Page images
PDF
EPUB

FRANCE.

Who has not been amazed and saddened by the downfall of France? How is it that her once mighty armies have melted away, that her brave sons have so easily been conquered and disarmed? How is it that France, fallen powerless at the feet of her enemies, has frightened the world by the spectacle of the incredible, bloody, and savage follies of the commune?

Do not look for the causes of the downfall, humiliation, and untold miseries of France anywhere else than in the confessional. For centuries has not that great country obstinately rejected Christ? Has she not slaughtered or sent to exile her noblest children, who wanted to follow the Gospel? Has she not given her fair daughters into the hands of the confessors, who have defiled and degraded them? How could woman, in France, teach her husband and sons to love liberty, and die for it, when she herself was a miserable, an abject slave? How could she form her husband and sons to the manly virtues of heroes, when her own mind was defiled and her heart corrupted by the priest?

The French woman had unconditionally surrendered the noble and fair citadel of her heart, intelligence, and womanly self-respect into the hands of her confessor long before her sons surrendered their swords to the Germans at Sedan and Paris. The first unconditional surrender had brought the second. The complete moral destruction of woman by the confessor in France has been a long work. It has required centuries to bow down, break, and enslave the noble daughters of France. Yes; but those who know France, know that that destruction is now complete as it is deplorable. The downfall of woman in France, and her supreme degradation through the confessional, is now un fait accompli,

which nobody can deny; the highest intellects have seen and confessed it.

One of the most profound thinkers of that unfortunate country, Michelet, has depicted that supreme and irretrievable degradation in a most eloquent book, "The Priest, The Woman, The Family, and not a voice has been raised to deny or refute what he has said.

Those who have any knowledge of history and philosophy know very well that the moral degradation of the woman is soon followed everywhere by the moral degradation of the nation, and the moral degradation of the nation is very soon followed by ruin and overthrow.

The French nation had been formed by God to be a race of giants. They were chivalrous and brave; they had bright intelligences, stout hearts, strong arms and a mighty sword. But as the hardest granite rock yields and breaks under the drop of water which incessantly falls upon it, so that great nation had to break and fall into pieces, under, not the drop, but the rivers of impure waters which, for centuries, have incessantly flowed in upon it from the pestilential fountain of the confessional. "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." (Proverbs xiv. 34.)

In the sudden changes and revolutions of these latter days, France is aiso sharing; and the Church of Rome has received a blow there, which, though perhaps only temporary in its character, will help to awaken the people to the corruption and fraud of the priesthood.

SPAIN.

Why is is it that Spain is so miserable, so weak, so poor, so foolishly and cruelly tearing down her own bosom, and reddening her fair valleys with the blood of her own children?

The principal, if not the only, cause of the down

fall of that great nation is the confessional. There, also, the confessor has defiled, degraded, and enslaved women, and women in turn have defiled and degraded their husbands and sons. Women have sown broadcast over their country the seeds of that slavery, of that want of Christian honesty, justice, and self-respect with which they had themselves been first imbued in the confessional.

But when you see, without a single exception, the nations whose women drink the impure and poisonous waters which flow from the confessional, sinking down so rapidly, do you not wonder how fast the neighboring nations, who have destroyed these dens of impurity, prostitution, and abject slavery, are rising up?

What a marvelous contrast is before our eyes! On the one side, the nations who allow woman to be degraded and enslaved at the feet of her confessor-France, Spain, Ireland, Mexico, etc., etc.,are there, fallen into the dust, bleeding, struggling, powerless, like the sparrow whose entrails are devoured by the vulture! On the other side, see how the nations whose women go to wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, are soaring up, as on eagle wings, in the highest regions of progress, peace and liberty.

If legislators could once understand the respect and protection they owe to women, they would soon, by stringent laws, prohibit auricular confession, as contrary to good morals and the welfare of society; for though the advocates of auricular confession have succeeded, to a certain extent, in blinding the public, and in concealing the abominations of the system under a lying mantle of holiness and religion, it is nothing else than a school of impurity.

I say more than that.

After twenty-five years

of hearing the confessions of the common people,

of the highest classes of society, of the laymen, of the priests, of the grand vicars and the bishops and the nuns, I conscientiously say before the world, that the immorality of the confessional is of a more dangerous and degrading nature than that which we attribute to the social evil of our great cities. The injury caused to the intelligence and to the soul in the confessional, as a general rule, is of a more dangerous nature and more irremediable, because it is neither suspected nor understood by its victims.- Chiniquy, "Priest, Woman and Confessional," page 128.

4.-TRANSUBSTANTIATION A SPECIES OF

CANNIBALISM.

Durand admits, that human infirmity, unaccustomed to eat man's flesh, would, if the substance were seen, refuse participation." Aquinas avows "the horror of swallowing human flesh and blood." "The smell, the species, and the taste of bread and wine remain," says the sainted Bernard, "to conceal flesh and blood, which if offered without disguise as meat and drink, might horrify human weakness." According to Alcuin in Pithou, "Almighty God causes the prior form to continue in condescension to the frailty of man, who is unused to swallow raw flesh and blood." "The partaker," says Pithou in the Canon Law, "drinks the likeness of blood, and therefore no horror is excited, nor anything done which might be ridiculed by pagans." The statements of Faber and Lyra are to the same effect. According to the Trentine Catechism, "The Lord's body and blood are administered under the species of bread and wine, on account of man's horror of eating and drinking human flesh and blood." These descriptions are shocking, and calculated, in some measure, to awaken the horror which they portray. The acci

dents, it appears, which remain after consecration, are like sugar, which conceals bitter medicine from a child and renders it pleasing and palatable. This is actually the simile of Hugo. He compares the forms of the bread and wine to the ingredients with which a physician would sweeten a bitter draught for a squeamish patient. Human flesh and blood, clothed in this manner with the external appearance of bread and wine, may, according to popish divinity, be swallowed without any disgust of nausea, and with pleasure and good taste. The apology, however, is a very silly device. The same reason might excuse the cannibals of New Zealand. The American savage might mix human gore with other food, and cover human flesh with something less offensive to the senses, so as to disguise the outward appearance, and then glut his appetite with a full meal. He would then enjoy the substance clothed with another exterior. All this, however, would not exempt the barbarian from the brutality of anthropophagy. The Romanist, on the supposition of the corporeal presence, swallows human flesh and blood as well as the Indian.Variations of Popery," page 422.

5. ADORATION OF THE HOST.

On page 253 of "The Mission Book," the question is asked, "Is it right to adore the blessed eucharist?" "A. Yes; we may and ought to adore it." In the canon of the mass the people are told.to adore the host when the priest elevates it. The Council of Trent decreed: "If any one should say that this Holy Sacrament should not be adored nor solemnly carried about in procession, nor held up publicly for the people to adore it, or that its worshipers be idolators: let him be accursed."

Of this idolatrous adoration of the elements of the Lord's Supper I have only to say: 1. Christ

« PreviousContinue »