The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Are not his wife and daughters as precious to him as those horses? Is there not greater danger of indiscretions, mismanagement, irreparable and fatal errors on the part of the priest, dealing alone with the wife and daughters, than when driving the horses? No human act of folly, moral depravity, and want of common sense, can equal the permission given by a man to his wife to go and confess to the priest.

That day he abdicates the royal—I had almost said divine—dignity of husband; for it is from God that he holds it: his crown is forever lost, his sceptre broken!

What would you do to any one mean enough to peep or listen through the key-hole of your door, in order to hear or see everything that was said or done within? Would you show so little self-respect as to tolerate such indiscretion? Would you not rather take a whip or a cane, and drive away the villain? Would you not even expose your life to free yourself from impudent curiosity?

But what is the confessional, if not the key-hole of your house and of your very chamber, through which the priest can hear and see your most secret words and actions, nay, more, know your most intimate thoughts and aspirations?

Are you men to submit to such sly and insulting inquisition? Do you deserve the name of men who consent to put up with such ignoble affront and humiliation?

"The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the Church." "Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands, in everything" (Eph. v.) If these solemn words are the true oracles of divine wisdom, is not the husband divinely appointed the only adviser, counsellor, help of his wife, just as Christ is the only adviser, counsellor, and help of His Church?

If the Apostle was not an impostor when he said that the wife is to her husband what the body is to the head, and that the husband is to his wife what the head is to the body—is not the husband appointed by God to be the light, the guide of his wife? Is it not his duty, as well as his privilege and glory, to console her in her afflictions, strengthen her in her hours of weakness, keep her up when she is in danger of fainting, and encourage her when she is on the rough and uphill ways of life?

If Christ has not come to deceive the world through His Apostle, must not the wife go to her husband for advice? Ought she not to expect from him, and him alone, after God, the light she wants and the consolation she is in need of? Is it not to her husband, and to him alone, after God, she ought to look in her days of trial for help? Is it not under his leadership alone she must fight the battle of life and conquer? Are not this mutual and daily sharing of the anxieties of life, this constant shouldering on the battle-field, and this reciprocal and mutual protection and help renewed at every hour of the day, which form, under the eyes and by the mercy of God, the holiest and the purest charms of the married life? Is it not that unreserved confidence in each other which binds together those golden links of Christian love that make them happy in the very midst of the trials of life? Is it not through this mutual confidence alone that they are one as God wants them to be one? Is it not in this unity of thoughts, fears and hopes, joys and love, which come from God, that they can cheerfully cross the thorny valley, and safely reach the Promised Land?

The Gospel says that the husband is to his wife what Christ is to His Church! Is it not, then, a most sacrilegious iniquity for a wife to look to another rather than to her own husband for such advice, wisdom, strength, and life, as he is entitled, qualified, and ready to afford? As no other has the right to her love, so no other man has any right to her absolute confidence. As she becomes an adulteress the day that she gives her body to another man, is she any the less an adulteress, the day that she gives her confidence and trusts her soul to a stranger? The adultery of the heart and soul is not less criminal than the adultery of the body; and every time the wife goes to the feet of the priest to confess, does she not become guilty of that iniquity?

In the Church of Rome, through the confessional, the priest is much more the husband of the wife than the man to whom she was wedded at the foot of the altar. The priest has the best part of the wife. He has the marrow, when the husband has the bones. He has the juice of the orange, the husband has the rind. He has the soul and the heart; the husband has the skeleton. He has the honey; the husband has the wax cell. He has the succulent oyster; the husband has the dry shell. As much as the soul is higher than the body, so much are the power and privileges of the priest higher than the power and privileges of the husband in the mind of the penitent wife. As the husband is the lord of the body which he feeds, so the priest is the lord of the soul, which he also feeds. The wife, then, has two lords and masters, whom she must love, respect, and obey. Will she not give the best part of her love, respect, and submission to the one who is as much above the other as the heavens are above the earth? But as one cannot serve two masters together, will not the master who prepares and fits her for an eternal life of glory, certainly be the object of her constant, real, and most ardent love, gratitude, and respect, when the worldly and sinful man to whom she is married will have only the appearance or the crumbs of those sentiments? Will she not, naturally, instinctively serve, love, respect, and obey, as lord and master, the godly man whose yoke is so light, so holy, so divine, rather than the carnal man whose human imperfections are to her a source of daily trial and suffering?