Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

“The monastic axiom, that the highest point of perfection is attained only when you consider yourself a corpse in the hand of your superior, is anti-social and anti-Christian; it is simply diabolical. It transforms into a vile machine that man whom God had created in his likeness, and made forever free. It degrades below the brute that man whom Christ, by his death, has raised to the dignity of a child of God, and inheritor of an eternal kingdom in Heaven. Everything is mechanical, material, false, in the life of a monk and a nun. Even the best virtues are deceptions and lies. The monks and the nuns being perfect only when they have renounced their own free will and intelligence, to become corpses, can have neither virtues nor vices,

Their best actions are mechanical. Their acts of humility are to crawl under the table and kiss the feet of each other, or to make a cross on a dirty floor with the tongue, or lie down in the dust to let the rest of the monks or the nuns pass over them. Have you not remarked how these so-called monks speak with the utmost contempt of the rest of the world? One must have opportunities as I have had of seeing the profound hatred which exists among all monastic orders against each other. How the Dominicans have always hated the Franciscans, and how they both hate the Jesuits, who pay them back in the same coin. What a strong and merciless hatred divides the oblates, to whom we belong, from the Jesuits! The Jesuits never lose an opportunity of showing us their supreme contempt! You are aware that, on account of those bad feelings, it is absolutely forbidden to an oblate to confess to a Jesuit, as we know it is forbidden to the Jesuits to confess to an oblate, or to any other priest.

“I need not tell you, for you know that their vow of poverty is a mask to help them to become rich with more rapidity than the rest of the world. Is it not under the mask of that vow that the monks of England, Scotland, France and Italy became the masters of the richest lands of those countries, which the nations were forced, by bloody revolutions, to wrench from their grasp?

“I have seen much more of the world than you. When a young priest, I was the chaplain, confessor and intimate friend of the Duchesse De Berry, the mother of Henry V., now the only legitimate King of France. When, in the midst of those great and rich princes and nobles of France, I never saw such a love of money, of honor, of vain glory, as I have seen among the monks since I have become one of them. When the Duchess De Berry finished her providential work in France, after making the false step which ruined her, I threw myself into the religious order of the Chartreux. I have lived several years in their palatial monastery of Rome; have cultivated and enjoyed their sweet fruits in their magnificent gardens; but I was not there long, without seeing the fatal error I had committed in becoming a monk. During the many years I resided in that splendid mansion, where laziness, stupidity, filthiness, gluttony, superstition, tediousness, ignorance, pride and unmentionable immoralities, with very few exceptional cases, reigned supreme. I had every opportunity to know what was going on in their midst. Life soon became an unbearable burden, but for the hope I had of breaking my fetters. At last I found out that the best, if not the only way of doing this, was to declare to the Pope that I wanted to go and preach the gospel to the savages of America, which was and is still true.

“I made my declaration, and by the Pope’s permission, the doors of my gaol were opened, with the condition that I should join the order of the Oblates Immaculate, in connection with which I should evangelize the savages of the Rocky Mountains.

“I have found among the monks of Canada, the very same things I have seen among those of France and Italy. With very few exceptions, they are all corpses, absolutely dead to every sentiment of true honesty and real Christianity; they are putrid carcasses, which have lost the dignity of manhood.

“My dear Father Chiniquy,” he added, “I trust you as I trust myself, when I tell you for your own good, a secret which is known to God alone. When I am on the Rocky Mountains, I will raise myself up, as the eagles of those vast countries, and I shall go up to the regions of liberty, light and life; I will cease being a corpse, to become what my God has made me—a free and intelligent man. I will cease to be a corpse, in order to become one of the redeemed of Christ, who serve God in spirit and in truth.

“Christ is the light of the world; monachism is its night! Christ is the strength, the glory, the life of man; monachism is its decay, shame and death! Christ died to make us free; the monastery is built up to make slaves of us! Christ died that we might be raised to the dignity of children of God; monachism is established to bring us down much below the living brutes, for it transforms us into corpses! Christ is the highest conception of humanity; monachism is its lowest.

“Yes, yes, I hope my God will soon give me the favor I have asked so long. When I shall be on the top of the Rocky Mountains, I will, forever, break my fetters. I will rise from my tomb, I will come out from among the dead, to sit at the table of the redeemed, and eat the bread of the living children of God.”

I do regret that the remarkable monk, whose abridged views on monachism I have here given, should have requested me never to give his name, when he allows me to tell some of his adventures, which will make a most interesting romance. Faithful to his promise, he went, as an oblate, to preach to the savages of the Rocky Mountains, and there, without noise, he slipped out of their hands; broke his chains, to live the life of a freedman of Christ, in the holy bonds of a Christian marriage with a respectable American lady.