast, in the county of Iroquois. These settlements were soon filled; for that very spring, more than one thousand new families came from Canada, to join us.
No words can express the joy of my heart, when I saw with what rapidity, my (then) so dear Church of Rome was taking possession of those magnificent lands, and how soon she would be unrivaled mistress, not only of the State of Illinois, but of the whole valley of the Mississippi. But the ways of men are not the ways of God. I had been called, by the Bishops of Rome, to Illinois, to extend the power of that church. But my God had called me there, that I might give, to that church, the most deadly blow she has ever received on this Continent.
My task is now to tell my readers, how the God of Truth, and Light and Life, broke, one after another, all the charmed bonds by which I was kept a slave at the feet of the Pope; and how He opened my eyes, and those of my people, to the unsuspected and untold abominations of Romanism.
Chapter LI
INTRIGUES, IMPOSTURES, AND CRIMINAL LIFE OF THE PRIEST IN BOURBONNAIS—INDIGNATION OF THE BISHOP—THE PEOPLE IGNOMINIOUSLY TURN OUT THE CRIMINAL PRIEST FROM THEIR PARISH—FRIGHTFUL SCANDAL—FAITH IN THE CHURCH OF ROME SERIOUSLY SHAKEN.
“Please accompany me to Bourbonnais; I have to confer with you and the Rev. Mr. Courjeault, on important matters,” said the bishop, half an hour before leaving St. Anne, after having blessed the chapel.
“I intended, my lord, to ask your lordship to grant me that honor, before you offered it,” I answered.
Two hours of good driving took us to the parsonage of the Rev. Mr. Courjeault, who had prepared a sumptuous dinner, to which several of the principal citizens of Bourbonnais had been invited.
When all the guests had departed, and the bishop, Mr. Courjeault, and I, were alone, he drew from his trunk, a bundle of weekly papers of Montreal, Canada, in which several letters, very insulting and compromising for the bishop, were published, signed R. L. C. Showing them to me, he said:
“Mr. Chiniquy, can I know the reason you had for writing such insulting things against your bishop?”
“My lord,” I answered. “I have no words to express my surprise and indignation, when I read those letters. But, thanks be to God, I am not the author of those infamous writings. I would rather have my right hand cut off, than to allow it to pen such false and perfidious things against you, or any one else.”
“Do you assure me that you are not the writer of the letters? Are you positive in that denegation; and do you know the contents of these lying communications?” replied the Bishop.
“Yes, my lord, I know the contents of these communications. I have read them, several times, with supreme disgust and indignation; and I positively assert that I never wrote a single line of them.”
“Then, can you tell me who did write them?” said the bishop.
I answered: “Please, my lord, put that question to the Rev. Mr. Courjeault; he is more able than any one to satisfy your lordship on that matter.”
I looked at Mr. Courjeault with an indignant air, which told him, that he could not any longer wear the mask, behind which he had concealed himself, for the last three or four months. The eyes of the bishop were also turned, and firmly fixed on the wretched priest.
No! Never had I seen anything so strange, as the countenance of that guilty man. His face, though usually ugly, suddenly took a cadaverous appearance; his eyes were fixed on the floor, as if unable to move.
The only signs of life left in him, were given by his knees, which were shaking convulsively; and by the big drops of sweat rolling down his unwashed face; for, I must say here, en passant, that, with very few exceptions, that priest was the dirtiest man I ever saw.
The bishop, with unutterable expressions of indignation, exclaimed:
“Mr. Courjeault; you are the writer of those infamous and slanderous letters! Three times, you have written, and twice you told me, verbally, that they were coming from Mr. Chiniquy! I do not ask you if you are the author of these slanders against me.
“I see it written in your face. Your malice against Mr. Chiniquy, is really diabolical. You wanted to ruin him in my estimation, as well as in that of his countrymen. And to succeed the better in that plot, you publish the most egregious falsehoods against me in the Canadian press, to induce me to denounce Mr. Chiniquy as an impostor.
“How is it possible that a priest can so completely give himself to the Devil?”
Addressing me, the bishop said: “Mr. Chiniquy, I beg your pardon for having believed and repeated, that you were depraved enough to write those calumnies against your bishop, I was deceived by that deceitful man.
“I will immediately retract what I have written and said against you.”
Then, addressing Mr. Courjeault he again said:
“The least punishment I can give you is to turn you out of my diocese, and write to all the Bishops of America, that you are the vilest priest I ever saw, that they may never give you any position on this Continent.”
These last words had hardly fallen from the lips of the bishop, when Mr. Courjeault fell on his knees, before me, and bathing, with his tears, my hands, which he was convulsively pressing in his, said:
“Dear Mr. Chiniquy, I see the greatness of my iniquity against you and against our common bishop. For the dear Saviour Jesus’ sake, forgive me. I take God to witness that you will never have a more devoted friend than I will be. And you, my lord, allow me to tell you, that I thank God that my malice and my great sin against both you and Mr. Chiniquy is known and punished at once. However, in the name of our crucified Saviour, I ask you to forgive me. God knows that, hereafter, you will not have a more obedient and devoted priest than I.”
It was a most touching spectacle to see the tears, and hear the sobs of that repentant sinner. I could not contain myself, nor refrain from tears. They were mingled with those of that returning stray sheep. I answered:
“Yes, Mr. Courjeault, I forgive you with all my heart, as I wish my merciful God to forgive me my sins. May the God who sees your repentance forgive you also!”
Bishop Vandeveld, who was gifted with a most sensitive and kind nature, was also shedding tears, when I lifted up Mr. Courjeault to press him to my heart, and to tell him again with my voice choked with sobs: “I forgive you most sincerely, as I want to be forgiven.”
He asked me: “What do you advise me to do? Must I forgive also? and can I continue to keep him at the head of this important mission?”
“Yes, my lord. Please forgive and forget the errors of that dear brother; he has already done so much good to my countrymen of Bourbonnais. I pledge myself that he will, hereafter, be one of your best priests.”
And the bishop forgave him, after some very appropriate and paternal advice, admirably mixed with mercy and firmness.
It was then about three o’clock in the afternoon. We separated, to say our vespers and matins (prayers which took nearly an hour).
I had just finished reciting them in the garden, when I saw the Rev. Mr. Courjeault walking from the church towards me, but his steps were uncertain, as one distracted or half drunk. I was puzzled at the sight, for he was a strong teetotaler, and I knew he had no strong drink in the church. He advanced three or four steps, then retreated. At last, he came very near, but his face had such an expression of terror and sadness that he was hardly recognizable. He muttered something that I could not understand.
“Please repeat your sentence,” I said to him, “I did not understand you.”
He then put his hands on his face, and again muttered something. His voice was drowned in his tears and sobs. Supposing that he was coming to ask me again to pardon his past malice and calumnies against me, I felt an unspeakable compassion for him.
As there were a couple of seats near by, I said to him:
“My dear Mr. Courjeault, come and sit here with me; and do not think any more of what God Almighty has blotted out with the blood of His Son. I will never think any more of your momentary errors. You may look upon me as your most devoted friend.”
“Dear Mr. Chiniquy,” he answered, “I have to reveal to you another dark mystery of my miserable life. Since more than a year, I have lived with the beadle’s daughter as if she were my wife!
“She has just told me that she is to become a mother in a few days, and that I have to see to that, and give her $500. She threatens to denounce me publicly to the bishop and people if I do not support her and her offspring. Would it not be better for me to flee away, this night, and go back to France to live in my own family, and conceal my shame? Sometimes, I am even tempted to throw myself in the river, to put an end to my miserable and dishonored existence. Do you think that the bishop would forgive this new crime, if I threw myself at his feet and asked pardon? Would he give me some other place in his vast diocese, where my misfortunes and my sins are not known? Please tell me what to do.”
I remained absolutely stupefied, and did not know what to answer. Though I had compassion for the unfortunate man, I must confess that this new development of his hypocrisy and rascality filled me with an unspeakable horror and disgust. He had, till then, wrapped himself in such a thick mantle of deception that many of his people looked upon him as an angel of purity. His infamies were so well concealed under an exterior of extreme moral rigidity that several of his parishioners looked upon him as a saint, whose relics could perform miracles. Not long before, two young couples, of the best families of Bourbonnais, having danced in a respectable social gathering, had been condemned by him, and compelled to ask pardon, publicly, in the church. This pharisaical rigidity caused the secret vices of that priest to be still more conspicuous and scandalous. I felt that the scandal which would follow the publication of this mystery of iniquity would be awful; that it would even cause many, forever, to lose faith in our church. So many sad thoughts filled my mind that I was confused and unable to give him any advice. I answered:
“Your misfortune is really great. If the bishop were not here, I might, perhaps, tell you my mind about the best thing to do, just now. But the bishop is here; he is the only man to whom you have to go to know how to come out of the bottomless abyss into which you have fallen. He is your proper counsellor; go and tell him, frankly, everything, and follow his advice.”
With staggering step, and in such deep emotions that his sobs and cries could be heard for quite a distance, he went to the bishop. I remained alone, half petrified at what I had heard.
Half an hour later, the bishop came to me. He was pale and his eyes reddened with tears. He said to me:
“Mr. Chiniquy, what an awful scandal! What a new disgrace for our holy church! That Mr. Courjeault, whom I thought, till to-day, to be one of my best priests, is an incarnate devil. What shall I do with him? Please help me by your advice; tell me what you consider the best way of preventing the scandal, and protecting the faith of the good people against the destructive storm which is coming upon them.”
“My dear Bishop,” I answered, “the more I consider these scandals here, the less I see how we can save the church from becoming a dreadful wreck. I feel too much the responsibility of my advice to give it. Let your lordship, guided by the Spirit of God, do what you consider the best for the honor of the church and the salvation of so many souls, which are in danger of perishing when this scandal becomes known. For me, the only thing I can do is to conceal my face with shame, go back to my young colony to pray and weep and work.”
The bishop replied: “Here is what I intend to do. Mr. Courjeault tells me that there is not the least suspicion among the people of his sin, and that it is an easy thing to send that girl to the house provided in Canada for priests’ offenses, without awakening any suspicion. He seems so penitent, that I hope, hereafter, we have nothing to fear from him. He will now live the life of a good priest here, without giving any scandal. But if I remove him, then there will be some suspicions of his fall, and the awful scandal we want to avoid will come. Please lend me $100, which I will give to Mr. Courjeault, to send that girl to Canada as soon as possible; and he will continue here, to work with wisdom after this terrible trial. What do you think of that plan?”
“If your lordship is sure of the conversion of Mr. Courjeault, and that there is no danger of his great iniquity being known by the people, evidently the wisest thing you can do is to send that girl to Canada, and keep Mr. Courjeault here. Though I see great dangers even in that way of dealing in this sad affair. But, unfortunately, I have not a cent in hand to-day, and I cannot lend you the $100 you want.”
“Then,” said the bishop, “I will give a draft on a bank of Chicago, but you must endorse it.”
“I have no objection, my lord, to endorse any draft signed by your lordship,” I replied.
Though it was late in the day, and that I had, at first, proposed to spend the night, I came back to my dear colony of St. Anne. Bourbonnais appeared to me like a burning house, in the cellar of which there was a barrel of powder, from which one could not keep himself too far away.
Five days later, four of the principal citizens of that interesting, but sorely tried, place knocked at my door. They were sent as a deputation from the whole village to ask me what to do about their curate, Mr. Courjeault. They told me that several of them had, long since, suspected what was going on between that priest and the beadle’s daughter, but they had kept that secret. However, yesterday, they said the eyes of the parish had been opened to the awful scandal.
The disgusting demonstrations and attention of the curate, when the victim of his lust took the diligence, left no doubt in the minds of any one that she is to have a child in Montreal.
“Now, Mr. Chiniquy, we are sent here to ask your advice. Please tell us what to do.”
“My dear friends,” I answered, “it is not from me, but from our common bishop, that you must ask what is to be done in such deplorable affairs.”
But they replied: “Would you not be kind enough to come to Bourbonnais with us, and go to our unfortunate priest to tell him that his criminal conduct is known by the whole people, and that we cannot decently keep him a day longer as our Christian teacher. He has rendered us great services in the past, which we will never forget. We do not want to abuse or insult him in any way. Though guilty, he is still a priest. The only favor we ask from him now is that he quits the place, without noise and scandal, in the night, to avoid any disagreeable demonstrations which might come from his personal enemies, whom his pharisaical rigidity has made pretty numerous and bitter.”
“I do not see any reason to refuse you that favor,” I answered.
Three hours later, in the presence of those four gentlemen, I was delivering my sad message to the unfortunate curate. He received it as his death warrant. But he was humble, and submitted to his fate.
After spending four hours with us in settling his affairs, he fell on his knees, with torrents of tears, he asked pardon for the scandal he had given, and requested us to ask pardon from the whole parish, and at 12 o’clock at night he left for Chicago. That hour was a sad one, indeed, for us all. But my God had a still sadder hour in store for me. The people of Bourbonnais had requested me to give them some religious evening services the next week, and I was just at the end of one of them, the 7th of May, when, suddenly, the Rev. Mr. Courjeault entered the church, walked through the crowd, saluting this one, smiling on that one, and pressing the hands of many. His face bore the marks of impudence and debauchery.
From one end of the church to the other, a whisper of amazement and indignation was heard.
“Mr. Courjeault! Mr. Courjeault!! Great God! what does this mean?”
I observed that he was advancing towards me, probably with the intention of shaking hands, before the people, but I did not give him time to do it. I left by the back door, and went to the parsonage, which was only a few steps distant. He, then, went back to the door to have a talk with the people, but very few gave him that chance. Though he affected to be exceedingly gay, jocose and talkative, he could not get many people to stop and hear him. Every one, particularly the women, were filled with disgust, at his impudence. Seeing himself nearly deserted, at the church door, he turned his steps towards the parsonage, which he entered, whistling. When he beheld me, he laughed and said:
“Oh! oh! our dear little Father Chiniquy here? How do you do?”
“I am quite unwell,” I answered, “since I see that you are so miserably destroying yourself.”
“I do not want to destroy myself,” he answered; “but it is you who wants to turn me out of my beautiful parish of Bourbonnais, to take my place. With the four blockheads who accompanied you, the other day, you have frightened and persuaded me that my misfortune with Mary was known by all the people; but our good bishop has understood that this was a trick of yours, and that it was one of your lying stories. I came back to take possession of my parish, and turn you out.”
“If the bishop has sent you back here to turn me out, that I may go back to my dear colony, he has just done what I asked him to do; for he knows, better than any man, for what great purpose I came to this country, and that I cannot do my work so long as he asks me to take care of Bourbonnais. I go, at once, and leave you in full possession of your parsonage. But I pity you, when I see the dark cloud which is on your horizon. Good-bye!”
“You are the only dark cloud on my horizon,” he answered. “When you are gone, I will be in as perfect peace as I was before you set your feet in Illinois. Good-bye; and please never come back here, except I invite you.”
I left, and ordered my servant-man to drive me back to St. Anne. But when crossing the village, I saw that there was a terrible excitement among the people. Several times they stopped me, and requested me to remain in their midst to advise them what to do.
But I refused, saying to them: “It would be an insult on my part to advise you anything, in a matter where your duty as men and Catholics is so clear. Consult the respect you owe to yourselves, to your families and to your church, and you will know what to do.”
It took me all night, which was very dark, to come back to St. Anne, where I arrived at dawn, the 9th of May, 1852.
The next Sabbath day, I held a public service in my chapel, which was crowded, without making any allusion to that deplorable affair. On the Monday following, four citizens of Bourbonnais were deputed to tell me what they had done, and asked me not to desert them in that hour of trial, but to remember that I was their countryman, and that they had nobody else to whom they could look to help to fulfill their religious duties. Here is the substance of their message:
“As soon as we saw that you had left our village, without telling us what to do, we called a public meeting, where we passed the following resolutions”:
1st. No personal insult shall be given to Mr. Courjeault.
2nd. We cannot consent to keep him a single hour as our pastor.
3rd. When, next Sabbath, he will begin his sermon, we will instantly leave the church, and go to the door, that he may remain absolutely alone, and understand our stern determination not to have him any more for our spiritual teacher.
4th. We will send these resolutions to the bishop, and ask him to allow Mr. Chiniquy to divide his time and attention between his new colony and us, till we have a pastor able to instruct and edify us.
Strange to say, poor Mr. Courjeault, shut up in his parsonage during that night, knew nothing of that meeting. He had not found a single friend to warn him of what was to happen the next Sunday. That Sunday, the weather was magnificent, and there never had been such a multitude of people at the church.
The miserable priest, thinking by that unusual crowd, that everything was to be right with him, that day, began his mass and went to the pulpit to deliver his sermon. But he had hardly pronounced the first words, when, at a signal given by some one, the whole people, without a single exception, ran out of the church, as if it had been on fire, and he remained alone.
Of course, this fell upon him as a thunderbolt, and he came very near fainting. However, recovering himself, he went to the door, and having with his tears and sobs, as with his words, persuaded the people to listen to what he had to tell them, he said:
“I see that the hand of God is upon me, and I deserve it. I have sinned, and made a mistake by coming back. You do not want me any more to be your pastor. I can not complain of that; this is your right, you will be satisfied. I will leave the place forever, to-night. I only ask you to forgive my past errors and pray for me.”
This short address was followed by the most deadly silence, not a voice was heard to insult him. Many, on the contrary, were so much impressed with the sad solemnity of this occurrence that they could not refrain their tears. The whole people went back to their homes with broken hearts. Mr. Courjeault left Bourbonnais that very night, never to return again. But the awful scandal he had given did not disappear with him.
Our Great and Merciful God, who, many times, has made the very sins and errors of his people to work for good, caused that public iniquity of the priest to remove the scales from many eyes and prepare them to receive the light, which was already dawning at the horizon. A voice from heaven was as if heard by many of us:
“Do you not see that in your Church of Rome, you do not follow the Word of God, but the lying traditions of men? Is it not evident that your priest’s celibacy is a snare and an institution of Satan?”
Many asked me to show them, in the Gospel, where Christ had established the law of celibacy.
“I will do better,” I added, “I will put the Gospel in your hands, and you will look for yourselves in that holy book what is said on that matter.”
The very same day I ordered a merchant, from Montreal, to send me a large box filled with New Testaments, printed by the order of the Archbishop of Quebec, and on the 25th as many from New York. Very soon it was known by every one of my emigrants that not only had Jesus never forbidden His apostles and priests to marry, but he had left them free to have their wives, and live with them, according to the very testimony of Paul: “Have we not the power to lead about with us a wife and sister, as well as the rest of the apostles and brethren of the Lord, and Cephas” (Cor. ix: 55); they saw, by their Gospel, that the doctrine of celibacy of the priests was not brought from heaven by Christ, but had been forged in darkness, to add to the miseries of man. They read and read over again these words of Christ:
“If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed.
“You shall know the truth, and it shall make you free.
“If, therefore, the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John viii: 31, 32, 36).
And those promises of liberty, which Christ gave to those who read and followed His Word, made their hearts leap with joy. They fell upon their minds as music from heaven. They also soon found, by themselves, that every time the disciples of Christ had asked Him who would be the first ruler, or the pope, in His church, he had always solemnly and positively said that, in His church, nobody would ever become the first, the ruler or the pope.
And they began, seriously, to suspect that the great powers of the pope and his bishops were nothing but a sacrilegious usurpation. I was not long without seeing that the reading of the Holy Scriptures by my dear countrymen was changing them into other men.
Their minds were evidently enlarged and raised to higher spheres of thought. They were beginning to suspect that the heavy chains which were wounding their shoulders were preventing them from making progress in wealth, intelligence and liberty, as their more fortunate fellow-men, called Protestants.
This was not yet the bright light of the day, but it was the blessed dawn.
Chapter LII
On the 20th of May, 1852, I received the following letter from Bishop Vandeveld:
REV. MR. CHINIQUY.
MY DEAR MR. CHINIQUY:—The Rev. Mr. Courjeault is just returned from Bourbonnais, where he ought never to have gone back. He has told me of his complete failure and ignominious exit. I bitterly regret having allowed him to go there again. But he had so persuaded me that his criminal conduct with his servant girl was ignored by the people, that I had yielded to his request.
I feel that this new attempt, on his part, to impose himself on that honest people, has added to the enormity of his first scandal. I advise him now to go back to France, where he can more easily conceal his shame than in America. But one of the darkest features of that disgusting affair is that I am obliged to pay the $500 which the girl asked, in order to prevent Mr Courjeault from being dragged before the civil tribunal and sent to jail.
The malice of that priest against you has received its just reward. But my fear is that you have another implacable enemy here in Mr. Lebel, whose power to do evil is greater than Mr. Courjeault’s.
Before you began your great work of directing the flood of Roman Catholic emigration towards this country, to secure it to our holy church, he was in favor of that glorious scheme, but his jealousy against you has suddenly changed his mind.
He has, lately, addressed a letter to the Canadian press, every word of which is an unmitigated falsehood. Of course, the Bishop of Montreal, who is more than ever opposed to our colonization plan, has published that lying letter in his journal; more than that, he has reproduced the testimony of a perjured man, who swears that many of the people of Illinois are bitten and killed by the rattlesnakes, and those who escape are taxed six cents for each pane of glass of their windows.
Will you be discouraged by this opposition? I hope not. This opposition is the greatest evidence we could have that our scheme is from God, and that He will support you. I am tempted to interdict Mr. Lebel, and send him back to Canada, for writing things which he so well knows to be false. The want of a French-speaking priest for your countrymen of Chicago is the only thing which has prevented me from withdrawing his faculties. But I have warned him that if he writes any more against the truth, I will punish him as he deserves.
For you, my dear sir, I will address to you the very words which God Himself addressed to His servant, Joshua: “Be strong, and of good courage; for unto this people shalt thou divide, for an inheritance, the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them” (Joshua 1: 6).
1 agree with what you wrote me in your last letter, that the charge I have given you of Bourbonnais, pro tempore, will seriously interfere with your other numberless duties towards your dear emigrants. But there is no help; the only thing I can promise, is to relieve you as soon as possible. I have no other priest to whom I can trust the interesting mission of Bourbonnais. For Father Huick is too old and infirm for such a work. It is evidently the will of God that you should extend your labors over the first limits you had fixed. Be faithful to the end, and the Lord will be with you, and support you throughout all your labors and tribulations.
Truly Yours,
✠ OLIV VANDEVELD,
Bishop of Chicago.
During the next six months, more than 500 families from France, Belgium and Canada came and gave to our colony a life, power and prosperity impossible for me to depict. The joy I felt at this unforeseen success was much diminished, however, by the sudden news that Mr. Courjeault had come back from France, where he spent only one month.
Not daring to visit Bourbonnais again, he was lurking on the frontiers of Indiana, only a few miles distant, evidently with some sinister intention.
Driven to a state of madness by his jealousy and hatred, that unfortunate man addressed to me, on the 23d of January, 1853, the most abusive letter I ever received, and ended it by telling me that the fine (though unfinished) church of Bourbonnais, which he had built, was to be burned, and that my life would be in danger if I remained at the head of that mission.
I immediately sent that letter to the bishop, asking his advice. In his answer he told me that he thought that Mr. Courjeault was wicked enough to fulfill his threats. He added: “Though I have not yet clear evidence of it, it is my fear that Mr. Lebel is united with Mr. Courjeault in the diabolical plot of burning your church of Bourbonnais. Several people have reported to me that he says that your presence there will be the ruin of that people, and the destruction of their church. Oh! to what extremities bad priests can go, when once they have given themselves to their unbridled passions! The first thing I would advise you, my dear Mr. Chiniquy, in the presence of such a terrible calamity, is to insure that church without delay. I have tried to do it here, but they have refused, under the pretext that it is an unfinished, frame building, and there are too many dangers of fire when people are still working at it.
“My impression is that Mr. Lebel is on intimate terms with some insurance gentlemen, and has frightened them by speaking of that rumor of danger, of which he is probably the father, with that miserable Courjeault. Perhaps you may have a better chance, by addressing yourself to some insurance company which you might find at Joliet or at Springfield.”
After vain efforts to insure the church, I wrote to the bishop: “The only way to escape the impending danger is to finish the church at once, and insure it after. I have just made a collection of $400 among the people of Bourbonnais, to which I added $300 from my own private resources, and will go to work immediately if your lordship has no objections.”
Having got the approbation of my superior, on the 1st of March I began to put the last hand to that building.
We worked almost day and night, till the 1st of May, when it was all finished. I dare affirm, that for a country place, that church was unsurpassed in beauty. The inside frame-work was all made of the splendid black oak of Bourbonnais, polished and varnished by most skillful men, and it looked like a mirror. Very seldom have I seen anything more grand and beautiful than the altar, made also of that precious black oak. It was late at night when, with my fellow-laborers, covered with dust and sweat, we could say with joy the solemn words, “It is finished!” Afterwards we sung the Te Deum.
Had I had any opportunity, at that late hour, it was my thought and desire to insure it. But I was forced to postpone this till the next Monday.
The next day (the first Sabbath of May, 1853), the sun seemed to come out from the horizon and rise above our heads with more than usual magnificence.
The air was calm and pure, and the numberless spring flowers of our gardens mingling their perfumes with the fragrant leaves of the splendid forest at the front of the village, the balmy atmosphere, the songs of the birds, seemed to tell us that this Sabbath day was to be the most happy one for me and my dear people of Bourbonnais. The church had never been so crowded. The hymns we sung had never been so melodious, and the words of gratitude which I addressed to my God, when I thanked him for the church he had given us, in which to adore and bless him, had never been so sincere and earnest: never had our tears of joy flowed so profusely as on that splendid and never-to-be-forgotten Sabbath.
Alas! who would suspect that, six hours later, the same people, gathered around the smoking ruins of their church, would rend the air with their cries of desolation! Such, however, was the case.
While taking my dinner, after the public service, two little boys, who had remained in the church to wait for the hour of the Catechism, ran to the parsonage, crying: “Fire! Fire!! Fire!!!”
Bare-headed, and half-paralyzed with the idea that my church was on fire, I went out to see the awful reality. A girdle of smoke and fire was already issuing from almost every part, between the top of the wooden walls and the roof.
I had rushed to the church with a pail of water in my hand. But it was too late to make any use of it; the flames were already running and leaping with a fearful rapidity over the fresh varnish, like a long train of powder. In less than two hours all was finished again.
No doubt could remain in our minds. This was the work of an incendiary, for there was no fire in the church after the service. Many strangers who had come from a distance, had gone through the whole nave and the upper galleries, to have a better sight of the whole building, and two of them had been seen by the little boys, remaining ten or fifteen minutes alone; they had gone back to some of the houses of the village without being remarked by anybody, for it was dinner time, and there was nobody to watch them.
Though stunned by that awful calamity, the noble-hearted people of Bourbonnais did not lose their minds. Seeing that they were all gathered around the smoking ruins, at about six P. M., I addressed to them a few words to support their courage. I told them that it was only in the midst of great trials and difficulties that men could show their noblest qualities, and their true manhood; that if we were true men, instead of losing our time in shedding tears and rending the air with our cries of desolation, we would immediately put our hands to the work, and begin the very next day to raise up, not a frame building, which the flames could turn into ashes in a few minutes, and which the storm could blow down over our heads, but a stone church, which would stand before God and man as an imperishable monument of their faith, indomitable courage and liberality. We immediately started a subscription, to erect, without delay, a stone church. In less than one hour, $4,000 in money, and more than $5,000 in time, timber and stone and other material, were subscribed, every cent of which has been faithfully given for the erection of that fine stone church of Bourbonnais.
The next Thursday, Bishop Vandeveld came from Chicago to confer with me about what could be done to repair that terrible loss, and to inquire confidentially of me as to the author of that fire. All the facts we gathered pointed to the same direction. It was evident that the miserable Courjeault, with Lebel, the French Canadian priest of Chicago, had done that evil work through their emissaries. No doubt of this remained in my mind when I learned that soon after, Mr. Courjeault had thrown himself into one of those dark dungeons called a monastery of La Trappe, which Satan has built on earth as a preparation for the dark hereafter of the wicked.
The unexpected visit of the bishop, had, at first, rejoiced me, by the hope that he would bring me words of encouragement.
But what was my disappointment, when he said to me:
“My dear Mr. Chiniquy, I must reveal to you a thing that I have not yet made known to anyone. It is confidential, and I request you not to say a word before it is accomplished. I can not remain any longer Bishop of Illinois! No! I cannot any longer assume the responsibilities of such a high position, because it is beyond my power to fulfill my duties and do what the church requires of me. The conduct of the priests of this diocese is such, that, should I follow the regulations of the canon, I would be forced to interdict all my priests with the exception of you and two or three others.
“They are all either notorious drunkards, or given to public or secret concubinage; several of them have children by their own nieces, and two by their own sisters. I do not think that ten of them believe in God. Religion is nothing to them but a well-paying comedy. Where can I find a remedy for such a general evil? Can I punish one of them and leave the others free in their abominable doings, when they are almost all equally guilty? Would not the general interdiction of these priests be the death blow to our church in Illinois? Besides, how can I punish them, when I know that many of them are ready to poison me the very moment I raise a finger against them. I suppose that you do not ignore the fact that my poor predecessor was poisoned by one of those priests who had seduced several nuns, when he was in the very act of investigating the matter.
“I intend to go to Rome, as soon as I receive my permit from the pope, to renounce at his feet the Bishopric of Chicago, which I will not keep on any consideration.
“If the pope does not give me another diocese, with a better set of priests, I prefer to spend the rest of my life at the head of a small congregation, where I shall not have, on my shoulders, the awful responsibility which is killing me here. The last horrible deeds of Courjeault and Lebel, of which you are the victim to-day, has filled the bitter cup which God has put to my lips to drink. It is overflowing. I cannot any longer endure it.”
When speaking so, the bishop’s face was bathed with tears. It was very late—too late, indeed, to make the remonstrances which came to my mind, in order to change his resolutions.
I determined to wait till the next morning, when I should have plenty of time, I hoped, to expel his dark thoughts, and give him more courage. Besides, I was, myself, so discouraged by those awful disclosures, that I was in need of mental as well as bodily rest. But, alas! the next day was to be one of the darkest of my priestly life!
When the hour for breakfast came the next morning, I went to awaken the bishop. What was my dismay, when I found him drunk!
Before going to bed, he had secretly asked my housekeeper to give him the bottle of wine which I used to celebrate mass. It was a large bottle, containing nearly a quart of wine, which would last me at least six months. The whole of which he had drank during the night!
I had been told that Bishop Vandeveld (as well as the greater number of the Bishops of the United States) was a drunkard, but I had never believed it. He always drank very moderately, before me, any time I sat at his table, or he at mine. It appears that it was at night, when nobody could see him, that he gave himself up to that detestable habit. His room was filled with the odor of what he had vomited, after drinking such an enormous quantity of wine. He left the room, only at noon, after the fumes of the wine had almost entirely disappeared, and requested the housekeeper to cleanse it herself, without letting the servants know anything of the occurrence of the night.
But words would fail to express my consternation and the discouragement I felt. I had formed such a good and exalted opinion of that man! I had found in him such noble qualities! His intelligence was so bright, his learning so extensive, his heart so large, his plans so grand, his piety so sincere, his charity so worthy of a Bishop of Christ!
It was so pleasant for me to know, till then, that I was honored with the full confidence of a bishop who, it seemed to me, had not a superior in our church!
The destruction of my dear church by the hands of incendiaries was surely a great calamity for me; but the fall of my bishop, from the high position he had in my heart and mind, was still greater.
I had the means, in hand, to rebuild that church; but my confidence in my bishop was irremediably, and forever lost! Never had a son loved his father more sincerely, than I had loved him; and never had any priest felt a more sincere respect for his bishop, than I for him! Oh! what a terrible wound was made in my heart that day! what tortures I felt!
But how many times, since, I have blessed my God for these wounds! Without them, I should never have known, that instead of being in the bosom of the Immaculate Church of Christ, I was the slave of that great Babylon, which poisons the nations with the wine of her abominations.
My love and respect for Bishop Vandeveld, were very strong chains, by which I was bound to the feet of the idols of Rome. I will earnestly bless God for having himself broken these chains, on that day of supreme desolation.
The remaining part of the day, as well as the hour of the next morning which the bishop spent in my house, I remained almost mute in his presence. He was not less embarrassed when he asked me my view about his project of leaving the diocese. I answered him, in a few words, that I could not disapprove the purpose; for I would, myself, prefer to live in a dark forest, in the midst of wild animals, than among drunken, atheist priests and bishops.
Some months later, I learned, without regret, that the Pope had accepted his resignation of the Bishopric of Chicago, and appointed him Bishop of Natchez, in Louisiana. His successor to the Bishopric of Chicago, was Rev. O’Regan.
One of the very first things which this new bishop did, was to bring Bishop Vandeveld before the criminal tribunals, as a thief, accusing him of having stolen $100,000 from the Bishopric of Chicago, and carrying them away with him. There is no need to say, that this action caused a terrible scandal. Not only in Illinois, but through all the United States, both priests and laymen had to blush, and cast down their eyes before the world. The two bishops, employing the best lawyers to fight each other, came very near proving to the world that both of them were equally swindlers and thieves; when the Pope forced them both to stop their contestation, and bring the affair before his tribunal, at Rome. There, it was decided that the $100,000, which had really been taken from Chicago to the Natchez diocese, should be equally divided between the two bishops.
How many times did I feel my soul brought to the dust, in the midst of those horrible scandals! How many sleepless nights have I spent, when a voice, which I could not silence, seemed crying to me, louder than thunder:
“What are you doing here, extending the power of a church, which is a den of thieves, drunkards, and impure atheists? A church, governed by men whom you know to be godless, swindlers, and vile comedians? Do you not see that you do not follow the Word of God, but the lying traditions of men, when you consent to bow your knees before such men? Is it not blasphemy to call such men the ambassadors, and the disciples of the humble, pure, holy, peaceful, and divine Jesus? Come out of that church! Break the fetters, by which you are bound, as a vile slave, to the feet of such men! Take the Gospel for thine only guide, and Christ for thine only Ruler!”
I was in desolation, at finding that my faith in my church was, in spite of myself, shaken by these scandals. With burning tears rolling down my cheeks, and with a broken, and humiliated heart, I fell, one night, on my knees, and asked my God to have mercy upon me, by strengthening my faith and preserving it from ruin. But it seemed that neither my tears nor my cries were of any avail, and I remained the whole night, as a ship struck by a hurricane, drifting on an unknown sea, without a compass or a rudder.
I was not aware of it then, but I learned it after, that the divine and sure Pilot was directing my course towards the port of salvation!
The next day, I had a happy diversion, in the arrival of fifty new emigrants, who knocked at my door, asking my advice about the best place to select for their future home.
It seemed to me, though pretty long after that, that my duty was to go and pay my respects to my new bishop, and open to him my heart as to my best friend, and the guide whom God Himself had chosen to heal the wounds of my soul, by pouring the oil and wine of charity into them.
I will never forget the day (the 11th day of December, 1854) when I saw Bishop O’Regan, for the first time, nor the painful impressions I received from that first interview.
He was of medium stature, with a repugnant face, and his head always in motion: all its motions seemed the expression of insolence, contempt, tyranny, and pride; there was absolutely nothing pleasant, either in his words, or in his manners. I fell on my knees to ask his benediction, when I had given him my name and kissed his hand, which seemed as cold as that of a corpse.
“Ah! ah! you are Father Chiniquy,” he said, “I am glad to see you, though you have deferred your visit a long time; please sit down, I want some explanation from you about a certain very strange document, which I have just read to-day;” and he went, at the double quick, to his room to get the document. There were two Irish priests in the room, who came a few minutes before me. When we were alone, one of them said: “We had hoped that we would gain by changing Bishop Vandeveld, for this one. But my fear is that we have only passed from Charybdis to Scylla,” and they laughed outright. But I could not laugh. I was more inclined to weep. After less than ten minutes of absence, the bishop returned, holding in his hand a paper, which I understood, at once, to be the deed of the eleven acres of land, which I had bought, and on which I had built my chapel of St. Anne.
“Do you known this paper?” he asked me in an angry manner.
“Yes, my lord, I know it,” I answered.
“But, then,” he quickly replied, “you must know that that title is a nullity; a fraud, which you ought never to have signed.”
“Your venerable and worthy predecessor has accepted it,” I answered, “and what might have been incorrect has been made valid, I hope, by his acceptation.”
“I do not care a straw about what my predecessor has done,” he abruptly answered, “he is not here to defend himself; neither are we here to discuss his merits or demerits. We have not to deal with my lord Vandeveld, but with a document which is a nullity, a deception, which must be thrown into the fire; you must give me another title of that property!”
And saying this, he flung my deed on the floor. I calmly picked it up, and said:
“I exceedingly regret, my lord, that my first interview with your lordship should be the occasion of such an unexpected act. But I hope this will not destroy the paternal sentiments which God must have put into the heart of my bishop, for the last and least of his priests. I see that your lordship is very busy; I do not want to trespass on your valuable time; I take this rejected document with me, to make another one, which I hope will be more agreeable to your views;” and I then took my departure.
I leave the reader to imagine the sentiments which filled my mind when coming back to my colony.
I did not dare to say a word to my people about our bishop. When questioned by them, I gave the most evasive answers I could. But I felt as the mariner feels when he hears the rumbling thunder approaching. Though the sea is calm as the oil of a lamp, he knows the storm is coming, he trims his sails, and prepares for the impending hurricane.
It seemed that my most pressing duty, after my first interview, was to bring my heart nearer to my God than ever; to read and study my Bible with more attention, and to get my people to take more than ever the Word of God as their daily bread. I began, also, to speak more openly of our Christian rights, as well as of our duties, as these are set forth in the Gospel of Christ.
Some time, before this, feeling more than ever that I could not do justice to my colony, by keeping any longer the charge of Bourbonnais, I had respectfully sent my resignation to the bishop, which had been accepted. A priest had been called by him to take my place there. But he too was ere long, guilty of a public scandal with his servant girl. The principal citizens of Bourbonnais protested against his presence in their midst, and soon forced the bishop to dismiss him. His successor was the miserable priest, Lebel, who had been turned out of Chicago for a criminal offence with his own niece, and was now to be the curate of Bourbonnais. But his drunkenness and other public vices, caused him to be interdicted, and expelled from that place, in the month of September, 1855. About the same time, a priest, who had been expelled from Belgium, for a great scandal, was sent to Kankakee, as the curate of the French Canadians of that interesting young city. After his expulsion from Belgium, he had come to Chicago, where, under another name, he had made a fortune, and for five or six years kept a house of prostitution. Becoming tired of that occupation, he offered $5,000 to the bishop, if he would accept him as one of his priests, and give him a parish. Bishop O’Regan being in need of money, accepted the gift, and fulfilled the condition by sending him as missionary to Kankakee.
As soon as he had taken possession of that interesting mission, he came with Mr. Lebel to pay me a visit. I received them as politely as possible, though they were both half drunk when they arrived. After dinner, they went to shoot prairie chickens, and got so drunk that one of them, Mr. Lebel, lost his boots in a slough, and came back to my house barefooted, without noticing his loss. I had to help them get their carriage, and the next day I wrote them, forbidding them to ever set a foot in my house again.
But what was my surprise and sadness, not long before these two infamous priests were ignominiously turned out by their people, to receive a letter from my bishop, which ended in these words:
“I am sorry to hear that you refuse to live on good terms with your two neighboring brother priests. This ought not to be, and I hope to hear soon, that you have reconciled yourself with them, in a friendly way, as you ought to have done long ago.”
I answered him:
“It is my interest, as well as my duty, to obey my bishop. I know it. But as long as my bishop gives me for neighbors, priests, one of whom has lived publicly with his own niece, as his wife, and the other who has kept a house of prostitution in Chicago, I respectfully ask my bishop to be excused for not visiting them.”
The bishop felt insulted by my letter, and was furious against me. It came to be a public fact that he had said before many people: “I would give anything to the one who would help me to get rid of that unmanageable Chiniquy.”
Among those who heard the bishop, was a land speculator, a real land-shark, against whom a bill for perjury had been found by the jury of Iroquois county, the 27th of April, 1854. That man was very angry against me for protecting my poor countrymen against his too sharp speculations. He said to the bishop, “if you pay the expenses of the suit, I pledge myself to have Chiniquy put in gaol.” The bishop had publicly answered him:
“No sum of money will be too great to be delivered from a priest, who alone gives me more trouble than the rest of my clergy.”
To comply with the desires of the bishop, this speculator dragged me before the criminal court of Kankakee, on the 16th day of May, 1855, but he lost his action, and was condemned to pay the cost.
It was my impression that the bishop, having so often expressed in public his bad feelings against me, would not visit my colony. But, I was mistaken, on the 11th of June, taking the Rev. Mr. Lebel and Carthuval for his companions, he came to St. Anne to administer the sacrament of confirmation.
As the infamous conduct of those two priests was known to every one of my people, I felt a supreme disgust at their arrival, and came very near forbidding them to sit at my table. Having, however, asked the bishop to give me half-an-hour of private interview, I respectfully, but energetically protested against the presence of these two degraded men in my house.
He coldly answered me:
“Mr. Chiniquy, you forget that I am the Bishop of Illinois, and that you are a simple priest, whom I can interdict and remove from here when I like. I do not come here to receive your lessons, but to intimate to you my orders. You seem to forget that charity is above all others the virtue which must adorn the soul of a good priest. Your great zeal is nothing before God, and it is less than nothing before me, so long as you have not charity. It is my business, and not yours, to know what priests I must employ or reject. Your business is to respect them, and forget their past errors, the very day I see fit to receive them among my priests.”
“My lord,” I answered, “allow me respectfully to tell you, that though you are a bishop, and I am a simple priest, the Gospel of Christ, which we have to preach, tells us to avoid the company of publicly vicious and profligate men. My conscience tells me that through respect for myself, and my people, and through respect for the Gospel I preach, I must avoid the company of men, one of whom has lived with his niece as his wife, and the other has, till very lately, been guilty of keeping a house of prostitution in Chicago. Your lordship may ignore these things, and, in consequence of that, may give his confidence to these men; but nothing is more apt to destroy the faith of our French Canadian people, than to see such men in your company when you come to administer the sacrament of confirmation. It is through respect for your lordship, that I take the liberty of speaking thus.”
He angrily answered me:
“I see, now, the truthfulness of what people say about you. It is to the Gospel you constantly appeal on everything. The Gospel! The Gospel! is surely a holy book; but remember that it is the church which must guide you. Christ has said: ‘Hear my church.’ I am here the interpreter, ambassador—the representative of the church—when you disobey me, it is the church you disobey.”
“Now, my lord, that I have fulfilled what I consider a conscientious duty, I promise, that through respect for your lordship, and to keep myself in the bonds of peace with my bishop, I, to-day, will deal with these two priests, as if they were worthy of the honorable position you give them.”
“All right! all right!” replied the bishop. “But it must be near the hour for dinner.”
“Yes, my lord, I have just heard the bell calling us to the dining-room.”
After the blessing of the table by the bishop he looked at the Rev. Carthuval, who was sitting just before him, and said:
“What is the matter with you, Mr. Carthuval, you do not look well?”
“No, my lord,” he answered, “I am not well, I want to go to bed.”
He was correct, he was not well, for he was drunk.
During the public services, he had left the chapel to come down to ask for a bottle of the wine I kept to celebrate mass. The housekeeper, thinking he wanted the wine in the chapel, handed him the bottle, which he drank in her presence, in less than five minutes. After which he went up the chapel to help the bishop in administering the confirmation to the 150 people whom I had prepared for the reception of that rite.
As soon as dinner was finished, the bishop requested me to go and take a walk with him. After giving me some compliments, on the beauty of the site I had chosen for my first village and chapel, he saw at a short distance, a stone building, which was raised only a little above the windows, and directing his steps towards it, he stopped only twenty or thirty feet distant and asked me:
“Whose house is this?”
“It is mine, my lord.”
“It is yours!” he replied, “and to whom does that fine garden belong?”
“It is mine, also, my lord.”
“Well! Well!” he rejoined. “Where did you get the money to purchase that fine piece of land, and build that house?”
“I got the money where every honest man gets what he possesses, in my hard labor, and in the sweat of my brow,” I replied.
“I want that house and that piece of land!” rejoined the bishop, with an imperative voice.
“So do I,” I replied.
“You must give me that house, with the land on which it is built,” said the bishop.
“I can not give them as long as I am in need of them, my lord,” I replied.
“I see that you are a bad priest, as I have often been told, since you disobey your bishop,” he rejoined with an angry manner!
I replied: “I do not see why I am a bad priest, because I keep what my God has given me.”
“Are you ignorant of the fact that you have no right to possess any property,” he answered.
“Yes! my lord, I am ignorant of any law in our holy church that deprives me of any such rights. If, however, your lordship can show me any such law, I will give you the title of that property just now.”
“If there is not such a law,” he replied, stamping on the ground with his feet, “I will get one passed.”
“My lord,” I replied, “You are a great bishop. You have great power in the church, but allow me to tell you that you are not great enough to have such a law passed, in our holy church!”
“You are an insolent priest,” he answered with an accent of terrible anger, “and I will make you repent for your insolence.”
He then turned his face towards the chapel, without waiting for my answer, and ordered the horses put in the carriage, that he might leave in the shortest possible time.
A quarter of an hour later, he had left St. Anne, where he was never to come again.
The visit of that mitred thief, with his two profligate priests, though very short, did much by the mercy of God, to prepare our minds to understand that Rome is the =great= harlot of the Bible, which seduces and intoxicates the nations with the wine of her prostitution.
LIII. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY
The 8th December, 1854, Pope Pius IX. was sitting on his throne; a triple crown of gold and diamonds was on his head; silk and damask—red and white vestments on his shoulders; five hundred mitred prelates were surrounding him; and more than fifty thousand people were at his feet, in the incomparable St. Peter’s Church of Rome.
After a few minutes of most solemn silence, a Cardinal, dressed with his purpled robe, left his seat, and gravely walked towards the Pope, kneeled before him, and humbly prostrating himself, at his feet said:
“Holy Father: tell us if we can believe and teach that the Mother of God, the Holy Virgin Mary, was immaculate in her conception?”
The Supreme Pontiff answered. “I do not know; let us ask the light of the Holy Ghost.”
The Cardinal withdrew; the Pope and the numberless multitude fell on their knees; and the harmonious choir sang the “Veni Creator Spiritus.”
The last note of the sacred hymn had hardly rolled under the vaults of the Temple, when the same Cardinal left his place, and again advanced towards the throne of the Pontiff, prostrated himself at his feet, and said:
“Holy Father, tell us if the Holy Mother of God, the blessed Virgin Mary, was immaculate in her conception.”
The Pope again answered: “I do not know; let us ask the light of the Holy Ghost.”
And, again, the “Veni Creator Spiritus” was sung.
The most solemn silence had, a second time, succeeded to the melodious sacred song, when again the eyes of the multitude were following the grave steps of the purple-robed Cardinal, advancing, for the third time, to the throne of the successor of St. Peter, to ask again:
“Holy Father, tell us if we can believe that the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, was immaculate?”
The Pope, as if he had just received a direct communication from God, answered with a solemn voice:
“Yes! we must believe that the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, was immaculate in her conception. * * * There is no salvation to those who do not believe this dogma!”
And, with a loud voice, the Pope intoned the Te Deum; the bells of three hundred churches of Rome rang; the cannons of the citadel were fired. The last act of the most ridiculous and sacrilegious comedy the world has ever seen, was over; the doors of heaven were, for ever, shut against those who would refuse to believe the anti-scriptural doctrine that there is a daughter of Eve who has not inherited the sinful nature of Adam, to whom the Lord said in his justice:
“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return!” and of the children of whom the God of truth has said:
“'There is none righteous; no, not one; they have all sinned!'”
We look in vain to the first centuries of the Church to find any traces of that human aberration. The first dark clouds which Satan had brought to mar the gospel truth, on that subject, appeared only between the eighth and ninth centuries. But, in the beginning, that error made very slow progress; those who propagated it, at first, were a few ignorant fanatics, whose names are lost in the night of the dark ages.
It is only in the twelfth century that it began to be openly preached by some brainless monks. But, then, it was opposed by the most learned men of the time. We have a very remarkable letter of St. Bernard to refute some monks of Lyons who were preaching this new doctrine.
A little later, Peter Lombard adopted the views of the monks of Lyons, and wrote a book to support that opinion; but he was refuted by St. Thomas Aquinas, who is justly considered, by the Church of Rome, as the best theologian of that time.
After that, the celebrated order of the Franciscans used all their influence to persuade the world that “Mary was immaculate in her conception,” but they were vigorously opposed and refuted by the not less celebrated order of the Dominicans. These two learned and powerful bodies, during more than a century, attacked each other without mercy on that subject, and filled the world with the noise of their angry disputes, both parties calling their adversaries heretics. They succeeded in driving the Roman Catholics of Europe into two camps of fierce enemies. The “Immaculate Conception” became the subject of burning discussions, not only between the learned universities, between the bishops and the priests and the nuns of those days; but it divided the families into two fiercely contending parties. It was discussed, attacked and defended, not only in the chairs of universities, and the pulpits of the cathedrals, but also in the fields, and in the very streets of the cities. And when the two parties had exhausted the reasons which their ingenuity, their learning, or their ignorant fanaticism could suggest to prove or deny the “Immaculate Conception,” they often had recourse to the stick and to the sword to sustain their arguments.
It will appear almost incredible to-day, but it is a fact, that the greatest number of the large cities of Europe, particularly in Spain, were then reddened with the blood of the supporters and opponents of that doctrine. In order to put an end to these contests, which were troubling the peace of their subjects, the kings of Europe sent deputation after deputation to the Popes to know, from their infallible authority, what to believe on the subject.
Philip III. and Philip IV. made what we may call supreme efforts to force the Popes, Paul V., Gregory XV., and Alexander VII., to stop the shedding of blood, and disarm the combatants, by raising the opinion in favor of the Immaculate Conception to the dignity of a Catholic dogma. But they failed. The only answer they could get from the infallible head of the Church of Rome was, that “that dogma was not revealed in the Holy Scriptures, had never been taught by the Apostles, nor by the Fathers, and had never been believed or preached by the Church of Rome as an article of faith!”
The only thing the Popes could do to please the supplicant kings and bishops, and nations of Europe in those days, was to forbid both parties to call each other heretics: and to forbid to say that it was an article of faith which ought to be believed to be saved.
At the Council of Trent, the Franciscans, and all the partisans of the “Immaculate Conception,” gathered her strength to have a decree in favor of the new dogma; but the majority of the bishops were visibly against that sacrilegious innovation, and they failed.
It was reserved to the unfortunate Pius IX., to drag the Church of Rome to that last limit of human folly. In the last century, a monk, called Father Leonard, had a dream, in which he heard the Virgin Mary telling him: “There would be an end to the wars in the world, and to the heresies and schism in the church, only after a Pope should have obliged, by a decree, all the faithful to believe that she was 'immaculate in her conception.’”
That dream, under the name of a “celestial vision,” had been extensively circulated, by means of little tracts. Many believed it to be a genuine revelation from heaven; and, unfortunately, the good natured, but weak-minded Pius IX., was among the number.
When he was an exile in Gaeta, he had, himself, a dream, which he took for a vision, on the same subject. He saw the Virgin, who told him that he should come back to Rome, and get an eternal peace for the church, only after he should have promised to declare that the “Immaculate Conception” was a dogma, which every one had to believe to be saved. He awoke from his dream much impressed by it; and the first thing he did when up, was to make a vow to promulgate the new dogma as soon as he should be back to Rome, and the world has seen how he has fulfilled that vow.
But, by the promulgation of this new dogma, Pius IX., far from securing an eternal peace to his church, far from destroying what he was pleased to call the heresies which are attacking Rome on every side, has done more to shake the faith of the Roman Catholics than all their enemies.
By trying to force this new article of faith on the consciences of his people, in a time that so many can judge for themselves, and read the records of past generations, he has pulled down the strongest column which was supporting the whole fabric of his church; he forever destroyed the best arguments which the priests had to offer to the ignorant, deluded multitudes which they kept so abjectly tied to their feet.
No words can sufficiently express the dignified and supreme contempt with which, before that epoch, the priests of Rome were speaking of the “new articles of faith, the novelties of the arch-heretics, Luther, Calvin, Knox, &c., &c!” How eloquent were the priests of Rome, before the 8th of December, 1854, when saying to their poor ignorant dupes: “In our holy Church of Rome there is no change, no innovations, no novelties, no new dogmas. We believe to-day just what our fathers believed, and what they have taught us; we belong to the apostolical church; which means we believe only what Apostles have believed and preached.” And the ignorant multitudes were saying: “Amen!”
But, alas, for the poor priests of Rome to-day; those dignified nonsenses, those precious and dear illusions, are impossible! They have to confess that those high-sounding denunciations against what they call the new doctrines of the heretics, were nothing but big guns loaded to the mouth to destroy the Protestants, which are discharging their deadly missiles against the crumbling walls of their Church of Rome. They have to confess that their pretensions to an unchangeable creed is all mere humbug, shameful lies; they have to confess that the Church of Rome is FORGING NEW DOGMAS, NEW ARTICLES OF FAITH; they do not any longer dare to say to the disciples of the Gospel: “Where was your religion before the days of Luther and Calvin?” for the secret voice of their conscience says to-day to the Roman Catholics: “Where was your religion before the 8th of December, 1854?” and they cannot answer.
There is an inexorable and irresistible logic in the minds even of the most unlearned men, which defies, to-day, all the sophisms of the priests of Rome, if they dare to speak again on their pet subjects: “the novelties and new dogmas of the Protestants.” There is a silent, but crushing voice, going, to-day, from the crowds to the priest, telling him: “Now, be quiet and silent on what you are used to call the novelties and new doctrines of the Protestants! for, are you not preaching to us an awful novelty? Are you not damning us to-day for disbelieving a thing which the church, during eighteen hundred years has, a hundred times, solemnly declared, by the mouth of the Popes, had never been revealed in the Holy Scriptures, had never been taught by the Fathers, had never been heard of by the church herself?”
I will never forget the sadness which overcame me when I received the order from Bishop O’Regan to proclaim that new dogma to my people, (then all Roman Catholics.) It was as if an earthquake had shaken and destroyed the ground on which my feet were resting. My most cherished illusions about the immutability and the infallibility of my church were crumbling down, in my intelligence, in spite of my efforts to keep them up. I have seen old priests, to whom I opened my mind on that subject, shed tears of sorrow on the injury this new dogma would do to the church.
The Archbishop of Paris, at the head of the most learned members of the clergy of France, had sent his protest to the Pope against this dogma before it was decreed; and he had eloquently foretold the deplorable consequences which would follow that innovation; but their warning voice failed to make any impression on the mind of the infatuated Pope.
And, we children of God, must we not acknowledge the hand of the Lord, in that blindness of “the man of sin!”
The days are not far away that a cry of joy will be heard from one end of the world to the other: “Fear God, and give glory to him! Babylon is fallen! Babylon is fallen! because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornications.”
For, when we see that “wicked one, who exalteth himself above all that is called God,” destroying himself by the excess of his own folly and impurities, we must bless the Lord.
The proclamation of this new dogma is one of those great moral iniquities which carry their punishment and their remedy in their own hands.
When the Pope, in the morning of the 8th of December, 1854, answered twice: “I do not know;” to the question put to him: “Is the Virgin Mary Immaculate in her Conception?” and then, a minute after, to the same question, he answered: “Yes! I know it: the Holy Virgin Mary was Immaculate in her Conception;” he proved to his most credulous dupes that he was nothing but a sacrilegious comedian. How would a jury of honest men deal with a witness who, being interrogated about what he knows of a certain fact, would answer: “I know nothing about it;” and a moment after would acknowledge that “he knows everything about it?” Would not such a witness be justly punished as a perjurer?
Such is the sad and unenviable position which the Pope made to himself and to his church, on the 8th of December, 1854. Interrogated by the nations of Europe about what was to be believed on the “Conception of the Virgin Mary,” the Church of Rome, during ten centuries, had answered: “I do not know.” And let every one remember that she wants to be believed INFALLIBLE when she says she “knows nothing about the Immaculate Conception.”
But, to-day, that same church assures us, through the infallible decree of Pius IX., that she knows, and that she has always known and believed that the Virgin Mary was Immaculate!
Has the world ever seen such a want of self-respect, such an unblushing impudence!
What verdict will the Christian world give against that great mother of lies? What punishment will the God of truth administer to that great culprit who swears “yes” and “no” on the same question?
It is a fact, that by the promulgation of this decree, Pius IX. had forever destroyed his prestige in the minds of millions of his followers.
A few days after I had read to my congregation the decree of the pope proclaiming the new dogma, and damning all those who would not believe it, one of my most intelligent and respectable farmers came to visit me, and put to me the following questions on the new articles of faith:
“Mr. Chiniquy, please tell me, have I correctly understood the letter from the pope you read us last Sabbath? Does the pope tell us in that letter that we can find this new dogma of the ‘Immaculate Conception’ in the Holy Scriptures; that it has been taught by the Fathers, and that the church has constantly believed it from the days of the Apostles?”
I answered: “Yes, my friend, the pope tells us all those things in his letter which I read in the church last Sabbath.”
“But, sir, will you be so kind as to read me the verses of the Holy Scriptures which are in favor of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary?”
“My dear friend,” I answered,“ “Now, please tell me the names of the Holy Fathers who have preached that we must believe in the Immaculate Conception, or be forever damned if we do not believe in it!”
I answered my parishioner: “I would have preferred, my dear friend, that you should have never come to put to me these questions; but as you ask me the truth, I must tell you the truth. I have studied the Fathers with a pretty good attention, but I have not yet found a single one of them who was of that opinion in any way.”
“I hope,” added the good farmer, “you will excuse me if I put to you another question on this subject. Perhaps you do not know it, but there is a great deal of feeling and talking about this new article of faith among us since last Sabbath; I want to know a little more about it. The pope says in his letter that the Church of Rome has always believed and taught that dogma of Immaculate Conception. Is that correct?”
“Yes, my friend, the pope says that in his Encyclical; but these last nine hundred years more than one hundred popes have declared that the church had never believed it. Even several popes have forbidden to say ‘that the Immaculate Conception was an article of faith’—and they solemnly permitted us to believe and say what we please on that matter.”
“If it be so with this new dogma, how can we know it is not so with the other dogmas of our church, as the confession, the purgatory, etc.?” added the farmer.
“My dear friend, do not allow the devil to shake your faith. We are living in bad days, indeed. Let us pray God to enlighten us and save us. I would have given much had you never put to me these questions!”
My honest parishioner had left me; but his awful questions (they were really awful, as they are still awful for a priest of Rome), and the answers I had been forced to give were sounding in my soul as thunder-claps. There was in my poor trembling heart, as the awful noise of an irresistible storm which was to destroy all that I had so dearly cherished and respected in my then so dear and venerated Church of Rome. My head was aching. I fell on my knees; but for a time I could not utter a word of prayer; big tears were rolling on my burning cheeks; new light was coming before the eyes of my soul; but I took it for the deceitful temptation of Satan; a voice was speaking to me—it was the voice of my God, telling me, “Come out from Babylon!” But I took that voice for the voice of Satan; I was trying to silence it. The Lord was then drawing me away from my perishing ways; but I did not know Him then; I was struggling against Him to remain in the dark dungeons of error. But God was to be the stronger. In His infinite mercy He was to overpower His unfaithful servant; He was to conquer me, and with me many others.
LIV. THE ABOMINATIONS OF AURICULAR CONFESSION
There are two women who ought to be constant objects of the compassion of the disciples of Christ, and for whom daily prayers ought to be offered at the mercy-seat—the Brahmin woman, who, deceived by her priests, burns herself on the corpse of her husband to appease the wrath of her wooden gods; and the Roman Catholic woman, who, not less deceived by her priests, suffers a torture far more cruel and ignominious in the confessional-box, to appease the wrath of her wafer-god.
For I do not exaggerate when I say, that for many noble-hearted, well-educated, high-minded women to be forced to unveil their hearts before the eyes of a man, to open to him all the most secret recesses of their souls, all the most sacred mysteries of their single or married life, to allow him to put to them questions which the most depraved woman would never consent to hear from her vilest seducer, is often more horrible and intolerable than to be tied on burning coals.
More than once, I have seen women fainting in the confessional-box, who told me afterwards that the necessity of speaking to an unmarried man on certain things, on which the most common laws of decency ought to have forever sealed their lips, had almost killed them! Not hundreds, but thousands of times, I have heard from the lips of dying girls, as well as married women, the awful words: “I am forever lost! All my past confessions and communions have been so many sacrileges! I have never dared to answer correctly the questions of my confessors! Shame has sealed my lips and damned my soul!”
How many times I remained as one petrified by the side of a corpse, when these last words having hardly escaped the lips of one of my female penitents who had been snatched out of my reach by the merciless hand of death before I could give her pardon through the deceitful sacramental absolution. I then believed, as the dead sinner herself had believed, that she should not be forgiven except by that absolution.
For there are not only thousands, but millions, of Roman Catholic girls and women whose keen sense of modest and womanly dignity are above all the sophisms and diabolical machinations of their priests. They never can be persuaded to answer “Yes” to certain questions of their confessors. They would prefer to be thrown into the flames and burnt to ashes with the Brahmin widows, rather than allow the eyes of a man to pry into the sacred sanctuary of their souls. Though sometimes guilty before God, and under the impression that their sins will never be forgiven if not confessed, the laws of decency are stronger in their hearts than the laws of their perfidious church. No consideration, not even the fear of eternal damnation, can persuade them to declare to a sinful man sins which God alone has the right to know, for He alone can blot them out with the blood of His Son, shed on the cross.
But what a wretched life must that be of those exceptional noble souls which Rome keeps in the dark dungeons of her superstition! They read in all their books and hear from all their pulpits that if they conceal a single sin from their confessors, they are forever lost! 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 matters which a respectable woman will never reveal to her own mother, much less to a man!
I have known only too many of these noble-hearted women, who, when alone with God in a real agony of desolation and with burning tears, had asked Him to grant them what they considered the greatest favor, which was to lose so much of their self-respect as to be enabled to speak of those unmentionable things just as their confessors wanted them to speak; and, hoping that their petition had been granted, they went again to the confessional-box, determined to unveil their shame before the eyes of that inexorable man. But when the moment had come for the self-immolation, their courage failed, their knees trembled, their lips became pale as death, cold sweat poured from all their pores! The voice of modesty and womanly self-respect was speaking louder than the voice of their false religion. They had to go out of the confessional-box unpardoned—nay, with the burden of a new sacrilege on their conscience.
Oh! how heavy is the yoke of Rome—how bitter is human life—how cheerless is the mystery of the cross to those deluded and perishing souls! How gladly they would rush into 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 a better life!
I do here publicly challenge the whole Roman Catholic priesthood to deny that the greater part of their female penitents remain a certain period of time—some longer, some shorter—under that 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, intelligences and souls as the best safeguard against the snares of this polluted world. Those laws of self-respect, by which they cannot consent to speak an impure word into the ears of a man, and which shut all the avenues of the heart against his unchaste questions, even when speaking in the name of God—those laws of self-respect are so clearly written on their conscience, and they are so well understood by them to be a most Divine gift, that, as I have already said, many prefer to run the risk of being forever lost by remaining silent.
It takes many years of the most ingenious (I do not hesitate to call it diabolical) efforts on the part of the priests to persuade the majority of their female penitents to speak on questions which even pagan savages would blush to mention among themselves. Some persist in remaining silent on those matters during the greater part of their lives, and many of them prefer to throw 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 receive their pardon from a man who, as they feel, would surely have been scandalized by the recital of their human frailties. All the priests of Rome are aware of this natural disposition of their female penitents. There is not a single one—no, not a single one of their moral theologians, who does not warn the confessors against that stern and general determination of the girls and married women never to speak in the confessional on matters which may more or less deal with sins against the seventh commandment. Dens, Liguori, Debreyene, Bailly, etc.,—in a word, all the theologians of Rome, own that this is one of the greatest difficulties which the confessors have to contend with in the confessional-box.
Not a single Roman Catholic priest will dare to deny what I say on this matter, for they know that it would be easy for me to overwhelm them with such a crowd of testimonials that their grand imposture would forever be unmasked.
I intend, at some future day, if God spares me and gives me time for it, to make known some of the innumerable things which the Roman Catholic theologians and moralists have written on this question. It will form one of the most curious books ever written, and it will give unanswerable evidence of the fact that, instinctively, without consulting each other, and with an unanimity which is almost marvellous, the Roman Catholic women, guided by the honest instincts which God has given them, shrink from the snares put before them in the confessional-box, and that everywhere they struggle to nerve themselves with a superhuman courage against the torturer who is sent by the pope to finish their ruin, and to make shipwrecks 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. She understands that to recite the history of certain sins, even of thought, is not less shameful and criminal than to do them. She hears the voice of God whispering into her ears,“ 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 to decide 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!
The history of that secret, fierce, desperate struggle, has never yet, so far as I know, been fully given. It would draw the tears of admiration and compassion of the whole world, if it could be written with its simple, sublime, and terrible realities.
How many times I have 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 should never say a word with a man. They have told me of 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 have realized all the strength, the grandeur and the holiness of their motives for being silent on these defiling matters, and I could not but admire them. It seemed at times that they were speaking the language of angels of light; that I ought to fall at their feet and ask their pardon for having spoken to them of questions on which a man of honor ought never to converse with a woman whom he respects.
But alas! I had soon to reproach myself, and regret those short instances of my wavering faith in the infallible voice of my church. 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 on these matters?”
How many times my God has spoken to me as He speaks to all the priests of Rome, and said with a thundering voice: “What would that young man do, could he hear the questions you put to his wife? Would he not blow out your brains? And that father, would he not pass his dagger through your breast if he could know what you ask from his poor trembling daughter? Would not the brother of that young girl put an end to your miserable life if he could hear the unmentionable subjects on which you speak with her in the confessional?”
I was compelled by all 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 questions. My infallible church was mercilessly forcing me to oblige those poor trembling, weeping, desolate girls and women to swim with me and all their priests in those waters 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 noble Episcopal Church of England struck by a plague which seems incurable, under the name of Puseyism, or Ritualism, bringing again—more or less openly—in many places the diabolical and filthy auricular confession among the Protestants of England, Australia and America The Episcopal church is doomed to perish in that dark and stinking pool of popery—auricular confession—if she does not find a prompt remedy to stop the plague brought by the disguised Jesuits, who are at work everywhere to poison and enslave her too unsuspecting daughters and sons.
In the beginning of my priesthood, when I was in Quebec I was not a little surprised and embarrassed to see a very accomplished and beautiful young lady, whom I used to meet almost every week at her father’s house, entering the box of my confessional. She had been used to confess to another young priest of my acquaintance, and she was always looked upon as one of the most pious girls of the city. Though she had disguised herself as much as possible, in order that I might not know her, I felt sure that I was not mistaken—she was the amiable Mary * *
Not being absolutely certain of the correctness of my impressions, I left her entirely under the hope that she was a perfect stranger to me. At the beginning she could hardly speak; her voice was suffocated by her sobs, and through the little apertures of the thin partition between her and me, I saw two streams of big tears trickling down her cheeks. After much effort, she said: “Dear Father, I hope you do not know me, and that you will never try to know me—I am a desperately great sinner. Oh! I fear that I am lost! But if there is still a hope for me to be saved, for God’s sake, do not rebuke me! Before I begin my confession, allow me to ask you not to pollute my ears by questions which our confessors are in the habit of putting to their female penitents; I have already been destroyed by those questions. Before I was seventeen years old, God knows that His angels are not more pure than I was; but the chaplain of the nunnery where my parents had sent me for my education, though approaching old age, put to me in the confessional a question which, at first, I did not understand, but, unfortunately, he had put the same questions to one of my young class-mates, who made fun of them in my presence, and explained them to me: for she understood them too well. This first unchaste conversation of my life plunged my thoughts into a sea of iniquity, till then absolutely unknown to me; temptations of the most humiliating character assailed me for a week, day and night; after which, sins which I would blot out with my blood, if it were possible, overwhelmed my soul as with a deluge. But the joys of the sinner are short. Struck with terror at the thought of the judgment of God, after a few weeks of the most deplorable life, I determined to give up my sins and reconcile myself to God. Covered with shame, and trembling from head to foot I went to confess to my old confessor, whom I respected as a saint and cherished as a father. It seems to me that, with sincere tears of repentance, I confessed to him the greatest part of my sins, though I concealed one of them, through shame and respect for my spiritual guide. But I did not conceal from him that the strange questions he had put to me at my last confession were, with the natural corruption of my heart, the principal cause of my destruction.
“He spoke to me very kindly, encouraged me to fight against my bad inclinations, and, at first, gave me very kind and good advice. But when I thought he had finished speaking, and as I was preparing to leave the confessional-box, he put to me two new questions of such a polluting character that, I fear neither the blood of Christ, nor all the fires of hell will ever be able to blot them out of my memory. Those questions have achieved my ruin; they have stuck to my mind like two deadly arrows; they are day and night before my imagination; they fill my arteries and veins with deadly poison.
“It is true, that at first, they filled me with horror and disgust; but alas! I soon got so accustomed to them that they seemed to be incorporated with me, and as if becoming a second nature. Those thoughts have become a new source of innumerable criminal thoughts, desires and actions.
“A month later, we were obliged by the rules of our convent to go and confess; but by this time, I was so completely lost, that I no longer blushed at the idea of confessing my shameful sins to a man; it was the very contrary. I had a real, diabolical pleasure in the thought that I should have a long conversation with my confessor on those matters, and that he would ask me more of his strange questions. In fact, when I had told him everything without a blush, be began to interrogate me, and God knows what corrupting things fell from his lips into my poor criminal heart! Every one of his questions was thrilling my nerves and filling me with the most shameful sensations! After an hour of this criminal tete-a-tete with my old confessor (for it was nothing else but a criminal tete-a-tete), I perceived that he was as depraved as I was myself. With some half-covered words, he made a criminal proposition, which I accepted with covered words also; and during more than a year, we have lived together on the most sinful intimacy. Though he was much older than I, I loved him in the most foolish way. When the course of my convent instruction was finished, my parents called me back to their home. I was really glad of that change of residence, for I was beginning to be tired of my criminal life. My hope was that, under the directions of a better confessor, I should reconcile myself to God and begin a Christian life.
“Unfortunately for me, my new confessor, who was very young, began also his interrogation. He soon fell in love with me, and I loved him in a most criminal way. I have done with him things which I hope you will never request me to reveal to you, for they are too monstrous to be repeated, even in the confessional, by a woman to a man.
“I do not say these things to take away the responsibility of my iniquities with my young confessor, from my shoulders, for I think I have been more criminal than he was. It is my firm conviction that he was a good and holy priest before he knew me; but the questions he put to me, and the answers I had to give him, melted his heart—I know it—just as boiling lead would melt the ice on which it flows.
“I know this is not such a detailed confession as our holy Church requires me to make, but I have thought it necessary for me to give you this short history of the life of the greatest and most miserable sinner who ever asked you to help her to come out from the tomb of her iniquities. This is the way I have lived these last few years. But last Sabbath, God, in His infinite mercy, looked down upon me. He inspired you to give us the Prodigal Son as a model of true conversion, and as the most marvellous proof of the infinite compassion of the dear Saviour for the sinner. I have wept day and night since that happy day, when I threw myself into the arms of my loving, merciful Father. Even now, I can hardly speak, because my regret for my past iniquities, and my joy that I am allowed to bathe the feet of the Saviour with tears, are so great that my voice is as choked. “ I was then a very young priest, and never had any words so sublime come to my ears in the confessional-box. Her tears and her sobs, mingled with the frank declaration of the most humiliating actions, had made such a profound impression upon me that I was, for some time, unable to speak. It had come to my mind also that I might be mistaken about her identity, and that perhaps she was not the young lady that I had imagined. I could, then, easily grant her first request, which was to do nothing by which I could know her. The second part of her prayer was more embarrassing; for the theologians are very positive in ordering the confessors to question their penitents, particularly those of the female sex, in many circumstances.
I encouraged her in the best way I could, to persevere in her good resolutions, by invoking the blessed Virgin Mary and St. Philomene, who was, then, Sainte a la mode, just as Marie Alacoque is to-day, among the blind slaves of Rome. I told her that I would pray and think over the subject of her second request; and I asked her to come back in a week for my answer.
The very same day, I went to my own confessor, the Rev. Mr. Baillargeon, then curate of Quebec, and afterwards Archbishop of Canada. I told him the singular and unusual request she had made, that I should never put to her any of those questions suggested by the theologians, to insure the integrity of the confession. I did not conceal from him that I was much inclined to grant her that favor; for I repeated what I had already several times told him, that I was supremely disgusted with the infamous and polluting questions which the theologians forced us to put to our female penitents. I told him frankly that several old and young priests had already come to confess to me; and that, with the exception of two, they had told me that they could not put those questions and hear the answers they elicited without falling into the most damnable sins.
My confessor seemed to be much perplexed about what he should answer. He asked me to come the next day, that he might review some theological books, in the interval. The next day, I took down in writing his answer, which I find in my old manuscripts, and I give it here in all its sad crudity:—
“Such cases of the destruction of female virtue by the questions of the confessors is an unavoidable evil. It cannot be helped; for such questions are absolutely necessary in the greater part of the cases with which we have to deal. Men generally confess their sins with so much sincerity that there is seldom any need for questioning them, except when they are very ignorant. But St. Liguori, as well as our personal observation, tells us that the greatest part of girls and women, through a false and criminal shame, very seldom confess the sins they commit against purity. It requires the utmost charity in the confessors to prevent these unfortunate slaves of their secret passions from making sacrilegious confessions and communions. With the greatest prudence and zeal he must question them on those matters, beginning with the smallest sins, and going, little by little, as much as possible by imperceptible degrees, to the most criminal actions. As it seems evident that the penitent referred to in your questions of yesterday is unwilling to make a full and detailed confession of all her iniquities, you cannot promise to absolve her without assuring yourself, by wise and prudent questions, that she has confessed everything.
“You must not be discouraged when, through the confessional or any other way, you learn the fall of priests into the common frailties of human nature with their penitents. Our Saviour knew very well that the occasions and the temptations we have to encounter, in the confessions of girls and women, are so numerous, and sometimes so irresistible, that many would fall. But He has given them the Holy Virgin Mary, who constantly asks and obtains their pardon; He has given them the sacrament of penance, where they can receive their pardon as often as they ask for it. The vow of perfect chastity is a great honor and privilege; but we cannot conceal from ourselves that it puts on our shoulders a burden which many cannot carry forever. St. Liguori says that we must not rebuke the penitent priest who falls only once a month; and some other trustworthy theologians are still more charitable.”
This answer was far from satisfying me. It seemed to me composed of soft soap principles. I went back with a heavy heart and an anxious mind; and God knows that I made many fervent prayers that this girl should never come again to give me her sad history. I was then hardly twenty-six years old, full of youth and life. It seemed to me that the stings of a thousand wasps to my ears could not do me so much harm as the words of that dear, beautiful, accomplished, but lost girl.
I do not mean to say that the revelations which she made, had, in any way, diminished my esteem and my respect for her. It was just the contrary. Her tears and her sobs, at my feet; her agonizing expressions of shame and regret; her noble words of protest against the disgusting and polluting interrogations of the confessors, had raised her very high in my mind. My sincere hope was that she would have a place in the kingdom of Christ with the Samaritan women, Mary Magdalene, and all the sinners who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.
At the appointed day, I was in my confessional, listening to the confession of a young man, when I saw Miss Mary entering the vestry, and coming directly to my confessional-box, where she knelt by me. Though she had, still more than at the first time, disguised herself behind a long, thick, black veil, I could not be mistaken; she was the very same amiable young lady in whose father’s house I used to pass such pleasant and happy hours. I had often listened, with breathless attention, to her melodious voice, when she was giving us, accompanied by her piano, some of our beautiful church hymns. Who could then see and hear her, without almost worshipping her? The dignity of her steps, and her whole mien, when she advanced towards my confessional, entirely betrayed her and destroyed her incognito.
Oh! I would have given every drop of my blood in that solemn hour, that I might have been free to deal with her just as she had so eloquently requested me to do—to let her weep And cry at the feet of Jesus to her heart’s content. Oh! if I had been free to take her by the hand, and silently show her the dying Saviour, that she might have bathed His feet with her tears, and spread the oil of her love on His head, without my saying else but “Go in peace: thy sins are forgiven.”
But there, in that confessional-box, I was not the servant of Christ, to follow His Divine, saving words, and obey the dictates of my honest conscience. I was the slave of the Pope! I had to stifle the cry of my conscience, to ignore the inspirations of my God! There, my conscience had no right to speak; my intelligence was a dead thing! The theologians of the Pope, alone, had a right to be heard and obeyed! I was not there to save, but to destroy; for, under the pretext of purifying, the real mission of the confessor, often, if not always, in spite of himself, is to scandalize and damn their souls.
As soon as the young man who was making his confession at my left hand, had finished, I, without noise, turned myself towards her, and said, through the little aperture, “Are you ready to begin your confession?”
But she did not answer me. All that I could hear was: “Oh, my Jesus, have mercy upon me! I come to wash my soul in Thy blood; wilt Thou rebuke me?”
During several minutes she raised her hands and eyes to heaven, and wept and prayed. It was evident that she had not the least idea that I was observing her; she thought the door of the little partition between her and me was shut. But my eyes were fixed upon her; my tears were flowing with her tears, and my ardent prayers were going to the feet of Jesus with her prayers. I would not have interrupted her for any consideration, in this, her sublime communication with her merciful Savior.
But after a pretty long time, I made a little noise with my hand, and putting my lips near the opening of the partition which was between us, I said in a low voice, “Dear sister, are you ready to begin your confession?”
She turned her face a little towards me, and said with trembling voice, “Yes, dear father, I am ready.”
But she then stopped again to weep and pray, though I could not hear what she said.
After some time in silent prayer, I said, “My dear sister, if you are ready, please begin your confession.” She then said, “My dear father, do you remember the prayers which I made to you, the other day? Can you allow me to confess my sins without forcing me to forget the respect that I owe to myself, to you, and to God, who hears us? And can you promise that you will not put to me any of those questions which have already done me such irreparable injury? I frankly declare to you that there are sins in me that I cannot reveal to anyone, except to Christ, because He is my God, and that he already knows them all. Let me weep and cry at His feet: can you not forgive me without adding to my iniquities by forcing me to say things that the tongue of a Christian woman cannot reveal to a man?”
“My dear sister,” I answered, “were I free to follow the voice of my own feelings I would be only too happy to grant your request; but I am here only as the minister of our holy church, and bound to obey the laws. Through her most holy Popes and theologians she tells me that I cannot forgive your sins, if you do not confess them all, just as you have committed them. The church tells me also that you must give the details, which may add to the malice or change the nature of your sins. I am sorry to tell you that our most holy theologians make it a duty of our confessor to question the penitent on the sins which he has good reason to suspect have been voluntarily omitted.”
With a piercing cry she exclaimed, “Then, O my God, I am lost—forever lost!”
This cry fell upon me like a thunderbolt; but I was still more terror-stricken when, looking through the aperture, I saw she was fainting; I heard the noise of her body falling upon the floor, and of her head striking against the sides of the confessional box.
Quick as lightning I ran to help her, took her in my arms, and called a couple of men who were at a little distance, to assist me in laying her on a bench. I washed her face with some cold water and vinegar. She was as pale as death, but her lips were moving, and she was saying something which nobody but I could understand—
“I am lost—lost forever!”
We took her home to her disconsolate family, where, during a month she lingered between life and death. Her two first confessors came to visit her; but having asked every one to go out of the room, she politely, but absolutely, requested them to go away, and never come again. She asked me to visit her every day, “for,” she said, “I have only a few more days to live. Help me to prepare myself for the solemn hour which will open to me the gates of eternity!”
Every day I visited her, and I prayed and I wept with her.
Many times, when alone, with tears I requested her to finish her confession; but, with a firmness which, then, seemed to be mysterious and inexplicable, she politely rebuked me.
One day, when alone with her, I was kneeling by the side of her bed to pray, I was unable to articulate a single word, because of the inexpressible anguish of my soul on her account, she asked me, “Dear father why do you weep?”
I answered, “How can you put such a question to your murderer! I weep because I have killed you, dear friend.”
This answer seemed to trouble her exceedingly. She was very weak that day. After she had wept and prayed in silence, she said, “do not weep for me, but weep for so many priests who destroy their penitents in the confessional. I believe in the holiness of the sacrament of penance, since our holy church has established it. But there is, somewhere, something exceedingly wrong in the confessional. Twice I have been destroyed, and I know many girls who have also been destroyed by the confessional. This is a secret, but will that secret be kept forever? I pity the poor priests the day that our fathers will know what becomes of the purity of their daughters in the hands of their confessors. Father would surely kill my two last confessors, if he could only know they have destroyed his poor child.”
I could not answer except by weeping.
We remained silent for a long time; then she said, “It is true that I was not prepared for the rebuke you have given me, the other day, in the confessional; but you acted conscientiously as a good and honest priest. I know you must be bound by certain laws.”
She then pressed my hand with her cold hand and said,“ She had hardly finished her last word when she fainted, and I feared lest she should die just then, when I was alone with her.
I called the family, who rushed into the room. The doctor was sent for. He found her so weak that he thought proper to allow only one or two persons to remain in the room with me. He requested us not to speak at all: “For,” said he, “the least emotion might kill her instantly; her disease is, in all probability, an aneurism of the aorta, the big vein which brings the blood to the heart: when it breaks, she will go as quick as lightning.”
It was nearly ten at night when I left the house, to go and take some rest. But it is not necessary to say that I passed a sleepless night. My dear Mary was there, pale, dying from the deadly blow which I had given her in the confessional. She was there, on her bed of death, her heart pierced with the dagger which my church had put into my hands! and instead of rebuking, and cursing me for my savage, merciless fanaticism, she was blessing me! She was dying from a broken heart! and I was not allowed by my church to give her a single word of consolation and hope, for she had not made her confession? I had mercilessly bruised that tender plant, and there was nothing in my hands to heal the wounds I had made!
It was very probable that she would die the next day, and I was forbidden to show her the crown of glory which Jesus has prepared in His kingdom for the repenting sinner!
My desolation was really unspeakable, and I think I would have been suffocated and have died that night, if the stream of tears which continually flowed from my eyes had not been as a balm to my distressed heart.
How dark and long the hours of that night seemed to me!
Before the dawn of day, I arose to read my theologians again, and see if I could not find some one who would allow me to forgive the sins of that dear child, without forcing her to tell me anything she had done. But they seemed to me, more than ever, unanimously inexorable, and I put them back on the shelves of my library with a broken heart.
At nine A. M. the next day, I was by the bed of our dear sick Mary. I cannot sufficiently tell the joy I felt, when the doctor and whole family said to me, “She is much better; the rest of last night has wrought a marvelous change, indeed.”
With a really angelic smile she extended her hand towards me, that I might press it in mine, and she said, “I thought last evening, that the dear Savior would take me to Him, but He wants me, dear father, to give you a little more trouble; however, be patient, it cannot be long before the solemn hour of the appeal will ring. Will you please read me the history of the suffering and death of the beloved Savior, which you read me the other day? It does me so much good to see how He has loved me, such a miserable sinner.”
There was a calm and solemnity in her words which struck me singularly, as well as all those who were there.
After I had finished reading, she exclaimed, “He has loved me so much that He died for my sins!” And she shut her eyes as if to meditate in silence, but there was a stream of big tears rolling down her cheeks.
I knelt down by her bed, with her family, to pray; but I could not utter a single word. The idea that this dear child was there, dying from the cruel fanaticism of my theologians and my own cowardice in obeying them, was a mill-stone to my neck. It was killing me.
Oh! if by dying a thousand times, I could have added a single day to her life, with what pleasure I would have accepted those thousand deaths!
After we had silently prayed and wept by her bedside, she requested her mother to leave her alone with me.
When I saw myself alone, under the irresistible impression that this was her last day, I fell on my knees again, and with tears of the most sincere compassion for her soul, I requested her to shake off her shame and to obey our holy church, which requires every one to confess their sins if they want to be forgiven.
She calmly, but with an air of dignity which no human words can express, said,“ “Yes,” I said, “this is what the Holy Scriptures tell us.”
“Well, then, how is it possible that our confessors dare to take away from us that holy, divine coat of modesty and self-respect? Has not Almighty God Himself made, with His own hands, that coat of womanly modesty and self-respect, that we might not be to you and to ourselves, a cause of shame and sin?”
I was really stunned by the beauty, simplicity, and sublimity of that comparison. I remained absolutely mute and confounded. Though it was demolishing all the traditions and doctrines of my church, and pulverizing all my holy doctors and theologians, that noble answer found such an echo in my soul, that it seemed to me a sacrilege to try to touch it with my finger.
After a short time of silence, she continued, “Twice I have been destroyed by priests in the confessional. They took away from me that divine coat of modesty and self-respect which God gives to ever human being who comes into this world, and twice, I have become for those very priests a deep pit of perdition, into which they have fallen, and where, I fear, they are forever lost! My merciful heavenly Father has given me back that coat of skins, that nuptial robe of modesty, self-respect, and holiness, which had been taken away from me. He cannot allow you or any other man, to tear again and spoil that vestment which is the work of His hands.”
These words had exhausted her; it was evident to me that she wanted some rest. I left her alone, but I was absolutely beside myself. Filled with admiration for the sublime lessons which I had received from the lips of that regenerated daughter of Christ, who, it was evident, was soon to fly away from us, I felt a supreme disgust for myself, my theologians,—shall I say it? yes, I felt in that solemn hour a supreme disgust for my church, which was cruelly defiling me, and all her priests, in the confessional-box. I felt, in that hour, a supreme horror for that auricular confession, which is so often a pit of perdition and supreme misery for the confessor and penitent. I went out and walked two hours on the Plains of Abraham, to breathe the pure and refreshing air of the mountains. There, alone, I sat on a stone, on the very spot where Wolf and Montcalm fought and died; and I wept to my heart’s content, on my irreparable degradation, and the degradation of so many priests through the confessional.
At four o’clock in the afternoon I went back again to the house of my dear dying Mary. The mother took me apart, and very politely said, “My dear Mr. Chiniquy, do you not think it is time that our dear child should receive the last sacraments? She seemed to be much better this morning, and we were full of hope: but she is now rapidly sinking. Please lose no time in giving her the holy viaticum and the extreme unction.”
I said, “Yes, madam: let me pass a few minutes alone with our dear child, that I may prepare her for the last sacraments.”
When alone with her, I again fell on my knees, and, amidst torrents of tears, I said, “Dear sister, it is my desire to give you the holy viaticum and the extreme unction: but tell me, how can I dare do a thing so solemn against all the prohibitions of our holy church? How can I give you the holy communion without first giving you absolution? and how can I give you absolution when you earnestly persist in telling me that you have so many sins which you will never declare to me or any other confessor?
“You know that I cherish and respect you as if you were an angel sent to me from heaven. You told me, the other day, that you blessed the day that you first saw and knew me. I say the same thing. I bless the day that I have known you; I bless every hour that I have spent by your bed of suffering; I bless every tear which I have shed with you on your sins and on my own; I bless every hour we have passed together in looking to the wounds of our beloved, dying Savior; I bless you for having forgiven me your death! for I know it, and I confess it in the presence of God, I have killed you, dear sister. But now I prefer a thousand times to die than to say to you a word which would pain you in any way, or trouble the peace of your soul. Please, my dear sister, tell me what I can and must do for you in this solemn hour?”
Calmly, and with a smile of joy such as I had never seen before, nor seen since, she said, “I thank and bless you, dear father, for the parable of the Prodigal Son, on which you preached a month ago. You have brought me to the feet of the dear Savior; there I have found a peace and a joy surpassing anything that human heart can feel; I have thrown myself into the arms of my Heavenly Father, and I know He has mercifully accepted and forgiven His poor prodigal child! Oh, I see the angels with their golden harps around the throne of the Lamb! Do you not hear the celestial harmony of their songs? I go—I go to join them in my Father’s house. I SHALL NOT BE LOST!
While she was thus speaking to me my eyes were really turned into two fountains of tears; I was unable, as well as unwilling, to see anything, so entirely overcome was I by the sublime words which were flowing from the dying lips of that dear child, who was no more a sinner, but a real angel of Heaven to me. I was listening to her words; there was a celestial music in every one of them. But she had raised her voice in such a strange way, when she had begun to say,“and she had made such a cry of joy when she had to let the last words, “not be lost,” escape her lips, that I raised my head and opened my eyes to look at her. I suspected that something strange had occurred.
I got upon my feet, passed my handkerchief over my face to wipe away the tears which were preventing me from seeing with accuracy, and looked at her.
Her hands were crossed on her breast, and there was on her face the expression of a really superhuman joy; her beautiful eyes were fixed as if they were looking on some grand and sublime spectacle; it seemed to me, at first, that she was praying.
In that very instant the mother rushed into the room, crying, “My God! my God! what does that cry ‘lost’ mean?”—For her last words, “not to be lost,” particularly the last one, had been pronounced with such a powerful voice, that they had been heard almost everywhere in the house.
I made a sign with my hand to prevent the distressed mother from making any noise and troubling her dying child in her prayer, for I really thought that she had stopped speaking, as she used so often to do, when alone with me, in order to pray. But I was mistaken. The redeemed soul had gone, on the golden wings of love, to join the multitude of those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, to sing the eternal Alleluia.
The revelation of the unmentionable corruptions directly and unavoidably engendered by auricular confession, had come to me from the lips of that young lady, as the first rays of the sun which were to hurl back the dark clouds of night by which Rome had wrapped my intelligence on that subject.
So miserable by her fall and her sins, but so admirable by her conversion, that young lady was standing before me, for the rest of my priestly life, as the bright beacon raised on the solitary rocks stands before the sailor whose ship is drifting through the shoals, in a dark and stormy night.
She was brought there, by the merciful hand of God, to right my course.
Lost and degraded by auricular confession, only after having given it up, that precious soul was to find peace and life, when washed in the blood of the Lamb, as the only hope and refuge of sinners.
Her words, filled with a superhuman wisdom, and her burning tears, came to me, by the marvelous Providence of God, as the first beams of the Sun of Righteousness, to teach me that auricular confession was a Satanic invention.
Had this young person been the only one to tell me that, I might still have held some doubt about the diabolical origin of that institution. But thousands and thousands, before and after her, have been sent by my merciful God to tell me the same tale, till after twenty-five years of experience it became a certitude to me that that modern invention of Rome must, sooner or later, with very few exceptions, drag both the confessor and his female penitents into a common and irreparable ruin.[D]
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Footnote D:
Those who would like to know all about the abominations of auricular confession should have my volume “The Priest, The Woman and The Confessional.” It is probably the only book ever written on that subject which completely unveils the mask of Rome, by telling the whole truth.
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Chapter LV
THE ECCLESIASTICAL RETREAT—CONDUCT OF THE PRIESTS—THE BISHOP FORBIDS ME TO DISTRIBUTE THE BIBLE.
On the first of Aug., 1855, I received the following letter:
THE COLLEGE—Chicago July 24th, 1855.
REV. MR. CHINIQUY.
You will have the goodness to attend a spiritual retreat to be given next month at the college, in Chicago, for the clergy of the diocese of Chicago and Quincy.
The spiritual exercises, which will be conducted by the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Louisville, are to commence on Tuesday, the 28th of Aug., and will terminate on the following Sunday. This arrangement will necessitate your absence from your church on Sunday, the 14th, after Pentecost, which you will make known to your congregation. No clergyman is allowed to be absent from this retreat without the previous written consent of the bishop of the diocese, which consent will not be given except in cases which he will judge to be of urgent necessity.
By order of Rt. Rev. Bishop,
MATTHEW DILLON,
Pro Secretary.
Wishing to study the personnel of that Irish clergy of which Bishop Vandeveld had told such frightful things, I went to St. Mary’s University, two hours ahead of time.
Never did I see such a band of jolly fellows. Their dissipation and laughter, their exchange of witty, and too often, unbecoming expressions, the tremendous noise they made in addressing each other, at a distance: Their “Hallo, Patrick!” “hallo, Murphy!”“The answers: “Yes! yes! She will never leave me;” or “no! no! the crazy girl is gone,” were invariably followed by outbursts of laughter.
Though nine-tenths of them were evidently under the influence of intoxicating drinks, not one could be said to be drunk. But the strong odor of alcohol, mixed with the smoke of cigars, soon poisoned the air and made it suffocating.
I had withdrawn in a corner, alone, in order to observe everything.
What stranger, in entering that large hall, would have suspected that those men were about to begin one of the most solemn and sacred actions of a priest of Jesus Christ! With the exception of five or six, they looked more like a band of carousing raftsmen, than priests.
About an hour before the opening of the exercises, I saw one of the priests with hat in hand accompanied by two of the fattest and most florid of the band, going to every one, collecting money and with the most hilarity and pleasure, each one threw his bank bills into the hat. I supposed that this collection was intended to pay for our board, during the retreat, and I prepared the $15 I wanted to give. When they came near me—the big hat was literally filled with five and ten dollar bills. Before handing my money to them, I asked: “What is the object of that collection?”
“Ah! ah!” they answered with a hearty laugh,“and the collectors laughed outright.
I answered politely, but seriously: “Gentlemen, I came here to meditate and pray; and when I am thirsty, the fresh and pure water of Lake Michigan will quench my thirst. I have given up, long ago, the use of intoxicating drinks. Please excuse me, I am a teetotaler.”
“So we are!” they answered with a laugh; “We have all taken the pledge from Father Mathew; but this does not prevent us from taking a little drop to quench our thirst and keep up our health. Father Mathew is not so merciless as you are.”
“I know Father Mathew well;” I answered, “I have written to him and seen him many times. Allow me to tell you that we are of the same mind about the use of intoxicating drink.”
“Is it possible! you know Father Mathew! and you are exchanging letters with him! What a holy man he is, and what good he has done in Ireland, and everywhere!” they answered.
“But the good he has done will not last long,” I said, “if all his disciples keep their pledges as you do.”
As we were talking, a good number of priests came around to hear what was said; for it was evident to all, that the bark of their collectors, not only had come to shallow waters, but had struck on a rock.
One of the priests said: “I thought we were to be preached by Bishop Spaulding; I had no idea that it was Father Chiniquy who had that charge.”
“Gentlemen,” I answered, “I have as much right to preach to you in favor of temperance as you have to preach to me in favor of intemperance. You may do as you please about the use of strong drink, during the retreat; but I hope I also may have the right to think and do as I please, in that matter.”
“Of course,” they all answered, “But you are the only one who will not give us a cent to get a little drop.”
“So much the worse for you all, gentlemen, if I am the only one. But please excuse me, I cannot give you a cent for that object.”
They then left me, saying something which I could not understand, but they were evidently disgusted, with what they considered my stubbornness and want of good manners.
I must, however, say here, that two of them, Mr. Dunn, pastor of one of the best congregations in Chicago, and the other unknown to me, came to congratulate me on the stern rebuke I had given the collectors.
“I regret,” said Mr Dunn, “the five dollars I have thrown into that hat. If I had spoken to you before, and had known that you would be brave enough to rebuke them, I would have stood by you, and kept my money for better use. It is really a shame that we should be preparing ourselves for a retreat by wasting $500 for such a shameful object. They have just told me that they have raised that sum for the champagne, brandy, whisky and beer they will drink, this week. Ah! what disgrace! What a cry of indignation would be raised against us, if such a shameful thing should be known! I am sorry about the unkind words those priests have spoken to you; but you must excuse them, they are already full of bad whisky.
“Do not think, however, that you are friendless, here, in our midst. You have more friends than you think among the Irish priests; and I am one of them, though you do not know me. Bishop Vandeveld has often spoken to me of your grand colonization work, among the French.”
Mr. Dunn, then, pressed my hand in his, and taking me a short distance from the others, said:
“Consider me, hereafter, as your friend: you have won my confidence by the fearless way in which you have just spoken, and the common sense of your arguments.
“You have lost a true friend in Bishop Vandevelde. I fear that our present bishop will not do you justice. Lebel and Carthyvel have prejudiced him against you. But I will stand by you, if you are ever unjustly dealt with, as I fear you will, by the present administration of the diocese. I fear we are on the eve of great evils. The scandalous suit which Bishop O’Regan has brought upon his predecessor is a disgrace. If he has gained $50,000 by it, he has forever lost the respect and confidence of all his priests and diocesans.
“After the mild and paternal ruling of Bishop Vandevelde, neither the priests, nor the people of Illinois will long bear the iron chains which the present bishop has in store for us all.”
I thanked Mr. Dunn for his kind words, and told him that I had already tasted the paternal love of my bishop by being twice dragged by Spink before the criminal court for having refused to live on good terms with the two most demoralized priests I have ever known.
He, then, speaking with a more subdued voice, said:
“I must tell you, confidentially, that one of those priests, Lebel, will be turned out ignominiously from the diocese, during the retreat. Last week, a new fact, which surpasses all his other abominations, has been revealed and proved to the bishop, for which he will be interdicted.”
At that moment, the bell called us to the chapel to hear the regulations of the bishop in reference to the retreat, after which we sang the matins.
At 8 P. M., we had our first sermon by Bishop Spaulding, from Kentucky. He was a fine-looking man, a giant in stature, and a good speaker. But the way in which he treated his subject, though very clever, left, in my mind, the impression that he did not believe a word of what he said. At certain times, there was much fire in his elocution, but it was a fire of straw. He delivered two sermons, each day; and the Rev. Mr. Vanhulest, a Jesuit, gave us two meditations, each of them lasting from forty to fifty minutes. The rest of the time was spent in reading aloud the life of a saint, reciting the breviarum, examination of conscience and going to confession.
We had half an hour for meals, followed by one hour of recreation. Thus were the days spent. But the nights! the nights! what shall I say of them! What pen can describe the orgies I witnessed during those dark nights! and who can believe what I shall have to say about them! though I will not and cannot say the half of what I have seen and heard!
I got from the Rev. Mr. Dunn, then one of the bishop’s counselors, and soon after, Vicar General, the statement that the sum of $500 was expended in intoxicating drinks during the six days of the retreat. I ought to say during the five nights. My pen refuses to write what my eyes saw and my ears heard during the long hours of those nights, which I cannot forget though I should live a thousand years.
The drinking used to begin about 9 o’clock, as soon as the lights were put out. Some were handing the bottles from bed to bed, while others were carrying them to those at a distance, at first, with the least noise possible; but half an hour had not elapsed before the alcohol was beginning to unloose the tongues, and upset the brain. Then the bons mots, the witty stories, at first, were soon followed by the most indecent and shameful recitals. Then the songs, followed by the barking of dogs, the croaking of frogs, the howling of wolves. In a word, the cries of all kinds of beasts, often mixed with the most lascivious songs, the most infamous anecdotes flying from bed to bed, from room to room, till one or two o’clock in the morning.
One night three priests were taken with delirium tremens, almost at the same time. One cried out that he had a dozen rattle-snakes at his shirt; the second was fighting against thousands of bats which were trying to tear his eyes from their sockets: and the third, with a stick, was repulsing millions of spiders which, he said, were as big as wild turkeys, all at work to devour him. The cries and lamentations of those three priests were really pitiful! To those cries, add the lamentations of some dozen of them whose overloaded stomachs were ejecting in the beds and all around, the enormous quantity of drink they had swallowed!
The third day, I was so disgusted and indignant, that I determined to leave, without noise, under the pretext that I was sick. It was not a false pretext; for I was really sick. There was no possibility of sleeping before two or three o’clock. Besides, the stench in the dormitories was horrible.
There was, however, another thing which was still more overwhelming me. It was the terrible moral struggle in my soul from morning till night, and from night till morning, when the voice of conscience, which I had to take for the voice of Satan, was crying in my ears:“ Oh! what an awful thing it is to resist the voice of God! To take him for the evil one, when, by his warnings, he seeks to save your soul! Although the horrible scandal I had seen distressed me more than human words can tell, those mental conflicts were still more distressing. Fearing lest I should entirely lose my faith in my religion, and become an absolute infidel, by remaining any longer in the midst of such profligacy, I determined to leave; but before doing so, I wanted to consult the new friend whom the Providence of God had given me in Mr. Dunn. It seemed the unbearable burden which was on my shoulders would become lighter, by sharing it with such a sympathetic brother priest.
I went to him, after dinner, and taking him apart, I told him all about the orgies of last night, and asked his advice on my determination not to continue that retreat, which was evidently nothing else than a blind, and a sacrilegious comedy, to deceive the world.
He answered: “You teach me nothing, for I spent last night in the same dormitory where you were. One of the priests told me all about those orgies, yesterday; I could hardly believe what he said, and I determined to see and hear for myself what was going on. You do not exaggerate, you do not even mention half of the horrors of last night. It baffles any description. It is simply incredible for any one who has not himself witnessed them. However, I do not advise you to leave. It would forever ruin you in the mind of the bishop, who is not already too well disposed in your favor. The best thing you can do is to go and tell everything to Bishop Spaulding. I have done it this morning; but I felt that he did not believe the half of what I told him. When the same testimony comes from you, then he will believe it, and will probably take some measures, with our own bishop, to put an end to those horrors. I have something to tell you, confidentially, which surpasses, in a measure, anything you know of the abominations of these last three nights. “ “With these fine words ringing in my ears,” said good Mr. Dunn, “I had to leave his room at the double quick. It is of no use for us to speak to Bishop O’Regan, on that matter. It will do no good. He wants to get a large subscription from those priests, at the end of the retreat, and he is rather inclined to pet than punish them, till he obtains the $100,000 he wants to build his white marble palace on the lake shore.”
I replied: “Though you add to my desolation, instead of diminishing it, by what you say of the strange principles of our bishop, I will speak to my lord Spaulding as you advise me.”
Without a moment’s delay, I went to his room. He received me very kindly, and did not at all seem surprised at what I said. It was as if he had been accustomed to see the same, or still worse abominations. However, when I told him the enormous quantity of liquor drank, and that retreat would be only a ridiculous comedy, if no attempt at reform was tried, he agreed with me; “but it would be advisable to try it,” he said.“ Although the Bishop of Chicago seemed puzzled at seeing me entering the room with my lord Spaulding, he was as polite as possible. He listened with more attention than I expected to the narrative I gave of what is going on among the priests. After telling him my sad story, Bishop Spaulding said: “My lord of Chicago: These facts are very grave, and there cannot be any doubt about the truth of what we have just heard. Two other gentlemen gave me the same testimony this morning.”
“Yes!” said Bishop O’Regan, “it is very sad to see that our priests have so little self-respect, even during such solemn days as those of a public retreat. The Rev. Mr. Dunn has just told me the same sad story as Father Chiniquy. But what remedy can we find for such a state of things? Perhaps it might do well to give them a good sermon on temperance. Mr. Chiniquy, I am told that you are called ‘the temperance apostle of Canada.’ and that you are a powerful speaker on that subject; would you not like to give them one or two addresses on the injury they are doing to themselves and to our holy church, by their drunkenness?”
“If those priests could understand me in French,” I replied, “I would accept the honor you offer me, with pleasure; but to be understood by them, I would have to speak in English; and I am not sufficiently free in that language to attempt it. My broken English would only bring ridicule upon the holy cause of temperance.
“But my lord Spaulding has already preached on that subject in Kentucky, and an address from his lordship would be listened to with more attention and benefit from him than from me.”
It was, then, agreed that he should change his programme, and give two addresses on temperance, which he did. But though these addresses were really eloquent, they were pearls thrown before swine.
The drunken priests slept as usual; and even snored, almost through the whole length of the delivery. It is true that we could notice a little improvement and less noise the following nights; the change, however, was very little.
The fourth day of the retreat, the Rev. Mr. Lebel came to me with his bag in his hand. He looked furious. He said:
“Now, you must be satisfied, I am interdicted and turned out ignominiously from this diocese. It is your work! But mind what I tell you; you will, also, soon, be turned out from your colony by the mitred tyrant who has just struck me down. He told me, several times, that he would, at any cost, break your plans of French colonization, by sending you to the south-west of Illinois, along the Mississippi, to an old French settlement, opposite St. Louis.
“He is enraged against you for your refusing to give him your fine property at St. Anne.”
I answered him: “You are mistaken when you think that I am the author of your misfortunes. You have disgraced yourself, by your own acts. God has given you talents and qualities, which, if cultivated, would have exalted you in the church, but you have preferred to destroy those great gifts, in order to follow the evil inclinations of your poor degraded human nature; you reap to-day what you have sown. Nobody is more sorry than I am, for your misfortune, and my most sincere wish is that the past may be a lesson to guide your steps in the future. The desire of my bishop to turn me out of my colony does not trouble me. If it is the will of God to keep me at the head of that great work, the Bishop of Chicago will go down from his episcopal throne before I go down the beautiful hill of St. Anne. Adieu!”
He soon disappeared. But how the fall of this priest, whom I had so sincerely loved, saddened me!
The next Sabbath was the last day of the retreat. All the priests went in procession to the cathedral, to receive the holy communion, and every one of them ate, what we had to believe the true body, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. This, however, did not prevent thirteen of them from spending the greater part of the next night in the calaboose, to which they had been taken by the police, from houses of ill-fame, where they were rioting and fighting. The next morning, they were discharged from the hands of the police by paying pretty round sums of money for the trouble of the night!
The next day, I went to Mr. Dunn’s parsonage to ask him if he could give me any explanation of the rumor which was afloat, and to which Mr. Lebel had made allusion, that it was the intention of the bishop to remove me from my colony to some distant part of his diocese.
“It is unfortunately too true,” said he. “Bishop O’Regan thinks that he has a mission from heaven to undo all his predecessor has done, and as one of the best and grandest schemes of Bishop Vandevelde was to secure the possession of this magnificent State of Illinois to our church, by inducing all the Roman Catholic emigrants from France, Belgium and Canada, to settle here, our present bishop does not conceal that he will oppose that plan by removing you to such a distance, that your colonization plans will be at an end. He says that the French are, as a general thing, rebels and disobedient to their bishops. He prefers seeing the Irish coming, on account of their proverbial docility to their ecclesiastical superiors.
“I have, in vain, tried to change his mind. I told you, before, that he often asks my opinion on what I think the best thing to be done for the good of the diocese. But I do not think that he intends to follow my advice! it is just the contrary. My impression now is, that he wants to know our views, only for the pleasure of acting diametrically in opposition to what we advise.”
I must not omit to say, that we had been requested to spend the forenoon of Monday, in the University, for an important affair which the Bishop had to propose to his clergy. We were all there, in the great hall, at the appointed hour. Even the thirteen priests who had spent the best part of the night at the police station, heard the voice of their bishop, and they were there, as docile lambs.
We knew beforehand, the proposition which was to be put before us. It was to build a palace for our bishop, worthy of the great Illinois State, the cost of which would be about $100,000.
Though every one of us felt that this was most extravagant in such a young and poor diocese, nobody dared to raise his voice against that act of pride and supreme folly. Every one promised to do all in his power to raise that sum, and to show our good will, we raised among ourselves, at once, $7,000, which we gave in cash or in promissory notes.
After this act of liberality, we were blessed and dismissed by our bishop.
I was but a few steps from the University, when an Irish priest, unknown to me, ran after me to say: “My lord O’Regan wants to see you immediately.” And, five minutes later, I was alone with my bishop, who, without any preface, told me:
“Mr. Chiniquy, I hear very strange and damaging things about you, from every quarter. But the worst of all is, that you are a secret Protestant emissary; that, instead of preaching the true doctrines of our holy church, about the immaculate conception, purgatory, the respect and obedience due to their superiors by the people, auricular confession, etc., etc., you spend a part of your time in distributing Bibles and New Testaments among your emigrants; I want to know from your own lips, if this be true or not.”
I answered: “A part of what the people told you about the matter is not true; the other is true. It is not true that I neglect the preaching of the doctrines of our holy church, about purgatory, immaculate conception of Mary, auricular confession, or the respect due to our superiors. But it is true that I do distribute the Holy Bible and the Gospel of Christ, among my people.”
“And instead of blushing at such unpriestly conduct, you seem to be proud of it,” angrily replied the bishop.
“I do not understand, my lord, why a priest of Christ could blush for distributing the Word of God among his people; as I am bound to preach that Holy Word, it is not only my right, but my duty to give it to them. I am fully persuaded that there is no preaching so efficacious and powerful as the preaching of God Himself, when speaking to us in His Holy Book.”
“This is sheer Protestantism, Mr. Chiniquy, this is sheer Protestantism,” he answered me, angrily.
“My dear bishop,” I answered calmly, “if to give the Bible to the people and invite them to read and meditate on it, is Protestantism, our holy Pope Pius VI. was a good Protestant, for in his letter to Martini, which is probably in the first pages of the beautiful Bible I see on your lordship’s table, he not only blesses him for having translated that Holy book into Italian, but invites the people to read it.”
The bishop, assuming an air of supreme contempt, replied:
“Your answer shows your complete ignorance on the subject on which you speak so boldly. If you were a little better informed on that grave subject, you would know that the translation by Martini, which the Pope advised the Italian people to read, formed a work of twenty-three big volumes in folio, which, of course, nobody except very rich and idle people could read. Not one in ten thousand Italians have the means of purchasing such a voluminous work; and not one in fifty thousand have the time or the will to peruse such a mass of endless commentaries. The Pope would never have given such an advice to read a Bible, as the one you distribute so imprudently.”
“Then, my lord, do you positively tell me that the Pope gave permission to read Martini’s translation because he knew that the people could never get it on account of its enormous size and price, and do you assure me that he would never have given such an advice had the same people been able to purchase and read that holy work?”
“Yes, sir! It is what I mean,” answered the bishop, with an air of triumph, “for I know, positively, that this is the fact.”
I replied, calmly: “I hope your lordship is unwillingly mistaken; for if you were correct, the stern and unflinching principles of logic would force me to think and say that that Pope, and all his followers were deceivers, and that encyclical, a public fraud in his own hands; for we, Catholic priests, make use of it, all over the world, and reprint it at the head of our own Bibles, to make the people, both Protestants and Catholics, believe that we approve of their reading our own versions of that Holy Book.”
Had I thrown a spark of fire in a keg of powder, the explosion would not have been more prompt and terrible than the rage of that prelate. Pointing his finger to my face, he said:
“Now, I see the truth of what I have been told, that you are a disguised Protestant, since the very day you were ordained a priest.
“The Bible! the Bible! is your motto! For you, the Bible is everything, and the holy church, with her Popes and bishops, nothing! what an insolent, I dare say, what a blasphemous word I have just heard from you! You dare call an encyclical letter of one of our most holy Popes, a fraud!”
In vain, I tried to explain; he would not listen, and he silenced me by saying:
“If our holy church has, in an unfortunate day, appointed you one of her priests in my diocese, it was to preach her doctrines, and not to distribute the Bible! If you forget that, I will make you remember it!”
And with that threat on my head, as a Damocles’ sword, I had to take to the door, which he had opened, without any au revoir. Thanks be to God, this first persecution and these outrages I received for my dear Bible’s sake, did not diminish my respect for God’s Holy Word nor my confidence in it. On the contrary, on reaching home, I took it, fell on my knees, and pressing it to my heart, I asked my Heavenly Father to grant me the favor to love it more sincerely, and follow its divine teachings with more fidelity, till the end of my life.