"Madame, it is long since the priest is everything, and your husband nothing to you! There is a hidden and terrible power which governs you, it is the power of the priest: this you have often denied, but it can not be denied any longer, the Providence of God has decided, to day, that this power should forever be destroyed in my house, I want to be the only ruler of my family: from this moment the power of the priest over you is forever abolished. Whenever you go and take your heart and your secrets to the feet of the priest, be so kind as not to come back any more into my house as my wife."
This is one of the thousand and thousand specimens of the peace of conscience brought to the soul through auricular confession. I could give many similar instances, if it were my intention to publish a treatise on this subject, but as I only desire to write a short chapter, I will adduce but one other fact to show the awful deception practised by the Church of Rome when she invites persons to come to confession under the pretext that peace to the soul will be the reward of their obedience. Let us hear the testimony of another living and unimpeachable witness about this peace of the soul, before, during, and after auricular confession. In her remarkable book "Personal experience of Roman Catholicism" Miss Eliza Richardson, writes, (Page 34 and 35.)
"Thus I silenced my foolish quibbling, and went on to the test of a convert's fervour and sincerity in confession. And here was assuredly a fresh source of pain and disquiet, and one not so easily vanquished. "The theory had appeared, as a whole, fair and rational, but the reality, in some of its details, was terrible!"
"Divested, for the public gaze, of its darkest ingredients, and dressed up, in their theological works, in false and meretricious pretentions to truth and purity, it exhibited a dogma only calculated to exert a beneficial influence on mankind, and to prove a source of morality and usefulness. But oh, as with all ideals, how unlike was the actual!"
"Here, however, I may remark, in passing, the effect produced upon my mind by the first sight of the older editions of "the Garden of the Soul". I remember the stumbling-block it was to me, my sense of womanly delicacy was shocked. It was a dark page in my experience, when first I knelt at the feet of a mortal man to confess what should have been poured into the ear of God alone. I cannot dwell upon this...."
"Though I believe my Confessor was, on the whole, as guarded as his manners were kind; at some things I was strangely startled, utterly confounded."
"The purity of mind and delicacy in which I had been nurtured, had not prepared me for such an ordeal; and my own sincerity, and dread of committing a sacrilege, tended to augment the painfulness of the occasion. One circumstance especially I will recall, which my fettered conscience persuaded me I was obliged to name. My distress and terror, doubtless, made me less explicit than I otherwise might have been. The questioning, however, it elicited, and the ideas supplied by it, outraged my feelings to such an extent, that, forgetting all respect for my Confessor, and careless, even, at the moment, whether I received absolution or not, I hastily exclaimed, "I cannot say a word more," while the thought rushed into my mind, "all is true that their enemies say of them." Here, however prudence dictated to my questioner to put the matter no further; and the kind and almost respectful tone he immediately assumed, went far towards effacing an impression so injurious. On rising from my knees, when I should have gladly fled to any distance rather than have encountered his gaze, he addressed me in the most familiar manner on different subjects, and detained me some time in talking. What share I took in the conversation, I never knew and all that I remember, was my burning cheek, and inability to raise my eyes from the ground.
"Here I would not be supposed to be intentionally casting a stigma upon an individual. Nor am I throwing unqualified blame upon the priesthood. It is the system which is at fault, a system which teaches that things, even at the remembrance of which degraded humanity must blush in the presence of heaven and its angels, should be laid open, dwelt upon, and exposed in detail, to the sullied ears of a corrupt and fallen fellow-mortal who of like passions with the penitent at his feet, is thereby exposed to temptations the most dark and dangerous. But what shall we say of woman? Draw a veil! Oh purity, modesty! and every womanly feeling! a veil as oblivion, over the fearfully, dangerous experience thou art called to pass through! (page 37, and 38.")
"Ah! there are things that cannot be recorded! facts too startling, and at the same time, too delicately intricate, to admit a public portrayal, or meet the public gaze; But the cheek can blush in secret at the true images which memory evokes, and the oppressed mind shrinks back, in horror, from the dark shadows which have saddened and overwhelmed it. I appeal to converts, to converts of the gentler sex, and ask them, fearlessly ask them, what was the first impression made on your minds and feelings by the confessional? I do not ask how subsequent familiarization has weakened the effects: but when acquaintance was first made with it, how were you affected by it? I ask not the impure, the already defiled, for to such, it is sadly susceptible of being made a darker source of guilt and shame;—but I appeal to the pure minded and delicate, the pure in heart and sentiment. Was not your first impression one of inexpressible dread and bewilderment, followed by a sense of humiliation and degradation, not easily to be defined or supported? (page 39.) "The memory of that time (first auricular confession) will ever be painful and abhorent to me; though subsequent experience has thrown, even that, far into the back ground. It was my initiatory lesson upon subjects which ought never to enter the imagination of girlhood: my introduction into a region which should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with me, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with them for years, and I could not gainsay their statement.
"I was reluctant to believe more than I had experienced the proof, however, was destined to come in no dubious shape at a no distant day.... A dark and sullied page of experience was fast opening upon me; but so unaccustomed was the eye which scanned it, that I could not at all, at once, believe in its truth! And it was of hypocrisy so hateful, of sacrilege so terrible, and abuse so gross of all things pure and holy, and in the person of one bound by his vows, his position, and every law of his church, as well as of God, to set a high example, that, for a time, all confidence in the very existence of sincerity and goodness was in danger of being shaken, sacraments, deemed the most sacred, were profaned; vows disregarded, vaunted secrecy of the confessional covertly infringed, and its sanctity abused to an unhallowed purpose; while even private visitation was converted into a channel for temptation, and made the occasion of unholy freedom of words and manner. So ran the account of evil and a dire account it was. By it, all serious thoughts of religion were well nigh extinguished. The influence was fearful and polluting, the whirl of excitement inexpressible: I cannot enter into minute particulars here, every sense of feminine delicacy and womanly feeling shrink from such a task. This much, however, I can say that I, in conjunction with two other young friends, took a journey to a confessor, an inmate of a religious house, who lived at some distance, to lay the affair before him; thinking that he would take some remedial measures adequate to the urgency of the case. He heard our united statements, expressed great indignation, and, at once, commended us each to write and detail the circumstances of the case to the Bishop of the district. This we did; but of course, never heard the result. The reminiscences of these dreary and wretched months seem now like some hideous and guilty dream. It was actual familiarization with unholiest things! (page 63.)