Auricular Confession and Popish Nunneries. William Hogan

or to Den's treatise, "De Peccatis" which I have read in the same college, and in the same class with some of the Romish priests now in this country, hearing confessions perhaps at the moment I write, and debauching their penitents, aye even in New England, the land of the pilgrims! In those books I have mentioned, they will find the obscene questions which are put by priests and bishops of the Romish church, to all women, young and old, married or single; and if any married man, or father, or brother, will, after the perusal of these questions, allow his wife, his daughter, or his sister, ever again to go to confession, I will only say that his ideas of morality are more vague and loose than those of the heathen or the Turk. Christian he should not be called, who permits these deeds in our midst. I beg here to lay before my readers an extract from a work, recently published in Paris, entitled, "Auricular Confession and Direction." The work is written by M. Michelet, one of the most distinguished writers in France. It has been noticed in the last number of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and in that admirably conducted press, the Boston Courier.

      The following is given as the mysterious opening of the book:!!!!!

      "The family is in question;

      'That home where we would all fain repose, alter so many useless efforts, so many illusions destroyed.

      'We return home very wearied—do we find repose there?

      'We must not dissimulate—we must frankly confess to ourselves the real state of things. There exists in the bosom of society—in the family circle—a serious dissension, nay, the most serious of all dissensions.

      'We may talk with our mothers, our wives or our daughters, on all those matters about which we talk with our acquaintances: on business, on the news of the day, but not at all on matters nearest the heart, on religion, on God, on the soul.

      'Take the instant when you would fain find yourself united with your family in one common feeling, in the repose of the evening, round the family table; there, in your home, at your own hearth, venture to utter a word on these matters; your mother sadly shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, although silent, disapproves. They are on one side of the table, you on the other, alone.

      'It would seem as if in the midst of them, opposite to you, sat an invisible man to contradict what you say.'

      "The invisible enemy here spoken of, is the priest. The reviewer proceeds!!!!!

      'The priest, as confessor, possesses the secret of a woman's soul; he knows every half-formed hope, every dim desire, every thwarted feeling. The priest, as spiritual director, animates that woman with his own ideas, moves her with his own will, fashions her according to his own fancy. And this priest is doomed to celibacy. He is a man, but is bound to pluck from his heart the feelings of a man. If he is without faith, he makes desperate use of his power over those confiding in him. If he is sincerely devout, he has to struggle with his passions, and there is a perilous chance of his being defeated in that struggle. And even should he come off victorious, still the mischief done is incalculable and irreparable. The woman's virtue has been preserved by an accident, by a power extraneous to herself. She was wax in her spiritual director's hands; she has ceased to be a person, and is become a thing.'

      "There is something diabolical in the institution of celibacy accompanying confession. Paul Louis Courrier has painted a fearful picture of the priest's position as an unmarried confessor; and as Courrier's works are far less read than they deserve to be, we make no scruple of transferring his powerful sentences to our pages.

      'What a life, what a condition is that of our priests'? Love is forbidden them, marriage especially; women are given up to them. They may not have one of their own, and yet live familiarly with all, nay, in the confidential, intimate privity of their hidden actions, of all their thoughts. An innocent girl first hears the priest under her mother's wing; he then calls her to him, speaks alone with her, and is the first to talk of sin to her, before she can have known it. When instructed, she marries; when married, he still confesses and governs her. He has preceded the husband in her affections, and will always maintain himself in them. What she would not venture to confide to her mother, or confess to her husband, he, a priest, must know it, asks it, hears it, and yet shall not be her lover. How could he, indeed? is he not tonsured? He hears whispered in his ear, by a young woman, her faults, passions, desires, weaknesses, receives her sighs without feeling agitated, and he is five-and-twenty!

      'To confess a woman! imagine what that is. At the end of the church a species of closet or sentry-box is erected against the wall, where the priest awaits in the evening, after vespers, his young penitent whom he loves, and who knows it; love cannot be concealed from the beloved person. You will stop me there: his character of priest, his education, his vow. … I reply that there is no vow which holds good, that every village cure just come from the seminary, healthy, robust, and vigorous, doubtless loves one of his parishioners. It cannot be otherwise; and if you contest this, I will say more still, and that is, that he loves them all, those at least of his own age; out he prefers one, who appears to him, if not more beautiful than the others, more modest and wiser, and whom he would marry; he would make her a virtuous, pious wife, if it were not for the Pope. He sees her daily, and meets her at church or elsewhere, and sitting opposite her in the winter evenings, he imbibes, imprudent man! the poison of her eyes!

      'Now, I ask you, when he hears that one coming the next day, and approaching the confessional, and when he recognizes her footsteps, and can say, 'It is she;' what is passing in the mind of the poor confessor? Honesty, duty, wise resolutions, are here of little use, without peculiarly heavenly grace. I will suppose him a saint: unable to fly, he apparently groans, sighs, recommends himself to God; but if he is only a man, he shudders, desires, and already unwillingly, without knowing it, perhaps, he hopes. She arrives, kneels down at his knees, before him whose heart leaps and palpitates. You are young, sir, or you have been so; between ourselves, what do you think of such a situation? Alone most of the time, and having these walls, these vaulted roofs, as sole witnesses, they talk; of what? alas! of all that is not innocent They talk, or rather murmur, in low voice, and their lips approach each other, and their breaths mingle. This lasts for an hour or more, and is often renewed.

      'Do not think I invent. This scene takes place such as I describe it; is renewed daily by forty thousand young priests, with as many young girls whom they love, because they are men, whom they confess in this manner, entirely tete-a-tete, and visit, because they are priests, and whom they do not marry, because the Pope is opposed to it.'

      "The priest has the spiritual care of her he loves; her soul is in his hands. He is connected with her by the most sacred ties; his interest in her he disguises to himself under the cloak of spiritual anxiety. He can always quiet the voice of conscience by an equivoque. The mystic language of love is also the mystic language of religion, and what guilt is shrouded under this equivoque, the history of priestcraft may show. Parler l'amour c'est faire l'amour, is a profound truth. From the love of God, it is easy to descend to the love of man; especially when this man is a priest, that is to say, a mediator between the woman and God, one who says, 'God hears you through me; through me he will reply.' This man whom she has seen at the altar, and there invested with all the sacred robes and sacred associations of his office; whom she has visited in the confessional, and there laid bare her soul to him; whose visits she has received in her boudoir, and there submitted to his direction; this man, whom she worships, is supposed to be an idea, a priest; no one supposing him to be a man, with a man's passions!

      "M. Michelet's book contains the proofs of what I have just said; but they are too numerous to quote. I shall only borrow from his work the passages he gives from an unexceptionable authority, Llorente."

      'Llorente, a contemporary, relates (t. hi., ch. 28. article 2, ed. 1817) that when he was secretary to the Inquisition, a capuchin was brought before that tribunal, who directed a community of beguines, and had seduced nearly all of them, by persuading them that they were not leaving the road to perfection. He told each of them in the confessional that he had received from God a singular favor: "Our Lord," he said, "has deigned to show himself to me in the Sacrament, and has said to me, Almost all the souls that thou dost direct here are pleasing to me, but especially such a one, (the capuchin named her to whom he spoke.) She is already so perfect,