Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

But what was my dismay when I discovered that those liturgies were nothing else than vile and audacious forgeries presented to the world, by my Popes and my church, as gospel truths.

I could not find words to express my sense of shame and consternation, when I became sure that the same church which had invented these apostolic liturgies, had accepted and circulated the false decretals of Isidore, and forged innumerable additions and interpolations to the writings of the Holy Fathers, in order to make them say the very contrary of what they intended.

How many times, when alone, studying the history of the shameless fabrications, I said to myself: “Does the man whose treasury is filled with pure gold, forge false coins, or spurious pieces of money? No! How, then, is it possible that my church does possess the pure truth, when she has been at work during so many centuries, to forge such egregious lies, under the names of liturgies and decretals, about the holy mass, purgatory, the supremacy of the Pope, etc.”

“If those dogmas could have been proved by the gospel and the true writings of the Fathers, where was the necessity of forging lying documents? Would the Popes and councils have treasuries with spurious bank bills, if they had had exhaustless mines of pure gold in hand? What right has my church to be called holy and infallible, when she is publicly guilty of such impostures?”

From my infancy I had been taught, with all the Roman Catholics, that Mary is the mother of God, and many times every day, when praying to her, I used to say, “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for me.”

But what was my distress when I read in the “Treatise on Faith and Creed,” by St Augustine, chapter iv., § 9, these very words, “When the Lord said: Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.” (John xix: 4.) He rather admonishes us to understand that, in respect of His being God, there was no mother for Him.

This was so completely demolishing the teachings of my church, and telling me that it was blasphemy to call Mary, mother of God, that I felt as if struck with a thunderbolt.

Several volumes might be written, if my plan were to give the story of my mental agonies, when reading the Holy Fathers, I found their furious battles against each other, and reviewed their fierce divisions on almost every subject. The horror of many of them at the dogmas which my church had taught to make me believe from my infancy, as the most solemn and sacred revelations of God to man, such as transubstantiation, auricular confession, purgatory, the supremacy of Peter, the absolute supremacy of the Pope over the whole church of Christ. Yes! what thrilling pages I would give to the world, were it my intention to portray in their true colors, the dark clouds, the flashing lights and destructive storms which, during the long and silent hours of the many nights I spent in comparing the Fathers with the Word of God and the teachings of my church. Their fierce and constant conflicts; their unexpected, though undeniable opposition to many of the articles of the faith I had to believe and preach; were coming to me day after day, as the barbed darts thrown at the doomed whale when coming out of the dark regions of the deep to see the light and breathe the pure air.

Thus, as the unexpected contradictions of the Holy Fathers to the tenets of my church, and their furious and uncharitable divisions among themselves, were striking me, I plunged deeper and deeper in the deep waters of the Fathers and the Word of God, with the hope of getting rid of the deadly darts which were piercing my Roman Catholic conscience. But it was in vain. The deeper I went, the more the deadly weapons would stick to the flesh and bone of my soul. How deep was the wound I received from Gregory the Great, one of the most learned Popes of Rome, against supremacy and universality of the power of the Pope of Rome as taught to-day, the following extracts from his writings will show: “But I confidently say that whosoever calls himself universal bishop, or desires to be called so, in his pride, he prefers himself to the rest. And he is led to error with a similar pride. For as that wicked one wishes to appear a God, above all men, whosoever he is, who alone desires to be called a supreme Bishop, extols himself above the other bishops.” (Bk. vii. Int. 15. Epist. 33, to Maurituus Augustus.)

These words wounded me very painfully. I showed them to Mr. Brassard, saying: “Do you not see here the incontrovertible proof of what I have told you many times, that, during the first six centuries of Christianity, we do not find the least proof that there was anything like our dogma of the supreme power and authority of the Bishop of Rome, or any other bishop, over the rest of the Christian world? If there is anything which comes to the mind with an irresistible force, when reading the Fathers of the first centuries, it is that, not one of them had any idea that there was, in the church, any man chosen by God, to be in fact or name, the universal and supreme pontiff. With such an undeniable fact before us, how can we believe and say that the religion we profess and teach is the same which was preached from the beginning of Christianity?”