“I? Confess to a priest? What for? Every night when I go to bed I confess my sins to the Virgin, and I can die as well after that as if I had received the holy oils,” said an old woman of deep and sincere faith.
“I do not allow my wife to go to confession,” said a master mason. “If she insisted I should refuse to provide for her. I will have no traffic with the gentry of the long skirts in my family.”
“No, I did not call in a priest when my husband was dying. He would have died all the sooner if I had, he hated them so. We poor people never call the priest if we can help it. We say ‘death gave us no time.’ The priests pretend to believe it; they are glad enough to be saved the trouble of coming to our houses because, if we send for them, they have to give the holy oils gratis. And we get buried all the same,” said a young widow who had lost husband and child within three months of each other.
“And you are not afraid the dead will stay longer in purgatory if they die without the holy oils?” I have frequently asked on hearing such statements.
“Why should they? My brother, may his soul rest in peace! was a good man. God will look after him without any priest putting in his oar. Yes, it is true that the priests talk of purgatory, but for my part I have never well understood what it is, and I do not care. I say a prayer for my dead on All Souls’ Day, and there is an end of it. There may be purgatory, God knows. But certainly I will not pay money to a priest on that account. I want it more than he does.”
The popular idea of purgatory is very confused, and many declare that they do not believe in it, while betraying in every word that they pray heartily for the souls that they assume to be there.
“Do you think I could believe that my brother or my mother are in purgatory, or that I shall go there, I, who would give the clothes off my back to the poor?”
You cannot pay a greater compliment to a sceptic of this kind than to say: “By your good deed of this or that kind you have certainly taken a soul (or two souls) out of purgatory to-day.” “Taking souls out of purgatory” is a favourite occupation. It is effected by prayer or by good works, not necessarily, so far as the popular belief can be understood, by both practices together.
“There are always seven souls clinging to the cloak of the Virgin—not the Virgin on any altar, but the real Virgin in heaven. They are all climbing up, one above the other, and by prayers or good works you can help the uppermost to get out and make room for the next.”
“And where do they go then?”