“As the writings of the Holy Fathers fill at least two hundred volumes in folio, it will not take us less than ten years of constant study to know on what question they are or are not unanimous! If, after that time of study, I find that they are unanimous on the question of orthodoxy, which I must believe and preach, all will be right with me. I will walk with a fearless heart to the gates of eternity, and with the certainty of following the true way of salvation. But if among fifty Holy Fathers there are forty-nine on one side and one only on the opposite side, in what awful state of distress will I be plunged! Will I not be then as a ship in a stormy night, after she has lost her compass, her masts and her helm. If I were allowed to follow the majority, there would always be a plank of safety to rescue me from the impending wreck. But the Pope has inexorably tied us to the unanimity. If my faith is not the faith of unanimity, I am forever damned. I am out of the Church!!
“What a frightful alternative is just before us! We must either perjure ourselves, by swearing to follow a unanimity which is a fable, in order to remain Roman Catholics, or we must plunge into the abyss of impiety and atheism by refusing to swear that we will adhere to a unanimity which never existed.”
It was visible, at the end of that long and stormy conference, that the fears and anxieties of Baillargeon and mine were partaken of by every one of the students in theology. The boldness of our expressions brought upon us a real storm. But our superior did not dare to face or answer a single one of our arguments; he was evidently embarrassed, and nothing could surpass his joy when the bell told him that the hour of the conference was over. He promised to answer us the next day; but the next day he did nothing but throw dust into our eyes, and abuse us to his heart’s content. He began by forbidding me to read any more of the controversial books I had bought a few months before, among which was the celebrated Derry discussion between seven priests and seven Protestants. I had to give back the well-known discussion between “Pope and Maguire,” and between Gregg and the same Maguire. I had also to give up the numbers of the Avenir and other books of Lamenais, which I had got the liberty, as a privilege, to read. It was decided that my intelligence was not clear enough, and that my faith was not sufficiently strong to read those books. I had nothing to do but to bow my head under the yoke and obey, without a word of murmur. The darkest night was made around our understandings, and we had to believe that that awful darkness was the shining light of God!! We rejected the bright truth which had so nearly conquered our minds, in order to accept the most ridiculous sophisms as gospel truths! We did the most degrading action a man can do—we silenced the voice of our conscience, and we consented to follow our superior’s views, as a brute follows the order of his master; we consented to be in the hands of our superiors like a stick in the hands of the traveler.
During the months which elapsed between that hard-fought, though lost battle, and the solemn hour of my priestly ordination, I did all I could to subdue and annihilate my thoughts on that subject. My hope was that I had entirely succeeded. But, to my dismay, that reason suddenly awoke, as from a long sleep, when I had perjured myself, as every priest has to do. A chill of horror and shame ran through all my frame in spite of myself. In my inmost soul a cry was heard from my wounded conscience. “You annihilate the Word of God! You rebel against the Holy Ghost! You deny the Holy Scriptures to follow the steps of sinful men! You reject the pure waters of eternal life, to drink the waters of death.”
In order to choke again the voice of my conscience, I did what my Church advised me to do—I cried to my wafer god and to the blessed Virgin Mary, that they might come to my help, and silence the voices which were troubling my peace by shaking my faith.
With the utmost sincerity, the day of my ordination, I renewed the promise that I had already so often made, and said in the presence of God and His angels, “I promise that I will never believe anything except according to the teachings of my Holy and Apostolic Church of Rome.”
And on that pillow of folly, ignorance and fanaticism I laid my head to sleep the sleep of spiritual death, with the two hundred millions of slaves whom the Pope sees at his feet.
And I slept that sleep till the God of our salvation, in His great mercy, awoke me, by giving to my soul the light, the truth and the life which are in Jesus Christ.
Chapter XVII.
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD: OR ANCIENT AND