NOVICIATE IN THE MONASTERY OF THE OBLATES OF MARY IMMACULATE OF
LONGUEUIL—SOME OF THE THOUSAND ACTS OF FOLLY AND IDOLATRY WHICH FORM
THE LIFE OF A MONK—THE DEPLORABLE FALL OF ONE OF THE FATHERS—FALL OF
THE GRAND VICAR QUIBLIER—SICK IN THE HOTEL DIEU OF MONTREAL—SISTER
URTUBISE, WHAT SHE SAYS OF MARIA MONK—THE TWO MISSIONARIES TO THE
LUMBER MEN—FALL AND PUNISHMENT OF A FATHER OBLATE—WHAT ONE OF THE BEST
FATHER OBLATES THINKS OF THE MONKS AND THE MONASTERY.
On the first Sabbath of November, 1846, after a retreat of eight days, I
fell on my knees, and asked as a favor, to be received as a novice of
the religious order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate of Longueuil,
whose object is to preach retreats (revivals) among the people. No child
of the Church of Rome ever enrolled himself with more earnestness and
sincerity under the mysterious banners of her monastic armies, than I
did, that day. It is impossible to entertain more exalted views of the
beauty and holiness of the monastic life, than I had. To live among the
holy men who had made the solemn vows of poverty, obedience and charity,
seemed to me the greatest and the most blessed privilege which my God
could grant on earth.
Within the walls of the peaceful monastery of Longueuil, among those
holy men who had, long since, put an impassable barrier between
themselves and that corrupted world, from the snares of which I was just
escaping, my conviction was that I should see nothing but actions of the
most exalted piety; and that the deadly weapons of the enemy could not
pierce those walls protected by the Immaculate Mother of God!
The frightful storms which had covered with wrecks the roaring sea,
where I had so often nearly perished, could not trouble the calm waters
of the port where my bark had just entered. Every one of the members of
the community was to be like an angel of charity, humility, modesty,
whose example was to guide my steps in the ways of God. My superior
appeared to be less a superior than a father, whose protecting care, by
day and night, would be a shield over me. Noah, in the ark, safe from
the raging waves which were destroying the world, did not feel more
grateful to God, than I was, when once in this holy solitude. The vow of
perfect poverty was to save me, for ever, from the cares of the world.
Having, hereafter, no right to possess a cent, the world would become to
me a paradise, where food, clothing, and lodging would come without
anxiety or care. My father superior would supply all these things,
without any other condition on my part, than to love, and obey a man of
God whose whole life was to be spent in guiding my steps in the ways of
the most exalted evangelical virtues. Had not that father himself made a
solemn vow to renounce not only all the honors and dignities of the
church, that his whole mind and heart might be devoted to my holiness on
earth, and my salvation in Heaven?
How easy to secure that salvation now! I had only to look to that father
on earth, and obey him as my Father in Heaven. Yes! The will of that
father, was to be, for me, the will of my God. Though I might err in
obeying him, my errors would not be laid to my charge. To save my soul,
I should have only to be like a corpse, or a stick in the hands of my
father superior. Without any anxiety or any responsibility whatever of
my own, I was to be led to heaven as a new-born child in the arms of his
loving mother without any fear, thoughts or anxiety of his own.
With the Christian poet I could have sung:
“Rocks and storms I’ll fear no more,
When on that eternal shore,
Drop the anchor! Furl the sail!
I am safe within the vail.”
But how short were to be these fine dreams of my poor deluded mind! When
on my knees, father Guigues handed me, with great solemnity, the Latin
books of the rules of that monastic order, which is their real gospel,
warning me that it was a _secret book_, that there were things in it
that I ought not to reveal to any one; and he made me solemnly promise
that I would never show it to any one outside of the order.
When alone, the next morning, in my cell, I thanked God and the Virgin
Mary for the favors of the last day, and the thought came involuntarily
to my mind:
“Have you not, a thousand times, heard and said that the Holy Church of
Rome absolutely condemns and anathematizes secret societies. And, do you
not, to-day, belong to a secret society? How can you reconcile the
solemn promise of secrecy you made last night, with the anathemas hurled
by all your popes against secret societies?” After having, in vain,
tried, in my mind, to reconcile those two things, I happily remembered
that I was a corpse, that I had forever given up my private
judgment—that my only business, now, was to obey. “Does a corpse argue
against those who turn it from side to side? Is it not in perfect peace,
whatever may be the usage to which it is exposed, or to whatever place
it is dragged? Shall I lose the rich crown which is before me, at my
first step in the way of perfection?”
I bade my rebellious intelligence to be still, my private judgment to be
mute, and, to distract my mind from this first temptation, I read that
book of rules with the utmost attention. I had not gone through it all,
before I understood why it was kept from the eyes of the curates and
other secular priests. To my unspeakable amazement, I found that, from
the beginning to the end, it speaks with the most profound contempt for
them all. I said to myself: “What would be the indignation of the
curates, if they should suspect that these strangers from France have
such a bad opinion of them all! Would the good Canadian curates receive
them as angels from heaven, and raise them so high in the esteem of the
people, if they knew that the first thing an oblate has to learn, is
that the secular priest is, to-day, steeped in immorality, ignorance,
worldliness, laziness, gluttony, etc.; that he is the disgrace of the
church, which would speedily be destroyed, was she not providentially
sustained, and kept in the ways of God, by the holy monastic men whom
she nurses as her only hope? Clear as the light of the sun on a bright
day, the whole fabric of the order of the oblates presented itself to my
mind, as the most perfect system of Pharisaism the world had ever seen.
The oblate who studies his book of rules, his only gospel, must have his
mind filled with the idea of his superior holiness, not only over the
poor sinful, secular priest, but over everyone else. The oblate alone is
Christian, holy and saved; the rest of the world is lost! The oblate
alone is the salt of the earth, the light of the world!
I said to myself: “Is it to attain this pharisaical perfection, that I
have left my beautiful and dear parish of Kamouraska, and given up the
honorable position which my God had given me in my country!”
However, after some time spent in these sad and despondent reflections,
I again felt angry with myself; I quickly directed my mind to the
frightful, unsuspected and numberless scandals I had known in almost
every parish I had visited. I remembered the drunkenness of that curate,
the impurities of this, the ignorance of another, the worldliness and
absolute want of faith of others, and concluded that, after all, the
oblates were not far from the truth in their bad opinions of the secular
clergy. I ended my sad reflections by saying to myself: “After all, if
the oblates live a life of holiness, as I expect to find here, is it a
crime that they should see, feel and express among themselves, the
difference which exists between a regular and a secular clergy? Am I
come here to judge and condemn these holy men? No! I came here to save
myself by the practice of the most heroic Christian virtues, the first
of which, is that I should absolutely and forever give up my _private
judgment_—consider myself as a corpse in the hand of my superior.”
With all the fervor of my soul, I prayed to God and to the Virgin Mary,
day and night, that week, that I might attain that supreme state of
perfection, when I would have no will, no judgment of my own. The days
of that first week passed very quickly, spent in prayer, reading and
meditation of the Scriptures, studies of ecclesiastical history and
ascetical books, from half-past five in the morning till half-past nine
at night. The meals were taken at the regular hours of seven, twelve and
six o’clock, during which, with rare exceptions, silence was kept, and
pious books were read. The quality of the food was good; but, at first,
before they got a female cook to preside over the kitchen, everything
was so unclean, that I had to shut my eyes at meals, not to see what I
was eating. I should have complained, had not my lips been sealed by
that strange monastic vow of perfection that every religious man is a
corpse! What does a corpse care about the cleanliness or uncleanliness
of what is put into its mouth? The third day, having drank at breakfast
a glass of milk which was literally mixed with the dung of the cow, my
stomach rebelled; a circumstance which I regretted exceedingly,
attributing it to my want of monastic perfection. I envied the high
state of holiness of the other fathers, who had so perfectly attained to
the sublime perfection of submission that they could drink that impure
milk, just as if it had been clean.
Everything went on well the first week, with the exception of a dreadful
scare I had, at the dinner of the first Friday. Just after eating soup,
when listening with the greatest attention to the reading of the life of
a saint, I suddenly felt as if the devil had taken hold of my feet; I
threw down my knife and fork, and I cried, at the top of my voice, “My
God! My God! what is there?” and as quick as lightning, I jumped on my
chair to save myself from Satan’s grasp. My cries were soon followed by
an inexpressible burst of convulsive laughter from everyone.
“But what does that mean? Who has taken hold of my feet?” I asked.
Father Guigues tried to explain the matter to me, but it took him a
considerable time. When he began to speak, an irrepressible burst of
laughter prevented his saying a word. The fits of laughter became still
more uncontrollable, on account of the seriousness with which I was
repeatedly asking them who could have taken hold of my feet! At last,
some one said, “It is Father Lagier who wanted to kiss your feet!” At
the same time, Father Lagier, walking on his hands and knees, his face
covered with sweat, dust and dirt, was crawling out from under the
table, literally rolling on the floor, in such an uncontrollable fit of
laughter, that he was unable to stand on his feet.
Of course, when I understood that no devil had tried to drag me by the
feet, but that it was simply one of the father oblates, who, to go
through one of the common practices of humility in that monastery, had
crawled under the table, to take hold of the feet of everyone and kiss
them, I joined with the rest of the community, and laughed to my heart’s
content.
Not many days after this, we were going, after tea, from the dining-room
to the chapel, to pass five or ten minutes in adoration of the
wafer-god; we had two doors to cross, and it was pretty dark. Being the
last who had entered the monastery, I had to walk first, the other monks
following me; we were reciting, with a loud voice, the Latin Psalm:
“_Misere mihi Deus_.” We were all marching pretty fast, when, suddenly,
my feet met a large, though unseen object, and down I fell, and rolled
on the floor; my next companion did the same, and rolled over me, and so
did five or six others, who, in the dark had also struck their feet on
that object. In a moment, we were five or six “Holy Fathers” rolling on
each other on the floor, unable to rise up, splitting our sides with
convulsive laughter. Father Brunette, in one of his fits of humility,
had left the table a little before the rest, with the permission of the
Superior, to lay himself flat on the floor, across the door. Not
suspecting it, and unable to see anything, from the want of sufficient
light, I had entangled my feet on that living corpse, as also the rest
of those who were walking too close behind me to stop, before tumbling
over one another.
[Illustration: FALL OF THE “HOLY FATHERS.”]
No words can describe my feelings of shame when I saw, almost every day,
some performance of this kind going on, under the name of Christian
humility. In vain, I tried to silence the voice of my intelligence,
which was crying to me, day and night, that this was a mere diabolical
caricature of the humility of Christ. Striving to silence my untamed
reason by telling it that it had no right to speak and argue and
criticise, within the holy walls of the monastery. It, nevertheless,
spoke louder, day after day, telling me that such acts of humility were
a mockery. In vain, I said to myself, “Chiniquy, thou art not come here
to philosophize on this and that, but to sanctify thyself by becoming
like a corpse, which has no preconceived ideas, no acquired store of
knowledge, no rule of common sense to guide you! Poor, wretched, sinful
Chiniquy, thou art here to save thyself by admiring every idea of the
holy rules of your superiors, and to obey every word of their lips!”
I felt angry against myself, and unspeakably sad, when, after whole
weeks and months of efforts, not only to silence the voice of my reason,
but to kill it, it had more life than ever, and was more and more loudly
protesting against the unmanly, unchristian and ridiculous daily usages
and rules of the monastery. I envied the humble piety of the other good
Fathers, who were apparently so happy, having conquered themselves so
completely as to destroy that haughty reason which was constantly
rebelling in me.
Twice, every week, I went to reveal to my guide and confessor, Father
Allard, the master of novices, my interior struggles; my constant,
though vain efforts to subdue my rebellious reason. He always gladdened
me with the promise that, sooner or later, I should have that interior
perfect peace which is promised to the humble monk, when he has attained
the supreme monastic perfection of considering himself as a corpse, as
regards the rules and will of his superiors. My sincere and constant
efforts to reconcile myself to the rules of the monastery were, however,
soon to receive a new and rude check. I had read in the book of rules,
that a true monk must closely watch those who live with him, and
secretly report to his superior the defects and sins which he detects in
them. The first time I read that strange rule, my mind was so taken up
by other things, that I did not pay much attention to it. But the second
time, I studied that clause, the blush came to my face, and in spite of
myself, I said: “Is it possible that we are a band of spies?” I was not
long in seeing the disastrous effects of this most degrading and immoral
rule. One of the fathers, for whom I had a particular affection, for his
many good qualities, and who had, many times, given me the sincere proof
of his friendship, said to me one day: “For God’s sake, my dear Father
Chiniquy, tell me if it is you who denounced me to the Superior, for
having said that the conduct of Father Guigues toward me was
uncharitable?” “No! my dear friend,” I answered, “I never said such a
thing against you, for two reasons: The first is, that you have never
said a word in my presence which could give me the idea that you had
such an opinion of our good Father Superior; the second reason is, that,
though you might have told me anything of that kind, I would prefer to
have my tongue cut and eaten by dogs, than to be a spy, and denounce
you!”
“I am glad to know that,” he rejoined, “for I was told by some of the
fathers that you were the one who had reported me to the superior as
guilty, though I am innocent of that offense, but I could not believe
it.” He added, with tears: “I regret having left my parish to be an
oblate, on account of that abominable law which we are sworn to fulfill.
That law makes a real hell of this monastery, and, I suppose, of all the
monastic orders, for I think it is a general law with all the religious
houses. When you have passed more time here, you will see that the law
of detection puts an insurmountable wall between us all; it destroys
every spring of Christian and social happiness.”
“I understand perfectly well what you say,” I answered him; “the last
time I was alone with father superior, he asked me why I had said that
the present Pope was an old fool; he persisted in telling me that I must
have said it, ‘for,’ he added, ‘one of our most reliable fathers has
assured me you said it.’ ‘Well, my dear father superior,’ I answered
him, ‘that reliable father has told you a big lie; I never said such a
thing, for the good reason that I sincerely think that our present Pope
is one of the wisest that ever ruled the church.’” I added: “Now I
understand why there is so much unpleasantness in our mutual
intercourse, during the hours we are allowed to talk. I see that nobody
dares to speak his mind on any grave subject. The conversations are
colorless and without life.”
“That is just the reason,” answered my friend. “When some of the
fathers, like you and me, would prefer to be hung rather than become
spies, the great majority of them, particularly among the French priests
recently imported from France, will not hear ten words from your lips on
any subject, without finding an opportunity of reporting eight of them
as unbecoming and unchristian, to the superiors. I do not say that it is
always through malice that they give such false reports: it is more
through want of judgment. They are very narrow-minded; they do not
understand the half of what they hear in its true sense: and they give
their false impressions to the superiors, who, unfortunately, encourage
that system of spying, as the best way of transforming every one of us
into corpses. As we are never confronted with our false accusers, we can
never know them, and we lose confidence in each other; thus it is that
the sweetest and holiest springs of true Christian love are forever
dried up. It is on this spying system, which is the curse and the hell
of our monastic houses, that a celebrated French writer, who had been a
monk himself, wrote of all the monks:
“Ils rentrent dans leurs monasteres sans se connaitre; ils y vivent sans
s’aimer et ils se separent sans se regretter” (monks enter the monastery
without knowing each other. They live there, without loving each other,
and they depart from each other without any regret).
However, though I sincerely deplored that there was such a law of
espionage among us, I tried to persuade myself that it was like the dark
spots of the sun which do not diminish its beauty, its grandeur and its
innumerable blessings. The society of the oblates was still to me the
blessed ark where I should find a sure shelter against the storms which
were desolating the rest of the world.
Not long after my reception as a novice, the providence of God put
before my eyes one of those terrible wrecks which would make the
strongest of us tremble. Suddenly, at the hour of breakfast, the
superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, and grand vicar of the Diocese
of Montreal, the Rev. Mr. Quibiler, knocked at our door, to rest an hour
and breakfast with us, when on his way to France.
This unfortunate priest, who was among the best orators and the best
looking men, Montreal had ever seen, had lived such a profligate life
with his penitent nuns and ladies of Montreal, that a cry of indignation
from the whole people had forced Bishop Bourget to send him back to
France. Our father superior took the opportunity of the fall of that
talented priest, to make us bless God for having gathered us behind the
walls of our monastery, where the efforts of the enemy were powerless.
But alas! we were soon to know, at our own expense, that the heart of
man is weak and deceitful everywhere.
It was not long after the public fall of the grand vicar of Montreal,
when a fine-looking widow was engaged to preside over our kitchen. She
was more than forty years old, and had very good manners. Unfortunately,
she had not been four months in the monastery, when she fell in love
with her father confessor, one of the most pious of the French father
oblates. The modern Adam was not stronger than the old one against the
charms of the new Eve. Both were found, in an evil hour, forgetting one
of the holy laws of God. The guilty priest was punished and the weak
woman dismissed. But an unspeakable shame remained upon us all! I would
have preferred to have my sentence of death, than the news of such a
fall inside the walls of that house where I had so foolishly believed
that Satan could not lay his snares. From that day, it was the will of
God that the strange and beautiful illusions which had brought me to
that monastery, should fade away one after the other, like the white
mist which conceals the bright rays of the morning sun. The oblates
began to appear to me pretty much like other men. Till then, I had
looked at them with my eyes shut, and I had seen nothing but the
glittering colors with which my imagination was painting them. From that
day, I studied them with my eyes opened, and I saw them just as they
were.
In the spring of 1847, having a severe indisposition, the doctor ordered
me to go to the Hotel Dieu of Montreal, which was, then, near the
splendid St. Mary’s Church. I made there, for the first time, the
acquaintance of a venerable old nun, who was very talkative. She was one
of the superiors of the house; her family name was Urtubise. Her mind
was still full of indignation at the bad conduct of two father oblates,
who, under the pretext of sickness, had lately come to her monastery to
seduce the young nuns who were serving them. She told me how she had
turned them out ignominiously, forbidding them ever to come again, under
any pretext, into the hospital. She was young, when Bishop Lartigue,
being driven away from the Sulpician Seminary of Montreal, in 1824, had
taken refuge, with his secretary, the Rev. Ignace Bourget, into the
modest walls of that nunnery. She told me how the nuns had soon to
repent having received that bishop with his secretary and other priests.
“It was nearly the ruin of our community. The intercourse of the priests
with a certain number of the nuns,” she said: “was the cause of so much
disorder and scandal, that I was deputed with some other nuns, to the
bishop to respectfully request him not to prolong his stay in our
nunnery. I told him, in my name, and in the name of many others, that if
he would not comply with our legitimate request, we should instantly
leave the house, go back to our families and get married, that it was
better to be honestly married than to continue to live as the priests,
even our father confessors, wanted us to do.”
After she had given me several other spicy stories of those interesting
distant days, I asked her if she had known Maria Monk, when she was in
their house, and what she thought of her book “Awful Disclosures?” “I
have known her well,” she said. “She spent six months with us. I have
read her book, which was given me, that I might refute it. But after
reading it, I refused to have anything to do with that deplorable
_exposure_. There are surely some inventions and suppositions in that
book. But there is a sufficient amount of truth to cause all our
nunneries to be pulled down by the people, if only the half of them were
known to the public?”
She then said to me: “For God’s sake, do not reveal these things to the
world, till the last one of us is dead, if God spares you.” She then
covered her face with her hands, burst into tears, and left the room.
I remained horrified. Her words fell upon me as a thunderbolt. I
regretted having heard them, though I was determined to respect her
request not to reveal the terrible secret she had entrusted to me. My
God knows that I never repeated a word of it till now. But I think it is
my duty to reveal to my country and the whole world the truth, on that
grave subject, as it was given me by a most respectable and
unimpeachable eye-witness.
The terrible secrets which sister Urtubise had revealed to me rendered
my stay in the Hotel Dieu as unpleasant as it had been agreeable at
first. Though not quite recovered, I left, the same day, for Longueuil,
where I entered the monastery with a heavy heart. The day before, two of
the fathers had come back from a two or three months’ evangelical
excursion among the lumber men, who were cutting wood in the forests,
along the Ottawa River and its tributaries, from one to three hundred
miles north-west of Montreal. I was glad to hear of their arrival. I
hoped that the interesting history of their evangelical excursions,
narrow escapes from the bears and the wolves of the forests; their
hearty receptions by the honest and sturdy lumber men, which the
superior had requested me, some weeks before, to write, would cause a
happy diversion from the deplorable things I had recently learned. But
only one of those fathers could be seen, and his conversation was
anything but interesting and pleasant. There was evidently a dark cloud
around him. And the other oblate, his companion, where was he? The very
day of his arrival, he had been ordered to keep his room, and make a
retreat of ten days, during which time he was forbidden to speak to any
one.
I inquired from a devoted friend among the old oblates the reason of
such a strange thing. After promising never to reveal to the superiors
the sad secret he trusted me with, he said: “Poor father D—— has seduced
one of his fair penitents, on the way. She was a married woman, the lady
of the house where our missionaries used to receive the most cordial
hospitality. The husband having discovered the infidelity of his wife,
came very near killing her; he ignominiously turned out the two fathers,
and wrote a terrible letter to the superior. The companion of the guilty
father, denounced him and confessed everything to the superior, who has
seen that the letter of the enraged husband was only giving too true and
correct version of the whole unfortunate and shameful occurrence. Now,
the poor weak father, for his penance, is condemned to ten days of
seclusion from the rest of the community. He must pass that whole time
in prayer, fasting, and acts of humiliation, dictated by the superior.”
“Do these deplorable facts occur very often among the father oblates?” I
asked.
My friend raised his eyes, filled with tears, to Heaven, and with a deep
sigh, he answered: “Dear Father Chiniquy, would to God that I might be
able to tell you that it is the first crime of that nature committed by
an oblate. But alas! you know, by what has occurred with our female
cook, not long ago, that it is not the first time that some of our
fathers have brought disgrace upon us all. And you know also the
abominable life of Father Telmont with the two nuns at Ottawa!”
“If it be so,” I replied, “where is the spiritual advantage of the
regular clergy over the secular?”
“The only advantage I see,” answered my friend, “is that the regular
clergy gives himself with more impunity to every kind of debauch and
licentiousness than the secular. The monks being concealed from the eyes
of the public, inside the walls of their monastery, where nobody, or at
least very few people have any access, are more easily conquered by the
devil, and more firmly kept in his chains, than the secular priests. The
sharp eyes of the public, and the daily intercourse the secular priests
have with their relations and parishioners, form a powerful and salutary
restraint upon the bad inclinations of our depraved nature. In the
monastery, there is no restraint except the childish and ridiculous
punishment of retreats, kissing of the floor, or of the feet, the
prostration of the ground as father Brunet did, a few days after your
coming among us.
“There is surely more hypocrisy and selfishness among the regular than
the secular clergy. That great social organization which forms the human
family, is a divine work. Yes! those great social organizations which
are called the city, the township, the country, the parish, and the
household, where every one is called to work in the light of day, is a
divine organization, and makes society as strong, pure and holy as it
can be.
“I confess that there are also terrible temptations, and deplorable
falls there, but the temptations are not so unconquerable, and the falls
not so irreparable, as in these dark recesses and unhealthy prisons
raised by Satan only for the birds of night called monasteries or
nunneries.
“The priest and the woman who fall in the midst of a well organized
Christian society, break the hearts of the beloved mother, cover with
shame a venerable father, cause the tears of cherished sisters and
brothers to flow, pierce, with a barbed arrow the hearts of thousands of
friends; they forever lose their honor and good name. These
considerations are so many providential, I dare say divine shields, to
protect the sons and daughters of Eve against their own frailty. The
secular priest and the woman shrink before throwing themselves into such
a bottomless abyss of shame, misery and regret. But behind the thick and
dark walls of the monastery, or the nunnery, what has the fallen monk or
nun to fear? Nobody will hear of it, no bad consequences worth
mentioning will follow, except a few days of retreat, some
insignificant, childish, ridiculous penances, which the most devoted in
the monastery are practicing almost every day.
“As you ask me, in earnest, what are the advantages of a monastic life
over a secular, in a moral and social point of view, I will answer you:
In the monastery, man as the image of God forgets his divine origin,
loses his dignity; and as a Christian, he loses the most holy weapons
Christ has given to his disciples to fight the battle of life. He, at
once and forever, loses that law of self-respect, and respect for
others, which is one of the most powerful and legitimate barriers
against vice. Yes! That great and divine law of self-respect, which God
himself has implanted in the heart of every man and woman who live in a
Christian society, is completely destroyed in the monastery and nunnery.
The foundation of perfection in the monk and the nun is that they must
consider themselves as corpses. Do you not see that this principle
strikes at the root of all that God has made good, grand and holy in
man? Does it not sweep away every idea of holiness, purity, greatness!
every principle of life which the Gospel of Christ had for its mission
to reveal to the fallen children of Adam?
“What self-respect can we expect from a corpse? and what respect can a
corpse feel for the other corpses which surround it? Thus it is that the
very idea of monastic perfection carries with it the destruction of all
that is good, pure, holy and spiritual in the religion of the gospel. It
destroys the very idea of life, to put death into its place.
“It is for that reason that if you study the true history, _not the
lying history_, of monachism, you will find the details of a corruption
impossible, anywhere else, not even among the lowest houses of
prostitution. Read the Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci, one of the most pious
and intelligent bishops our Church has ever had, and you will see that
the monks and the nuns of Italy lead the very life of the brutes in the
fields. Yes! read the terrible revelations of what is going on among
those unfortunate men and women, whom the iron hand of monachism keeps
tied in their dark dungeons, you will hear from the very lips of the
nuns that the monks are more free with them than the husbands are with
their legitimate wives; you will see that every one of those monastic
institutions is Sodom!
“The monastic axiom, that the highest point of perfection is attained
only when you consider yourself a corpse in the hand of your superior,
is anti-social and anti-Christian; it is simply diabolical. It
transforms into a vile machine that man whom God had created in his
likeness, and made forever free. It degrades below the brute that man
whom Christ, by his death, has raised to the dignity of a child of God,
and inheritor of an eternal kingdom in Heaven. Everything is mechanical,
material, false, in the life of a monk and a nun. Even the best virtues
are deceptions and lies. The monks and the nuns being perfect only when
they have renounced their own free will and intelligence, to become
corpses, can have neither virtues nor vices,
Their best actions are mechanical. Their acts of humility are to crawl
under the table and kiss the feet of each other, or to make a cross on a
dirty floor with the tongue, or lie down in the dust to let the rest of
the monks or the nuns pass over them. Have you not remarked how these
so-called monks speak with the utmost contempt of the rest of the world?
One must have opportunities as I have had of seeing the profound hatred
which exists among all monastic orders against each other. How the
Dominicans have always hated the Franciscans, and how they both hate the
Jesuits, who pay them back in the same coin. What a strong and merciless
hatred divides the oblates, to whom we belong, from the Jesuits! The
Jesuits never lose an opportunity of showing us their supreme contempt!
You are aware that, on account of those bad feelings, it is absolutely
forbidden to an oblate to confess to a Jesuit, as we know it is
forbidden to the Jesuits to confess to an oblate, or to any other
priest.
“I need not tell you, for you know that their vow of poverty is a mask
to help them to become rich with more rapidity than the rest of the
world. Is it not under the mask of that vow that the monks of England,
Scotland, France and Italy became the masters of the richest lands of
those countries, which the nations were forced, by bloody revolutions,
to wrench from their grasp?
“I have seen much more of the world than you. When a young priest, I was
the chaplain, confessor and intimate friend of the Duchesse De Berry,
the mother of Henry V., now the only legitimate King of France. When, in
the midst of those great and rich princes and nobles of France, I never
saw such a love of money, of honor, of vain glory, as I have seen among
the monks since I have become one of them. When the Duchess De Berry
finished her providential work in France, after making the false step
which ruined her, I threw myself into the religious order of the
Chartreux. I have lived several years in their palatial monastery of
Rome; have cultivated and enjoyed their sweet fruits in their
magnificent gardens; but I was not there long, without seeing the fatal
error I had committed in becoming a monk. During the many years I
resided in that splendid mansion, where laziness, stupidity, filthiness,
gluttony, superstition, tediousness, ignorance, pride and unmentionable
immoralities, with very few exceptional cases, reigned supreme. I had
every opportunity to know what was going on in their midst. Life soon
became an unbearable burden, but for the hope I had of breaking my
fetters. At last I found out that the best, if not the only way of doing
this, was to declare to the Pope that I wanted to go and preach the
gospel to the savages of America, which was and is still true.
“I made my declaration, and by the Pope’s permission, the doors of my
gaol were opened, with the condition that I should join the order of the
Oblates Immaculate, in connection with which I should evangelize the
savages of the Rocky Mountains.
“I have found among the monks of Canada, the very same things I have
seen among those of France and Italy. With very few exceptions, they are
all corpses, absolutely dead to every sentiment of true honesty and real
Christianity; they are putrid carcasses, which have lost the dignity of
manhood.
“My dear Father Chiniquy,” he added, “I trust you as I trust myself,
when I tell you for your own good, a secret which is known to God alone.
When I am on the Rocky Mountains, I will raise myself up, as the eagles
of those vast countries, and I shall go up to the regions of liberty,
light and life; I will cease being a corpse, to become what my God has
made me—a free and intelligent man. I will cease to be a corpse, in
order to become one of the redeemed of Christ, who serve God in spirit
and in truth.
“Christ is the light of the world; monachism is its night! Christ is the
strength, the glory, the life of man; monachism is its decay, shame and
death! Christ died to make us free; the monastery is built up to make
slaves of us! Christ died that we might be raised to the dignity of
children of God; monachism is established to bring us down much below
the living brutes, for it transforms us into corpses! Christ is the
highest conception of humanity; monachism is its lowest.
“Yes, yes, I hope my God will soon give me the favor I have asked so
long. When I shall be on the top of the Rocky Mountains, I will,
forever, break my fetters. I will rise from my tomb, I will come out
from among the dead, to sit at the table of the redeemed, and eat the
bread of the living children of God.”
I do regret that the remarkable monk, whose abridged views on monachism
I have here given, should have requested me never to give his name, when
he allows me to tell some of his adventures, which will make a most
interesting romance. Faithful to his promise, he went, as an oblate, to
preach to the savages of the Rocky Mountains, and there, without noise,
he slipped out of their hands; broke his chains, to live the life of a
freedman of Christ, in the holy bonds of a Christian marriage with a
respectable American lady.
Weak and timid soldier that I was once; frightened by the ruins spread
everywhere on the battle-field, I looked around to find a shelter
against the impending danger; I thought that the monastery of the
oblates of Mary Immaculate was one of those strong towers, built by my
God, where the arrows of the enemy could not reach me, and I threw
myself into it.
But, hardly beginning to hope that I was out of danger, behind those
dark and high walls, when I saw them shaking like a drunken man; and the
voice of God passed like a hurricane over me.
Suddenly, the high towers and walls around me fell to the ground, and
were turned into dust. Not one stone remained on another.
And I heard a voice saying to me: “Soldier! come out and get in the
light of the sun; trust no more in the walls built by the hand of man;
they are nothing but dust. Come and fight in the open day, under the
eyes of God, protected only by the gospel banners of Christ! Come out
from behind those walls, they are a diabolical deception, a snare, a
fraud!”
I listened to the voice, and I bade adieu to the inmates of the
monastery of the oblates of Mary Immaculate.
When, on the first of October, 1847, I pressed them on my heart for the
last time, I felt the burning tears of many of them falling on my
cheeks, and my tears moistened their faces: for they loved me, and I
loved them. I had met there several noble hearts and precious souls,
worthy of a better fate. Oh! if I could have, at the price of my life,
given them the light and liberty which my merciful God had given me! But
they were in the dark; and there was no power in me to change their
darkness into light.
The hand of God brought me back to my dear Canada, that I might again
offer it the sweat and labors, the love and life of the least of its
sons.