Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

I bade my rebellious intelligence to be still, my private judgment to be mute, and, to distract my mind from this first temptation, I read that book of rules with the utmost attention. I had not gone through it all, before I understood why it was kept from the eyes of the curates and other secular priests. To my unspeakable amazement, I found that, from the beginning to the end, it speaks with the most profound contempt for them all. I said to myself: “What would be the indignation of the curates, if they should suspect that these strangers from France have such a bad opinion of them all! Would the good Canadian curates receive them as angels from heaven, and raise them so high in the esteem of the people, if they knew that the first thing an oblate has to learn, is that the secular priest is, to-day, steeped in immorality, ignorance, worldliness, laziness, gluttony, etc.; that he is the disgrace of the church, which would speedily be destroyed, was she not providentially sustained, and kept in the ways of God, by the holy monastic men whom she nurses as her only hope? Clear as the light of the sun on a bright day, the whole fabric of the order of the oblates presented itself to my mind, as the most perfect system of Pharisaism the world had ever seen.

The oblate who studies his book of rules, his only gospel, must have his mind filled with the idea of his superior holiness, not only over the poor sinful, secular priest, but over everyone else. The oblate alone is Christian, holy and saved; the rest of the world is lost! The oblate alone is the salt of the earth, the light of the world!

I said to myself: “Is it to attain this pharisaical perfection, that I have left my beautiful and dear parish of Kamouraska, and given up the honorable position which my God had given me in my country!”

However, after some time spent in these sad and despondent reflections, I again felt angry with myself; I quickly directed my mind to the frightful, unsuspected and numberless scandals I had known in almost every parish I had visited. I remembered the drunkenness of that curate, the impurities of this, the ignorance of another, the worldliness and absolute want of faith of others, and concluded that, after all, the oblates were not far from the truth in their bad opinions of the secular clergy. I ended my sad reflections by saying to myself: “After all, if the oblates live a life of holiness, as I expect to find here, is it a crime that they should see, feel and express among themselves, the difference which exists between a regular and a secular clergy? Am I come here to judge and condemn these holy men? No! I came here to save myself by the practice of the most heroic Christian virtues, the first of which, is that I should absolutely and forever give up my private judgment—consider myself as a corpse in the hand of my superior.”

With all the fervor of my soul, I prayed to God and to the Virgin Mary, day and night, that week, that I might attain that supreme state of perfection, when I would have no will, no judgment of my own. The days of that first week passed very quickly, spent in prayer, reading and meditation of the Scriptures, studies of ecclesiastical history and ascetical books, from half-past five in the morning till half-past nine at night. The meals were taken at the regular hours of seven, twelve and six o’clock, during which, with rare exceptions, silence was kept, and pious books were read. The quality of the food was good; but, at first, before they got a female cook to preside over the kitchen, everything was so unclean, that I had to shut my eyes at meals, not to see what I was eating. I should have complained, had not my lips been sealed by that strange monastic vow of perfection that every religious man is a corpse! What does a corpse care about the cleanliness or uncleanliness of what is put into its mouth? The third day, having drank at breakfast a glass of milk which was literally mixed with the dung of the cow, my stomach rebelled; a circumstance which I regretted exceedingly, attributing it to my want of monastic perfection. I envied the high state of holiness of the other fathers, who had so perfectly attained to the sublime perfection of submission that they could drink that impure milk, just as if it had been clean.

Everything went on well the first week, with the exception of a dreadful scare I had, at the dinner of the first Friday. Just after eating soup, when listening with the greatest attention to the reading of the life of a saint, I suddenly felt as if the devil had taken hold of my feet; I threw down my knife and fork, and I cried, at the top of my voice, “My God! My God! what is there?” and as quick as lightning, I jumped on my chair to save myself from Satan’s grasp. My cries were soon followed by an inexpressible burst of convulsive laughter from everyone.

“But what does that mean? Who has taken hold of my feet?” I asked.

Father Guigues tried to explain the matter to me, but it took him a considerable time. When he began to speak, an irrepressible burst of laughter prevented his saying a word. The fits of laughter became still more uncontrollable, on account of the seriousness with which I was repeatedly asking them who could have taken hold of my feet! At last, some one said, “It is Father Lagier who wanted to kiss your feet!” At the same time, Father Lagier, walking on his hands and knees, his face covered with sweat, dust and dirt, was crawling out from under the table, literally rolling on the floor, in such an uncontrollable fit of laughter, that he was unable to stand on his feet.

Of course, when I understood that no devil had tried to drag me by the feet, but that it was simply one of the father oblates, who, to go through one of the common practices of humility in that monastery, had crawled under the table, to take hold of the feet of everyone and kiss them, I joined with the rest of the community, and laughed to my heart’s content.

Not many days after this, we were going, after tea, from the dining-room to the chapel, to pass five or ten minutes in adoration of the wafer-god; we had two doors to cross, and it was pretty dark. Being the last who had entered the monastery, I had to walk first, the other monks following me; we were reciting, with a loud voice, the Latin Psalm: “Misere mihi Deus.” We were all marching pretty fast, when, suddenly, my feet met a large, though unseen object, and down I fell, and rolled on the floor; my next companion did the same, and rolled over me, and so did five or six others, who, in the dark had also struck their feet on that object. In a moment, we were five or six “Holy Fathers” rolling on each other on the floor, unable to rise up, splitting our sides with convulsive laughter. Father Brunette, in one of his fits of humility, had left the table a little before the rest, with the permission of the Superior, to lay himself flat on the floor, across the door. Not suspecting it, and unable to see anything, from the want of sufficient light, I had entangled my feet on that living corpse, as also the rest of those who were walking too close behind me to stop, before tumbling over one another.