direct inspiration from God, they taught their own infallibility and
in name of Him, whom they professed to serve, the grossest crimes were
perpetrated, and this profession became a protecting sanctuary to
men whose villainous lives would otherwise have brought them to the
gallows.[77]
With conviction of woman’s supreme wickedness, increased through the
formal recognition of celibacy as a dogma of the church, with the
establishment of auricular confession, and the denial of the Bible
to the laity, the persecution of woman for witchcraft took on new
phase. The belief that it was the ordinary method through which the
devil won souls, together with the persuasion that woman through her
greater wickedness fell more readily than men into such practices,
acquired a firmer seat in theology. Heresy, of which witchcraft was one
phase, became a greater sin; the inquisition arose, and the general
characteristics of the christian world rapidly grew more inimical to
humanity, and especially to woman’s freedom, happiness and security.
The influence of the church daily grew more unfavorable to all virtue;
vice was sustained, immorality dignified. The concubines of priests
called “wives,” in bitter mockery of that relation in which the legal
wife was termed concubine, were known as “The Hallowed Ones,” “The
Honored Ones.” No stigma attached to such a life; these women formed
quite a class in mediaeval society, themselves and their children
out-ranking the wives of ordinary laymen;[78] the touch of a priest had
sanctified them. In the estimation of the church an immoral life led
with a priest was more honorable than marriage with a layman, and all
the obligations such a relation implied. Priests assumed immunity from
wrong doing. So far from celibacy causing purity of life, through
it the priesthood grew to look upon themselves as especially set
apart for indulgence in vice. Did not history so faithfully portray
this condition, it would seem impossible that it had existed among
people asserting the highest morality, and is proof of the danger
of irresponsible power to possessor and victim alike, and the ease
with which the true meaning of right and wrong is lost under such
circumstances.
The theory of the church that as the fall and sin really existed,
priestly immorality became a necessity in order to perpetuate the
world even through a continuance of the original sin, was a species of
fine casuistry for which the church in all ages has been remarkable.
The general tenor of the church against marriage, together with its
teaching of woman’s greater sinfulness, were the chief causes which
undermined the morality of the christian world for fifteen hundred
years. With these doctrines were also taught the duty of woman to
sacrifice herself in every way for man, a theory of which the present
century is not unfamiliar. The loss of chastity in woman was held as
light sin in comparison to the degradation that marriage would bring
to a priest, and young girls ruined by some candidate or priest,
considered themselves doing God service in refusing a marriage that
would cause the expulsion of the priestly lover from the ecclesiastical
order. With woman’s so-called “divine,” but rather demoniac
self-sacrifice, Heloise chose to be deemed the mistress of Abelard
rather than by acknowledging their marriage destroy his prospects of
advancement in the church.[79]
The State sustained the Church in its opposition to marriage, and we
find the anomaly of marriage for political reasons where the parties
forever separated at the altar. St. Jerome, and at a later date St.
Dunstan, sustained the policy of such marriages. The history of Britain
gives instances of early queens thus separating from their newly made
husbands at the close of the ceremony, dedicating their lives to
celibacy and their fortunes to the church.
Nor did this institution neglect that large class of women to whom
marriage was made impossible because of the numbers of men to whom
it was forbidden. After the Lateran Council had permanently settled
the action of the church in favor of priestly celibacy, great effort
was made to draw women of wealth into a monastic life. Religion was
the chief method of acquiring power, and as an abbess of a religious
institution it opened opportunity for power to women scarcely possible
outside the church. The two highest womanly virtues inculcated by the
church were a celibate life and liberality to religious houses. It was
taught if anything could possibly mitigate women’s sin through Eve’s
transgression, it was the observance of these two conditions.
To the student this is the most remarkable period in the history of
the church, not merely as a culmination of the effort of centuries in
finally deciding the questions of celibacy, so long agitated with such
varying results, but in the immediate change and permanent settlement
it brought about in regard to other church dogmas, as well as its
pronounced influence in causing the Lutheran Reformation.
It was asserted that the spiritual office of the priest sanctified
sin; it became a maxim that whatever a priest might do was holy; by
their taking part in lasciviousness it became consecration. To disobey
a priest was to endanger salvation; it was libellous and treasonable
to question the purity of a priest’s motives, hence religion became a
screen for all vice and a source of moral degradation to all woman. To
such extent was belief carried in the superior purity of a celibate
life that but little more than 300 years since a man was burned at the
stake in England for asserting the lawfulness of priestly marriage.[80]
The action of the council of 1215, so powerfully sustaining the olden
claims of the superior holiness of celibacy soon created a belief in
the inability of a priest to commit sin. During the middle ages his
infallibility was constantly maintained, his superior sanctity in
consequence of his celibacy universally asserted. It was impossible
not to connect the idea of great wickedness with those incapable of
entering this holy office, and as woman by virtue of sex was prohibited
priestly functions, and as her marriage had been declared a necessity
for the world, these conditions were used as arguments against her. The
conscience and morality of tens of thousands were destroyed by these
teachings, enforced as they were by all the dread authority of the
church. The christian world was under entire control of a class whose
aim was chiefly that of personal aggrandizement, and that hesitated at
no means for securing wealth and power.
The Inquisition was firmly established; under its reign six hundred
methods of torture were known, and it was conducted with such secrecy
that not until dragged before it were many of its victims aware they
were under suspicion. Even when imprisoned in its torture chambers,
the charges against them were kept secret in hopes thereby to compel
self-accusation upon other points. The inferiority of woman, her
proneness to evil and readiness to listen to all suggestions of Satan,
was taught with renewed vigor and power for evil.
The priest regarded himself as the direct representative of divinity;
the theory of infallibility was not confined to the pope, but all
dignitaries of the church made the same claim. Asserting themselves
incapable of wrong doing, maintaining an especial sanctification by
reason of their celibacy, priests nevertheless made their holy office
a cover for the most degrading sensuality. Methods were taken to
debauch the souls as well as the bodies of women. Having first taught
their special impurity, it was not maintained that immorality with a
priest was not sin, but on the contrary hallowed the woman, giving
her particular claim upon heaven. It was taught that sin could only
be killed through sin.[81] The very incarnation was used as a means
of weakening woman’s virtue. That Christ did not enter the world
through the marriage relation, stamped with christian honor a system
of concubinage in the church, for whose warrant woman was pointed to
the Virgin Mary. As an enforcement of her duty of absolute surrender
of soul and body to the will of the priest the course of the Virgin
was adduced, “who obeyed the angel Gabriel and conceived without fear
of evil, for impurity could not come of a spirit.”[82] The chastity of
concubinage and the unchasteness of marriage was constantly asserted
by the church, and thus the mysteries upon which its foundations were
laid were used by it for the degradation of woman, who was at all times
depicted as a being of no self-individuality, but one who had been
created solely for man’s pleasure. As late as the seventeenth century,
it was taught that a priest could commit no sin. This old doctrine took
new strength from the Illumes, who claimed an inner divine light.[83]
We find reference to priestly immorality and claim of infallibility
among old writers, Boccaccio in many of his stories putting arguments
of this kind in the mouth of his priestly characters.[84]
It was asserted too that sin was of the body alone, the soul knowing
nothing, partaking nothing of it. As an argument in favor of woman’s
throwing herself entirely in the hands of priests for immoral purposes,
it was declared that, “The devout having offered up and annihilated
their own selves exist no longer but in God; thenceforth they can do
no wrong. The better part of them is so divine that it no longer knows
what the other is doing.”
In confirmation of this doctrine it was said that Jesus threw off his
clothing and was scourged naked before the people. The result of this
teaching was the almost universal immorality of christendom. Under
such religious doctrine it could but be expected that the laity would
closely imitate the priesthood. Europe became a continent of moral
corruption, of which proof is overwhelming. Could we but relegate
christian immorality to the dark ages we might somewhat palliate it
under plea of ignorance. But unfortunately for such claim ample proof
is found to show that the enlightenment of modern civilization has not
yet been able to overthrow the basic idea upon which this immorality
rests. Amid the material and intellectual advancement of the last
hundred years we find spiritual darkness still profound in the church
and the true foundation of immorality almost unrecognized.
As long as the church maintains the doctrine that woman was created
inferior to man, and brought sin into the world rendering the sacrilige
of the Son of God a necessity, just so long will the foundation of vice
and crime of every character remain. Not until the exact and permanent
equality of woman with man is recognized by the church, aye, even more,
the greater power and capacity of woman in the creative function,
together with the accountability of man to woman in everything relating
to the birth of a new being, is fully accepted as a law of nature, will
vice and crime disappear from the world. Until that time has fully
come, prostitution in its varied forms will continue to exist, together
with alms-houses, reformatories, jails, prisons, hospitals and asylums
for the punishment, reformation or care of the wretched beings who have
come into existence with an inheritance of disease and crime because of
church theory and church teaching.
The system of celibacy produced its same effects wherever preached. So
constant was the system of debauchery practiced in England during the
reign of Henry VII that the gentlemen and farmers of Carnarvonshire
laid complaint against the clergy of systematically seducing their
wives and daughters.[85] Women were everywhere looked upon as slaves
and toys, to obey, to furnish pleasure and amusement, and to be cast
aside at will. Under the religious teaching of christendom it could not
but be expected that the laity would closely imitate the priesthood,
and to victimize women became the custom of all men.[86] When a priest
failed to take a concubine his parishoners compelled him to do so
in order to preserve the chastity of their own wives and daughters.
Draper[87] tells us that in England alone 100,000 women became victims
of the priests. Houses of vile character were maintained for especial
use of the priesthood. The marriage of a priest was called a deception
of the devil who thus led him into an adulterous relation[88] for sake
of alienating property from the church.
This mediaeval doctrine that sin can only be killed through sin, finds
expression today not alone in religion[89] but in society novels;[90]
its origin, like many other religious wrongs, being directly traceable
to the teaching of St. Paul.[91]
The incontinence of these celibate priests ultimately became so great
a source of scandal to the church that it was obliged to take action.
Edicts and bulls were fulminated from the papal chair, although the
facts of history prove Rome itself, its popes and its cardinals, to
have been sunk in the grossest immorality. Spain, the seat of the
Inquisition, and at that period the very heart of Christendom, was
the first country toward which investigation was turned, Pope Paul IV
issuing a bull against those confessors who solicited women, provoking
them to dissolute action. When this bull of investigation first
appeared in Spain, it was accompanied by an edict commanding all those
who knew of monks or priests that had thus abused the confessional to
make it known within thirty days under grievous penalty. The terrible
power of the church intimidated those who otherwise for very shame
would surely have buried the guilt of their priests in oblivion,
and so great was the number of women who thronged the palace of the
Inquisition in the city of Seville alone, that twenty secretaries
with as many Inquisitors were not sufficient to take the deposition
of the witnesses. A second, a third and a fourth thirty days were
appointed for investigation, so great were the number of women making
complaint.[92] So large a number of priests were implicated that after
a four months’ examination, the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition put
a stop to the proceedings, commanding that all those immoralities
and crimes against womanhood only rendered possible in the name of
religion, and which has been proven by legal evidence, should be buried
in eternal oblivion. The deposition of thousands of women seduced by
their confessors, was not deemed sufficient evidence for removal of the
guilty priests from their holy offices. Occasionally a single priest
was suspended for a short time but in a few months restored again to
his priestly position.[93]
It was not uncommon for women to be openly carried off by priests,
their husbands and fathers threatened with vengeance in cases of their
attempted recovery.[94] During the height of the Inquisitorial power
it was not rare for a family to be aroused in the night by an ominous
knock and the cry “The Holy Fathers, open the door!”
To this dread mandate there could be but one reply, as both temporal
and spiritual power lay in their hands. A husband, father or son might
thus be seized by veiled figures; or as frequently a loved wife or
young daughter was dragged from her bed, her fate ever to remain a
mystery. When young and beautiful these women were taken to replenish
the Inquisitional harem; the “dry pan,” “boiling in oil,” and similar
methods of torture, threatened, in order to produce compliance upon
part of wretched victims. No Turkish seraglio with bow-string and sack
ever exhibited as great an amount of diabolical wickedness as the
prison-harems of the Inquisition. As late as the seventeenth century
Pope Gregory XV commanded strict enforcement of the bull against
priestly lechery not alone in Spain, but in all other parts of the
Christian world. In England after the reformation, the same condition
was found to exist.[95] But edicts against lasciviousness were vainly
issued by a church whose foundation is a belief in the supremacy of one
sex over the other, and that woman brought sin into the world through
having seduced man into the marriage relation. Despite the advance of
knowledge and civilization the effects of such teachings are the same
now as during the middle ages, as fully proven at time of separation
between the temporal and spiritual power in Italy;[96] and these
proofs are taken from Catholic sources. In 1849 when the Roman people
opened the palace of the Inquisition there was found in the library
a department entitled “Summary of Solicitations,” being a record of
cases in which women had been solicited to acts of criminality by
their confessors in the pontifical state.[97] The testimony of Luther
as to the moral degradation of the church at time of the Reformation
has never been invalidated,[98] and is entirely in accord with its
character throughout history.
That the same iniquities are connected with the confessional today, we
learn from the testimony of those priests who have withdrawn from the
communion of the Catholic Church; Father Hyacinthe publicly declaring
that ninety-nine out of one hundred priests live in sin with the women
they have destroyed. Another priest following the example of Father
Hyacinthe in marrying, asserted that he took this step in order to get
out of the ultramontane slough and remain an honest man.[99] That the
Catholic Church of the present day bears the same general character
it did during the middle ages is proven from much testimony. Among
the latest and most important witnesses, for minuteness and fullness
of detail, is Rev. Charles Chiniquy in his works “The Priest, The
Woman and the Confessional,” “Fifty Years of Rome,” etc. Now over
eighty years of age, Rev. Mr. Chiniquy was for more than fifty years
a Catholic priest of influence and high reputation, known in Canada,
where thousands of drunkards reformed under his teaching, as the
“Apostle of Temperance.” Becoming convinced of the immorality of the
Romish Church, he left it in 1856, taking with him five thousand French
Canadians with whom he settled at St. Anne, Kankakee County, Illinois.
Having united with a branch of the Protestant church, he was invited
to Scotland to take part in the Tercentenary of the Reformation, and
later to England, where he lectured on invitation of ministers of every
evangelical denomination.[100] His “Fifty Years of Rome” indissolubly
links his name with that of Abraham Lincoln, through the information
there made known regarding the Catholic plot for President Lincoln’s
assassination.
It is as fully a law of moral as of material nature that from the same
causes the same effects follow. In his work upon the confessional[101]
Rev. Mr. Chiniquy relates incidents coming under his own personal
knowledge while he was still a catholic priest regarding its present
abuses. The character of the questions made a duty of the priest
to ask during confession, are debasing in the extreme, their whole
tendency towards the undermining of morality. Too broadly indelicate
for translation these priestly instructions are hidden in Latin, but
are no less made the duty of a priest to understand and use. In 1877, a
number of prominent women of Montreal, Canada, addressed a declaration
and protest to the bishop of that diocese against the abuses of the
confessional of which their own experience had made them cognizant.
DECLARATION
To His Lordship Bourget, Bishop of Montreal
_Sir_:—Since God in his infinite mercy has been pleased to
show us the errors of Rome, and has given us strength to
abandon them to follow Christ, we deem it our duty to say
a word on the abominations of the confessional. You well
know that these abominations are of such a nature that it
is impossible for a woman to speak of them without a blush.
How is it that among civilized christian men one has so far
forgotten the rule of common decency as to force women to
reveal to unmarried men, under the pains of eternal damnation,
their most secret thoughts, their most sinful desires and
their most private actions?
How unless there be a brazen mask on your priest’s face dare
they go out into the world having heard the tales of misery
which cannot but defile the hearing, and which the women
cannot relate without having laid aside modesty and all sense
of shame. The harm would not be so great should the Church
allow no one but the woman to accuse herself. But what shall
we say of the abominable questions that are put to them and
which they must answer?
Here, the laws of common decency strictly forbid us to enter
into details. Suffice it to say, were husbands cognizant of
one-tenth of what is going on between the confessor and their
wives, they would rather see them dead than degraded to such a
degree.
As for us, daughters and wives from Montreal who have known
by experience the filth of the confessional, we cannot
sufficiently bless God for having shown us the error of our
ways in teaching us that it was not at the feet of a man as
weak and as sinful as ourselves, but at the feet of Christ
alone that we must seek salvation.
Julia Herbert,
Marie Rogers,
J. Rocham,
Louise Picard,
Francoise Dirringer,
Eugenie Martin, and
forty-three others.[102]
In reply to a letter of inquiry addressed by myself to Rev. Mr.
Chiniquy, the following answer was received.
St. Anne, Kankakee County, Illinois
January 4, 1887
Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage,
Madam
In answer to your honored letter of the 29th Dec. I hasten to
say: _First._ The women of Montreal signed the declaration
you see in ‘The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional,’ in
the fall of 1877. I do not remember the day. _Second._ As it
is ten years since I left Montreal to come to my Missionary
field of Illinois, I could not say if these women are still in
Montreal or not. Great, supreme efforts were secretly made by
the Bishop of Montreal to show that these names were forged
in order to answer and confound me, but the poor Bishop found
that the document was too correct, authentic and public to be
answered and attacked, and he remained mute and confounded,
for many of these women were well known in the city.
_Third._ You will find the answer to your other questions,
in the volume ‘Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,’ which I
addressed you by today’s mail.
Respectfully yours in Christ,
C. Chiniquy
The same assertion of priestly infallibility is made today as it
was centuries ago, the same declaration of change of nature through
priestly celibacy. Upon this question Mr. Chiniquy says:
If any one wants to hear an eloquent oration let him go
where the Roman Catholic priest is preaching on the divine
institution of auricular confession. They make the people
believe that the vow of perpetual chastity changes their
nature, turns them into angels and puts them above the common
faults of the fallen children of Adam. With a brazen face when
they are interrogated on that subject, they say that they have
special graces to remain pure and undefiled in the midst of
the greatest dangers; that the Virgin Mary to whom they are
consecrated is their powerful advocate to obtain from her son
that superhuman virtue of Chastity; that what would be a cause
of sin and perdition to common men is without peril and danger
for a true son of Mary.[103]
A work entitled “Mysteries of the Neapolitan Convents,” its author
Henrietta Carracciola, a woman of the purest blood of the princes of
Italy, daughter of the Marshal Carracciola, Governor of the Province of
Pasi in Italy, is quoted from, by Rev. Mr. Chiniquy, in confirmation of
his statements as to the continued impurity of the confessional.
Finally another priest, the most annoying of all for his
obstinate assiduity, sought to secure my affections at all
cost. There was not an image profane poetry could afford
him, nor a sophism he could borrow from rhetoric, no wily
interpretation he could give to the word of God, which he did
not employ to convert me to his wishes. Here is an example of
his logic:—
“Dear daughter,” said he to me one day, “knowest thou who thy
God truly is?”
“He is the Creator of the Universe,” I answered dryly.