“A culprit or a witness questioned by a judge, but in an illegal manner (of which the culprit, of course, is the judge) may swear that he knows nothing of the crime about which he is questioned, although he knows it well, meaning mentally, that he knows nothing in such manner as to answer.”—Alphonso Maria de Liguori, Popish theologian, bishop and founder of the order of Redemptorists, 1696-1787.
Again “Saint” Liguori: “He may swear that he knows nothing, when he knows that the person who committed the crime committed it without malice; or if he knows the crime, but secretly, and there has been no scandal. When a crime has been well concealed, the witness and even the criminal, may and even must, swear that the crime has never been committed. The accused may deny his crime under oath, understanding that he has not committed this crime in such a manner as to be obliged to confess it. He who has sworn to keep a secret is not obliged to keep his oath, if any consequential injury to him or to others is thereby caused. If any one has sworn before a judge to keep the truth, he is not obliged to say secret things. (A woman who has really committed adultery may deny it under oath, provided she has been to confess: for then the sin has been pardoned, and has really ceased to exist.) It is right to advise any one to commit a robbery, or a fornication in order to avoid a murder. We may be allowed to conceal the truth, or disguise it under ambiguous or equivocal words or signs, for a just cause, and where there is no necessity to confess the truth.” And Liguori is still a “saint” in the Roman ecclesiasticism, “where Satan's seat is,” and with whom Episcopalians, Church of England men, and Protestants generally, are trying to come together in a church union or federation, destined fortunately to an early decease.
“They are not to be called oaths, but rather perjury, which are in opposition to the welfare of the Romish church.”—The Lateran Council (“infallible”). “If any, either alone or before others, whether asked or of his own accord, or for the purpose of sport, or for any other object, swears that he has not done something else which he has done, or in a different way from that in which he has done it, or any other truth that is added, he does not really lie, nor is he perjured.”—Pope Innocent XI, another of the “saints.” 1611-1689. “A man may swear that he never did such a thing (though he actually did it), meaning within himself that he did not do so on a certain day, or before he was born, or understanding any other such [pg 523] circumstances, while the words which he employs have no such sense as would discover his meaning.” “Promises are not binding, when the person in making them had no intention to bind himself.”—“Saint” Antonio Escobar of Mendoza, a Spanish Casuist and Jesuit, 1589-1699 (“Papacy and Civil Power,” page 607). “I pronounce all Roman Catholic priests, bishops, popes, monks, friars and nuns to be the most deliberate and willful set of liars that ever infested this or any other country, or disgraced the name of religion.”—William Hogan, a prominent southern lawyer, formerly a priest, on page 172 of his book, “Popery.”
Stealing is authorized by Popish ecclesiasticism: “A servant has the right to rob his master, a child his father, and a poor man the rich. The poor man who has concealed the goods and effects of which he has need, may swear that he has nothing.” In Romish theology it is ordinarily a mortal sin to steal two pieces of gold; but, “If any one steal small sums at different times, either from the same or from different persons, not having the intention of stealing large sums, nor of causing a great damage, his sin is not mortal. If several persons steal from the same master, in small quantities, each in such a manner as not to commit a mortal sin, though each knows that all of these little thefts together cause a considerable damage to their master, yet no one of them commits a mortal sin, even when they steal at the same time. A son does not commit a mortal sin when he steals only twenty or thirty pieces of gold from a father who has an income of 150 pieces of gold.”—“Saint” Liguori.
Ecclesiasticism, the dominant power of the Gospel Age, authorizes murder: “A man who has been excommunicated by the Pope may be killed anywhere, because the Pope has an indirect jurisdiction over the whole world, even in temporal things.”—Dens, a Roman Catholic theological authority in his “Theologica Morales.” Pope Gregory VII (alias “Saint” Hildebrand), 1020-1085, pronounced that it was no murder to kill an excommunicated person. “This rule has been for 700 years and continues to be, part of the ecclesiastical law. One of the later popes has declared that the murder of a Protestant is so good a deed that it atones and more than atones for the murder of a Catholic.”—Lord Acton in the London Times, July 26, 1872. Says Dr. Isaac J. Lansing in “Romanism and the Republic;” “Every person who had anything to do with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a Roman Catholic. John Wilkes Booth was a Roman Catholic; Payne and Atseroth, also Dr. Nudd, who dressed Booth's leg; Garrett, in whose premises he was killed; also Harold was [pg 524] a Roman Catholic; Mrs. Suratt and her son were Roman Catholics; their house was the headquarters for Roman Catholics and for the Jesuit priests. All this was brought out before the military tribunal which condemned some of them to death. When John Suratt fled from Washington he was taken charge of by Jesuits, and under a Jesuit convoy was carried to France.”—Page 272.
“Catholics who shall assume the cross for the extermination of heretics, shall enjoy the same indulgences and be protected by the same privileges as are granted to those who go to the help of the Holy Land. We decree, further that all who may have dealings with heretics, shall be excommunicated.”—The Lateran Council (composed of candidates for Roman Catholic “saintship.”).
Papacy, the mother of harlots, also permits her clergy to become criminals: “Were even the lives of her ministers debased by crime, they are still within her pale, and therefore lose none of the powers with which her ministry invests them.”—Catechism of the Council of Trent. “A mortal sin is that which kills the soul and deserves hell,” says Archbishop John Hughes, of New York. Papal ecclesiasticism controls the education of the nations under threat of mortal sin: “Catholic electors (voters) in this country, who do not use their electoral (voting) power in behalf of separate (religious public) schools, are guilty of mortal sin. Likewise parents not making the sacrifices necessary to secure such schools, or sending their children to mixed schools. Moreover, the confessor (priest) who would give absolution to such parents, electors or legislators as support mixed schools, to the prejudice of separate schools, would be guilty of a mortal sin.”—Right Reverend Charbonnel, Bishop of Toronto, Canada.
The chastity of an attractive and obedient young nun may hang by the following slender thread: “When a nun receives a precept from her prelate, superior, or confessor, she should immediately execute it, not only to please them, but principally to please God, whose will is known by their command. If then, you receive a command from one who holds the place of God (a man-made priest!) you should observe it as if it came from God Himself. There is more certainty of doing the will of God by obedience to our superiors than by obedience to Jesus Christ should He appear in person and give His command. The nun shall be most certain of not having to render an account of the actions performed through obedience; for these the superior only, who commands them, shall be accountable.”—Liguori, “Saint,” in Popish constellation of fallen stars. According to Cardinal Manning, a bright star in the Roman [pg 525] Catholic heavens (page 89 of his “True Story of the Vatican Council”) the pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals: and the canonizing of “saints” comes under this head. Cardinal Newman on page 84 of his “Via Media,” 1887 edition, asserts concerning the canonizing of “Saints:”
“The infallibility of the church must certainly extend to this solemn and public act, canonization; and that because so serious a matter, affecting the worship of the faithful, the church, that is, the Pope, must be infallible.” One of the persons duly authorized by infallible Romish canonization is “Saint” Bridget, who lived in 1360. This “saint” says: “The Pope is a murderer of souls. He destroys the flock of Christ and fleeces it. More savage is he than Judas, and more unjust than Pilate, and worse and more wicked than Lucifer. He has exchanged all the ten commandments of God for this single one of his own, ‘Give me money, money, money.’ The Pope with his clergy are the forerunners of Antichrist, rather than the servants of Christ. The Pope's court on earth plunders the Heavenly court of Christ. The clergy never read the Book of God; but they are ever studying the book of this world. I once loved priests more than men and even angels. The kiss of those fornicating priests is the kiss of Judas when he betrayed our Lord!”—Montagu, pages 305-6.
An essential factor in the power of this evil one, and an important part of the iniquity of ecclesiasticism is the Romish confessional, which many Episcopal and Protestant ecclesiastics would, if they could, establish in the harlot daughters, the daughter churches, Protestantism. This feature is of Pagan origin. “Auricular confession was enjoined in the Elusinian mysteries, by Zoroaster in Persia, by Buddha in India, and was practiced by the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, the Mexicans before Cortez, the Peruvians before Pizarro, by the Japanese, the Siamese, and others.” The confessional has made of every priest a spy upon the privacy of the home, the inner secrets of business and the confidential affairs of city, state, province, and nation. Theoretically the confessions are confidential, as Dr. Dens says: “It is not lawful to reveal anything that is told in confession, though it be to avoid the greatest evil that can happen; but actually the secrets of the confessional are revealed.” “De Sanctis,” page 122, says: