The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Legislators of the so-called Christian and civilized nations, I ask it again from you, Where is your consistency, your justice, your love of public morality, when you punish so severely the man who has printed the questions put to the women in the confessional, while you honour and let free, and often pay the men whose public and private life is spent in spreading the very same moral poison in a much more efficacious, scandalous and shameful way, under the sacrilegious mask of religion?

The confessional is in the hands of the devil what West Point is to the United States, and Woolwich is to Great Britain, a training of the army to fight and conquer the enemy. It is in the confessional that 500,000 women every day, and 182,500,000 every year are trained by the Pope in the art of fighting against God, by destroying themselves and the whole world, through every imaginable kind of impurity and filthiness.

Once more, I request the legislators, the husbands, and the fathers in Europe, as well as in America, to read in Dens, Liguori, Debreyne, in every theological book of Rome, what their wives and their daughters have to learn in the confessional.

In order to screen themselves, the priests of Rome have recourse to the following miserable subterfuge:—"Is not the physician forced," they say, "to perform certain delicate operations on women? Do you complain of this? No; you let the physicians alone; you do not abuse them in their arduous and conscientious duties. Why, then, do you insult the physician of the soul, the confessor, in the accomplishment of his holy, though delicate, duties?

I answer, first, The art and science of the physician are approved and praised in many places of the Scriptures. But the art and science of the confessor are nowhere to be found in the holy records. Auricular confession is nothing else than a most stupendous imposture. The filthy and impure questions of the confessor, with the polluting answers they elicit, were put among the most diabolical and forbidden actions by God Himself the day that the Spirit of Truth, Holiness, and Life wrote the imperishable words,—"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth" (Eph. iv. 29).

Secondly, The physician is not bound by a solemn oath to remain ignorant of the things which it will be his duty to examine and cure. But the priest of Rome is bound, by the most ridiculous and impious oath of celibacy, to remain ignorant of the very things which are the daily objects of his inquiries, observations, and thoughts! The priest of Rome has sworn never to taste of the fruits with which he feeds, his imagination, his memory, his heart, and his soul day and night! The physician is honest in the performance of his duties; but the priest of Rome becomes in fact a perjured man every time he enters the confessional-box.

Thirdly, If a lady has a little sore on her small finger, and is obliged to go to the physician, for a remedy, she has only to show her little finger, allow the plaister or ointment to be applied, and all is finished. The physician never—no, never—says to that lady, "It is my duty to suspect that you have many other parts of your body which are sick; I am bound in conscience, under pain of death, to examine you from head to foot, in order to save your precious life from those secret diseases, which may kill you if they are not cured just now. Several of those diseases are of such a nature that you never dared perhaps to examine them with the attention they deserve, and you are hardly conscious of them. I know, madam, that this is a very painful and delicate thing for both you and me, that I should be forced to make that thorough examination of your person, but there is no help; I am in duty bound to do it. But you have nothing to fear. I am a holy man, who has made a vow of celibacy. We are alone; neither your husband nor your father will ever know the secret infirmities I will find in you; they will never even suspect the perfect investigation I will make, and they will, for ever, be ignorant of the remedy I will apply."

Has any physician ever been authorized to speak or act in this way with any of his female patients? No; never! never!

But this is just the way the spiritual physician, with whom the devil enslaves and corrupts women, acts. When the fair, honest, and timid spiritual patient has come to her confessor, to show him the little sore she has on the small finger of her soul, the confessor is bound in conscience to suspect that she has other sores,—secret, shameful sores! Yes, he is bound, nine times in ten; and he is always allowed to suppose that she does not dare to reveal them! Then he is advised by the Church to induce her to let him search every corner of the heart, and of the soul, and to inquire about every kind of contaminations, impurities, secret and shameful unspeakable matters! The young priest is drilled in the diabolical art of going into the most sacred recesses of the soul and the heart, almost in spite of his penitents. I could bring hundreds of theologians as witnesses to what I say.—But it is enough just now to cite three.

"Lest the Confessor should indolently hesitate in tracing out the circumstances of any sin, let him have the following versicle of circumstances in readiness: