THE SHEPHERD WHIPPED BY HIS SHEEP.
Shortly after the trial of auricular confession, my young friend, Louis
Cazeault, accosted me on a beautiful morning and said, “Do you know what
happened last night?”
“No,” I answered. “What was the wonder?”
“You know that our priest spends almost all his evenings at Mr.
Richards’ house. Everybody thinks that he goes there for the sake of the
two daughters. Well, in order to cure him of that disease, my uncle, Dr.
Tache, and six others, masked, whipped him without mercy as he was
coming back at eleven o’clock at night. It is already known by every one
in the village, and they split their sides with laughing.”
My first feeling on hearing that news, was one of joy. Ever since my
first confession I felt angry every time I thought of that priest. His
questions had so wounded me that I could not forgive him. I had enough
of self-control, however, to conceal my pleasure and I answered my
friend:
“You are telling me a wicked story; I can’t believe a word of it.”
“Well,” said young Cazeault, “come at eight o’clock this evening to my
uncle’s. A secret meeting is to take place then. No doubt they will
speak of the pill given to the priest last night. We shall place
ourselves in our little room as usual and shall hear everything, our
presence not being suspected. You may be sure that it will be
interesting.”
“I will go,” I answered, “but I do not believe a word of that story.”
I went to school at the usual hour. Most of the pupils had preceded me.
Divided into groups of eight or ten, they were engaged in a most lively
conversation. Bursts of convulsive laughter were heard from every
corner. I could very well see that something uncommon had taken place in
the village.
I approached several of these groups, and all received me with the
question:
“Do you know that the priest was whipped last night as he was coming
from the Misses Richards’?”
“That is a story invented for fun,” said I.
“You were not there to see him, were you? You therefore know nothing
about it; for if anybody had whipped the priest he would not surely
boast of it.”
“But we heard his screams,” answered many voices.
“What! was he then screaming out?” I asked.
“He shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Help, help! Murder!’”
“But you were surely mistaken about the voice,” said I. “It was not the
priest who shouted, it was somebody else. I could never believe that
anybody would whip a priest in such a crowded village.”
“But” said several, “we ran to his help and we recognized the priest’s
voice. He is the only one who lisps in the village.”
“And we saw him with our own eyes,” said several.
The school bell put an end to this conversation. As soon as school was
out I returned to the house of my relatives, not wishing to learn any
more about this matter. Although I did not like this priest, yet I was
much mortified by some remarks which the older pupils made about him.
But it was difficult not to hear any more. On my arrival home I found my
uncle and aunt engaged in a very warm debate on the subject. My uncle
wished to conceal the fact that he was among those who had whipped him.
But he gave the details so precisely, he was so merry over the
adventure, that it was easy to see that he had a hand in the plot. My
aunt was indignant, and used the most energetic expressions to show her
disapprobation.
That bitter debate annoyed me so that I did not stay long to hear it
all. I withdrew to my study.
During the remainder of the day I changed my resolution many times about
my going to the secret meeting in the evening. At one moment I would
decide firmly not to go. My conscience told me that, as usual, things
would be uttered which it was not good for me to hear. I had refused to
go to the two last meetings, and a silent voice, as it were, told me I
had done well. Then a moment after I was tormented by the desire to know
precisely what had taken place the evening before. The flagellation of a
priest in the midst of a large village was a fact too worthy of note to
fail to excite the curiosity of a child. Besides, my aversion to the
priest, though I concealed it as well as I could, made me wish to know
whether everything was true on the subject of the chastisement. But in
the struggle between good and evil which took place in my mind during
that day, the evil was finally to triumph. A quarter of an hour before
the meeting my friend came to me and said:
“Make haste, the members of the association are coming.”
At this call all my good resolutions vanished. I hushed the voice of my
conscience, and a few minutes later I was placed in an angle of that
little room, where for more than two hours I learned many strange and
scandalous things about the lives of the priests of Canada.
Dr. Tache presided. He opened the meeting in a low tone of voice. At the
beginning of his discourse I had some difficulty to understand what he
said. He spoke as one who feared to be overheard when disclosing a
secret to a friend. But after a few preliminary sentences he forgot the
rule of prudence which he had imposed upon himself, and spoke with
energy and power.
Mr. Etienne Tache was naturally eloquent. He seemed to speak on no
question except under the influence of the deepest conviction of its
truth. His speech was passionate, and the tone of his voice clear and
agreeable. His short and cutting sentences did not reach the ear only;
they penetrated even the secret folds of the soul. He spoke in substance
as follows:
“Gentlemen:—I am happy to see you here more numerously than ever. The
grave events of last night have, no doubt, decided many of you to attend
debates which some began to forsake, but the importance of which, it
seems to me, increases day by day.
“The question debated in our last meeting—‘The Priests’—is one of life
and death, not only for our young and beautiful Canada, but in a moral
point of view it is a question of life and death for our families, and
for every one of us in particular.
“There is, I know, only one opinion among us on the subject of priests;
and I am glad that this opinion is not only that of all educated men in
Canada, but also of learned France; nay, of the whole world. The reign
of the priest is the reign of ignorance, of corruption, and of the most
barefaced immorality, under the mask of the most refined hypocrisy. The
reign of the priest is the death of our schools; it is the degradation
of our wives, the prostitution of our daughters; it is the reign of
tyranny—the loss of liberty.
“We have only one good school, I will not say in St. Thomas, but in all
our county. This school in our midst is a great honor to our village.
Now see the energy with which all the priests who come here work for the
closing of that school. They use every means to destroy that focus of
light which we have started with so much difficulty, and which we
support by so many sacrifices.
“With the priest of Rome our children do not belong to us; he is their
master. Let me explain. The priest honors us with the belief that the
bodies, the flesh and bones of our children, are ours, and that our duty
in consequence is to clothe and feed them. But the nobler and more
sacred part, namely, the intellect, the heart, the soul, the priest
claims as his own patrimony, his own property. The priest has the
audacity to tell us that to him alone it belongs to enlighten those
intelligences, to form those hearts, to fashion those souls as it may
best suit him. He has the impudence to tell us that we are too silly or
perverse to know our duties in this respect. We have not the right of
choosing our school teachers. We have not the right to send a single ray
of light into those intellects, or to give to those souls who hunger and
thirst after truth a single crumb of that food prepared with so much
wisdom and success by enlightened men of all ages.
“By the confessional the priests poison the springs of life in our
children. They initiate them into such mysteries of iniquity as would
terrify old galley slaves. By their questions they reveal to them
secrets of a corruption such as carries its germs of death into the very
marrow of their bones, and that from the earliest years of their
infancy. Before I was fifteen years old I had learned more real
blackguard ism from the mouth of my confessor than I have learned ever
since in my studies and in my life as a physician for twenty years.
“A few days ago I questioned my little nephew, Louis Cazeault, upon what
he had learned in his confession. He answered me ingenuously, and
repeated things to me which I would be ashamed to utter in your
presence, and which you, fathers of families, could not listen to
without blushing. And just think, that not only of little boys are those
questions asked, but also of our dear little girls. Are we not the most
degraded of men if we do not set ourselves to work in order to break the
iron yoke under which the priest keeps our dear country, and by means of
which he keeps us, with our wives and children, at his feet like vile
slaves!
“While speaking to you of the deleterious effect of the confessional
upon our children, shall I forget its effect upon our wives and upon
ourselves? Need I tell you that, for most women, the confessional is a
rendezvous of coquetry and of love? Do you not feel as I do myself, that
by means of the confessional the priest is more the master of the hearts
of our wives than ourselves? Is not the priest the private and public
confidant of our wives? Do not our wives go invariably to the feet of
the priest, opening to him what is most sacred and intimate in the
secrets of our lives as husbands and as fathers? The husband belongs no
more to his wife as her guide through the dark and difficult paths of
life: it is the priest! We are no more their friends and natural
advisers. Their anxieties and their cares they do not confide to us.
They do not expect from us the remedies for the miseries of this life.
Towards the priest they turn their thoughts and desires. He has their
entire and exclusive confidence. In a word, it is the priest who is the
real husband of our wives! It is he who has the possession of their
respect and of their hearts to a degree to which no one of us need ever
aspire!
“Were the priest an angel, were he not made of flesh and bones just as
we are, were not his organization absolutely the same as our own, then
might we be indifferent to what might take place between him and our
wives, whom he has at his feet, in his hands—even more, in his heart.
But what does my experience tell me, not only as a physician, but also
as a citizen of St. Thomas? What does yours tell you? Our experience
tells us that the priest, instead of being stronger, is weaker than we
generally are with respect to women. His sham vows of perfect chastity,
far from rendering him more invulnerable to the arrows of Cupid, expose
him to be made more easily the victim of that god, so small in form, but
so dreadful a giant by the irresistible power of his weapons and the
extent of his conquests.
“As a matter of fact, of the last four priests who came to St. Thomas,
have not three seduced many of the wives and daughters of our most
respected families? And what security have we that the priest who is now
with us does not walk in the same path? Is not the whole parish filled
with indignation at the long nightly visits made by him to two girls
whose dissolute morals are a secret to nobody? And when the priest does
not respect himself, would we not be silly in continuing to give him
that respect of which he himself knows he is unworthy?
“At our last meeting the opinions were divided at the beginning of the
discussion. Many thought it would be well to speak to the bishop about
the scandal caused by those nightly visits. But the majority judged that
such steps would be useless, since the bishop would do one of two
things, namely, he would either pay no attention to our just complaints,
as has often been the case, or he would remove this priest, filling his
place with one who would do no better. That majority, which became a
unanimity, acceded to my thought of taking justice into our own hands.
The priest is our servant. We pay him a large tithe. We have therefore
claims upon him. He has abused us, and does so every day by his public
neglect of the most elementary laws of morality. In visiting every night
that house whose degradation is known to everybody, he gives to youth an
example of perversity the effects of which no one can estimate.
“It had been unanimously decided that he should be whipped. Without my
telling you by whom it was done, you may be assured that Mr. Beaubien’s
flagellation of last night will never be forgotten by him!
“Heaven grant that this brotherly correction be a lesson to teach all
the priests of Canada that their golden reign is over, that the eyes of
the people are opened, and that their domination is drawing to an end!”
This discourse was listened to with deep silence, and Dr. Tache saw by
the applause that followed that his speech had been the expression of
everyone.
Next followed a gentleman named Dubord, who in substance spoke as
follows:
“Mr. President:—I was not among those who gave the priest the expression
of public feeling with the energetic tongue of the whip. I wish I had
been, however; I would heartily have co-operated in giving that lesson
to the priests of Canada. Let me give my reason.
“My daughter, who is twelve years old, went to confession as did the
others a few weeks ago. It was against my will. I know by my own
experience that of all actions confession is the most degrading in a
person’s life. I can imagine nothing so well calculated to destroy for
ever one’s self-respect as the modern invention of the confessional.
Now, what is a person without self-respect—especially a woman? Without
this all is lost to her forever.
“In the confessional everything is corruption of the lowest grade.
“In the confessional, a girl’s thoughts are polluted, her tongue is
polluted, her heart is polluted—yes, and forever polluted! Do I need to
tell you this? You know it as well as I do. Though you are now all too
intelligent to degrade yourselves at the feet of a priest, though it is
long since you have been guilty of that meanness, not one of you have
forgotten the lessons of corruption received, when young, in the
confessional. Those lessons were engraved on your memory, your thoughts,
your hearts, and your souls like the scar left by the red-hot iron upon
the brow of the slave, to remain a perpetual witness of his shame and
servitude. The confessional is a place where one gets accustomed to
hear, and repeat without a scruple, things which would cause even a
prostitute to blush!
“Why are Roman Catholic nations inferior to nations belonging to
Protestantism? Only in the confessional can the solution of that problem
be found. And why are Roman Catholic nations degraded in proportion to
their submission to the priest? It is because the oftener the
individuals composing those nations go to confession the more rapidly
they sink in the scale of intelligence and morality. A terrible example
of this I had in my own house.
“As I said a moment ago, I was against my daughter going to confession;
but her poor mother, who is under the control of the priest, earnestly
wanted her to go. Not to have a disagreeable scene in my house, I had to
yield to the tears of my wife.
“On the day following that of her confession they believed I was absent;
but I was in my office, with the door sufficiently open to allow me to
hear what was said. My wife and daughter had the following conversation:
“‘What makes you so thoughtful and sad, my dear Lucy, since you went to
confession? It seems to me you should feel happier since you had the
privilege of confessing your sins.’
“Lucy made no answer.
“After a silence of two or three minutes her mother said:
“‘Why do you weep, dear child? Are you ill?’
“Still no answer from the child.
“You may well suppose that I was all attention. I had my suspicions
about the dreadful ordeal which had taken place. My heart throbbed with
uneasiness and anger.
“After a short time my wife spoke to her child with sufficient firmness
to force her to answer. In a trembling voice and half suppressed with
sobs my dear little daughter answered:
“‘Ah! mamma, if you knew what the priest asked me, and what he said to
me in the confessional, you would be as sad as I am.’
“‘But what did he say to you? He is a holy man. You surely did not
understand him if you think he said anything to pain you.’
“‘Dear mother,’ as she threw herself into her mother’s arms, ‘do not ask
me to confess what that priest said! He told to me things so shameful
that I cannot repeat them. But that which pains me most is the
impossibility of banishing from my thoughts the hateful things which he
has taught me. His impure words are like the leeches put upon the chest
of my friend Louise—they could not be removed without tearing the flesh.
What must have been his opinion of me to ask such questions!’”
“My child said no more, and began to sob again.
“After a short silence my wife rejoined:
“‘I’ll go to the priest. I’ll tell him to beware how he speaks in the
confessional. I have noticed myself that he goes too far with his
questions. I, however, thought that he was more prudent with children.
After the lesson that I’ll give him be sure that you will have only to
tell your sins, and that you will be no more troubled by his endless
questions. I ask of you, however, never to speak of this to anybody,
especially never let your poor father know anything about it; for he has
little enough religion already, and this would leave him without any at
all.’”
“I could contain myself no longer. I rose and abruptly entered the
parlor. My daughter threw herself, weeping, into my arms. My wife
screamed with terror, and almost fell into a swoon. I said to my child:
“If you love me, put your hand on my heart and promise me that you’ll
never go to confession again. Fear God, my child; walk in His presence,
for His eye seeth you everywhere. Remember that day and night He is
ready to forgive us. Never place yourself again at the feet of a priest
to be defiled and degraded by him!
“This my daughter promised me.
“When my wife had recovered from her surprise I said to her:
“Madam, for a long time the priest has been everything and your husband
nothing to you. There is a hidden and terrible power that governs your
thoughts and affections as it governs your deeds—it is the power of the
priest. This you have often denied; but providence has decided to-day
that this power should be forever broken for you and for me. I want to
be the ruler in my own house; and from this moment the power of the
priest over you must cease, unless you prefer to leave my house forever.
The priest has reigned here too long! But now that I know he has stained
and defiled the soul of my daughter, his empire must fall! Whenever you
go and take your heart and secrets to the feet of the priest, be so kind
as not to come back to the same house with me.”
Three other discourses followed that of Mr. Dubord, all of which were
pregnant with details and facts going to prove that the confessional was
the principal cause of the deplorable demoralization of St. Thomas.
If, in addition to all that, I could have mentioned before that
association what I already knew of the corrupting influences of that
institution given to the world by centuries of darkness, certainly the
determination of its members to make use of every means to abolish its
usage would have been strengthened.