Father Greenway, horrified at the disclosure, availed himself of Catesby’s permission to confide it to Father Garnet in confession. The latter[180] “was amazed,”and “said it was a most horrible thing, the like of which was never heard of, for many reasons unlawful, &c.,” and he proceeded to reprimand Father Greenway very severely for even giving ear to the matter.[181] By this, Endæmon the Jesuit, who tells the story, probably means “for discussing”the matter, and not refusing to listen to any defence of it. A priest can hardly be blamed for “hearing”anything in confession; yet this is what Endæmon says. Therefore it would appear that, whether Father Garnet acted imprudently or not, Father Greenway certainly did so—at any rate, in Father Garnet’s opinion.[182]
The position in which Catesby was placed with regard to the sacraments of confession and communion is delicate ground for a layman to approach; especially as nobody knows exactly what took place with regard to either. I am told, however, by those who ought to know, that this much may be said from my own point of view, without danger of theological error. Father Greenway, after telling Catesby in confession about the nature of the enormity he was meditating, must have refused him absolution and the sacraments if he persevered.[183] After so striking a sentence, what possible room is there for thinking that Catesby could have gone on without even a serious practical doubt as to the lawfulness of his object? Yet to have persevered with such a doubt would have put him at once into a state of mala fides. And if he became in a state of mala fides, as he was in the habit of going to the sacraments every week, he must have done one or other of two things. He must either have made sacrilegious communions, or he must have given up going to Holy Communion in order to commit the crime of proceeding with the Gunpowder Plot.
There is another point in connection with Catesby’s confession which is worthy of notice. When he first told the other conspirators that he had obtained the consent of a Jesuit to a case similar to the Gunpowder Plot, he could at least honestly say that no priest had at that time directly condemned the Gunpowder Plot itself as such; but, when Father Greenway had distinctly done so, he still seems to have left them under the impression that the Jesuit Fathers approved of the conspiracy “in general, though they knew not the particulars.”To do this was to act a lie! But it seems to have been after he had heard Greenway condemn the Plot in confession that he said something of the same kind to Sir Everard Digby for the first time, and in that case he told a lie! In short, if—mind, I say if—after hearing Greenway’s denunciation of the Plot, which, according to Father Pollen,[184] was in July, he gave Sir Everard Digby to understand, on first telling him of the plot, in the following September, that the scheme in general had the approval of the Jesuits, though they knew not the particulars, when he was well aware that he himself had told them the main particulars, and was certain that they did not approve of it, he obtained Sir Everard’s adherence to the plot by a direct fraud, and acted the part of an unscrupulous scoundrel.
Some devout people have endeavoured to find excuses for Catesby—not for his action with regard to the plot, of course, but for the condition of mind into which he fell preparatory to it—on the ground that he was a good Catholic. What is a good Catholic? I suppose a man who keeps God’s commandments and obeys his Church. One commandment is, “Thou shalt do no murder”; and one of the Pope’s orders, in Catesby’s time, was that the Catholics in England were not to rise against the Government. But then it is said that Catesby went to Holy Communion every week. Be it so! Another historical character, one Judas Iscariot, committed a still worse crime immediately after receiving his First Communion.
Robert Catesby was one of those most dangerous men to his own cause, a Catholic on Protestant principles. He acted in direct opposition to the commands of the Divine Founder of his Church, as well as to the precepts of the representative of that Divine Founder upon earth. He preferred his own private opinion to that of either. He considered his own Decalogue and Beatitudes juster and more sublime than the Almighty’s, his own intentions for the welfare of the Church wiser than the Holy Father’s, his own moral theology more orthodox than that of the Jesuits; and then this Protestant in practice—for Protestantism is not exclusively restricted to protests against such matters as the supremacy of the Pope or transubstantiation—took it upon himself to pose as a prominent champion of the Catholic Church.
I am not denying that Catesby fancied he was doing right; but whether that fancy was arrived at by right means or wrong is another question. He seems to have argued to himself that Pope, Priests, and Jesuits were not equal to the occasion; that there were times, of which his own was one, at which papal, spiritual, and even biblical teaching must for the moment be set on one side whilst the secular arm struck a violent blow for the relief of God’s suffering people; that, ante factum, the ecclesiastical powers could not consent to such a measure, but that, post factum, they would not only tolerate it, but approve of and rejoice at it. It came, therefore, to this, that on a most important point of morals—faith and morals, be it remembered, are the two chief provinces over which the Catholic Church claims power—a private individual, and not the Church, was to decide what was best; in short, Catesby was to protest against the teaching of the Church. Luther protested in matters of faith; Catesby protested in matters of morals. Both men seem to have believed that the time would come when the Church would see that what they did was for its welfare.
It has been said that in Father Garnet we have one of the most remarkable instances in history of the secresy of the confessional. On this point I venture no opinion; but I am bold enough to say that in Robert Catesby we have one of the most remarkable instances in history of the abuse of the confessional. Perhaps no man ever did more to foster that superstitious horror of “auricular confession”which has so long prevailed, and still prevails in this country.
In passing, I may meet a possible inquiry as to how it came about that so much should be known concerning what Catesby had told Greenway in confession, and what Greenway had told Garnet under the same sacred seal. The explanation is simple. Catesby had not only given Father Greenway permission to inform Father Garnet of the plot, under seal of confession, but had[185] “arranged that neither should be bound by that seal when lawfully examined by their superiors.” Another question naturally presents itself, much more connected with the man whose life I am writing, which I confess I do not find it so easy to answer. It is the following:—When Father Garnet noticed the sudden and suspicious confidences which had arisen between Catesby and Sir Everard Digby,[186] after their ride from Harrowden to Gothurst, did he, though tongue-tied as to what he knew of Catesby’s designs under seal of confession, know enough out of the confessional to warn Sir Everard against consenting to, or joining in, any illicit schemes which Catesby might propose to him and had he an extra-confessional causa loquendi?
Let us suppose that he asked himself this question. Even if he answered it in the affirmative, he might have refrained from acting, through fear that, in his vehemence in warning Sir Everard, there might be a danger of his breaking the seal of the confessional; or that in vaguely putting Sir Everard on his guard, he might raise the suspicion that knowledge obtained in the confessional was the occasion, or the impelling cause of that warning. Or he might reflect that, if cross-questioned by Sir Everard, it would be difficult to remember, at a moment’s notice, exactly how much of his knowledge of Catesby’s schemes was sealed by confession, and how much unsealed.
Yet when he looked at his young host, and at his charming and excellent wife, still a mere girl, but with two little children beside her, in their beautiful and happy home, the model of what a Christian home ought to be, and a centre of Catholic society; and when he considered that hitherto Sir Everard Digby had been as upright in character as in stature, and as distinguished in virtue as in appearance, might he not have told himself that any effort was worth making to try to save him from a terrible crime and its terrible consequences?