“It had been unanimously decided that he should be whipped. Without my telling you by whom it was done, you may be assured that Mr. Beaubien’s flagellation of last night will never be forgotten by him!
“Heaven grant that this brotherly correction be a lesson to teach all the priests of Canada that their golden reign is over, that the eyes of the people are opened, and that their domination is drawing to an end!”
This discourse was listened to with deep silence, and Dr. Tache saw by the applause that followed that his speech had been the expression of everyone.
Next followed a gentleman named Dubord, who in substance spoke as follows:
“Mr. President:—I was not among those who gave the priest the expression of public feeling with the energetic tongue of the whip. I wish I had been, however; I would heartily have co-operated in giving that lesson to the priests of Canada. Let me give my reason.
“My daughter, who is twelve years old, went to confession as did the others a few weeks ago. It was against my will. I know by my own experience that of all actions confession is the most degrading in a person’s life. I can imagine nothing so well calculated to destroy for ever one’s self-respect as the modern invention of the confessional. Now, what is a person without self-respect—especially a woman? Without this all is lost to her forever.
“In the confessional everything is corruption of the lowest grade.
“In the confessional, a girl’s thoughts are polluted, her tongue is polluted, her heart is polluted—yes, and forever polluted! Do I need to tell you this? You know it as well as I do. Though you are now all too intelligent to degrade yourselves at the feet of a priest, though it is long since you have been guilty of that meanness, not one of you have forgotten the lessons of corruption received, when young, in the confessional. Those lessons were engraved on your memory, your thoughts, your hearts, and your souls like the scar left by the red-hot iron upon the brow of the slave, to remain a perpetual witness of his shame and servitude. The confessional is a place where one gets accustomed to hear, and repeat without a scruple, things which would cause even a prostitute to blush!
“Why are Roman Catholic nations inferior to nations belonging to Protestantism? Only in the confessional can the solution of that problem be found. And why are Roman Catholic nations degraded in proportion to their submission to the priest? It is because the oftener the individuals composing those nations go to confession the more rapidly they sink in the scale of intelligence and morality. A terrible example of this I had in my own house.
“As I said a moment ago, I was against my daughter going to confession; but her poor mother, who is under the control of the priest, earnestly wanted her to go. Not to have a disagreeable scene in my house, I had to yield to the tears of my wife.