brought with them a disease of an unknown character, which speedily
found its way into every part of Europe. None were exempt; the king
on his throne, the beggar in his hovel, noble and peasant, priest and
layman alike succumbed to the dire influence which made Christendom one
vast charnel house. Of it, _Montesquieu_ said: “It is now two centuries
since a disease unknown to our ancestors was first transplanted from
the new world to ours, and came to attack human nature in the very
source of life and pleasure. Most of the powerful families of the South
of Europe were seen to perish by a distemper that was grown too common
to be ignominious, and was considered in no other light than that of
being fatal. _Works_, I, 265.
[51] St. Ambrose and others believed not that they (women) were human
creatures like other people. Luther.—_Familiar Discourses_, p. 383.
[52] When a woman is born it is a deficit of nature and contrary to her
intentions, as is the case when a person is born blind or lame or with
any natural defect, and as we frequently see happens in fruit trees
which never ripen. In like manner a woman may be called a fortuitous
animal and produced by accident.
[53] Cajetan, living from 1496 to 1534, became General of the Dominican
Order and afterwards Cardinal.
[54] “The Father alone is creator.”
[55] By decree of the Council of Lyons, 1042, barons were allowed to
enslave the children of married clergy.—_Younge._
[56] In 1108 priests were again ordered to put away their wives.
Such as kept them and presumptuously celebrated mass were to be
excommunicated. Even the company of their wives was to be avoided.
Monks and priests who for love of their wives left their orders
suffering excommunication, were again admitted after forty days penance
if afterwards forsaking them.
[57] Dulaure.—_Histoire de Paris_, I, 387, note.
[58] The abbot elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, in 1171, was
found on investigation to have seventeen illegitimate children in a
single village. An abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, in 1130, was proved
to have kept no less than seventy mistresses.—_Hist. European Morals_,
p. 350.
[59] A tax called “cullagium,” which was a license to clergymen to
keep concubines, was during several years systematically levied by
princes.—_Ibid_ 2, 349.
[60] _Supplement to Lumires, 50th question, Art, III._
[61] St. Anselm, although very strict in the enforcement of the canons
favoring celibacy, found recalcitrant priests in his own diocese whose
course he characterized as “bestial insanity.”
[62] So says _Bayle_, author of the _Historical and Critical
Dictionary_, a magnificent work in many volumes. Bayle was a man of
whom it has justly been said his “profound and varied knowledge not
only did much to enlighten the age in which he lived by pointing out
the errors and supplying the deficiencies of contemporaneous writers
of the seventeenth century, but down to the present time his work has
preserved a repository of facts from which scholars continually draw.”
[63] Those who support celibacy would perhaps choose rather to allow
crimes than marriage, because they derive considerable revenue by
giving license to keep concubines. A certain prelate boasted openly
at his table that he had in his diocese 1,000 priests who kept
concubines, and who paid him, each of them, a crown a year for their
license.—_Cornelius Aggrippa._
[64] For years in Germany the word Pufferkind signified “priest’s
bastard.” _Montesquieu_ declared celibacy to be libertinism.
[65] _Amelot_ (Abraham Nicholas), born in Orleans 1134, declared the
celibacy of the clergy to have been established a law in order to
prevent the alienation of the church estate.
[66] Pope Pelagius was unwilling to establish the Bishop of Sagola in
his see because he had a wife and family, and only upon condition that
wife and children should inherit nothing at his death except what he
then possessed, was he finally confirmed. All else was to go into the
coffers of the church.
[67] Cardinal Otto decreed that wives and children of priests should
have no benefit from the estate of the husband and father; such estates
should be vested in the church.
[68] In 1396 Charles VI forbade that the testimony of women should be
received in any of the courts of his kingdom.
[69] The council of Tivoli, in the Soisonnais, 909, in which twelve
bishops took part, promulgated a Canon requiring the oath of seven
witnesses to convict a priest with having lived with a woman; if these
failed of clearing him he could do so by his own oath.
[70] Though the clergy now and then made use both of the Justinian and
Theodosian Codes, the former body of law, as such, was notwithstanding
from the reign of the Emperor Justinian, or about the year of our Lord
560, till the beginning of the 12th century, or the year of Christ,
1230 or thereabouts, of no force in the west in matter of government.
Seldon.—_Dissertation on Fleta_, p. 112.
[71] The codification of the laws under Justinian were largely due
to his wife the Empress Theodosia, who having risen from the lowest
condition in the empire, that of a circus performer, to the throne of
the East, proved herself capable in every way of adorning that high
position.
[72] By the Code Napoleon, all research into paternity is forbidden.
The Christian Church was swamped by hysteria from the third to the
sixteenth century. Canon Charles Kingsley.—_Life and Letters._
[73] Although under law the entire property of the wife became that of
the husband upon marriage.
[74] A treatise on Chastity, attributed to Pope Sixtus III., barely
admits that married people can secure eternal life, though stating that
the glory of heaven is not for them.
[75] The Romish religion teaches that if you omit to name anything in
confession, however repugnant or revolting to purity which you even
doubt having committed, your subsequent confessions are thus rendered
null and sacrilegious. Chiniquy.—_The Priest, the Woman and the
Confessional_, p. 202. Study the pages of the past history of England,
France, Italy, Spain, etc., and you will see that the gravest and most
reliable historians have everywhere found instances of iniquity in the
confessional box which their order refused to trace. _Ibid_, p. 175.
It is a public fact which no learned Roman Catholic has ever denied
that auricular confession became a dogma and obligatory practice of
the church only at the Lateran Council, in the year 1215, under Pope
Innocent III. Not a single trace of auricular confession as a dogma
can be found before that year. _Ibid_, p. 239. Auricular confession
originated with the early heretics, especially with Marcius. Bellarmin
speaks of it as something to be practiced. But let us hear what the
contemporary writers have to say on this question: “Certain women were
in the habit of going to the heretic Marcius to confess their sins to
him. But as he was smitten with their beauty, and they loved him also,
they abandoned themselves to sin with him.”—_Ibid_, p. 234.
[76] Disraeli, who is most excellent authority, declared the early
English edition of the Bible contained 6,000 errors, which were
constantly introduced and passages interpolated for sectarian purposes
or to sustain new creeds; sometimes, indeed, they were added for the
purpose of destroying all scriptural authority by the use of texts.
The revisors of the New Testament found 150,000 errors, interpolations,
additions and false translations in the King James or common version.
[77] Cardinal Wolsey complained to the Pope that both the secular and
regular priests were in the habit of committing actions for which if
not in orders, they would have been promptly executed.
The claim of direct inspiration from God exists equally among
Protestants as among Catholics, and even among the Unitarians, who deny
Christ’s divinity. A notable instance of this kind, both because of the
high scientific and moral character of the clergyman, took place in the
pulpit of the May Memorial Church, Syracuse, N.Y., December 4th, 1887,
as reported in the Morning Standard of the 5th.
Luther declared that priests believed themselves to be as superior to
the laity in general as males were held superior to females.
[78] The legal wife of a priest was termed “An Unhallowed Thing,” while
mistresses and concubines were known as “The Hallowed Ones,” “The
Honored Ones.” In parts of France, especially in Paris, the latter
epithet was common as applied to a priest’s mistress.—_Michelet._
[79] Heloise sacrificed herself on account of the impediments the
church threw in the way of the married clergy’s career of advancement.
As his wife he would lose the ascending ladder of ecclesiastical
honors, priory, abbacy, bishopric, metropolitane, cardinalate, and even
that which was above and beyond all. Milman.—_Latin Christianity._
[80] In 1558 one Walter Mill was indicted, one article of his
accusation being his assertion of the lawfulness of sacerdotal
marriage. He was condemned to the stake and burned. Taine.—_English
Literature._
[81] An old doctrine which often turns up again in the middle ages. In
the seventeenth century it prevailed among the convents of France and
Spain. Michelet.—_La Sorcerie_, p. 258.
[82] They made the vilest use of the doctrine that Christ was born of a
Virgin, using this as an example for woman to be followed.—_Ibid_, p.
259.
[83] They must kill sin by being more humble and lost to all sense
of pride through sin. This was the Quietist doctrine introduced by a
Spanish priest, Molinos, who claimed it as the result of an inner light
or illumination. He declared that “Only by dint of sinning can sin be
quelled.”
[84] “Let not this surprise you,” replied the abbot, “My sanctity is
not the less on this account because that abides in the soul, and what
I now ask of you is only a sin of the body. Do not refuse the grace
heaven sends you.” Boccaccio.—_Decameron._
[85] Taine—_Eng. Lit._ I, 363.
[86] The unmarried state of the clergy was in itself one of the
chief causes of sexual excess. The enormously numerous clergy
became a perilous plague for female morality in town and village.
The peasants endeavored to preserve their wives and daughters from
clerical seduction by accepting no pastor who did not bind himself to
take a concubine. In all towns there were brothels belonging to the
municipality, to the sovereign, to the church, the proceeds of which
flowed into the treasury of proprietors.
[87] Draper.—_Intellectual Development of Europe_, 498.
[88] Men in orders are sometimes deceived by the devil that they marry
unrighteously and foredo themselves by the adulteries in which they
continue. _Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical_, 437.
There is ground for the assumption that the Canon which bound all the
active members of the church to perpetual celibacy, and thus created
an impenetrable barrier between them and the outer world, was one of
the efficient methods in creating and sustaining both the temporal and
spiritual power on the Romish Church. Taine.—_English Literature._
[89] All steps are necessary to make up the ladder. The vices of men
become steps in the ladder one by one as they are remounted. The
virtues of man are steps indeed, necessary not by any means to be
dispensed with, yet though they create a fair atmosphere and a happy
future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man
must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. Seek it by
plunging into the mysterious and glorious depth of your inmost being.
Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to
understand the growth of meaning of individuality and the beauty and
obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side
by side with you and from the race to which you belong.—_Light on the
Path_, Rule XX.
[90] “What in the world makes you look so sullen?” asked the young man
as he took his arm and they walked towards the palace. “I am tormented
with wicked thoughts,” answered Eugene gloomily. “What kind? They can
easily be cured.” “How?” “By yielding to them.” _Dialogue in Balzac’s
Pere Goriot._
[91] _1st Corinthians_ VII, 36.
[92] Limbrock.—_History of the Inquisition._
[93] Carema reported that the parish priest of Naples was not convicted
though several women deposed that he had seduced them. He was, however,
tortured, and suspended for a year, when he again entered his duties.
[94] Lea.—_Sacerdotal Celibacy_, p. 422.
The secrecy with which the Inquisition worked may be conjectured from
the fact that during the whole time its officers were busy gathering
evidence upon which to condemn Galileo, his friends in Rome, none of
whom occupied high position in the church, not only did not suspect his
danger, but constantly wrote him in the most encouraging terms.
[95] The acts of the Metropolital Visitation of the Archbishops of
Wareham states that in the Diocese of Bangor and St. Davids, in time
of Henry VIII., more than eighty priests were actually presented for
incontinence.
[96] Against this separation the bitter animosity of Pope Leo XIII. was
seen in his refusal of the gifts tendered him by the royal family of
Italy at the time of his jubilee.
[97] And the summary was not brief. Dwight.—_Roman Republic in 1849_,
p. 115. Pope John XIII., having appeared before the council to give an
account of his conduct, he was proved by thirty-seven witnesses, the
greater part of whom were bishops and priests, of having been guilty of
fornication, adultery, incest, sodomy, theft and murder. It was also
proved by a legion of witnesses that he had seduced and violated 300
nuns.—_The Priest, Woman and Confessional_, p. 268.
Henry III., bishop of Liege, was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five
illegitimate children. Lecky.—_Hist. European Morals_, p. 350. This
same bishop boasted at a public banquet that in twenty-two months
fourteen children had been born to him. _Ibid_, Vol. 2, p. 349. It was
openly asserted that 100,000 women in England were made dissolute by
the clergy. Draper.—_Intellectual Development of Europe_, p. 498.
[98] _Familiar Discourses_ and other works. In Rome are born such a
multitude of bastards that they are constrained to build particular
monasteries, where they are brought up and the pope is named their
father. When any great processions are held in Rome, then the said
bastards go all before the pope.—_Familiar Discourses_, 383.
After Pope Gregory confirmed celibacy he found 6,000 heads of infants
in a fish pond, which caused him to again favor the marriage of
priests.—_Ibid_. Bishop Metz, to my knowledge, hath lost the annual
revenue of 500 crowns, which he was wont to receive from the county for
pardoning of whoring and adultery.—_Ibid_, 260.
[99] In 1874, an old Catholic priest of Switzerland, about to follow
Pere Hyacinthe’s example in abandoning celibacy, announced his
betrothal in the following manner: “I marry because I wish to remain
an honorable man. In the seventeenth century it was a proverbial
expression, ‘As corrupt as a priest,’ and this might be said today.
I marry, therefore, because I wish to get out of the Ultramontane
slough.”—_Galignani’s Messenger_, September 19, 1874.
[100] See _Biographical Sketch_. (Died January 16, 1899.)
[101] pp. 86 to 140.
[102] To be found in _The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional_.
[103] _Ibid_, p. 77-8.
[104] _Ibid_, p. 287.
[105] A Shenandoah correspondent of the Pittsburgh Commercial
Advertiser, June 5, 1885, wrote:
SHENANDOAH, PA., June 5.—Father Wolonski, of this place, the only
priest of the Uniate Greek Church in this country, has been recalled to
Europe.
The Uniate Greek Church, it will be remembered, comprehends those
Christians who, while they follow the Greek rite, observe the general
discipline of the Greek Church and make use of the Greek liturgy, are
yet united with the Church of Rome, admitting the double procession of
the Spirit and the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, and accepting all
the doctrinal decisions subsequent to the Greek schism which have force
as articles of faith in the Roman Church. The usage of the Church as to
the law of celibacy is, with the consent of the Roman Pontiff, the same
as among the other Greeks, and Father Wolonski brought a wife with him
to Shenandoah when he came here last December. This fact has made both
the priest and his religion, subjects of great importance here, and the
attention they have received has resulted in his recall to Limberg,
Austria, the see of the diocese from which he was transferred here.
FATHER WOLONSKI AND THE ARCHBISHOP.
When Father Wolonski arrived in Philadelphia he visited the Cathedral
and sought an interview with Archbishop Ryan, but when that gentlemen
then came to Shenandoah, as directed by Bishop Sembratowicz, of
Limberg, who sent him on his mission, Father O’Reilly, of the
Irish Catholic Church, warned his congregation, under pain of
excommunication, to shun the church and priest, at the same time
tacitly denying that the Roman Church recognized the right of any
priest to marry. The matter led to great controversy, during which
Father Wolonski established his congregation, and arrangements have
been made for the erection of a church. To avoid further trouble,
however, the Bishop of Limberg has selected and sent an unmarried
priest to succeed him, and Father Wolonski will return to Austria.
Father Wolonski is an intelligent and highly-educated gentleman, and
has made a large number of friends during the few months he has been
here. He speaks several languages, and during his stay here acquired a
remarkable knowledge of English. He has worked incessantly since his
arrival here for the temporal as well as the spiritual comfort of his
people, and has made a large circle of acquaintances, who will regret
his departure from the town.
[106] And yet the world “does move,” and the experience of the church
is much that of the big elephant Jumbo, who in opposing his vast form
to a train of cars met his death at the engine.
[107] The Chili mantas and skirts of white flannel are worn by
penitentes, or women who have committed some heinous sin and thus
advertise their penitence; or those who have taken some holy vow to
get a measure nearer heaven, and go about the street with downcast
eyes, looking at nothing and recognizing no one. They hover about the
churches, and sit for hours crouched before some saint or crucifix,
saying prayers and atoning for their sin. In the great Cathedral at
Santiago, and in the smaller churches everywhere, these penitentes, in
their snow-white garments, are always to be seen, on their knees, or
posing in other uncomfortable postures, and looking for all the world
like statues carved in marble. In the Santiago Cathedral they cluster
in large groups around the confessionals, waiting to receive absolution
from some fat and burly father, that they may rid their bodies of the
mark of penitence they carry and their souls of sin. Some of them
make vows, or are sentenced by their confessors to wear their white
shrouds for a certain time, while others assume them voluntarily until
they have assurance from their priest that their sin is atoned for.
Ladies of the highest social position and great wealth are commonly
found among the penitentes, as well as young girls of beauty and
winning grace. Even the wives of merchants and bankers wander about
the streets with all but their eyes covered with this white mantle,
which gives notice to the world that they have sinned. The women of
Chili are as pious as the men are proud, and this method of securing
absolution is quite fashionable. Those souls that cannot be purged by
this penitential dress retire to a convent in the outskirts of the city
called the Convent of the Penitents, where they scourge themselves with
whips, mortify the flesh with sackcloth, sleep in ashes and upon stone
floors, and feed themselves on mouldy crusts. Some stay longer and some
a less time in these houses of correction, until the priests by whose
advice they go there, give them absolution; but it is seldom that the
inmates are men. They are usually women who have been unfaithful to
their marriage vows, or girls who have yielded to temptation. After
the society season, after the carnival, at the end of the summer when
people return from the fashionable resorts, and at the beginning of
lent these places are full, and throngs of carriages surround them,
waiting to bear back to their homes the belles who are sent here and
can find no room to remain. For those whose sins have been too great to
be washed out by this process, for those whose shame has been published
to the world and are unfitted under social laws to associate with the
pure, other convents are open, established purposely as a refuge or
House of Detention. Young mothers without husbands are here cared for,
and their babes are taken to an orphan asylum in the neighborhood to be
reared by the nuns for the priesthood and other religious orders. It
is the practice for parents to send wayward daughters to these homes,
while society is given to understand that they are elsewhere visiting
friends or finishing their education. After a time they return to their
families and no questions are asked.
[108] Too long have the people out of respect for the church,
maintained silence in the presence of gross abuses, while their
families have been ruined. I am a husband and a father, and I do not
wish the honor of my name and my family to be at the mercy of a wolf
who may introduce himself with the viaticum in his hands. I am a
father, and I do not wish that the sacred candor of my child should
be exposed to the lecherous attempts of a wretch in a soutane. The
religious authorities are on the eve of witnessing honest men follow
their wives, their daughters, and even their little boys to the
confessional, to assure themselves if the hand that holds there the
balance of divine justice is the hand of a respectable man or the hand
of a blackguard who should receive the lash in public with his neck in
the pillory.—_Letter from a gentleman._ A recent article in the Canada
“Review” asks if after giving to the clergy riches, respect and the
highest positions, it is too much to ask that they should leave to the
people their wives? Our wives and daughters whom they steal from us
by the aid of religion, and more especially of the confessional. An
immediate, firm and vigorous reform is needed. Our wives and daughters
must be left alone. Let the clergy keep away from the women, and
religion and the Catholics will be better off. This must be done and at
once.—_Montreal Correspondence of the Toronto Mail_, September 15, 1892.
CHAPTER THREE
[1] Maine says the bodies of customary law which were built up over
Europe were in all matters of first principles under ecclesiastical
influence, but the particular application of a principle once accepted
were extremely various.
[2] The Council held at Winchester in time of Archbishop Le Franc
contained a constitution that a marriage without the benediction of
a priest should not be deemed a legitimate marriage. Ecclesiastical
law as allowed in this country (Great Britain), from earliest times
the presence of a priest was required to constitute a legal marriage.
Reeves.—_History of English Law._
[3] Reeves History of English Law is a full and comprehensive
history of the English Law, accurate and judicious as well as full.
Lord Mansfield is said to have advised its author. In this work the
student is presented with all that is necessary that he should know
of the earliest law books. Bracton, Glanville and Fleta carefully
collected and presented. Reeves History of English Law, says Chancellor
Kent, contains the best account that we have of the progress of
the law from the time of the Saxons to the reign of Elizabeth.
Sherwood.—_Professional Ethics._
[4] Hefele’s, _Acts of Councils_.
[5] Church and priestly property is still untaxed in the United States.
At an early day the clergy were not required to sit on juries nor
permitted to cast a vote.
[6] Giessler, _Ecclesiastical History_.
[7] Doctrines in the Canon Law most favorable to the power of the
clergy are founded in ignorance, or supported by fraud and forgery,
of which a full account is found in Gerard. See _Mem. de l’Acad. des
Inscript._, Tom 18, p. 46. Also Voltaire’s essay upon general history.