This short address was followed by the most deadly silence, not a voice was heard to insult him. Many, on the contrary, were so much impressed with the sad solemnity of this occurrence that they could not refrain their tears. The whole people went back to their homes with broken hearts. Mr. Courjeault left Bourbonnais that very night, never to return again. But the awful scandal he had given did not disappear with him.
Our Great and Merciful God, who, many times, has made the very sins and errors of his people to work for good, caused that public iniquity of the priest to remove the scales from many eyes and prepare them to receive the light, which was already dawning at the horizon. A voice from heaven was as if heard by many of us:
“Do you not see that in your Church of Rome, you do not follow the Word of God, but the lying traditions of men? Is it not evident that your priest’s celibacy is a snare and an institution of Satan?”
Many asked me to show them, in the Gospel, where Christ had established the law of celibacy.
“I will do better,” I added, “I will put the Gospel in your hands, and you will look for yourselves in that holy book what is said on that matter.”
The very same day I ordered a merchant, from Montreal, to send me a large box filled with New Testaments, printed by the order of the Archbishop of Quebec, and on the 25th as many from New York. Very soon it was known by every one of my emigrants that not only had Jesus never forbidden His apostles and priests to marry, but he had left them free to have their wives, and live with them, according to the very testimony of Paul: “Have we not the power to lead about with us a wife and sister, as well as the rest of the apostles and brethren of the Lord, and Cephas” (Cor. ix: 55); they saw, by their Gospel, that the doctrine of celibacy of the priests was not brought from heaven by Christ, but had been forged in darkness, to add to the miseries of man. They read and read over again these words of Christ:
“If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed.
“You shall know the truth, and it shall make you free.
“If, therefore, the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John viii: 31, 32, 36).
And those promises of liberty, which Christ gave to those who read and followed His Word, made their hearts leap with joy. They fell upon their minds as music from heaven. They also soon found, by themselves, that every time the disciples of Christ had asked Him who would be the first ruler, or the pope, in His church, he had always solemnly and positively said that, in His church, nobody would ever become the first, the ruler or the pope.