[Gutenberg 20120] • The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional

THERE are two women who ought to be constant objects of the compassion of the disciples of Christ, and for whom daily prayers ought to be offered at the mercy-seat—the Brahmin woman, who, deceived by her priests, burns herself on the corpse of her husband to appease the wrath of her wooden gods; and the Roman Catholic woman, who, not less deceived by her priests, suffers a torture far more cruel and ignominious in the confessional-box, to appease the wrath of her wafer-god.

For I do not exaggerate when I say, that for many noble-hearted, well-educated, high-minded women, to be forced to unveil their hearts before the eyes of a man, to open to him all the most secret recesses of their souls, all the most sacred mysteries of their single or married life, to allow him to put to them questions which the most depraved woman would never consent to hear from her vilest seducer, is often more horrible and intolerable than to be tied on burning coals.

More than once, I have seen women fainting in the confessional-box, who told me afterwards, that the necessity of speaking to an unmarried man on certain things, on which the most common laws of decency ought to have for ever sealed their lips, had almost killed them! Not hundreds, but thousands of times, I have heard from the lips of dying girls, as well as of married women, the awful words; "I am forever lost! All my past confessions and communions have been so many sacrileges! I have never dared to answer correctly the questions of my confessors! Shame has sealed my lips and damned my soul!"

How many times I remained as one petrified, by the side of a corpse, when these last words having hardly escaped the lips of one of my female penitents, who had been snatched out of my reach by the merciless hand of death, before I could give her pardon through the deceitful sacramental absolution? I then believed, as the dead sinner herself had believed, that she could not be forgiven except by that absolution.

For there are not only thousands but millions of Roman Catholic girls and women whose keen sense of modesty and womanly dignity are above all the sophisms and diabolical machinations of their priests. They never can be persuaded to answer "Yes " to certain questions of their confessors.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

EZEKIEL 8

CHAPTER ONE

THE STRUGGLE BEFORE THE SURRENDER OF WOMANLY SELF-RESPECT IN THE CONFESSIONAL

CHAPTER TWO

AURICULAR CONFESSION A DEEP PIT OF PERDITION FOR THE PRIEST.

CHAPTER THREE

THE CONFESSIONAL IS THE MODERN SODOM

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW THE VOW OF CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTS IS MADE EASY BY AURICULAR CONFESSION

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HIGHLY-EDUCATED AND REFINED WOMAN IN THE CONFESSIONAL

CHAPTER SIX

AURICULAR CONFESSION DESTROYS ALL THE SACRED TIES OF MARRIAGE AND HUMAN SOCIETY

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHOULD AURICULAR CONFESSION BE TOLERATED AMONG CIVILIZED NATIONS?

CHAPTER EIGHT

DOES AURICULAR CONFESSION BRING PEACE TO THE SOUL?

CHAPTER NINE

THE DOGMA OF AURICULAR CONFESSION A SACRILEGIOUS IMPOSTURE.

CHAPTER TEN

GOD COMPELS THE CHURCH OF ROME TO CONFESS THE ABOMINATIONS OF AURICULAR CONFESSION

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AURICULAR CONFESSION IN AUSTRALIA, AMERICA, AND FRANCE.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A CHAPTER FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF LEGISLATORS, HUSBANDS, AND FATHERS.