St. Anne, Kankakee County, Ills., September 25, 1856.
"Rt. Rev'd O'Regan:—You seem to be surprised that I have offered
the holy sacrifice of mass since our last interview. Here are some of my
reasons for so doing.
"1st. You have not suspended me; far from it, you have given me
fifteen days to consider what I should do, threatening only to interdict me
after that time, if I would not obey your orders.
"2nd. If you have been so ill-advised as to suspend me, for the crime
of telling you that my intention was to live the live of a retired priest in my
little colony, sooner than be exiled at my age, your sentence is ridiculous
and null; and if you were as expert in the jure Canonico as in the art of
pocketing our money, you would know that you are yourself suspended
ipso facto for a year, and that I have nothing to fear or to expect from
you now.
"3rd. When I bowed down before the altar of Jesus Christ, twenty
four years ago, to receive the priesthood, my intention was to be the minister
of the Catholic Church, but not a slave of a lawless tyrant.
"4th. Remember the famous words of Tertullian, `Nimi potestas,
nulla potestas.' For the sake of peace, I have, with many others, tolerated
your despotism till now; but my patience is at an end, and for the sake of
our holy church, which you are destroying, I am determined with many to
oppose an insurmountable wall to your tyranny.
"5th. I did not come here, you know well, as an ordinary missionary;
but I got from your predecessor the permission to form a colony of my emigrating
countrymen. I was not sent here in 1851 to take care of any congregation.
It was a complete wilderness; but I was sent to form a colony
of Catholics. I planted my cross in a wilderness. In a great part, with my
own money, I have built a chapel, a college and a female academy. I
have called from everywhere my countrymen—nine-tenths of them came
here only to live with me, and because I had the pledged word of my
bishop to do that work. And as long as I live the life of a good priest I
deny you the right to forbid me to remain in my colony which wants my
help and my presence.
"6th. You have never shown me your authority (but once) except in
the most tyrannical way. But now, seeing that the more humble I am
before you, the more insolent you grow, I have taken the resolution to
stand by my rights as a Catholic priest and as an American citizen.
"7th. You remember, that in our second interview you forbade me to
have the good preceptors we have now for our children, and you turned into
ridicule the idea I had to call them from Canada. Was that the act of a
bishop or of a mean despot?
"8th. A few days after you ordered me to live on good terms with R.
R. LeBelle and Carthavel, though you were well acquainted with their
scandalous lives, and twice you threatened me with suspension for refusing
to become a friend of those two rogues! And you have so much made a
fool of yourself before the four gentlemen I sent to you to be the witnesses
of your iniqnity and my innocence, that you have acknowledged before them
that one of your principal reasons for turning me out of my colony was,
that I had not been able to keep peace with three priests whom you acknowledged
to be depraved and unworthy priests! Is not that surpassing
wickedness and tyranny of anything recorded in the blackest pages of the
most daring tyrants? You want to punish by exile a gentleman and a
good priest, because he cannot agree to become the friend of two public
rogues! I thank you, Bishop O'Regan, to have made that public confession
in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses. I do not want to advise you
to be hereafter very prudent in what you intend to do against the reputation
and character of the priest of St. Anne. If you continue to denounce me as
you have done since a few weeks, and to tell the people what you think
fit against me, I have awful things to publish of your injustice and
tyranny.
"As Judas sold our Saviour to his enemies, so you have sold me to
my enemy of L'Erable. But be certain that you shall not deliver up your
victim as you like.
"For withdrawing a suit which you have incited against my honor,
and which you shall certainly lose, you drag me out from my home and
order me to the land of exile, and you cover that iniquity with the appearance
of zeal for the public peace, just as Pilate delivered his victim into the
hands of their enemies to make peace with them.
"Shame on you, Bishop O'Regan! For the sake of God, do not
oblige me to reveal to the world what I know against you. Do not oblige
me, in self-defence, to strike, in you, my merciless persecutor. If you have
no pity for me, have pity on yourself, and on the church which that coming
struggle will so much injure.
"It is not enough for you to have so badly treated my poor countrymen
of Chicago—your hatred against the French Canadians cannot be satisfied
except when you have taken away from them the only consolation they
have in this land of exile—to possess in their midst a priest of their own
nation whom they love and respect as a father! My poor countrymen of
Chicago, with many hard sacrifices, had built a fine church for themselves
and a house for their priest. You have taken their church from their hands
and given it to the Irish; you have sold the house of their priests, after
turning him out; and what have you done with the $1,500 you got
as its price? Public rumor says that you are employing that money to
support the most unjust and infamous suit against one of their priests.
Continue a little longer, and you may be sure that the cursing of my poor
countrymen against you will be heard in heaven and that the God of
Justice will give them an avenger!
"You have, at three different times, threatened to interdict and excommunicate
me if I would not give you my little personal properties! and as
many times you have said in my teeth, that I was a bad priest, because I
refused to act according to your rapacious tyranny!
"The impious Ahab, murdering Naboth to get his fields, is risen from
the dead in your person. You cannot kill my body, since I am protected by
the glorious flag of the United States; but you do worse, you try to destroy
my honor and my character, which are dearer to me than my life. In a
moral way you give my blood to be licked by your dogs. But remember
the words of the prophet to Ahab, `In this place where the dogs have licked
the blood of Naboth, they shall lick thy blood also.' For every false witness
you shall bring against me, I shall have a hundred unimpeachable ones
against you. Thousands and thousands of religious Irish, and generous
Germans, and liberty and fair-play-loving French Canadians, will help me in
that struggle. I do not address you these words as a threat, but as a friendly
warning.
"Keep quiet, my lord; do not let yourself be guided by your quick temper;
do not be so free in the use of suspense and interdicts. These terrible
arms are two-edged swords, which very often hurt more the imprudent who
make use of them than those whom they intend to strike.
"I wish to live in peace with you. I take my God to witness, that to
this day I have done everything to keep peace with you. But the peace I
want is the peace which St. Jerome speaks of when, writing to his bishop,
he tells him:
" `It is no use to speak of peace with the lips, if we destroy it with our
works. It is a very different way to work for peace, from trying to submit
every one to an abject slavery. We, also, want peace. Not only we
desire it, but we implore you instantly to give it. However, the peace we
want is the peace of Christ—a true peace, a peace without hatred, a peace
which is not a masked war, a peace which is not to crush enemies, but a
peace which unites friends.
" `How can we call that peace which is nothing but tyranny? Why should
we not call everything by its proper name? Let us call hatred—what is
hatred. And let us say that peace reigns only when a true love exists. We
are not the authors of the troubles and divisions which exist in the church.
A father must love his children. A bishop, as well as a father, must wish
to be loved, but not feared. The old proverb says, One hates whom he
fears, and we naturally wish for the death of the one we hate. If you do
not try to crush the religious men under your power they will submit
themselves to your authority. Offer them the kiss of love and peace and
they will obey you. But liberty refuses to yield as soon as you try to crush
it down. The best way to be obeyed by a free man is not to deal with
him as with a slave. We know the laws of the church, and we do not
ignore the rights which belong to every man. We have learned many
things, not only from experience, but also from the study of books. The
king who strikes his subjects with an iron rod, or who thinks that his fingers
must be heavier than his father's hand, has soon destroyed the kingdom
even of the peaceful and mild David. The people of Rome refused to bear
the yoke of their proud king.
" `We have left our country in order to live in peace. In this solitude
our intention was to respect the authority of the pontiffs of Christ (we
mean those who teach the true faith). We want to respect them not as our
masters, but as our fathers. Our intention was to respect them as bishops,
not as usurpers and tyrants who want to reduce us to slavery by the abuse
of their power. We are not so vain as to ignore what is due to the priests
of Christ, for to receive them is to receive the very one whose bishops they
are. But let them be satisfied with the respect which is due to them. Let
them remember that they are fathers, not masters of those who have given
up everything in order to enjoy the privileges of a peaceful solitude. May
Christ who is our mighty God grant that we should be united not by a
false peace, but by a true and loyal love, lest that by biting each other we
destroy each other.'
[Letter of St. Jerome to his bishop.]
"You have a great opinion of the episcopal power, and so have I. But
St. Paul and all the Holy Fathers that I have read, have also told us many
things of the dignity of the priest (alter Christus Sacerdos). I am your
brother and equal in many things; do not forget it. I know my dignity as a
man and a priest, and I shall sooner lose my life than to surrender them to
any man, even a bishop. If you think you can deal with me as a carter
with his horse, drawing him where he likes, you will soon see your
error.
"I neither drink strong wines nor smoke, and the many hours that
others spend in emptying their bottles and smoking their pipes, I read my dear
books—I study the admirable laws of the church and the Gospel of Christ.
I love my books and the holy laws of our church, because they teach me
my rights as well as my duties. They tell me that many years ago a general
council, which is something above you, has annulled your unjust sentenca,
and brought upon your head the very penalty you intended to impose upon
me. They tell me that any sentence from you coming (from your own
profession) from bad and criminal motives, is null, and will fall powerless at
my feet.
"But I tell you again, that I desire to live in peace with you. The false
reports of LeBelle and Carthevel have disturbed that peace; but it is still in
your power to have it for yourself and give it to me. I am sure that the
sentence you say you have preferred against me comes from a misunderstanding,
and your wisdom and charity, if you can hear their voice, can
very easily set everything as it was two months ago. It is still in your
power to have a warm friend, or an immovable adversary in Kankakee
County. It would be both equitable and honorable in you to extinguish
the fires of discord which you have so unfortunately enkindled, by drawing
back a sentence which you would never have preferred if you had not been
deceived. You would be blessed by the Church of Illinois, and particularly
by the 10,000 French Canadians who surround me, and are ready to support
me at all hazards.
"Do not be angry from the seeming harsh words which you find in this
letter. Nobody, but I, could tell you these sad truths, though every one
of your priests, and particularly those who flatter you the most, repeat
them every day.
"By kind and honest proceedings you can get everything from me,
even the last drop of my blood; but you will find me an immovable rock if
you approach me as you have already done (but once) with insult and tyrannical
threats.
"You have not been ordained a bishop to rule over us according to
your fancy, but you have the eternal laws of justice and equity to guide you.
You have the laws of the church to obey as well as her humblest child, and
as soon as you do anything against these imperishable laws you are powerless
to obtain your object. It is not only lawful, but a duty to resist you.
When you strike without a legitimate or a canonical cause; when you try
to take away my character to please some of your friends; when you order
me to exile to stop a suit which you are exciting against me; when you
punish me for the crime of refusing to obey tho orders you gave me to be
the friend of three public rogues; when you threaten me with excommunication,
because I do not give you my little personal properties, I have nothing
to fear from your interdicts and excommunication.
"What a sad lot for me, and what a shame for you, if by your continual
attacks at the door of our churches or in the public press, you oblige me
to expose your injustice. It is yet time for you to avoid that. Instead of
striking me like an outcast, come and give me the paternal hand of charity,
instead of continuing that fraticidal combat, come and heal the wounds you
have made and already received. Instead of insulting me by driving me
away from my colony to the land of exile, come and bless the great work I
have begun here for the glory of God and the good of my people. Instead
of destroying the college and the female academy, for the erection of whtch
I have expended my last cent, and whose teachers are fed at my table, come
and bless the three hundred little children who are daily attending our
schools.
"Instead of sacrificing me to the hatred of my enemies, come and
strengthen my heart against their fury.
"I tell you again, that no consideration whatever will induce me to
surrender my right as a Catholic priest and as an American citizen. By the
first title you cannot interdict me, as long as I am a good priest, for the
crime of wishing to live in my colony and among my people. By the second
title, you cannot turn me out from my home.
