Roman Catholicism in Spain

by Anonymous

Secondly. As the exorbitant ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome is bound up intimately, and by a well-known analogy, with absolute power and civil despotism, the confessional is converted into a political engine by a true espionage, by means of which is discovered every

liberal tendency, every germ of conspiracy or rebellion, and every thing that can offend the supreme authority.

In the epoch of the restoration of Ferdinand VII. to Spain, after his captivity in France, when the persecution of the liberal party became the essence of that monarch’s policy, the confessors were actively occupied, by command of the bishops, in these odious examinations and inquiries. Thus, the wife was made to denounce the husband, the son the father, and the friend the friend. Peace, thus disturbed, flew from the abodes of families; the clergy acquired new rights to the hatred of the nation,—for many were the persecutions to which the accusations, thus dragged from the weakness of penitents, gave rise. Freemasonry was considered then not only as a political crime, but as a challenge to pontifical bulls, which were fulminated against the mystery with violent anathemas. The penitent saw himself obligated to accuse, before the tribunal of the Inquisition, any persons whom he knew to be members of a lodge, although bound to such persons by the ties of kindred or friendship.

Thirdly. The most dangerous use of the power of examination, which the confessor exercises, is that of interrogating persons of the weaker sex. A woman who once kneels before a confessor renounces from that moment the most noble, the most pure, and the most amiable of the sentiments which can animate the bosom of her sex. The searching voice and tone of her judge breaks down with violence, at once, all those barriers which modesty and self-respect by turns have raised up

in her heart and conscience. Not only is she compelled to reveal the positive acts, gestures, and words, containing the least element of culpability or blame against the chastity and purity of her habits, but even the most vague and inevitable thoughts,—those against which woman recoils with indignation, and which she would even blush and refuse to give an account of to herself,—have all to be expressed and uttered by her lips without the least palliation or disguise. It is a fact generally admitted in Spain, and one spoken of without reserve in all classes of society, that the most uncontaminated and pure maiden rises from the confessional as well instructed in things of which before she was absolutely ignorant, as though she had come from a house of the vilest character. It is enough to indicate the nature of this abuse, in order to form some idea of its pernicious consequences. Women worthy of credit have declared over and over again that their first visit to the confessional opened the way to their perdition, by inflaming the imagination with ideas of a most voluptuous and obscene nature, and exciting their curiosity on subjects which had never before even entered into the mind or conception. Should any person doubt these statements, let him turn to any book of Roman Catholic devotion, which contains what is called, in ecclesiastical language, “examination of the conscience.” The famous treatise, “De Matrimonio,” cited in our introduction, by the Jesuit Sanchez, for the use of confessors of married women, contains particulars so filthy, and pictures, descriptive of certain sins, so utterly disgusting and obscene, that even the Court of Rome

has been obliged to order all copies of the work to be bought up and suppressed.

Fourthly and finally. Another of the great dangers of the indefinite authority of the confessor, with respect to penitents of the weaker sex, is the facility it offers for seduction.

Consider the situation of a single man in the presence of a young and beautiful woman, alone with her, and master of her conscience and all the secrets of her heart. How much denial, how much virtue must he not possess to resist the temptation which such circumstances bring before him! That great crimes do very commonly result from such circumstances in Roman Catholic countries, is proved by the existence of the penalties which the canon law imposes on the authors of such crimes, in the book which goes by the title of “De Solicitante in Confessione.” In almost all the cities of Spain are recounted scandalous examples of this class of abuses, and it is generally believed that in the greater number of the cases, criminal relations between the clergy and women of all classes had their origin in the confessional. When the people in Spain rose against the Inquisition in 1820, and sacked the archives of that tribunal, they found numerous informations by modest women against their confessors, who had assailed their virtue in the confessional. The interests of the clergy required that a veil should be thrown over those excesses, and thus we find but very few instances in which the Inquisition awarded punishment to the culprits.

With such efficacious instruments of power and of influence,

it is not surprising that the clergy and friars should wield an authority, without limit, over all the affairs of families. Spaniards, who are old enough to remember the moral state of their country towards the end of the last century, are well aware that there was scarcely a family of any importance in Spain which was not blindly subjected to the advice and even orders of some individual member of the priesthood. Nothing could be done without such advice and sanction. The clergy had great influence in the marriages, domestic disputes, business, studies, and even diversions, of all who recognised their superiority. They prohibited the reading of the most innocent books,—even those respected by “the Index.” They exacted acts of devotion, such as masses, romerias, novenas, and others, from which there resulted constant droppings of money into the coffers of the church. In short, it may be taken as a fact, that, until the period of the French invasion, the true government of the Spanish nation had been a theocracy in the hands of forty or fifty thousand individuals, freed from all responsibility with respect to the civil power, united among themselves by the bonds of a common interest, and forming a privileged caste, considered generally as the depositaries of divine power. All this rested upon the basis of confession.