{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_56041/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_56041","id":"gutenberg_56041","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56041","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Religious","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Catholic Church -- Controversial literature","Celibacy -- Catholic Church"],"text":"+-------------------------------------------------+\n|Transcriber's note:                              |\n|                                                 |\n|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |\n|                                                 |\n+-------------------------------------------------+\n\n\nTHE INEVITABLE CRIMES OF CELIBACY:\n\nTHE\nVICES OF CONVENTS\nAND MONASTERIES,\nPRIESTS AND NUNS\n\n_By_\n\nTHOS. E. WATSON\n\n_Author of \"The Story of France,\" \"Napoleon,\" \"Life and\nTimes of Andrew Jackson,\" \"Life and Times of Thomas\nJefferson,\" \"The Roman Catholic Hierarchy,\" Etc._\n\n\nTHOMSON, GA.:\n1916.\n\n\nPress of\nTHE JEFFERSONIAN PUB. CO.\nThomson, Ga.\n\n\n\n\nThe Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and\nMonasteries, Priests and Nuns.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n\nWhen any species of wrong-doing can wear the disguise of righteousness,\nthe blindest among us can see how dangerous that kind of crime may\nbecome--how hard to prove, punish and put down.\n\nThere are immense Arabian plains where nomad robbers have practised\ntheir profession, from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to\nthe contrary; yet those plains and the nomad bands that pitch their\ntents beneath the Oriental sun remain very much as they were in the days\nof Abraham.\n\nBut where robbery has disguised itself _as Law_, and one class has aimed\nthe law-making machine at the others, saying \"_Stand and deliver!_\"\nwhole regions have become deserts, and great peoples have been blotted\nout.\n\nIn fact, the highwayman, the cattle-lifter and the pickpocket have never\nin the least affected the destinies of nations. The pirate and the\nbuccaneer have never been able to destroy the commerce of the seas,\nbeggar provinces, and change noble harbors into neglected pools.\n\nIt is when the robbers intrench themselves in Parliaments, Reichstags\nand Congresses, and the robbery takes the form of \"Law,\" that spoliation\nbecomes destructive. Bank laws and money-contraction laws beat down more\nvictims than armies. Protective Tariff \"laws,\" infinitely more ruinous\nthan all the Lafittes and Captain Kidds, drive the American flag from\nthe seas, while on land they make a thousand Rockefellers, Carnegies,\nMorgans, Guggenheims, McCormicks and Armours, at the same time that they\nare casting millions of the despoiled out of house and home.\n\nThere are realms where religious mendicancy keeps to the primitive forms\nof the beggar's bowl and pouch. It is the free-will offering.\n\nIn these countries of voluntary tributes, religious feeling has branched\ninto the fewest channels, has lost the least of its original force, and\nmaintains today its most impregnable position. But where the priestly\ncaste was able to intrench its mendicancy in Law, and arrogantly say to\nthe laity, \"_Pay me one-tenth of all thou hast!_\" religion was first to\nwell-nigh lose its beauty and its strength, and like, the Rhine, almost\ndisappear into the intricate morasses of subdivisions.\n\nTen thousand virulent disputes about tithes ushered in the diabolisms of\nthe French Revolution; and many of my readers will remember how Charles\nDickens, when a Parliamentary reporter, dropped his pencil in tears,\nunable to go on, as Daniel O'Connell described one of the tragedies of a\ntithe-riot in Ireland.\n\nWhen Religion went forth as Christ sent it forth, _it demanded nothing\nfor the priest_. Yet, the same religion, organized into an episcopacy,\nafterwards wrote the tax of one-tenth upon the statute-book, and sold\nthe widow's cow to pay the priest for his prayer. In those days, it must\nhave been a gruesome spectacle as the burly parson, a picture of\nphysical fullness, stood in the background, personifying Law and\nReligion, while the bailiff raided the cotter's wretched premises,\npounced upon pigs and poultry, or dragged household goods off to public\nsale. Yet, during centuries of outrage, pain and starvation, this sort\nof robbery disguised itself with _a double domino of Law and Religion_.\n\nForgive me, if I digress briefly to mention how vividly I was reminded\nof all this, by the thrifty, business-like manner in which Bishop P. J.\nDonohue, of Wheeling, West Virginia, sold out a laboring man, S. W.\nHawley, _for rent_, in the year of our Crucified Lord, 1913.\n\nTo satisfy the debt due to this most worshipful Bishop of God, the\nfollowing personal property was seized, and advertised for sale, to-wit:\n3 bed springs and 3 beds, 3 mattresses, 1 stove, 2 tables, 10 chairs, 3\npictures, 1 broom, 4 comforts, 2 blankets, 3 quilts, 4 pillows, and some\ndishes.\n\n(It was further stated that Hawley's back was broken, while working in\nthe coal mines.)\n\n\nGeorge Alfred Townsend, who was so well known to journalism as \"Gath,\"\nwrote a novel which he called \"The Entailed Hat.\" The book would have\nlived gloriously, had it not been for the hat: the sternly absurd\nconditions which this idea about the Entailed Hat fastened upon the\nauthor, killed his novel.\n\nBut there was in it one passage which lingers yet in my recollection,\nafter the lapse of more than 30 years. There were two brothers, shrewd,\npushing, flinty Jews, who drove hard bargains, hard collections, and\nfilled a store-room with household plunder sold for debt, and bought in\nby the Jews, to be resold at a profit. \"Gath\" gave tongue to each\narticle of this pitiful domestic furniture, torn from the homes of the\npoor, and auctioned at public outcry.\n\nThe old rickety cradle spoke of the babes that had lain in it, and of\nthe mother-songs that had been sung over it, as the foot which moves the\nworld softly pedalled the wooden rockers.\n\nThe loom and the spindle had their stories to tell: the table and the\ndishes spoke of the plain meals and unpretentious hospitalities of the\nlowly: the chairs remembered the humble hearth and fireside, and many a\ncircle of bright faces they had helped to form around the cheerful glow\nof the burning logs.\n\nThe silent clock, with no life of moving hands on its dust-covered face,\nspoke of how the short and simple annals of the poor had been measured\nby it, how it had timed the marriage and the funeral, the birth and\ndeath; and how it had missed the toil-hardened hands that used to wind\nit up, every night.\n\nAnd so on--the dirge of the Household Goods!\n\nAs my eye ran over the items of the poor man's goods ordered to sale for\nthe most worshipful Bishop Donohue--the consecrated disciple of Christ\nwho didn't even have as much of a home as the foxes and the birds--I\n_might_ have thought of one or two blistering passages in the glorious\nold Code of Moses; I _might_ have recalled some of the bitterest of the\nwords of Jesus Christ, against those rich, haughty, unmerciful lordlings\nwho grind the faces of the poor.\n\nBut I did not: on the contrary, that passage in \"Gath's\" novel rose out\nof the mist of 30 years, and brought back the plaintive lament of the\nhousehold goods, seized, carried away, and sold into strange hands to\npay a trifling debt. \"Gath,\" following literary tradition, most\ncanonically chose _Jews_ to act as shylocks: it would never have\noccurred to him that a consecrated Bishop of Jesus Christ could sell the\npoor Christian's blanket off the bed, sell the bed itself, sell the\ntable at which the family ate, and the chairs that they sat on. Not\nonly the mattress on which the tired limbs of labor stretched themselves\nto rest, and the pillows upon which the aching head had lain, but the\nvery broom which swept the floor, had to be seized to satisfy the rent\nof this godly landlord, _the Bishop of a homeless Christ_!\n\nTo make this picture perfect, the family Bible ought to have been levied\non--and this Catholic Bishop ought to have bought it in. Having acquired\nthe Book in that manner, a natural curiosity might have prompted him to\nread it.\n\nOne thing, however, the most worshipful Bishop might yet do: he might\ntake the proceeds of the sale of Hawley's beds, mattresses, pillows,\nstove, dishes, comforts, blankets, chairs and broom--and contribute the\nwhole sum to Foreign Missions.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Thou shalt not commit adultery!\"\n\nAll Christians take their laws and their religion more or less from the\nJews. Who the Jews took it from, is another question. Skeptical scholars\nsay that they took it from the older peoples of the East, of the Nile,\nthe Euphrates: orthodox Christianity maintains that they took it by\nrevelation direct from Jehovah. Therefore, every sect in Christendom\nstands committed to the proposition that God Almighty, clothed in all\nHis terrors, with the clouds darkening the skies, the thunders for His\nheralds and the lightenings for the flaming swords that went before His\nface, came down to Sinai, and wrote upon the everlasting tablets,\n\n\"_Thou shalt not commit adultery!_\"\n\n(Doway Bible: Deut. xx:14. I will hereafter use this Roman Catholic\nversion as the true one, thus avoiding any dispute with papists as to\nthe accuracy of my quotations.)\n\nIn this Doway, or Douay, a version of the Book, we are somewhat patly\ntold that the first thing which Adam did, after having been dispossessed\nof Eden, was to know \"Eve his wife, who conceived and brought forth\nCain, saying, I have gotten a man through God.\"\n\nThen she brought forth Abel; and before six other verses are ended, we\nlearn that the brothers are at enmity because of religion, and that one\nhas killed the other.\n\nHow Adam and Eve were to have propagated the human race, had Eve not\nlistened to the snake; or whether they were to have propagated it at\nall, is a mystery which our finite minds were evidently not expected to\nfathom. Nevertheless, Saint Augustine made a heroic effort to answer\nthe riddle; and his classic theological work, \"The City of God,\"\ncontains his theory, still discreetly veiled in the original Latin,\nwhich, being interpreted, is considerably nastier than any other English\nthat I ever perused in a classical theological work.\n\nThe first occupation of Adam outside of Paradise ought to have some\nweight with us, as a time-honored precedent. That wicked mankind, and\nNoe came out of the Ark, together with all those animals, birds,\nreptiles, &c., the very first command given him was, that he and his\nfamily should increase and multiply. Apparently, their obedience to this\ncommand was so prompt and effective that the Lord never reproached him\nor his descendants for any neglect of duty in that particular.\n\n\"And God blessed Noe and his sons: and said unto them, Increase and\nmultiply, and fill the earth.\"\n\nIt is true that Noe got drunk, soon after this; but the diligent\ncasuists, who follow every perilous passage in the Douay Bible with\ntheir indefatigable notes, tell us that Noe did not commit a sin by\ngetting drunk, \"because he knew not the strength of it,\" the wine.\n\n(Thus does ignorance excuse the sinner, when the casuists need the\ndefense.)\n\nAnd through the Mosaic Code, breathes the same spirit and purpose: it\ncan fairly be summed up in the phrase, _Thou shalt marry_!\n\nEvery encouragement is given to wedlock and to large families: polygamy\nitself, had its _reason_, in those hot climates where puberty is reached\nat so early an age, and where the child-bearing woman is so quickly aged\ninto unfitness for mating with the robust husband. It was partly because\nthe Mosaic law gave so little excuse for immorality, that adultery was\nso cruelly punished. And the vigor of the Jewish type, for so many\ncenturies, amid so many barbarous persecutions, and in spite of such\nwide geographical dispersions, is the most splendid monument to the\neternal wisdom of the command--\n\n_Marry! Increase and multiply! Fill the earth with lawfully begotten\nchildren! Honor the Home! Preserve your Race! Do not breed\npromiscuously! DO NOT MONGRELIZE!_\n\nIn short,\n\n\"_Do not commit adultery._\"\n\nAs Moses minutely regulated the patriarchal household, making the nomad\nJew's wife the queen of his tent, so Paul the Apostle carefully\ninstructed the model priest, admonishing him to be content with one\nwife, and to be watchful over the conduct of his family, \"having his\nchildren in subjection with all chastity.\"\n\n(I may add that St. Paul lays down the law in a manner that condemns the\nChristian bishops who sell out their humble fellows who are unable to\npay rent and tithes.)\n\nThe priests of Assyria and of Egypt were married men. The priests of the\nJews were married men: the priests of the Romans were married men. The\nBishops, or Popes, of Rome were married men, during the first four\nhundred years after Christ.\n\n(See Dr. Angelo S. Rappoport's \"Love Affairs of the Vatican,\" 3rd\nEdition, 1912, p. 9.)\n\nLet no one misunderstand me: I freely admit that there are exceptional\nmen and women who voluntarily choose the unmarried life. There have\nalways been such exceptions to the rule, and there probably always will\nbe: the reasons need not be discussed.\n\nThose reasons do not necessarily imply a lack of virility: some men\nsimply prefer not to take a wife; some women just naturally fear the\nloss of independence, or they never meet the King who will take no\ndenial, or they nobly burden their lives with duties which demand\nself-sacrifice.\n\nThe six Vestals of old Rome were _voluntary_ celibates: such men as\nPaul, Ben Zoma, Montaigne, Spinoza, were _voluntary_ bachelors. It might\nhave been far happier for John Wesley, Thomas Carlyle, and John Ruskin,\nhad they persisted in the single state.\n\nBut _enforced_ spinsterhood and bachelorhood, is a frightfully different\nthing. To say to men and women who have taken certain \"vows,\" that they\nshall never seek happiness in marriage, never escape mental and physical\nlonging and anguish, because of such \"vows,\" _is to put the selfish will\nof an earthly priesthood above the will of God_.\n\nIt is impossible to conceive of a crucifixion of humanity more\nunnatural, more indefensible, and more necessarily horrible in its\nconsequences.\n\n_Enforced_ celibacy in normal priests, simply means adultery, hidden\nbehind walls and disguised _as religion_. Therefore, when adultery has\nto be tolerated, as an incident to a certain form of Christianity, the\ncrime eludes the law, the illicit intercourse of the sexes identifies\nitself with a religious system, and it becomes as impossible to control\nas does the robber who gains control of the machinery of government.\nWhen the robber is _the Law_, who is to punish the criminal? When\nadultery is elevated into a system which is recognized as a religion,\nwho is to punish the adulterer?\n\nRobbery enthroned in the law, and advancing its demands too far, has to\nbe dealt with by revolutions. Thus it was in England, when the Great\nCharter was won. Thus it was in the Revolution of 1688. Thus it was in\nSwitzerland, in France, in the American Colonies, in Italy, in Germany,\nand even in Spain and Portugal--not to mention South America, and\nMexico.\n\nAdultery, _interwoven in a religious system_, was one of the\nmain-springs of the Revolution in Germany, in England, in Holland and in\nthe States of the libertine Popes, themselves.\n\nThe enormous popular support given to Calvin, Luther, and Knox, to Henry\nVIII., to Garibaldi, to Bolivar, and to Juarez, was largely fanned and\nfed by the intense wrath of the people against the pope-protected\nimmorality of the priests--_the adultery which could not be punished\nbecause it was interwoven into the system of popery_.\n\nThe Popes could not punish the priests, because the Popes were equally\ncriminal. The system required celibacy: the system was against the law\nof God: _the system gave the priest absolute power over women, and\nsecret access to them_. The system needed the unmarried priest, and the\nsystem had to pay the price. _The adultery of the priest_ had to be\ncloaked and tolerated, for the simple reason that it _was incidental and\ninseparable_.\n\nBut who made the system? Not God, nor the Bible, nor the Apostles, nor\nthe early Fathers of the Primitive Church: the system was peculiarly the\nwork of Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII.\n\nIt was this Pope who formulated the dogma of universal dominion.\n\nIt was Gregory who said that, \"The world derives its light from two\nsources, the sun and the moon, the former symbolizing the Papacy, the\nlatter the Civil State.\"\n\nIn Gregory's mind, the entire Christian world was his Empire. The\ntemporal Princes were his vassals, every Kingdom of Europe was his\nfief, every crown, his to give and to take away. The keys of Heaven and\nof Hell were in his hands; he was the Infallible representative of\nJehovah; and when he spoke, nations must shout, \"_The voice of the Pope,\nis the voice of God!_\"\n\nTo defend such a power and advance its banners, a disciplined and\ndevoted soldiery was necessary: hence, the priests who could not take\nwives and have children. A family would _divide their allegiance_.\nHence, also, the convent and the confessional, to furnish an outlet to\nthe ungovernable natural desires of full-sexed men.\n\nDuring the three frozen winter days of 1077, when a barefooted Emperor\nof Germany stood outside the castle-gate at Canossa, in the snow, this\nGregory VII. spent the time inside with his Mistress, the Countess\nMatilda of Tuscany. When the Pope finally professed himself satisfied\nwith the Emperor's penitence and submission, he figuratively placed his\nfoot upon the Emperor's neck. The Church had conquered the Civil State.\nThe priest was above the King. To C\u00e6sar nothing was left, save what the\nPope might graciously concede. The things that had been C\u00e6sar's, _in\nChrist's time_, were now the Pope's. Thus, the Fisherman not only wore\none crown, but three, the tiara. He was lord of Earth, lord of Heaven,\nlord of Hell.\n\nUnder the Gregorian theory, God had become a silent partner in the\ngovernment of Creation, oppressed by the logical necessity of endorsing\nevery decree of the Infallible Italian priest. Jehovah was become a sort\nof _Roy Faineant_: the Italian Pope was Mayor of the Palace. To vary the\nillustration, the Almighty was become a King of England, and the Pope,\nPrime Minister. What the Premier tells the King to say, the King says;\nand then the Premier assures the world that what he has told the King to\nsay is, \"the King's speech.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the palace of the Popes themselves, what was the result of celibacy?\n\nDr. Angelo Rappoport, of Rome, Italy, says in his book, published in\n1912:\n\n\"For centuries the history of the Roman Pontiffs reminds one of the most\ndepraved times of Athens and pagan Rome, rather than of Bethlehem and\nJerusalem.\n\nCourtesans, famous for their talent and their beauty, their intrigues,\nand their gallant love affairs, ruled the Church and disposed of the\ntiara. They raised and deposed the Pontiffs, imprisoned and assassinated\nthem. * * * Their beds became the pedestals from which their lovers\nascended the Pontifical throne.\n\nAll these Popes were imitating the mode of life of the Saracens, to whom\nthey were paying tribute, and like true heroes of a seraglio, these\nchiefs of Christendom died by poison or strangulation. They committed\nfollies worthy of Oriental despots, and vied in their debaucheries with\nthe Emperors of pagan Rome. Pope John XXII. ordained priests in a\nstable, and swore by Bacchus and Venus.\" (John the 22nd Papa of that\nname, began his Vicarship of God in the year 1316.)\n\nCardinal Baronius exclaims,\n\n\"Those infamous prostitutes ruled Rome, and their creatures and lovers\nsat on the throne of St. Peter.\"\n\nBernard de Morlaix, monk of Cluny, writes in the 12th century,\n\n\"Rome is the impure city of the hunter Nimrod: piety and religion have\nfled its walls.\n\nAlas! the Pontiff, or rather the King of this odious city of Babylon,\ntreads under foot the sanctity of the Gospel and the morality of\nChrist.\"\n\nMatthew Paris, the historian of the 13th century, says:\n\n\"The holy city has become a place of infamy, whose lewdness surpass even\nthat of Sodom and Gomorrha.\"\n\nSo universal was the scandal caused by the bestial vices of the Popes\nand the Italian cardinals that the Catholic Parliament of England\nrefused to allow Pope Innocent IV. to come to the British Court. Why?\nBecause, as the House of Commons roundly declared, \"the Papal Court\nspreads such an abominable odor that it should not be permitted in\nEngland.\"\n\n(This was the Catholic Parliament of the Catholic King, Henry III., 13th\ncentury.)\n\nLet me quote the brutally frank _words of a Pope_--\n\n\"Whoever,\" writes Pius II., \"has not felt the fire of love is either a\nstone or a beast.\n\nWho is it, at the age of thirty, that has not committed a crime for the\nsake of love?\n\nMany women have I courted and loved: and as soon as I had possessed\nthem, I was filled with loathing for them.\"\n\n(The Infallible Pius II. lived in the 15th century.)\n\nInasmuch as the courtesans raised one boy of eighteen, and another of\ntwelve, to the \"throne of Saint Peter,\" you can imagine what sort of\nlives they led in that gilded brothel, the Pope's palace.\n\n(Pope John XII. was 18 years of age. Pope Benedict IX. was a lad of 12\nyears. Both were monsters of lust.)\n\nThis being the general picture of the Popes, _after_ they quit taking\nwives, we are not surprised to learn that their mistresses and their\nbastards were as well known, and as socially respectable, as those of\nthe kings and emperors, who married because it was a duty, and\nLotharioed because they found pleasure in it. The illegitimate children\nof the Vicars of Christ were as undenied and undeniable as were those of\nHenry of Navarre, Augustus of Saxony, Louis XIV. of France, and Charles\nII., of England. Don John of Austria, was not more proudly the \"woods\ncolt\" of Charles V. of Germany, than was C\u00e6sar Borgia the son of His\nHoliness, Alexander VI. The Duke of Berwick was not better known as the\nbastard of James II. and Arabella Churchill, than were two of the\nreigning belles of Rome, not many years ago, recognized as the winsome\ndaughters in the flesh of His Holiness, Pope Pius IX.\n\nTo complete the picture, history tells us that Pope John XII., who was\nmade God-on-earth at the age of eighteen, met his death by the hand of\nan outraged husband, at the age of twenty-five. The furious husband\nbroke into the Pope's bed-room, in the Lateran palace, and slew the\nadulterer in the arms of the faithless wife.\n\nEven Platina mentions this horrible fact, in his Lives of the Popes,\nwritten at the request of Pope Sixtus IV., and published in the year\n1479.\n\nPlatina was a devout Catholic and was Superintendent of the Vatican\nLibrary, Rome, Italy.\n\nIn the biography of Petrarch by Jerome Equarciafico, we learn that this\npoetic dawn-bird of the Renaissance had a beautiful sister, named\nSelvaggia. Upon this lovely girl, Pope Benedict XII. looked with the\neyes of desire. He made infamous proposals to Petrarch, while the poet\nscornfully rejected. Then His Holiness caused it to be whispered to\nPetrarch that the Inquisition felt inclined to question him concerning\nthe orthodoxy of his faith. \"The Question,\" meant torture, and Petrarch\nfled from Avignon for his life. But a younger brother of Selvaggia was\nmore of \"a man of the world,\" as the world went in those days of\nall-powerful popery; and this brother gave ear to the Pope's temptings.\nBy his connivance, the girl was seized one night, as she slept, and\ncarried into the bedroom of the Vicar of Christ.\n\nWhen this girl of sixteen realized what was intended, she fell on her\nknees, and piteously begged the Pope, the Holy Father, to take pity on\nher.\n\nThe raging lusts of the Pope were only maddened the more by the sight\nand the touch of her charms, and he threatened her with eternal\ndamnation if she persisted in her obstinacy. The weeping, despairing\nchild _did_ persist, and \"_he had recourse to force_\"\n\n(\"Love Affairs of the Vatican.\" Page 154.)\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPetrarch, as I have said, may be fairly regarded as the dawn-bird of the\nRenaissance, that marvellous Easter of Literature, when European\n_Intellect_, which popery had buried and set the soldiers of the\nInquisition to guard, heard the golden trumpet of Resurrection sounded\nby the Byzantine scholars--fleeing from Moslem invasion--and threw off\nthe shroud of a degrading superstition, defied the terrors of the stupid\nfanatic, and said to all the world--\n\n\"_I will be free again, even though I die for it._\"\n\nPetrarch was the purest of ten thousand pure, a lover who lived in the\nglory of the sentiment, without even the temptation to plunge the sacred\ntorch into the stream of sensuality--a poet who sang as the bird sings,\nbecause Nature put music in his brain and heart and throat.\n\nPetrarch was a devout Christian; and to be a Christian at that time,\nmeant to be a Catholic. You may be sure that it was no heretic whom the\nRomans publicly honored in Rome, in the year 1342, and crowned with the\nlaurels that Virgil had not worn more worthily.\n\nSurely, Petrarch's description of the Pope's morals and the Papal Court\nwill not be spurned as the libel of an abominable heretic.\n\n\"You find there the terrible Nimrod, Semiramis, armed * * * the\nscandalous monument of the most infamous amours.\n\nConfusion, darkness and horror, vice and crime dwell within these\nprecincts. I am only describing to you what I have seen with my own\neyes.\n\nThe hope of future life is looked upon as a vain illusion--what is\nbeing told of hell as a mere fable. * * * Love of truth is considered\neccentricity; chastity, prudishness. Licentiousness is considered\nbroadness of soul, whilst prostitution here leads to fame and prestige.\nThe more vice one accumulates, the greater the glory. Virtue is\nconsidered ridiculous. * * *\n\nI shall not speak of violation, rape, adultery and incest. _They are\ntrifles at the Pontifical Court._\n\nI shall not relate that the husbands whose wives have been abducted,\n_are forced to silence and exile_. * * * I shall not dwell upon the\ncruel insult by which the outraged husbands are being compelled to\nreceive in their houses _their wives who had been prostituted,\nespecially when they carry in their wombs the fruit of the criminal\nlove_.\"\n\nGreat God! What a picture of the Papal Court!\n\nPetrarch adds, \"The people are quite aware of everything I know myself.\"\n\nThe people knew; the people murmured: the people were helpless.\n_Adultery had interwoven itself into the very fabric of religion_; and\nthe people saw no way to attack the adulterers without being accused of\nheresy and delivered to the terrible Inquisition.\n\nLuther had not yet come. When he _did_ come, the adulterers said that he\nwas not only a heretic, but a drunkard and a libertine!\n\n\nWilliam Hogan was born in Ireland, and was educated for the priesthood\nat Maynooth College. Coming to America to follow his calling, he was so\nshocked by what he learned, in the Confessional and otherwise, that he\nabandoned popery in utter disgust.\n\nWhen he landed on our shores, he brought with him letters of\nintroduction to DeWitt Clinton of New York. So favorably was he received\nthat he was elected Chaplain of the New York legislature, unanimously.\nTherefore, he was not a man with a grievance. Every selfish instinct\nwarned him to remain in the service of popery. It was his native honesty\nand his horror of imposture that caused him to rebel. Afterwards, he\npublished books which reached an immense circulation prior to the Civil\nWar, but which were forgotten in that shock of armies. They are now\nseldom seen even in the catalogues of Old Book stores.\n\nTo that splendid gentleman, Dr. John N. Taylor, of Crawfordville,\nIndiana, I was indebted for a copy of the edition of 1856. The volume\ncontains Hogan's book on \"Popery,\" and also his \"Auricular Confession\nand Popish Nunneries.\"\n\nOn page 247, Ex-Priest William Hogan says, in reference to the popish\nschool-teachers, so numerous now in our Protestant schools--\n\n\"These ladies, when properly disciplined by the Jesuits and priests,\nbecome the best teachers. But before they are allowed to teach, there is\nno art, no craft, no species of cunning, no refinement in private\npersonal indulgences, or no modes or means of seduction, in which they\nare not thoroughly initiated.\n\nI may say with safety, and from my own personal knowledge through the\nConfessional, that _there is scarcely one of them who has not been\nherself DEBAUCHED BY HER OWN CONFESSOR_.\n\nThe reader will understand that every nun has a confessor; and here I\nwill add, for the truth must be told at once, that _every confessor has\na concubine, and there are very few of them who have not several_.\"\n\nRemember that this fearful charge against celibacy was made in 1856, in\nthe edition of Hogan's work which was the 76th thousand. Therefore, the\nex-priest who had brought the best letters of introduction from Europe,\nand who had been unanimously elected Chaplain of the New York\nlegislature, had hurled this hideous indictment at popery and its priest\n76,000 times.\n\nWhat answer was made to him? _None!_\n\nThey furiously abused him, but did not dare to either prosecute or\nreply. He had been a priest, and he knew too much.\n\n_Popery has never dared to prosecute an ex-priest, or an ex-nun, where\nthere was any chance to lift the veil that conceals the rottenness of\nlife inside the convents, and the monasteries._\n\nAfter quoting Michelet and Courier and Llorente on the inevitable\nlasciviousness and depravity necessarily resulting from denying the\npriests the right to marry, William Hogan proceeds--\n\n\"Shall the cowl shelter the adulterous monk in this land of freedom? Are\nthe sons of freemen to countenance, nay, asked to build impassible walls\naround a licentious, lecherous, profligate horde of foreign priests and\nmonks, who choose to come among us, and erect a little _fortification_,\nwhich they call nunneries for their protection?\n\n\"Shall they own, by law and charter, places where _to bury_, hidden from\nthe public eye, _the victim of their lust, AND THE MURDERED OFFSPRING OF\nTHEIR CONCUPISCENCE_?\"\n\nSpeaking of Albany, New York, Rev. Hogan, on page 268, of \"Nunneries,\"\nsays--\n\n\"As soon as I got settled in Albany, I had of course to attend to the\nduty of Auricular Confession; and in less than two months found that\nthose three priests, during the time they were there, were the fathers\nof between 60 and 100 children, besides having debauched many who had\nleft the place previous to their confinement.\n\nMany of these children were by married women, whose husbands and\nbrothers, and relatives were ready, if necessary, to wade knee-deep in\nblood for the _holy immaculate infallible church of Rome_.\"\n\nAnd why were these American Catholics willing to wade in blood for\npopery? Because they did not know the truth about it.\n\nThe same reason holds good today; and that's the reason the priests are\nfrantically trying to violate our Constitutional right of free speech\nand free press.\n\n_Above all things_, the priests dread the day when American fathers,\nhusbands, sons and brothers find out _what it is_, that these devilish\npriests claim they have a right _to say, and to do_, in their secret\nintercourse with Catholic wives, sisters and daughters.\n\n_The priests will murder any man, if they can, to prevent HIM from\nuncovering THEM._\n\nOn page 283, Hogan continues--\n\n\"Priests, nuns, and confessors are the same now that they were\nthen--15th century--all over the world.\n\nMany of you have visited Paris, and do you not see there a lying-in\nhospital attached to every nunnery in the city? The same is to be seen\nin Madrid, and the principal cities of Spain.\n\nI have seen them myself in Mexico, and in the city of Dublin, Ireland.\n\nWhat is the object of these hospitals? _It is chiefly to provide for the\nillicit offspring of priests and nuns, and such other unmarried females\nas the priests can seduce through the confessional._\n\nBut, it will be said, there are no lying-in hospitals attached to the\nnunneries in this country. True, there are not; but I know from my own\nexperience, _through the confessional_, that it would be well, if there\nwere.\n\n_There would be fewer abortions; there would be fewer infants strangled\nand murdered._\n\nIt is not generally known to Americans that the crime of procuring\nabortion, is a common, everyday crime in popish nunneries.\n\nIt is not known to Americans, that strangling and putting to death\ninfants, is common in nunneries throughout this country.\n\n_It is done systematically and methodically, ACCORDING TO POPISH\nINSTRUCTIONS._\"\n\nThe modus operandi is this--and then the ex-priest describes how the\npriest, the father of the child, baptises it, and thus insures its\npassage to Heaven, as per popish belief; and how the abbess, or Mother\nSuperior, then shuts off the breath of the babe, at the nose: after\nwhich the poor little body is thrown into the lime-pit to be consumed.\n\nFather Hogan also describes how the priests and monks give desired\nchildren to wives whose husbands are not productive. The woman is easily\nled to believe that God's will is enlisted in her behalf, and that He\nhas commissioned the priest to accomplish what the husband failed at:\n_result_, happy wife, bouncing babe, rapturous husband, chuckling\npriest.\n\nFather Hogan _tells it all_; and the rancorous papists never dared to\nhale him into court!\n\n\n     APPENDIX.\n\n     Constable's Public Sale.\n\n     On Monday, the 22d day of September, 1913, between the hours of 9\n     o'clock a. m. and 4 p. m. of said day, at the residence of S. W.\n     Hawley in ---- Town, district of Raleigh County, West Virginia, I\n     will sell at Public Auction to the highest bidder, for cash, the\n     following described personal property, to wit: Three bed springs\n     and 3 beds, 3 mattresses, 1 dresser, 1 wash stand, 1 stand table, 1\n     range stove, and outfit for said stove, 2 tables, 10 chairs, 3\n     pictures, 1 broom, 4 comforts, 2 blankets, 3 quilts, and 3\n     comforts, 1 safe and dishes and 1 set of irons, 4 pillows, levied\n     upon as the property of S. W. Hawley ---- a distress warrant for\n     rent ---- to satisfy ---- in my hands for collection in favor of P.\n     J. Donahue.\n\n     Terms of sale: Cash in hand on day of sale.\n\n     Given under my hand this 10th day of September, 1913.\n\n     J. L. WILLIAMS,\n\n     Constable of Raleigh County.\n\n\n     STATE OF MISSOURI,\n\n     County of Lawrence--ss.\n\n     Before me personally appeared Marvin Brown, and after being duly\n     sworn on his oath says that the above and foregoing is a true and\n     correct copy of the notice of the constable's sale as the same\n     appears from the original now in the possession of the affiant, and\n     compared by him with the original at the time of making this\n     affidavit.\n\n     (Signed)\n\n     MARVIN BROWN, Affiant.\n\n     Subscribed and sworn to before me this 30th day of December, 1913.\n\n     (Signed)\n\n     EUGENE J. McNATT,\n     Notary Public, Lawrence County.\n     Commission expires Feb. 19th, 1916.\n\n     (Appeared in _The Menace_, Jan. 10, 1914.)\n\n\n\n\nWhat Happens to Full Sexed Women When They Foolishly Take Vows Which\nInsult Nature and God?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n\nWhy is it that a human document ten thousand years old has the same\neffect upon us, as a newspaper story of yesterday? Why is it that we\nlove or hate the men and women who live in the songs of Homer? Why do we\ngrieve, or rejoice with those who live in the pages of Plutarch; and\nfeel deeply moved when David and Jonathan are forced apart; when Joseph\nis sold by his brethren; when the song of Solomon voices the deathless\ndevotion of the country girl for her mountain lover; and when the\nfanatical Jeptha is about to slay his innocent, beautiful daughter?\n\nIt is because human nature has never changed; what our fathers were, we\nare: what Absolom and David felt, we feel.\n\nWhen the brilliant, wayward Jewish boy goes astray and meets his\nuntimely fate, we mourn with his broken father as he wails--\"O Absolom\nmy son, O my son Absolom!\"\n\nThat which women have already been, women continue to be. Helen of Troy\nwas not essentially different from Madame de Pompadour; Cleopatra was a\nmore refined Catherine of Russia; Aspasia was the forerunner of Madame\nMaintenon: Sappho was another \"George Sand;\" Lilly Langtry was a modern\nPhryne; and Pauline Bonaparte had all the charm and voluptousness of\nNell Gwynne.\n\nOne reason why the Old Testament continues to be a modern book is, that\nit is so full of human nature. Our first instinct, when we became\nviolently enraged is, _to kill_. In the Old Testament, they do it.\nConsidered as a mere human document, there is more raw slaughter in the\nOld Testament than any book you ever read, and the details are given\nwith frightfully fascinating realism.\n\nNo cloak is thrown around Jacob and Abraham and Lot. Those citizens are\npainted with all the warts on. In some of them, indeed, the warts fill\nmost of the canvass. That affair of David and the other man's wife: how\nmodern it is! If you will glance over the daily newspaper, you will find\nthat somewhere or other in this world of today, another David has seen\nthe loveliness of Uriah's wife; and the first thing you know this modern\nDavid (in a Derby hat and tailor-made clothes) is running away with\nBathsheba in an automobile. As to Solomon and his harem--including the\nEthiopian woman--the subject is too delicate for polite treatment in a\nhigh class publication. I must leave such matters to Mr. William\nRandolph Hearst, whose Sunday editions and monthly outputs deal in \"sex\"\nnovels, Gaby Deslys, Lina Cavalieri, Evelyn Thaw, Mrs. Keppel, and\nscarlet people generally.\n\nThe point I desired to make is that _God made men and women to mate with\none another_, and thus reproduce and perpetuate the human species.\n\nThere are no bachelor eagles, no spinster swans, no monks among the\nlions, no nuns among the deer. When we want to make a bachelor out of a\nhorse, we resort to surgery. Most of us know what Mooley, the cow, does\nin the Spring time, if she is shut up in the pasture with no other\ncompany than other Mooley cows.\n\nWithout pursuing this line of illustration farther, it is sufficient to\nsay that _all animal nature is under the same law_. Of course, there are\nexceptions to all rules. Some men repel women: some women abhor men.\nSome men actually marry, believing that they are fit for it and then\ndiscover that they are not. A tragic instance of this was Thomas\nCarlyle: another was Frederick the Great. Our President James Buchanan\nwas wise enough _not_ to marry; and Charles Sumner was so fatuous as to\ndo so.\n\nBut the great law of Nature is, _Mate and reproduce_! It applies to the\nflowers, to the plants, to the insects, to the fishes of the sea, and to\nthe fowls of the air. I have often wondered why we become so accustomed\nto the outrageously informal conduct of hens and roosters, pigeons,\nducks, turkeys, &c., that we see it and don't see it: we know it, and\ndon't know it: it happens right under our eyes, and yet we never learn\nanything from it, or think anything about it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOnce again, let me say, men and women in their animal natures are just\nlike other animals. They hunger, they thirst, they are hot, they are\ncold, they are sick, they are well, they love, they hate, they fight,\nthey yearn for mates, and having found mates, _they mate_. Allowed\nliberty, this natural tendency leads to wedlock, and legitimate\nchildren. The husband and wife make the Home: the Home is the Gibraltar\nof organized civilization; and the children are Posterity, in its\nbeginning. Thus marriage, the home, and the children are the\nconservators of Society.\n\nIf a so-called \"religion\" _forces_ 71,000 American marriageable men and\nwomen into hiding places, where they have physical contact with one\nanother but cannot marry, _what happens_?\n\nYou _know_ what happens. Your common sense tells you what happens. Your\nown natural passions tell you what happens.\n\nThose marriageable men and women--many of them young, handsome,\nbuxom,--are shut off from all the world, by thick walls, barred windows,\nlocked doors. The young buxom men can get to the young buxom women.\nEither in the day-time or in the night, this physical access can be had,\n_in secret_.\n\nThe men have been taught that they are gifted with supernatural powers;\nand that they can forgive each other's sins. The women have been taught\nthat these men cannot sin, and that in serving these men they will be\nserving God. Besides, if they _do_ sin with the priests, the priests can\nforgive the sins. This being so, what happens, when the lustful young\npriest slips into the cloistered convent, goes to the nun's bed-room and\nsolicits her to yield to _him_, as Mary yielded to the angel?\n\n(See \"Why Priests Should Wed.\" Page 103.)\n\nThe cloistered convent is built like a huge dungeon. The encircling\nwalls about it, are thick and high. No one enters in unto the unmarried\nwomen excepting the bachelor priests.\n\n_The Law does not enter!_\n\nThe Italian Pope draws his line around the dungeons of darkness and\nmystery, and the civil authorities dare not go in.\n\nEverybody knows that young women are caged in those hell-holes.\nEverybody knows that burly, beefy, red-faced, thick-lipped young priests\nglide in and out.\n\nEverybody knows what _he_ would do, if _he_ had the pick of a score of\nbuxom girls, in a secret place, he being a bachelor and they being\nwithout access to any man but _himself_.\n\nIf you were young and had no wife, you know what would happen, if you\nwere alone in a pretty girl's bed-room, and she were educated to yield\nto you in _everything_.\n\nYet, these impudent rascals, the beefy Irish, Italian and German\npriests, ask you to believe that they never even think of touching\nthose 56,000 American girls that are caged inside those walls:\n\nNevertheless, you _know_ it is against Nature for these young men not to\nwant to mate with those women. You _know_ that the cloistered convents\nwould not be built like Bastilles, and the world shut out, if there were\nnot something going on in there which they are afraid for the world to\nsee.\n\nYou _know_ that where cloistered convents are _built and managed like\njails, THEY ARE JAILS_!\n\nYet, those impudent rascals, gliding into the women, and coming out from\nthe women, tell you that although the women are taught to obey the\npriest in all things, the priest never does say or do what every\nfull-sexed man would do and say, under the same circumstances.\n\nThe Turks had their harems, and they knew women--likewise, they knew\nmen. The Turks had walls, and bars, and locked gates, and sentinels\noutside to watch. But the Turks knew how vain are walls, and barred\nwindows, locked gates and vigilant sentinels. Therefore, the Turks\nalways kept eunuchs in the harem itself, eunuchs whose watchful eyes\nwere ever upon those ladies of the harem. And the eunuchs were powerful\nmen, strong and fierce, _but unsexed_. They had the strength to guard\nthe women, _without the desire to enjoy_.\n\nBut the Roman Pope builds harems in all Christian lands--_harems for his\npriests to whom he denies marriage_.\n\nThere are no eunuchs to guard these women. The men who go in unto them\nare men of like passions as ourselves; and there is no eye to watch, no\ntongue that will tell, _after_ the priest has gone inside.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOur common sense condemns this enforced celibacy which pagan popes\ninvented for their own selfish, ambitious purposes. Or rather, the Popes\nborrowed it from the Turkish Sultans who would not allow their chosen\nbody-guard, the Janissaries, to marry. In course of time, the\nJanissaries became more powerful than the Sultan, and they had to be\nexterminated. The Pope's Janissaries are now more powerful than the\nPope; and the wretchedness of his position is that he can neither\nmassacre them, nor rob them of their women. Of all the exalted slaves\nthe world ever saw, the Pope is perhaps the most conspicuous example.\n\nThe Jesuits rule the priesthood; the Jesuits rule the cardinals; the\nJesuits rule the Pope--and the Jesuits have the pick of the most\nbeautiful women throughout the Christian world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOn such a system as this--a system which has denied so many millions of\nmen and women _the God-given right to live according to Nature_, history\nought to have much to say. What is the evidence and the verdict of\nimpartial History?\n\nLet us try the case: let us call the witnesses and hear their evidence.\nIf the other side wants to be heard, the court is open. I will give them\nas much space for the defense as I take for the prosecution. It shall be\na perfectly fair investigation. Remember, however, that the unmarried\nmen and the unmarried women have been hiding within the walls of\nmonasteries and convents, ever since Pope Gregory abolished God's\nordinance of marriage, and declared, virtually, that the Pope's will,\nand not that of God Almighty, should govern priests and nuns. Remember\nthat there has been every effort made at concealment: that the dungeons\ncould not tell their awful secrets; that the light of day was jealously\nshut out. Remember that the nun who willingly submitted to the priest\ndid not wish to expose their mutual guilt. Remember that the nun who was\n_forced_, could seldom escape and give the alarm. Remember that the\nbabes born in the cloistered convents were seldom seen of men, and that\nthey could easily be thrown into the hidden vault, where the quick-lime\nwas ready to eat their bones. Remember that it was to the interest of\npopery to screen the priests, and that the rulers of States were in\ndeadly fear of the wrath of Popes--wrath which sent death to Henry III.\nof France, William of Orange, and Henry of Navarre. Remember further,\nthat when Popes kept acknowledged paramours and bastards in the Vatican,\nthe priests had nothing to fear on account of their turning the\nnunneries into brothels. Those nuns whose vows were not broken, were the\nugly ones, the old and the ailing. The monks had such complete power\nover wives through the Confessional, that many women inside the cloister\nowed their immunity to the women outside.\n\nThere was a time, under popery, when no Italian husband was certain that\nhis wife's children were _his_: hence, for a time paternal affection in\nItaly almost became extinct. There was a time, under popery, when every\nItalian wife had an acknowledged lover--her _cicisbeo_--the priests\nhaving paved the way. The husband kept a mistress; the wife, a lover;\nand the priest enjoyed both wife and mistress, without bearing the\nexpense of either.\n\n(See Sismondi's Hist. des Repub. d'Ital.)\n\nThere was a time, under popery, when it was assumed that every Spanish\nwoman had yielded to a priest. And of course a woman who takes one lover\nwill take another; and thus Spain went to moral perdition, with the\npriests and the nuns in the lead.\n\nThe same thing was true of Portugal, and of all Southern Europe. Of\nMexico, Central and South America and Cuba, it would be a waste of words\nto speak.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPope Gregory VII. introduced the unnatural requirement of celibacy--the\nforbidding of men and women to do what God had equipped them to do, and\nprompted them, by sexual passions to do--the most powerful passions\nknown to humanity--passions which if not naturally gratified lead to\ncrimes of revolting enormity, to loss of health, to loss of mental\nbalance, to loss of shame, of normal desires, and of reason itself.\n\n(Consult such books as Dr. Sanger's \"History of Prostitution;\"\nKrafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, &c.)\n\nSoon after enforced celibacy was introduced, an honest priest, Honorius\nof Antrim wrote--\n\n\"Look at the convents of the nuns, places of debauchery! These\nabominable women have not chosen the Virgin, but Phryne and Messalina as\ntheir models. They prostrate themselves before the idol of Priapus!\"\n\n(Priapus was the male organ of generation, and was formerly to be seen\nthroughout Europe, especially at public fountains.)\n\nKing Edgar of England wrote--\n\n\"What shall I say of the clergy? We find nothing among them but\ndebauchery, excesses, orgies, and unchastity. Their abodes are\npropitious for solitude, and yet they dwell there not for pious\nmeditation, but in order to lead lives of debauchery.\"\n\nPope Benedict VIII. at the Council of Pavia deplored the awful vices of\nthe unmarried clergy.\n\nNicholas Clemangis says--\n\n\"The monasteries are no longer sanctuaries devoted to the divinity, but\nplaces of abomination and debauchery--rendezvous of young libertines.\nIndeed, _to make a girl take the veil is equivalent to forcing her into\nprostitution_.\"\n\nThe monks of the Middle Ages led a life full of orgies, equalling the\ndissipations of Tiberius at Capri. \"The concubines and prostitutes were\nmistresses of the wealth of the monasteries and convents.\"\n\nThe good Catholic, Anselm of Bisate, wrote--\n\n\"The nuns are not more virtuous than the monks. Widows took the veil in\norder to be free, and not bound to one man.\"\n\nInstead of being the wife of one man, the nun could be the mistress of\nseveral.\n\n(Dr. Angelo Rappaport, p. 36.)\n\nWhy was it that Iren\u00e6us and Epiphanius poured out such unprintable\ndescriptions of the immorality of those \"heretics\" who refused to marry\nand who professed to be virgins? Did these Fathers of the Christian\nChurch grossly slander those celibate heretics? Were the men and the\nwomen who indulged in those sexual excesses, while pretending to be\nchaste, any better or any worse than the human creatures of today?\n\nWas Cyprian libelling his own brethren and sisters when he described how\ndepraved, how licentious, how sodom-like was the conduct of the\nso-called \"virgins\" of his time? Cyprian lived in the third century\nafter Christ, and he was speaking of the same phase of Christianity\nwhich provoked the immortal passage in Gibbon. Carrying their brazen\nhypocrisy to unheard of lengths, the monks and the nuns occupied the\nsame beds, and yet unblushingly vowed that they had passed through this\nfiery furnace without the smell of fire on their garments!\n\nIf I were to quote the Latin in which Cyprian exposes these shameless\nharlots and libertines, the great and good U. S. Government would\nperhaps _again_ prosecute me for telling the truth on Roman Catholicism.\n\n_Popery is the one thing that you must not tell the truth about, unless\nyou are prepared to withstand boycott, abuse, persecution and threats\nagainst your property and life!_\n\n(The curious are cited to \"Elliott on Romanism,\" Vol. II., p. 408, and\nto Cyprian to Pompanius, Book II., p. 181.)\n\nSo well understood was it that young men and young women needed each\nother, sexually, that both in the Latin and in the Greek there was a\ndistinctive name given to these \"holy virgins.\" The \"soul marriage\" of\nthe ancient church was as much like the affinity doings of the present\nday, as Solomon's carryings on were like those of the Sultan of Turkey.\n\nTo the testimony of Cyprian may be added that of Chrysostom, who\nbewailed the utter licentiousness of the \"virgins.\"\n\nSince Bishop Udalric in the year 606 wrote of the skulls of the six\nthousand infants found in draining off some fish ponds at the command of\nGregory the Great, the slaughter of the babes has gone steadily on.\n\"When Pope Gregory ascertained that _the infants thus killed were born\nfrom the concealed fornications of and adulteries of the priests_, he\nrecalled his decree, extolling the apostolic command. It is better to\nmarry than to burn.\" (Elliott II., p. 409.)\n\nYet, when we are told the same story by Father Chiniquy, Dr. Justin\nFulton, ex-priest William Hogan, ex-priest Fresenborg, ex-priest Manuel\nFerrando, ex-nun Margaret Shepherd, ex-nun Maria Monk, ex-priest Blanco\nWhite, ex-priest Seguin, and by such submissive Catholics as Erasmus,\nRabelais, Campanella and scores of other unimpeachable witnesses, we are\nmore inclined to listen to the impudent denials of the lecherous priests\nthan to the evidence of _those who escape AND TELL_!\n\nThe denial made by the unmarried priests is at variance with their\nlooks, is at variance with admitted facts, is at variance with what we\nourselves know of the overwhelming strength of our carnal desires: yet\nthe impudent denial is _so_ brazen, _so_ persistent, and _so_\nthreatening, that we either accept it, or enter the plea of _nolle\ncontendere_.\n\nThe accusation against the pretended virgins involves so many apparently\ngood men and chaste women, that we shrink from remembering the\ndifference between publicity and privacy; we forget that the treacherous\ninclination is not felt in the church and in the crowd, but that it\ncreeps to the secret couch, under cover of night, when there is silence,\nfreedom from interruption and security from detection.\n\nWe forget how this passion takes advantage of night, of undress, and of\nsecret contact of the physical man and woman, to heat their normal\nblood, _no matter how sanctified they may really be in their daily\nvisible life_.\n\n\"Saint\" Bernard of the 10th century exhausts his wrath upon the hideous\nvices of the monks and nuns \"behind the partition.\" \"What abominable\nlust!\" cries this stern old anchorite. He exclaims--\n\n\"Would that those who cannot rule their sexuality would fear to give\ntheir conduct the name of celibacy. It is better to marry than to\nburn.... Take away from the church honorable marriage and the undefiled\nbed, and do you not fill it with concubines, incestuous persons,\nonanists, male concubines, and with every kind of unclean person?\"\n\n(Bernard's Sermons V. 29, cited in Elliott, II., 410.)\n\nTake away honorable marriage from the priests, and what do you get in\nplace of the bed undefiled? Read again that tremendous sentence of Saint\nBernard, and then ask yourself, _Has human nature changed_?\n\nA typical illustration of priestly seduction is the following:\n\n\"A lady of the name of Maria Catharine Barni, of Santa Croe, declared on\nher death-bed, that she had been seduced through the confessional, and\nthat she had during twelve years maintained a continual intercourse with\npriest Pachiani. He had assured her _that by means of the supernatural\nlight which he had received from Jesus and the holy virgin_, he was\nperfectly certain that neither of them was guilty of sin, &c.\" (Secrets\nof Female Convents, p. 58, cited by Elliott, Vol. II., p. 448.)\n\nSubstantially, that is the way every priest seduces every nun who yields\nto him.\n\nAlmost the very formula is mentioned in Dr. Justin D. Fulton's book\nwhich was submitted to Anthony Comstock, the modern Cato, before it was\npublished. And Dr. Fulton asserts that Pope Pius IX. authorized this\nconcubinage of priests with nuns, _by a formal Vatican decree of 1866_.\n\nDr. Fulton says--page 97 of \"Why Priests Should Wed\"--\n\n\"In the year 1866, Pope Pius IX. sanctioned the establishment of one of\nthe most appalling institutions of immorality and wickedness ever\ncountenanced under the form and garb of religion.\"\n\nBriefly, this institution authorized priests and nuns who had been in\nservice long enough to inspire confidence, to live in sexual relations,\nlike man and wife. Dr. Fulton proceeds at length to describe how the\npriest selects his nun, how he makes his wishes known to her, how he\nquotes Scripture to overcome her scruples, how the \"love room\" is\nadorned with holy emblems and images, how the priest sprinkles holy\nwater over the bed, how he then kneels and prays for a blessing on the\nunion about to take place, and then----!\n\nAs I have said a number of times, Dr. Fulton submitted his manuscript to\nAnthony Comstock. The chaste Cato of New York, advised the omission of\nmany passages; but the whole of this hideous chapter describing how\nPope Pius IX. authorized the priests to make use of the nuns, sexually,\nappears in the book with sufficient clearness to lay it in parallel\ncolumns with the abominations of Sodom, Gomorrha, the White Slave\nTraffic, the Decameron, the Heptameron, and Balzac's Merry Tales of the\nAbbeys of Touraine.\n\nDr. Fulton's book was published in 1888. _He was never prosecuted for\nthat terrible charge against Pope Pius IX._ He was never sued for\nlibelling the priests and nuns. His charges were never officially\ndenied.\n\nCardinal Gibbons wrote his mendacious book, \"The Faith of our Fathers,\"\nfor the purpose of answering all that had been said against Popery. He\nmentioned Maria Monk by name, and denounced her true story as false.\nYet, although Gibbons published his book _sixteen years after Dr. Fulton\nhad hurled his awful charge against Pope Pius IX._, the Baltimore priest\ndared not challenge the statement of Dr. Fulton!\n\nMaria Monk--poor, outraged, persecuted woman, was dead: Dr. Justin D.\nFulton, a fearless, powerful man, _was alive_! Gibbons was brave enough\nto vilely attack the dead woman: he was too much of a contemptible\ncoward to attack the living man.\n\nThe living man was ready with his evidence, _and he was a fighter_--and\nthe catlike Gibbons knew it.\n\nSays Dr. Fulton--\n\n\"At first the female may be a little timid, &c. She may object, &c. But\nthe priest, representing God's angel in this office, gently soothes the\nmind and quiets the fears of his future spouse by saying to her, He who\nwill _come upon thee_ is not man, but is the holy one of God, and this\nunion is pleasing to him;----.\"\n\n(At this point Anthony Comstock must have blushed and raised an\nobjection, as the nun was doing, for the remainder of the sentence is\nstricken out.)\n\nBut the text continues--\"It will be holy and blessed; therefore I say\nunto thee, as the angel said unto Mary, Fear not.\"\n\nAfter this, the woman, being convinced by the language of heaven's\nmessenger that all is right, gives the priest complete assurance of her\nwillingness to submit by saying, as Mary said to the angel, \"Be it done\nunto me according to thy word.\"\n\nThen Dr. Fulton so frankly indicates what takes place in that private\nroom, and upon that consecrated bed, that I really am curious to know\nwhat it was that made Comstock blush, a few lines above those which thus\ntell of the soliciting priest, the yielding nun, and the ready bed.\n\nNow, if you will compare one case with another, from the time of the\nearly Fathers down to the present day, you will detect a similarity that\nis appalling.\n\nThe testimony of Edward Gibbon, the skeptical historian, exactly accords\nwith that of Saint Cyprian, Chrysostom, Jerome and Bernard.\n\nThe memorable investigation which Duke Leopold of Tuscany caused to be\nmade of the cloistered convents of Italy revealed identically the same\ncess-pools of vice that came to light in England when Henry VII.\nuncovered the monasteries.\n\nAll the literature of the Renaissance, after men's minds and pens freed\nthemselves from the ignoble fear of popery, bear witness to the same\nuniversal everlasting truth--_Men and women were made for each other,\nand no so-called religion can annul the laws of Nature_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen a \"religion\" sets up the claim that it can pardon sins, educate the\nchildren to believe it, _destroys those who deny it_, and fixes a scale\nof money-payments for the pardon of sins, what sort of fruit is that\nkind of tree likely to bear?\n\nIf penance and payment rids me of sin, my conscience, like an unused\nmuscle, becomes enfeebled, and my proneness to sin is encouraged.\n\nPope Leo X. was the Vicar of Christ who ordered lists of sin to be drawn\nup, with the price of the pardon opposite each sin.\n\n(See History of Auricular Confession, by Count C. P. De Lasteyrie, Vol.\nII., p. 132.)\n\nI will quote only a few of these tariff rates established by this\nInfallible Pope.\n\nFor allowing a ship to sail to convey merchandise to infidels, 100 d.\n\nFor the absolution of any one practising usury, 7 d.\n\nFor concubinage, 7 d.\n\nFor intimacy with a woman _in a church_, 6 d.\n\nFor pardon of him who has violated a virgin, 6 d.\n\nFor one who has committed incest, 5 d.\n\n(The d. stands for the coin known as the ducat.)\n\nCan you imagine anything more conducive to immorality, than a\n\"religion,\" sanctified by the name of Christ, which teaches that its\npriests can forgive sins, and which publishes a list of market prices\nfor such forgiveness? Do you marvel that Roman Catholic countries are\nthe immoral countries? Do you wonder at the mania for vice and crime\namong the lower Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese?\n\nWhen a man could ravish a virgin for six ducats, what girl had any\nsafety except in the fear that libertines might have of her father or\nher brother, or her sweetheart?\n\nWhat sort of hell would we have in America if popery gained the upper\nhand, _and the negro bucks were taught that they could buy pardons for\nviolating white women_?\n\nGod Almighty! It makes one sick to think that even now they are\nadmitting young black men to the priesthood.\n\nWhat will _they do_, inside the cloistered convents?\n\nNo scream from within can be heard outside. Those dead walls tell no\ntales. The Law dares not scrutinize the interiors where the negro\npriests can penetrate; and we have no legal process to wring the dread\nSecret out of the nun's cell!\n\nThe Pope's Empire has been erected inside our Republic; and those who\nrepresent our State, and our Law, are afraid of the Italian Pope and the\nlaws of the Italian church!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen the Commissioners sent by King Henry VII. visited the monasteries,\nthe guilt of the inmates was so overwhelmingly evident that hardly any\nattempt at denial was made. The Confession of the Prior and Benedictines\nof St. Andrew's in Northampton is yet of record, and it is a fair\nexample. They confessed that they \"had lived in idleness, gluttony, and\nsensuality, for which the Pit of Hell was ready to swallow them up.\"\n\n(Burnett, Book III., p. 227.)\n\nAmong the false \"relics\" that were found and which had long been used to\nswindle ignorant believers out of their money, were a Wing of the Angel\nthat had brought to England the Spear which pierced Christ's side; some\nof the coals that had roasted the Most Blessed Saint Anthony; numerous\npieces of \"the true Cross;\" a small bottle filled with Christ's blood; a\nCrucifix which would sometimes bow its head, sometimes roll its eyes and\nsometimes move its lips.\n\n(All this fraudulent rubbish was seized, taken to London, and publicly\ndestroyed.)\n\nBishop Burnett says--\n\n\"But for the lewdness of the confessors of the Nunneries, and the great\ncorruption of that state, _whole houses being found almost all with\nchild_.\"\n\nThat was in the year 1535, in England! In the year 1910, when the\nnunneries were suddenly broken up in Spain, exactly the same state of\naffairs was discovered! Some of the nuns came out leading their\nchildren: some were so far advanced in pregnancy that their condition\nwas evident to all--and as to how many little bones were left in the\nunderground vaults, God alone knows.\n\nBishop Burnett continues--\n\n\"The dissoluteness of Abbots, and the other monks, and the friars, not\nonly with whores, but married women, and their unnatural lusts and other\nbrutal practices, _these are not fit to be spoken of_, much less\nenlarged on, in a work of this nature.\" ...\n\n_The full report was destroyed_ by the fanatical papist Bishop Bonner,\nat the beginning of the reign of Bloody Mary. (See \"English\nReformation.\") But Bishop Burnett saw extracts from it \"concerning 144\nHouses, that contains abominations in it, equal to any that were in\nSodom!\"\n\nPut this original evidence side by side with the confession already\nquoted: put with it the testimony gathered by Duke Leopold of Tuscany:\nadd what Blanco White and Erasmus say; add what S. J. Mahoney and Manuel\nFerrando say: buttress this mass of evidence with what the Fathers of\nthe Church said, what all the escaped nuns and priests have alleged, and\ncompare this mountain of proof with what you _know_ about human\nnature--and how can you harbor a doubt that nunneries and monasteries\nare today what they always have been? They are houses of hidden\niniquity, and nameless crimes--_AND YOU KNOW IT_!\n\nThat marvellous man of letters, Erasmus, who _wrote_ for the\nReformation, but who left Luther and others to _fight for it_, says this\nin his \"Colloquies.\"--\n\n\"I hold up to censure those who entice lads and girls into monasteries\nagainst their parents' wills, abusing their simplicity or superstition,\nand persuading them that there is no chance of salvation but in the\ncloister. If the world were not full of such anglers; if countless minds\nhad not been most miserably _buried alive_ in such places, then I have\nbeen wrong in my conclusions. But if ever I am forced to _speak out_\nwhat I feel upon this subject, I will paint the portrait of _these\nkidnappers_, and so represent _the magnitude of the evil_, that every\none shall confess I have not been wrong.\"\n\n(Quoted in Day's \"Monastic Institutions,\" p. 239.)\n\nThe infamous Liguori--a Roman Catholic \"Saint\"--calmly assumes that many\ninmates of the convents are captives, just as Erasmus had said they\nwere, and he lays down the law to these helpless, kidnapped captives\nwith all the malevolence of a grinning devil.\n\n\"Now that you are professed in a convent, and that _it is impossible for\nyou to leave it_,\" &c. (Monastic Institutions, p. 294.)\n\nLiguori threatens the captive, telling the poor creature that if she\nabandons herself to sadness and regret, _she will be made to suffer a\nhell here_, and another hereafter.\n\nIn other words, _Smile, prisoner, smile! or we will make the convent a\nhell to you_!\n\nSo says Saint Liguori, whose instructions to the priests, telling them\nwhat filthy questions they must ask the Catholic women, are so \"obscene\"\nthat I was prosecuted by the Catholic Knights of Columbus for having\nquoted some of them. If I had quoted all that Liguori wrote in coaching\nthe priests, _and teaching them virtually how to disrobe women of their\nmodesty as a prelude to their ruin_, I suppose the Government would have\nordered out the troops and had me shot.\n\n\nSeveral times, Erasmus has been mentioned as one of the most terrific\naccusers of the papal system, its frauds, impostures, greed, ferocity,\nits fake miracles, its pagan adoration of images and relics, and its\nrotten immorality. Perhaps it is due to the reader that I cite him to\n\"The Life and Letters of Erasmus,\" by the historian James A. Froude,\npublished in this country by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, in 1895.\n\nFrom this comparatively recent work, the student can most readily obtain\na general idea of Popery, as described by one who was a devout Catholic,\nbut not a blind, servile papist. Erasmus was practically an orphan boy,\nof somewhat uncertain parentage, whose life mystery and romance inspired\nCharles Read to write the greatest of all novels, \"The Cloister and the\nHearth.\"\n\nMr. Froude tells the painful story of the forcing of Erasmus into\nmonastic vows; and then follows him as he develops into the most learned\nand brilliant scholar of Europe.\n\nNever a robust man, always more or less an invalid, Erasmus remained\ninside the Roman pale, but abhorred the inherent vices of _the system_,\ndenounced those vices with a pen of fire, endured the terrors and\nagonies of persecution within his church, was bitterly abused by the\nvile priesthood whose putrid lives he uncovered, was menaced by the\ndread Inquisition, and really suffered more keenly the penalties than\nLuther did, _for telling the truth on popery_.\n\nLuther, a bull-necked, fearless _Man_, broke out, and fought popery from\nthe outside. Erasmus, like many of his predecessors, tried to reform it\n_from within_, and he discovered at last that he might as well have been\ntrying to reform hell.\n\nThe enraged monks and monkesses did not murder Erasmus, as they had\nmurdered Savonarola, Huss, Jerome, &c.; but it was because the Pope had\nhis hands full of other matters, and the time was not favorable for\nburning the most illustrious scholar of Christendom.\n\nWhat did Erasmus say and write and publish against the vast parasitical\ngrowth of paganism, fraud and imposture that had overgrown Christianity\nunder the pope?\n\nRead his \"Praise of Folly,\" which has been translated into English and\ncan be had through any book-dealer.\n\nWhen you read it, remember that Erasmus was never answered, save by\n_abuse and threats_.\n\nIn his letters to the Prothonotary of the Pope, letters written for the\nPope to read, and which the Pope did read, Erasmus arraigns the\nunmarried clergy of Rome, her monks and her nuns, her monasteries and\nher convents, in the same terms that are used by the Preamble to the Act\nof the British Parliament which stated that reasons for the dissolution\nof these Romish hell-holes.\n\nThe accusations fathered by Erasmus and laid before the Pope, agree in\nevery essential particular with the revelations of Blanco White, of S.\nJ. Mahoney, William Hogan, Joseph McCabe, Bishop Manuel Ferrando,\nMargaret Shepherd, Maria Monk, and every other witness who has had the\ncourage to uncover these papal dens of infamy, torture, vice and crime.\n\nI have not the space to quote at any length from the Letters of Erasmus:\nget the book and read it for yourself.\n\nBut weigh this passage--\n\n\"Men are threatened or tempted into vows of celibacy. _They can have\nlicense to go with harlots_, but they must not marry wives.\n\nThey may keep concubines and remain priests. If they take wives, they\nare thrown to the flames.\n\nParents who design their children for a celibate priesthood _should\nemasculate them in their infancy_, instead of forcing them, reluctant or\nignorant, _into a furnace of licentiousness_.\"\n\nWhat was this furnace of licentiousness? The cloistered convent, or the\nmonastery.\n\nIn his notes to the New Testament, a Greek translation of which Erasmus\nmade, he said, after alluding to St. Paul's injunction about the \"one\nwife,\" that the priests could commit homicide, parricide, incest,\npiracy, sodomy and sacrilege: \"_these_ can be got over, but _marriage is\nfatal_.\"\n\nHe adds that of all the enormous herds of priests, \"very few of them are\nchaste.\"\n\nIn his letter to Lambert Grunnius, (in the year 1514) Erasmus gives an\nawful picture of monastic slavery in houses \"_which are worse than\nbrothels_.\"\n\nBut once a young man is entrapped, there is no escape. \"They may repent,\nbut the superiors will not let them go, _lest they should betray the\norgies which they have witnessed_.\"\n\nThen Erasmus tells of instances where men were buried alive inside the\nmonasteries to prevent their escape. \"Dead men tell no tales!\"\n\nRemember, reader! Erasmus was writing to the Pope's own Prothonotary, in\norder that the \"Holy Fathers\" might of a surety _know_ what was going on\ninside the monastic houses! And in reply, the Prothonotary, Lambert\nGrunnius, writes to Erasmus--\n\n\"I read your letter aloud to the Pope, from end to end: several\ncardinals and other great persons were present. The Holy Father was\ncharmed with your style!\"\n\nAnd the Holy Father waxes wroth at some personal grievances of Erasmus,\nand granted _him_ relief from monkish diabolism; but what was done to\ncorrect the frightful conditions which Erasmus had brought to the Pope's\npersonal attention?\n\nNothing! Absolutely nothing. It was the same way when the exposures were\nmade in Spain, when they were made in Tuscany, when they were made in\nEngland, when they were made in the Philippines! The answer of Rome is\never the same: _Nothing can be done_.\n\nThe Pope _knows_ what enforced male celibacy does, when screened from\nthe civil law behind thick walls, _and given unlimited license among\nyoung women, who cannot resist, and who cannot tell_!\n\nAnd you _know_ that the Pope _does_ know--for he also is a male like me\nand you.\n\n\nAgain, Erasmus asks what would Saint Augustine say _now_, if he were to\nsee these convents and monasteries become \"public brothels.\"\n\nIn those standard works, \"The History of Prostitution\" and \"Human\nSexuality,\" you will learn the fearful fact that the utter lewdness of\nnuns and of wives who had been debauched by the priests, became so\nuniversal that _the trade of the professional harlot was almost entirely\ntaken away from her_. Why should loose men _pay_, when there were so\nmany places of gratuitous entertainment?\n\n(Lest you heed the deceptive talk which endeavors to convince you that\nthe old tree is now bearing different fruit, read Hogan's \"Popish\nNunneries,\" McCabe's \"Ten Years in a Monastery,\" McCarthy's up-to-date\n\"Priests and People in Ireland;\" and the astounding, undenied statements\nof Bishop Manuel Ferrando, in \"The Converted Catholic\" magazine of New\nYork City.)\n\nIn Delisser's powerful book, \"Pope, or President?\" there is a masterly\nsumming up against \"Romanism as revealed by its own writers.\"\n\nAmong other witnesses, he cites the evidence of Mahoney, the priest who\nwas examined by a Committee of the House of Commons.\n\n\"A very nefarious use was made of convents,\" testified this honest\nIrishman. His disclosures corroborated what another honest Irish priest,\nHogan, said several centuries later.\n\n\"A woman ... is seduced into a convent to live in sin with the bishop\nand other confessors. It is not human to place a priest where he is\nallowed to fall, and suppose him innocent. Reader, commit your daughter\nto the soldier or hussar who can marry her, rather than to a Romish\npriest.\" (\"Pope, or President,\" p. 59.)\n\nIn fact, Delisser's chapter on \"Convent Exposed\" is one of the most\nfrightful that I ever read--doubly frightful because the Romanist\nwriters therein quoted _assume it to be their right_ to mistreat women,\njust as they please!\n\nIt is only in such a chapter, composed of citations from orthodox Roman\nCatholics, that you can obtain anything like a true conception of _the\npriest's point of view_.\n\nThey have the right to kidnap children: they have a right to restrain\nprisoners; they have a right to compel obedience: they have a right to\nshut out the State and its law: they have a right to punish the\nrefractory, to flog the unruly girl, to starve her into submission, to\ndegrade her with disgusting services, to use her person for their lusts!\n\n_That is the priest's point of view!_\n\nStudy the horrible \"theology\" of Dens and Liguori: read what popes have\nsaid in denial of a layman's right to criticise a priest; read what Rev.\nBlanco White said of the systematic depravity of Romanism.\n\nCardinal Newman had to acknowledge that Blanco White was a man or\nirreproachable character, \"a man you can trust.\" \"I have the fullest\nconfidence in his word,\" &c.\n\nAnd what does this ex-Catholic, for whom Cardinal Newman vouched, have\nto say about convents?\n\n\"I cannot,\" says he, \"find tints sufficiently dark to portray the\nmiseries which I have witnessed in convents. Crime, in spite of the\nspiked walls and prison gates is there. The gates of the holy prison are\nforever closed upon the inmates: _force and shame_ await them wherever\nthey might fly.\"\n\nThen the ex-priest tells the tragic story of his two sisters, virtually\ntortured to death in the Spanish convent, he being a witness to their\nmisery and powerless to relieve it. The system held them all!\n\nHe continues--\n\n\"Of all the victims of the church of Rome, _the nuns_ deserve the\ngreatest sympathy.\"\n\nWhite's book was published in 1826. Like \"Pope, or President,\" published\nin 1859, it is now out of print. Only at long intervals may you see a\ncopy advertised in the catalogues of Old-book stores. _Some_ agency has\nbeen most active in destroying anti-Catholic books, and keeping them out\nof our Public Libraries.\n\n\nConsider this sentence in Hume's \"History of England,\" Vol. II., p.\n592.\n\n\"Monstrous disorders are therefore said to have been found in many of\nthe religious houses, _whole convents of women abandoned to lewdness_;\nsigns of abortions procured, _OF INFANTS MURDERED_, of unnatural lusts\nbetween persons of the same sex.\"\n\nDid poor Margaret Shepherd, or Maria Monk make any accusations that were\nworse than these which we find in a standard history of England?\n\nIn Aubrey's \"Rise and Growth of the English People,\" the indictment\nagainst the convents and the monasteries is equally severe. See Vol. I.,\np. 80 and 81.\n\nIn Lecky's \"History of European Morals,\" we have exactly the same\narraignment of this unnatural and polluting system.\n\nIn Bower's \"History of the Popes,\" in Hallam's \"Constitutional History\nof England,\" and in every trustworthy account of the system of enforced\ncelibacy we have the same horrible, _but natural_, description of the\nlives led by those full-sexed members of both sexes, who cannot mate\nlegally and decently, but who are given access to each other under cover\nof night, behind the curtain of thick walls, and with the assurance\nthat, _so long as no scandal leaks out_, no notice will be taken of what\nis done inside the \"holy\" brothel.\n\nThe very language in which the virgin girl is made to pledge herself as\n\"the spouse of Christ,\" is so abominably obscene and suggestive that it\nis bound to plant impure curiosity in her mind--and, with a girl,\n_impure curiosity_ is the lure to the fall. Not especially wishing to be\nagain indicted for quoting the Pope's nasty language, I will forbear.\nEven in the Latin, it is so vile, lewd, lascivious, filthy, _and nasty_,\nthat I marvel how any white woman, under any circumstances, can allow a\nbeast of a man to use that language to her, _and not slap his face_.\n\nThe language is quoted in \"Pope, or President,\" pages 86 and 360. The\n\"Nun Sanctified,\" of \"Saint\" Alphonsus Liguori, and the Theology of\nPeter Dens will give the reader a fairly correct idea of what sort of a\nslave the priests make of a woman, _after_ she has been ensnared into\ntaking the black veil.\n\nIn the famous investigation of the convents of Tuscany, in 1775, one of\nthe nuns gave testimony which, is singularly piquant and unique.\nBesides, it remained uncontradicted. The name of the witness was Sister\nFlavia Peraccini. After telling of many escapades she had witnessed\ninside the convents, and of many merry times the priests and the nuns\nhad with one another, Sister Flavia Peraccini deposed--\n\n\"A monk said to me that if a nun's veil were placed on one pole, and a\nmonk's cowl on another, so great is the sympathy between the veil and\nthe cowl they would come together, _and unite_.\" (\"Unite\" is the modest\nword: \"copulate,\" is _meant_.)\n\n\"I say,\" continues the Sister, \"I say, and repeat it, that whatever the\nSuperiors know, they do not know _the least portion_ of the great evils\nthat pass between the monks and the nuns.\"\n\nThe foregoing is a mere trifle compared to the whole amount of the\nundisputed testimony taken by Duke Leopold of Tuscany in 1775. Have men\nand women changed? Is human nature the same?\n\nIt was for all people and all ages that the inspired writer wrote--\n\n\"Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let _every man_ have his own wife;\nand let _every woman_ have her own husband.\" (I. Cor. 7:12.)\n\nThe most powerful argument and authority against the Roman papacy on\nthis question _is that of Jesus Christ_.\n\nVirtually, he said that _a man must make himself a eunuch_--if not born\nso--_before he could live like a eunuch_!\n\nIf the word of Christ is not conclusive and binding, where shall we seek\nthe truth?\n\nThe trouble with papists is, they are educated outside of the Bible and\ncommon sense; and they seldom free their minds from the priestly\ndomination established in childhood.\n\n\n(THE END.)","title":"The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and Monasteries, Priests and Nuns","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":13403}