Many of you have visited Paris, and do you not see there a lying-in hospital attached to every nunnery in the city? The same is to be seen in Madrid, and the principal cities of Spain.
I have seen them myself in Mexico, and in the city of Dublin, Ireland.
What is the object of these hospitals? It is chiefly to provide for the illicit offspring of priests and nuns, and such other unmarried females as the priests can seduce through the confessional.
But, it will be said, there are no lying-in hospitals attached to the nunneries in this country. True, there are not; but I know from my own experience, through the confessional, that it would be well, if there were.
There would be fewer abortions; there would be fewer infants strangled and murdered.
It is not generally known to Americans that the crime of procuring abortion, is a common, everyday crime in popish nunneries.
It is not known to Americans, that strangling and putting to death infants, is common in nunneries throughout this country.
It is done systematically and methodically, ACCORDING TO POPISH INSTRUCTIONS. "
The modus operandi is this—and then the ex-priest describes how the priest, the father of the child, baptises it, and thus insures its passage to Heaven, as per popish belief; and how the abbess, or Mother Superior, then shuts off the breath of the babe, at the nose: after which the poor little body is thrown into the lime-pit to be consumed.
Father Hogan also describes how the priests and monks give desired children to wives whose husbands are not productive. The woman is easily led to believe that God's will is enlisted in her behalf, and that He has commissioned the priest to accomplish what the husband failed at: result, happy wife, bouncing babe, rapturous husband, chuckling priest.