Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Why those tears? Why that desolation? I wept over my sins? Alas! I confess it with shame, my sins did not call forth those tears. And yet how many sins had I already committed, for which Jesus shed his precious blood. But I confess my sins were not the cause of my desolation. I was rather thinking of my mother, who had taken such good care of me, and who had so well succeeded in keeping away from my thoughts those impure forms of sin, the thoughts of which had just now defiled my heart. I said to myself, Ah! if my mother had heard those questions; if she could see the evil thoughts which overwhelm me at this moment—if she knew to what school she sent me when she advised me in her last letter to go to confession, how her tears would mingle with mine! It seemed to me that my mother would love me no more—that she would see written upon my brow the pollution with which that priest had profaned my soul.

Perhaps the feeling of pride was what made me weep. Or perhaps I wept because of a remnant of that feeling of original dignity whose traces had still been left in me. I felt so downcast by the disappointment of being removed farther from the Saviour by that confessional which had promised to bring me nearer to Him. God only knows what was the depth of my sorrow at feeling myself more defiled and more guilty after than before my confession.

I left the church only when forced to do so by the shades of night, and came to my uncle’s house with that feeling of uneasiness caused by the consciousness of having done a bad action, and by the fear of being discovered.

Though this uncle, as well as most of the principal citizens of the village of St. Thomas, had the name of being a Roman Catholic, yet he did not believe a word of the doctrines of the Roman Church. He laughed at the priests, their masses, their purgatory, and especially their confession. He did not conceal that when young, he had been scandalized by the words and actions of a priest in the confessional. He spoke to me jestingly. This increased my trouble and my grief. “Now,” said he “you will be a good boy. But if you have heard as many new things as I did the first time I went to confess, you are a very learned boy;” and he burst into laughter.

I blushed and remained silent. My aunt, who was a devoted Roman Catholic, said to me, “Your heart is relieved, is it not, since you confessed all your sins?” I gave her an evasive answer, but I could not conceal the sadness that overcame me. I thought I was the only one from whom the priest had asked those polluting questions. But great was my surprise, on the following day, when going to school I learned that my fellow pupils had not been happier than I had been. The only difference was, that instead of being grieved, they laughed at it. “Did the priest ask you such and such questions?” they would demand laughing boisterously. I refused to reply, and said, “Are you not ashamed to speak of these things?”

“Ah! ah! how very scrupulous you are,” continued they. “If it is not a sin for the priest to speak to us on these matters, how can it be a sin for us?” I stopped, confounded, not knowing what to say.

I soon perceived that even the young school girls had not been less polluted and scandalized by the questions of the priest than the boys. Although keeping at a distance, such as to prevent us from hearing all they said, I could understand enough to convince me that they had been asked about the same questions. Some of them appeared indignant, while others laughed heartily.

I should be misunderstood were it supposed that I mean to convey the idea that this priest was more to blame than others, or that he did more than fulfil the duties of his ministry in asking these questions. Such, however, was my opinion at the time, and I detested that man with all my heart until I knew better. I had been unjust towards him, for this priest had only done his duty. He was only obeying the Pope and his theologians. His being a priest of Rome was, therefore, less his crime than his misfortune. He was, as I have been myself, bound hand and foot at the feet of the greatest enemy that the holiness and truth of God have ever had on earth—the Pope.

The misfortune of Mr. Beaubien, like that of all the priests of Rome, was that of having bound himself by terrible oaths not to think for himself, or to use the light of his own reason.

Many Roman Catholics, even many Protestants, refuse to believe this. It is, notwithstanding, a sad truth. The priest of Rome is an automaton—a machine which acts, thinks and speaks in matters of morals and of faith, only according to the order and the will of the Pope and his theologians.