The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

In the Church of Rome the thoughts and desires, the secret joys and fears of the soul, the very life of the wife, are sealed things to the husband. He has no right to look into the sanctuary of her heart; he has no remedy to apply to the soul; he has no mission from God to advise her in the dark hours of her anxieties; he has no balm to apply to the bleeding wounds, so often received in the daily battles of life; he must remain a perfect stranger in his own house.

The wife, expecting nothing from her husband, has no revelation to make to him, no favour to ask, no debt of gratitude to pay. Nay, she shuts all the avenues of her soul, all the doors and windows of her heart, against her husband. The priest, and the priest alone, has a right to her entire confidence; to him, and him alone, she will go and reveal all her secrets, show all her wounds; to him, and him alone, she will turn her mind, her heart and soul, in the hour of trouble and anxiety; from him, and him alone, she will ask and expect the light and consolation she wants. Every day, more and more, her husband will become as a stranger to her, if he does not become a real nuisance, and an obstacle to her happiness and peace.

Yes, through the confessional, an unfathomable abyss has been dug, by the Church of Rome, between the heart of the wife and the heart of the husband! Their bodies may be very near each other, but their souls, their real affections and their confidence, are at greater distance than the north is from the south pole of the earth. The confessor is the master, the ruler, the king of the soul; the husband, as the grave-yard keeper, must be satisfied with the carcase!

The husband has the permission to look on the outside of the palace; he is allowed to rest his head on the cold marble, of the outdoor steps; but the confessor triumphantly walks into the mysterious starry rooms, examines at leisure their numberless and unspeakable wonders; and, alone, he is allowed to rest his head on the soft pillows of the unbounded confidence, respect, and love of the wife.

In the Church of Rome, if the husband asks a favour from his wife, nine times in ten she will inquire from her father confessor whether or not she can grant him his request, and the poor husband will have to wait patiently for the permission of the master or the rebuke of the lord, according to the answer of the oracle which had to be consulted! If he gets impatient under the yoke, and murmurs, the wife will soon go to the feet of her confessor; to tell him how she has the misfortune to be united to a most unreasonable man, and how she has to suffer from him! She reveals to her "dear father" how she is unhappy under such a yoke, and how her life would be an unsupportable burden, had she not the privilege and happiness of coming often to his feet, to lay down her sorrows, hear his sympathetic words, and get his so affectionate and paternal advice! She tells him, with tears of gratitude, that it is only when by his side, and at his feet, she finds rest to her weary soul, balm to her bleeding heart, and peace to her troubled conscience.

When she comes from the confessional, her ears are long filled as with a heavenly music, the honeyed words of her confessor ring for many days in her heart, she feels it lonesome to be separated from him, his image is constantly before her mind, and the souvenir of his amiabilities is one of her most pleasant thoughts. There is nothing which she likes so much as to speak of his good qualities, his patience, his piety, his charity, she longs for the day when she will again go to confess, and pass a few hours by the side of that angelic man, in opening to him all the secrets of her heart, and in revealing all her ennuis. She tells him how she regrets that she cannot come oftener to see him, and receive the benefit of his charitable counsels; she does not even conceal from him how often, in her dreams, she feels too happy to be with him! More and more, every day, the gap between her and her husband widens; more and more, each day, she regrets that she has not the happiness to be the wife of such a holy man as her confessor! Oh! if it were possible...! But, then, she blushes or smiles, and sings a song.

Then again, I ask it, Who is the true lord, ruler, and master in that house? For whom does that heart beat and live?

Thus it is that that stupendous imposture, the dogma of auricular confession, does completely destroy all the links, the joys, the responsibilities, and divine privileges of the married life, and transforms it into a life of perpetual, though disguised, adultery. It becomes utterly impossible, in the church of Rome, that the husband should be one with his wife, and that the wife should be one with her husband: a "monstrous being" has been put between them both, called the confessor! Born in the darkest ages of the world, that being has received from hell his mission to destroy and contaminate the purest joys of the married life, to enslave the wife, to outrage the husband, and to damn the world!

The more auricular confession is practised, the more the laws of public and private morality are trampled under feet. The husband wants his wife to be his—he does not, and could not, consent to share his authority over her with anybody: he wants to be the only man who will have her confidence and her heart, as well as her respect and love. And so, the very moment that he anticipates the dark shadow of the confessor coming between him and the woman of his choice, he prefers silently to shrink from entering into the sacred bond; the holy joys of home and family lose their divine attractions; he prefers the cold life of an ignominious celibacy to the humiliation and opprobrium of the questionable privileges of an uncertain paternity.

France, Spain, and many other Roman Catholic countries, thus witness the multitude of those bachelors increasing every year. The number of families and births, in consequence, is fast decreasing in their midst; and, if God does not perform a miracle to stop those nations on their downward course, it is easy to calculate the day when they will owe their existence to the tolerance and pity of the mighty Protestant nations by which they are surrounded.