The full report was destroyed by the fanatical papist Bishop Bonner, at the beginning of the reign of Bloody Mary. (See "English Reformation.") But Bishop Burnett saw extracts from it "concerning 144 Houses, that contains abominations in it, equal to any that were in Sodom!"
Put this original evidence side by side with the confession already quoted: put with it the testimony gathered by Duke Leopold of Tuscany: add what Blanco White and Erasmus say; add what S. J. Mahoney and Manuel Ferrando say: buttress this mass of evidence with what the Fathers of the Church said, what all the escaped nuns and priests have alleged, and compare this mountain of proof with what you know about human nature—and how can you harbor a doubt that nunneries and monasteries are today what they always have been? They are houses of hidden iniquity, and nameless crimes— AND YOU KNOW IT!
That marvellous man of letters, Erasmus, who wrote for the Reformation, but who left Luther and others to fight for it, says this in his "Colloquies."—
"I hold up to censure those who entice lads and girls into monasteries against their parents' wills, abusing their simplicity or superstition, and persuading them that there is no chance of salvation but in the cloister. If the world were not full of such anglers; if countless minds had not been most miserably buried alive in such places, then I have been wrong in my conclusions. But if ever I am forced to speak out what I feel upon this subject, I will paint the portrait of these kidnappers, and so represent the magnitude of the evil, that every one shall confess I have not been wrong."
(Quoted in Day's "Monastic Institutions," p. 239.)
The infamous Liguori—a Roman Catholic "Saint"—calmly assumes that many inmates of the convents are captives, just as Erasmus had said they were, and he lays down the law to these helpless, kidnapped captives with all the malevolence of a grinning devil.
"Now that you are professed in a convent, and that it is impossible for you to leave it," &c. (Monastic Institutions, p. 294.)
Liguori threatens the captive, telling the poor creature that if she abandons herself to sadness and regret, she will be made to suffer a hell here, and another hereafter.
In other words, Smile, prisoner, smile! or we will make the convent a hell to you!
So says Saint Liguori, whose instructions to the priests, telling them what filthy questions they must ask the Catholic women, are so "obscene" that I was prosecuted by the Catholic Knights of Columbus for having quoted some of them. If I had quoted all that Liguori wrote in coaching the priests, and teaching them virtually how to disrobe women of their modesty as a prelude to their ruin, I suppose the Government would have ordered out the troops and had me shot.