Oh! would to God that the honest Romanists all over the world—for there are millions who, though deluded, are honest—could see what is going on in the heart, the imagination of the poor confessor when he is, there, surrounded by attractive women, and tempting girls, speaking to him from morning to night on things which a man cannot hear without falling! Then that modern but grand imposture called the Sacrament of Penance would soon be ended.
But here, again, who will not lament the consequence of the total perversity of our human nature? Those very same priests who, when alone in the presence of God, speak so plainly of the constant temptations by which they are assailed, and who so sincerely weep over the irreparable loss of their virtue of purity, when they think that nobody hears them, will yet in public deny with a brazen face those temptations. They will indignantly rebuke you as a slanderer if you say anything to lead them to suppose that you fear for their purity when they hear the confessions of girls or married women. There is not a single one of the Roman Catholic authors who have written on that subject for the priests, who has not deplored their innumerable and degrading sins against purity on account of the auricular confession; but those very men will be the first to try to prove the very contrary when they write books for the people. I have no words to say what was my surprise when, for the first time, I saw that this strange duplicity seemed to be one of the fundamental stones of my Church.
It was not very long after my ordination, when a priest came to me to confess the most deplorable things. He honestly told me that there was not a single one of the girls or married women whom he had confessed who had not been a secret cause of the most shameful sins in thoughts, desires, or actions; but he wept so bitterly over his degradation, his heart seemed so sincerely broken on account of his own iniquities, that I could not refrain from mixing my tears with his. I wept with him, and I gave him the pardon of all his sins, as I thought, then, I had the power and right to give it.
Two hours afterwards, that same priest, who was a good speaker, was in the pulpit. His sermon was on "The Divinity of Auricular Confession;" and, to prove that it was an institution coming directly from Christ, he said that the Son of God was making a constant miracle to strengthen His priests, and prevent them from falling into sins, on account of what they might have heard in the confessional!
The daily abominations, which are the result of auricular confession, are so horrible and so well known by the popes, the bishops, and the priests, that several times, public attempts have been made to diminish them by punishing the guilty priests; but all these have failed.
One of the most remarkable of those efforts was made by Pius IV. about the year 1500. A Bull was published by him, by which all the girls and the married women who had been seduced into sins by their confessors were ordered to denounce them; and a certain number of high church officers of the Holy Inquisition were authorized to take the depositions of the fallen penitents. The thing was at first tried at Seville, one of the principal cities of Spain. When the edict was first published the number of women who felt bound in conscience to go and depose against their father confessors was so great that, though there were thirty notaries and as many inquisitors to take the depositions, they were unable to do the work in the appointed time. Thirty days more were given, but the inquisitors were so overwhelmed with the numberless depositions that another period of time of the same length was given. But this, again, was found insufficient. At the end, it was found that the number of priests who had destroyed the purity of their penitents was so great that it was impossible to punish them all. The inquest was given up, and the guilty confessors remained unpunished. Several attempts of the same nature have been tried by other popes, but with about the same success.
But if those honest attempts, on the part of some well-meaning popes, to punish the confessors who destroy the purity of their penitents, have failed to touch the guilty parties, they are, in the good providence of God, infallible witnesses to tell to the world that auricular confession is nothing else than a snare to the confessor and his dupes. Yes, those Bulls of the popes are an irrefragable testimony that auricular confession is the most powerful invention of the devil to corrupt the heart, pollute the body, and damn the soul of the priest and his female penitent!
[CHAPTER IV].
how the vow of celibacy of the priests is made easy by auricular confession.