I WRITE TO POPE PIUS IX. AND TO NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF FRANCE, AND SEND
THEM THE PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PROVING THE BAD CONDUCT OF BISHOP
O’REGAN—CARDINAL BIDINI ORDERED TO INVESTIGATE—THE BISHOP CALLED TO
ROME, IS FORCED TO RESIGN, AND BECOMES A BANKER—BISHOP SMITH, OF
DUBUQUE, NAMED ADMINISTRATOR OF THE DIOCESE OF CHICAGO—GRAND VICAR
DUNN SENT TO TELL ME OF MY VICTORY AT ROME—I GO TO DUBUQUE TO OFFER MY
SUBMISSION TO THE BISHOP.
I had not forgotten the advice given me by Archbishop Kenrick, of St.
Louis, April 9, 1856, to address my complaints to the Pope himself. But
the terrible difficulties and trials which had constantly followed each
other, had made it impossible to follow that advice. The betrayal of
Mons. Desaulnier and the defection of Mons. Brassard, however, had so
strangely complicated my position, that I felt the only way to escape
the wreck which threatened myself and my colony, and to save the holy
cause God had entrusted me, was to strike such a blow to our haughty
persecutor that he could not survive it. I determined to send to the
Pope all the public accusations which had been legally proved and
published against the bishop, with the copy of the numerous and infamous
suits which he had sustained before the civil courts, and had almost
invariably lost, with the sentences of the judges who had condemned him.
This took me nearly two months of the hardest labors of my life. I had
gathered all those documents, which covered more than 200 pages of
foolscap. I mailed them to Pope Pius IX., accompanied by only the
following words: “Holy Father, for the sake of your precious lambs which
are slaughtered and devoured in this vast diocese by a ravening wolf,
Bishop O’Regan, and in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ, I implore
your Holiness to see if what is contained in these documents is correct
or not. If everything is found correct, for the sake of the blood shed
on Calvary, to save our immortal souls, please take away from our midst,
the unworthy bishop whose daily scandals can no longer be tolerated by a
Christian people.”
In order to prevent the Pope’s servants from throwing my letter with
those documents into their waste paper baskets, I sent a copy of them
all to Napoleon III., Emperor of France, respectfully requesting him to
see, through his ambassador at Washington, and his consul at Chicago,
whether these papers contained the truth or not. I told him how his
countrymen were trampled under the feet of Bishop O’Regan, and how they
were ruined and spoiled to the benefit of the Irish people; how the
churches built by the money of the French were openly stolen, and
transferred to the emigrants from Ireland. Napoleon had just sent an
army to punish the Emperor of China on account of some injustice done to
a Frenchman. I told him “the injustice done to that Frenchman in the
Chinese Empire is nothing to what is done here every day, not against
one, but hundreds of your majesty’s countrymen. A word from the Emperor
of France to His Holiness will do here what your armies have done in
China: force the unjust and merciless oppressor of the French of
Illinois to do them justice.”
I ended my letter by saying:
“My grandfather, though born in Spain, married a French lady, and
became, by choice and adoption, a French citizen. He became a captain in
the French navy, and for gallant service, was awarded lands in Canada,
which by the fate of war fell into the hands of Great Britain. Upon
retiring from the service of France he settled upon his estates in
Canada, where my father and myself were born. I am thus, with other
Canadians who have come to this country, a British subject by birth, an
American citizen by adoption, but French still in blood and Roman
Catholic in religion. I, therefore, on the part of a noble French
people, humbly ask your majesty to aid us by interceding with his
holiness, Pope Pius IX., to have these outrages and wrongs righted.”
The success of this bold step was more prompt and complete than I had
expected. The Emperor was, then, all powerful at Rome. He had not only
brought the Pope from Civita Vecchia to Rome, after taking that city
from the hands of the Italian Republicans, a few years before, but he
was still the very guardian and protector of the Pope.
A few months later, when in Chicago, the Grand Vicar Dunn showed me a
letter from Bishop O’Regan, who had been ordered to go to Rome and give
an account of his administration in which he had said: “One of the
strangest things which has occurred to me in Rome, is that the influence
of the Emperor Napoleon is against me here. I can not understand what
right he he has to meddle in the affairs of my diocese.”
I had learned since, that it was really through the advice of Napoleon
that Cardinal Bidini, who had been previously sent to the United States
to inquire about the scandal given by Bishop O’Regan, gave his opinion
in our favor. The cardinal, having consulted the bishops of the United
States, who unanimously denounced O’Regan as unfit and unworthy of such
a high position, immediately ordered him to go to Rome, where the Pope
unceremoniously transferred him from the bishopric of Chicago to a
diocese extinct more than 1,200 years ago, called “Dora.” This was as
good as a bishopric in the moon. He consoled himself in his misfortune
by drawing the hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen money he had
sent at different times, to be deposited in the banks of Paris, and went
to Ireland, where he established a bank, and died in 1865.
On the 11th of March, 1858, at about 10 o’clock p. m., I was not a
little pleased and surprised to hear the voice of my devoted friend,
Rev. Mr. Dunn, grand vicar of Chicago, asking my hospitality for the
night. His first words were:
“My visit here must be absolutely incognito. In ordering me to come and
see you, the bishop of Dubuque, who is just named administrator of
Chicago, advised me to come as secretly as possible. He said: 'Your
triumph at Rome is perfect. You have gained the greatest victory a
priest ever won over his unjust bishop; but you must thank the Emperor
Napoleon for it. It is to his advice which, under the present
circumstances, is equal to an order, that you owe the protection of the
Cardinal Bidini. His report to the Pope is, that all the documents you
sent to Rome were correct. The inquiry of the cardinal has brought facts
to the knowledge of the Pope, still more compromising than what you have
written against him. Several bishops of the United States have
unanimously denounced Bishop O’Regan as a most depraved man, entirely
unworthy of his position, and have advised the pope to take him away and
choose another bishop for Chicago. It is acknowledged, at Rome, that all
the sentences pronounced by that bishop against you, are unjust and
null. Our good administrator has been advised to put an end, at once, to
all the troubles of your colony, by treating you as a good and faithful
priest.’
“I come here, not only to congratulate you on your victory, but also to
thank you, in my name, and in the name of the church, for having saved
our diocese from such a plague; for Bishop O’Regan is a real plague. A
few more years of such administration would have destroyed our holy
religion in Illinois. However, as you handled the poor bishop pretty
roughly, it is suspected, at a distance, that you and your people are
more Protestants than Catholics. We know better here; for, from the
beginning, it was evident that the act of excommunication, posted at the
door of your chapel by three priests too drunk to know what they were
about, is a nullity, having never been signed by the bishop. It was a
shameful and sacrilegious comedy. But, in many distant places, that
excommunication was accepted as valid, and you are considered by many,
as a real schismatic. Bishop Smith has thought it advisable to ask you
to give him a written and canonical act of submission, which he will
publish to show the world that you are still a good Roman Catholic
priest.”
I thanked the grand vicar for his kind words, and the good news he was
giving me, and I asked him to help me to thank God for having so visibly
protected and guided me through all these terrible difficulties. We both
knelt and repeated the sublime words of gratitude and joy of the old
prophet: “Bless the Lord, oh! my soul, and all that is within me, bless
His holy name,” etc. (Ps. ciii.) I then said that I had no objection to
give the renewed act of my faith and submission to the church, that it
might be published. I took a piece of paper, and with emotions of joy
and gratitude to God, which it would be impossible to express, I slowly
prepared to write. But as I was considering what form I should give to
that document, a sudden, strange thought struck my mind: “Is this not
the golden opportunity to put an end to the terrible temptations which
have shaken my faith and distressed me for so many years, I said to
myself:
“Is not this a providential opportunity to silence those mysterious
voices which are troubling me almost every hour? That, in the church of
Rome, we do not follow the Word of God, but the lying traditions of
men?”
I determined then to frame my act of submission in such a way that I
would silence those voices, and be, more than ever, sure that my faith,
the faith of my dear church, which had just given me such a glorious
victory at Rome, was based upon the Holy Word of God, on the divine
doctrines of the gospel. I then wrote down, in my own name and in the
name of my people:
“My lord Bishop Smith, bishop of Dubuque and administrator of the
diocese of Chicago:—We want to live and die in the holy Catholic,
apostolic and Roman church, out of which there is no salvation, and to
prove this to your lordship, we promise to obey the authority of the
church according to the word and commandments of God as we find them
expressed in the gospel of Christ.
“C. CHINIQUY.”
I handed this writing to Mr. Dunn, and said:
“What do you think of this act of submission?” He quickly read it and
answered:
“It is just what we want from you.”
“All right,” I rejoined. “But I fear the bishop will not accept it. Do
you not see that I have put a condition to our submission? I say that we
will submit ourselves to the bishop’s authority, but only according to
the Word of God and the gospel of Christ.”
“Is not that good?” quickly replied Mr. Dunn.
“Yes, my dear, Mr. Dunn, this is good, very good indeed,” I answered,
“But my fear is that it is too good for the bishop and the Pope!”
“What do you mean?” he replied.
“I mean that though this act of submission is very good, I fear lest the
Pope and the bishop reject it.”
“Please explain yourself more clearly,” answered the grand vicar. “I do
not understand the reason for such a fear.”
“My dear Mr. Dunn,” I continued, “I must confess to you here, a thing
which is known only to God. I must show you a bleeding wound which is in
my soul for many years: A wound which has never been healed by any of
the remedies I have applied to it. It is a wound which I never dared to
show to any man, except to my confessor, though it has often made me
suffer almost the tortures of hell. You know well that there is not a
living priest who has studied the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers,
with more attention and earnestness, these last few years, than I have.
It was not only to strengthen my own faith, but also, the faith of our
people, and to be able to fight the battles of our church against her
enemies, that I spent so many hours of my days and nights in those
studies.
“But, though I am confounded and ashamed to confess it to you, I must do
it. The more I have studied and compared the Holy Scriptures and the
Holy Fathers with the teachings of our church, the more my faith has
been shaken, and the more I have been tempted to think, in spite of
myself, that our church has, long ago, given up the Word of God and the
Holy Fathers, in order to walk in the muddy and crooked ways of human
and false traditions. Yes! the more I study, the more I am troubled by
the strange and mysterious voices which haunt me day and night, saying:
“Do you not see that in your Church of Rome, you do not follow the Word
of God, but the lying traditions of men?”
“What is more strange and painful is that, the more I pray to God to
silence these voices, the louder they repeat the same distressing
things. It is to put an end to those awful temptations that I have
written this conditional submission. I want to prove to myself that I
will obey the Word of God and the gospel of Christ, in our church, and I
shall be happy all the rest of my life, if the bishops accept this
submission. But I fear it will be rejected.” Mr. Dunn promptly replied:
“You are mistaken, my dear Mr. Chiniquy. I am sure that our bishop will
accept this document as canonical, and sufficient to show your orthodoxy
to the world.”
“If it be so,” I replied, “I will be a most happy man.” It was agreed
that on the 25th of March, I would go with him to Dubuque, to present my
act of submission to the administrator of the diocese, after the people
had signed it. Accordingly, at 7 p. m. on that day, we both took the
train at Chicago for Dubuque, where we arrived next morning. At 11 a.
m., I went to the palace of the bishop, who received me with marks of
the utmost cordiality and affection. I presented him our written act of
submission with a trembling hand, fearing he would reject it. He read it
twice, and throwing his arms around me, he pressed me to his heart. I
felt his tears of joy mixed with mine, rolling down my cheeks, as he
said:
“How happy I am to see that submission! How happy the Pope and all the
bishops of the United States will be to hear of it, for I will not
conceal it from you; we feared that both you and your people would
separate from the church by refusing to submit to her authority.”
I answered that I was not less happy to see an end to those painful
difficulties, and I promised him that, with the help of God, our holy
church would not have a more faithful priest than myself.
While engaged in that pleasant conversation, the dinner hour came. He
gave me the place of honor on his right, before the two grand vicars,
and nothing could be more pleasant than the time we spent around the
table, which was served with a good and well prepared, though frugal
meal. I was happy to see that the bishop, with his priests, were
teetotalers. No wine nor beer to tempt the weak. Before the dinner was
over, the bishop said to Mr. Dunn:
“You will accompany Mr. Chiniquy to St. Anne, in order to announce, in
my name, to the people, the restoration of peace, next Sabbath. No doubt
it will be joyful news to the colony of Father Chiniquy.
“After so many years of hard fighting, the pastor and the people of St.
Anne will enjoy the days of peace and rest which are now secured to
them.”
Then, addressing himself to me, the bishop said:
“The only condition of that peace is that you will spend fifteen days in
retreat and meditation in one of the religious houses you will choose
yourself. I think that, after so much noise and exciting controversies,
it will do you good to pass those days in meditation and prayer, in some
of our beautiful and peaceful solitudes.
I answered him: “If your lordship had not offered me the favor of those
days of perfect and Christian rest, I would have asked you to grant it.
I consider it as a crowning of all your acts of kindness to offer me
those few days of calm and meditation, after the terrible storms of
those last three years. If your lordship has no objection to my choice,
I will go to the beautiful solitude where M. Saurin has built the
celebrated Monastery, College and University of St. Joseph, Indiana. I
hope that nothing will prevent my being there next Monday. After going,
next Sabbath, in the company of Grand Vicar Dunn, to proclaim the
restoration of the blessed peace to my people of St. Anne.”
“You cannot make a better choice,” answered the bishop.
“But, my lord,” I rejoined, “I hope your lordship will have no objection
to give me a written assurance of the perfect restoration of that
long-sought peace. There are people who, I know, will not believe me,
when I tell them how quickly and nobly your lordship has put an end to
all those deplorable difficulties. I want to show them that I stand,
to-day, in the same relation with my superiors and the church in which I
stood previous to these unfortunate strifes.”
“Certainly,” said the bishop, “you are in need of such a document from
your bishop, and you shall have it. I will write it at once.”
But, he had not yet written two lines, when Mr. Dunn looked at his watch
and said: “We have not a minute to lose, if we want to be in time for
the Chicago train.”
I then said to the bishop: “Please, my lord, address me that important
document to Chicago, where I will get it at the postoffice, on my way to
the University of St. Joseph, next Monday; your lordship will have
plenty of time to write it, this afternoon.”
The bishop, having consented, I hastily took leave of him, with Mr.
Dunn, after having received his benediction.
On our way back to St. Anne, the next day, we stopped at Bourbonnaise to
see the grand vicar Mailloux, one of the priests who had been sent by
the bishops of Canada to help my lord O’Regan to crush me. We found him
as he was going to his dining room to take his dinner. He was visibly
humiliated by the complete defeat of Bishop O’Regan, at Rome.
After Mr, Dunn told him that he was sent to proclaim peace to the people
of St. Anne, he coldly asked the written proof of such strange news.
Mr. Dunn answered him: “Do you think, sir, that I would be mean enough
to tell you a lie?”
“I do not say that you are telling me a lie,” replied Mr. Mailloux, “I
believe what you say. But, I want to know the condition of that
unexpected peace. Has Mr. Chiniquy made his submission to the church?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, “here is a copy of my act of submission.”
He read it, and coldly said: “This is not an act of submission to the
church, but only to the authority of the Gospel, which is a very
different thing. This document can be presented by a Protestant; but, it
cannot be offered by a Catholic priest to his bishop. I cannot
understand how our bishop did not see that at once.”
Mr. Dunn answered him: “My dear grand vicar Mailloux, I have often been
told that it does not do to be more loyal than the king. My hope was
that you would rejoice with us at the news of the peace. I am sorry to
see that I was mistaken. However, I must tell you that if you want to
fight, you will have nobody to fight against; for Father Chiniquy was,
yesterday, accepted as a regular priest of our holy church by the
administrator. This ought to satisfy you.”
I listened to the unpleasant conversation of those two grand vicars,
with painful feelings, without saying a word. For, I was troubled by
those mysterious voices which were reiterating in my mind the cry: “Do
you not see that in the Church of Rome, you do not follow the Word of
God, but only the lying traditions of men?”
I felt much relieved, when I left the house of that so badly disposed
confrere, to come to St. Anne, where the people had gathered on the
public square, to receive us, and rend the air with their cries of joy
at the happy news of peace.
The next day, 27th of March, was Palm Sunday, one of the grand
festivities of the Church of Rome; there was an immense concourse of
people, attracted not only by the religious solemnity of the feast; but
also by the desire to see and hear the deputy sent by their bishop to
proclaim peace. He did it in a most elegant English address, which I
translated into French. He presented me a blessed palm, and I offered
him another loaded with beautiful flowers, in the presence of the
people, as a public sign of the concord which was restored between my
colony and the authorities of the church.
That my Christian readers may understand my blindness, and the mercies
of God towards me, I must confess here, to my shame, that I was glad to
have made my peace with those sinful men, which was not peace with my
God. But, that great God had looked down upon me in mercy. He was soon
to break that peace with the great apostate church, which is poisoning
the world with the wine of her enchantments, that I might walk in the
light of the Gospel and possess that peace and joy which passeth all
understanding.