“I tell you again, that no consideration whatever will induce me to surrender my right as a Catholic priest and as an American citizen. By the first title you cannot interdict me, as long as I am a good priest, for the crime of wishing to live in my colony and among my people. By the second title, you cannot turn me out from my home.
“C. CHINIQUY.”
It was the first time that a Roman Catholic priest, with his whole people, had dared to speak such language to a Bishop of Rome on this continent. Never yet had the unbearable tyranny of those haughty men received such a public rebuke. Our fearless words fell as a bombshell in the camp of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of America.
With very few exceptions, the press of the State of Illinois, whose columns had so often echoed the cries of indignation raised everywhere against the tyranny of Bishop O’Regan, took sides with me. Hundreds of priests, not only from Illinois, but from every corner of the United States, addressed their warmest thanks to me for the stand I had taken, and asked me, in the name of God and for the honor of the church, not to yield an inch of my rights. Many promised to support us at the court of Rome, by writing themselves to the Pope, to denounce not only the Bishop of Illinois, but several others, who, though not so openly bad, were yet trampling under their feet the most sacred rights of the priests and the people. Unfortunately those priests gave me a saddening knowledge of their cowardice by putting in their letters “absolutely confidential.” They all promised to help me when I was storming the strong fortress of the enemy, provided I would go alone in the gap, and that they would keep themselves behind thick walls, far from shot and shell.
However, this did not disturb me, for my God knows it, my trust was not in my own strength, but in his protection. I was sure that I was in the right, that the Gospel of Christ was on my side, that all the canons and laws of the councils were in my favor.
My library was filled with the best books on the canons and laws passed in the great councils of my church. It was written in big letters in the celebrated work, “Histoire du droit canonique.” There is no arbitrary power in the Church of Christ,—Vol. iii., page 139.
The Council of Augsburg, held in 1548 (Can. 24), had declared that, “no sentence of excommunication will be passed, except for great crimes.”
The Pope St. Gregory had said: “That censures are null when not inflicted for great sins or for faults which have not been clearly proved.”
“An unjust excommunication does not bind before God those against whom it has been hushed. But it injures only the one who has proffered it.”—Eccl. Laws, by Hericourt, c. xxii., No. 50.
“If an unjust sentence is pronounced against any one, he must not pay any attention to it; for, before God and his Church, an unjust sentence cannot injure anybody. Let, then, that person do nothing to get such an unjust sentence repealed, for it cannot injure him.”—St. Gelace—The Pope—(Canoni bin est.)