Auricular Confession, a sacrament inseparable from that of
communion--Obligatory on all once a-year--Plan of discovering
defaulters--How punished--Evils of confession--Power of the priest--Four
evils pointed out--Discoveries in the Inquisition in 1820--Facility of
obtaining absolution--Louis XIV.--Robbers and assassins--The
confessional--Practice, how conducted--Expiatory acts--Refusal of
absolution--A husband disguised as his wife's confessor--The injunction
of secrecy on part of confessor--Advantages of the knowledge he
gains--Jesuits advocate the confessional--No fees for confession, but
gratuities are generally given.
Confession is one of the sacraments of the Church of Rome. Roman
Catholicism, at least in Spain, requires that all believers shall
celebrate that sacrament, as well as the sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
at least once a-year. Confessors amplify this obligation, and require
their penitents to observe both these sacraments frequently. Devout
persons who aspire to greater spiritual perfection practise these
observances once a week. Still, however, the church is satisfied with an
annual celebration of them by each of its members, and fixes the period
for that performance at Easter. The infraction of this rule is
considered a mortal sin, and the clergy use every possible means to
enforce the precept. The two sacraments are inseparable, and to obey the
injunction of confession and communion is called "to comply with the
church," (_cumplir con la Iglesia_).
The method employed by the clergy to discover delinquents with reference
to these obligations, is as rigid and severe as any that can be devised
by the most despotic civil authority. About the middle of Lent the
priest and one of his assistants form a general census of all their
parishioners. In the acts of confession and communion, the penitent
receives two tickets, which certify his obedience to the paschal precept,
and when the assigned period is over for these observances, the priest
goes from house to house to gather the tickets; so that it is impossible
to conceal any infraction of the rule. Until within the last few years,
it was the custom to write the names of all defaulters upon a board,
exposed to public view in the churches, by way of punishment of the
delinquents; and, consequently, those who were the subjects of this
punishment were badly looked upon by the towns-people, and considered as
atheists and heretics. The result of this absurd penal code was, that
men preferred sacrilege to dishonour, and complied externally with the
precept, making an imperfect confession, receiving the eucharist in a
state of culpability, and committing, consequently, in the eyes of a
Roman Catholic, one of the blackest crimes. Whether it was on account of
a grave inconvenience resulting from this mode of punishment, or by
virtue of that decay in the ecclesiastical influence in Spain, so notable
in recent years, we cannot determine, but that practice has now been
completely abolished; and even in Madrid and the principal cities of the
kingdom, the "complying with the church" has lost its compulsory
character, and been reduced to those who truly believe in its efficacy.
It is true that the clergy still give tickets, as testimonials, to those
who perform acts of confession and communion, but they have not the
temerity to go from house to house to collect them as formerly, and the
clergy who would venture to demand them would be exposed to mortification
and rebuke. Still, however, in some families, the children are bound in
duty to prove before the paternal tribunal their compliance with those
obligations, by means of those official documents; but even this test is
easily evaded by the purchase of the tickets, which are publicly sold in
the churches by the sacristans and other inferior agents of the
priesthood, for the moderate sum of a _peseta_, (ten-pence.)
The practice of confession, however, is not quite extinct, particularly
among the inferior classes of society, and it is natural that the clergy
should represent it as absolutely necessary to the salvation of souls,
looking to the great advantages which they themselves derive from it. By
means of the sacrament of confession, the confessor makes himself the
absolute master of the conscience of his penitent,--not merely of his own
secrets, but of those of his whole family; he directs all their
operations, and superintends all their domestic concerns, as well as
their social and even their political affairs. The confessor has
constantly suspended over the head of his penitent the terrible menace of
eternal punishment. It is not the pure and genuine law of God which the
devotee observes,--it is the law of God explained, augmented, or
diminished, and often distorted, by the voice of a fallible man, only his
equal, and perhaps vastly inferior to him in point of erudition and
purity of morals. The devotee has no right to obey God in the way he
understands the precepts imposed upon him by God and God's church. In
his view, God and the church are a sort of concrete centred in the
confessor. The confessor not only directs him, but punishes him with the
severest penances that a confessor can enjoin, for the penal code of the
confessional not only embraces the religious practices of fasting, alms,
scourging, and other inflictions, which are entirely at the disposal of
that terrible judge, but he has, or assumes to have, the power of denying
absolution; that is to say, of condemning the soul to the terrible state
of mortal sin, of interposing himself between the sinner and the divine
mercy, and of annulling the consoling hopes of Him who in compassion to
human weakness has said, "I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner,
but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live." The
confessor is just as frail, as mortal, as subject to human weakness, as
susceptible of human passions and vices, as the penitent himself. The
character he assumes to perform, by the imposition of his hands, does not
allay in him either the violence of appetite, or the claims of
self-interest. How is it possible to believe that, in the exercise of
his ministry, he can entirely rid himself of sentiments of hatred,
sympathy, rancour, and envy, with respect to the man or woman who kneels
at his feet, imploring through him the pardon of sin?
People greatly deceive themselves who imagine that the confessional, at
least in Spain, bears the least analogy to the case of a man who,
burthened with sorrow and repentance, comes in confidence to deposit the
weight of the burden which oppresses him on the bosom of his friend. No;
do not believe that the penitent hopes to find in the confessor a kind
consoling guide to wipe away his tears, pour into his bosom the balm of
hope, and present to him an endearing hand which may lead him in the way
of holiness. The confessor is an implacable judge, who speaks with
gentle smiles or bland insinuations, but who tears out, with an imperious
tone and formidable menaces, the secrets of the heart, and not only those
which may be connected with crime worthy of deep contrition and sincere
repentance, but even others which pertain to an order of things exempt
from the sinfulness attaching to human actions. The confessor has an
absolute right to know every thing without exception. The most
insignificant actions, and even the most innocent ones, must come to his
knowledge. He is not content with the spontaneous declaration that the
penitent feels disposed to make of all infractions of duty; but he
insists on examining the case with the most scrupulous minuteness, and
takes as much pains as would a clever, cunning lawyer to extract every
particle of evidence from the witnesses for or against a culprit on his
trial. Under this last point of view, auricular confession may be
considered as the most tyrannical, odious, and unmoral institution, which
superstition, leagued with sordid interests, could ever have invented.
Innumerable are the abuses made of this wicked instrument by the Spanish
clergy, and which have resulted in the abandonment of the confessional by
every educated, discreet, and intelligent man. Of those abuses we shall
only point out four of the most important, and which have most
efficaciously contributed to bring auricular confession into disrepute.
_First_. The great interest of the clergy being to consolidate the papal
power, the confession serves to ascertain the extent of hostilities
raised against that power by philosophy, impiety, the tendency to
religious reform, and the general spirit of the age. The confessor asks
every penitent whether he has any prohibited or simply profane books; if
he, or his parents, or his friends, listen to the conversation or
discourse of heretics, or murmur against the ecclesiastical power, or
satirise the conduct of the clergy, or even attend balls, theatres, or
other profane amusements. Many confessors give to these things
infinitely greater importance than to the infraction of the Decalogue.
If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the
confessor requires, under pain of refusing absolution, that such books be
given up,--that all further communication with the enemies of the church
be discontinued,--and that such carnal entertainments as balls and
theatres, and the like, be renounced for ever.
_Secondly_. As the exorbitant ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome
is bound up intimately, and by a well-known analogy, with absolute power
and civil despotism, the confessional is converted into a political
engine by a true espionage, by means of which is discovered every liberal
tendency, every germ of conspiracy or rebellion, and every thing that can
offend the supreme authority.
In the epoch of the restoration of Ferdinand VII. to Spain, after his
captivity in France, when the persecution of the liberal party became the
essence of that monarch's policy, the confessors were actively occupied,
by command of the bishops, in these odious examinations and inquiries.
Thus, the wife was made to denounce the husband, the son the father, and
the friend the friend. Peace, thus disturbed, flew from the abodes of
families; the clergy acquired new rights to the hatred of the
nation,--for many were the persecutions to which the accusations, thus
dragged from the weakness of penitents, gave rise. Freemasonry was
considered then not only as a political crime, but as a challenge to
pontifical bulls, which were fulminated against the mystery with violent
anathemas. The penitent saw himself obligated to accuse, before the
tribunal of the Inquisition, any persons whom he knew to be members of a
lodge, although bound to such persons by the ties of kindred or
friendship.
_Thirdly_. The most dangerous use of the power of examination, which the
confessor exercises, is that of interrogating persons of the weaker sex.
A woman who once kneels before a confessor renounces from that moment the
most noble, the most pure, and the most amiable of the sentiments which
can animate the bosom of her sex. The searching voice and tone of her
judge breaks down with violence, at once, all those barriers which
modesty and self-respect by turns have raised up in her heart and
conscience. Not only is she compelled to reveal the positive acts,
gestures, and words, containing the least element of culpability or blame
against the chastity and purity of her habits, but even the most vague
and inevitable thoughts,--those against which woman recoils with
indignation, and which she would even blush and refuse to give an account
of to herself,--have all to be expressed and uttered by her lips without
the least palliation or disguise. It is a fact generally admitted in
Spain, and one spoken of without reserve in all classes of society, that
the most uncontaminated and pure maiden rises from the confessional as
well instructed in things of which before she was absolutely ignorant, as
though she had come from a house of the vilest character. It is enough
to indicate the nature of this abuse, in order to form some idea of its
pernicious consequences. Women worthy of credit have declared over and
over again that their first visit to the confessional opened the way to
their perdition, by inflaming the imagination with ideas of a most
voluptuous and obscene nature, and exciting their curiosity on subjects
which had never before even entered into the mind or conception. Should
any person doubt these statements, let him turn to any book of Roman
Catholic devotion, which contains what is called, in ecclesiastical
language, "examination of the conscience." The famous treatise, "_De
Matrimonio_," cited in our introduction, by the Jesuit Sanchez, for the
use of confessors of married women, contains particulars so filthy, and
pictures, descriptive of certain sins, so utterly disgusting and obscene,
that even the Court of Rome has been obliged to order all copies of the
work to be bought up and suppressed.
_Fourthly and finally_. Another of the great dangers of the indefinite
authority of the confessor, with respect to penitents of the weaker sex,
is the facility it offers for seduction.
Consider the situation of a single man in the presence of a young and
beautiful woman, alone with her, and master of her conscience and all the
secrets of her heart. How much denial, how much virtue must he not
possess to resist the temptation which such circumstances bring before
him! That great crimes do very commonly result from such circumstances
in Roman Catholic countries, is proved by the existence of the penalties
which the canon law imposes on the authors of such crimes, in the book
which goes by the title of "_De Solicitante in Confessione_." In almost
all the cities of Spain are recounted scandalous examples of this class
of abuses, and it is generally believed that in the greater number of the
cases, criminal relations between the clergy and women of all classes had
their origin in the confessional. When the people in Spain rose against
the Inquisition in 1820, and sacked the archives of that tribunal, they
found numerous informations by modest women against their confessors, who
had assailed their virtue in the confessional. The interests of the
clergy required that a veil should be thrown over those excesses, and
thus we find but very few instances in which the Inquisition awarded
punishment to the culprits.
With such efficacious instruments of power and of influence, it is not
surprising that the clergy and friars should wield an authority, without
limit, over all the affairs of families. Spaniards, who are old enough
to remember the moral state of their country towards the end of the last
century, are well aware that there was scarcely a family of any
importance in Spain which was not blindly subjected to the advice and
even orders of some individual member of the priesthood. Nothing could
be done without such advice and sanction. The clergy had great influence
in the marriages, domestic disputes, business, studies, and even
diversions, of all who recognised their superiority. They prohibited the
reading of the most innocent books,--even those respected by "the Index."
They exacted acts of devotion, such as masses, romerias, novenas, and
others, from which there resulted constant droppings of money into the
coffers of the church. In short, it may be taken as a fact, that, until
the period of the French invasion, the true government of the Spanish
nation had been a theocracy in the hands of forty or fifty thousand
individuals, freed from all responsibility with respect to the civil
power, united among themselves by the bonds of a common interest, and
forming a privileged caste, considered generally as the depositaries of
divine power. All this rested upon the basis of confession.
But the most deplorable inconvenience of these practices, and that which
makes it incompatible with the public morals, is the facility of pardon
offered for those criminal excesses and to the most abandoned depravity.
He who can be assured of the efficacy of a remedy which is at his
disposition every moment does not fear exposing himself to temptation.
The most obstinate sinner, the perpetrator of the most atrocious crimes,
knows that he has in his hand, already, absolution for all his
excesses,--that he is free from all responsibility and all
consequences,--and, in a word, that he can transform himself into a saint
or an angel by the mere performance of the rite which his church
prescribes. If, after this purification, he returns to his old habits,
and gives himself up to his wicked inclinations, the same process of
absolution is at hand, and can be repeated as often as he pleases; and as
the administration of this sacrament, on the part of the priest, becomes,
through force of repetition, a mere matter of routine, it can hardly be
supposed that the words he utters can carry along with them any efficacy,
as they might be expected to do if they were those of a truly devoted
minister of Jesus Christ. To assure oneself of these truths, let any one
attend a Spanish church on one of those days on which it is necessary
"_to comply with the church_," and draw near to those confessional-boxes
which are there erected for the use of the penitents. He will there see
people successively throw themselves down on their knees before a priest,
pronounce a few words, hear a slight admonition, and then rise up to make
way for another person who in his turn does the like, and so on during
the day. Can any one believe that this almost insignificant ceremony is
sufficient to impress on any mind that profound feeling, that intense
grief for past sins, and that firm resolve to sin no more, which are the
true signs of contrition and repentance? Can it be believed that the
treasures of divine mercy and forgiveness are open to all comers, who,
persisting in their sinful course, think fit to come, and, as a matter of
right, demand them as they would passports at the office of the police?
It is well known that even Louis XIV., notorious for his open and
profligate as well as habitual adulteries, had a confessor, and complied
with the duties of confession and communion in the presence of his whole
court. In Spain, robbers, assassins, and the most corrupt of the people,
pursued by justice for their crimes, and who are the terror of society,
always confess and receive the eucharist at Easter, but without ever
amending their lives or even intending to do so.
The priest, before saying mass, in which rite he is about to identify
himself with what he supposes to be the very body of our Saviour, is
bound to purify himself previously, so that in that awful ceremony the
holy elements may not enter a temple wherein dwelleth sin. The greater
number of those priests say mass every day, but seldom are they seen,
before assuming the sacred vestments to officiate at the altar, to
prepare themselves by means of confession, as the rules of their religion
most strictly enjoin. There are innumerable towns in Spain in which
there are no other clergymen than the parish priest. In what state then
must _his_ soul be when he approaches the altar to eat and drink, as he
professes to believe, the body and blood of Jesus Christ?
These considerations are so obviously natural and simple, that it has
required six centuries of civil and religious oppression to hide them
under the weight of ignorance and the fear of punishment. Nevertheless,
the invasion of the French, the political revolutions which have
followed, intercourse with foreign nations, and other causes which have
co-operated with these, have at last begun to open the eyes of Spaniards,
and confession is daily falling into disuse, particularly among the
educated classes of society. Even in these same classes, however, there
are many persons who, although persuaded of the truth of all that their
clergy teach them, refuse to confess, and declare that they will do so
only at the hour of death. Confession is, in the present day, more
common in the inferior ranks; for these move in a sphere without the pale
of civilization, and consequently are yet under the clerical power.
Still, there are villages in Spain in which the bad example of the
priest, and the enmity which is manifested towards him by the
inhabitants, prevent the compliance with those sacraments, so that for
years together the great majority of the people never think of purifying
their consciences in the way prescribed by their church. In the eyes of
a true Roman Catholic, these people are therefore living in a state of
complete reprobation, and are destined to perdition. And yet, how can a
human being throw himself at the feet of a man whom he despises? How can
he ask absolution of a man who he knows requires it more, perhaps, than
himself? And, above all, how can he confide the consciences and souls of
his daughters to a man who carries seduction in his eyes and pollution on
his lips?
The act of confession is practised after the following manner:--First of
all, the penitent makes, whilst alone, a private examination of the heart
and conscience, according to the instructions of books written with this
special object in view, some of which have justly merited the censures
passed upon them by the English press, in citing them by way of argument
against Parliamentary grants in favour of the college of Maynooth. The
hour of confession arrived, the penitent kneels before the priest, who is
seated in a kind of sentry-box, called the confessional, open in front,
and having the two sides of trellis-work, by which the priest is
separated from actual contact with the woman who comes to confess. This
confessional is placed in the church. Those who have visited the
churches and cathedrals on the continent of Europe may have seen several
of them in almost every one of these. Thus the confession may be said to
be made in public, for the rite is most frequently performed when there
is a crowd assembled, so that persons nearest to the confessional can
often distinctly hear much of what passes between the confessor and his
penitent. Now, only consider the situation of a woman observed, at
least, by so many witnesses, who, even though they do not hear her words,
can, by the alteration of her features and visage, understand what
emotions of mind she is enduring whilst undergoing the painful process.
The parties thus placed, the ceremony then begins with an act of
contrition, which the penitent pronounces.
Then follows the self-accusation of sins, in the order of the ten
commandments, or the Decalogue, and the other five of the Roman Catholic
Church. The priest frequently interrupts this self-accusation with
leading questions concerning the most minute particulars of the act which
is the subject of accusation. For example, suppose the accusation to be
this: "I accuse myself, holy father, of having uttered a falsehood." The
priest interrupts: "On a light matter, or on a serious one? was it for
personal interest? was it in order to stain the reputation of another?
and if so, was the person calumniated a man or a woman? and was that
person married or single? a member of the civil authority, or one of the
clergy?" This introductory part being ended, the priest begins a fresh
tack, and interrogates the penitent upon infractions not specified in any
of the commandments. For example: If the penitent is accustomed to pray
the rosary; if she frequents churches; if she contributes her money
towards the support of divine worship; if she knows, and omits to
denounce, impious persons, heretics, and enemies of the church; if she
prefers the society of worldly men to that of the clergy and friars; if
her parents, brothers, husband, sons, relatives, or friends, read
prohibited or dangerous books; if she orders masses to be said for the
souls of the dead; and other things of a similar kind. Then follows an
exhortation to show the turpitude of the sins confessed and the necessity
of repentance, and the priest concludes this peroration by the imposition
of penance or other expiatory act. Here the confessor has an open field
before him, in which he shows the fecundity of his imagination,--prayers,
paying for masses, fasting, alms, corporal mortification, pilgrimages to
sanctuaries, privation from theatres, balls, and parties, and other
penalties of a similar nature, which form the criminal code of the
confessional tribunal; and here it is easy to imagine what a latitude
this faculty offers to gratify hatred, show revenge, flatter the
powerful, and make things pleasant to those who have the power of
conferring favours. The act concludes with the words of absolution,
which is a formula consisting of a few Latin phrases.
The priest has the power of refusing absolution, but which however he
seldom ventures to exercise, for there is no penitent, be she who she
may, that would not sooner make the most terrible sacrifices of her
self-respect, than expose herself to such an affront. There have been
instances in which refusal of absolution has provoked the penitent to
personal vengeance against an inexorable confessor.
There is a fact well known in Spain, which proves the abuses to which the
practice of confession may lead. A husband who suspected the fidelity of
his wife, knowing that she was accustomed always to go to the same church
and the same confessional to confess, dressed himself up as a friar, and
taking care to conceal his face with the capucha, entered the church and
sat down in the confessional. The unlucky woman fell into the snare, and
confided to her husband the particulars of her faithless conduct. The
result was, as the reader may readily suppose, a great outcry among the
clergy against such profanation and sacrilege; but the man who was guilty
of this delinquency being high and powerful, escaped punishment.
The canon law imposes on the confessor the most inviolable secrecy, and
provides severe penalties for the least infraction. This injunction, it
must be admitted, is most scrupulously obeyed; but then it must be
considered, that, if the prohibition favour the penitent by preventing
the disclosure of her frailties, it equally favours the clergy
themselves, by making them the masters of all consciences, and lifts up
to their own eyes the veil which is supposed to conceal the infirmities
of their fellow-creatures.
It is not difficult to calculate the advantages the clergy are able to
draw from this intimate knowledge of the interests, and the ambition,
hatred, and other passions of the mind most dangerous to the quietude of
families. One would think it impossible that there could exist a human
society in which a privileged body of men were to be found, invested with
the faculty of penetrating into those mysteries which are generally
supposed to be open only to the Almighty. But it was for the possession
of this very faculty, that the Jesuits, so clever in discovering and
practising the means of their greatness and influence, abandoning their
vulgar ambition, their mitres, and other ecclesiastical insignia, fixed
all their hopes and attention on the confessional. Before the extinction
of that order, confessors of the popes, kings of Europe, and the chief
persons of their courts, pertained to it. Leo X., Louis XIV., Louis XV.,
and Catherine de Medicis, may be looked upon as regulators who qualified
that temperament of Christian morals which domineered over the world
under the imperium of those reverend fathers.
The administration of the sacrament of absolution does not figure in the
tariff of regular parochial dues, payable for baptism, marriage, and
burial. That act, according to the canons of the church, must be
gratuitous. But in Spain, since the abolition of the tithes, which
brought with it that state of poverty under which the clergy now groan,
there has been introduced a custom of slipping a few pieces of money into
the hand of the confessor at parting. This gratuity varies according to
the means of the penitents; but the average may be taken at a dollar and
a half. May not the probability of a larger or a smaller fee on these
occasions, as pourtrayed in the aspect of the giver, have an influence,
more or less, in proportioning the amount of severity in the penance
imposed?