University of Virginia Library

Chapter IV.

THE SHEPHERD WHIPPED BY HIS SHEEP.

SHORTLY after the trial of auricular confession, my young
friend, Louis Cazeault, accosted me on a beautiful morning
and said, "Do you know what happened last night?"

"No," I answered. "What was the wonder?"

"You know that our priest spends almost all his evenings
at Mr. Richards' house. Everybody thinks that he goes there
for the sake of the two daughters. Well, in order to cure him
of that disease, my uncle, Dr. Tache, and six others, masked,
whipped him without mercy as he was coming back at eleven
o'clock at night. It is already known by every one in the
village, and they split their sides with laughing."

My first feeling on hearing that news, was one of joy. Ever
since my first confession I felt angry every time I thought of
that priest. His questions had so wounded me that I could not
forgive him. I had enough of self-control, however, to conceal
my pleasure and I answered my friend:

"You are telling me a wicked story; I can't believe a word
of it."

"Well," said young Cazeault, "come at eight o'clock this
evening to my uncle's. A secret meeting is to take place then.
No doubt they will speak of the pill given to the priest last night.
We shall place ourselves in our little room as usual and shall
hear everything, our presence not being suspected. You may
be sure that it will be interesting."

"I will go," I answered, "but I do not believe a word of
that story."

I went to school at the usual hour. Most of the pupils had
preceeded me. Divided into groups of eight or ten, they were

engaged in a most lively conversation. Bursts of convulsive
laughter were heard from every corner. I could very well see
that something uncommon had taken place in the village.

I approached several of these groups, and all received me
with the question:

"Do you know that the priest was whipped last night as he
was coming from the Misses Richards'?"

"That is a story invented for fun," said I.

"You were not there to see him, were you? You therefore
know nothing about it; for if anybody had whipped the priest
he would not surely boast of it."

"But we heard his screams," answered many voices.

"What! was he then screaming out?" I asked.

"He shouted at the top of his voice, `Help, help! Murder!' "

"But you were surely mistaken about the voice," said I
"It was not the priest who shouted, it was somebody else. I
could never believe that anybody would whip a priest in such a
crowded village."

"But" said several, "we ran to his help and we recognized
the priest's voice. He is the only one who lisps in the village."

"And we saw him with our own eyes," said several.

The school bell put an end to this conversation. As soon as
school was out I returned to the house of my relatives, not
wishing to learn any more about this matter. Although I did
not like this priest, yet I was much mortified by some remarks
which the older pupils made about him.

But it was difficult not to hear any more. On my arrival
home I found my uncle and aunt engaged in a very warm
debate on the subject. My uncle wished to conceal the fact
that he was among those who had whipped him. But he gave
the details so precisely, he was so merry over the adventure,
that it was easy to see that he had a hand in the plot. My aunt
was indignant, and used the most energetic expressions to show
her disapprobation.

That bitter debate annoyed me so that I did not stay long to
hear it all. I withdrew to my study.

During the remainder of the day I changed my resolution

many times about my going to the secret meeting in the evening.
At one moment I would decide firmly not to go. My conscience
told me that, as usual, things would be uttered which it was not
good for me to hear. I had refused to go to the two last meetings,
and a silent voice, as it were, told me I had done well.
Then a moment after I was tormented by the desire to know
precisely what had taken place the evening before. The flagellation
of a priest in the midst of a large village was a fact too
worthy of note to fail to excite the curiosity of a child. Besides,
my aversion to the priest, though I concealed it as well as I
could, made me wish to know whether everything was true on
the subject of the chastisement. But in the struggle between
good and evil which took place in my mind during that day, the
evil was finally to triumph. A quarter of an hour before the
meeting my friend came to me and said:

"Make haste, the members of the association are coming."

At this call all my good resolutions vanished. I hushed the
voice of my conscience, and a few minutes later I was placed in
an angle of that little room, where for more than two hours I
learned many strange and scandalous things about the lives of
the priests of Canada.

Dr. Tache presided. He opened the meeting in a low tone
of voice. At the beginning of his discourse I had some difficulty
to understand what he said. He spoke as one who feared
to be overheard when disclosing a secret to a friend. But after
a few preliminary sentences he forgot the rule of prudence
which he had imposed upon himself, and spoke with energy and
power.

Mr. Etienne Tache was naturally eloquent. He seemed to
speak on no question except under the influence of the deepest
conviction of its truth. His speech was passionate, and the tone
of his voice clear and agreeable. His short and cutting sentences
did not reach the ear only; they penetrated even the secret folds
of the soul. He spoke in substance as follows:

"Gentlemen:—I am happy to see you here more numerously
than ever. The grave events of last night have, no doubt,
decided many of you to attend debates which some began to

forsake, but the importance of which, it seems to me, increases
day by day.

"The question debated in our last meeting—`The Priests'—
is one of life and death, not only for our young and beautiful
Canada, but in a moral point of view it is a question of life and
death for our families, and for every one of us in particular.

"There is, I know, only one opinion among us on the subject
of priests; and I am glad that this opinion is not only that of all
educated men in Canada, but also of learned France; nay, of the
whole world. The reign of the priest is the reign of ignorance,
of corruption, and of the most barefaced immorality, under the
mask of the most refined hypocrisy. The reign of the priest is
the death of our schools; it is the degradation of our wives, the
prostitution of our daughters; it is the reign of tyranny—the loss
of liberty.

"We have only one good school, I will not say in St. Thomas,
but in all our county. This school in our midst is a great honor
to our village. Now see the energy with which all the priests
who come here work for the closing of that school. They use
every means to destroy that focus of light which we have started
with so much difficulty, and which we support by so many
sacrifices.

"With the priest of Rome our children do not belong to us;
he is their master. Let me explain. The priest honors us with
the belief that the bodies, the flesh and bones of our children, are
ours, and that our duty in consequence is to clothe and feed them.
But the nobler and more sacred part, namely, the intellect, the
heart, the soul, the priest claims as his own patrimony, his own
property. The priest has the audacity to tell us that to him
alone it belongs to enlighten those intelligences, to form those
hearts, to fashion those souls as it may best suit him. He has the
impudence to tell us that we are too silly or perverse to know
our duties in this respect. We have not the right of choosing
our school teachers. We have not the right to send a single ray
of light into those intellects, or to give to those souls who hunger
and thirst after truth a single crumb of that food prepared with
so much wisdom and success by enlightened men of all ages.

"By the confessional the priests poison the springs of life in
our children. They initiate them into such mysteries of iniquity
as would terrify old galley slaves. By their questions they
reveal to them secrets of a corruption such as carries its germs of
death into the very marrow of their bones, and that from the
earliest years of their infancy. Before I was fifteen years old I
had learned more real blackguardism from the mouth of my
confessor than I have learned ever since in my studies and in my
life as a physician for twenty years.

"A few days ago I questioned my little nephew, Louis
Cazeault, upon what he had learned in his confession. He
answered me ingenuously, and repeated things to me which I
would be ashamed to utter in your presence, and which you,
fathers of families, could not listen to without blushing. And
just think, that not only of little boys are those questions asked,
but also of our dear little girls. Are we not the most degraded
of men if we do not set ourselves to work in order to break the
iron yoke under which the priest keeps our dear country, and by
means of which he keeps us, with our wives and children, at his
feet like vile slaves!

"While speaking to you of the deleterious effect of the
confessional upon our children, shall I forget its effect upon our
wives and upon ourselves? Need I tell you that, for most
women, the confessional is a rendezvous of coquetry and of love?
Do you not feel as I do myself, that by means of the confessional
the priest is more the master of the hearts of our wives than
ourselves? Is not the priest the private and public confidant of
our wives? Do not our wives go invariably to the feet of the
priest, opening to him what is most sacred and intimate in the
secrets of our lives as husbands and as fathers? The husband
belongs no more to his wife as her guide through the dark and
difficult paths of life: it is the priest! We are no more their
friends and natural advisers. Their anxieties and their cares they
do not confide to us. They do not expect from us the remedies
for the miseries of this life. Towards the priest they turn their
thoughts and desires. He has their entire and exclusive confidence.
In a word, it is the priest who is the real husband of our

wives! It is he who has the possession of their respect and of
their hearts to a degree to which no one of us need ever aspire!

"Were the priest an angel, were he not made of flesh and
bones just as we are, were not his organization absolutely the
same as our own, then might we be indifferent to what might
take place between him and our wives, whom he has at his feet,
in his hands—even more, in his heart. But what does my
experience tell me, not only as a physician, but also as a citizen
of St. Thomas? What does yours tell you? Our experience
tells us that the priest, instead of being stronger, is weaker than
we generally are with respect to women. His sham vows of
perfect chastity, far from rendering him more invulnerable to
the arrows of Cupid, expose him to be made more easily the
victim of that god, so small in form, but so dreadful a giant by
the irresistible power of his weapons and the extent of his
conquests.

"As a matter of fact, of the last four priests who came to
St. Thomas, have not three seduced many of the wives and
daughters of our most respected families? And what security
have we that the priest who is now with us does not walk in the
same path? Is not the whole parish filled with indignation at
the long nightly visits made by him to two girls whose dissolute
morals are a secret to nobody? And when the priest does not
respect himself, would we not be silly in continuing to give him
that respect of which he himself knows he is unworthy?

"At our last meeting the opinions were divided at the
beginning of the discussion. Many thought it would be well to
speak to the bishop about the scandal caused by those nightly
visits. But the majority judged that such steps would be useless,
since the bishop would do one of two things, namely, he would
either pay no attention to our just complaints, as has often been
the case, or he would remove this priest, filling his place with
one who would do no better. That majority, which became a
unanimity, acceded to my thought of taking justice into our own
hands. The priest is our servant. We pay him a large tithe.
We have therefore claims upon him. He has abused us, and
does so every day by his public neglect of the most elementary

laws of morality. In visiting every night that house whose
degradation is known to everybody, he gives to youth an
example of perversity the effects of which no one can estimate.

"It had been unanimously decided that he should be whipped.
Without my telling you by whom it was done, you may be
assured that Mr. Beaubien's flagellation of last night will never
be forgotten by him!

"Heaven grant that this brotherly correction be a lesson to
teach all the priests of Canada that their golden reign is over,
that the eyes of the people are opened, and that their domination
is drawing to an end!"

This discourse was listened to with deep silence, and Dr.
Tache saw by the applause that followed that his speech had
been the expression of everyone.

Next followed a gentleman named Dubord, who in substance
spoke as follows:

"Mr. President:—I was not among those who gave the
priest the expression of public feeling with the energetic tongue
of the whip. I wish I had been, however; I would heartily
have co-operated in giving that lesson to the priests of Canada.
Let me give my reason.

"My daughter, who is twelve years old, went to confession
as did the others a few weeks ago. It was against my will. I
know by my own experience that of all actions confession is the
most degrading in a person's life. I can imagine nothing so
well calculated to destroy for ever one's self-respect as the
modern invention of the confessional. Now, what is a person
without self-respect—especially a woman? Without this all is
lost to her forever.

"In the confessional everything is corruption of the lowest
grade.

"In the confessional, a girl's thoughts are polluted, her
tongue is polluted, her heart is polluted—yes, and forever polluted!
Do I need to tell you this? You know it as well as I
do. Though you are now all too intelligent to degrade yourselves
at the feet of a priest, though it is long since you have
been guilty of that meanness, not one of you have forgotten the

lessons of corruption received, when young, in the confessional.
Those lessons were engraved on your memory, your thoughts,
your hearts, and your souls like the scar left by the red-hot iron
upon the brow of the slave, to remain a perpetual witness of his
shame and servitude. The confessional is a place where one
gets accustomed to hear, and repeat without a scruple, things
which would cause even a prostitute to blush!

"Why are Roman Catholic nations inferior to nations
belonging to Protestantism? Only in the confessional can the
solution of that problem be found. And why are Roman
Catholic nations degraded in proportion to their submission to
the priest? It is because the oftener the individuals composing
those nations go to confession the more rapidly they sink in the
scale of intelligence and morality. A terrible example of this
I had in my own house.

"As I said a moment ago, I was against my daughter going
to confession; but her poor mother, who is under the control of
the priest, earnestly wanted her to go. Not to have a disagreeable
scene in my house, I had to yield to the tears of my wife.

"On the day following that of her confession they believed
I was absent; but I was in my office, with the door sufficiently
open to allow me to hear what was said. My wife and daughter
had the following conversation:

" `What makes you so thoughtful and sad, my dear Lucy,
since you went to confession? It seems to me you should feel
happier since you had the privilege of confessing your sins.'

"Lucy made no answer.

"After a silence of two or three minntes her mother said:

" `Why do you weep, dear child? Are you ill?'

"Still no answer from the child.

"You may well suppose that I was all attention. I had my
suspicions about the dreadful ordeal which had taken place. My
heart throbbed with uneasiness and anger.

"After a short time my wife spoke to her child with sufficient
firmness to force her to answer. In a trembling voice and
half suppressed with sobs my dear little daughter answered:

" `Ah! mamma, if you knew what the priest asked me, and

what he said to me in the confessional, you would be as sad as
I am.'

" `But what did he say to you? He is a holy man. You
surely did not understand him if you think he said anything to
pain you.'

" `Dear mother,' as she threw herself into her mother's arms,
`do not ask me to confess what that priest said! He told to me
things so shameful that I cannot repeat them. But that which
pains me most is the impossibility of banishing from my
thoughts the hateful things which he has taught me. His
impure words are like the leeches put upon the chest of my
friend Louise—they could not be removed without tearing the
flesh. What must have been his opinion of me to ask such
questions!' "

"My child said no more, and began to sob again.

"After a short silence my wife rejoined:

" `I'll go to the priest. I'll tell him to beware how he
speaks in the confessional. I have noticed myself that he goes
too far with his questions. I, however, thought that he was
more prudent with children. After the lesson that I'll give him
be sure that you will have only to tell your sins, and that you
will be no more troubled by his endless questions. I ask of
you, however, never to speak of this to anybody, especially
never let your poor father know anything about it; for he has
little enough religion already, and this would leave him without
any at all.' "

"I could contain myself no longer. I rose and abruptly
entered the parlor. My daughter threw herself, weeping, into
my arms. My wife screamed with terror, and almost fell into a
swoon. I said to my child:

"If you love me, put your hand on my heart and promise
me that you'll never go to confession again. Fear God, my
child; walk in His presence, for His eye seeth you everywhere.
Remember that day and night He is ready to forgive us. Never
place yourself again at the feet of a priest to be defiled and
degraded by him!

"This my daughter promised me.

"When my wife had recovered from her surprise I said to
her:

"Madam, for a long time the priest has been everything and
your husband nothing to you. There is a hidden and terrible
power that governs your thoughts and affections as it governs
your deeds—it is the power of the priest. This you have often
denied; but providence has decided to-day that this power should
be forever broken for you and for me. I want to be the ruler
in my own house; and from this moment the power of the priest
over you must cease, unless you prefer to leave my house
forever. The priest has reigned here too long! But now that
I know he has stained and defiled the soul of my daughter, his
empire must fall! Whenever you go and take your heart and
secrets to the feet of the priest, be so kind as not to come back
to the same house with me."

Three other discourses followed that of Mr. Dubord, all of
which were pregnant with details and facts going to prove that
the confessional was the principal cause of the deplorable
demoralization of St. Thomas.

If, in addition to all that, I could have mentioned before that
association what I already knew of the corrupting influences of
that institution given to the world by centuries of darkness,
certainly the determination of its members to make use of every
means to abolish its usage would have been strengthened.