"The nuns are not more virtuous than the monks. Widows took the veil in
order to be free, and not bound to one man."
Instead of being the wife of one man, the nun could be the mistress of
several.
(Dr. Angelo Rappaport, p. 36.)
Why was it that Irenæus and Epiphanius poured out such unprintable
descriptions of the immorality of those "heretics" who refused to marry
and who professed to be virgins? Did these Fathers of the Christian
Church grossly slander those celibate heretics? Were the men and the
women who indulged in those sexual excesses, while pretending to be
chaste, any better or any worse than the human creatures of today?
Was Cyprian libelling his own brethren and sisters when he described how
depraved, how licentious, how sodom-like was the conduct of the
so-called "virgins" of his time? Cyprian lived in the third century
after Christ, and he was speaking of the same phase of Christianity
which provoked the immortal passage in Gibbon. Carrying their brazen
hypocrisy to unheard of lengths, the monks and the nuns occupied the
same beds, and yet unblushingly vowed that they had passed through this
fiery furnace without the smell of fire on their garments!
If I were to quote the Latin in which Cyprian exposes these shameless
harlots and libertines, the great and good U. S. Government would
perhaps _again_ prosecute me for telling the truth on Roman Catholicism.
_Popery is the one thing that you must not tell the truth about, unless
you are prepared to withstand boycott, abuse, persecution and threats
against your property and life!_
(The curious are cited to "Elliott on Romanism," Vol. II., p. 408, and
to Cyprian to Pompanius, Book II., p. 181.)
So well understood was it that young men and young women needed each
other, sexually, that both in the Latin and in the Greek there was a
distinctive name given to these "holy virgins." The "soul marriage" of
the ancient church was as much like the affinity doings of the present
day, as Solomon's carryings on were like those of the Sultan of Turkey.
To the testimony of Cyprian may be added that of Chrysostom, who
bewailed the utter licentiousness of the "virgins."
Since Bishop Udalric in the year 606 wrote of the skulls of the six
thousand infants found in draining off some fish ponds at the command of
Gregory the Great, the slaughter of the babes has gone steadily on.
"When Pope Gregory ascertained that _the infants thus killed were born
from the concealed fornications of and adulteries of the priests_, he
recalled his decree, extolling the apostolic command. It is better to
marry than to burn." (Elliott II., p. 409.)
Yet, when we are told the same story by Father Chiniquy, Dr. Justin
Fulton, ex-priest William Hogan, ex-priest Fresenborg, ex-priest Manuel
Ferrando, ex-nun Margaret Shepherd, ex-nun Maria Monk, ex-priest Blanco
White, ex-priest Seguin, and by such submissive Catholics as Erasmus,
Rabelais, Campanella and scores of other unimpeachable witnesses, we are
more inclined to listen to the impudent denials of the lecherous priests
than to the evidence of _those who escape AND TELL_!
The denial made by the unmarried priests is at variance with their
looks, is at variance with admitted facts, is at variance with what we
ourselves know of the overwhelming strength of our carnal desires: yet
the impudent denial is _so_ brazen, _so_ persistent, and _so_
threatening, that we either accept it, or enter the plea of _nolle
contendere_.
The accusation against the pretended virgins involves so many apparently
good men and chaste women, that we shrink from remembering the
difference between publicity and privacy; we forget that the treacherous
inclination is not felt in the church and in the crowd, but that it
creeps to the secret couch, under cover of night, when there is silence,
freedom from interruption and security from detection.
We forget how this passion takes advantage of night, of undress, and of
secret contact of the physical man and woman, to heat their normal
blood, _no matter how sanctified they may really be in their daily
visible life_.
"Saint" Bernard of the 10th century exhausts his wrath upon the hideous
vices of the monks and nuns "behind the partition." "What abominable
lust!" cries this stern old anchorite. He exclaims--
"Would that those who cannot rule their sexuality would fear to give
their conduct the name of celibacy. It is better to marry than to
burn.... Take away from the church honorable marriage and the undefiled
bed, and do you not fill it with concubines, incestuous persons,
onanists, male concubines, and with every kind of unclean person?"
(Bernard's Sermons V. 29, cited in Elliott, II., 410.)
Take away honorable marriage from the priests, and what do you get in
place of the bed undefiled? Read again that tremendous sentence of Saint
Bernard, and then ask yourself, _Has human nature changed_?
A typical illustration of priestly seduction is the following:
"A lady of the name of Maria Catharine Barni, of Santa Croe, declared on
her death-bed, that she had been seduced through the confessional, and
that she had during twelve years maintained a continual intercourse with
priest Pachiani. He had assured her _that by means of the supernatural
light which he had received from Jesus and the holy virgin_, he was
perfectly certain that neither of them was guilty of sin, &c." (Secrets
of Female Convents, p. 58, cited by Elliott, Vol. II., p. 448.)
Substantially, that is the way every priest seduces every nun who yields
to him.
Almost the very formula is mentioned in Dr. Justin D. Fulton's book
which was submitted to Anthony Comstock, the modern Cato, before it was
published. And Dr. Fulton asserts that Pope Pius IX. authorized this
concubinage of priests with nuns, _by a formal Vatican decree of 1866_.