CHAPTER 16
There
are several imposing ceremonies at the ordination of a priest; and I will never
forget the joy I felt when the Roman Pontiff, presenting to me the Bible,
ordered me, with a solemn voice, to study and preach it. That order passed through
my soul as a beam of light. But, alas! those rays of light and life were soon
to be followed, as a flash of lightning in a stormy night, by the most sudden
and distressing darkness!
When holding the sacred volume, I accepted with unspeakable joy the command of
studying and preaching its saving truth; but I felt as if a thunderbolt had
fallen upon me when I pronounced the awful oath which is required from every
priest: "I will never interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to
the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers."
Many times, with the other students in theology, I had discussed the nature of
that strange oath; still more often, in the silence of my meditations, alone in
the presence of God, I had tried to fathom the bottomless abyss which, it
seemed to me, was dug under my feet by it, and every time my conscience had
shrunk in terror from its consequences. But I was not the only one in the
seminary who contemplated, with an anxious mind, its evidently blasphemous
nature.
About six months before our ordination, Stephen Baillargeon, one of my fellow
theological students, had said in my presence to our superior, the Rev. Mr.
Raimbault: "Allow me to tell you that one of the things with which I
cannot reconcile my conscience is the solemn oath we will have to take, `That
we will never interpret the Scriptures except according to the unanimous
consent of the Holy Fathers! We have not given a single hour yet to the serious
study of the Holy Fathers. I know many priests, and not a single one of them
has ever studied the Holy Fathers; they have not even got them in their
libraries! We will probably walk in their footsteps. It may be that not a
single volume of the Holy Fathers will ever fall into our hands! In the name of
common sense, how can we swear that we will follow the sentiments of men of
whom we know absolutely nothing, and about whom, it is more probable, we will
never know anything, except by mere vague hearsay?"
Our superior gave evident signs of weakness in his answer to that unexpected difficulty.
But his embarrassment grew much greater when I said: "Baillargeon cannot
contemplate that oath without anxiety, and he has given you some of his
reasons; but he has not said the last word on that strange oath. If you will
allow me, Mr. Superior, I will present you some more formidable objections. It
is not so much on account of our ignorance of the doctrines of the Holy Fathers
that I tremble when I think I will have `to swear never to interpret the
Scriptures, except according to their unanimous consent.' Would to God that I
could say, with Baillargeon, `I know nothing of the Holy Fathers: how can I
swear they will guide me in all my ways?' It is true that we know so little of
them that it is supremely ridiculous, if it is not an insult to God and man,
that we take them for our guides. But my regret is that we know already too
much of the Holy Fathers to be exempt from perjuring ourselves, when we swear
that we will not interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to their
unanimous consent.
"Is it not a fact that the Holy Fathers' writings are so perfectly kept
out of sight, that it is absolutely impossible to read and study them? But even
if we had access to them, have we sufficient time at our disposal to study them
so perfectly that we could conscientiously swear that we will follow them? How
can we follow a thing we do not see, which we cannot hear, and about which we
do not know more than the man in the moon? Our shameful ignorance of the Holy
Fathers is a sufficient reason to make us fear at the approach of the solemn
hour that we will swear to follow them. Yes! But we know enough of the Holy
Fathers to chill the blood in our veins when swearing to interpret the Holy
Scriptures only according to their unanimous consent. Please, Mr.Superior, tell
us what are the texts of Scripture on which the Holy Fathers are unanimous. You
respect yourself too much to try to answer a question which no honest man has,
or will ever dare to answer. And if you, one of the most learned men of France,
cannot put your finger on the texts of the Holy Bible and say, `The Holy
Fathers are perfectly unanimous on these texts!' How can we, poor young
ecclesiastics of the humble College of Nicolet, say, `The Holy Fathers are
unanimously of the same mind on those texts?' But if we cannot distinguish
today, and if we shall never be able to distinguish between the texts on which
the Holy Fathers are unanimous and the ones on which they differ, how can we
dare to swear before God and men to interpret every text of the Scriptures only
according to the unanimous consent of those Holy Fathers?
"By that awful oath, will we not be absolutely bound to remain mute as
dead men on every text on which the Holy Fathers have differed, under the
evident penalty of becoming perjured? Will not every text on which the Holy
Fathers have differed become as the dead carcass which the Israelites could not
touch, except by defiling themselves? After that strange oath, to interpret the
Scripture only according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers, will we
not be absolutely deprived of the privilege of studying or preaching on a text
on which they have differed?
"The consequences of that oath are legion, and every one of them seems to
me the death of our ministry, the damnation of our souls! You have read the
history of the Church, as we have it here, written by Henrion, Berrault, Bell,
Costel, and Fleury. Well, what is the prominent fact in those reliable
histories of the Church? Is it not that the Church has constantly been filled
with the noise of the controversies of Holy Fathers with Holy Fathers? Do we
not find, on every page, that the Holy Fathers of one century very often
differed from the Holy Fathers of another century in very important matters? Is
it not a public and undeniable fact, that the history of our Holy Church is
almost nothing else than the history of the hard conflict, stern divisions,
unflinching contradictions and oppositions of Holy Fathers to Holy Fathers?
"Here is a big volume of manuscript written by me, containing only
extracts from our best Church historians, filled with the public disputes of
Holy Fathers among themselves on almost every subject of Christianity.
"There are Holy Fathers who say, with our best modern theologians St.
Thomas, Bellarmine and Liguori that we must kill heretics as we kill wild
beasts; while many others say that we must tolerate them! You all know the name
of the Holy Father who sends to hell all the widows who marry a second time,
while other Holy Fathers are of a different mind. Some of them, you know well,
had very different notions from ours about purgatory. Is it necessary for me to
give you the names of the Holy Fathers, in Africa and Asia, who refused to
accept the supreme jurisdiction we acknowledge in the Pope over all churches? Several
Holy Fathers have denied the supreme authority of the Church of Rome you know
it; they have laughed at the excommunications of the Popes! Some even have
gladly died, when excommunicated by the Pope, without doing anything to
reconcile themselves to him! What do we find in the six volumes of letters we
have still from St. Jerome, if not the undeniable fact that he filled the
Church with the noise of his harsh denunciations of the scriptural views of St.
Augustine on many important points. You have read these letters? Well, have you
not concluded that St. Jerome and St. Augustine agreed almost only on one
thing, which was, to disagree on every subject they treated?
"Did not St. Jerome knock his head against nearly all the Holy Fathers of
his time? And has he not received hard knocks from almost all the Holy Fathers
with whom he was acquainted? Is it not a public fact that St. Jerome and
several other Holy Fathers rejected the sacred books of the Maccaabees, Judith,
Tobias, just as the heretics of our time reject them?
"And now we are gravely asked, in the name of the God of Truth, to swear
that we will interpret the Holy Scriptures only according to the unanimous
consent of those Holy Fathers, who have been unanimous but in one thing, which
was never to agree with each other, and sometimes not even with themselves.
"For it is a well-known fact, though it is a very deplorable one, for
instance, that St. Augustine did not always keep to the same correct views on
the text "Thou art Peter, and upon that rock I will build My church.'
After holding correct views on that fundamental truth he gave it up, at the end
of his life, to say, with the Protestants of our day, that `upon that rock
means only Christ, and not Peter.' Now, how can I be bound by an oath to follow
the views of men who have themselves been wavering and changing, when the Word
of God must stand as an unmoving rock to my heart? If you require from us an
oath, why put into our hands the history of the Church, which has stuffed our
memory with the undeniable facts of the endless fierce divisions of the Holy
Fathers on almost every question which the Scriptures present to our faith?
Would to God that I could say, with Baillargeon, I know nothing of the Holy
Fathers! Then I could perhaps be at peace with my conscience, after perjuring
myself by promising a thing that I cannot do.
"I was lately told by the Rev. Leprohon, that it is absolutely necessary
to go to the Holy Fathers in order to understand the Holy Scriptures! But I
will respectfully repeat today what I then said on that subject.
"If I am too ignorant or too stupid to understand St. Mark, St. Luke and
St. Paul, how can I be intelligent enough to understand Jerome, Augustine and
Tertullian? And if St. Matthew, St. John and St. Peter have not got from God
the grace of writing with a sufficient degree of light and clearness to be
understood by men of good-will, how is it that Justin, Clemens and Cyprian have
received from our God a favour of lucidity and clearness which He denied to His
apostles and evangelists? If I cannot rely upon my private judgment when
studying, with the help of God, the Holy Scriptures, how can I rely on my
private judgment when studying the Holy Fathers? You constantly tell me I
cannot rely on my private judgment to understand and interpret the Holy
Scriptures; but will you please tell me with what judgment and intelligence I
shall have to interpret and understand the writings of the Holy Fathers, if it
be not with my own private judgment? Must I borrow the judgment and intelligence
of some of my neighbours in order to understand and interpret, for instance,
the writings of Origen? or shall I be allowed to go and hear what that Holy
Father wants from me, with my own private intelligence? But again, if you are
forced to confess that I have nothing else but my private judgment and
intelligence to read, understand and follow the Holy Fathers, and that I not
only can but must rely on my own private judgment, without any fear, in that
case, how is it that I will be lost if I make use of that same private and
personal judgment when at the feet of Jesus, listening to His eternal and
life-giving words?
"Nothing distresses me so much in our holy religion as that want of
confidence in God when we go to the feet of Jesus to hear or read His
soul-saving words, and the abundance of self-confidence, when we go among
sinful and fallible men, to know what they say.
"It is not to the Holy Scriptures that we are invited to go to know what
the Lord saith: it is to the Holy Fathers!
"Would it be possible that, in our Holy Church, the Word of God would be
darkness, and the words of men light!
"This dogma, or article of our religion, by which we must go to the Holy
Fathers in order to know what `The Lord saith,' and not to the Holy Scriptures,
is to my soul what a handful of sand would be to my eyes it makes me perfectly
blind.
"When our venerable bishop places the Holy Scriptures in my hands and
commands me to study and peach them, I shall understand when he means, and he
will know what he says. He will give me a most sublime work to perform; and, by
the grace of God, I hope to do it. But when he orders me to swear that I will
never interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent
of the Holy Fathers, will he not make a perjured man of me, and will he not say
a thing to which he has not given sufficient attention? For to swear that we
will never interpret anything of the Scriptures, except according to the
unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers, is to swear to a thing as impossible and
ridiculous as to take the moon with our hands. I say more, it is to swear that
we ill never study nor interpret a single chapter of the Bible. For it is
probable that there are very few chapters of that Holy Book which have not been
a cause of serious differences between some of the Holy Fathers.
"As the writings of the Holy Fathers fill at least two hundred volumes in
folio, it will not take us less than ten years of constant study to know on
what question they are or are not unanimous! If, after that time of study, I
find that they are unanimous on the question of orthodoxy which I must believe
and preach, all will be right with me. I will walk with a fearless heart to the
gates of eternity, with the certainty of following the true way of salvation.
But if among fifty Holy Fathers there are forty-nine on one side and one only
on the opposite side, in what awful state of distress will I be plunged! Shall
I not be then as a ship in a stormy night, after she has lost her compass, her
masts, and her helm. If I were allowed to follow the majority, there would
always be a plank of safety to rescue me from the impending wreck. But the Pope
has inexorably tied us to the unanimity. If my faith is not the faith of
unanimity, I am for ever damned. I am out of the Church!
"What a frightful alternative is just before us! We must either perjure
ourselves, by swearing to follow a unanimity which is a fable, in order to
remain Roman Catholics, or we must plunge into the abyss of impiety and atheism
by refusing to swear that we will adhere to a unanimity which never
existed."
It was visible, at the end of that long and stormy conference, that the fears
and anxieties of Baillargeon and mine were partaken of by every one of the
students in theology. The boldness of our expressions brought upon us a real
storm. But our Superior did not dare to face or answer a single one of our
arguments; he was evidently embarrassed, and nothing could surpass his joy when
the bell told him that the hour of the conference was over. He promised to
answer us the next day; but the next day he did nothing but throw dust into our
eyes, and abuse us to his heart's content. He began by forbidding me to read
any more of the controversial books I had brought a few months before, among
which was the celebrated Derry discussion between seven priests and seven
Protestants. I had to give back the well known discussion between "Pope
and Maguire," and between Gregg and the same Maguire. I had also to give
up the numbers of the Avenir and other books of Lamenais, which I had got the
liberty, as a privilege, to read. It was decided that my intelligence was not
clear enough, and that my faith was not sufficiently strong to read those
books. I had nothing to do but to bow my head under the yoke and obey, without
a word or murmur. The darkest night was made around our understandings, and we
had to believe that that awful darkness was the shining light of God! We
rejected the bright truth which had so nearly conquered our mind in order to
accept the most ridiculous sophisms as gospel truths! We did the most degrading
action a man can do we silenced the voice of our conscience, and we consented
to follow our superior's views, as a brute follows the order of his master; we
consented to be in the hands of our superiors like a stick in the hands of the
traveler.
During the months which elapsed between that hard fought, through lost battle,
and the solemn hour of my priestly ordination, I did all I could to subdue and
annihilate my thoughts on that subject. My hope was that I had entirely
succeeded. But, to my dismay, that reason suddenly awoke, as from a long sleep,
when I had perjured myself, as every priest has to do. A chill of horror and
shame ran through all my frame in spite of myself. In my inmost soul a cry was
heard from my wounded conscience, "You annihilate the Word of God! You
rebel against the Holy Ghost! You deny the Holy Scriptures to follow the steps
of sinful men! You reject the pure waters of eternal life, to drink the waters
of death."
In order to choke again the voice of my conscience, I did what my Church
advised me to do I cried to my wafer god and to the blessed Virgin Mary that
they might come to my help, and silence the voices which were troubling my
peace by shaking my faith.
With the utmost sincerity, the day of my ordination, I renewed the promise that
I had already so often made, and said in the presence of God and His angels,
"I promise that I will never believe anything except according to the
teachings of my Holy and Apostolic Church of Rome."
And on that pillow of folly, ignorance, and fanaticism I laid my head to sleep
the sleep of spiritual death, with the two hundred millions of slaves whom the
Pope seem at his feet.
And I slept that sleep till the God of our salvation, in His great mercy, awoke
me, by giving to my soul the light, the truth, and the life which are in Jesus
Christ.
.
CHAPTER 17
I
was ordained a priest of Rome in the Cathedral of Quebec, on the 21st of
September, 1833, by the Right Reverend Signaie, first Archbishop of Canada. No
words can express the solemnity of my thoughts, the superhuman nature of my
aspirations, when the delegate of the Pope, imposing his hands on my head, gave
me the power of converting a real wafer into the real substantial body, blood, soul
and divinity of Jesus Christ! The bright illusion of Eve, as the deceiver told
her "Ye shall be as gods," was child's play compared with what I felt
when, assured by the infallible voice of my Church that I was not only on equal
terms with my Saviour and God, but I was in reality above Him! and that
hereafter I would not only command, but create Him!!
The aspirations to power and glory which had been such a terrible temptation in
Lucifer were becoming a reality in me! I had received the power of commanding
God, not in a spiritual and mystical, but in a real, personal and most
irresistible way.
With my heart full of an inexpressible joy and gratitude to God, and with all
the faculties of my soul raised to exaltation, I withdrew from the feet of the
pontiff to my oratory, where I passed the rest of the day in meditation on the
great things which my God had wrought in me.
I had, at last, attained the top of that power and holiness which my Church had
invited me to consider from my infancy as the most glorious gift which God had
ever given to man! The dignity which I had just received was above all the
dignities and the thrones of this world. The holy character of the PRIESTHOOD
had been impressed on my soul, with the blood of Christ, as an imperishable and
celestial glory. Nothing could ever take it away from me, in time or eternity.
I was to be a priest of my God for ever and ever. Not only had Christ let His
divine and priestly mantle fall on my shoulders, but He has so perfectly
associated me with Himself as the great and eternal Sacrificer, that I was to
renew, every day of my life, His atoning SACRIFICE! At my bidding, the only and
eternally begotten Son of my God was now to come into my hands in Person! The
same Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father was to come down every day
into my breast, to unite His flesh to my flesh, His blood to my blood, His
divine soul to my poor sinful soul, in order to walk, work and live in me and
with me in the most perfect unity and intimacy!
I passed that whole day and the greater part of the night in contemplating the
superhuman honours and dignities which my beloved Church had conferred on me.
Many times I fell on my knees to thank God for His mercies towards me, and I
could hardly speak to Him except with tears of joy and gratitude. I often
repeated the words of the Holy Virgin Mary: "My soul doth magnify the
Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Saviour."
The privileges granted to me were of a more substantial kind than those
bestowed upon Mary. She had been obeyed by Christ only when He was a child. He
had to obey me now, although He was in the full possession of His eternal
glory!
In the presence of God and His angels, I promised to live a holy life as a
token of my gratitude to Him. I said to my lips and my tongue, "Be holy
now; for you will not only speak to your God: you will give Him a new birth
every day!" I said to my heart, "Be holy and pure now; for you will
bear every day the Holy of Holies!" To my soul I said, "Be holy now;
for you will henceforth be most intimately and personally united to Christ
Jesus. You will be fed with the body, blood, soul and divinity of Him before
whom the angels do not find themselves pure enough!"
Looking on my table, where my pipe, filled with tobacco, and my snuffbox were
lying, I said: "Impure and noxious weeds, you will no more defile me! I am
the priest of the Almighty. It is beneath my dignity to touch you any
more!" and opening the window I threw them into the street, never to make
use of them again.
On the 21st of September, 1833, I had thus been raised to the priesthood; but I
had not yet made use of the divine powers with which I had been invested. The
next day I was to say my first Mass, and work that incomparable miracle which
the Church of Rome calls TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
As I have already said, I had passed the greater part of the night between the
21st and 22nd in meditation and thanksgivings. On the morning of the 22nd, long
before the dawn of day, I was dressed and on my knees. This was to be the most holy
and glorious day of my life! Raised, the day before, to a dignity which was
above the kingdoms and empires of the world, I was now, for the first time, to
work a miracle at the altar which no angel or seraph could do.
At my bidding Christ was to receive a new existence! The miracle wrought by
Joshua, when he commanded the sun and moon to stop, on the bloody plain of
Gibeon, was nothing compared to the miracle that I was to perform that day.
When the eternal Son of God would be in my hands, I was to present myself at
the throne of mercy, with that expiatory victim of the sins of the world pay
the debt, not only of my guilty soul, but of all those for whom I should speak!
The ineffable sacrifice of Calvary was to be renewed by me that day with the
utmost perfection!
When the bell rang to tell me that the hour was come to clothe myself with the
golden priestly robes and go to the altar, my heart beat with such a rapidity
that I came very near fainting. The holiness of the action I was to do, the
infinite greatness of the sacrifice I was about to make, the divine victim I
was to hold in my hands and present to God the Father! the wonderful miracle I
was to perform, filled my soul and my heart with such sentiments of terror, joy
and awe, that I was trembling from head to foot; and if very kind friends,
among whom was the venerable secretary of the Archbishop of Quebec, now the
Grand Vicar Cazault, had not been there to help and encourage me, I think I
would not have dared to ascend the steps of the altar.
It is not an easy thing to go through all the ceremonies of a Mass. There are
more than one hundred different ceremonies and positions of the body, which
must be observed with the utmost perfection. To omit one of them willingly, or
through a culpable neglect or ignorance, is eternal damnation. But thanks to a
dozen exercises through which I had gone the previous week, and thanks be to
the kind friends who helped and guided me, I went through the performances of
that first Mass much more easily than I expected. It lasted about an hour. But
when it was over, I was really exhausted by the effort made to keep my mind and
heart in unison with the infinite greatness of the mysteries accomplished by
me.
To make one's self believe that he can convert a piece of bread into God
requires such a supreme effort of the will, and complete annihilation of
intelligence, that the state of the soul, after the effort is over, is more
like death than life.
I had really persuaded myself that I had done the most holy and sublime action
of my life, when, in fact, I had been guilty of the most outrageous act of
idolatry! My eyes, my hands an lips, my mouth and tongue, and all my senses, as
well as the faculties of my intelligence, were telling me that what I had seen,
touched, eaten, was nothing but a wafer; but the voices of the Pope and his
Church were telling me that it was the real body, blood, soul and divinity of
Jesus Christ. I had persuaded myself that the voices of my senses and
intelligence were the voices of Satan, and that the deceitful voice of the Pope
was the voice of the God of Truth! Every priest of Rome has come to that
strange degree of folly and perversity, every day of his life, to remain a
priest of Rome.
The great imposture taught under the modern word TRANSUBSTANTIATION, when
divested of the glare which Rome, by her sorceries, throws around it, is soon
seen to be what it is a most impious and idolatrous doctrine.
"I must carry the `good God' to-morrow to a sick man," says the
priest to his servant girl. In plain French: "Je dois porter le `Bon Dieu'
demain a un malade," dit le pretre a sa servante; "mais il n'y en a
plus dans le tabernacle." "But there are no more particles in the
tabernacle. Make some small cakes that I may consecrate them to-morrow."
And the obedient domestic takes some wheat flour, for no other kind of flour is
fit to make the god of the Pope. A mixture of any other kind would make the
miracle of "transubstantiation" a great failure. The servant girl
accordingly takes the dough, and bakes it between two heated irons, on which
are graven the following figures, C.H.S. When the whole is well baked, she
takes her scissors and cuts those wafers, which are about four or five inches
large, into smaller ones of the size of an inch, and respectfully hands them
over to the priest.
The next morning the priest takes the newly-baked wafers to the altar, and
changes them into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. It was
one of those wafers that I had taken to the altar in that solemn hour of my
first Mass, and which I had turned into my Saviour by the five magical words
HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM!
What was the difference between the incredible folly of Aaron, on the day of
his apostasy in the wilderness, and the action I had done when I worshipped the
god whom I made myself, and got my friends to worship? Where, I ask, is the
difference between the adoration of the calf-god of Aaron and the wafer-god
which I had made on the 22nd of September, 1833. The only difference was, that
the idolatry of Aaron lasted but one day, while the idolatry in which I lived
lasted a quarter of a century, and has been perpetuated in the Church of Rome
for more than a thousand years.
What has the Church of Rome done by giving up the words of Christ, "Do
this in remembrance of Me," and substituting her dogma of
Transubstantiation? She has brought the world back to the old heathenism. The
priest of Rome worships a Saviour called Christ. Yes; but that Christ is not
the Christ of the gospel. It is a false and newly-invented Christ whom the
Popes have smuggled from the Pantheon of Rome, and sacrilegiously called by the
adorable name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
I have often been asked: "Was it possible that you sincerely believed that
the wafer could be changed into God by you?" And, "Have you really
worshipped that water as your Saviour?"
To my shame, and to the shame of poor humanity, I must say, "Yes." I
believed as sincerely as every Roman Catholic priest is bound to believe it,
that I was creating my own Saviour-God every morning by the assumed
consecration of the wafer; and I was saying to the people, as I presented it to
them, "Ecce Agnus Dei" "This is the Lamb of God, who takes away
the sins of the world; let us adore Him;" and prostrating myself on my
knees I was adoring the god made by myself, with the help of my servant; and
all the people prostrated themselves to adore the newlymade god!
I must confess, further, that though I was bound to believe in the existence of
Christ in heaven, and was invited by my Church to worship Him as my Saviour and
my God, I had, as every Roman Catholic has, more confidence, faith, and love
towards the Christ which I had created with a few words of my lips than towards
the Christ of heaven.
My Church told me, every day of my life, and I had to believe and preach it,
that though the Christ of heaven was my Saviour, He was angry against me on
account of my sins; that He was constantly disposed to punish me, according to
His terrible justice; that He was armed with lightning and thunder to crush me;
and that, were it not for His mother, who day and night was interceding for me,
I should be cast into that hell which my sins had so richly deserved. All the
theologians, with St. Liguori at their head, whose writings I was earnestly
studying, and which had received the approbation of infallible Popes, persuaded
me that it was Mary whom I had to thank and bless, if I had not yet been
punished as I deserved. Not only had I to believe this doctrine, but I had to
peach it to the people. The result was for me, as it is for every Roman
Catholic, that my heart was really chilled, and I was filled with terror every
time I looked to the Christ of heaven through the lights and teachings of my
Church. He could not, as I believed, look to me except with an angry face; He
could not stretch out His hand towards me except to crush me, unless His
merciful mother or some other mighty saint interposed their saving
supplications to appease His just indignation. When I was praying to that
Christ of the Church of Rome, my mind was constantly perplexed about the choice
I should make of some powerful protector, whose influence could get me a
favourable hearing from my irritated Saviour.
Besides this, I was told, and I had to believe it, that the Christ of heaven
was a mighty monarch, a most glorious king, surrounded by innumerable hosts of
servants, officers and friends, and that, as it would not do for a poor rebel
to present himself before his irritated King to get His pardon, but he must
address himself to some of His most influential courtiers, or to His beloved
mother, to whom nothing can be refused, that they might plead his cause; so I
sincerely believed that it was better for me not to speak myself to Jesus
Christ, but to look for some one who would speak for me.
But there were no such terrors or fears in my heart when I approached the
Saviour whom I had created myself! Such an humble and defenseless Saviour,
surely, had no thunder in His hands to punish His enemies. He could have no
angry looks for me. He was my friend, as well as the work of my hands. There
was nothing in Him which could inspire me with any fear. Had I not brought Him
down from heaven? And had He not come into my hands that He might hear, bless,
and forgive me? that He might be nearer to me, and I nearer to Him?
When I was in His presence, in that solitary church, there was no need of
officers, of courtiers, of mothers to speak to Him for me. He was no longer
there a mighty monarch, an angry king, who could be approached only by the
great officers of His court; He as now the rebuked of the world, the humble and
defenseless Saviour of the manger, the forsaken Jesus of Calvary, the forgotten
Christ of Gethsemane.
No words can give any idea of the pleasure I used to feel when alone,
prostrated before the Christ whom I had made at the morning Mass, I poured out
my heart at His feet. It is impossible for those who have not lived under those
terrible illusions to understand with what confidence I spoke to the Christ who
was then before me, bound by the ties of His love for me! How many times, in
the colder days of winter, in churches which had never seen any fire, with an
atmosphere 15 degrees below zero, had I passed whole hours alone, in adoration
of the Saviour whom I had made only a few hours before! How often have I looked
with silent admiration to the Divine Person who was there alone, passing the
long hours of the day and night, rebuked and forsaken, that I might have an
opportunity of approaching Him, and of speaking to Him as a friend to his friend,
as a repenting sinner to his merciful Saviour. My faith I should rather say my
awful delusion, was then so complete that I scarcely felt the biting of the
cold! I may say with truth, that the happiest hours I ever had, during the long
years of darkness into which the Church of Rome had plunged me, were the hours
which I passed in adoring the Christ whom I had made with my own lips. And
every priest of Rome would make the same declaration were they questioned on
the subject.
It is a similar principle of monstrous faith that leads widows in India to leap
with cries of joy into the fire which will burn them into ashes with the bodies
of their deceased husbands. Their priests have assured them that such a
sacrifice will secure eternal happiness to themselves and their departed
husbands.
In fact, the Roman Catholics have no other Saviour to whom they can betake
themselves than the one made by the consecration of the wafer. He is the only
Saviour who is not angry with them, and who does not require the mediation of
virgins and saints to appease His wrath. This is the reason why Roman Catholic
churches are so well filled by the poor blind Roman Catholics. See how they
rush to the foot of their altars at almost every hour of the day, sometimes
long before the dawn! Go to some of their churches, even on a rainy and stormy
morning, and you will see crowds of worshipers, of every age and from every
grade of society, braving the storm and the rain, walking through the mud to
pass an hour at the foot of their tabernacles!
How is it that the Roman Catholics, alone, offer such a spectacle to the
civilized world? The reason is very simple and plain. Every soul yearns for a
God to whom it can speak, and who will hear its supplications with a merciful
heart, and who will wipe away her penitential tears. Just as the flowers of our
gardens turn naturally towards the sun which gives them their colour, their
fragrance and their life, so every soul wants a Saviour who is not angry but
merciful towards those who come unto Him. A Saviour who will say to the weary
and heavy laden: "Come unto Me and I will give you rest." A God, in
fine, who is not armed with Thunder and Lightning, and does not require to be
approached only by saints, virgins, and martyrs; but who, through his son
Jesus, is the real, the true, and the only friend of Sinners.
When the people think there is such a God such a loving Saviour to be found in
the tabernacle, it is but natural that they should brave the storms and the
rains, to worship at His feet, to receive the pardon of their sins.
The children of light, the disciples of the gospel, who protest against the
errors of Rome, know that their Heavenly Father is everywhere ready to hear,
forgive, and help them. They know that it is no more at Jerusalem, nor on this
or that mountain, or at Church that God wants to be worshipped (John iv. 21.)
They know that their Saviour liveth, and is everywhere ready to hear those who
invoke His name; that He is no more in that desert, or in that secret chamber
(Matt. xxiv. 26). They know that He is everywhere that He is ever near to those
who look to His bleeding wounds, and whose robes are washed in His blood. They
find Jesus in their most secret closets when they enter them to pray; they meet
Him and converse with Him when in the fields, behind the counter, traveling on
railroads or steamers everywhere they meet with Him, and speak to Him as friend
to friend.
It is not so with the followers of the Pope. They are told contrary to the
gospel (Matt. xxiv. 23), that Christ is in this Church in that secret chamber
or tabernacle! cruelly deceived by their priests, they run, they brave the
storms to go as near as possible to that place where their merciful Christ
lives. They go to the Christ who will give them a hearty welcome who will
listen to their humble prayers, and be compassionate to their tears of
repentance.
Let Protestants cease to admire poor deluded Roman Catholics who dare the storm
and go to church even before the dawn of day. This devotion, which so dazzles
them, should excite compassion, and not admiration; for it is the logical
result of the most awful spiritual darkness. It is the offspring of the
greatest imposture the world has ever seen; it is the natural consequence of
the belief that the priest of Rome can create Christ and God by the
consecration of a wafer, and keep Him in a secret chamber.
The Egyptians worshipped God under the form of crocodiles and calves. The
Greeks made their gods of marble or of gold. The Persian made the sun his god.
The Hottentots make their gods with whalebone, and go far through the storms to
adore them. The Church of Rome makes her god out of a piece of bread! Is this
not Idolatry?
From the year 1833, the day that God in His mercy opened my eyes, my servant
had used more than a bushel of wheat flour, to make the little cakes which I
had to convert into the Christ of the Mass. Some of these I ate; others I
carried about with me for the sick, and others I placed in the tabernacle for
the adoration of the people.
I am often asked, "How is it that you could be guilty of such a gross act
of idolatry?" My only answer is the answer of the blind man of the gospel:
"I know not; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."
(John ix. 25).
.
CHAPTER 18
On
the day of my ordination to the priesthood, I had to believe, with all the
priests of Rome, that it was within the limits of my powers to go into all the
bakeries of Quebec, and change all the loaves and biscuits in that old city,
into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
pronouncing over them the five words: Hoc est enim corpus meum. Nothing would
have remained of these loaves and biscuits but the smell, the colour, the
taste.
Every bishop and priest of the cities of New York and Boston, Chicago, Montreal,
Paris, and London, ect., firmly believes and teaches that he has the power to
turn all the loaves of their cities, of their dioceses, nay, of the whole
world, into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
And, though they have never yet found it advisable to do that wonderful
miracle, they consider, and say, that to entertain any doubt about the power to
perform that marvel, is as criminal as to entertain any doubt about the
existence of God.
When in the Seminary of Nicolet, I heard, several times, our Superior, the Rev.
Mr. Raimbault, tell us that a French priest having been condemned to death in
Paris, when dragged to the scaffold had, through revenge, consecrated and
changed into Jesus Christ all the loaves of the bakeries which were along the
streets through which he had to pass; and though our learned Superior condemned
that action in the strongest terms, yet he told us that the consecration was
valid, and that the loaves were really changed into the body, blood, soul and divinity
of the Saviour of the world. And I was bound to believe it under pain of
eternal damnation.
Before my ordination I had been obliged to learn by heart, in one of the most
sacred books of the Church of Rome (Missale Romanum, p. 63) the following statement:
"If the host after consecration disappear, either by any accident, as by
the wind, or a miracle, or being taken and carried off by any animal; and if it
cannot be recovered, then he shall consecrate another."
And at page 57 I had learned, "If after consecration a fly has fallen in,
or anything of that sort, and a nausea be occasioned to the priest, he shall
draw it out and wash it with wine, and when the mass is finished, burn it, and
the ashes and lotion shall be thrown into the sacrarium. But if he have not a
nausea, nor fear any danger, he shall drink them [ashes and lotion] with the
blood."
In the month of January, 1834, I heard the following fact from the Rev. Mr.
Paquette, curate of St. Gervais, at a grand dinner which he had given to the neighbouring
priests:-
"When young, I was the vicar of a curate who could eat as much as two of
us, and drink as much as four. He was tall and strong, and he has left the dark
marks of his hard fists on the nose of more than one of his beloved sheep; for
his anger was really terrible after he had drank his bottle of wine.
"One day, after a sumptuous dinner, he was called to carry the good god
(Le Bon Dieu), to a dying man. It was in midwinter. The cold was intense. The
wind was blowing hard. There were at least five or six feet of snow, and the
roads were almost impassable. It was really a serious matter to travel nine
miles on such a day, but there was no help. The messenger was one of the first
marguilliers (elders) who was very pressing, and the dying man was one of the
first citizens of the place. The curate, after a few grumblings, drank a
tumbler of good Jamaica with his marguillier, as a preventive against the cold;
went to church, took the good god (Le Bon Dieu), and threw himself into the
sleigh, wrapped as well as possible in his large buffalo robes.
"Though there were two horses, one before the other, to drag the sleigh,
the journey was a long and tedious one, which was made still worse by an
unlucky circumstance. They were met half-way by another traveler coming from
the opposite direction. The road was too narrow to allow the two sleighs and
horses to remain easily on firm ground when passing by each other, and it would
have required a good deal of skill and patience in driving the horses to prevent
them from falling into the soft snow. It is well known that when once horses
are sunk into five or six feet of snow, the more they struggle the deeper they
sink.
"The marguillier, who was carrying the `good god,' with the curate,
naturally hoped to have the privilege of keeping the middle of the road, and
escaping the danger of getting his horses wounded and his sleigh broken. He
cried to the other traveler in a high tone of authority, `Traveler! let me have
the road. Turn your horses into the snow. Make haste, I am in a hurry. I carry
the good god!'
"Unfortunately that traveler was a heretic, who cared much more for his
horses than for the `good god.' He answered:
"`Le Diable emporte ton Bon Dieu avant que je ne casse le cou de mon
cheval!' `The d take your "good god" before I break the neck of my
horse. If your god has not taught you the rules of law and of common sense, I
will give you a free lecture on that matter,' and jumping out of his sleigh he
took the reins of the front horse of the marguillier to help him to walk on the
side of the road, and keep the half of it for himself.
"But the marguillier, who was naturally a very impatient and fearless man,
had drank too much with my curate, before he left the parsonage, to keep cool,
as he ought to have done. He also jumped out of his sleigh, ran to the
stranger, took his cravat in his left hand and raised his right to strike him
in the face.
"Unfortunately for him, the heretic seemed to have foreseen all this. He
had left his overcoat in the sleigh, and was more ready for the conflict than
his assailant. He was also a real giant in size and strength. As quick as
lightning his right and left fists fell like iron masses on the face of the
poor marguillier, who was thrown upon his back in the soft snow, where he
almost disappeared.
"Till then the curate had been a silent spectator; but the sight and cries
of his friend, whom the stranger was pommeling without mercy, made him lose his
patience. Taking the little silk bag which contained the `good god' from about
his neck, where it was tied, he put it on the seat of the sleigh, and said,
`Dear good god! Please remain neutral; I must help my marguillier. Take no part
in this conflict, and I will punish that infamous Protestant as he deserves.'
"But the unfortunate marguillier was entirely put hors de combat before
the curate could go to his help. His face was horribly cut three teeth were
broken the lower jaw dislocated, and the eyes were so terribly damaged that it
took several days before he could see anything.
"When the heretic saw the priest coming to renew the battle, he threw down
his other coat, to be freer in his movements. The curate had not been so wise.
Relying too much on his herculean strength, covered with his heavy overcoat, on
which was his white surplice, he threw himself on the stranger, like a big rock
with falls from the mountain and rolls upon the oak below.
"Both of these combatants were real giants, and the first blows must have
been terrible on both sides. But the `infamous heretic' probably had not drank
so much as my curate before leaving home, or perhaps he was more expert in the
exchange of these savage jokes. The battle was long, and the blood flowed
pretty freely on both sides. The cries of the combatants might have been heard at
a long distance, were it not for the roaring noise of the wind which at that
instant was blowing a hurricane.
"The storm, the cries, the blows, the blood, the surplice, and the
overcoat of the priest torn to rags; the shirt of the stranger reddened with gore,
made such a terrible spectacle, that in the end the horses of the marguillier,
though well trained animals, took fright and threw themselves into the snow,
turned their backs to the storm and made for home. They dragged the fragments
of the upset sleigh a pretty long distance, and arrived at the door of their
stable with only some diminutive parts of the harness.
"The `good god' had evidently heard the prayer of my curate, and he had
remained neutral; at all events, he had not taken the part of his priest, for
he lost the day, and the infamous Protestant remained master of the
battle-field.
"The curate had to help his marguillier out of the snow in which he was
buried, and where he had lain like a slaughtered ox. Both had to walk, or
rather crawl, nearly half a mile in snow to the knees, before they could reach
the nearest farmhouse, where they arrived when it was dark.
"But the worse is not told. You remember when my curate had put the box
containing the `good god' on the seat of the sleigh, before going to fight. The
horses had dragged the sleigh a certain distance, upset and smashed it. The
little silk bag, with the silver box and its precious contents, was lost in the
snow, and though several hundred people had looked for it, several days at different
times, it could not be found. It was only late in the month of June, that a
little boy, seeing some rags in the mud of the ditch, along the highway, lifted
them and a little silver box fell out. Suspecting that it was what the people
had looked for so many days during the last winter, he took it to the
parsonage.
"I was there when it was opened; we had the hope that the `good god' would
be found pretty intact, but we were doomed to be disappointed. The good god was
entirely melted away. Le Bon Dieu etait fondu!"
During the recital of that spicy story, which was told in the most amusing and
comical way, the priests had drunk freely and laughed heartily. But when the
conclusion came: "Le Bon Dieu etait fondu!"
"The good god was melted away!" There was a burst of laughter such as
I never heard the priests striking the floor with their feet, and the table
with their hands, filled the house with the cries, "The good god melted
away!"
Le Bon Dieu est fondu!' "Le Bon Kieu est fondu!" Yes, the god of
Rome, dragged away by a drunken priest, had really melted away in the muddy
ditch. This glorious fact was proclaimed by his own priests in the midst of
convulsive laughter, and at tables covered with scores of bottles just emptied
by them!
About the middle of March, 1839, I had one of the most unfortunate days of my
Roman Catholic priestly life. At about two o'clock in the afternoon, a poor
Irishman had come in haste from beyond the high mountains, between Lake
Beauport and the River Morency, to ask me to go and anoint a dying woman. It
took me ten minutes to run to the church, put the "good god" in the
little silver box, shut the whole in my vest pocket and jump into the
Irishman's rough sleigh. The roads were exceeding bad, and we had to go very
slowly. At 7 p.m. we were yet more than three miles from the sick woman's
house. It was very dark, and the horse was so exhausted that it was impossible
to go any further through the gloomy forest. I determined to pass the night at
a poor Irish cabin which was near the road. I knocked at the door, asked
hospitality, and was welcomed with that warm-hearted demonstration of respect
which the Roman Catholic Irishman knows, better than any other man, how to pay
to his priests.
The shanty, twenty-four feet long by sixteen wide, was built with round logs,
between which a liberal supply of clay, instead of mortar, had been thrown, to
prevent the wind and cold from entering. Six fat, though not absolutely
well-washed, healthy boys and girls, half-naked, presented themselves around
their good parents, as the living witnesses that this cabin, in spite of its
ugly appearance, was really a happy home for its dwellers.
Besides the eight human beings sheltered beneath that hospitable roof, I saw,
at one end, a magnificent cow, with her new-born calf, and two fine pigs. These
last two boarders were separated from the rest of the family only by a branch
partition two or three feet high.
"Please your reverence," said the good woman, after she had prepared
her supper, "excuse our poverty, but be sure that we feel happy and much
honoured to have you in our humble dwelling for the night. My only regret is
that we have only potatoes, milk and butter to give you for your supper. In
these backwoods, tea, sugar, and wheat flour are unknown luxuries."
I thanked that good woman for her hospitality, and caused her to rejoice not a
little by assuring her that good potatoes, fresh butter and milk, were the best
delicacies which could be offered to me in any place. I sat at the table, and
ate one of the most delicious suppers of my life. The potatoes were exceedingly
well-cooked the butter, cream and milk of the best quality, and my appetite was
not a little sharpened by the long journey over the steep mountains.
I had not told these good people, nor even my driver, that I had "Le Bon
Dieu," the good god, with me in my vest pocket. It would have made them
too uneasy, and would have added too much to my other difficulties. When the
time of sleeping arrived I went to bed with all my clothing, and I slept well;
for I was very tired by the tedious and broken roads from Beauport to these
distant mountains.
Next morning, before breakfast and the dawn of day, I was up, and as soon as we
had a glimpse of light to see our way, I left for the house of the sick woman
after offering a silent prayer.
I had not traveled a quarter of a mile when I put my hand into my vest pocket,
and to my indescribable dismay I found that the little silver box, containing
the "good god," was missing. A cold sweat ran through my frame. I
told my driver to stop and turn back immediately, that I had lost something
which might be found in the bed where I had slept. It did not take five minutes
to retrace our way.
On opening the door I found the poor woman and her husband almost beside themselves,
and distressed beyond measure. They were pale and trembling as criminals who
expected to be condemned.
"Did you not find a little silver box after I left," I said.
"O my God!" answered the desolate woman; "yes, I have found it,
but would to God I had never seen it. There it is."
"But why do you regret finding it, when I am so happy to find it here,
safe in your hands!" I replied.
"Ah; your reverence, you do not know what a terrible misfortune has just
happened to me, not more than half a minute before you knocked at the
door."
"What misfortune can have fallen upon you in so short a time," I
answered.
"Well, please your reverence, open the little box and you will understand
me."
I opened it, but the "good god" was not in it!! Looking in the face
of the poor distressed woman, I asked her, "What does this mean? It is
empty!"
"It means," answered she, "that I am the most unfortunate of
women! Not more than five minutes after you had left the house, I went to your
bed and found that little box. Not knowing what it was I showed it to my
children and to my husband. I asked him to open it, but he refused to do it. I
then turned it on every side, trying to guess what it could contain; till the
devil tempted me so much that I determined to open it. I came to this corner,
where this pale lamp is used to remain on that little shelf, and I opened it.
But, oh my God! I do not dare to tell the rest."
At these words she fell on the floor in a fit of nervous excitement her cries
were piercing, her mouth was foaming. She was cruelly tearing her hair with her
own hands. The shrieks and lamentations of the children were so distressing
that I could hardly prevent myself from crying also.
After a few moments of the most agonizing anxiety, seeing that the poor woman
was becoming calm, I addressed myself to the husband, and said: "Please
give me the explanation to these strange things?" He could hardly speak at
first, but as I was very pressing he told me with a trembling voice:
"Please your reverence; look into that vessel which the children use, and
you will perhaps understand our desolation! When my wife opened the little
silver box she did not observe the vessel was there, just beneath her hands. In
the opening, what was in the silver box fell into that vase, and sank! We were
all filled with consternation when you knocked at the door and entered."
I felt struck with such unspeakable horror at the thought that the body, blood,
soul and divinity of my Saviour, Jesus Christ, was there, sunk into that vase,
that I remained speechless, and for a long time did not know what to do. At
first it came into my mind to plunge my hands into the vase and try to get my
Saviour out of that sepulchre of ignominy. But I could not muster courage to do
so.
At last I requested the poor desolated family to dig a hole three feet deep in
the ground, and deposit it, with its contents, and I left the house, after I
had forbidden them from ever saying a word about that awful calamity.
In one of the most sacred books of the laws and regulations of the Church of
Rome (Missale Romanum), we read, page 58, "If the priest vomit the
Eucharist, if the species appear entire, let them be reverently swallowed,
unless sickness arise; for then let the consecrated species be cautiously
separated and laid up in some sacred place till they are corrupted; and
afterwards let them be cast into the sacrarium. But if the species do not
appear, let the vomit be burned, and the ashes cast into the sacarium."
When a priest of Rome, I was bound, with all the Roman Catholics, to believe
that Christ had taken His own body, with His own hand, to His mouth; and that
He had eaten Himself, not in a spiritual, but in a substantial material way!
After eating Himself, He had given it to each of His apostles, who then ate Him
also!!
Before closing this chapter, let the reader allow me to ask him, if the world,
in its darkest ages of paganism, has ever witnessed such a system of idolatry,
so debasing, impious, ridiculous, and diabolical in its consequences as the
Church of Rome teaches in the dogma of transubstantiation!
When, with the light of the gospel in hand, the Christian goes into those
horrible recesses of superstition, folly, and impiety, he can hardly believe
what his eyes see and his ears hear. It seems impossible that men can consent
to worship a god whom the rats can eat! A god who can be dragged away and lost
in a muddy ditch by a drunken priest! A god who can be eaten, vomited, and
eaten again by those who are courageous enough to eat again what they have
vomited!!
The religion of Rome is not a religion: it is the mockery, the destruction, the
ignominies caricature of religion. The Church of Rome, as a public fact, is
nothing but the accomplishment of the awful prophecy: "Because they
received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause
God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." (2
Thess. ii. 10, 11.)
.
CHAPTER 19
On
the 24th September, 1833, the Rev. Mr. Casault, secretary of the Bishop of
Quebec, presented tome the official letters which named me the vicar of the
Rev. Mr. Perras, arch-priest, and curate of St. Charles, Rivierre Boyer, and I
was soon on my way, with a cheerful heart, to fill the post assigned to me by
my Superior.
The parish of St. Charles is beautifully situated about twenty miles south-west
of Quebec, on the banks of a river, which flows in its very midst, from north
to south. Its large farm-houses and barns, neatly white-washed with lime, were
the symbols of peace and comfort. The vandal axe had not yet destroyed the
centenary forests which covered the country. On almost every farm a splendid
grove of maples had been reserved as the witness of the intelligence and tastes
of the people.
I had often heard of the Rev. Mr. Perras as one of the most learned, pious, and
venerable priest of Canada. I had even been told that several of the governors
of Quebec had chosen him for the French teacher of their children. When I
arrived, he was absent on a sick call, but his sister received me with every mark
of refined politeness. Under the burden of her five-and-fifty years she had
kept all the freshness and amiability of youth. After a few words of welcome,
she showed me my study and sleeping room. They were both perfumed with the
fragrance of two magnificent bouquets of the choicest flowers, on the top of
one of which were written the words: "Welcome to the angel whom the Lord
sends to us as His messenger." The two rooms were the perfection of
neatness and comfort. I shut the doors and fell on my knees to thank God and
the blessed Virgin for having given me such a home. Ten minutes later I came
back to the large parlour, where I found Miss Perras waiting for me, to offer
me a glass of wine and some excellent "pain de savoie," as it was the
universal custom, then, to do in every respectable house. She then told me how
her brother, the curate, and herself were happy when they heard that I was to
come and live with them. She had known my mother before her marriage, and she
told me how she had passed several happy days in her company.
She could not speak to me of any subject more interesting than my mother; for,
though she had died a few years before, she had never ceased to be present to
my mind, and near and dear to my heart.
Miss Perras had not spoken long when the curate arrived. I rose to meet him,
but it is impossible to adequately express what I felt at that moment. The
Israelites were hardly struck with more awe when they saw Moses coming down
from Mount Sinai, than I was at the first sight I had of that venerable man.
Rev. Mr. Perras was then about sixty-five years old. He was a tall man almost a
giant. No army officer, no king ever bore his head with more dignity. But his
beautiful blue eyes, which were the embodiment of kindness, tempered the
dignity of his mien. His hair, which was beginning to whiten, had not yet lost
its golden lustre. It seemed as if silver and gold were mixed on his head to
adorn and beautify it. There was on his face an expression of peace, calm,
piety and kindness, which entirely won my heart and my respect. When, with a
smile on his lips, he extended his hands towards me, I felt beside myself, I
fell on my knees and said: "Mr. Perras, God sends me to you that you may
be my teacher and my father. You will have to guide my first and inexperienced
steps in the holy ministry. Do bless me, and pray that I may be a good priest
as you are yourself."
That unpremeditated and earnest act of mine so touched the good old priest,
that he could hardly speak. Leaning towards me he raised me up and pressed me
to his bosom, and with a voice trembling with emotion he said: "May God
bless you, my dear sir, and may He also be blessed for having chosen you to
help me to carry the burden of the holy ministry in my old age." After
half-an-hour of the most interesting conversation, he showed me his library,
which was very large, and composed of the best books which a priest of Rome is
allowed to read; and he very kindly put it at my service.
Next morning, after breakfast, he handed me a large and neat sheet of paper,
headed by these Latin words:
"ORDO DUCIT AD DEUM."
It was the rule of life which he had imposed upon himself, to guide all the
hours of the day in such a way that not a moment could be given to idleness or
vain pastime.
"Would you be kind enough," he said, "to read this and tell me
if it suits your views? I have found great spiritual and temporal benefits in
following these rules of life, and would be very happy if my dear young
coadjutor would unite with me in walking in the ways of an orderly, Christian
and priestly life.
I read this document with interest and pleasure, and handed it back to him
saying: "I will be very happy, with the help of God, to follow, with you,
the wise rules set down here for a holy and priestly life."
Thinking that these rules might be interesting to the reader, I give them here
in full:
1. Rising..........5:30am.
2. Prayer and Meditation............6 to 6:30am.
3. Mass, hearing confessions and recitation of brevarium ..6:30 to 8am.
4. Breakfast......................8am.
5. Visitation of the sick, and reading the lives of the saints......8:30 to
10am.
6. Study of philosophical, historical or theological books 11a.m. to 12.
7. Dinner.........................12 to 12:30.
8. Recreation and conversation.............12:30 to 1:30.
9. Recitation and vespers...................1:30 to 2pm.
10. Study of history, theology or philosophy........2 to 4 pm.
11. Visit to the holy sacrament and reading "Imitation of Jesus
Christ" 4 to 4:30.
12. Hearing of confessions, or visit to the sick, or study..4:30 to 6pm.
13. Supper..................6 to 6:30pm.
14. Recreation..............6:30 to 8pm.
15. Chaplet reading of the Holy Scriptures and prayer.....8 to 9pm.
16. Going to bed............9pm.
Such
was our daily life during the eight months which it was my privilege to remain
with the venerable Mr. Perras, except that Thursdays were invariably given to
visit some of the neighbouring curates, and the Sabbath days spent in hearing
confessions, and performing the public services of the church.
The conversation of Mr. Perras was generally exceedingly interesting. I never
heard from him any idle, frivolous talking, as is so much the habit among the
priests. He was well versed in the literature, philosophy, history and theology
of Rome. He had personally known almost all the bishops and priests of the last
fifty years, and his memory was well stored with anecdotes and facts concerning
the clergy, from almost the days of the conquest of Canada. I could write many
interesting things, were I to publish what I heard from him, concerning the
doings of the clergy. I will only give two or three of the facts of that
interesting period of the church in Canada.
A couple of months before my arrival at St. Charles, the vicar who preceded me,
called Lajus, had publicly eloped with one of his beautiful penitents, who,
after three months of public scandal, had repented and come back to her heart
broken parents. About the same time a neighbouring curate, in whom I had great
confidence, compromised himself also, with one of his fair parishioners, in a
most shameful, though less public way. These who scandals, which came to my
knowledge almost at the same time, distressed me exceedingly, and for nearly a
week I felt so overwhelmed with shame, that I dreaded to show my face in
public, and I almost regretted that I ever became a priest. My nights were
sleepless; the best viands of the table had lost their relish. I could hardly
eat anything. My conversations with Mr. Perras had lost their charms. I even
could hardly talk with him or anybody else.
"Are you sick, my young friend?" said he to me one day.
"No, sir, I am not sick, but I am sad."
He replied, "Can I know the cause of your sadness? You used to be so
cheerful and happy since you came here. I must bring you back to your former
happy frame of mind. Please tell me what is the matter with you? I am an old
man, and I know many remedies for the soul as well as for the body. Open your
heart to me, and I hope soon to see that dark cloud which is over you pass
away."
"The two last awful scandals given by he priests," I answered,
"are the cause of my sadness. The news of the fall of these two confreres,
one of whom seemed to me so respectable, has fallen upon me like a thunderbolt.
Though I had heard something of that nature when I was a simple ecclesiastic in
the college, I had not the least idea that such was the life of so many
priests. The fact of the human frailty of so many, is really distressing. How
can one hope to stand up on one's feet when one sees such strong men fall by
one's side? What will become of our holy church in Canada, and all over the
world, if her most devoted priests are so weak and have so little self-respect,
and so little fear of God?"
"My dear young friend," answered Mr. Perras. "Our holy church is
infallible. The gates of hell can not prevail against her; but the assurance of
her perpetuity and infallibility does not rest on any human foundation. It does
not rest on the personal holiness of her priests; but it rests on the promises
of Jesus Christ. Her perpetuity and infallibility are a perpetual miracle. It
requires the constant working of Jesus Christ to keep her pure and holy, in
spite of the sins and scandals of her priests. Even the clearest proof that our
holy church has a promise of perpetuity and infallibility is drawn from the
very sins and scandals of her priests; for those sins and scandals would have
destroyed her long ago, if Christ was not in the midst to save and sustain her.
Just as the ark of Noah was miraculously saved by the mighty hand of God, when
the waters of the deluge would otherwise have wrecked it, so our holy church is
miraculously prevented from perishing in the flood of iniquities by which too
many priests have deluged the world. By the great mercy and power of God, the
more the waters of the deluge were flowing on the earth, the more the ark was
raised towards heaven by these very waters. So it is with our holy church. The
very sins of the priests make that spotless spouse of Jesus Christ fly away
higher and higher towards the regions of holiness, as it is in God. Let,
therefore, your faith and confidence in our holy church, and your respect for
her, remain firm and unshaken in the midst of all these scandals. Let your zeal
be rekindled for her glory and extension, at the sight of the unfortunate
confreres who yield to the attacks of the enemy. Just as the valiant soldier
makes superhuman efforts to save the flag, when he sees those who carried it
fall on the battlefield. Oh! you will see more of our flag bearers slaughtered
before you reach my age. But be not disheartened or shaken by that sad
spectacle; for once more our holy church will stand for ever, in spite of all
those human miseries, for her strength and her infallibility do not lie in men,
but in Jesus Christ, whose promises will stand in spite of all the efforts of
hell.
"I am near the end of my course, and, thanks be to God, my faith in our
holy church is stronger than ever, though I have seen and heard many things,
compared with which, the facts which just now distress you are mere trifles. In
order the better to inure you to the conflict, and to prepare you to hear and
see more deplorable things than what is now troubling you, I think it is my
duty to tell you a fact which I got from the late Lord Bishop Plessis. I have
never revealed it to anybody, but my interest in you is so great that I will
tell it to you, and my confidence in your wisdom is so absolute, that I am sure
you will never abuse it. What I will reveal to you is of such a nature that we
must keep it among ourselves, and never let it be known to the people, for it
would diminish, if not destroy their respect and confidence in us, respect and
confidence, without which, it would become almost impossible to lead them.
"I have already told you that the late venerable Bishop Plessis was my
personal friend. Our intimacy had sprung up when we were studying under the
same roof in the seminary of St. Sulpice, Montreal, and it had increased year
after year till the last hour of his life. Every summer, when he had reached
the end of the three months of episcopal visitation of his diocese, he used to
come and spend eight or ten days of absolute rest and enjoyment of private and
solitary life with me in this parsonage. The two rooms you occupy were his, and
he told me many times that the happiest days of his episcopal life were those
passed in this solitude.
"One day he had come from his three months' visit, more worn out than
ever, and when I sat down with him in his parlour, I was almost frightened by
the air of distress which covered his face. Instead of finding him the
loquacious, amiable and cheerful guest I used to have in him, he was taciturn,
cast down, distressed. I felt really uneasy, for the first time, in his
presence, but as it was the last hour of the day, I supposed that this was due
to his extreme fatigue, and I hoped that the rest of the night would bring
about such a change in my venerable friend, that I would find him, the next
morning, what he used to be, the most amiable and interesting of men.
"I was, myself, completely worn out. I had traveled nearly thirty miles
that day, to go to receive him at St. Thomas. The heat was oppressive, the
roads very bad, and the dust awful. I was in need of rest, and I was hardly in
my bed when I fell into a profound sleep, and slept till three o'clock in the
morning. I was then suddenly awakened by sobs and halfsuppressed lamentations
and prayers, which were evidently coming from the bishop's room. Without losing
a moment, I went and knocked at the door, inquiring about the cause of these
sobs. Evidently the poor bishop had not suspected that I could hear him.
"`Sobs! sobs!' he answered, `What do you mean by that. Please go back to
your room and sleep. Do not trouble yourself about me, I am well,' and he
absolutely refused to open the door of his room. The remaining hours of the
night, of course, were sleepless ones for me. The sobs of the bishop were more
suppressed, but he could not sufficiently suppress them to prevent me from hearing
them. The next morning his eyes were reddened with weeping, and his face was
that of one who had suffered intensely all the night. After breakfast I said to
him: `My lord, last night has been one of desolation to your lordship; for
God's sake, and in the name of the sacred ties of friendship, which has united
us during so many years, please tell me what is the cause of your sorrow. It
will become less the very moment you share it with your friend.'
"The bishop answered me: `You are right when you think that I am under the
burden of a great desolation; but its cause is of such a nature, that I cannot
reveal it even to you, my dear friend. It is only at the feet of Jesus Christ
and His holy mother, that I must go to unburden my heart. If God does not come to
my help, I must certainly die from it. But I will carry with me into my grave,
the awful mystery which kills me.'
"In vain, during the rest of the day, I did all that I could to persuade
Monseigneur Plessis to reveal the cause of his grief. I failed. At last,
through respect for him, I withdrew to my own room, and left him alone, knowing
that solitude is sometimes the best friend of a desolated mind. His lordship,
that evening withdrew to his sleeping room sooner than usual, and I retired to
my room much later. But sleep was out of the question for me that night, for
his desolation seemed to be so great, and his tears so abundant, that when he
bade me `good-night,' I was in fear of finding my venerable, and more than ever
dear friend, dead in his bed the next morning. I watched him, without closing
my eyes, from the adjoining room, from ten o'clock till the next morning.
Though it was evident that he was making great efforts to suppress his sobs, I
could see that his sorrow was still more intense that night, than the last one,
and my mental agony was not much less than his, during those distressing hours.
"But I formed an extreme resolution, which I put into effect the very
moment that he came out of his room the next morning, to salute me.
"`My Lord,' said I, `I thought till the night before last, that you
honored me with your friendship, but I see today that I was mistaken. You do
not consider me as your friend, for if you would look upon me as a friend
worthy of your confidence, you would unburden your heart into mine. A true
friend has no secret from a true friend. What is the use of friendship if it be
not to help each other to carry the burdens of life! I found myself honored by
your presence in my house, so long as I considered myself as your own friend.
But now, that I see I have lost your confidence, please allow me frankly to say
to your lordship, that I do not feel the same at your presence here. Besides,
it seems to me very probable that the terrible burden which you want to carry
alone, will kill you, and that very soon. I do not at all like the idea of
finding you suddenly dead in my parsonage, and having the coroner holding his
inquest upon your body, and making the painful inquiries which are always made
upon one suddenly taken by death, particularly when he belongs to the highest
ranks of society. Then, my lord, be not offended if I respectfully request your
lordship to find another lodging as soon as possible.'
"My words fell upon the bishop like a thunderbolt. He seemed to awaken
from a profound sleep. With a deep sigh he looked in my face with his eyes
rolling in tears, and said:
"`You are right, Perras, I ought never to have concealed my sorrow from
such a friend as you have always been for more than half a century to me. But
you are the only one to whom I can reveal it. No doubt your priestly and
Christian heart will not be less broken than mine; but you will help me with
your prayers and wise counsels to carry it. However, before I initiate you into
such an awful mystery, we must pray.'
"We then knelt down, and we said together a chaplet to invoke the power of
the Virgin Mary, after which we recited Psalm li.: `Miserere mihi.' Have mercy
upon me, O Lord!
"Then, sitting by me on this sofa, the bishop said: `My dear Mr. Perras,
you are the only one to whom I could reveal what you are about to hear, for I
think you are the only one who can hear such a terrible secret without
revealing it, and because, also, you are the only friend whose advice can guide
me in this terrible affliction.
"`You know that I have just finished the visit of my immense diocese of
Quebec. It has taken me several years of hard work and fatigue, to see by my
own eyes, and know by myself, the gains and losses in a word, the strength and
life of our holy church. I will not speak to you of the people. They are, as a
general thing, truly religious and faithful to the church. But the priests. O
Great God! will I tell you what they are? My dear Perras, I would almost die
with joy, if God would tell me that I am mistaken. But, alas! I am not
mistaken. The sad, the terrible truth is this' (putting his right hand on his
forehead), `the priests! Ah! with the exception of you and three others, are
infidels and atheists! O my God! my God! what will become of the church, in the
hands of such wicked men!' and covering his face with his hands, the bishop
burst into tears, and for one hour could not say a word. I myself remained
mute.
"At first I regretted having pressed the bishop to reveal such an
unexpected `mystery of iniquity.' But, taking counsel of our very fathomless
humiliation and distress, after an hour of silence, spent in pacing the walks
of the garden, almost unable to look each other in the face, I said; `My lord,
what you have told me is surely the saddest thing that I ever heard; but allow
me to tell you that your sorrows are out of the limits of your high
intelligence and your profound science. If you read the history of our holy
church, from the seventh to the fifteenth century, you will know that the
spotless spouse of Christ has seen as dark days, if not darker, in Italy,
France, Spain and Germany, as she does in Canada, and though the saints of
those days deplored the errors and crimes of those dark ages, they have not
killed themselves with their vain tears, as you are doing.'
"Taking the bishop by the hand, I led him to the library, and opened the
pages of the history of the church, by Cardinals Baronius and Fieury, and I
showed him the names of more than fifty Popes who had evidently been atheists
and infidels. I read to him the lives of Borgia, Alexander VI., and a dozen
others, who would surely and justly be hanged today by the executioner of
Quebec, were they, in that city, committing one-half of the public crimes of
adultery, murder, debauchery of every kind, which they committed in Rome,
Avignon, Naples, ect., ect. I read to him some of the public and undeniable
crimes of the successors of the apostles, and of the inferior clergy, and I
easily and clearly proved to him that his priests, though infidels and atheists,
were angels of pity, modesty, purity, and religion, when compared with a
Borgia, who publicly lives as a married man with his own daughter, and had a
child by her. He agreed with me that several of the Alexanders, the Johns, the
Piuses, and the Leos were sunk much deeper in the abyss of every kind of
iniquity than his priests.
"Five hours passed in so perusing the sad but irrefutable pages of the
history of our holy church, wrought a marvelous and beneficial change in the
mind of Monseigneur Plessis.
"My conclusion was, that if our holy church had been able to resist the
deadly influence of such scandals during so many centuries in Europe, she would
not be destroyed in Canada, even by the legion of atheists by whom she is
served today.
"The bishop acknowledged that my conclusion was correct. He thanked me for
the good I had done him, by preventing him from despairing of the future of our
holy church in Canada, and the rest of the days which he spent with me, he was
almost as cheerful and amiable as before.
"Now, my dear young friend," added Mr. Perras, "I hope you will
be as reasonable and logical in your religion as bishop Plessis, who was
probably the greatest man Canada has ever had. When Satan tries to shake your
faith by the scandals you see, remember that Stephen, after having fought with
his adversary, Pope Constantine II., put out his eyes and condemned him to die.
Remember that other Pope, who through revenge against his predecessor, had him
exhumed, brought his dead body before judges, then charged him with the most
horrible crimes, which he proved by the testimony of scores of eye-witnesses,
got him (the dead Pope), to be condemned to be beheaded and dragged with ropes
through the muddy streets of Rome, and thrown into the river Tiber. Yes, when
your mind is oppressed by the secret crimes of the priests, which you will
know, either through the confessional or by public rumour, remember that more
than twelve Popes have been raised to that high and holy dignity by the rich
and influential prostitutes of Rome, with whom they were publicly living in the
most scandalous way. Remember that young bastard, John XI., the son of Pope
Sergius, who was consecrated Pope when only twelve years old by the influence
of his prostitute mother, Marosia, but who was so horribly profligate that he
was deposed by the people and the clergy of Rome.
"Well, if our holy church has been able to pass through such storms
without perishing, is it not a living proof that Christ is her pilot, that she
is imperishable and infallible because St. Peter is her foundation, `Tu es
Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non
prevalebunt adversus eam.'"
Oh, my God! Shall I confess, to my confusion, what my thoughts were during that
conversation, or rather that lecture of my curate, which lasted more than an
hour! Yes, to thy eternal glory, and to my eternal shame, I must say the truth.
When the priest was exhibiting to me the horrible unmentionable crimes of so
many of our Popes, to calm my fears and strengthen my shaken faith, a
mysterious voice was repeating to the ears of my soul the dear Saviour's words:
"A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree
bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not good fruit is hewn down
and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them"
(Matt. vii. 18 20), and in spite of myself the voice of my conscience cried in
thundering tones that a church, whose head and members were so horribly
corrupt, could not, by any means, be the Church of Christ.
But the most sacred and imperative law of my church, which I had promised by
oaths, was that I would never obey the voice of my conscience, nor follow the
dictates of my private judgment, when they were in opposition to the teachings
of my church. Too honest to admit the conclusions of Mr. Perras, which were
evidently the conclusions of my church, I was too cowardly and too mean to
bravely express my own mind, and repeat the words of the Son of God: "By
their fruits ye shall know them! A good tree cannot bring forth evil
fruit!"
.
CHAPTER 20
The
name of Louis Joseph Papineau will be for ever dear to the French Canadians;
for whatever may be the political party to which one belongs in Canada, he
cannot deny that it is to the ardent patriotism, the indomitable energy, and
the remarkable eloquence of that great patriot, that Canada is indebted for the
greater part of the political reforms which promise in a near future to raise
the country of my birth to the rank of a great and free nation.
It is not my intention to speak of the political parties which divided the
people of Canada into two camps in 1833. The long and trying abuses under which
our conquered race was groaning, and which at last brought about the bloody
insurrections of 1837 and 1838, are matters of history, which do not pertain to
the plea of this work. I will speak of Papineau, and the brilliant galaxy of
talented young men by whom he was surrounded and supported, only in connection
with their difficulties with the clergy and the Church of Rome.
Papineau, Lafontaine, Bedard, Cartier and others, though born in the Church of
Rome, were only nominal Romanists. I have been personally acquainted with every
one of them, and I know they were not in the habit of confessing. Several times
I invited them to fulfill that duty, which I considered, then, of the utmost
importance to be saved. They invariably answered me with jests which distressed
me; for I could see that they did not believe in the efficacy of auricular
confession. These men were honest and earnest in their efforts to raise their
countrymen from the humiliating and inferior position which they occupied
compared with the conquering race. They well understood that the first thing to
be done, in order to put the French Canadians on a level with their British
compatriots, was to give good schools to the people; and they bravely set
themselves to show the necessity of having a good system of education, for the
country as well as for the city. But at the very first attempt they found an
insurmountable barrier to their patriotic views in the clergy. The priests had
everywhere the good common sense to understand that their absolute power over
the people was due to its complete ignorance. They felt that that power would
decrease in the same proportion that light and education would spread among the
masses. Hence the almost insurmountable obstacles put by the clergy before the
patriots, to prevent them from reforming the system of education. The only
source of education, then in Canada, with the exception of the colleges of
Quebec, Montreal and Nicolet, consisted in one or two schools in the principal
parishes, entirely under the control of the priests and kept by their most
devoted servants, while the new parishes had none at all. The greater part of
these teachers knew very little more, and required nothing more from their
pupils, than the reading of the A, B, C, and their little catechism. When once
admitted to their first communion the A, B, C, and the little catechism were soon
forgotten, and 95 in 100 of the French Canadian people were not even able to
sign their names! In many parishes, the curate, with his school teacher, the
notary, and half-a-dozen others, were the only persons who could read or write
a letter. Papineau and his patriotic friends understood that the French
Canadian people were doomed to remain an inferior race in their own country, if
they were left in that shameful state of ignorance. They did not conceal their
indignation at the obstacles placed by the clergy to prevent them from amending
the system of education. Several eloquent speeches were made by Papineau, who
was their "Parliament Speaker," in answer to the clergy. The curates,
in their pulpits, as well as by the press, tried to show that Canada had the
best possible system of education that the people were happy that too much
education would bring into Canada the bitter fruits which had grown in France
infidelity, revolution, riots, bloodshed; that the people were too poor to pay
the heavy taxes which would be imposed for the new system of education. In one
of his addresses, Papineau answered this last argument, showing the immense
sums of money foolishly given by those so-called poor people to gild the
ceilings of the church (as was the usage then). He made a calculation of the
tithes paid to the priests; of the costly images and statues of saints, which
were to be seen then, around all the interior of the churches, and he boldly
said that the priests would do better to induce the people to establish good
schools, and pay respectable teachers, than to lavish their money on objects
which were of so little benefit.
That address, which was reproduced by the only French paper of Quebec, "Le
Canadien," fell upon the clergy like a hurricane upon a rotten house,
shaking it to its foundation. Everywhere Papineau and his party were denounced
as infidels, more dangerous than Protestants, and plans were immediately laid
down to prevent the people from reading "Le Canadien," the only
French paper they could receive. Not more than half-adozen were receiving it in
St. Charles; but they used to read it to their neighbours, who gathered on
Sabbath afternoons to hear its contents. We at first tried, through the
confessional, to persuade the subscribers to reject it, under the pretext that
it was a bad paper; that it spoke against the priests and would finally destroy
our holy religion. But, to our great dismay, our efforts failed. The curates
then had recourse to a more efficacious way of preserving the faith of their people.
The postmaster of St. Charles was, then, a man whom Mr. Perras had got educated
at his own expense in the seminary of Quebec. His name was Chabot. That man was
a perfect machine in the hands of his benefactor. Mr. Perras forbade him to
deliver any more of the numbers of that journal to the subscribers, when there
would be anything unfavourable to the clergy in its columns. "Give them to
me," said he, "that I may burn them, and when the people come to get
them, give them such evasive answers, that they may believe that it is the
editor's fault, or of some other post-offices, if they have not received
it." From that day, every time there was any censure of the clergy, the
poor paper was consigned to the flames. One evening, when Mr. Perras had, in my
presence, thrown a bundle of these papers into the stove, I told him:
"Please allow me to express to you my surprise at this act. Have we really
the right to deprive the subscribers of that paper of their property! That
paper is theirs, they have paid for it. How can we take upon ourselves to
destroy it without their permission! Besides, you know the old proverb: Les
pierres parlent. (Stones speak.) If it were known by our people that we destroy
their papers, would not the consequences be very serious? Now, Mr. Perrs, you
know my sincere respect for you, and I hope I do not go against that respect by
asking you to tell me by what right or authority you do this? I would not put
this question to you, if you were the only one who does it. But I know several
others who do just the same thing. I will, probably, be obliged, when a curate,
to act in the same manner, and I wish to know on what grounds I shall be
justified in acting as you do."
"Are we not the spiritual fathers of our people?" answered Mr.
Perras.
I replied, "Yes sir, we are surely the spiritual fathers of our
people."
"Then," rejoined Mr. Perras, "we have in spiritual matters, all
the rights and duties which temporal fathers have, in temporal things, towards
their children. If a father sees a sharp knife in the hands of his beloved but
inexperienced child, and if he has good reason to fear that the dear child may
wound himself, nay, destroy his own life with that knife, is it not his duty,
before God and man, to take it from his hands, and prevent him from touching it
any more?"
"Yes," I answered, "but allow me to draw your attention to a
little difference which I see between the corporal and the spiritual children
of your comparison. In the case you bring forward, of a father who takes away
the knife from the hands of a young and inexperienced child, that knife has,
very probably, been bought by the father. It has been paid for with that
father's money. It is, then, the father's knife. But the papers of your
spiritual children, which you have thrown into your stove, have been paid for
by them, and not by you. They are theirs, then, before the laws of God and man,
and they are not yours."
I saw that my answer had cut the good old priest to the quick, and he became
more nervous than I had ever seen him. "I see that you are young,"
answered he; "you have not yet had time to meditate on the great and broad
principles of our holy church. I confess there is a difference in the rights of
the two children to which I had not paid attention, and which, at first sight,
may seem to diminish the strength of my argument. But I have here an argument
which will satisfy you, I hope. Some weeks ago I wrote to our venerable Bishop
Panet about my intention of burning that miserable and impious paper, `Le
Canadien,' to prevent it from poisoning the minds of our people against us, and
he has approved me, adding the advice, to be very prudent, and to act so
secretly that there would be no danger in being detected. Here is the letter of
the holy bishop; you may read it if you like."
"I thank you," I replied. "I believe that what you say in
reference to that letter is correct. But suppose that our good bishop has made
a mistake in advising you to burn those papers, would you not have some reasons
to regret that burning, should you, sooner or later, detect that mistake?"
"A reason of regretting to follow the advice of my superiors! Never!
Never! I fear, my dear young friend, that you do not sufficiently understand
the duties of an inferior, and the sacred rights of superiors in the College of
Nicolet, that there can be no sin in an inferior who obeys the orders or
counsels of his legitimate superiors?"
"Yes, sir," I answered, "the Rev. Mr. Leprohon has told us that
in the college of Nicolet."
"But," rejoined Mr. Perras, "your last question makes me fear
that you have forgotten what you have learned there. My dear young friend, do
not forget that it was the want of respect to their ecclesiastical superiors
which caused the apostasy of Luther and Calvin, and damned so many millions of
heretics who have followed them. But in order to bring your rebellious mind
under the holy yoke of a perfect submission to your superiors, I will show you,
by our greatest and most approved theologian, that I can burn these papers,
without doing anything wrong before God."
He then went to his library, and brought me a volume of Liguori, from which he
read to me the following Latin words: "Docet Sanchez, ect., parato aliquem
occidere, licite posse suaderi, ut ab eo furetur, vel ut fornicetur." [*]With
an air of triumph he said, "Do you see now that I am absolutely
justifiable in destroying these pestilential papers. According to those
principles of our holy church, you know well that even a woman is allowed to
commit the sin of adultery with a man who threatens to kill her, or himself, if
she rebukes him; because murder and suicide are greater crimes, and more
irremediable than adultery. So the burning of those papers, though a sin, if
done through malice, or without legitimate reasons, ceases to be a sin; it is a
holy action the moment I do it, to prevent the destruction of our holy
religion, and to save immortal souls."
I must confess, to my shame, that the degrading principles of absolute
submission of the inferior to the superiors, which flattens everything to the
ground in the Church of Rome, had so completely wrought their deadly work on
me, that it was my wish to attain to that supreme perfection of the priest of
the Church or Rome, to become like a stick in the hands of my superiors like a
corpse in their presence. But my God was stronger than His unfaithful and blind
servant, and He never allowed me to go down to the bottom of that abyss of
folly and impiety. In spite of myself, I had left in me sufficient manhood to
express my doubts about that awful doctrine of my Church.
"I do not want to revolt against my superiors," I answered, "and
I hope God will prevent me from falling into the abyss where Luther and Calvin
lost themselves. I only respectfully request you to tell me, if you would not
regret the burning of these papers, in case you would know that Bishop Panet
made a mistake in granting you the power of destroying a property which is
neither yours or his a property over which neither of you has any
control?"
It was the first time that I was not entirely of the same mind with Mr. Perras.
Till then, I had not been brave, honest, or independent enough to oppose his
views and his ipse dixit, though often tempted to do so. The desire of living
in peace with him; the sincere respect which his many virtues and venerable age
commanded in me; the natural timidity, not to say cowardice, of a young,
inexperienced man, in the presence of a learned and experienced priest, had
kept me, till then, in perfect submission to the views of my aged curate. But
it seemed impossible to yield any longer, and to bow my conscience before
principles, which seemed to me then, as I am sure they are now, subversive of
everything which is good and holy among men. I took the big Bible, which was on
the table, and I opened it at the history of Susanna, and I answered: "My
dear Mr. Perras, God has chosen you to be my teacher, and I have learned many
things since it has been my privilege to be with you. But I have much more to
learn, before I know all that your books and your long experience have taught
you. I hope you will not find fault with me, if I honestly tell you that in
spite of myself, there is a doubt in my mind about this doctrine of our
theologians," and I said, "is there anything more sublime, in the
whole Bible, than that feeble woman, Susanna, in the hands of those two
infamous men? With a diabolical impudence and malice, they threaten to destroy
her, and to take her before a tribunal which will surely condemn her to the
most ignoble death, if she does not consent to satisfy their criminal desires.
She is just in the position alluded to by Liguori. What will she do? Will she
be guided by the principles of our theologians? Will she consent to become an
adulteress in order to prevent those two men from perjuring themselves, and
becoming murderers, by causing her to be stoned to death, as was required by
the law of the Jews? No! She raises her eyes and her soul towards the God whom
she loves and fears more than anything in the world, and she says, `I am
straitened on every side, for if I do this thing it is death unto me; and if I
do it not, I cannot escape your hands. It is better for me to fall into your
hands, and not to do it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord.' Has not God
Almighty Himself shown that He approved of that heroic resolution of Susanna,
to die rather than commit adultery. Does He not show that He himself planted,
in that noble soul, the principle that it is better to die than break the laws
of God, when He brought His prophet Daniel, and gave him a supernatural wisdom
to save the life of Susanna? If that woman had been guided by the principles of
Liguori, which, I confess to you with regret, are the principles accepted
everywhere in our Church (principles which have guided you in the burning of
`Le Canadien'), she would have consented to the desires of those infamous men.
Nay, if she had been interrogated by her husband, or by the judges on that
action, she would have been allowed to swear before God and men, that she was
not guilty of it. Now, my dear Mr. Perras, do you not find that there is some
clashing between the Word of God, as taught in the Holy Scriptures, and the
teachings of our Church, through the theologians?"
Never have I seen such a sudden change in the face and manners of a man, as I
saw in that hour. That Mr. Perras, who had, till then, spoken with so much
kindness and dignity, completely lost his temper. Instead of answering me, he
abruptly rose to his feet, and began to pace the room with a quick step. After
some time he told me: "Mr. Chiniquy, you forget that when you were
ordained a priest, you swore that you would never interpret the Holy Scriptures
according to your own fallible private judgment; you solemnly promised that you
would take them only according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers
speaking to you through your superiors. Has not Liguori been approved by the
Popes by all the bishops of the Church? We have then, here, the true doctrine
which must guide us. But instead of submitting yourself with humility, as it
becomes a young and inexperienced priest, you boldly appeal to the Scriptures,
against the decisions of Popes and bishops against the voice of all your
superiors, speaking to you through Liguori. Where will that boldness end? Ah! I
tremble for you, if you do not speedily change: you are on the high road to
heresy!"
These last words had hardly fallen from his lips, when the clock struck 9 p.m.
He abruptly stopped speaking, and said, "This is the hour of prayer."
We knelt and prayed.
I need not say that that night was a sleepless one to me. I wept and prayed all
through its long dark hours. I felt that I had lost, and for ever, the high
position I had in the heart of my old friend, and that I had probably
compromised myself, for ever, in the eyes of my superiors, who were the
absolute masters of my destinies. I condemned myself for that inopportune
appeal to the Holy Scriptures, against the ipse dixit of my superiors. I asked
God to destroy in me, that irresistible tendency, by which I was constantly
going to the Word of God to know the truth, instead of remaining at the feet of
my superiors, with the rest of the clergy, as the only fountain of knowledge
and light.
But thanks be to God that blasphemous prayer was never to be granted.
.
CHAPTER 21
It
was the custom in those days, in the Church of Rome, to give the title of
arch-priest to one of the most respectable and able priests, among twelve or
fifteen others, by whom he was surrounded. That title was the token of some
superior power, which was granted to him over his confreres, who, in
consequence, should consult him in certain difficult matters.
As a general thing, those priests lived in the most cordial and fraternal
unity, and, to make the bond of that union stronger and more pleasant, they
were, in turn, in the habit of giving a grand dinner every Thursday.
In 1834 those dinners were really state affairs. Several days in advance,
preparations were made on a grand scale, to collect everything that could
please the taste of the guests. The best wines were purchased. The fattest
turkeys, chickens, lambs, or sucking pigs were hunted up. The most delicate
pastries were brought from the city, or made at home, at any cost. The rarest
and most costly fruits and desserts were ordered. There was a strange emulation
among those curates, who would surpass his neighbours. Several extra hands were
engaged, some days before, to help the ordinary servants to prepare the "GRAND
DINNER."
The second Thursday of May, 1834, was Mr. Perras' turn, and at twelve o'clock
noon, we were fifteen priests seated around the table.
I must here render homage to the sobriety and perfect moral habits of the Rev.
Mr. Perras. Though he took his social glass of wine, as it was the universal
usage at that time, I never saw him drink more than a couple of glasses at the
same meal. I wish I could say the same thing of all those who were at his table
that day.
Never did I see, before nor after, a table covered with so many tempting and
delicate viands. The good curate had surpassed himself, and I would hardly be
believed, were I to give the number of dishes and covers, plates et
entreplates, which loaded the table. I will only mention a splendid salmon,
which was the first brought to Quebec that year, for which Mr. Amoit, the
purveyor for the priests around the capital, had paid twelve dollars.
There was only one lady at that dinner, Miss Perras, sister of the curate.
However, she was not at all embarrassed by finding herself along among those
jolly celebataires, and she looked like a queen at the head of the table. Her
sweet and watchful eyes were everywhere to see the wants of her guests. She had
an amiable word for every one of them. With the utmost grace she pressed the
Rev. Mr. A. to try that wing of turkey she was so gently remonstrating with the
Rev. Mr. B. for his not eating more, and she was so eloquent in requesting them
all to taste of this dish, or of that; which was quite a new thing in Canada.
And her young chickens! who could refuse to accept one of them, after she had
told their story: how, three months before, in view of this happy day, she had
so cajoled the big black hen to hatch over sixteen eggs in the kitchen; what a
world of trouble she had, when the little dog was coming in, and she (the hen)
was rushing at him! how, many times, she had to stop the combatants, and force
them to live in peace! and what desolation swept over her mind, when, in a dark
night, the rats had dragged into their holes, three of her newly-hatched
chickens! how she had got a cat to destroy the rats; and, how in escaping
Scylla, she was thrown on Charybdis, when, three days after, the cat made his
dinner of two of her dear little chickens; for which crime, committed in open
day, before several witnesses, the sentence of death was passed and executed,
without benefit of clergy.
Now where would they find young chickens in the month of May, in the
neighbourhood of Quebec, when the snow had scarcely disappeared?
These stories, given with an art which no pen can reproduce, were not finished
before the delicate chickens had disappeared in the hungry mouths of he
cheerful guests.
One of the most remarkable features of these dinners was the levity, the
absolute want of seriousness and gravity. Not a word was said in my presence,
there, which could indicate that these men had anything else to do in this
world but to eat and drink, tell and hear merry stories, laugh and lead a jolly
life!
I was the youngest of those priests. Only a few months before, I was in the
Seminary of Nicolet, learning from my grave old superior, lessons of priestly
life, very different from what I had there under my eyes. I had not yet
forgotten the austere preaching of self-denial, mortification, austerity and
crucifixion of the flesh, which were to fill up the days of a priest!
Though, at first, I was pleased with all I saw, heard and tasted; though I
heartily laughed with the rest of the guests, at their bon mots, their spicy
stories about their fair penitents, or at the funny caricatures they drew of
each other, as well as of absent ones, I felt, by turns, uneasy. Now and then
the lessons of priestly life, received from the lips of my venerable and dear
Mr. Leprohon, were knocking hard at the door of my conscience. Some words of
the Holy Scriptures which, more than others, had adhered to my memory, were
also making a strange noise in my soul. My own common sense was telling me,
that this was not quite the way Christ taught His disciples to live.
I made a great effort to stifle these troublesome voices. Sometimes I
succeeded, and then I became cheerful: but a moment after I was overpowered by
them, and I felt chilled, as if I had perceived on the walls of the festive
room, the finger of my angry God, writing "MENE, MENE, TEKEL,
UPHARSIN." Then all my cheerfulness vanished, and I felt so miserable
that, in spite of all my efforts to look happy, the Rev. Mr. Paquette, curate
of St. Gervais, observed it on my face. That priest was probably the one who
most enjoyed everything of that feast. Under the snowy mantle of sixty-five
years, he had kept the warm heart and the joviality of youth. He was considered
one of our most wealthy curates, and he richly deserved the reputation of being
the most epicurean of them all. He was a perfect cook, and with his chaplet or
his breviarium in hand, he used to pass a great part of the day in his kitchen,
giving orders about broiling this beefsteak, or preparing this fricassee, and
that gravy a la Francaise. He was loved by all his confreres, but particularly
by the young priests, who were the objects of his constant attentions. He had
always been exceedingly kind to me, and when in his neighbourhood, I dare say
that my most pleasant hours were those passed in his parsonage.
Looking at me in the very moment when my whole intellectual being was, in spite
of myself, under the darkest cloud, he said: "My dear little Father
Chiniquy, are you falling into the hands of some blue devils, when we are all
so happy? You were so cheerful half-an-hour ago! What is the matter with you
now? Are you sick? You look as grave and anxious as Jonah, when in the big
whale's stomach! What is the matter with you? Has any of your fair penitents
left you, to go to confess to another, lately?"
At these funny questions, the dining-room was shaken with the convulsive
laughter of the priests. I wished I could join in with the rest of my
confreres; for it seemed to me very clear that I was making a fool of myself by
this singularity of demeanor. But there was no help for it; for a moment before
I had seen that the servant girls had blushed; they had been scandalized by a
very improper word from the lips of a young priest about one of his young
female penitents; a word which he would, surely, never have uttered, had he not
drank too much wine. I answered; "I am much obliged to you for your kind
interest, I find myself much honoured to be here in your midst; but as the
brightest days are not without clouds, so it is with us all sometimes. I am young,
and without experience; I have not yet learned to look at certain things in
their proper light. When older, I hope I shall be wiser, and not make an ass of
myself as I do today."
"Tah! tah! tah!" said old Mr. Paquette, "this is not the hour of
dark clouds and blue devils. Be cheerful, as it behooves your age. There will
be hours enough in the rest of your life for sadness and somber thoughts. This
is the hour for laughing and being merry. Sad thoughts for to-morrow." And
appealing to all, he asked, "Is not this correct, gentlemen?"
"Yes, yes," unanimously rejoined all the guests.
"Now," said the old priest, "you see that the verdict of the
jury is unanimously in my favour and against you. Give up those airs of
sadness, which do not answer in the presence of those bottles of champagne.
Your gravity is an anachronism when we have such good wines before us. Tell me
the reason of your grief, and I pledge myself to console you, and make you
happy as you were at the beginning of the dinner."
"I would have liked better that you should have continued to enjoy this
pleasant hour without noticing me," I answered. "Please excuse me if
I do not trouble you with the causes of my personal folly."
"Well, well," said Mr. Paquette, "I see it, the cause of your
trouble is that we have not yet drank together a single glass of sherry. Fill
your glass with that wine, and it will surely drown the blue devil which I see
at its bottom."
"With pleasure," I said; "I feel much honoured to drink with
you," and I put some drops of wine into my glass.
"Oh! oh! what do I see you doing there? Only a few drops in your glass!
This will not even wet the cloven feet of the blue devil which is tormenting
you. It requires a full glass, an over-flowing glass to drown and finish him.
Fill, then, your glass with that precious wine the best I ever tasted in my
whole life."
"But I cannot drink more than those few drops," I said.
"Why not?" he replied.
"Because, eight days before her death, my mother wrote me a letter,
requesting me to promise her that I would never drink more than two glasses of
wine at the same meal. I gave her that promise in my answer, and the very day
she got my pledge, she left this world to convey it, written on her heart, into
heaven, to the feet of her God!"
"Keep that sacred pledge," answered the old curate; "but tell me
why you are so sad when we are so happy?"
"You already know part of my reasons if I had drunk as much wine as my
neighbour, the vicar of St. Gervais, I would probably have filled the room with
my shouts of joy as he does; but you see now that the hands of my deceased,
though always dear mother, are on my glass to prevent me from filling it any
more, for I have already drank two glasses of wine."
"But your sadness, in such a circumstance, is so strange, that we would
all like to know its cause."
"Yes, yes," said all the priests. "You know that we like you,
and we deeply feel for you. Please tell us the reason of this sadness."
I then answered, "It would be better for me to keep my own secret: for I
know I will make a fool of myself here: but as you are unanimous in requesting
me to give you the reasons of the mental agony through which I am just passing,
you will have them.
"You well know that, through very singular circumstances, I have been
prevented, till this day, from attending any of your grand dinners. Twice I had
to go to Quebec on these occasions, sometimes I was not well enough to be
present several times I was called to visit some dying person, and at other
times the weather, or the roads were too bad to travel; this, then is the first
grand dinner, attended by you all, which I have the honour of attending.
"But before going any further, I must tell you that, during the eight
months it has been my privilege to sit at Rev. Mr. Perras's table, I have never
seen anything which could make me suspect that my eyes would see, and my ears
would hear such things in this parsonage, as have just taken place. Sobriety,
moderation, truly evangelical temperance in drink and food were the invariable
rule. Never a word was said which could make our poor servant girls, or the
angels of God blush. Would to God that I had not been here today! For, I tell
you, honestly, that I am scandalized by the epicurean table which is before us;
by the enormous quantity of delicate viands and the incredible number of
bottles of most costly wines, emptied at this dinner.
"However, I hope I am mistaken in my appreciation of what I have seen and
heard I hope you are all right and that I am wrong. I am the youngest of you
all. It is not my business to teach you, but it is my duty to be taught by you.
"Now, I have given you my mind, because you so pressingly requested me to
do it, as honestly as human language will allow me to do. I have the right, I
hope, to request you to tell me, as honestly, if I am, and in what I am wrong
or right!"
"Oh! oh! my dear Chiniquy," replied the old curate, "you hold
the stick by the wrong end. Are we not the children of God?"
"Yes, sir," I answered, "we are the children of God."
"Now, does not a loving father give what he considers the best part of his
goods to his beloved children?"
"Yes, sir," I replied.
"Is not that loving father pleased when he sees his beloved children eat
and drink the good things he has prepared for them?"
"Yes, sir," was my answer.
"Then," rejoined the logical priest, "the more we, the beloved
children of God, eat of these delicate viands, and drink of those precious
wines, which our Heavenly Father puts into our hands, the more He is pleased
with us. The more we, the most beloved one of God, are merry and cheerful, the
more He is Himself and rejoiced in His heavenly kingdom.
"But if God our Father is so pleased with what we have eaten and drunk
today, why are you so sad?"
This masterpiece of argumentation was received by all (except Mr. Perras), with
convulsive cries of approbation, and repeated "Bravo! bravo!"
I was too mean and too cowardly to say what I felt. I tried to conceal my
increased sadness under the forced smiles of my lips, and I followed the whole
party, who left the table, and went to the parlour to drink a cup of coffee. It
was then half-past one p.m. At two o'clock, the whole party went to the church,
where, after kneeling for a quarter of an hour before their wafer God, they
fell on their knees to the feet of each other, to confess their sins, and get
their pardon, in the absolution of their confessors!
At three p.m. they were all gone, and I remained alone with my venerable old
curate Perras. After a few moments of silence, I said to him: "My dear Mr.
Perras, I have no words to express to you my regret for what I have said at
your table. I beg your pardon for every word of that unfortunate and unbecoming
conversation, into which I was dragged in spite of myself; you know it. It does
not do for a young priest, as I am, to criticize those whom God has put so much
above him by their science, their age, and their virtues. But I was forced to
give my mind, and I have given it. When I requested Mr. Paquette to tell me in
what I might be wrong, I had not the least idea that he would hear, from the
lips of one of our veterans in the priesthood, the blasphemous jokes he has
uttered. Epicurus himself would have blushed, had he been among us, in hearing
the name of God connected with such deplorable and awful impieties." Mr.
Perras answered me: "Far from being displeased with what I have heard from
you at this dinner, I must tell you that you have gained much in my esteem by
it. I am, myself, ashamed of that dinner. We priests are the victims, like the
rest of the world, of the fashions, vanities, pride and lust of that world
against which we are sent to preach. The expenditure we make at those dinners
is surely a crime, in the face of the misery of the people by whom we are
surrounded. This is the last dinner I give with such foolish extravagance. The
next time my neighbours will meet here, I will not expose them to stagger, as
the greater part of them did when they rose from the table. The brave words you
have uttered have done me good. They will do them good also; for though they
had all eaten and drunk too much, they were not so intoxicated as not to
remember what you have said."
Then, pressing my hand in his, he said, "I thank you, my good little
Father Chiniquy, for the short but excellent sermon you have given us. It will
not be lost. You have drawn my tears when you have shown us your saintly mother
going to the feet of God in heaven, with your sacred promise written in her
heart. Oh! you must have had a good mother! I knew her when she was very young.
She was then, already, a very remarkable girl, for her wisdom and the dignity
of her manners."
Then he left me alone in the parlour, and he went to visit a sick man in one of
the neighbouring houses.
When alone I fell on my knees, to pray and weep. My soul was filled with
emotions which it is impossible to express. The remembrance of my beloved
mother, whose blessed name had fallen form my lips when her sacred memory
filled my mind with the light and strength I needed in that hour of trial the
gluttony and drunkenness of those priests, whom I was accustomed to respect and
esteem so much their scandalous conversation their lewd expressions and more
than all, their confessions to each other after two such hours of profanity and
drinking, were more than I could endure. I could not contain myself. I wept
over myself, for I felt also the burden of my sins, and I did not find myself
much better than the rest, though I had not eaten or drunk quite so much as
several of them I wept over my friends, whom I had seen so weak; for they were
my friends. I loved them, and I knew they loved me. I wept over my church,
which was served by such poor, sinful priests. Yes! I wept there, when on my
knees, to my heart's content, and it did me good. But my God had another trial
in store for his poor unfaithful servant.
I had not been ten minutes alone, sitting in my study, when I heard strange
cries, and such a noise as if a murderer were at work to strike his victim. A
door had evidently been broken open, upstairs, and someone was running down
stairs as if one was wanting to break down everything. The cries of
"Murder, murder!" reached my ears, and the cries of "Oh! my God!
my God! where is Mr. Perras?" filled the air.
I quickly ran to the parlour to see what was the matter, and there I found
myself face to face with a woman absolutely naked! Her long black hair was
flowing on her shoulders; her face was pale as death her dark eyes fixed in
their sockets. She stretched her hands towards me with a horrible shriek, and
before I could move a step, terrified, and almost paralyzed as I was, she
seized my two arms with her hands, with such a terrible force as if my arms had
been grasped in a vice. My bones were cracking under her grasp, and my flesh
was torn by her nails. I tried to escape, but it was impossible. I soon found
myself as if nailed to the wall, unable to move any further. I cried then to
the utmost compass of my voice for help. But the living spectre cried still
louder: "You have nothing to fear. Be quiet. I am sent by God Almighty and
the blessed Virgin Mary, to give you a message. The priests whom I have known,
without a single exception, are a band of vipers; they destroy their female
penitents through auricular confession. They have destroyed me, and killed my
female child! Do not follow their example!" Then she began to sing with a
beautiful voice, to a most touching tune, a kind of poem she had composed
herself, which I secretly got afterwards from one of her servant maids, the
translation of which is as follows:
"Satan's priests have defiled
my heart!
Damned my soul! murdered my child!
O my child! my darling child!
From thy place in heaven, dost thou see
Thy guilty mother's tears?
Canst thou come and press me in thine arms? My child! my darling child!
Will never thy smiling face console me?"
When she was singing these words, big tears were rolling down her pale cheeks,
and the tone of her voice was so sad that she could have melted a heart of
stone. She had not finished her song when I cried to the girl: "I am
fainting, for God's sake bring me some water!" The water was only pressed
to my lips, I could not drink. I was choked, and petrified in the presence of
that living phantom! I could not dare to touch her in any way with my hands. I
felt horrified and paralyzed at the sight of that livid, pale, cadaverous,
naked spectre. The poor servant girl had tried in vain, at my request, to drag
her away from me. She had struck her with terror, by crying, "If you touch
me, I will instantly strangle you!"
"Where is Mr. Perras? Where is Mr. Perras and the other servants? For
God's sake call them," I cried out to the servant girl, who was trembling
and beside herself.
"Miss Perras is running to the church after the curate," she
answered, "and I do not know where the other girl is gone."
In that instant Mr. Perras entered, rushed towards his sister, and said,
"Are you not ashamed to present yourselves naked before such a
gentleman?" and with his strong arms he tried to force her to give me up.
Turning her face towards him, with tigress eyes, she cried out "Wretched
brother! what have you done with my child? I see her blood on your hands!"
When she was struggling with her brother, I made a sudden and extreme effort to
get out of her grasp; and this time I succeeded: but seeing that she wanted to
throw herself again upon me, I jumped through a window which was opened.
Quick as lightning she passed out of the hands of her brother, and jumped also
through the window to run after me. She would, surely, have overtaken me; for I
had not run two rods, when I fell headlong, with my feet entangled in my long,
black, priestly robe. Providentially, two strong men, attracted to my cries,
came to my rescue. They wrapped her in a blanket, taken there by her sister,
and brought her back into her upper chambers, where she remained safely locked,
under the guard of two strong servant maids.
The history of that woman is sad indeed. When in her priest-brother's house,
when young and of great beauty, she was seduced by her father confessor, and
became mother of a female child, which she loved with a real mother's heart.
She determined to keep it and bring it up. But this did not meet the views of
the curate. One night, when the mother was sleeping, the child had been taken
away from her. The awakening of the unfortunate mother was terrible. When she
understood that she could never see her child any more, she filled the
parsonage with her cries and lamentations, and, at first, refused to take any
food, in order that she might die. But she soon became a maniac.
Mr. Perras, too much attached to his sister to send her to a lunatic asylum,
resolved to keep her in his own parsonage, which was very large. A room in its
upper part had been fixed in such a way that her cries could not be heard, and
where she would have all the comfort possible in her sad circumstances. Two
servant maids were engaged to take care of her. All this was so well arranged,
that I had been eight months in that parsonage, without even suspecting that
there was such an unfortunate being under the same roof with me. It appears
that occasionally, for many days, her mind was perfectly lucid, when she passed
her time in praying, and singing a kind of poem which she had composed herself,
and which she sang while holding me in her grasp. In her best moments she had
fostered an invincible hatred of the priests whom she had known. Hearing her
attendants often speak of me, she had, several times, expressed the desire to
see me, which, of course, had been denied her. Before she had broken her door,
and escaped from the hands of her keeper, she had passed several days in saying
that she had received from God a message for me which she would deliver, even
if she had to pass on the dead bodies of all in the house.
Unfortunate victim of auricular confession! How many others could sing the sad
words of thy song.
.
"Satan's priests have defiled my heart,
Damned my soul! murdered my child!"
.
CHAPTER 22
The
grand dinner previously described had its natural results. Several of the
guests were hardly at home, when they complained of various kinds of sickness,
and none was so severely punished as my friend Paquette, the curate of St.
Gervais. He came very near dying, and for several weeks was unable to work. He
requested the Bishop of Quebec to allow me to go to his help, which I did to
the end of May, when I received the following letter:
Charlesbourgh, May 25th, 1834
Rev. Mr. C. Chiniquy:
My Dear Sir: My Lord Panet has again chosen me, this year, to accompany him in
his episcopal visit. I have consented, with the condition that you should take
my place, at the head of my dear parish, during my absence. For I will have no
anxiety when I know that my people are in the hands of a priest who, though so
young, has raised himself so high in the esteem of all those who know him.
Please come as soon as possible to meet me here, that I may tell you many
things which will make your ministry more easy and blessed in Charlesbourgh.
His Lordship has promised me that when you pass through Quebec, he will give
you all the powers you want to administer my parish, as if you were its curate
during my absence.
Your devoted brother priest, and friend in the love and heart of Jesus and
Mary,
ANTOINE BEDARD.
I
felt absolutely confounded by that letter. I was so young and so deficient in
the qualities required for the high position to which I was so unexpectedly
called. I know it was against the usages to put a young and untried priest in
such a responsible post. It seemed evident to me that my friends and my
superiors had strangely exaggerated to themselves my feeble capacity.
In my answer to the Rev. Mr. Bedard, I respectfully remonstrated against such a
choice. But a letter received from the bishop himself, ordering me to go to
Charlesbourgh, without delay, to administer that parish during the absence of
its pastor, soon forced me to consider that sudden and unmerited elevation as a
most dangerous, though providential trial of my young ministry. Nothing
remained to be done by me but to accept the task in trembling, and with a
desire to do my duty. My heart, however, fainted within me, and I shed bitter
tears of anxiety. When entering into that parish for the first time, I saw its
magnitude and importance. It seemed, then, more than ever evident to me that
the good Mr. Bedard, and my venerable superiors, had made a sad mistake in
putting such a heavy burden on my young and feeble shoulders. I was hardly
twenty-four years old, and had not more than nine month's experience of the
ministry.
Charlesbourgh is one the most ancient and important parishes of Canada. Its
position, so near Quebec, at the feet of the Laurentide Mountains, is
peculiarly beautiful. It has an almost complete command of the city, and of its
magnificent port, where not less than 900 ships when received their precious
cargoes of lumber. On our left, numberless ranges of white houses extend as far
as the Falls of Montmorency. At our feet the majestic St. Lawrence, dashing its
rapid waters on the beautiful "Isle d' Orleans." To the right, the
parishes of Lorette, St. Foy, Roch, ect., with their high church steeples,
reflected the sun's glorious beams; and beyond, the impregnable citadel of
Quebec, with its tortuous ranges of black walls, its numerous cannon, and its
high towers, like fearless sentinels, presented a spectacle of remarkable
grandeur.
The Rev. Mr. Bedard welcomed me on my arrival with words of such kindness that
my heart was melted and my mind confounded. He was a man about sixty-five years
of age, short in stature, with a well-formed breast, large shoulders, bright eyes,
and a face where the traits of indomitable energy were coupled with an
expression of unsurpassed kindness.
One could not look on that honest face without saying to himself, "I am
with a really good and upright man!" Mr. Bedard is one of the few priests
in whom I have found a true honest faith in the Church of Rome. With an
irreproachable character, he believed, with a child's faith, all the
absurdities which the Church of Rome teaches, and he lived according to his
honest and sincere faith.
Though the actions of our daily lives were not subjected to a regular and
inexorable rule in Charlesbourgh's as in St. Charles' parsonage, there was yet
far more life and earnestness in the performance of our ministerial duties.
There was less reading of learned, theological, philosophical, and historical
books, but much more real labour in Mr. Bedard's than in Mr. Perras' parish;
there was more of the old French aristocracy in the latter priest, and more of
the good religious Canadian habitant in the former. Though both could be
considered as men of the most exalted faith and piety in the Church of Rome,
their piety was of a different character. In Mr. Perras' religion there was
real calmness and serenity, while the religion of Mr. Bedard had more of the
flash of lightning and the noise of thunder. The private religious
conversations with the curate of St. Charles were admirable, but he could not
speak common sense for ten minutes when preaching from his pulpit. Only once
did he preach while I was his vicar, and then he was not half through his
sermon before the greater part of his auditors were soundly sleeping. But who
could hear the sermons of Rev. Mr. Bedard without feeling his heart moved and
his soul filled with terror? I never heard anything more thrilling than his
words when speaking of the judgments of God and the punishment of the wicked.
Mr. Perras never fasted, except on the days appointed by the church: Mr. Bedard
condemned himself to fast besides twice every week. The former never drank, to
my knowledge, a single glass of rum or any other strong drink, except his two
glasses of wine at dinner; but the latter never failed to drink full glasses of
rum three times a day, besides two or three glasses of wine at dinner. Mr.
Perras slept the whole night as a guiltless child. Mr. Bedard, almost every
night I was with him, rose up, and lashed himself in the most merciless manner
with leather thongs, at the end of which were small pieces of lead. When
inflicting upon himself those terrible punishments, he used to recite, by
heart, the fifty-first Psalm, in Latin, "Miserere mei, Deus, secundam
magnam misericordiam tuam" (Have mercy upon me, O Lord, according to Thy
lovingkindness); and though he seemed to be unconscious of it, he prayed with
such a loud voice, that I heard every word he uttered; he also struck his flesh
with such violence that I could count all the blows he administered.
One day I respectfully remonstrated against such a cruel self-infliction as
ruining his health and breaking his constitution: "Cher petit Frere"
(dear little brother), he answered, "our health and constitution cannot be
impaired by such penances, but they are easily and commonly ruined by our sins.
I am one of the healthiest men of my parish, though I have inflicted upon myself
those salutary and too well-merited chastisements for many years. Though I am
old, I am still a great sinner. I have an implacable and indomitable enemy in
my depraved heart, which I cannot subdue except by punishing my flesh. If I do
not do those penances for my numberless transgressions, who will do penance for
me? If I do not pay the debts I owe to the justice of God, who will pay them
for me?"
"But," I answered, "has not our Saviour, Jesus Christ, paid our
debts on Calvary? Has He not saved and redeemed us all by His death on the
cross? Why, then, should you or I pay again to the justice of God that which
has been so perfectly and absolutely paid by our Saviour?"
"Ah! my dear young friend," quickly replied Mr. Bedard, "that
doctrine you hold is Protestant, which has been condemned by the Holy Council
of Trent. Christ has paid our debts certainly; but not in such an absolute way
that there is nothing more to be paid by us. Have you never paid attention to
what St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Colossians, `I fill up that which is
behind of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is
the Church.' Though Christ could have entirely and absolutely paid our debts,
if it had been His will, it is evident that such was not His holy will He left something
behind which Paul, you, I, and every one of His disciples, should take and
suffer in our flesh for His Church. When we have taken and accomplished in our
flesh what Christ has left behind, then the surplus of our merits goes to the
treasury of the Church. For instance, when a saint has accomplished in his
flesh what Christ has left behind for his perfect sanctification, if he
accomplishes more than the justice of God requires, that surplus of merits not
being of any use to him, is put by God into the grand and common treasure,
where it makes a fund of merits of infinite value, from which the Pope and the
bishops draw the indulgences which they scatter all over the world as a dew
from heaven. By the mercy of God, the penances which I impose upon myself, and
the pains I suffer from these flagellations, purify my guilty soul, and raising
me up from this polluting would, they bring me nearer and nearer to my God
every day. I am not yet a saint, unfortunately, but if by the mercy of God, and
my penances united to the sufferings of Christ, I arrive at the happy day when
all my debts shall be paid, and my sins cleansed away, then if I continue those
penances and acquire new merits, more than I need, and if I pay more debts than
I owe to the justice of God, this surplus of merits which I shall have acquired
will go to the rich treasure of the Church, from which she will draw merits to
enrich the multitude of good souls who cannot do enough for themselves to pay
their own debts, and to reach that point of holiness which will deserve a crown
in heaven. Then the more we do penance and inflict pains on our bodies, by our
fastings and floggings, the more we feel happy in the assurance of thus raising
ourselves more and more above the dust of this sinful world, of approaching
more and more to that state of holiness of which our Saviour spoke when He
said, `Be holy as I am holy Myself.' We feel an unspeakable joy when we know
that by those self-inflicted punishments we acquire incalculable merits, which
enrich not only ourselves, but our Holy Church, by filling her treasures for
the benefit and salvation of the souls for which Christ died on Calvary."
When Mr. Bedard was feeding my soul with these husks, he was speaking with
great animation and sincerity. Like myself, he was far away from the good
Father's house. He had never tasted of the bread of the children. Neither of us
knew anything of the sweetness of that bread. We had to accept those husks as
our only food, though it did not remove our hunger.
I answered him: "What you tell me here is what I find in all our ascetic
books and theological treatises, and in the lives of all our saints. I can
hardly reconcile that doctrine with what I read this morning in the 2nd chapter
of Ephesians. Here is the verse in my New Testament: `But God who is rich in
mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in
sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace ye are saved....for by
grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift
of God; not of works, least any man should boast.'
"Now, my dear and venerable Mr. Bedard, allow me respectfully to ask, how
is it possible that your salvation is only by grace, if you have to purchase it
every day by tearing your flesh and lashing your body in such a fearful manner?
Is it not a strange favour a very singular grace which reddens your skin with
your blood, and bruises your flesh every night?"
"Dear little brother," answered Mr. Bedard, "when Mr. Perras
spoke to me, in the presence of the bishop, with such deserved euloqium of your
piety, he did not conceal that you had a very dangerous defect, which was to
spend too much time in reading the Bible, in preference to every other of our
holy books. He told us more than this. He said that you had a fatal tendency to
interpret the Holy Scriptures too much according to your own mind, and in a
sense which is rather more Protestant than Catholic. I am sorry to see that the
curate of St. Charles was but too correct in what he told us of you. But, as he
added that, though your reading too much the Holy Scriptures brought some
clouds in your mind, yet when you were with him, you always ended by yielding
to the sense given by our holy Church. This did not prevent me from desiring to
have you in my place during my absence, and I hope I will not regret it, for we
are sure that our dear young Chiniquy will never be a traitor to our holy
Church."
These words, which were given with a great solemnity, mixed with the good
manners of the most sincere kindness, went through my soul as a two-edged
sword. I felt an inexpressible confusion and regret, and, biting my lips, I
said: "I have sworn never to interpret the Holy Scriptures except
according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers, and with the help of
God, I will fulfill my promise. I regret exceedingly to have differed for a
moment from you. You are my superior by your age, your science and your piety.
Please pardon me that momentary deviation from my duty, and pray that I may be
as you are a faithful and fearless soldier of our holy Church to the end."
At that moment the niece of the curate came to tell us that the dinner was
ready. We went to the modest, though exceedingly well spread table, and to my
great pleasure that painful conversation was dropped. We had not sat at the
table five minutes, when a poor man knocked at the door and asked a piece of
bread for the sake of Jesus and Mary. Mr. Bedard rose from the table, went to
the poor stranger, and said: "Come, my friend, sit between me and our dear
little Father Chiniquy. Our Saviour was the friend of the poor: He was the
father of the widow and the orphan, and we, His priests, must walk after Him.
Be not troubled; make yourself at home. Though I am the curate of
Charlesbourgh, I am your brother. It may be that in heaven you will sit on a
higher throne than mine, if you love our Saviour Jesus Christ and His holy
mother Mary, more than I do."
With these words, the best things that were on the table were put by the good
old priest in the plate of the poor stranger, who with some hesitation finished
by doing honour to the excellent viands.
After this, I need not say that Mr. Bedard was charitable to the poor: he
always treated them as his best friends. So also was my former curate of St.
Charles; and, though his charity was not so demonstrative and fraternal as that
of Mr. Bedard, I had yet never seen a poor man go out of the parsonage of St.
Charles whose breast ought not to have been filled with gratitude and joy.
Mr. Bedard was as exact as Mr. Perras in confessing once, and sometimes twice,
every week; and, rather than fail in that humiliating act, they both, in the
absence of their common confessors, and much against my feelings, several times
humbly knelt at my youthful feet to confess to me.
Those two remarkable men had the same views about the immorality and the want
of religion of the greater part of the priests. Both have told me, in their
confidential conversations, things about the secret lives of the clergy which
would not be believed were I to publish them; and both repeatedly said that
auricular confession was the daily source of unspeakable depravities between
the confessors and heir female as well as male penitents; but neither of them
had sufficient light to conclude from those deeds of depravity that auricular
confession was a diabolical institution. They both sincerely believed as I did
then, that the institution was good, necessary and divine, and that it was a
source of perdition to so many priests only on account of their want of faith
and piety; and principally from their neglect of prayers to the Virgin Mary.
They did not give me those terrible details with a spirit of criticism against
our weak brethren. Their intention was to warn me against the dangers, which
were as great for me as for others. They both invariable finished those
confidences by inviting me more and more to pray constantly to the mother of
God, the blessed Virgin Mary, and to watch over myself, and avoid remaining
alone with a female penitent; advising me also to treat my own body as my most
dangerous enemy, by reducing it into subjection to the law, and crucifying it
day and night.
Mr. Bedard had accompanied the Bishop of Quebec in his episcopal visits during
many years, and had seen with his eyes the unmentionable plague, which was
then, as it is now, devouring the very vitals of the Church of Rome. He very
seldom spoke to me of those things without shedding tears of compassion over
the guilty priests. My heart and my soul were so filled with an unspeakable
sadness when hearing the details of such iniquities. I also felt struck with
terror lest I might perish myself, and fall into the same bottomless abyss.
One day I told him what Mr. Perras had revealed to me about the distress of
Bishop Plessis, when he had found that only three priests besides Mr. Perras
believed in God, in his immense diocese. I asked him if there was not some
exaggeration in this report. He answered, after a profound sigh: "My dear
young friend: the angel could not find ten just men in Sodom my fear is that
they would not find more among the priests! The more you advance in age, the
more you will see that awful truth Ah! let those who stand fear, lest they
fall!"
After these words he burst into tears, and went to church to pray at the feet
of his wafer god!
The revelations which I received from those worthy priests did not in any way
shake my faith in my Church. She even became dearer to me; just as a dear
mother gains in the affection and devotedness of a dutiful son as her trials
and afflictions increase. It seemed to me that after this knowledge it was my
duty to do more than I had ever done to show my unreserved devotedness, respect
and love to my holy and dear mother, the Church of Rome, out of which (I
sincerely believed then) there was no salvation. These revelations became to
me, in the good providence of God, like light-houses raised on the hidden and
dreadful rocks of the sea, to warn the pilot during the dark hours of the night
to keep at a distance, if he does not want to perish.
Though these two priests professed to have a most profound love and respect for
the Holy Scriptures, they gave very little time to their study, and both
several times rebuked me for passing too many hours in their perusal; and
repeatedly warned me against the habit of constantly appealing to them against
certain practices and teachings of our theologians. As good Roman Catholic
priests they had no right to go to the Holy Scriptures alone to know what
"the Lord saith!" The traditions of the Church were their fountain of
science and light! Both of them often distressed me with the facility with
which they buried out of view, under the dark clouds of their traditions, the
clearest texts of Holy Scriptures which I used to quote in defense of my
positions in our conversations and debates.
They both, with an equal zeal, and unfortunately with too much success,
persuaded me that it was right for the Church to ask me to swear that I would
never interpret the Holy Scriptures, except according to the unanimous consent
of the Holy Fathers. But when I showed them that the Holy Fathers had never
been unanimous in anything except in differing from one another on almost every
subject they had treated; when I demonstrated by our Church historians that
some Holy Fathers had very different views from ours on many subjects, they
never answered my questions except by silencing me by the text: "If he
does not hear the Church let him be as a heathen or a publican," and by
giving me long lectures on the danger of pride and self-confidence.
Mr. Bedard had many opportunities of giving me his views about the submission
which an inferior owes to his superiors. He was of one mind with Mr. Perras and
all the theologians who had treated that subject. They both taught me that the
inferior must blindly obey his superior, just as the stick must obey the hand
which holds it; assuring me at the same time that the inferior was not
responsible for the errors he commits when obeying his legitimate superior.
Mr. Bedard and Mr. Perras had a great love for their Saviour, Jesus; but the
Jesus Christ whom they loved and respected and adored was not the Christ of the
Gospel, but the Christ of the Church of Rome.
Mr. Perras and Mr. Bedard had a great fear, as well as a sincere love for their
god, while yet they professed to make him every morning by the act of
consecration. They also most sincerely believed and preached that idolatry was
one of the greatest crimes a man could commit, but they themselves were every
day worshiping an idol of their own creating. They were forced by their Church
to renew the awful iniquity of Aaron, with this difference only, that while
Aaron made his gods of melted gold, and moulded them into the figure of a calf,
they made theirs with flour, baked between two heated and well polished irons,
and in the form of a crucified man.
When Aaron spoke of his golden calf to the people, he said: "These are thy
gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt." So likewise
Mr. Bedard and Mr. Perras, showing the wafer to the deluded people, said:
"Ecc agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi!" ("Behold the Lamb of
God which taketh away the sins of the world!")
These two sincere and honest priests placed the utmost confidence also in
relics and scapularies. I have heard both say that no fatal accident could
happen to one who had a scapular on his breast no sudden death would overtake a
man who was faithful in keeping those blessed scapularies about his person.
Both of them, nevertheless, died suddenly, and that too of the saddest of
deaths. Mr. Bedard dropped dead on the 19th of May, 1837, at a great dinner
given to his friends. He was in the act of swallowing a glass of that drink of
which God says: "Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its
colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a
serpent and stingeth like an adder."
The Rev. Mr. Perras, sad to say, became a lunatic in 1845, and died on the 29th
of July, 1847, in a fit of delirium.
.
CHAPTER 23
I
had not been more than three weeks the administrator of the parish of
Charlesbourgh, when the terrible words, "The cholera morbus is in
Quebec!" sent a thrill of terror from one end to the other of Canada.
The cities of Quebec and Montreal, with many surrounding country places, had been
decimated in 1832 by the same terrible scourge. Thousands upon thousands had
fallen its victims; families in every rank of society had disappeared; for the
most skilful physicians of both Europe and America had been unable to stop its
march and ravages. But the year 1833 had passed without hearing almost of a
single case of that fatal disease: we had all the hope that the justice of God
was satisfied, and that He would no more visit us with that horrible plague. In
this, however, we were to be sadly disappointed.
Charlesbourgh is a kind of suburb of Quebec, the greatest part of its
inhabitants had to go within its walls to sell their goods several times every
week. It was evident that we were to be among the first visited by that
messenger of a just, but angry God. I will never forget the hour after I had
heard: "The cholera is in Quebec!" It was, indeed, a most solemn hour
to me. At a glance, I measured the bottomless abyss which was dug under my
feet. We had no physicians, and there was no possibility of having any one for
they were to have more work than they could do in Quebec. I saw that I would
have to be both the body and soulphysician of the numberless victims of this
terrible disease.
The tortures of the dying, the cries of the widows and of the orphans, the
almost unbearable stench of the houses attacked by the scourge, the desolation
and the paralyzing fears of the whole people, the fatherless and motherless
orphans by whom I was to be surrounded, the starving poor for whom I would have
to provide food and clothing when every kind of work and industry was stopped;
but above all, the crowds of penitents whom the terrors of an impending death
would drag to my feet to make their confessions, that I might forgive their
sins, passed through my mind as so many spectres. I fell on my knees, with a
heart beating with emotions that no pen can describe, and prostrating myself
before my too justly angry God, I cried for mercy: with torrents of tears I
asked Him to take away my life as a sacrifice for my people, but to spare them:
raising my eyes towards a beautiful statue of Mary, whom I believed to be then
the Mother of God, I supplicated her to appease the wrath of her Son.
I was still on my knees, when several knocks at the door told me that some one
wanted to speak to me a young woman was there, bathed in tears and pale as
death, who said to me: "My father has just returned from Quebec, and is
dying from the cholera please come quick to hear his confession before he
expires!"
No tongue will ever be able to tell half of the horrors which strike the eyes
and the mind the first time one enters the house of a man struggling in the
agonies of death from cholera. The other diseases seem to attack only one part
of the body at once, but the cholera is like a furious tiger whose sharp teeth
and nails tear his victim from head to feet without sparing any part. The hands
and the feet, the legs and the arms, stomach, the breast and the bowels are at
once tortured. I had never seen anything so terrible as the fixed eyes of that
first victim whom I had to prepare for death. He was already almost as cold as
a piece of ice. He was vomiting and ejecting an incredible quantity of a watery
and blackish matter, which filled the house with an unbearable smell. With a
feeble voice he requested me to hear the confession of his sins, and I ordered
the family to withdraw and leave me alone, that they might not hear the sad
story of his transgressions. But he had not said five words before he cried
out: "Oh my God! what horrible cramps in my leg! For God's sake, rub
it." And when I had given up hearing his confession to rub the leg, he
cried again: "Oh!what horrible cramps in my arms! in my feet! in my
shoulders! in my stomach!" And to the utmost of my capacity and my
strength, I rubbed his arms, his feet, his shoulders, his breast, till I felt
so exhausted and covered with perspiration, that I feared I should faint.
During that time the fetid matter ejected from his stomach, besmeared me almost
from head to foot. I called for help, and two strong men continued with me to
rub the poor dying man.
It seemed evident that he could not live very long: his sufferings looked so
terrible and unbearable! I administered him the sacrament of extreme unction.
But I did not leave the house after that ceremony as it is the custom of the
priests. It was the first time that I had met face to face with that giant
which had covered so many nations with desolation and ruin, caused so many
torrents of tears to flow. I had heard so much of him! I knew that, till then,
nothing had been able to stop his forward march! He had scornfully gone through
the obstacles which the most powerful nations had placed before him to retard
his progress. He had mocked the art and science of the most skilful physicians
all over the world! In a single step he had gone from Moscow to Paris! and in
another month he had crossed the bottomless seas which the hands of the
Almighty have spread between Europe and America! That king of terrors, after
piling in their graves, by millions, the rich and the poor, the old and the
young, whom he had met on his march through Asia, Africa, Europe, and America,
was now before me! Nay, he was torturing, before my eyes, the first victim he
had chosen among my people! But the more I felt powerless in the presence of
that mighty giant, the more I wanted to see him face to face. I had a secret
pleasure, a holy pride, in daring him. I wanted to tell him: "I do not
fear you! You mercilessly attack my people, but with the help of God, in the
strength of the One who died on Calvary for me, and who told me that nothing is
more sweet and glorious than to give my life for my friends, I will meet and
fight you everywhere when you attack any one of those sheep who are dearer to
me than my own life!"
Standing by the bedside of the dying man whilst I rubbed his limbs to alleviate
his tortures, I exhorted him to repent. But I closely watched that hand-to-hand
battle that merciless and unequal struggle between the giant and his poor
victim. His agony was long and terrible, for he was a man of great bodily
strength. But after several hours of the most frightful pains, he quietly
breathed his last. The house was crowded with the neighbours and relations,
who, forgetful of the danger of catching the disease, had come to see him. We
all knelt and prayed for the departed soul, after which I gave them a few words
about the necessity of giving up their sins and keeping themselves ready to die
and go at the Master's call.
I then left that desolated house with feelings of distress which no pen can
portray. When I got back to the parsonage, after praying and weeping alone in
my chamber, I took a bath, and washed myself with vinegar and a mixture of
camphor, as a preventive against the epidemic. The rest of the day, till ten at
night, was spent in hearing the confessions of a great number of people whom
the fear of death had dragged around my confessional box that I might forgive
their sins. This hearing of confession was interrupted only at ten o'clock at
night, when I was called to the cemetery to bury the first victim of the
cholera in Charlesbourgh. A great number of people had accompanied the corpse
to his last resting-place: the night was beautiful, the atmosphere balmy, and
the moon and stars had never appeared to me so bright. The stillness of the
night was broken only by the sobs of the relations and friends of the deceased.
It was one of the best opportunities God had ever given me of exhorting the
people to repentance. I took for my text: "Therefore, be ye also ready; for
in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh." The spectacle of
that grave, filled by a man who, twenty-four hours before, was full of health
and life in the midst of his happy family, was speaking more eloquently than
the words of my lips, to show that we must be always ready. And never any
people entered the threshold of their homes with more solemn thoughts than
those to whom I spoke, that night, in the midst of the graveyard.
The history of that day is the history of the forty days which followed for not
a single one of them passed without my being called to visit a victim of the
cholera more than one hundred people were attacked by the terrible disease,
nearly forty of whom died!
I cannot sufficiently thank my merciful God for having protected me in such a
marvelous way that I had not a single hour of disease during those two months
of hard labours and sore trials. I had to visit the sick not only as a priest,
but as physician also; for seeing, at first, the absolute impossibility of persuading
any physician from Quebec to give up their rich city patients for our more
humble farmers, I felt it was my duty to make myself as expert as I could in
the art of helping the victims of that cruel and loathsome disease: I studied
the best authors on that subject, consulted the most skilful physicians, got a
little pharmacy which would have done honour to an old physician, and I gave my
care and my medicine gratis. Very soon the good people of Charlesbourgh put as
much, if not more confidence, in my medical care, as in any other of the best
physicians of the country. More than once I had to rub the limbs of so many
patients in the same day, that the skin of my hands was taken away, and several
times the blood came out from the wounds. Dr. Painchaud, one of the ablest
physicians of Quebec, who was my personal friend, told me after, that it was a
most extraordinary thing that I had not fallen a victim to that disease.
I would never have mentioned what I did, in those never-to-be-forgotten days of
the cholera of 1834, when one of the most horrible epidemics which the world
has ever seen spread desolation and death almost all over Canada, if I had been
alone to work as I did; but I am happy and proud to say that, without a single
exception, the French Canadian priests, whose parishes were attacked by that
pestilence, did the same. I could name hundreds of them who, during several
months, also, day after day and night after night, bravely met and fought the
enemy, and fearlessly presented their breast to its blows. I could even name
scores of them who heroically fell and died when facing the foe on that
battlefield!
We must be honest and true towards the Roman Catholic priests of Canada. Few
men, if even any, have shown more courage and self-denial in the hour of danger
than they did. I have seen them at work during the two memorable years of 1832
and 1834, with a courage and self-denial worthy of the admiration of heaven and
earth. Though they know well that the most horrible tortures and death might be
the price of their devotedness, I have not known a single one of them who ever
shrank before the danger. At the first appeal, in the midst of the darkest and
stormiest nights, as well as in the light of the brightest days, they were
always ready to leave their warm and comfortable beds to run to the rescue of
the sick and dying.
But, shall we conclude from that, as the priests of Rome want us to do, that
their religion is the true and divine religion of Christ? Must we believe that
because the priests are brave, admirably brave, and die the death of heroes on
the battlefields, they are the true, the only priests of Christ, the successors
of the apostles the ministers of the religion out of which there is no
salvation? No!
Was it because his religion was the divine and only true one that the
millionaire, Stephen Gerard, when in 1793 Philadelphia was decimated by a most
frightful epidemic, went from house to house, visiting the sick, serving,
washing them with his own hands, and even helping to put them into their
coffins? I ask it again, is it because his religion was the divine religion of
Jesus that that remarkable man, during several months, lived among the dying
and the dead, to help them, when his immense fortune allowed him to put a whole
world between him and the danger? No; for every one knows that Stephen Gerard
was a deist, who did not believe in Christ.
Was it because they followed the true religion that, in the last war between
Russia and Turkey, a whole regiment of Turks heroically ran to a sure death to
obey the order of their general, who commanded them to change bayonets on a
Russian battery, which was pouring upon them a real hail of bullets and
canister? No! surely no!
These Turks were brave, fearless, heroic soldiers, but nothing more. So the priests
of the Pope, who expose themselves in the hour of danger, are brave, fearless,
heroic solders of the Pope but they are nothing more.
Was it because they were good Christians that the soldiers of a French
regiment, at Austerlitz, consented to be slaughtered to the last, at the head
of a bridge where Napoleon had ordered them to remain, with these celebrated
words: "Soldiers! stand there and fight to the last; you will all be
killed, but you will save the army, and we will gain the day!"
Those soldiers were admirably well disciplined they loved their flag more than
their lives they knew only one thing in the world: "Obey the command of
Napoleon!" They fought like giants, and died like heroes. So the priests
are a well disciplined band of soldiers; they are trained to love their church
more than their own life; they also know only one thing: "Obey your
superior, the Pope!" they fight the battle of their church like giants,
and they die like heroes!
Who has not read the history of the renowned French man-of-war, the
"Tonnant?" When she had lost her masts, and was so crippled by the
redhot shot of the English fleet that there was no possibility of escape, what
did the soldiers and mariners of that ship answer to the cries of
"Surrender!" which came from the English admiral? "We die, but
do not surrender!"
They all went to the bottom of the sea, and perished rather than see their
proud banners fall into the hands of the foe!
It is because those French warriors were good Christians that they preferred to
die rather than give up their flag? No! But they knew that the eyes of their
country, the eyes of the whole world were upon them. Life became to them a
trifle: it became nothing when placed in the balance against what they
considered their honour, and the honour of their fair and noble country; nay,
life became an undesirable thing, when it was weighted against the glory of
dying at the post of duty and honour.
So it is with the priest of Rome. He knows that the eyes of his people, and of
his superiors the eyes of his whole church are upon him. He knows that if he
shrinks in the hour of danger, he will for ever lose their confidence and their
esteem; that he will lose his position and live the life of a degraded man!
Death seems preferable to such a life.
Yes! let the people of Canada read the history of "La Nouvelle
France," and they will cease from presenting to us the courage of their
priests as an indication of the divinity of their religion. For there they will
see that the worshipers of the wooden gods of the forests have equaled, if not
surpassed, in courage and self-denial in the face of death, the courage and
self-denial of the priests of the wafer god of Rome.
.
CHAPTER 24
In
the beginning of September, 1834, the Bishop Synaie gave me the enviable position
of one of the vicars of St. Roch, Quebec, where the Rev. Mr. Tetu had been
curate for about a year. He was one of the seventeen children of Mr. Francis
Tetu, one of the most respectable and wealthy farmers of St. Thomas. Such was
the amiability of character of my new curate, that I never saw him in bad
humour a single time during the four years that it was my fortune to work under
him in that parish. And although in my daily intercourse with him I sometimes
unintentionally sorely tried his patience, I never heard an unkind word proceed
from his lips.
He was a fine looking man, tall and well built, large forehead, blue eyes, a
remarkably fine nose and rosy lips, only a little to feminine. His skin was
very white for a man, but his fine short whiskers, which he knew so well how to
trim, gave his whole mien a manly and pleasant appearance.
He was the finest penman I ever saw; and by far the most skilful skater of the
country. Nothing could surpass the agility and perfection with which he used to
write his name on the ice with his skates. He was also fond of fast horses, and
knew, to perfection, how to handle the most unmanageable steeds of Quebec. He
really looked like Phaeton when, in a light and beautiful buggy, he held the
reins of the fiery coursers which the rich bourgeois of the city like to trust
to him once or twice a week, that he might take a ride with one of his vicars
to the surrounding country. Mr. Tetu was also fond of fine cigars and choice
chewing tobacco. Like the late Pope Pius IX., he also constantly used the snuff
box. He would have been a pretty good preacher, had he not been born with a
natural horror of books. I very seldom saw in his hands any other books than
his breviary, and some treatises on the catechism: a book in his hands had
almost the effect of opium on one's brains, it put him to sleep. One day, when
I had finished reading a volume of Tertullian, he felt much interested in what
I said of the eloquence and learning of that celebrated Father of the Church,
and expressed a desire to read it. I smilingly asked him if he were more than
usual in need of sleep. He seriously answered me that he really wanted to read
that work, and that he wished to begin its study just then. I lent him the
volume, and he went immediately to his room in order to enrich his mind with
the treasures of eloquence and wisdom of that celebrated writer of the
primitive church. Half an hour after, suspecting what would occur, I went down
to his room, and noiselessly opening the door, I found my dear Mr. Tetu
sleeping on his soft sofa, and snoring to his heart's content, while Tertullian
was lying on the floor! I ran to the rooms of the other vicars, and told them:
"Come and see how our good curate is studying Tertullian!"
There is no need to say that we had a hearty laugh at his expense.
Unfortunately, the noise we made awoke him, and we then asked him: "What
do you think of Tertullian?"
He rubbed his eyes, and answered, "Well, well! what is the matter? Are you
not four very wicked men to laugh at the human frailties of your curate?"
We for a while called him Father Tertullian.
Another day he requested me to give him some English lessons. For, though my
knowledge of English was then very limited, I was the only one of five priests
who understood and could speak a few words in that language. I answered him
that it would be as pleasant as it was easy for me to teach the little I knew
of it, and I advised him to subscribe for the "Quebec Gazette," that
I might profit by the interesting matter which that paper used to give to its
readers; and at the same time I should teach him to read and understand its
contents.
The third time that I went to his room to give him his lesson, he gravely asked
me: "Have you ever seen `General Cargo?'"
I was at first puzzled by that question, and answered him: "I never heard
that there was any military officer by the name of `General Cargo.' How do you
know that there is such a general in the world?"
He quickly answered: "There is surely a `General Cargo' somewhere in
England or America, and he must be very rich; for see the large number of ships
which bear his name, and have entered the port of Quebec, these last few
days!"
Seeing the strange mistake, and finding his ignorance so wonderful, I burst
into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I could not answer a word, but cried at
the top of my voice: "General Cargo! General Cargo!"
The poor curate, stunned by my laughing, looked at me in amazement. But, unable
to understand its cause, he asked me: "Why do you laugh?" But the
more stupefied he was, the more I laughed, unable to say anything but
"General Cargo! General Cargo!"
The three other vicars, hearing the noise, hastily came from their rooms to
learn its cause, and get a good laugh also. But I was so completely beside
myself with laughing, that I could not answer their questions in any other way
than by crying, "General Cargo! General Cargo!"
The puzzled curate tried then to give them some explanation of that mystery,
saying with the greatest naivete: "I cannot see why our little Father
Chiniquy is laughing so convulsively. I put to him a very simple question, when
he entered my room to give me my English lesson. I simply asked him if he had
ever seen `General Cargo,' who has sent so many ships to our port these last
few days, and added that that general must be very rich, since he has so many
ships on he sea!" The three vicars saw the point, and without being able
to answer him a word, they burst into such fits of laughter, that the poor
curate felt more than ever puzzled.
"Are you crazy?" he said. "What makes you laugh so when I put to
you such a simple question? Do you not know anything about that `General
Cargo,' who surely must live somewhere, and be very rich, since he sends so
many vessels to our port that they fill nearly two columns of the `Quebec
Gazette'?"
These remarks of the poor curate brought such a new storm of irrepressible
laughter from us all as we never experienced in our whole lives. It took us
some time to sufficiently master our feelings to tell him that "General
Cargo" was not the name of any individual, but only the technical words to
say that the ships were laden with general goods.
The next morning, the young and jovial vicars gave the story to their friends,
and the people of Quebec had a hearty laugh at the expense of our friend. From
that time we called our good curate by the name of "General Cargo,' and he
was so good-natured that he joined with us in joking at his own expense. It
would require too much space were I to publish all the comic blunders of that
good man, and so I shall give only one more.
On one of the coldest days of January, 1835, a merchant of seal skins came to
the parsonage with some of the best specimens of his merchandise, that we might
buy them to make overcoats, for in those days the overcoats of buffalo or
raccoon skins were not yet thought of. Our richest men used to have beaver
overcoats, but the rest of the people had to be contented with Canada seal
skins; a beaver overcoat could not be had for less than 200 dollars.
Mr. Tetu was anxious to buy the skins; his only difficulty was the high price
asked by the merchant. For nearly an hour he had turned over and over again the
beautiful skins, and has spent all his eloquence on trying to bring down their
price, when the sexton arrived, and told him, respectfully, "Mr. le Cure,
there are a couple of people waiting for you with a child to be baptized."
"Very well," said the curate, "I will go immediately;" and
addressed the merchant, he said,"Please wait a moment; I will not be long
absent."
In two minutes after the curate had donned the surplice, and was going at full
speed through the prayers and ceremonies of baptism. For, to be fair and true
towards Mr. Tetu (and I might say the same thing of the greatest part of the
priests I have known), it must be acknowledged that he was very exact in all
his ministerial duties; yet he was, in this case, going through them by steam,
if not by electricity. He was soon at the end. But, after the sacrament was
administered, we were enjoined, then, to repeat an exhortation to the
godfathers and godmothers, from the ritual which we all knew by heart, and
which began with these words: "Godfathers and Godmothers: You have brought
a sinner to the church, but you will take back a saint!"
As the vestry was full of people who had come to confess, Mr. Tetu thought that
it was his duty to speak with more emphasis than usual, in order to have his
instructions heard and felt by everyone, but instead of saying, "Godfather
and Godmother, You have brought a sinner to the church, you will take back a
saint!" he, with great force and unction said: "Godfather and
Godmother, You have brought a sinner to the church, you will take back a seal
skin!"
No words can describe the uncontrollable burst and roar of laughter among the
crowd, when they heard that the baptized child was just changed into a
"seal skin." Unable to contain themselves, or do any serious thing,
they left the vestry to go home and laugh to their heart's content.
But the most comic part of this blunder was the sang froid and the calmness
with which Mr. Tetu, turning towards me, asked: "Will you be kind enough
to tell me the cause of that indecent and universal laughing in the midst of
such a solemn action as the baptism of this child?"
I tried to tell him his blunder, but for some time it was impossible to express
myself. My laughing propensities were so much excited, and the convulsive
laughter of the whole multitude made such a noise, that he would not have heard
me had I been able to answer him. It was only when the greatest part of the
crowd had left that I could reveal to Mr. Tetu that he had changed the baptized
baby into a "seal skin!" He heartily laughed at his own blunder, and
calmly went back to buy his seal skins. The next day the story went from house
to house in Quebec, and caused everywhere such a laugh as they had not had
since the birth of "General Cargo."
That priest was a good type of the greatest part of the priests of Canada. Fine
fellows social and jovial gentlemen as fond of smoking their cigars as of
chewing their tobacco and using their snuff; fond of fast horses; repeating the
prayers of their breviary and going through the performance of their
ministerial duties with as much speed as possible. With a good number of books
in their libraries, but knowing nothing of them but the titles. Possessing the
Bible, but ignorant of its contents, believing that they had the light, when
they were in awful darkness; preaching the most monstrous doctrines as the
gospel of truth; considering themselves the only true Christians in the world,
when they worshipped the most contemptible idols made with hands. Absolutely
ignorant of the Word of God, while they proclaimed and believed themselves to
be the lights of the world. Unfortunate, blind men, leading the blind into the
ditch!
.
CHAPTER 25
In
one of the pleasant hours which we used invariably to pass after dinner, in the
comfortable parlour of our parsonage, one of the vicars, Mr. Louis Parent, said
to the Rev. Mr. Tetu, "I have handed this morning more than one hundred
dollars to the bishop, as the price of the masses which my pious penitents have
requested me to celebrate, the greatest part of them for the souls in
purgatory. Every week I have to do the same thing, just as each of you, and every
one of the hundreds of priests in Canada have to do. Now I would like to know
how the bishops can dispose of all these masses, and what they do with the
large sums of money which go into their hands from every part of the country to
have masses said. This question vexes me, and I would like to know your mind
about it."
The good curate answered in a joking manner, as usual: "If the masses paid
into our hands, which go to the bishop, are all celebrated, purgatory must be
emptied twice a day. For I have calculated that the sums given for those masses
in Canada cannot be less than 4,000 dollars every day, and, as there are three
times as many Catholics in the United States as here, and as those Irish
Catholics are more devoted to the souls in purgatory than the Canadians, there
is no exaggeration in saying that they give as much as our people; 16,000
dollars at least will thus be given every day in these two countries to throw
cold water on the burning flames of that fiery prison. Now these 16,000 dollars
given every day, multiplied by the 365 days of the year, make the handsome sum
of 5,840,000 dollars paid for that object in low masses every year. But, as we
all know, that more than twice as much is paid for high masses than for the
low, it is evident that more than 10,000,000 dollars are expended to help the
souls of purgatory end their tortures every twelve months, in North America
alone. If those millions of dollars do not benefit the good souls in purgatory,
they at all events are of some benefit to our pious bishops and holy popes, in
whose hands the greatest part must remain till the day of judgment. For there
is not a sufficient number of priests in the world to say all the masses which
are paid for by the people. I do not know any more than you do about what the
bishops do with those millions of dollars; they keep that among their secret
good works. But it is evident there is a serious mystery here. I do not mean to
say that the Yankee and the Canadian bishops swallow those huge piles of
dollars as sweet oranges; or that they are a band of big swindlers, who employ
smaller ones, called Revs. Tetu, Bailargeon, Chiniquy, Parent, ect., to fill
their treasures. But, if you want to know my mind on that delicate subject, I
will tell you that the least we think and speak of it the better it is for us.
Every time my thoughts turn to those streams of money which day and night flow
from the small purses of our pious and unsuspecting people into our hands, and
from ours into those of the bishops, I feel as if I were choking. If I am at
the table I can neither eat nor drink, and if in my bed at night, I cannot
sleep. But as I like to eat, drink, and sleep, I reject those thoughts as much
as possible, and I advise you to do the same thing."
The other vicars seemed inclined, with Mr. Parent, to accept that conclusion;
but, as I had not said a single word, they requested me to give them my views
on that vexatious subject, which I did in the following brief words:-
"There are many things in our holy church which look like dark spots; but
I hope that this is due only to our ignorance. No doubt these very things would
look as white as snow, were we to see and know them just as they are. Our holy
bishops, with the majority of the Catholic priests of the United States and Canada,
cannot be that band of thieves and swindlers whose phantoms chill the blood of
our worthy curate. So long as we do not know what the bishops do with those
numberless masses paid into their hands, I prefer to believe that they act as
honest men."
I had hardly said these few words, when I was called to visit a sick
parishioner, and the conversation was ended.
Eight days later, I was alone in my room, reading the "L'Ami de la
Religion et du Roi," a paper which I received from Paris, edited by Picot.
My curiosity was not a little excited, when I read, at the head of a page, in
large letters: "Admirable Piety of the French Canadian People." The
reading of that page made me shed tears of shame, and shook my faith to its
foundation. Unable to contain myself, I ran to the rooms of the curate and the
vicars, and said to them: "A few days ago we tried, but in vain, to find
what becomes of the large sums of money which pass from the people, through our
hands, into those of the bishop, to say masses; but here is the answer, I have
the key to that mystery, which is worthy of the darkest ages of the Church. I
wish I were dead, rather than see with my own eyes such abominations." We
then read that long chapter, the substance of which was that the venerable
bishops of Quebec had sent not less than one hundred thousand francs, at
different times, to the priests of Paris, that they might say four hundred
thousand masses at five cents each! Here we had the sad evidence that our
bishops had taken four hundred thousand francs from our poor people, under the
pretext of saving the souls from purgatory! That article fell upon us as a
thunderbolt. For a long time we looked at each other without being able to
utter a single word; our tongues were as paralyzed by our shame: we felt as
vile criminals when detected on the spot.
At last, Baillargeon, addressing the curate, said: "Is it possible that
our bishops are swindlers, and we, their tools to defraud our people? What
would that people say, if they knew that not only we do not say the masses for
which they constantly fill our hands with their hard-earned money, but that we
send those masses to be said in Paris for five cents! What will our good people
think of us all when they know that our bishop pockets twenty cents out of every
mass they ask us to celebrate according to their wishes."
The curate answered: "it is very lucky that the people do not know that
sharp operation of our bishops, for they would surely throw us all into the
river. Let us keep that shameful trade as secret as possible. For what is the
crime of simony if this be not an instance of it?"
I replied: "How can you hope to keep that traffic of the body and blood of
Christ a secret, when not less than 40,000 copies of this paper are circulated
in France, and more than 100 copies come to the Untied States and Canada! The
danger is greater than you suspect; it is even at our doors. It is not on
account of such public and undeniable crimes and vile tricks of the clergy of
France, that the French people in general, not only have lost almost every
vestige of religion, but, not half a century ago, condemned all the bishops and
priests of France to death as public malefactors?
"But that sharp mercantile operation of our bishops takes a still darker
colour, when we consider that those `five-cent masses' which are said in Paris
are not worth a cent. For who among us is ignorant of the fact that the
greatest part of the priests of Paris are infidels, and that many of them live
publicly with concubines? Would our people put their money in our hands if we
were honest enough to tell them that their masses would be said for five cents
in Paris by such priests? Do we not deceive them when we accept their money,
under the well understood condition that we shall offer the holy sacrifice
according to their wishes? But, instead of that, we get it sent to France, to
be disposed of in such a criminal way. But, if you allow me to speak a little
more, I have another strange fact to consider with you, which is closely
connected with this simoniacal operation?"
"Yes! speak, speak!" answered all four priests.
I then resumed: "Do you remember how you were enticed into the `Three
Masses Society'? Who among us had the idea that the new obligations we were
then assuming were such that the greatest part of the year would be spent in
saying masses for the priests, and that it would thus become impossible to
satisfy the pious demands of the people who support us? We already belonged to
the societies of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St. Michael, which raised to
five the number of masses we had to celebrate for the dead priests. Dazzled by
the idea that we would have two thousand masses said for us at our death, we
bit at the bait presented to us by the bishop as hungry fishes, without
suspecting the hook. The result is that we have had to say 165 masses for the
33 priests who died during the past year, which means that each of us has to
pay forty-one dollars to the bishop for masses which he has had said in Paris
for eight dollars. Each mass which we celebrate for a dead priest here, is a
mass which the more priests he enrolls in his society of `Three Masses,' the
more twenty cents he pockets from us and from our pious people. Hence his
admirable zeal to enroll every one of us. It is not the value of the money
which our bishop so skillfully got from our hands which I consider, but I feel
desolate when I see that by these societies we become the accomplices of his
simoniacal trade. For, being forced the greatest part of the year to celebrate
the holy sacrifice for the benefit of the dead priests, we cannot celebrate the
masses for which we are daily paid by the people, and are therefore forced to
transfer them into the hands of the bishop, who sends them to Paris, after
spiriting away twenty cents from each of them. However, why should we lament
over the past? It is no more within our reach. There is no remedy for it. Let
us then learn from the past errors how to be wise in the future."
Mr. Tetu answered: "You have shown us our error. Now, can you indicate any
remedy?"
"I cannot say that the remedy we have in hand is one of those patented
medicines which will cure all the diseases of our sickly church in Canada, but
I hope it will help to bring a speedy convalescence. That remedy is to abolish
the society of `Three Masses,' and to establish another of `One Mass,' which
will be said at the death of every priest. In that way it is true that instead
of 2,000 masses, we shall have only 1,200 at our death. But if 1,200 masses do
not open to us the gates of heaven, it is because we shall be in hell. By that
reduction we shall be enabled to say more masses at the request of our people,
and shall diminish the number of five cent masses said by the priests of Paris
at the request of our bishop. If you take my advice, we will immediately name
the Rev. Mr. Tetu president of the new society, Mr. Parent will be its
treasurer, and I consent to act as your secretary, if you like it. When our
society is organized, we will send our resignations to the president of the
other society, and we shall immediately address a circular to all the priests,
to give them the reason for the change, and respectfully ask them to unite with
us in this new society, in order to diminish the number of masses which are
celebrated by the five cents priests of Paris."
Within two hours the new society was fully organized, the reasons of its
formation written in a book, and our names were sent to the bishop, with a
respectful letter informing him that we were no more members of the `Three
Masses Society.' That letter was signed, C. Chiniquy, Secretary. Three hours
later, I received the following note from the bishop's palace:
"My Lord Bishop of Quebec
wants to see you immediately upon important affairs. Do not fail to come
without delay.
Truly yours,
"Charles F. Cazeault, Secy."
I showed the missive to the curate and the vicars, and told them: "A big
storm is raging on the mountain; this is the first peal of thunder the
atmosphere looks dark and heavy. Pray for me that I may speak and act as an
honest and fearless priest, when in the presence of the bishop."
In the first parlour of the bishop I met my personal friend, Secretary
Cazeault. He said to me: "My dear Chiniquy, you are sailing on a rough sea
you must be a lucky mariner if you escape the wreck. The bishop is very angry
at you; but be not discouraged, for the right is on your side." He then
kindly opened the door of the bishop's parlour, and said:
"My lord, Mr. Chiniquy is here, waiting for your orders."
"Let him come, sir," answered the bishop.
I entered and threw myself at his feet, as it is the usage of the priests. But,
stepping backward, he told me in a most excited manner: "I have no
benediction for you till you give me a satisfactory explanation of your strange
conduct."
I arose to my feet and said: "My lord, what do you want from me?"
"I want you, sir, to explain to me the meaning of this letter signed by
you as secretary of a new-born society called, `One Mass Society.'" At the
same time he showed me my letter.
I answered him: "My lord the letter is in good French your lordship must
have understood it well. I cannot see how any explanation on my part could make
it clearer."
"What I want to know from you, is what you mean, and what is your object
in leaving the old and respectable `Three Mass Society'? Is it not composed of
your bishops and of all the priests of Canada? Did you not find yourself in
sufficiently good company? Do you object to the prayers said for the souls in
purgatory?"
I replied: "My lord, I will answer by revealing to your lordship a fact
which was not sufficiently attracted your attention. The great number of masses
which we have to say for the souls of the dead priests makes it impossible for
us to say the masses for which the people pay into our hands; and then instead
of having these holy sacrifices offered by the good priests of Canada, your
lordship has recourse to the priests of France, where you get them said for
five cents. We see two great evils in this: First, our masses are said by
priests in whom we have not the least confidence; and though the masses they
say are very cheap, they are too dearly purchased; for between you and me, we
can say that, with very few exceptions, the masses said by the priests of
France, particularly of Paris, are not worth one cent. The second evil is still
greater, for in our eyes, it is one of the greatest crimes which our holy
church has always condemned, the crime of simony."
"Do you mean to say," indignantly replied the bishop, "that I am
guilty of the crime of simony?"
"Yes! my lord; it is just what I mean to say, and I do not see how your
lordship does not understand that the trade in masses by which you gain 400,000
francs on a spiritual merchandise, which you get for 100,000, is not
simony."
"You insult me! You are the most impudent man I ever saw. If you do
retract what you have said, I will suspend and excommunicate you!"
"My suspension and my excommunication will not make the position of your
lordship much better. For the people will know that you have excommunicated me
because I protested against your trade in masses. They will know that you
pocket twenty cents on every mass, and that you get them said for five cents in
Paris by priests, the greatest part of whom live with concubines, and you will
see that there will be only one voice in Canada to bless me for my protest and
to condemn you for your simoniacal trade on such a sacred thing as the holy and
tremendous sacrifice of the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus
Christ."
I uttered these words with such perfect calmness that the bishop saw that I had
not the least fear of his thunders. He began to pace the room, and he heaped on
my devoted head all the epithets by which I could learn that I was an insolent,
rebellious and dangerous priest.
"It is evident to me," he said, "that you aim to be a reformer,
a Luther, au petit pied, in Canada. But you will never be anything else than a
monkey!"
I saw that my bishop was beside himself, and that my perfect calmness added to
his irritation. I answered him: "If Luther had never done anything worse
than I do today, he ought to be blessed by God and man. I respectfully request
your lordship to be calm. The subject on which I speak to you is more serious
than you think. Your lordship, by asking twenty-five cents for a mass which can
be said for five cents, does a thing which you would condemn if it were done by
another man. You are digging under your own feet, and under the feet of your
priests the same abyss in which the Church of France nearly perished, not half
a century ago. You are destroying with your own hands every vestige of religion
in the hearts of the people, who will sooner or later know it. I am your best
friend, your most respectful priest, when I fearlessly tell you this truth
before it is too late. Your lordship knows that he has not a priest who loves
and cherishes him more than I do God knows, it is because I love and respect
you, as my own father, that I profoundly deplore the illusions which prevent
you from seeing the terrible consequences that will follow, if our pious people
learn that you abuse their ignorance and their good faith, by making them pay
twenty-five cents for a thing which costs only five. Woe to your lordship! Woe
to me, woe to our holy church, the day that our people know that in our holy
religion the blood of Christ is turned into merchandise to fill the treasury of
the bishops and popes!"
It was evident that these last words, said with the most perfect
self-possession, had not all been lost. The bishop had become calmer. He
answered me: "You are young and without experience; your imagination is
easily fed with phantoms; when you know a little more, you will change your
mind and will have more respect for your superiors. I hope your present error
is only a momentary one. I could punish you for this freedom with which you
have dared to speak to your bishop, but I prefer to warn you to be more
respectful and obedient in future. Though I deplore for your sake, that you
have requested me to take away your name from the `Three Mass Society' you and
the four simpletons who have committed the same act of folly, are the only
losers in the matter. Instead of two thousand masses said for the deliverance
of your souls from the flames of Purgatory, you will have only twelve hundred.
But, be sure of it, there is too much wisdom and true piety in my clergy to
follow your example. You will be left alone, and I fear, covered with ridicule.
For they will call you the `little reformer.'"
I answered the bishop: "I am young, it is true, but the truths I have said
to your lordship are as old as the Gospel. I have such confidence in the
infinite merits of the holy sacrifice of the mass, that I sincerely believe,
that twelve hundred masses said by good priests, are enough to cleanse my soul
and extinguish the flames of purgatory. But, besides, I prefer twelve hundred
masses said by one hundred sincere Canadian priests, to a million said by the
five cent priests of Paris."
These last words, spoken with a tone half serious, half jocose, brought a
change on the face of my bishop. I thought it was a good moment to get my
benediction and take leave of him. I took my hat, knelt at his feet, obtained
his blessing, and left.
.
CHAPTER 26
The
hour of my absence had been one of anxiety for the curate and the vicars. But my
prompt return filled them with joy.
"What news?" they all exclaimed.
"Good news," I answered; "the battle has been fierce but short.
We have gained the day;; and if we are only true to ourselves, another great
victory is in store for us. The bishop is so sure that we are the only ones who
think of that reform, that he will not move a finger to prevent the other
priests from following us. This security will make our success infallible. But
we must not lose a moment. Let us address our circular to every priest in
Canada."
One hour later there were more than twenty writers at work, and before
twenty-four hours, more than three hundred letters were carried to all the
priests, giving them the reasons why we should try, by all fair means, to put
an end to the shameful simoniacal trade in masses which was going on between
Canada and France.
The week was scarcely ended, when letters came from almost all curates and
vicars to the bishop, respectfully requesting him to withdraw his name from
"The Society of the Three Masses." Only fifty refused to comply with
our request.
Our victory was more complete than we had expected. But the Bishop of Quebec,
hoping to regain his lost ground, immediately wrote to the Bishop of Montreal,
my Lord Telemesse, to come to his help and show us the enormity of the crime we
had committed, in rebelling against the will of our ecclesiastical superiors.
A few days later, to my great dismay, I received a short and very cold note
from the bishop's secretary, telling me that their lordships, the Bishops of
Montreal and Quebec, wanted to see me at the palace, without delay. I had never
seen the Bishop of Montreal, and my surprise and disappointment were great in
finding myself in the presence of a man, my idea of whom was of gigantic proportions,
when in reality, he was very small. But I felt exceedingly well pleased by the
admirable mixture of firmness, intelligence, and honesty of his whole demeanor.
His eyes were piercing as the eagle's; but when fixed on me, I saw in them the
marks of a noble and honest heart.
The motions of his head were rapid, his sentences short, and he seemed to know
only one line, the straight one, when approaching a subject or dealing with a
man. He had the merited reputation of being one of the most learned and eloquent
men of Canada. The Bishop of Quebec had remained on his sofa, and left the
Bishop of Montreal to receive me. I fell at his feet and asked his blessing,
which he gave me in the most cordial way. Then, putting his hand upon my
shoulder, he said, in a Quaker style: "Is it possible that thou art
Chiniquy that young priest who makes so much noise? How can such a small man
make so much noise?"
There being a smile on his countenance as he uttered these words, I saw at once
that there was no anger or bad feeling in his heart; I replied: "My lord;
do you not know that the most precious pearls and perfumes are put up in the
smallest vases?"
The bishop saw that this was a compliment to his address; he smilingly replied:
"Well, well, if thou art a noisy priest, thou art not a fool. But, tell
me, why dost thou want to destroy our `Three Mass Society' and establish that
new one on its ruins, in spite of thy superiors?"
"My lord, my answer will be as respectful, short, and plain as possible. I
have left the `Three Mass Society' because it was my right to do it, without
anybody's permission. I hope our venerable Canadian bishops do not wish to be
served by slaves!"
"I do not say," replied the bishop, "that you wert bound in
conscience to remain in the `Three Mass Society;' but, can I know why thou hast
left such a respectable association, at the head of which thou seest thy
bishops and the most venerable priests in Canada?"
"I will again be plain in my answer, my lord. If your lordship wants to go
to hell with your venerable priests by spiriting away twenty cents from every
one of our honest and pious penitents, for masses which you get said for five,
by bad priests in Paris, I will not follow you. Moreover, if your lordship
wants to be thrown into the river by the furious people, when they know how
long and how cunningly we have cheated them, with our simoniacal trade in
masses, I do not want to follow you into the cold stream."
"Well! well, answered the bishop, "let us drop that matter for
ever."
He uttered this short sentence with such an evidence of sincerity and honesty,
that I saw he really meant it. He had, at a glance, seen that his ground was
untenable, in the presence of priests who knew their rights, and had a mind to
stand by them.
My joy was great indeed at such a prompt and complete victory. I fell again at
the bishop's feet, and asked his benediction before taking leave of him I then
left to go and tell the curates and vicars the happy issue of our interview
with the bishop of Montreal.
From that time till now, at the death of every priest, the Clerical Press never
failed mentioning whether the deceased priest belonged to the "Three"
or "One Mass Society."
We had, to some extent, diminished the simoniacal and infamous trade in masses;
but unfortunately we had not destroyed it; and I know that today it has
revived. Since I left the Church of Rome, the Bishops of Quebec have raised the
"Three Mass Society" from its grave.
It is a public fact, that no priest will dare deny, that the trade in masses is
still conducted on a large scale with France. There are in Paris and other
large cities in that country, public agencies to carry on that shameful
traffic. It is, generally, in the hands of booksellers or merchants of church
ornaments. Every year their houses send a large number of prospectuses through
France and Belgium and other catholic countries, in which they say that, in
order to help the priests, who having received money for their masses, don't
know where to have them said; they offer a premium of twenty-five or thirty per
cent to those who will send them the surplus of the money they have in hand, to
offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The priests who have such surplus, tempted by that premium, which is usually
paid with a watch or a chain, or a chalice, disgorge a part, or the whole of
the large sums they possess, into the hands of the pious merchants, who take
this money and use it as they please.
But they never pay the masses in money, they give only merchandise. For
instance, that priest will receive a watch, if he promises to celebrate one or
two hundred masses, or a chalice to celebrate three or four hundred masses. I
have, here in my hand, several of the contracts or promissory notes sent by
those merchants of masses to the priests. The public will, no doubt, read the
following documents with interest. They were handed me by a priest lately
converted from the Church of Rome:
RUE DE REIMES - PARIS
Ant. Levesques, editor of the works of Mr. Dufriche - Desgenettes.
Cure of Notre Dame des Victories.
Delivered to the Rev. Mr. Camerle, curate of Ansibeau (Basses Alpes). Paris,
October 12, 1874.
10 metres of Satin Cloth at 22 francs.................... 220.
8" of Merino, all wool.................................. 123.
Month of May............................................. 2.
History of Mary Christina................................ 1.40
Life of St. Stanislas Koska.............................. 2.
Meditations of the Soul.................................. 4.
Jesus Christ, the Light of the World..................... 2.
Packing and Freight...................................... 9.30
Total......................................................... 363.70
Mr. Curate; We have the honour of informing you that the packages containing
the articles you have ordered on the 4th of October, were shipped on the 12th
of October, to Digne, where we respectfully request you to go and ask for them.
For the payment of these articles, we request you to say the following masses:
58 ad intentionem of the giver, for the discharge of Rev. Mr. Montet.
58 ad intentionem of the givers, for the discharge of Rev. Mr. Hoeg.
100 - 188 for the dead, for the discharge of Rev. Mr. Wod.
Mr. Curate: Will you be kind enough to say or have said all those masses in the
shortest time possible, and answer these Revd. gentlemen, if they make any
inquiries about the acquittal of those masses.
Respectfully yours,
(Signed) Ant. Levesques.
Paris, November 11th, 1874.
Rev. Mr. Camerle; We have the honour of addressing you the invoice of what we
forwarded to you on the 12th of October. On account we have put to your credit
188 masses. We respectfully request you to get said the following intentions:
73 for the dead, to the acquittal of Rev. Mr. Watters,
70 pro defuncto, For the discharge of
20 ad intentionem donatis, Rev. Mr. C.
13 ad intentionem donatis, ____ 176
Mr. Curate; Be kind enough to say these masses, or have them said as soon as
possible, and answer the reverend gentleman who may inquire from you about
their acquittal. The 188 masses mentioned in our letter of the 3rd inst., added
to the 176 here mentioned, make 364 francs, the value of the goods sent you. We
thought you would like to have the pamphlets of propaganda we address you.
Respectfully your,
(signed) Ant. Levesques.
Hence,
it is that priests, in France and elsewhere, have gold watches, rich house
furniture, and interesting books, purchased with the money paid by our poor
deluded Canadian Catholics to their priests, for masses which are turned into
mercantile commodities in other places. It would be difficult to say who makes
the best bargain between those merchants of masses, the priests to whom they
are sold, or those from whom they are bought at a discount of twenty-five to
thirty per cent.
The only evident thing is the cruel deception practiced on the credulity and
ignorance of the Roman Catholics by their priests and bishops. Today, the
houses of Dr. Anthony Levesques in Paris are the most accredied in France. In
1874, the house of Mesme was doing an immense business with its stock of
masses, but in an evil day, the government suspected that the number of masses
paid into their hands, exceeded the number of those celebrated through their
hired priests. The suspicions soon turned into certainty when the books were
examined. It was then found that an incredible number of masses, which were to
empty the large room of purgatory, never reached their destination, but only
filled the purse of the Parisian mass merchant; and so the unlucky Mesme was
unceremoniously sent to the penitentiary to meditate on the infinite merits of
the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which had been engulfed in his treasures.
But these facts are not known by the poor Roman Catholics of Canada, who are
fleeced more and more by their priests, under the pretext of saving souls from
purgatory.
A new element of success in the large swindling operations of the Canadian
priests has lately been discovered. It is well known that in the greater part
of the United States, the poor deluded Irish pay one dollar to their priest,
instead of a shilling, for a low mass. Those priests whose conscience are
sufficiently elastic (as is often the case), keep the money without ever
thinking of having the masses said, and soon get rich. But there are some whose
natural honesty shrinks from the idea of stealing; but unable to celebrate all
the masses paid for and requested at their hands, they send the dollars to some
of their clerical friends in Canada, who, of course, prefer these one dollar
masses to the twentyfive cent ones paid by the French Canadians. However, they
keep that secret and continue to fill their treasury.
There are, however, many priests in Canada who think it less evil to keep those
large sums of money in their own hands, than to give them to the bishops to
traffic with the merchants of Paris. At the end of one of the ecclesiastical
retreats in the seminary of St. Sulpice in 1850, Bishop Bourget told us that
one of the priests who had lately died, had requested him, in the name of Jesus
Christ, to ask every priest to take a share in the four thousand dollars which
he had received for masses he never said. We refused to grant him that favour,
and those four thousand dollars received by that priest, like the millions put
into the hands of other priests and the bishops, turned to be nothing less than
an infamous swindling operation under the mask of religion.
To understand what the priests of Rome are, let the readers note what is said
in the Roman Catholic Bible, of the priest of Babylon: -
"And King Astyges was gathered to his fathers, and Cyrus, of Persia,
received his kingdom, and Daniel conversed with the king, and was honoured
above all his friends. Now the Babylonians had an idol, called Bel, and there
were spent upon him, every day, twelve measures of fine flour, and forty sheep
and six vessels of wine. And the king worshipped it and went daily to adore:
but Daniel worshipped his own God, and the king said unto him: `Why dost thou
not worship Bel?' who answered and said: `Because I may not worship idols made
with hands, but the living God, who hath created the heavens and the earth, and
hath sovereignty over all flesh.' Then the king said: `Thinkest thou not that
Bel is a living God! Seest thou not how much he eateth and drinketh every day?'
"Then Daniel smiled and said: `Oh, king! be not deceived; for this is but
clay within and brass without, and did never eat or drink anything.'
"So that king was wroth, and called for his priests and said: `If ye tell
me not who this is that devoureth these expenses, ye shall die; but if ye can
certify me that Bel devoureth them, then Daniel shall die, for he has spoken
blasphemy against Bel.' And Daniel said unto the king; `Let it be according to
thy word."
"Now the priests of Bel were three score and ten, besides their wives and
children.
"And the king went with Daniel to the temple of Bel so Bel's priests said:
`Lo! we got out, but thou, O king, set on the meat, and make ready the wine,
and shut the door fast, and seal it with thine own signet; and to-morrow when
thou comest in, if thou findest not that Bel had eaten up all, we will suffer
death; or else, Daniel, that speaketh falsely against Bel, shall die and they
little regarded it, for under the table they had made a privy entrance, whereby
they entered continually and consumed those things.'
"So when they were gone forth, the king set meats before Bel.
"Now Daniel had commanded his servants to bring ashes, and those they
strewed throughout all the temple, in the presence of the king alone: then went
they out, and shut the door, and sealed it with the king's signet, and so
departed.
"Now in the night came the priests, with their wives and children, as they
were wont to do, and did eat and drink up all.
"In the morning betimes the king arose, and Daniel with him.
"And the king said, `Daniel, are the seals whole?' And he said, `Yea, O
king, they be whole.' And as soon as they had opened the door, the king looked
upon the table, and cried with a loud voice: `Great art thou, O Bel! and with
thee there is no deceit at all.' Then laughed Daniel, and held the king that he
should not go in, and said: `Behold now the pavement, and mark well whose
footsteps are these.' And the king said: `I see the footprints of men, women,
and children.' And then the king was angry, and took the priests, with their
wives and children, who showed him the privy doors, where they came in and
consumed such things as were on the tables.
"Therefore the king slew them, and delivered Bel into Daniel's power, who
destroyed him and his temple."
Who does not pity the king of Babylon, who, when looking at his clay and brass
god, exclaimed: "Great art thou, O Bel, and with thee there is no
deceit!"
But, is the deception practiced by the priests of the Pope on their poor,
deluded dupes, less cruel and infamous? Where is the difference between that
Babylonian god, made with brass and baked clay, and the god of the Roman
Catholics, made with a handful of wheat and flour, baked between two hot
polished irons?
How skilful were the priests in keeping the secret of what became of the rich
daily offerings brought to the hungry god! Who could suspect that there was a
secret trap through which they came with their wives and children to eat the
rich offerings?
So, today, among the simple and blind Roman Catholics, who could suppose that
the immense sums of money given every day to the priests to glorify God, purify
the souls of men, and bring all kinds of blessings upon the donors, were, on
the contrary, turned into the most ignominious and swindling operation the
world has ever seen?
Though the brass god of Babylon was a contemptible idol, is not the wafer god
of Rome still more so? Though the priests of Bel were skilful deceivers, are
they not surpassed in the art of deception by the priests of Rome! Do not these
carry on their operations on a much larger scale than the former?
But, as there is always a day of retribution for the great iniquities of this
world, when all things will be revealed; and just as the cunning of the priests
of Babylon could not save them, when God sent His prophet to take away the
mask, behind which they deceived their people, so let the priests of Rome know
that God will, sooner or later, send His prophet, who will tear off the mask,
behind which they deceive the world. Their big, awkward, and flat feet will be
seen and exposed, and the very people whom they keep prostrated before their
idols, crying: "O God! with Thee there is no deceit of all!" will
become the instruments of the justice of God in the great day of retribution.
.
CHAPTER 27
One
of the first things done by the curate Tetu, after his new vicars had been
chosen, was to divide, by casting lots, his large parish into four parts, that
there might be more regularity in our ministerial labours, and my lot gave me
the north-east of the parish, which contained the Quebec Marine Hospital.
The number of sick sailors I had to visit almost every day in that noble
institution, was between twenty-five and a hundred. The Roman Catholic chapel,
with its beautiful altar, was not yet completed. It was only in 1837 that I
could persuade the hospital authorities to fix it as it is today. Having no
place there to celebrate mass and keep the Holy Sacrament, I soon found myself
in presence of a difficulty which, at first, seemed to me of a grave character.
I had to administer the viaticum (holy communion) to a dying sailor. As every
one knows, all Roman Catholics are bound to believe that by the consecration,
the wafer is transformed into the body, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Hence,
they call that ceremony: "Porter le bon dieu au malade" (carry the
good god to the sick). Till then, when in Charlesbourgh or St. Charles, I, with
the rest of Roman Catholic priests, always made use of pomp and exterior marks
of supreme respect for the Almighty God I was carrying in my hands to the
dying.
I had never carried the good God without being accompanied by several people,
walking or riding on horseback. I then wore a white surplice over my long black
robe (soutane) to strike the people with awe. There was also a man ringing a
bell before me, all along the way, to announce to the people that the great
God, who had not only created them, but had made Himself man to save them, by
dying on Calvary, was passing by; that they had to fall on their knees in their
houses, or along the public roads, or in their fields, and prostrate themselves
and adore Him.
But could I do that in Quebec, where so many miserable heretics were more
disposed to laugh at my god than to adore him?
In my zeal and sincere faith, I was, however, determined to dare the heretics
of the whole world, and to expose myself to their insults, rather than give up
the exterior marks of supreme respect and adoration which were due to my god
everywhere; and twice I carried him to the hospital in the usual solemnity.
In vain, my curate tried to persuade me to change my mind. I closed my ears to
his arguments. He then kindly invited me to go with him to the bishop's palace,
in order to confer with him on that grave subject. How can I express my dismay
when the bishop told me, with a levity which I had not yet observed in him,
"that on account of the Protestants whom we had to meet everywhere, it was
better to make our `god' travel incognito in the streets of Quebec." He
added in a high and jocose tone: "Put him in your vest pocket, as do the
rest of the city priests. Carry him to your dying patients without any
scruples. Never aim at being a reformer and doing better than your venerable
brethren in the priesthood. We must not forget that we are a conquered people.
If we were masters, we would carry him to the dying with the public honours we
used to give him before the conquest; but the Protestants are the stronger. Our
governor is a Protestant, as well as our Queen. The garrison, which is inside
the walls of their impregnable citadel, is composed chiefly of Protestants.
According to the laws of our holy church, we have the right to punish, even by
death, the miserable people who turn into ridicule the mysteries of our holy
religion. But though we have that right, we are not strong enough to enforce
it. We must, then, bear the yoke in silence. After all, it is our god himself,
who in his inscrutable judgment, has deprived us of the power of honouring him
as he deserves; and to tell you my whole mind as plainly as possible, it is not
our fault, but his own doing, so to speak, if we are forced to make him travel
incognito through our streets. It is one of the sad results of the victory
which the God of battles gave to the heretics over us on the plains of Abraham.
If, in his good providence, we could break our fetters, and become free to pass
again the laws which regulated Canada before the conquest, to prevent the
heretics from settling among us, then we would carry him as we used to do in
those happy days."
"But," said I, "when I walk in the streets with my good god in
my vest pocket, what will I do if I meet any friend who wants to shake hands
and have a joke with me?"
The bishop laughed and answered: "Tell your friend you are in a hurry, and
go your way as quickly as possible; but if there is no help, have your talk and
your joke with him, without any scruple of conscience. The important point in
this delicate matter is that the people should not know we are carrying our god
through the streets incognito, for this knowledge would surely shake and weaken
their faith. The common people are, more than we think, kept in our holy
church, by the impressing ceremonies of our processions and public marks of
respect we give to Jesus Christ, when we carry Him to the sick; for the people
are more easily persuaded by what they see with their eyes and touch with their
hands, than by what they hear with their ears."
I submitted to the order of my ecclesiastical superior; but I would not be
honest, were I not to confess that I lost much of my spiritual joy for some
time in the administration of the viaticum. I continued to believe as sincerely
as I could, but the laughing words and light tone of my bishop had fallen upon
my soul as an icy cloud. The jocose way in which he had spoken of what I had
been taught to consider as the most awful and adorable mystery of the church,
left the impression on my mind that he did not believe one iota of the dogma of
transubstantiation. And in spite of all my honest efforts to get rid of that
suspicion, it grew in my mind every time I met him to talk on any ministerial
subject.
It took several years before I could accustom myself to carry my god in my vest
pocket as the other priests did, without any more ceremony than with a piece of
tobacco. So long as I was walking alone I felt happy. I could then silently
converse with my Saviour, and give Him all the expression of my love and
adoration. It was my custom, then, to repeat the 103rd or 50th Psalm of David,
or the Te Deum, or some other beautiful hymn, or the Pange Lingua, which I knew
by heart. But no words can express my sadness when, as it was very often the
case, I met some friends forcing me to shake hands with them, and began one of
those idle and commonplace talks, so common everywhere.
With the utmost efforts, I had then to put a smiling mask on my face, in order
to conceal the expressions of faith which are infallibly seen, in spite of
one's self, if one is in the very act of adoration.
How, then, I earnestly cursed the day when my country had fallen under the yoke
of Protestants, whose presence in Quebec prevented me from following the
dictates of my conscience! How many times did I pray my wafer god, whom I was
personally pressing on my heart, to grant us an opportunity to break those
fetters, and destroy for ever the power of Protestant England over us! Then we
should be free again, to give our Saviour all the public honours which were due
to His Majesty. Then we should put in force the laws by which no heretic had any
right to settle and live in Canada.
Not long after that conversation with the bishop, I found myself in a
circumstance which added much to my trouble and confusion of conscience on that
matter.
There was then, in Quebec, a merchant who had honourably raised himself from a
state of poverty, to the first rank among the wealthy merchants of Canada.
Though, a few years after, he was ruined by a series of most terrible
disasters, his name is still honoured in Canada, as one of the most industrious
and honest merchants of our young country. His name was James Buteau. He had
built a magnificent house, and furnished it in a princely style. In order to
celebrate his "house warming" in a becoming style, he invited a
hundred guests from the elite of the city, among whom were all the priests of
the parishes. But in order not to frighten their prudery though that party was
to be more of a nature of a ball than anything else Mr. Buteau had given it the
modest name of an Oyster Soiree.
Just as the good curate, Tetu, with his cheerful vicars was starting, a
messenger met us at the door, to say that Mr. Parent, the youngest vicar, had
been called to carry the "good god" to a dying woman.
Mr. Parent was born, and has passed his whole life in Quebec, in whose seminary
he had gone through a complete and brilliant course of study. I think there was
scarcely a funny song in the French language which he could not sing. With a
cheerful nature, he was the delight of the Quebec society, by almost every
member of which he was personally known.
His hair was constantly perfumed with the richest pomade, and the most precious
eau de cologne surrounded him with an atmosphere of the sweetest odours. With
all these qualities and privileges, it is no wonder that he was the confessor,
a la mode, of the young ladies of Quebec.
The bright luminaries which hover around Jupiter are not more exact in
converging toward that brilliant star than those pious young ladies were in
gathering around the confessional box of Mr. Parent every week or fortnight.
The unexpected announcement of a call to the death-bed of one of his poorest
penitents, was not quite the most desirable thing for our dear young friend, at
such an hour. But he knew too well his duty to grumble. He said to us, "Go
before me and tell Mr. Buteau that I will be in time to get my share of the
oysters."
By chance, the sick house was on the way and not far from Mr. Buteau's splendid
mansion. He left us to run to the altar and take the "good god" with
him. We started for the soiree, but not sympathizing with our dear Mr. Parent,
who would lose the most interesting part, for the administration of the
viaticum. The extreme unction, with the giving of indulgences, in articulo
moris, and the exhortations to the dying, and the people gathered from the
neighbourhood to witness those solemn rites, could not take much less than
three quarters, or even an hour of his time. But, to my great surprise, we had
not yet been ten minutes in the magnificent parlour of our host, when I saw Mr.
Parent, who like a newborn butterfly, flying from flower to flower, was running
from lady to lady, joking, laughing, surpassing himself with his inimitable and
refined manners. I said to myself, "How is it possible that he has so
quickly got rid of his unpalatable task with his dying penitent?" and I
wanted an opportunity of being alone with him, to satisfy my curiosity on that
point; but it was pretty late in the evening when I found a chance to say to
him: "We all feared lest your dying patient may deprive us of the pleasure
of your company the greatest part of the soiree!"
"Oh! oh!" answered he, with a hearty laugh, "that intelligent
woman had the good common sense to die just two minutes before I entered her
house. I suppose that her guardian angel, knowing all about this incomparable
party, had despatched the good soul to heaven a little sooner than she
expected, in my behalf."
I could not but smile at his answer, which was given in a manner to make a
stone laugh. "But," said I, "what have you done with the 'good
god' you had carried with you?"
"Ah! ah! the 'good god,'" he replied, in a jocose and subdued tone.
"Well, well; the 'good god!' He stands very still in my vest pocket; and
if he enjoys this princely festivity as well as we all do, he will surely thank
me for having brought him here, even en survenant. But do not say a word of his
presence here; it would spoil everything."
That priest, who was only one year younger than myself, was one of my dearest
friends. Though his words rather smelt of the unbeliever and blasphemer, I
preferred to attribute them to the sweet champagne he had drank than to a real
want of faith.
But I must confess that, though I had laughed very heartily at first, his last
utterance pained me so much that, from that moment to the end of the soiree, I
felt uneasy and confounded. My firm belief that my Saviour, Jesus Christ, was
there in person, kept a prisoner in my young friend's vest pocket, going to and
fro from one young lady to the other, witnessing the constant laughing, hearing
the idle words, the light and funny songs, made my whole soul shudder, and my
heart sunk within me. By times I wished I could fall on my knees to adore my
Saviour, whom I believed to be there. However, a mysterious voice was
whispering in my ear: "Are you not a fool to believe that you can make a
God with a wafer; and that Jesus Christ, your Saviour and your God, can be kept
a prisoner, in spite of himself, in the vest pocket of a man? Do you not see
that your friend, Parent, who has much more brains and intelligence than you,
does not believe a word of that dogma of transubstantiation? Have you forgotten
the unbeliever's smile, which you saw on the lips of the bishop himself only a
few days ago? Was not that laugh the infallible proof that he also does not believe
a particle of that ridiculous dogma?"
With superhuman effort I tried, and succeeded partly, to stifle that voice. But
that struggle could not last long within my soul, without leaving its exterior
marks on my face. Evidently a sad cloud was over my eyes, for several of my
most respectable friends, with Mr. and Mrs. Buteau, kindly asked if I were
sick.
At last I felt so confused at the repetition of the same suggestion by so many,
that I felt I was only making a fool of myself by remaining any longer in their
midst. Angry with myself for any want of moral strength in this hour of trial,
I respectfully asked pardon from my kind host for leaving their party before
the end, on account of a sudden indisposition.
The next day there was only one voice in Quebec saying that young Parent had
been the lion of that brilliant soiree, and that the poor young priest,
Chiniquy, had been its fool.
.
CHAPTER 28
God
controls the greatest as well as the smallest of the events of this world. Our
business during the few days of our pilgrimage, then, is to know His will and
do it. Our happiness here, as in heaven, rests on this foundation, just as the
success and failures of our lives come entirely from the practical knowledge or
ignorance of this simplest and sublimest truth. I dare say that there is not a
single fact of my long and eventful life which has not taught me that there is
a special providence in our lives. Particularly was this apparent in the
casting of the lots by which I became the first chaplain of the Quebec Marine
Hospital. After the other vicars had congratulated each other for having
escaped the heavy burden of work and responsibilities connected with that
chaplaincy, they kindly gave me the assurance of their sympathies for what they
called my bad luck. In thanking them for their friendly feeling, I confessed
that this occurrence appeared to me in a very different light. I was sure that
God had directed this for my good and His own glory, and I was right. In the
beginning of November, 1834, a slight indisposition having kept me a few days
at home, Mr. Glackmayer, the superintendent of the hospital, came to tell me
that there was an unusually large number of sick, left by the Fall fleets, in
danger of death, who were day and night calling for me. He added, in a secret
way, that there were several cases of small-pox of the worst type; that several
had already died, and many were dying from the terrible cholera morbus, which
was still raging among the sailors.
This sad news came to me as an order from heaven to run to the rescue of my
dear sick seamen. I left my room, despite my physician, and went to the
hospital.
The first man I met was Dr. Douglas, who was waiting for me at Mr. C.
Glackmayer's room. He confirmed what I had known before of the number of sick,
and added that the prevailing diseases were of the most dangerous kind.
Dr. Douglas, who was one of the founders and governors of the hospital, had the
well-merited reputation of being one of the ablest surgeons of Quebec. Though a
staunch Protestant by birth and profession, he honoured me with his confidence
and friendship from the first day we met. I may say I have never known a nobler
heart, a larger mind and a truer philanthropist.
After thanking him for the useful though sad intelligence he had given me, I
requested Mr. Glackmayer to give me a glass of brandy, which I immediately
swallowed.
"What are you doing there?" said Dr. Douglas.
"You see," I answered; "I have drunk a glass of excellent
brandy."
"But please tell me why you drank that brandy."
"Because it is a good preservative against the pestilential atmosphere I
will breathe all day," I replied. "I will have to hear the
confessions of all those people dying form small-pox or cholera, and breathe
the putrid air which is around their pillows. Does not common sense warn me to
take some precautions against the contagion?"
"Is it possible," rejoined he, "that a man for whom I have such
a sincere esteem is so ignorant of the deadly workings of alcohol in the human
frame? What you have just drank is nothing but poison; and, far from protecting
yourself against the danger, you are now more exposed to it than before you
drank that beverage."
"You poor Protestants," I answered, in a jocose way, "are a band
of fanatics, with your extreme doctrines on temperance; you will never convert
me to your views on that subject. Is it for the use of the dogs that God has
created wine and brandy? No; it is for the use of men who drink them with
moderation and intelligence."
"My dear Mr. Chiniquy, you are joking; but I am in earnest when I tell you
that you have poisoned yourself with that glass of brandy," replied Dr.
Douglas. "If good wine and brandy were poisons," I answered,
"you would be long ago the only physician in Quebec, for you are the only
one of the medical body whom I know to be an abstainer. But, though I am much
pleased with your conversation, excuse me if I leave you to visit my dear sick
sailors, whose cries for spiritual help ring in my ears."
"One word more," said Dr. Douglas, "and I have done. Tomorrow
morning we will make the autopsy of a sailor who has just died suddenly here.
Have you any objection to come and see with your eyes, in the body of that man,
what your glass of brandy has done in your own body."
"No, sir; I have no objection to see that," I replied. "I have
been anxious for a long time to make a special study of anatomy. It will be my
first lesson; I cannot get it from a better master."
I then shook hands with him and went to my patients, with whom I passed the
remainder of the day and the greater part of the night. Fifty of them wanted to
make general confessions of all the sins of their whole lives; and I had to
give the last sacraments to twenty-five who were dying from small-pox or
cholera morbus. The next morning I was, at the appointed hour, by the corpse of
the dead man, when Dr. Douglas kindly gave me a very powerful microscope, that
I might more thoroughly follow the ravages of alcohol in every part of the
human body.
"I have not the least doubt," said he, "that this man has been
instantly killed by a glass of rum, which he drank one hour before he fell
dead. That rum has caused the rupture of the aorta" (the big vein which
carries the blood to the heart).
While talking thus the knife was doing its work so quickly that the horrible
spectacle of the broken artery was before our eyes almost as the last word fell
from his lips.
"Look here," said the doctor, "all along the artery, and you
will see thousands, perhaps millions, of reddish spots, which are as many holes
perforated through it by alcohol. Just as the musk rats of the Mississippi
river, almost every spring, did little holes through the dams which keep that
powerful river within its natural limits, and cause the waters to break through
the little holes, and thus carry desolation and death along its shores, so
alcohol every day causes the sudden death of thousands of victims by
perforating the veins and opening small issues through which the blood rushes
out of its natural limits. It is not only this big vein which alcohol
perforates; it does the same deadly work in the veins of the lungs and the
whole body. Look at the lungs with attention, and count, if you can, the
thousands and thousands of reddish, dark and yellow spots, and little ulcers
with which they are covered. Every one of them is the work of alcohol, which
has torn and cut the veins and caused the blood to go out of its canals, to
carry corruption and death all over these marvelous organs. Alcohol is one of
the most dangerous poisons I dare say it is the most dangerous. It has killed
more men than all the other poisons together. Alcohol I cannot be changed or
assimilated to any part or tissue or our body, it cannot go to any part of the
human frame without bringing disorder and death to it. For it cannot in any
possible way unite with any part of our body. The water we drink, and the
wholesome food and bread we eat, by the laws and will of God are transformed
into different parts of the body, to which they are sent through the millions
of small canals which take them from the stomach to every part of our frame.
When the water has been drunk, or the bread we have eaten is, for instance,
sent to the lungs, to the brain, the nerves, the muscles, the bones wherever it
goes it receives, if I can so speak, letters of citizenship; it is allowed to
remain there in peace and work for the public good. But it is not so with
alcohol. The very moment it enters the stomach it more or less brings disorder,
ruin and death, according to the quantity taken. The stomach refuses to take
it, and makes a supreme effort to violently throw it out, either through the
mouth, or by indignantly pushing it to the brain or into the numberless tubes
by which it discharges its contents to the surface through all the tissues. But
will alcohol be welcome in any of these tubes or marvelous canals, or in any
part or tissue of the body it will visit on its passage to the surface? No!
Look here with your microscope, and you will see with your own eyes that
everywhere alcohol has gone in the body there has been a hand-to-hand struggle
and a bloody battle fought to get rid of it. Yes! every place where King
Alcohol has put his foot has been turned into a battlefield, spread with ruin
and death, in order to ignominiously turn it out. By a most extraordinary
working of nature, or rather by the order of God, every vein and artery through
which alcohol has to pass suddenly contracts, as if to prevent its passage or
choke it as a deadly foe. Every vein and artery has evidently heard the voice
of God: "Wine is a mocker; it bites like a serpent and stings as an
adder!" Every nerve and muscle which alcohol touched, trembled and shook
as if in the presence of an implacable and unconquerable enemy. Yes, at the
presence of alcohol every nerve and muscle loses its strength, just as the
bravest man, in the presence of a horrible monster or demon, suddenly loses his
natural strength, and shakes from head to foot."
I cannot repeat all I heard that day from the lips of Dr. Douglas, and what I
saw with my own eyes of the horrible workings of alcohol through every part of
that body. It would be too long. Suffice to say that I was struck with horror
at my own folly, and at the folly of so many people who make use of
intoxicating drinks.
What I learned that day was like the opening of a mysterious door, which
allowed me to see the untold marvels of a new and most magnificent world. But
though I was terror-stricken with the ravages of strong drink in that dead man,
I was not yet convinced of the necessity of being a total abstainer from wine
and beer, and a little brandy now and then, as a social habit. I did not like
to expose myself to ridicule by the sacrifice of habits which seemed then, more
than now, to be among the sweetest and most common links of society. But I determined
to lose no opportunity of continuing the study of the working of alcohol in the
human body. At the same time I resolved to avail myself of every opportunity of
making a complete study of anatomy under the kind and learned Dr. Douglas.
It was from the lips and works of Dr. Douglas that I learned the following
startling facts:
1st. The heart of man, which is only six inches long by four inches wide, beats
seventy times in a minute, 4,200 in one hour, 100,300 in a day, 36,792,000 in a
year. It ejects two ounces and a half of blood out of itself every time it
beats, which makes 175 ounces every minute, 656 pounds every hour, seven tons
and three-quarters of blood which goes out of the heart every day! The whole
blood of a man runs through his heart in three minutes.
2nd. The skin is composed of three parts placed over each other, whose
thickness varies from a quarter to an eighth of a line. Each square inch
contains 3,500 pores, through which the sweat goes out. Every one of them is a
pipe a quarter of an inch long. All those small pipes united together would
form a canal 201,166 feet long equal to forty miles, or nearly thirteen
leagues!
3rd. The weight of the blood in an ordinary man is between thirty and forty
pounds. That blood runs through the body in 101 seconds, or one minute and
forty-one seconds. Eleven thousand (11,000) pints of blood pass through the
lungs in twenty-four hours.
4th. There are 246 bones in the human body; 63 of them are in the head, 24 in
the sides, 16 in the wrist, 14 in the joints, and 108 in the hands and feet!
The heart of a man who drinks nothing but pure water beats about 100,300 a day,
but will beat from 25,000 to 30,000 times more if he drinks alcoholic drinks.
Those who have not learned anatomy know little of the infinite power, wisdom,
love and mercy of God. No book except the Bible, and no science except the
science of astronomy is like the body of man to tell us what our God is, and
what we are. The body of man is a book written by the hand of God, to speak to
us of Him as no man can speak. After studying the marvelous working of the
heart, the lungs, the eyes and the brain of man, I could not speak; I remained
mute, unable to say a single word to tell my admiration and awe. I wept as
overwhelmed with my feelings. I should have like to speak of those things to
the priests with whom I lived, but I saw at first they could not understand me;
they thought I was exaggerating. How many times, when alone with God in my
little closet, when thinking of those marvels, I fell on my knees and said:
"Thou are great, O my God! The works of Thy hands are above the works of
man! But the works of Thy love and mercy are above all Thy other works!"
During the four years I was chaplain of the Marine Hospital, more than one
hundred corpses were opened before me, and almost as many outside the hospital.
For when, by the order of the jury and the coroner, an autopsy was to be made,
I seldom failed to attend. In that way I have had a providential opportunity of
acquiring the knowledge of one of the most useful and admirable sciences as no
priest or minister probably ever had on this continent. It is my conviction
that the first thing a temperance orator ought to do is to study anatomy; get
the bodies of drunkards, as well as those of so called temperate drinkers,
opened before him, and study there the working of alcohol in the different
organs of man. So long as the orators on temperance will not do that, they
cannot understand the subject on which they speak. Though I have read the best
books written by the most learned physicians of England, France, and United
States on the ravages of rum, wines and beer of every kind and name in the body
of men, I have never read anything which enlightened me so much, and brought
such profound convictions to my intelligence, as the study I have made of the
brain, the lungs, the heart, veins, arteries, nerves and muscles of a single
man or woman. These bodies, opened before me, were books written by the hand of
God Himself, and they spoke to me as no man could speak. By the mercy of God,
to that study is due the irresistible power of my humble efforts in persuading
my countrymen to give up the use of intoxicating drinks. But here is the time
to tell how my merciful God forced me, His unprofitable and rebellious servant,
almost in spite of myself, to give up the use of intoxicating drinks.
Among my penitents there was a young lady belonging to one of the most
respectable families of Quebec. She had a child, a girl, almost a year old, who
was a real beauty. Nothing this side of heaven could surpass the charms of that
earthly angel. Of course that young mother idolized her; she could hardly
consent to be without her sweet angel, even to go to church. She carried her
everywhere, to kiss her at every moment and press her to her heart.
Unfortunately that lady, as it was then and is till now often the case, even
among the most refined, had learned in her father's house, and by the example
of he own mother, to drink wine at the table, and when receiving the visits of
her friends or when visiting them herself. Little by little she began to drink,
when alone, a few drops of wine, at first by the advice of her physician, but
soon only to satisfy the craving appetite, which grew stronger day by day. I
was the only one, excepting her husband, who knew this fact. He was my intimate
friend, and several times, with tears trickling down his cheeks, he had
requested me, in the name of God, to persuade her to abstain from drinking.
That young man was so happy with his accomplished wife and his incomparably
beautiful child! He was rich, had a high position in the world, numberless
friends, and a palace for his home! Every time I had spoken to that young lady,
either when alone or in the presence of her husband, she had shed tears of regret;
she had promised to reform, and take only the few glasses prescribed by her
doctor. But, alas! that fatal prescription of the doctor was like the oil
poured on burning coals; it was kindling a fire which nothing could quench. One
day, which I will never forget, a messenger came in haste and said: "Mr.
A. Wants you to come to his home immediately. A terrible misfortune has just
happened his beautiful child has just been killed. His wife is half crazy; he
fears lest she will kill herself."
I leaped into the elegant carriage drawn by two fine horses, and in a few
minutes I was in the presence of the most distressing spectacle I ever saw. The
young lady, tearing her robes into fragments, tearing her hair with her hands,
and cutting her face with the nails of her fingers, was crying, "Oh! for
God's sake, give me a knife that I may cut my throat? I have killed my child!
My darling is dead! I am the murderess of my own dear Lucy! My hands are
reddened with her blood. Oh! may I die with her!"
I was thunderstruck, and at first remained mute and motionless. The young
husband, with two other gentlemen, Dr. Blanchet and Coroner Panet, were trying
to hold the hands of his unfortunate wife. He did not dare to speak. At last
the young wife, casting her eyes upon me, said: "Oh, dear Father Chiniquy,
for God's sake give me a knife that I may cut my throat! When drunk, I took my
precious darling in my arms to kiss her; but I fell her head struck the sharp
corner of the stove. Her brain and blood are there spread on the floor! My
child! my own child is dead! I have killed her! Cursed liquor! cursed wine! My
child is dead! I am damned! Cursed drink!"
I could not speak, but I could weep and cry. I wept, and mingled my tears with
those of that unfortunate mother. Then, with an expression of desolation which
pierced my soul as with a sword, she said: "Go and see." I went to
the next room, and there I saw that once beautiful child, dead, her face
covered with her blood and brains! There was a large gap made in the right
temple. The drunken mother, falling with her child in her arms, had caused the
head to strike with such a terrible force on the stove that it upset on the
floor. The burning coals were spread on every side, and the house had been very
nearly on fire. But that very blow, with the awful death of her child, had
suddenly brought her to her senses, and put an end to her intoxication. At a
glance she saw the whole extent of her misfortune. Her first thought had been
to run to the sideboard, seize a large, sharp knife, and cut her own throat.
Providentially, her husband was on the spot. With great difficulty, and after a
terrible struggle, he took the knife out of her hands, and threw into the
street through the window. It was then about five o'clock in the afternoon.
After an hour passed in indescribable agony of mind and heart, I attempted to
leave and go back to the parsonage. But my unfortunate young friend requested
me, in the name of God, to spend the night with him. "You are the only
one," he said, "who can help us in this awful night. My misfortune is
great enough, without destroying our good name by spreading it in public. I
want to keep it as secret as possible. With our physician and coroner, you are
the only many on earth whom I trust to help me. Please pass the night with
us."
I remained, but tried in vain to calm the unfortunate mother. She was
constantly breaking our hearts with her lamentations her convulsive efforts to
take her own life. Every minute she was crying, "My child! my darling
Lucy! Just when thy little arms were so gently caressing me, and thy angelic
kisses were so sweet on my lips, I have slaughtered thee! When thou wert
pressing me on thy loving heart and kissing me, I, thy drunken mother, gave
thee the death-blow! My hands are reddened with thy blood! My breast is covered
with thy brains! Oh! for God's sake, my dear husband, take my life. I cannot
consent to live a day longer! Dear Father Chiniquy, give me a knife that I may
mingle my blood with the blood of my child! Oh that I could be buried in the
same grave with her!"
In vain I tried to speak to her of the mercies of God towards sinners; she
would not listen to anything I could say; she was absolutely deaf to my voice.
At about ten o'clock she had a most terrible fit of anguish and terror. Though
we were four men to keep her quiet, she was stronger than we all. She was
strong as a giant. She slipped from our hands and ran to the room where the
dear child was lying in her cradle. Grasping the cold body in her hands, she
tore the bands of white linen which had been put round the head to cover the
horrible wound, and with cries of desolation she pressed her lips, her cheeks,
her very eyes on the horrible gap from which the brain and blood were oozing,
as if wanting to heal it and recall the poor dear one to life.
"My darling, my beloved, my own dear Lucy," she cried, "open
they eyes look again at thy mother! Give me a kiss! Press me again to thy
bosom! But thine eyes are shut! thy lips are cold! Thou dost not smile on me
any longer! Thou art dead, and I, thy mother, have slaughtered thee! Canst thou
forgive me thy death? Canst thou ask Jesus Christ, our Saviour, to forgive me?
Canst thou ask the blessed Virgin Mary to pray for me? Will I never see thee
again? Ah, no! I am lost I am damned! I am a drunken mother who has murdered
her own darling Lucy! There is no mercy for the drunken mother, the murderess
of her own child."
And when speaking thus to her child she was sometimes kneeling down, then
running around the room as if flying before a phantom.
But even then she was constantly pressing the motionless body to her bosom or
convulsively passing her lips and cheeks over the horrible wound, so that her
lips, her whole face, her breast and hands were literally besmeared with the
blood flowing from the wound. I will not say that we were all weeping and
crying, for the words "weeping and crying" cannot express the
desolation the horror we felt. At about eleven o'clock, when on her knees,
clasping her child to her bosom, she lifted her eyes towards me, and said;
"Dear Father Chiniquy, why is it that I have not followed your charitable
advice when, still more with your tears than with words, you tried so often to
persuade me to give up the use of those cursed intoxicating wines? How many
times you have given me the very words which come from heaven: 'Wine is a
mocker; it bites as a serpent, and stings as an adder!' How many times, in the
name of my dear child, in the name of my dear husband, in the name of God, you
have asked me to give up the use of those cursed drinks! But listen now to my
prayer. Go all over Canada; tell all the fathers never to put any intoxicating
drink before the eyes of their children. It was at my father's table that I
first learned to drink that wine which I will curse during all eternity! Tell
all the mothers never to taste these abominable drinks. It was my mother who
first taught me to drink that wine which I will curse as long as God is!
"Take the blood of my child, and go redden with it the top of the doors of
every house in Canada, and say to all those who dwell in those houses that that
blood was shed by the hand of a murderess mother when drunk. With that blood
write on the walls of every house in Canada that 'wine is a mocker.' Tell the
French Canadians how, on the dead body of my child, I have cursed that wine
which has made me so wretchedly miserable and guilty."
She then stopped, as if to breathe a little for a few minutes. She added:
"In the name of God, tell me, can my child forgive me her death? Can she
ask God to look upon me with mercy? Can she cause the blessed Virgin Mary to
pray for me and obtain my pardon?"
Before I could answer, she horrified us by the cries, "I am lost! When
drunk I killed my child! Cursed wine!"
And she fell a corpse on the floor. Torrents of blood were flowing from her
mouth on her dead child, which she was pressing to her bosom even after her
death!
That terrible drama was never revealed to the people of Quebec. The coroner's
verdict was that the child's death was accidental, and that the distressed
mother died from a broken heart six hours after. Two days later the unfortunate
mother was buried, with the body of her child clasped in her arms.
After such a terrible storm I was in need of solitude and rest, but above
everything I was in need of praying. I shut myself in my little room for two
days, and there, alone, in the presence of God, I meditated on the terrible
justice and retribution which He had called me to witness. That unfortunate
woman had not only been my penitent: she had been, with her husband, among my
dearest and most devoted friends. It was only lately that she had become a
slave to drunkenness. Before that, her piety and sense of honour were of the
most exalted kind known in the Church of Rome. Her last words were not the
commonplace expressions which ordinary sinners proffer at the approach of
death; her words had a solemnity for me which almost transformed them into
oracles of God in my mind. Each of them sounded in my ears as if an angel of
God had touched the thousand strings of my soul, to call my attention to a
message from heaven. Sometimes they resembled the terrible voice of thunder;
and again it seemed as if a seraph, with his golden harp, were singing them in
my ears, that I might prepare to fight faithfully for the Lord against His
gigantic enemy, alcohol.
In the middle of that memorable night, when the darkness was most profound and
the stillness fearful, was I awake, was I sleeping? I do not know. But I saw a
calm, beautiful, and cherished form of my dear mother standing by me, holding
by the hand the late murderess, still covered with the blood of her child. Yes!
my beloved mother was standing before me; and she said, with power and
authority which engraved every one of her words on my soul, as if written with
letters of tears, blood, and fire: "Go all over Canada; tell every father
of a family never to put any intoxicating drink before his children. Tell all
the mothers never to take a drop of those cursed wines and drinks. Tell the
whole people of Canada never to touch nor look at the poisoned cup, filled with
those cursed intoxicating drinks. And thou, my beloved son, give up for ever
the use of those detestable beverages, which are cursed to hell, in heaven, and
on earth. It bites like a serpent; it stings like an adder."
When the sound of that voice, so sweet and powerful, was hushed, and my soul
had ceased seeing that strange vision of the night, I remained for some time
exceedingly agitated and troubled. I said to myself, "Is it possible that
the terrible things I have seen and heard these last few days will destroy my
mind, and send me to the lunatic asylum?"
I had hardly been able to take any sleep or food for the last three days and
nights, and I seriously feared lest the weakness of my body would cause me to
lose my reason. I then threw myself on my knees to weep and pray. This did me
good. I soon felt myself stronger and calmer.
Raising again my mind to God, I said: "O my God, let me know Thy holy
will, and grant me the grace to do it. Do the voices I have just heard come
from Thee? Hast Thou really sent one of the angels of Thy mercy, under the form
of my beloved mother? or is all this nothing but the vain dreams of my
distressed mind?
"Is it Thy will, O my God, that I should go and tell my country what Thou
hast so providentially taught me of the horrible and unsuspected injuries which
wine and strong drink cause to the bodies as well as the souls of men? Or is it
Thy will that I should conceal from the eyes of the world the wonderful things
Thou has made known to me, and that I might bury them with me in my
grave?"
As quick as lightning the answer was suggested to me. "What I have taught
thee in secret, go and tell it to the housetops!" Overwhelmed with an
unspeakable emotion, and my heart filled with a power which was not mine, I
raised my hands towards heaven and said to my God:
"For my dear Saviour Jesus' sake, and for the good of my country, O my
God, I promise that I will never make any use of intoxicating drinks; I will,
moreover, do all in my power to persuade the other priests and the people to
make the same sacrifice?"
Fifty years have passed since I took that pledge, and, thanks be to God, I have
kept it.
For the next two years I was the only priest in Canada who abstained from the
use of wine and other intoxicating drinks; and God only knows what I had to
suffer all that time what sneers, and rebukes and insults of every kind I had
silently to bear! How many times the epithets of fanatic, hypocrite, reformer,
half-heretic, have been whispered into my ear, not only by the priests, but
also by the bishops. But I was sure that my God knew the motives of my actions,
and by His grace I remained calm and patient. In His infinite mercy He has
looked down upon His unprofitable servant and has taken his part. He had
Himself chosen the day when I saw those same priests and bishops, at the head
of their people, receiving the pledge and blessing of temperance from my hands.
Those very bishops who had unanimously, at first, condemned me, soon invited the
first citizens of their cities to present me with a golden medal, as a token of
their esteem, after giving me, officially, the title of "Apostle of
Temperance of Canada." The Governor and the two Chambers of Parliament of
Canada voted me public thanks in 1851, and presented me $500 as a public
testimony of their kind feeling for what had been done in the cause of
temperance. It was the will of my God that I should see, with my own eyes, my
dear Canada taking the pledge of temperance and giving up the use of
intoxicating drinks. How many tears were dried in those days! Thousands and
thousands of broken hearts were consoled and filled with joy. Happiness and
abundance reigned in many once desolate homes, and the name of our merciful God
was blessed everywhere in my beloved country. Surely this was not the work of
poor Chiniquy!
It was the Lord's work, for the Lord, who is wonderful in all His doings, had
once more chosen the weakest instrument to show His mercy towards the children
of men. He has called the most unprofitable of His servants to do the greatest
work of reform Canada has ever seen, that the praise and glory might be given
to Him, and Him alone!
.
CHAPTER 29
"Out
of the Church of Rome there is no salvation," is one of the doctrines
which the priests of Rome have to believe and teach to the people. That dogma,
once accepted, caused me to devote all my energies to the conversion of
Protestants. To prevent one of those immortal and precious souls from going
into hell seemed to me more important and glorious than the conquest of a
kingdom. In view of showing them their errors, I filled my library with the
best controversial books which could be got in Quebec, and I studied the Holy
Scriptures with the utmost attention. In the Marine Hospital, as well as in my
intercourse with the people of the city, I had several occasions of meeting
Protestants and talking to them; but I found at once that, with very few
exceptions, they avoided speaking with me on religion. This distressed me.
Having been told one day that the Rev. Mr. Anthony Parent, superior of the
Seminary of Quebec, had converted several hundred Protestants during his long
ministry, I went to ask him if this were true. For answer he showed me the list
of his converts, which numbered more than two hundred, among whom were some of
the most respectable English and Scotch families of the city. I looked upon
that list with amazement; and from that day I considered him the most blessed
priest of Canada. He was a perfect gentleman in his manners, and was considered
our best champion on all points of controversy with Protestants. He could have
been classed also among the handsomest men in his time, had he not been so fat.
But, when the high classes called him by the respectable name of "Mr.
Superior of the Seminary," the common people used to name him Pere
Cocassier ("Cock-fighting Father"), on account of his long-cherished
habit of having the bravest and strongest fighting-cocks of the country. In
vain had the Rev. Mr. Renvoyze, curate of the "Good St. Anne," that
greatest miracle-working saint of Canada, expended fabulous sums of money in
ransacking the whole country to get a cock who would take away the palm of
victory from the hands of the Superior of the Seminary of Quebec. He had almost
invariably failed; with very few exception his cocks had fallen bruised,
bleeding, and dead on the many battlefields chosen by those two priests.
However, I feel happy in acknowledging that, since the terrible epidemic of
cholera, that cruel and ignominious passe temps has been entirely given up by
the Roman Catholic clergy of this country. Playing cards and checkers is now
the most usual way the majority of curates and vicars have recourse to spend
their long and many idle hours, both of the week and Sabbath days.
After reading over and over again that long list of converts, I said to Mr.
Parent: "Please tell me how you have been able to persuade these
Protestant converts to consent to speak with you on the errors of their
religion. Many times I have tried to show the Protestants whom I met that they
would be lost if they do not submit to our holy church, but, with few
exceptions, they laughed at me as politely as possible, and turned the
conversation to other matters. You must have some secret way of attracting
their attention and winning their confidence. Would you not be kind enough to
give me that secret, that I may be able also to prevent some of those precious
souls from perishing?"
"You are right when you think that I have a secret to open the doors of
the Protestants, and conquer and tame their haughty minds," answered Mr.
Parent. "But that secret is of such a delicate nature, that I have never
revealed it to anybody except my confessor. Nevertheless, I see that you are so
in earnest for the conversion of Protestants, and I have such a confidence in
your discretion and honour, that for the sake of our holy church I consent to
give you my secret; only you must promise that you will never reveal it, during
my lifetime, to anybody and even after my death you will not mention it, except
when you are sure it is for the greatest glory of God. You know that I was the
most intimate friend your father ever had; I had no secret from him, and he had
none from me. But God knows that the friendly feelings and the confidence I had
in him are now bestowed upon you, his worthy son. If you had not in my heart
and esteem the same high position your father occupied, I would not trust you
with my secret."
He then continued: "The majority of Protestants in Quebec have Irish Roman
Catholic servant girls; these, particularly before the last few years, used to
come to confess to me, as I was almost the only priest who spoke English. The
first thing I used to ask them, when they were confessing, was if their masters
and mistresses were truly devoted and pious Protestants, or if they were
indifferent and cold in performing their duties. The second thing I wanted to
know was if they were on good terms with their ministers? whether or not they
were visited by them? From the answers of the girls I knew both the moral and
immoral, the religious or irreligious habits of their masters as perfectly as
if I had been an inmate of their households. It is thus that I learned that
many Protestants have no more religion and faith than our dogs. They awake in
the morning and go to bed at night without praying to God any more than the
horses in their stables. Many of them go to church on the Sabbath day more to
laugh at their ministers and criticize their sermons than for anything else. A
part of the week is passed in turning them into ridicule; nay, through the
confessions of these honest girls, I learned that many Protestants liked the
fine ceremonies of our Church; that they often favourably contrasted them with
the cold performances of their own, and expressed their views in glowing terms
about the superiority of our educational institutions, nunneries, ect., over
their own high schools or colleges. Besides, you know that a great number of
our most respectable and wealthy Protestants trust their daughters to our good
nuns for their education. I took notes of all these things, and formed my plans
of battle against Protestantism, as a general who knows his ground and weak
point of his adversaries, and I fought as a man who is sure of an easy victory.
The glorious result you have under your eyes is the proof that I was correct in
my plans. My first step with the Protestants whom I knew to be without any
religion, or even already well disposed towards us, was to go to them with
sometimes $5, or even $25, which I presented to them as being theirs. They, at
first, looked at me with amazement, as a being coming from a superior world.
The following conversation then almost invariable took place between them and
me:
"'Are you positive, sir, that this money is mine?'
"'Yes, sir,' I answered, 'I am certain that this money is yours.'
"'But,' they replied, 'please tell me how you know that it belongs to me?
It is the first time I have the honour of talking with you, and we are perfect
strangers to each other.'
"I answered: 'I cannot say, sir, how I know that this money is yours,
except by telling you that the person who deposited it in my hands for you has
given me your name and your address so correctly that there is no possibility
of any mistake.'
"'But can I not know the name of the one who has put that money into your
hands for me?' rejoined the Protestant.
"'No, sir; the secret of confession is inviolable,' I replied. 'We have no
example that it has ever been broken; and I, with every priest in our Church,
would prefer to die rather than betray our penitents and reveal their
confession. We cannot even act from what we have learned through their
confession, except at their own request.'
"'But this auricular confession must then be a most admirable thing,'
added the Protestant; 'I had no idea of it before this day.'
"'Yes, sir, auricular confession is a most admirable thing,' I used to
reply, 'because it is a divine institution. But, sir, please excuse me; my
ministry calls me to another place. I must take leave of you, to go where my
duty calls me.'
"'I am very sorry that you go so quickly,' generally answered the
Protestant. 'Can I have another visit from you? Please do me the honour of
coming again. I would be so happy to present you to my wife; and I know she
would be happy also, and much honoured to make your acquaintance.'
"'Yes, sir, I accept with gratitude your invitation. I will feel much
pleased and honoured to make the acquaintance of the family of a gentleman
whose praises are in the mouth of everyone, and whose industry and honesty are
an honour to our city. If you allow me, next week, at the same hour, I will
have the honour of presenting my respectful homage to your lady.'
"The very next day all the papers reported that Mr. So-and-So had received
$5, or $10, or even $25 as a restitution, through auricular confession, and
even the staunch Protestant editors of those papers could not find words
sufficiently eloquent to praise me and our sacrament of penance.
"Three or four days later I was sure that the faithful servant girls were
in the confessional box, glowing with joy to tell me that now their masters and
mistresses could not speak of anything else than the amiability and honesty of
the priests of Rome. They raised them a thousand miles over the heads of their
own ministers. From those pious girls they invariably learned that they had not
been visited by a single friend without making the eulogium of auricular
confession, and even sometimes expressing the regret that the reformers had
swept away such a useful institution.
"Now, my dear young friend, you see how, by the blessing of God, the
little sacrifice of a few pounds brought down and destroyed all the prejudices
of those poor heretics against auricular confession and our holy church in
general. You understand how the doors were opened to me, and how their hearts
and intelligences were like fields prepared to receive the good seed. At the
appointed hour I never failed from paying the requested visit, and I was
invariably received like a Messiah. Not only the gentlemen, but the ladies
overwhelmed me with marks of the most sincere gratitude and respect; even the
dear little children petted me, and threw their arms around my neck to give
their sweetly angelic kisses. The only topic on which we could speak, of
course, was the great good done by auricular confession. I easily showed them
how it words as a check to all the evil passions of the heart; how it is
admirably adapted to all the wants of the poor sinners, who find a friend, a
counselor, a guide, a father, a real saviour in their confessor.
"We had not talked half an hour in that way, when it was generally evident
to me that they were more than half way out of their Protestant errors. I very
seldom left those houses without being sure of a new, glorious victory for our
holy religion over its enemies. It is very seldom that I do not succeed in
bringing that family to our holy church before one or two years; and if I fail
from gaining the father or mother, I am nearly sure to persuade them to send
their daughters to our good nuns and their boys to our colleges, where they
sooner or later become our most devoted Catholics. So you see that the few
dollars I spend every year for that holy cause are the best investments ever
made. They do more to catch the Protestants of Quebec than the baits of the
fishermen do to secure the cod fishes of the Newfoundland banks."
In ending this last sentence, Mr. Parent filled his room with laughter.
I thanked him for these interesting details. But I told him: "Though I cannot
but admire your perfect skill and shrewdness in breaking the barriers which
prevent Protestants from understanding the divine institution of auricular
confession, will you allow me to ask you if you do not fear to be guilty of an
imposture and a gross imposition in the way you make them believe that the
money you hand they has come to you through auricular confession?"
"I have not the least fear of that," promptly answered the old
priest, "for the good reason, that if you had paid attention to what I have
told you, you must acknowledge that I have not said positively that the money
was coming from auricular confession. If those Protestants have been deceived,
it is only due t their own want of a more perfect attention to what I said. I
know that there were things that I kept in my mind which would have made them
understand the matter in a very different way if I had said them. But Liguori
and all our theologians, among the most approved of our holy church, tell us
that these reservations of the mind (mentis reservationes) are allowed, when
they are for the good of souls and the glory of God."
"Yes," answered I, "I know that such is the doctrine of Liguori,
and it is approved by the popes. I must confess that this seems to me entirely
opposed to what we read in the sublime gospel. The simple and sublime 'Yea,
yea' and 'Nay, nay' of our Saviour seems to me in contradiction with the art of
deceiving, even when not saying absolute and direct falsehoods; and if I submit
myself to those doctrines, it is always with a secret protest in my inmost
soul."
In an angry manner, Mr. Parent replied: "Now, my dear young friend, I
understand the truth of what the Rev. Messrs. Perras and Bedard told me lately
about you. Though these remarkable priests are full of esteem for you, they see
a dark cloud on your horizon; they say that you spend too much time in reading
the Bible, and not enough in studying the doctrines and holy traditions of the
Church. You are too much inclined also to interpret the Word of God according to
your own fallible intelligence, instead of going to the Church alone for that
interpretation. This is the dangerous rock on which Luther and Calvin were
wrecked. Take my advice. Do not try to be wiser than the Church. Obey her voice
when she speaks to you through her holy theologians. This is your only
safeguard. The bishop would suspend you at once were he aware of your want of
faith in the Church."
These last words were said with such emphasis, that they seemed more like a
sentence of condemnation from the lips of an irritated judge than anything
else. I felt that I had again seriously compromised myself in his mind; and the
only way of preventing him from denouncing me to the bishop as a heretic and a
Protestant was to make an apology, and withdraw from the dangerous ground on
which I had again so imprudently put myself. He accepted my explanation, but I
saw that he bitterly regretted having trusted me with his secret. I withdrew
from his presence, much humiliated by my want of prudence and wisdom. However,
though I could not approve of all the modus operandi of the Superior of Quebec,
I could not but admire then the glorious results of his efforts in converting
Protestants; and I took the resolution of devoting myself more than ever to
show them their errors and make them good Catholics. In this I was too
successful; for during my twenty-five years of priesthood I have persuaded
ninety-three Protestants to give up their gospel light and truth in order to
follow the dark and lying traditions of Rome. I cannot enter into the details
of their conversions, or rather perversions; suffice to say that I soon found
that my only chance of success in that proselytizing work was among the
Ritualists. I saw at first that Calvin and Knox had dug a really impassable abyss
between the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and the Church of Rome. If
these Ritualists remain Protestants, and do not make the very short step which
separates them from Rome, it is a most astonishing fact, when they are logical
men. Some people are surprised that so many eminent and learned men, in Great
Britain and America, give up their Protestantism to submit to the Church of
Rome; but my wonder is that there are so few among them who fall into that
bottomless abyss of idolatry and folly, when they are their whole life on the
very brink of the chasm. Put millions of men on the very brink of the Falls of
Niagara, force them to cross to and from in small canoes between both shores,
and you will see that, every day, some of them will be dragged, in spite of
themselves, into the yawning abyss. Nay, you will see that, sooner or later,
those millions of people will be in danger of being dragged in a whole body, by
the irresistible force of the dashing waters, into the fathomless gulf. Through
a sublime effort the English people helped by the mighty and merciful hand of
God, has come out from the abyss of folly, impurity, ignorance, slavery, and
idolatry, called the Church of Rome. But many, alas! in the present day,
instead of marching up to the high regions of unsullied Gospel truth and light
instead of going up to the high mountains where true Christian simplicity and
liberty have for ever planted their glorious banners have been induced to walk
only a few steps out of the pestiferous regions of Popery. They have remained
so near the pestilential atmosphere of the stagnant waters of death which flow
from Rome, that the atmosphere they breathe is still filled with the deadly
emanations of that modern Sodom. Who, without shedding tears of sorrow, can
look at those misguided ministers of the Gospel who believe and teach in the
Episcopal Church that they have the power to make their God with a wafer, and
who bow down before that wafer God and adore him! Who can refrain from
indignation at the sight of so many Episcopal ministers who consent to have
their ears, minds, and souls polluted at the confessional by the stories of
their penitents, whom in their turn they destroy by their infamous and
unmentionable questions? When I was lecturing in England in 1860, the late
Archbishop of Canterbury, then Bishop of London, invited me to his table, in
company with Rev. Mr. Thomas, now Bishop of Goulburn, Australia, and put to me
the following questions, in the presence of his numerous and noble guests:-
"Father Chiniquy, when you left the Church of Rome, why did you not join
the Episcopalian rather than the Presbyterian Church?"
I answered: "Is it the desire of your lordship that I should speak my mind
on that delicate subject?"
"Yes, yes," said the noble lord bishop.
"Then, my lord, I must tell you that my only reason is that I find in your
Church several doctrines which I have to condemn in the Church of Rome."
"How is that?" replied his lordship.
"Please," I answered, "let me have one of your Common Prayer
Books."
Taking the book, I read slowly the article on the visitation of the sick:
"Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his
sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which
confession the priest shall absolve him if he humbly and heartily desire it
after this sort: 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to His Church to
absolve all sinners who repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive
thee thine offenses: and, by His authority committed to me, I absolve thee from
all thy sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.'" I then added: "Now, my Lord, where is the difference between
the errors of Rome and your Church on this subject?"
"The difference is very great," he answered. "The Church of Rome
is constantly pressing the sinners to come to her priests all their lifetime,
when we subject the sinner to this humiliation only once in his life, when he
is near his last hour."
"But, my lord, let me tell you that it seems to me the Church of Rome is
much more logical and consistent in this than the Episcopal Church. Both
churches believe and teach that they have received from Christ the power to
forgive the sins of those who confess to their priests, and you think yourself
wiser because you invite the sinner to confess and receive His pardon only when
he is tied to a bed of suffering, at the last hour before his death. But will
your lordship be kind enough to tell me when I am in danger of death? If I am
constantly in danger of death, must you not, with the Church of Rome, induce me
constantly to confess to your priests, and get my pardon and make my peace with
God? Has our Saviour said anywhere that it was only for the dying, at the last
extremity of life, that He gave the power to forgive my sins? Has He not warned
me many times to be always ready; to have always our peace made with God, and
not to wait till the last day, to the last hour?" The noble bishop did not
think fit to give me any other answer than these very words: "We all agree
that this doctrine ought never to have been put in our Common Prayer Book. But
you know that we are at work to revise that book, and we hope that this clause,
with several others, will be taken away."
"Then," I answered in a jocose way, "my lord, when this
obnoxious clause has been removed from your Common Prayer Book it will be time
for me to have the honour of belonging to your great and noble Church."
When the Church of England went out of the Church of Rome, she did as Rachel,
the wife of Jacob, who left the house of her father Laban and took his gods
with her. So the Episcopal Church of England, unfortunately, when she left
Rome, concealed in the folds of her mantle some of the false gods of Rome; she
kept to her bosom some vipers engendered in the marshes of the modern Sodom.
Those vipers, if not soon destroyed, will kill her. They are already eating up
her vitals. They are covering her with most ugly and mortal wounds. They are
rapidly taking away her life. May the Holy Ghost rebaptize and purify that
noble Church of England, that she may be worthy to march at the head of the
armies of the Lord to the conquest of the world, under the banners of the great
Captain of our Salvation.
.
CHAPTER 30
The
three years which followed the cholera will be long remembered in Quebec for
the number of audacious thefts and the murders which kept the whole population
in constant terror. Almost every week the public press had to give us the
account of the robbery of the houses of some of our rich merchants or old
wealthy widows.
Many times the blood was chilled in our veins by the cruel and savage
assassinations which had been committed by the thieves when resistance had been
offered. The number of these crimes, the audacity with which they were perpetrated,
the ability with which the guilty parties escaped from all the researches of
the police, indicated that they were well organized, and had a leader of
uncommon shrewdness.
But in the eyes of the religious population of Quebec, the thefts of the 10th
February, 1835, surpassed all the others by its sacrilegious character. That
night the chapel dedicated to the blessed Virgin Mary was entered, a silver
statue of the Virgin the gift of the King of France a massive lamp, a silver
candlestick, and the silver vases which contained the bread which the Roman
Catholics believe to be the body, blood, and divinity of Jesus Christ, were
stolen, and the holy sacrament impiously thrown and scattered on the floor.
Nothing can express the horror and indignation of the whole Catholic population
at this last outrage. Large sums of money were offered in order that the
brigands might be detected. At last five of them Chambers, Mathieu, Gagnon,
Waterworth, and Lemonie, were caught in 1836, tried, found guilty, and condemned
to death in the month of March, 1837.
During the trial, and when public attention was most intensely fixed on its
different aspects, in a damp, chilly, dark night, I was called to visit a sick
man. I was soon ready, and asked the name of the sick from the messenger. He
answered that it was Francis Oregon. As a matter of course, I said that the
sick man was a perfect stranger to me, and that I had never heard that there
was even such a man in the world. But when I was near the carriage which was to
take me, I was not a little surprised to see that the first messenger left
abruptly and disappeared. Looking with attention, then, at the faces of the two
men who had come for me in the carriage, it seemed that they both wore masks.
"What does this mean?" I said; "each of you wear a mask. Do you
mean to murder me?"
"Dear Father Chiniquy," answered one of them, in a low, trembling
voice, and in a supplicating tone, "fear not. We swear before God that no
evil will be done to you. On the contrary, God and man will, to the end of the
world, praise and bless you if you come to our help and save our souls, as well
as our mortal bodies. We have in our hands a great part of the silver articles
stolen these last three years. The police are on our track, and we are in great
danger of being caught. For God's sake come with us. We will put all those
stolen things in your hands, that you may give them back to those who have lost
them. We will then immediately leave the country, and lead a better life. We
are Protestants, and the Bible tell us that we cannot be saved if we keep in
our hands what is not ours. You do not know us, but we know you well. You are
the only man in Quebec to whom we can so trust our lives and this terrible
secret. We have worn these masks that you may not know us, and that you may not
be compromised if you are ever called before a court of justice."
My first thought was to leave them and run back to the door of the parsonage;
but such an act of cowardice seemed to me, after a moment's reflection, unworthy
of a man. I said to myself, these two men cannot come to steal from me: it is
well known in Quebec that I keep myself as poor as a church mouse, by giving
all I have to the poor. I have never offended any man in my life, that I know.
They cannot come to punish or murder me. They are Protestants, and they trust
me. Well, well, they will not regret to have put their trust in a Catholic
priest."
I then answered them: "what you ask from me is of a very delicate, and
even dangerous nature. Before I do it, I want to take the advice of one whom I
consider the wisest man of Quebec the old Rev. Mr. Demars, expresident of the
seminary of Quebec. Please drive me as quickly as possible to the seminary. If
that venerable man advises me to go with you I will go; but I cannot promise to
grant you your request if he tells me not to go."
"All right," they both said, and in a very short time I was knocking
at the door of the seminary. A few moments after I was alone in the room of Mr.
Demars. It was just half-past twelve at night.
"Our little Father Chiniquy here on this dark night, at half-past twelve!
What does this mean? What do you want from me?" said the venerable old
priest.
"I come to ask your advice," I answered, "on a very strange
thing. Two Protestant thieves have in their hands a great quantity of the
silver ware stolen these last three years. They want to deposit them in my
hands, that I may give them back to those from whom they have been stolen,
before they leave the country and lead a better life. I cannot know them, for
they both wear masks. I cannot even know where they take me, for the carriage
is so completely wrapped up by curtains that it is impossible to see outside.
Now, my dear Mr. Demars, I come to ask your advice. Shall I go with them or not?
But remember that I trust you with these things under the seal of confession,
that neither you nor I may be compromised."
Before answering me the venerable priest said: "I am very old, but I have
never heard of such a strange thing in my life. Are you not afraid to go alone
with these two thieves in that covered carriage?"
"No, sir," I answered; "I do not see any reason to fear anything
from these two men."
"Well! well," rejoined Mr. Demars, "If you are not afraid under
such circumstances, your mother has given you a brain of diamond and nerves of
steel."
"Now, my dear sir," I answered, "time flies, and I may have a
long way to travel with these two men. Please, in the shortest possible way,
tell me your mind? Do you advise me to go with them?"
He replied, "You consult me on a very difficult matter; there are so many
considerations to make, that it is impossible to weigh them all. The only thing
we have to do is to pray God and His Holy Mother for wisdom. Let us pray."
We knelt and said the "Veni Sancte Spiritus;" "Come Holy
Spirit," ect., which prayer ends by an invocation to Mary as Mother of
God.
After the prayer Mr. Demars again asked me: "Are you not afraid?"
"No, sir, I do not see any reason to be afraid. But, please, for God's
sake, hurry on, tell me if you advise me to go and accept this message of mercy
and peace."
"Yes! go! go! If you are not afraid," answered the old priest, with a
voice full of emotion, and tears in his eyes.
I fell on my knees and said, "Before I start, please, give me your
blessing, and pray for me, when I shall be on the way to that strange, but, I
hope, good work."
I left the seminary and took my seat at the right hand of one of my unknown
companions, while the other was on the front seat driving the horse.
Not a word was said by any of us on the way. But I perceived that the stranger
who was at my left, was praying to God; though in such a low voice that I
understood only these words twice repeated: "O Lord! have mercy upon me
such a sinner!" These words touched me to the heart, and brought to my
mind the dear Saviour's words: "The publicans and harlots shall go into
the kingdom of God before you," and I also prayed for that poor repenting
sinner and for myself, by repeating the sublime 50th psalm:
"Have mercy upon me, O Lord!"
It took about half an hour to reach the house. But, there, again, it was
impossible for me to understand where I was. For the carriage was brought so
near the door that there was no possibility of seeing anything beyond the
carriage and the house through the terrible darkness of that night.
The only person I saw, when in the house, was a tall woman covered with a long
black veil, whom I took to be a disguised man, on account of her size and her
strength; for she was carrying very heavy bags with as much ease as if they had
been a handful of straw.
There was only a small candle behind a screen, which gave so little light that
everything looked like phantoms around us. Pictures and mirrors were all turned
to the wall, and presented the wrong side to view. The sofa and the chairs were
also upset in such a way that it was impossible to identify anything of what I
had seen. In fact, I could see nothing in that house. Not a word was said,
except by one of my companions, who whispered in a very low voice,
"Please, look at the tickets which are on every bundle; they will indicate
to whom these things belong."
There were eight bundles.The heaviest of which was composed of the melted
silver of the statue of the virgin, the candlesticks, the lamp of the chapel,
the ciborium, a couple of chalices, and some dozens of spoons and forks. The
other bundles were made up of silver plates, fruit baskets, tea, coffee, cream
and sugar pots, silver spoons and forks, ect.
As soon as these bundles were put into the carriage we left for the parsonage,
where we arrived a little before the dawn of day. Not a word was exchanged
between us on the way, and my impression was, that my penitent companions were
sending their silent prayers, like myself, to the feet of that merciful God who
has said to all sinners, "Come unto Me, all ye who are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest."
They carried the bundles into my trunk, which I locked with peculiar attention.
When all was over I accompanied them to the door to take leave of them. Then,
each seizing one of my hands, by a spontaneous movement of gratitude and joy,
they pressed them on their lips, shedding tears, and saying in a low voice:
"God bless you a thousand times for the good work you have just performed.
After Christ, you are our saviour."
As these two men were speaking, it pleased God to send forth into my soul one
of those rays of happiness which He gives us only at great intervals.
I believe our fragile existence would soon be broken up were we by such joys
incessantly inundated. These two men had ceased to be robbers in my eyes. They
were dear brethren, precious friends, such as are seldom to be seen. The narrow
and shameful prejudices of my religion were silent before the fervent prayers
that I had heard from their lips; they disappeared in those tears of
repentance, gratitude and love, which fell from their eyes on my hands. Night
surrounded us with its deepest shades; but our souls were illuminated by a
light purer than the rays of the sun. The air that we breathed was cold and
damp; but one of these sparks brought down from heaven by Jesus to warm the
earth, had fallen into our hearts, and we were all penetrated by its glow. I
pressed their hands in mine, saying to them:
"I thank and bless you for choosing me as the confident of your
misfortunes and repentance. To you I owe three of the most precious hours of my
life. Adieu! We shall see one another no more on this earth; but we shall meet
in heaven. Adieu!"
It is unnecessary to add that it was impossible to sleep the remainder of that
memorable night. Besides, I had in my possession more stolen articles than
would have caused fifty men to be hanged. I said to myself: "What would
become of me if the police were to break in on me, and find all that I have in
my hands. What could I answer if I were asked, how all these had reached
me?"
Did I not go beyond the bounds of prudence in what I have just done? Have I
not, indeed, slipped a rope around my neck?
Though my conscience did not reproach me with anything, especially when I had
acted on the advice of a man as wise as Mr. Demars, yet was I not without some
anxiety, and I longed to get rid of all the things I had by giving them to
their legitimate owners.
At ten o'clock in the morning I was at Mr. Amiot's, the wealthiest goldsmith of
Quebec, with my heavy satchel of melted silver. After obtaining from him the
promise of secrecy, I handed it over to him, giving him at the same time its
history. I asked him to weigh it, keep its contents, and let me have its value,
which I was to distribute according to its label.
He told me that there was in it a thousand dollars worth of melted silver,
which amount he immediately gave me. I went down directly to give about half of
it to Rev. Mr. Cazeault, chaplain of the congregation which had been robbed,
and who was then the secretary of the Archbishop of Quebec; and I distributed
the remainder to the parties indicated on the labels attached to this enormous
ingot.
The good Lady Montgomery could scarcely believe her eyes when, after obtaining
also from her the promise of the most inviolable secrecy on what I was going to
show her, I displayed on her table the magnificent dishes of massive silver,
fruit baskets, tea and coffee pots, sugar bowls, cream jugs, and a great
quantity of spoons and forks of the finest silver, which had been taken from
her in 1835. It seemed to her a dream which brought before her eyes these
precious family relics.
She then related in a most touching manner what a terrible moment she had
passed, when the thieves, having seized her, with her maid and a young man,
rolled them in carpets to stifle their cries, whilst they were breaking locks,
opening chests and cupboards to carry off their rich contents. She had told me
how nearly she had been stifled with her faithful servants under the enormous
weight of carpets heaped upon them by the robbers.
This excellent lady was a Protestant, and it was the first time in my life that
I met a Protestant whose piety seemed so enlightened and sincere. I could not
help admiring her.
When she had most sincerely thanked and blessed me for the service I had done
for her, she asked if I would have any objection to pray with her, and to aid
her in thanking God for the favour He had just shown her. I told her, I should
be happy in uniting with her to bless the Lord for His mercies. Upon this she
gave me a Bible, magnificently bound, and we read each in turn a verse, slowly
and on our knees the sublime Psalm 103: "Bless the Lord, O my soul,"
ect.
As I was about to take leave of her she offered me a purse containing one
hundred dollars in gold, which I refused, telling her that I would rather lose
my two hands than receive a cent for what I had done.
"You are," said she, "surrounded with poor people. Give them
this that I offer to the Lord as a feeble testimony of my gratitude, and be
assured that as long as I live I will pray God to pour His most abounding
favours upon you."
In leaving that house I could not hide from myself that my soul had been
embalmed with the true perfume of a piety that I had never seen in my own
church.
Before the day closed I had given back to their rightful owners the effects
left in my hands, whose value amounted to more than 7,000 dollars, and had my
receipts in good form.
I am glad to say here, that the persons, most of whom were Protestants, to whom
I made these restitutions, were perfectly honourable, and that not a single one
of them ever said anything to compromise me in this matter, nor was I ever
troubled on this subject.
I thought it my duty to give my venerable friend, the Grand Vicar Demars, a
detailed account of what had just happened. He heard me with the deepest
interest, and could not retain his tears when I related the touching scene of
my separation from my two new friends that night, one of the darkest which,
nevertheless, has remained one of the brightest of my life.
My story ended, he said: "I am, indeed, very old, but I must confess that
never did I hear anything so strange and so beautiful as this story. I repeat,
however, that your mother must have given you a brain harder than diamond and
nerves more solid than brass, not to have been afraid during this very singular
adventure in the night."
After the fatigues and incidents of the last twenty-four hours, I was in great
need of rest, but it was impossible for me to sleep a single instant during the
night which followed. For the first time I stood face to face with that
Protestantism which my Church had taught me to hate and fight with all the
energy that heaven had bestowed on me, and when that faith had been, by the
hand of Almighty God, placed in the scale against my own religion, it appeared
to me as a heap of pure gold opposite a pile of rotten rags. In spite of
myself, I could hear incessantly the cries of grief of that penitent thief:
"Lord, have mercy on me, so great a sinner!"
Then, the sublime piety of Lady Montgomery, the blessings she had asked God to
pour on me, His unprofitable servant, seemed, as so many coals of fire heaped
upon my head by God, to punish me for having said so much evil of Protestants,
and so often decried their religion.
A secret voice arose within me: "Seest thou not how these Protestants,
whom thou wishest to crush with thy disdain, know how to pray, repent, and make
amends for their faults much more nobly than the unfortunate wretches whom thou
holdest as so many slaves at thy feet by means of the confessional?
"Understandest thou not that the Spirit of God, the grace and love of
Jesus Christ, produces effectually in the hearts and minds of these Protestants
a work much more durable than thy auricular confession? Compare the miserable
wiles of Mr. Parent, who makes false restitutions, to cast dust into the eyes
of the unsuspecting multitude, with the straightforwardness, noble sincerity,
and admirable wisdom of these Protestants, in making amends for their wrongs
before God and men, and judge for thyself which of those two religions raise,
in order to save, and which degrades, in order to destroy the guilty.
"Has ever auricular confession worked as efficiently on sinners as the
Bible on these thieves to change their hearts?
"Judge, this day, by their fruits, which of the two religions is led by
the spirit of darkness, or the Holy Ghost?"
Not wishing to condemn my religion, nor allow my heart to be attracted by
Protestantism during the long hours of that restless night, I remained anxious,
humiliated, and uneasy.
It is thus, O my God, that Thou madest use of everything, even these thieves,
to shake the wonderful fabric of errors, superstitions, and falsehoods that
Rome had raised in my soul. May Thy name be for ever blessed for Thy mercies
towards me, Thy unproffitable servant.
.
CHAPTER 31
A
few days after the strange and providential night spent with the repentant
thieves, I received the following letter signed by Chambers and his unfortunate
criminal friends:
"Dear Father Chiniquy:We are condemned to death. Please come and help us
to meet our sentence as Christians."
I will not attempt to say what I felt when I entered the damp and dark cells
where the culprits were enchained. No human words can express those things.
Their tears and their sobs were going through my heart as a two-edged sword.
Only one of them had, at first, his eyes dried, and kept silent: Chambers, the
most guilty of all.
After the others had requested me to hear the confession of their sins, and
prepare them for death, Chambers said: "You know that I am a Protestant.
But I am married to a Roman Catholic, who is your penitent. You have persuaded
my two so dear sisters to give up their Protestantism and become Catholics. I
have many times desired to follow them. My criminal life alone has prevented me
from doing so. But now I am determined to do what I consider to be the will of
God in this important matter. Please, tell me what I must do to become a
Catholic."
I was a sincere Roman Catholic priest, believing that out of the Church of Rome
there was no salvation. The conversion of that great sinner seemed to me a
miracle of the grace of God; it was for me a happy distraction in the desolation
I felt in that dungeon.
I spent the next eight days in hearing their confessions, reading the lives of
some saints, with several chapters of the Bible, as the Seven Penitential
Psalms, the sufferings and death of Christ, the history of the Prodigal Son,
ect. And I instructed Chambers, as well as the shortness of the time allowed
me, in the faith of the Church of Rome. I usually entered the cells at about 9
a.m., and left them only at 9 p.m.
After I had spent much time in exhorting them, reading and praying, several
times, I asked them to tell me some of the details of the murders and thefts
they had committed, which might be to me as a lesson of human depravity, which
would help me when preaching on the natural corruption and malice of the human heart,
when once the fear and the love, or even the faith in God, were completely set
aside.
The facts I then heard very soon convinced me of the need we have of a
religion, and what would become of the world if the atheists could succeed in
sweeping away the notions of a future punishment after death, or the fear and
the love of God from among men.
When absolutely left to his own depravity, without any religion to stop him on
the rapid declivity of his uncontrollable passions, man is more cruel than the
wild beasts. The existence of society would be impossible without a religion
and a God to protect it.
Though I am in favour of liberty of conscience in its highest sense, I think
that the atheist ought to be punished like the murderer and the thief for his doctrines
tend to make a murderer and a thief of every man. No law, no society is
possible if there is no God to sanction and protect them.
But the more we were approaching the fatal day, when I had to go on the
scaffold with those unfortunate men, and to see them launched into eternity,
the more I felt horrified. The tears, the sobs, and the cries of those
unfortunate men had so melted my heart, my soul, and my strong nerves, they had
so subdued my unconquerable will, and that stern determination to do my duty at
any cost, which had been my character till then, that I was shaking from head
to feet, when thinking of that awful hour.
Besides that, my constant intercourse with those criminals these last few days,
their unbounded confidence in me, their gratitude for my devotedness to them,
their desolation, and their cries when speaking of their fathers or mothers,
wives or children, had filled my heart with a measure of sympathy which I would
vainly try to express. They were no more thieves and murderers to me, whose
bloody deeds had at first chilled the blood in my veins; they were the friends
of my bosom the beloved children whom cruel beasts had wounded. They were
dearer to me than my own life not only I felt happy to mix my tears with
theirs, and unite my ardent prayers to God for mercy with them, but I would
have felt happy to shed my blood in order to save their lives. As several of
them belonged to the most reputable families of Quebec and vicinity, I thought
I could easily interest the clergy and the most respectable citizens to sign a
petition to the governor, Lord Gosford, asking him to change their sentence of
death into one of perpetual exile to the distant penal colony of Botany Bay in
Australia. The governor was my friend. Colonel Vassal, who was my uncle, and
the adjutant-general of the militia of the whole country, had introduced me to
his Excellency, who many times had overloaded me with the marks of his interest
and kindness, and my hope was that he would not refuse me the favour I was to
ask him, when the petition would be signed by the Bishop, the Catholic priests,
the ministers of the different Protestant denominations of the city, and
hundreds of the principal citizens of Quebec. I presented the petition myself,
accompanied by the secretary of the Archbishop. But to my great distress the
Governor answered me that those men had committed so many murders, and kept the
country in terror for so many years, that it was absolutely necessary they
should be punished according to the sentence of the court. Who can tell the
desolation of those unfortunate men, when, with a voice choked by my sobs and
my tears, I told them that the governor had refused to grant the favour I had
asked him for them. They fell on the ground and filled their cells with cries
which would have broken the hardest heart. From those very cells we were
hearing the noise of the men who were preparing the scaffold where they were to
be hanged the next day. I tried to pray and read, but I was unable to do so. My
desolation was too great to utter a single word. I felt as if I were to be
hanged with them and to say the whole truth, I think I would have been glad to
hear that I was to be hanged the next day to save their lives. For there was a
fear in me, which was haunting me as a phantom from hell, the last three days.
It seemed that, in spite of all my efforts, prayers, confessions, absolutions,
and sacraments, these men were not converted, and that they were to be launched
into eternity with all their sins.
When I was comparing the calm and true repentance of the two thieves, with whom
I spent the night a few weeks before in the carriage, with the noisy
expressions of sorrow of those newly converted sinners, I could not help
finding an immeasurable distance between the first and second of those
penitents. No doubt had remained in my mind about the first, but I had serious
apprehensions about the last. Several circumstances, which it would be too long
and useless to mention here, were distressing me by the fear that all my
chaplets, indulgences, medals, scapulars, holy waters, signs of the cross,
prayers to the Virgin, auricular confession, absolutions, used in the
conversion of these sinners, had not the divine and perfect power of a simple
book to the dying Saviour on the cross. I was saying to myself with anxiety:
"Would it be possible that those Protestants, who were with me in the
carriage, had the true ways of repentance, pardon, peace, and life eternal in
that simple look to the great victim, and that we Roman Catholics with our signs
of the cross and holy waters, our crucifixes and prayers to the saints, our
scapulars and medals, our so humiliating auricular confession, were only
distracting the mind, the soul, and the heart of the sinner from the true and
only source of salvation, Christ!" In the midst of those distressing
thoughts I almost regretting having helped Chambers in giving up his
Protestantism for my Romanism.
At about 4 p.m. I made a supreme effort to shake off my desolation, and nerve
myself for the solemn duties God had entrusted to me. I put a few questions to
those desolated men, to see if they were really repentant and converted. Their
answers added to my fear that I had spoken too much of the virgins and the
saints, the indulgences, medals and scapulars, integrity of confession, and not
enough of Christ dying on the cross for them. It is true I had spoken of Christ
and His death to them, but this had been so much mixed up with exhortation to
trust in Mary, put their confidence in their medals, scapulars, confessions,
ect., that it became almost evident to me that in our religion Christ was like
a precious pearl lost in a mountain of sand and dust. This fear soon caused my
distress to be unbearable.
I then went to the private, neat little room, which the gaoler had kindly
allotted to me, and I fell on my knees to pray God for myself and for my poor
convicts. Though this prayer brought some calm to my mind, my distress was
still very great. It was then that the thought came again to my mind to go the
governor and make a new and supreme effort to have the sentence of death
changed into that of perpetual exile to Botany Bay, and without a moment of
delay I went to his palace.
It was about 7 p.m. when he reluctantly admitted me to his presence, telling
me, when shaking hands, "I hope, Mr. Chiniquy, you are not coming to renew
your request of the morning, for I cannot grant it."
Without a word to answer I fell on my knees, and for more than ten minutes I
spoke as I had never spoken before. I spoke as we speak when we are the
ambassadors of God in a message of mercy. I spoke with my lips. I spoke with my
tears. I spoke with my sobs and my cries. I spoke with my supplicating hands
lifted to heaven. For some time the governor was mute and as if stunned. He was
not only a noble-minded man, but he had a most tender, affectionate, and kind
heart. His tears soon began to flow with mine, and his sobs mixed with my sobs;
with a voice halfsuffocated by his emotion, he extended his friendly hand and
said:
"Father Chiniquy, you ask me a favour which I ought not to give, but I
cannot resist your arguments, when your tears, your sobs, and your cries are
like arrows which pierce and break my heart. I will give you the favour you
ask."
It was nearly 10 p.m. when I knocked at the door of the gaoler, asking his
permission to see my dear friends in their cells, to tell them that I had
obtained their pardon, that they would not die. That gentleman could hardly
believe me. It was only after reading twice the document I had in my hands that
he saw that I told him the truth.
Looking at that parchment again, he said: "Have you noticed that it is
covered and almost spoiled by the spots evidently made with the tears of the
governor. You must be a kind of sorcerer to have melted the heart of such a man,
and have wrenched from his hands the pardon of such convicts; for I know he was
absolutely unwilling to grant the pardon."
"I am not a sorcerer," I answered. "But you remember that our
Saviour Jesus Christ had said, somewhere, that He had brought a fire from
heaven well, it is evident that He has thrown some sparks of that fire into my
poor heart, for it was so fiercely burning when I was at the feet of the
governor, that I think I would have died at his feet, had he not granted me
that favour. No doubt that some sparks of that fire have also fallen on his
soul and in his heart when I was speaking, for his cries, his tears, and his
sobs were filling his room, and showing that he was suffering as much as
myself. It was that he might not be consumed by that fire that he granted my
request. I am now the most happy man under heaven. Please, make haste. Come
with me and open the cells of those unfortunate men that I may tell what our
merciful God has done for them." When entering their desolated cells I was
unable to contain myself; I cried out: "Rejoice and bless the Lord, my
dear friends! You will not die to-morrow!I bring you your pardon with me!"
Two of them fainted, and came very near dying from excess of surprise and joy.
The others, unable to contain their emotions, were crying and weeping for joy.
They threw their arms around me to press me to their bosom, kiss my hands and
cover them with their tears of joy. I knelt with them and thanked God, after
which I told them how they must promise to God to serve Him faithfully after
such a manifestation of His mercies. I read to them the 100th, 101st, 102nd,
and 103rd Psalms, and I left them after twelve o'clock at night to go and take
some rest. I was in need of it after a whole day of such work and emotions.
The next day I wanted to see my dear prisoners early, and I was with them
before 7 a. m. As the whole country had been glad to hear that they were to be
hanged that very day, the crowds were beginning to gather at that early hour to
witness the death of those great culprits. The feelings of indignation were
almost unmanageable when they heard that they were not to be hanged, but only
to be exiled for their life to Botany Bay. For a time it was feared that the
mob would break the doors of the gaol and lynch the culprits. Though very few
priests were more respected and loved by the people, they would have probably
torn me to pieces when they heard that it was I who had deprived the gibbet of
its victims that day. The chief of police had to take extraordinary measures to
prevent the wrath of the mob from doing mischief. He advised me not to show
myself for a few days in the streets.
More than a month passed before all the thieves and murderers in Canada, to the
number of about seventy, who had been sentenced to be exiled to Botany Bay,
could be gathered into the ship which was to take them into that distant land.
I thought it was my duty during that interval to visit my penitents in gaol
every day, and instruct them on the duties of the new life they were called
upon to live. When the day of their departure arrived I gave a Roman Catholic
New Testament, translated by De Sacy, to each of them to read and meditate on
their long and tedious journey, and I bade them adieu, recommending them to the
mercy of God, and the protection of the Virgin Mary and all the Saints. Some
months later I heard, that on the sea Chambers had broken his chains and those
of some of his companions, with the intention of taking possession of the ship,
and escaping on some distant shore. But he had been betrayed, and was hanged on
his arrival at Liverpool.
I had almost lost sight of those emotional days of my young years of
priesthood. Those facts were silently lying among the big piles of the daily
records which I had faithfully kept since the very days of my collegiate life
at Nicolet, when, in 1878, I was called by the grand English colony of
Australia, formerly known by me only as the penal colony of Botany Bay.
Some time after my arrival, when I was lecturing in one of the young and thriving
cities of that country, whose future destinies promise to be so great, a rich
carross, drawn by two splendid English horses, with two men in livery, stopped
before the house where I had put up for a few days. A venerable gentleman
alighted from the carriage and knocked at the door as I was looking at him from
the window. I went to the door, to save trouble to my host, and I opened it. In
saluting me, the stranger said: "Is Father Chiniquy here?"
"Yes, sir," I answered. "Father Chiniquy is the guest of this
family."
"Could I have the honour of a few minutes' conversation with him?"
replied the old gentleman.
"As I am Father Chiniquy, I can at once answer you that I will feel much
pleasure in granting your request."
"Oh, dear Father Chiniquy," quickly replied the stranger, "is it
possible that it is you? Can I be absolutely alone with you for half an hour,
without any one to see and hear us?"
"Certainly," I said; "my comfortable rooms are upstairs, and I
am absolutely alone there.Please, sir, come and follow me."
When alone with me the stranger said:
"Do you not know me?"
"How can I know you, sir?" I answered. "I do not even remember
ever having seen you?"
"You have not only seen me, but you have heard the confession of my sins
many times; and you have spent many hours in the same room with me,"
replied the old gentleman.
"Please tell me where and when I have seen you, and also be kind enough to
give me your name; for all those things have escaped from my memory."
"Do you remember the murderer and thief, Chambers, who was condemned to
death in Quebec, in 1837, with eight of his accomplices?" asked the
stranger.
"Yes, sir; I remember well Chambers and the unfortunate men he was leading
in the ways of iniquity," I replied.
"Well, dear Father Chiniquy, I am one of the criminals who filled Canada
with terror for several years, and who were caught and rightly condemned to
death. When condemned, we selected you for our father confessor, with the hope
that through your influence we might escape the gallows; and we were not
disappointed. You obtained our pardon; the sentence of death was commuted into
a life of exile to Botany Bay. My name in Canada was A , but here they call me
B .God has blessed me since in many ways; but it is to you I owe my life, and
all the privileges of my present existence. After God, you are my saviour. I
come to thank and bless you for what you have done for me."
In saying that, he threw himself into my arms, pressed me to his heart, and
bathed my face and my hands with his tears of joy and gratitude.
But his joy did not exceed mine, and my surprise was equal to my joy to find
him apparently in such good circumstances. After I had knelt with him to thank
and bless God for what I had heard, I asked him to relate to me the details of
his strange and marvelous story. Here is a short resume of his answer:
"After you had given us your last benediction when on board the ship which
was to take us from Quebec to Botany Bay, the first thing I did was to open the
New Testament you had given me and the other culprits, with the advice to read
it with a praying heart. It was the first time in my life I had that book in my
hand. You were the only priest in Canada who would put such a book in the hands
of common people. But I must confess that its first reading did not do me much
good, for I read it more to amuse myself and satisfy my curiosity than through
any good and Christian motive. The only good I received from that first reading
was that I clearly understood, for the first time, why the priests of Rome fear
and hate that book, and why they take it out of the hands of their parishioners
when they hear that they have it. It was in vain that I looked for mass,
indulgences, chaplets, purgatory, auricular confession, Lent, holy water, the
worship of Mary, or prayers in an unknown tongue. I concluded from my first
reading of the Gospel that our priests were very wise to prevent us from
reading a book which was really demolishing our Roman Catholic Church, and felt
surprised that you had put in our hands a book which seemed to me so opposed to
the belief and practice of our religion as you taught it to us when in gaol,
and my confidence in your good judgment was much shaken. To tell you the truth,
the first reading of the Gospel went far to demolish my Roman Catholic faith,
and to make a wreck of the religion taught me by my parents and at the college,
and even by you. For a few weeks I became more of a skeptic than anything else.
The only good that first reading of the Holy Book did me was to give me more
serious thoughts, and prevent me from uniting myself to Chambers and his
conspirators in their foolish plot for taking possession of the ship and
escaping to some unknown and distant shore. He had been shrewd enough to
conceal a very small but exceedingly sharp saw between his toes before coming
to the ship, with which he had already cut the chains of eighteen of the
prisoners, when he was betrayed, and hanged on his arrival at Liverpool.
"But if my first reading of the Gospel did not do me much good, I cannot
say the same thing of the second. I remember that, when handing to us that holy
book, you had told us never to read it except after a fervent prayer to God for
help and light to understand it. I was really tired of my former life. In
giving up the fear and the love of God I had fallen into the deepest abyss of
human depravity and misery, till I had come very near ending my life on the
scaffold. I felt the need of a change. You had often repeated to us the words
of our Saviour, 'Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will
give you rest;' but, with all the other priests, you had always mixed those
admirable and saving words with the invocation to Mary, the confidence in our
medals, scapulars, signs of the cross, holy waters, indulgences, auricular
confessions, that the sublime appeal of Christ had always been, as it always
will be, drowned in the Church of Rome by those absurd and impious
superstitions and practices.
"One morning, after I had spent a sleepless night, and feeling as pressed
down under the weight of my sins, I opened my Gospel book, after an ardent
prayer for light and guidance, and my eyes fell on these words of John,
'Behold, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!' (John i. 29).
These words fell upon my poor guilty soul with a divine, irresistible power.
With tears and cries of an unspeakable desolation I spent the day in crying, 'O
Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on me! Take away
my sins!' The day was not over when I felt and knew that my cries had been
heard at the mercyseat. The Lamb of God had taken away my sins! He had changed
my heart and made quite a new man of me. From that day the reading of the
Gospel was to my soul what bread is to the poor hungry man, and what pure and
refreshing waters are to the thirsty traveler. My joy, my unspeakable joy, was
to read the holy book and speak with my companions in chains of the dear
Saviour's love for the poor sinners; and, thanks be to God, a good number of
them have found Him altogether precious, having been sincerely converted in the
dark holes of that ship. When working hard at Sydney with the other culprits, I
felt my chains to be as light as feathers when I was sure that the heavy chains
of my sins were gone; and though working hard under a burning sun from morning
till night, I felt happy, and my heart was full of joy when I was sure that my
Saviour had prepared a throne for me in His kingdom, and that He had bought a
crown of eternal glory for me by dying on the cross to redeem my guilty soul.
"I had hardly spent a year in Australia, in the midst of the convicts,
when a minister of the Gospel, accompanied by another gentleman, came to me and
said: 'Your perfectly good behavoiur and your Christian life have attracted the
attention and admiration of the authorities, and the governor sends us to hand
you this document, which says that you are no more a criminal before the law,
but that you have your pardon, and you can live the life of an honourable
citizen, by continuing to walk in the ways of God.' After speaking so, the
gentleman put one hundred dollars in my hands, and added: 'Go and be a faithful
follower of the Lord Jesus, and God Almighty will bless you and make you
prosper in all your ways.' All this seemed to me as a dream or vision from
heaven. I would hardly believe my ears or my eyes. But it was not a dream, it
was a reality. My merciful Heavenly Father had again heard my humble
supplications; after having taken away the heavy chains of my sins, He had
mercifully taken away the chains which wounded my feet and my hands. I spent
several days and nights in weeping and crying for joy, and in blessing the God
of my salvation, Jesus the Redeemer of my soul and my body.
"Some years after that we heard of the discoveries of the rich gold mines
in several parts of Australia. "After having prayed God to guide me, I
bought a bag of hard crackers, a ham and cheese, and started for the mines in
company with several who were going, like myself, in search of gold. But I soon
preferred to be alone. For I wanted to pray and to be united to my God, even
when walking. After a long march, I reached a beautiful spot, between three
small hills, at the foot of which a little brook was running down towards the
plain below. The sun was scorching, there was no shade, and I was much tired, I
sat on a flat stone to take my dinner, and quenching my thirst with the water
of the brook, I was eating and blessing my God at the same time for His
mercies, when suddenly my eyes fell on a stone by the brook, which was about
the size of a goose egg. But the rays of the sun was dancing on the stone, as
if it had been a mirror. I went and picked it up. The stone was almost all gold
of the purest kind! It was almost enough to make me rich. I knelt to thank and
bless God for this new token of His mercy toward me, and I began to look around
and see if I would not find some new piece of the precious metal, and you may
imagine my joy when I found that the ground was not only literally covered with
pieces of gold of every size from half an inch to the smallest dimensions, but
that the very sand was in great part composed of gold. In a very short time it
was the will of God that I could carry to the bank particles of gold to the
value of several thousand pounds. I continued to cover myself with rags, and
have old boots on in order not to excite the suspicion of any one of the
fortune which I was accumulating so rapidly. When I had about $80,000 deposited
in the banks, a gentleman offered me $80,000 more for my claim, and I sold it.
The money was invested by me on a piece of land which soon became the site of
an important city, and I soon became one of the wealthy men of Australia. I
then begun to study hard and improve the little education I had received in
Canada. I married, and my God has made me father of several children. The
people where I settled with my fortune and wife, not knowing my antecedents,
have raised me to the first dignities of the place. Please, dear Mr. Chiniquy,
come and take dinner with me to-morrow, that I may show you my house and some
of my other properties, and also that I may introduce you to my wife and
children. Let me ask the favour not to make them suspect that you have known me
in Canada, for they think that I am an European." When telling me his
marvelous adventures, which I am obliged to condense and abridge, his voice was
many times choked by his emotion, his tears and sobs, and more than once he had
to stop. As for me, I was absolutely beside myself with admiration at the
mysterious ways through which God leads His elect in all ages. "Now, I
understood why my God had given me such a marvelous power over the Governor of
Canada when I wrenched your pardon from his hands almost in spite of
himself." I said: "That merciful God willed to save you, and you are
saved! May His name be for ever blessed."
The next day, it was my privilege to be with his family, at dinner. And never
in my life, have I seen a more happy mother, and a more interesting family. The
long table was actually surrounded by them. After dinner he showed me his
beautiful garden and his rich palace, after which, throwing himself into my
arms, he said: "Dear Father Chiniquy, all those things belong to you. It
is to you after God that I owe my wife, all the blessings of a large and
Christian family, and the honour of the high position I have in this country.
May the God of heaven for ever bless you for what you have done for me." I
answered him: "Dear friend, you owe me nothing, I have been nothing but a
feeble instrument of the mercies of God towards you. To that great merciful God
alone be the praise and the glory. Please ask your family to come here and join
with us in singing to the praise of God the 103rd Psalm." And we sang
together: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His
holy name. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; not rewarded us according
to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His
mercy toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far
hath Here moved our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." After the singing of
that Psalm, I bade him adieu for the second time, never to meet him again
except in that Promised Land, where we shall sing the eternal Hallelujah around
the throne of the Lamb, who was slain for us, and who redeemed us in His blood.