Paris, Nov. 11, 1874.
Rev. Mr. Camerle: We have the honor of addressing you the invoice of what we forwarded to you on the 12th of October. On account we have put to your credit 188 masses. We respectfully request you get said to the following intentions:
| 73 70 20 13 | for the dead, to the acquittal of Rev. Mr. Watters, pro defucto, ad intentionem donatis, ad intentionem donatis, | For the discharge of Rev. Mr. C—— | |
| —— | |||
| 176 |
Mr. Curate: Be kind enough to say these masses or have them said as soon as possible, and answer the reverend gentlemen who may inquire from you about their acquittal. The 188 masses mentioned in our letter of the 3rd inst., added to the 176 here mentioned, make 364 francs, the value of the goods sent you. We thought you would like to have the pamphlets of propaganda we address you.
Respectfully yours,
Signed: Ant. Levesques.
Hence it is that priests, in France and elsewhere, have gold watches, rich house furniture, and interesting books, purchased with the money paid by our poor deluded Canadian Catholics to their priests for masses which are turned into mercantile commodities in other places. It would be difficult to say who makes the best bargain between those merchants of masses, the priests to whom they are sold, or those from whom they are bought at a discount of twenty-five to thirty per cent.
The only evident thing is the cruel deception practiced on the credulity and ignorance of the Roman Catholics by their priests and bishops. To-day, the houses of Dr. Anthony Levesques in Paris are the most accredited in France. In 1874, the house of Mesme was doing an immense business with its stock of masses, but in an evil day, the Government suspected that the number of masses paid into their hands, exceeded the number of those celebrated through their hired priests. The suspicion soon turned into certainty when the books were examined. It was then found that an incredible number of masses, which were to empty the large room of purgatory, never reached their destination, but only filled the purse of the Parisian mass merchant; and so the unlucky Mesme was unceremoniously sent to the penitentiary to meditate on the infinite merits of the holy sacrifice of the mass, which had been engulfed in his treasures.
But these facts are not known by the poor Roman Catholics of Canada, who are fleeced more and more by their priests, under the pretext of saving souls from purgatory.
A new element of success in the large swindling operations of the Canadian priests has lately been discovered. It is well known that in the greater part of the United States, the poor deluded Irish pay one dollar to their priest, instead of a shilling, for a low mass. Those priests whose conscience are sufficiently elastic (as is often the case), keep the money without ever thinking of having the masses said, and soon get rich. But there are some whose natural honesty shrinks from the idea of stealing; but unable to celebrate all the masses paid for and requested at their hands, they send the dollars to some of their clerical friends in Canada, who, of course, prefer these one dollar masses to the twenty-five cent ones paid by the French Canadians. However, they keep that secret and continue to fill their treasury.