The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

I left the confessional irritated and confused. From the shame of what I had just heard, I dared not raise my eyes from the ground. I went into a corner of the church to do my penance, that is to recite the prayers which he had indicated to me. I remained for a long time in the church. I had need of a calm, after the terrible trial through which I had just passed. But vainly sought I for rest. The shameful questions which had just been asked from me, the new world of iniquity into which I been introduced, the impure phantoms by which my childish head had been defiled, confused and troubled my mind so strongly, that I began to weep bitterly.

I left the church only when forced to do so by the shades of night, and came back to my uncle's house, with a feeling of shame and uneasiness, as if I had done a bad action and feared lest I should be detected. My trouble was much increased when my uncle, jestingly, said: "now that you have been to confess, you will be a good boy. But if you are not a better boy, you will be a more learned one, if your confessor has taught you what mine did when I confessed for the first time."

I blushed and remained silent. My aunt said: "you must feel happy, now that you have made your confession: do you not?"

I gave an evasive answer, but could not entirely conceal the confusion which overwhelmed me. I went to bed early; but I could hardly sleep.

I thought that I was the only boy whom the priest had asked these polluting questions: but great was my confusion, the next day when on going to school, I learned that my companions had not been happier than I had been. The only difference was that, instead of being grieved as I was, they laughed at it.

"Did the priest ask you this and that," they would demand laughing boisterously; I refused to reply, and said: "are you not ashamed to speak of these things."

"Ah! Ah! how scrupulous you are:" continued they, "if it is not a sin for the priest to speak to us on these matters, how can it be a sin for us to laugh at it." I felt confounded, not knowing what to answer. But my confusion increased not a little, when soon after, I perceived that the young girls of the school had not been less polluted, or scandalized than the boys. Although keeping at a sufficient distance from us to prevent us from understanding every thing they had to say on their confessional experience, those girls were sufficiently near to let us hear many things which it would have been better for us not to know. Some of them seemed thoughtful, sad and shameful: but several laughed heartily at what they had learned in the confessional box.

I was very indignant against the priest; and thought in myself, that he was a very wicked man, for having put to us such repelling questions. But I was wrong. That priest was honest; he was only doing his duty, as I have known since, when studying the theologians of Rome. The Rev. Mr. Beaubien was a real gentleman, and if he had been free to follow the dictates of his honest conscience it is my strong conviction he would never have sullied our young hearts with such impure ideas. But what has the honest conscience of a priest to do in the confessional, except to be silent and dumb? The priest of Rome is an automaton, tied to the feet of the Pope by an iron chain. He can move, go right or left, up or down; he can think and act, but only at the bidding of the infallible god of Rome. The priest knows the will of his modern divinity only through his approved emissaries, embassadors and theologians. With shame on my brow, and bitter tears of regret flowing just now, on my cheeks, I confess that I have had myself to learn by heart those damning questions, and put them to the young and the old; who like me, were fed with the diabolical doctrines of the church of Rome, in reference to auricular confession.

Some time after, some people waylaid and whipped that very same priest, when during a very dark night he was coming back from visiting his fair young penitents the Misses Rs.... And the next day, the conspirators having met at the house of Dr. Stephen Taché, to give a report of what they had done to the half secret society to which they belonged, I was invited by my young friend Louis Casault[^[6]] to conceal myself with him, in an adjoining room, where we could hear every thing without being seen. I find in the old manuscripts of "my young year's recollections" the following address of Mr. Dubord.

Mr. President—"I was not among those who gave to the priest the expression of the public feelings with the eloquent voice of the whip: but I wish I had been, I would heartily have co-operated to give that so well deserved lesson to the father confessors of Canada, and let me give you my reasons for that.