Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

By trying to force this new article of faith on the consciences of his people, in a time that so many can judge for themselves, and read the records of past generations, he has pulled down the strongest column which was supporting the whole fabric of his church; he forever destroyed the best arguments which the priests had to offer to the ignorant, deluded multitudes which they kept so abjectly tied to their feet.

No words can sufficiently express the dignified and supreme contempt with which, before that epoch, the priests of Rome were speaking of the “new articles of faith, the novelties of the arch-heretics, Luther, Calvin, Knox, &c., &c!” How eloquent were the priests of Rome, before the 8th of December, 1854, when saying to their poor ignorant dupes: “In our holy Church of Rome there is no change, no innovations, no novelties, no new dogmas. We believe to-day just what our fathers believed, and what they have taught us; we belong to the apostolical church; which means we believe only what Apostles have believed and preached.” And the ignorant multitudes were saying: “Amen!”

But, alas, for the poor priests of Rome to-day; those dignified nonsenses, those precious and dear illusions, are impossible! They have to confess that those high-sounding denunciations against what they call the new doctrines of the heretics, were nothing but big guns loaded to the mouth to destroy the Protestants, which are discharging their deadly missiles against the crumbling walls of their Church of Rome. They have to confess that their pretensions to an unchangeable creed is all mere humbug, shameful lies; they have to confess that the Church of Rome is FORGING NEW DOGMAS, NEW ARTICLES OF FAITH; they do not any longer dare to say to the disciples of the Gospel: “Where was your religion before the days of Luther and Calvin?” for the secret voice of their conscience says to-day to the Roman Catholics: “Where was your religion before the 8th of December, 1854?” and they cannot answer.

There is an inexorable and irresistible logic in the minds even of the most unlearned men, which defies, to-day, all the sophisms of the priests of Rome, if they dare to speak again on their pet subjects: “the novelties and new dogmas of the Protestants.” There is a silent, but crushing voice, going, to-day, from the crowds to the priest, telling him: “Now, be quiet and silent on what you are used to call the novelties and new doctrines of the Protestants! for, are you not preaching to us an awful novelty? Are you not damning us to-day for disbelieving a thing which the church, during eighteen hundred years has, a hundred times, solemnly declared, by the mouth of the Popes, had never been revealed in the Holy Scriptures, had never been taught by the Fathers, had never been heard of by the church herself?”

I will never forget the sadness which overcame me when I received the order from Bishop O’Regan to proclaim that new dogma to my people, (then all Roman Catholics.) It was as if an earthquake had shaken and destroyed the ground on which my feet were resting. My most cherished illusions about the immutability and the infallibility of my church were crumbling down, in my intelligence, in spite of my efforts to keep them up. I have seen old priests, to whom I opened my mind on that subject, shed tears of sorrow on the injury this new dogma would do to the church.

The Archbishop of Paris, at the head of the most learned members of the clergy of France, had sent his protest to the Pope against this dogma before it was decreed; and he had eloquently foretold the deplorable consequences which would follow that innovation; but their warning voice failed to make any impression on the mind of the infatuated Pope.

And, we children of God, must we not acknowledge the hand of the Lord, in that blindness of “the man of sin!”

The days are not far away that a cry of joy will be heard from one end of the world to the other: “Fear God, and give glory to him! Babylon is fallen! Babylon is fallen! because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornications.”

For, when we see that “wicked one, who exalteth himself above all that is called God,” destroying himself by the excess of his own folly and impurities, we must bless the Lord.

The proclamation of this new dogma is one of those great moral iniquities which carry their punishment and their remedy in their own hands.