And you know that the Pope does know—for he also is a male like me and you.
Again, Erasmus asks what would Saint Augustine say now, if he were to see these convents and monasteries become "public brothels."
In those standard works, "The History of Prostitution" and "Human Sexuality," you will learn the fearful fact that the utter lewdness of nuns and of wives who had been debauched by the priests, became so universal that the trade of the professional harlot was almost entirely taken away from her. Why should loose men pay, when there were so many places of gratuitous entertainment?
(Lest you heed the deceptive talk which endeavors to convince you that the old tree is now bearing different fruit, read Hogan's "Popish Nunneries," McCabe's "Ten Years in a Monastery," McCarthy's up-to-date "Priests and People in Ireland;" and the astounding, undenied statements of Bishop Manuel Ferrando, in "The Converted Catholic" magazine of New York City.)
In Delisser's powerful book, "Pope, or President?" there is a masterly summing up against "Romanism as revealed by its own writers."
Among other witnesses, he cites the evidence of Mahoney, the priest who was examined by a Committee of the House of Commons.
"A very nefarious use was made of convents," testified this honest Irishman. His disclosures corroborated what another honest Irish priest, Hogan, said several centuries later.
"A woman ... is seduced into a convent to live in sin with the bishop and other confessors. It is not human to place a priest where he is allowed to fall, and suppose him innocent. Reader, commit your daughter to the soldier or hussar who can marry her, rather than to a Romish priest." ("Pope, or President," p. 59.)
In fact, Delisser's chapter on "Convent Exposed" is one of the most frightful that I ever read—doubly frightful because the Romanist writers therein quoted assume it to be their right to mistreat women, just as they please!
It is only in such a chapter, composed of citations from orthodox Roman Catholics, that you can obtain anything like a true conception of the priest's point of view.