Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

“Each one gives twice, nay, ten times as much as before to the poor cripple, making him promise that if he is cured, he will come back and show himself, that they may bless the good St. Anne with him. When he arrives here, he gives me sometimes one, sometimes five dollars, to say mass for him. I take the money, for I would be a fool to refuse it when I know that his purse has been so well filled. During the celebration of the mass, when he receives the communion, I hear generally, a great noise, cries of joy! A miracle! A miracle!! The crutches are thrown on the floor, and the cripple walks as well as you or I! And the last act of that religious comedy is the most lucrative one, for he fulfills his promise of stopping at every house he had ever been seen with his crutches. He narrates how he was miraculously cured, how his feet and legs became suddenly all right. Tears of joy and admiration flow from every eye. The last cent of that family is generally given to the impostor, who soon grows rich at the expense of his dupes. This is the plain, but true story, of ninety-nine out of every hundred of the cures wrought in my church. The hundredth, is upon people as honest, but, pardon me the expression, as blind and superstitious as you are; they are really cured, for they were really sick. But their cures are the natural effects of the great efforts of the will. It is the result of a happy combination of natural causes which work together on the frame, and kill the pain, expel the disease and restore to health, just as I was cured of a most horrible toothache, some years ago. In the paroxysm, I went to the dentist and requested him to extract the affected tooth. Hardly had his knife and other surgical instruments come before my eyes than the pain disappeared. I quietly took my hat and left, bidding a hearty ‘good-by’ to the dentist, who laughed at me every time we met, to his heart’s content.

“One of the weakest points of our religion is in the ridiculous, I venture to say, diabolical miracles, performed and believed every day among us, with the so-called relics and bones of the saints.

“But, don’t you know that, for the most part, these relics are nothing but chickens’ or sheeps’ bones. And what could not say, were I to tell you of what I know of the daily miraculous impostures of the scapulars, holy water, chaplets and medals of every kind. Were I a pope, I would throw all these mummeries, which come from paganism, to the bottom of the sea, and would present to the eyes of the sinners, nothing but Christ and Him crucified as the object of their faith, invocation and hope, for this life and the next, just as the Apostle Paul, Peter and James do in their Epistles.”

I cannot repeat here, all that I heard, that night, from that old relative, against the miracles, relics, scapulars, purgatory, false saints and ridiculous practices of the Church of Rome. It would take too long, for he spoke three hours as a real Protestant. Sometimes what he said to me seemed according to common sense, but as it was against the practices of my church, and against my personal practices, I was exceedingly scandalized and pained, and not at all convinced. I pitied him for having lost his former faith and piety. I told him at the end, without ceremony: “I heard, long ago, that the bishops did not like you, but I knew not why. However, if they could hear what you think and say here about the miracles of St. Anne, they would surely interdict you.”

“Will you betray me?” he added, “and will you report our conversation to the bishop?”

“No, my cousin,” I replied, “I would prefer to be burned to ashes. I will not sell your kind hospitality for the traitor’s money.”

It was two o’clock in the morning when we parted to go to our sleeping rooms. But that night was again a sleepless one to me. Was it not too sad and strange for me to see that that old and learned priest was secretly a Protestant!

The next morning, the crowds began to arrive, not by hundreds, but by thousands, from the surrounding parishes. The channel between “L’Isle D’Orleans” and St. Anne, was literally covered with boats of every size, laden with men and women who wanted to hear from my own lips, the history of my miraculous cure, and see, with their own eyes, the picture of the two saints who had appeared to me. At 10 A. M., more than 10,000 people were crowded inside and outside the walls of the Church.

No words can give an idea of my emotion and of the emotion of the multitude when, after telling them in a simple and plain way, what I then considered a miraculous fact, I disclosed to their eyes, and presented it to their admiration and worship. There were tears rolling on every cheek and cries of admiration and joy from every lip.

The picture represented me dying in my bed of sufferings, and the two saints seen, at a distance, above me, and stretching their hands, as if to say: “You will be cured.” It was hung on the walls, in a conspicuous place, where thousands and thousands have come to worship it from that day to the year 1858, when the curate was ordered by the bishop to burn it, for it had pleased our merciful God, that very year, to take away the scales which were on my eyes and show me his saving light, and I had published all over Canada, my terrible, though unintentional error, in believing in that false miracle. I, however, was honest in my belief in a miraculous cure; and the apparition of the two saints had left such a deep impression on my mind, that, I confess it to my shame, the first week after my conversion, I very often said to myself: “How is it that I now believe that the Church of Rome is false, when such a miracle has been wrought on me as one of her priests?”