Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

For, let it be well understood, that it is absolutely impossible for one to study those questions of Roman Theology, and fathom those forms of iniquity without having his body as well as his mind plunged into a state the most degrading. Moreover, Rome does not even try to conceal the overwhelming power of this kind of teaching; she does not even attempt to make it a secret from the victims of her incomparable depravity, but BRAVELY TELLS them that the study of those questions will act with an irresistible power upon those organs, and without a blush says “that pollution must follow!!!”

But in order that the Church of Rome may more certainly destroy her victims, and that they may not escape from the abyss which she has dug under their feet, she tells them “There is no sin for you in those pollutions!” (Dens, vol. i., p. 315.)

But Rome must bewitch, so as the better to secure their destruction. She puts to their lips the cup of her enchantments, the more certainly to kill their souls, dethrone God from their consciences, and abrogate his eternal laws of holiness. What answer does Rome give those who reproach her with the awful impurity of her theology. “My theological works,” she answers, “are all written in Latin; the people cannot read them. No evil, no scandal, therefore, can come from them!” But this answer is a miserable subterfuge. Is this not the public acknowledgment that her theology would be exceedingly injurious to the people if it were read and understood by them?

By saying, “My theological works are written in Latin, therefore the people cannot be defiled, as they do not understand them,” Rome does acknowledge that these works would only act as a pestilence among the people were they read and understood by them. But are not the one hundred thousand priests of Rome bound to explain in every known tongue, and present to the mind of every nation, the theology contained in those books? Are they not bound to make every polluting sentence in them flow into the ears, imagination, hearts and minds of all the married and unmarried women whom Rome holds in her grasp?

I exaggerate nothing when I say that not fewer than half a million women every day are compelled to hear in their own language, almost every polluting sentence and impure notion of the diabolical science.

And here I challenge, most fearlessly, the Church of Rome to deny what I say, when I state that the daily average of women who go to confession to each priest, is ten. But let us reduce the number to five. Then the two hundred thousand priests who are scattered over the whole world, hear the confessions of one million women every day. Well, now, out of one hundred women who confess, there are at least ninety-nine whom the priest is bound in conscience to pollute, by questioning them on the matters mentioned in “The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional.” How can one be surprised at the rapid downfall of the nations who are under the yoke of the Pope?

The public statistics of the European, as well as of American nations, show that there is among Roman Catholics nearly double the amount of prostitution, bastardy, theft, perjury and murder, than is found among Protestant nations. Where must we, then, look for the cause of those stupendous facts, if not in the corrupt teachings of the theology of Rome. How can the Roman Catholic nations hope to raise themselves in the scale of Christian dignity and morality as long as there remain two hundred thousand priests in their midst, bound in conscience every day to pollute the minds, and the hearts of their mothers, their wives and their daughters.

And here let me say, once for all, that I am not induced to speak as I do from any motive of contempt or unchristian feeling against the theological professors who have initiated me into those mysteries of iniquity. The Rev. Messrs. Raimbault and Leprohon were, and in my mind they still are, as venerable as men can be in the Church of Rome. As I have been myself, and as all the priests of Rome are, they were plunged into the abyss without understanding it, into the abyss of the most stolid ignorance. They were crushed, as I was myself, under a yoke which bound their understanding to the dust and polluted their hearts without measure. We were embarked together on a ship, the first appearance of which was really magnificent, but the bottom of which was irremediably rotten. Without the true Pilot on board we were left to perish on unknown shoals. Out of this sinking ship the hand of God alone, in his merciful providence, rescued me. I pity those friends of my youth, but despise them? hate them? No! Never! Never!

Every time our theological teachers gave us our lessons, it was evident that they blushed in the inmost part of their souls. Their consciences as honest men were evidently forbidding them, on the one hand, to open their mouths on such matters, while, on the other hand, as slaves and priests of the Pope, they were compelled to speak without reserve.

After our lessons in theology, we students used to be filled with such a sentiment of shame that sometimes we hardly dared to look at each other; and, when alone in our rooms, those horrible pictures were affecting our hearts, in spite of ourselves, as the rust affects and corrodes the hardest and purest steel. More than one of my fellow-students told me, with tears of shame and rage, that they regretted to have bound themselves by perpetual oaths to minister at the altars of the Church.