What will they do, inside the cloistered convents?
No scream from within can be heard outside. Those dead walls tell no tales. The Law dares not scrutinize the interiors where the negro priests can penetrate; and we have no legal process to wring the dread Secret out of the nun's cell!
The Pope's Empire has been erected inside our Republic; and those who represent our State, and our Law, are afraid of the Italian Pope and the laws of the Italian church!
* * * * * * *
When the Commissioners sent by King Henry VII. visited the monasteries, the guilt of the inmates was so overwhelmingly evident that hardly any attempt at denial was made. The Confession of the Prior and Benedictines of St. Andrew's in Northampton is yet of record, and it is a fair example. They confessed that they "had lived in idleness, gluttony, and sensuality, for which the Pit of Hell was ready to swallow them up."
(Burnett, Book III., p. 227.)
Among the false "relics" that were found and which had long been used to swindle ignorant believers out of their money, were a Wing of the Angel that had brought to England the Spear which pierced Christ's side; some of the coals that had roasted the Most Blessed Saint Anthony; numerous pieces of "the true Cross;" a small bottle filled with Christ's blood; a Crucifix which would sometimes bow its head, sometimes roll its eyes and sometimes move its lips.
(All this fraudulent rubbish was seized, taken to London, and publicly destroyed.)
Bishop Burnett says—
"But for the lewdness of the confessors of the Nunneries, and the great corruption of that state, whole houses being found almost all with child."