University of Virginia Library

Chapter XXIX.

CONVERSIONS OF PROTESTANTS TO THE CHURCH OF ROME—
REV. ANTHONY PARENT, SUPERIOR OF THE SEMINARY OF
QUEBEC: HIS PECULIAR WAY OF FINDING ACCESS TO THE
PROTESTANTS AND BRINGING THEM TO THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH—HOW HE SPIES THE PROTESTANTS THROUGH THE
CONFESSIONAL—I PERSUADE NINETY-THREE FAMILIES TO
BECOME CATHOLICS.

"OUT of the Church of Rome there is no salvation," is one of
the doctrines which the priests of Rome have to believe
and teach to the people. That dogma, once accepted, caused
me to devote all my energies to the conversion of Protestants.
To prevent one of those immortal and precious souls from going
into hell seemed to me more important and glorious that the
conquest of a kingdom. In view of showing them their errors,
I filled my library with the best controversial books which could
be got in Quebec, and I studied the Holy Scriptures with the utmost
attention. In the Marine Hospital, as well as in my intercourse
with the people of the city, I had several occasions of
meeting Protestants and talking to them; but I found at once that,
with very few exceptions, they avoided speaking with me on
religion. This distressed me. Having been told one day that
the Rev. Mr. Anthony Parent, superior of the Seminary of
Quebec, had converted several hundred Protestants during his
ministry, I went to ask him if this were true. For answer, he
showed me the list of his converts, which numbered more than
two hundred, among whom were some of the most respectable
English and Scotch families of the city. I looked upon that
list with amazement; and from that day I considered him the
most blessed priest of Canada. He was a perfect gentleman in
his manners, and was considered our best champion on all points

of controversy with Protestants. He could have been classed,
also, among the handsomest men in his time, had not he been so
fat. But, when the high classes called him by the respectable
name of "Mr. Superior of the Seminary," the common people
used to name him Pere Cocassier ("Cock-fighting Father"),
on account of his long-cherished habit of having the bravest
and strongest fighting-cocks of the country. In vain had the
Rev. Mr. Renvoyze, curate of the "Good St. Anne," that greatest
miracle-working saint of Canada, expended fabulous sums of
money in ransacking the whole country to get a cock who would
take away the palm of victory from the hands of the superior of
the Seminary of Quebec. He had almost invariably failed;
with very few exceptions his cocks had fallen bruised, bleeding
and dead on the many battlefields chosen by those two priests.
However, I feel happy in acknowledging that, since the terrible
epidemic of cholera, that cruel and ignominious "passe temps"
has been entirely given up by the Roman Catholic clergy of
this country. Playing cards and checkers is now the most usual
way the majority of curates and vicars have recourse to spend
their long and many idle hours, both of the week and Sabbath
days.

After reading over and over again that long list of converts,
I said to Mr. Parent: "Please tell me how you have been able
to persuade these Protestant converts to consent to speak with
you on the errors of their religion. Many times I have tried to
show the Protestants whom I met, that they would be lost if
they do not submit to our holy Church, but, with few exceptions,
they laughed at me as politely as possible, and turned the
conversation to other matters. You must have some secret way
of attracting their attention and winning their confidence.
Would you not be kind enough to give me that secret, that I
may be able also to prevent some of those precious souls from
perishing?"

"You are right when you think that I have a secret to open
the doors of the Protestants, and conquer and tame their haughty
minds," answered Mr. Parent. "But that secret is of such a
delicate nature, that I have never revealed it to anybody except

my confessor. Nevertheless, I see that you are so in earnest for
the conversion of Protestants, and I have such a confidence in
your discretion and honor, that for the sake of our holy Church
I consent to give, you my secret; only you must promise that
you will never reveal it, during my lifetime, to anybody—
and even after my death you will not mention it, except when
you are sure it is for the greatest glory of God. You know that
I was the most intimate friend your father ever had; I had no
secret from him, and he had none from me. But God knows
that the friendly feelings and confidence I had in him are now
bestowed upon you, his worthy son. If you had not in my heart
and esteem the same high position your father occupied, I would
not trust you with my secret."

He then continued: "The majority of Protestants in Quebec
have Irish Roman Catholic servant girls; these, particularly before
the last few years, used to come to confess to me, as I was
almost the only priest who spoke English. The first thing I
used to ask them, when they were confessing, was, if their masters
and mistresses were truly devoted and pious Protestants, or
if they were indifferent and cold in performing their duties.
The second thing I wanted to know was, if they were on good
terms with their ministers; whether or not they were visited by
them. From the answers of the girls, I knew both the moral
and immoral, the religious or irreligious habits of their masters
as perfectly as if I had been an inmate of their households. It
is thus that I learned that many Protestants have no more religion
and faith than our dogs. They awake in the morning, and
go to bed at night, without praying to God any more than the
horses in their stables. Many of them go to church on the Sabbath
day, more to laugh at their ministers and criticise their sermons
than for anything else. A part of the week is passed in
turning them into ridicule; nay, through the confessions of these
honest girls, I learned that many Protestants liked the fine ceremonies
of our Church; that they often favorably contrasted
them with the cold performances of their own, and expressed
their views in glowing terms about the superiority of our educational
institutions, nunneries, etc., over their own high schools or

colleges. Besides, you know that a great number of our most
respectable and wealthy Protestants trust their daughters to our
good nuns for their education. I took notes of all these things,
and formed my plans of battle against Protestantism, as a general
who knows his ground and the weak points of his adversaries,
and I fought as a man who is sure of an easy victory.
The glorious result you have under your eyes is the proof that I
was correct in my plans. My first step with the Protestants
whom I knew to be without any religion, or even already well
disposed toward us, was to go to them with sometimes £5, or
even £25, which I presented to them as being theirs. They, at
first, looked at me with amazement, as a being coming from a
superior world. The following conversation then almost invariably
took place beteen them and me:

"Are you positive, sir, that this money is mine?"

"Yes, sir," I answered. "I am certain that this money is
yours."

"But," they replied, "please tell me how you know that it
belongs to me? It is the first time I have the honor of talking
with you, and we are perfect strangers to each other."

I answered: "I cannot say, sir, how I know that this money
is yours, except by telling you that the person who deposited it
in my hands for you has given me your name and your address
so correctly that there is no possibility of any mistake."

"But can I not know the name of the one who has put that
money into your hands for me?" rejoined the Protestant.

"No, sir; the secret of confession is inviolable," I replied.
"We have no example that it has ever been broken; and I, with
every priest of our Church, would prefer to die, rather than
betray our penitents and reveal their confession. We cannot
even act from what we have learned through their confession,
except at their own request."

"But this auricular confession must then be a most admirable
thing," added the Protestant; "I had no idea of it before this
day."

"Yes, sir, auricular confession is a most admirable thing," I
used to reply, "because it is a divine institution. But, sir, please

excuse me; my ministry calls me to another place. I must take
leave of you, to go where my duty calls me."

"I am very sorry that you go so quickly," generally answered
the Protestant. "Can I have another visit from you?
Please do me the honor of coming again. I would be so happy
to present you to my wife; and I know she would be happy
also, and much honored to make your acquaintance."

"Yes, sir, I accept with gratitude your invitation. I will feel
much pleased and honored to make the acquaintance of the family
of a gentleman whose praises are in the mouth of every one,
and whose industry and honesty are an honor to our city. If you
will allow me, next week, at the same hour, I will have the
honor of presenting my respectful homage to your lady.

"The very next day, all the papers reported that Mr. So-and-So
had received £5, or £10, or even £25, as a restitution
through auricular confession: and even the staunch Protestant
editors of those papers could not find words sufficiently eloquent
to praise me and our sacrament of penance.

"Three or four days later, I was sure that the faithful servant
girls were in the confessional-box, glowing with joy to tell me
that now their masters and mistresses could not speak of anything
else than the amiability and honesty of the priests of Rome.
They raised them a thousand miles over the heads of their own
ministers. From those pious girls, I invariably learned that
that they had not been visited by a single friend without making
the eulogium of auricular confession, and even sometimes expressing
the regret that the reformers had swept away such a
useful institution.

"Now, my dear young friend, you see how, by the blessing
of God, the little sacrifice of a few pounds brought down and
destroyed all the prejudices of those poor heretics against auricular
confession and our holy Church in general. You under
stand how the doors were opened to me, and how their hearts
and intelligences were like fields prepared to receive the good
seed. At the appointed hour, I never failed from paying the requested
visit, and I was invariably received like a messiah. Not
only the gentlemen, but the ladies, overwhelmed me with marks

of the most sincere gratitude and respect; even the dear little
children petted me, and threw their arms around my neck to
give me their sweetly angelic kisses. The only topic on which
we could speak, of course, was the great good done by auricular
confession. I easily showed them how it works as a check to
all the evil passions of the heart; how it is admirably adapted to
all the wants of the poor sinners, who find a friend, a councellor,
a guide, a father, a real saviour in their confessor.

"We had not talked half an hour in that way, when it was
generally evident to me that they were more than half way out
of their Protestant errors. I very seldom left the houses without
being sure of a new, glorious victory for our holy religion
over its enemies. It is very seldom that I do not succeed in
bringing that family to our holy Church before one or two
years; and if I fail of gaining the father or mother, I am
nearly sure to persuade them to send their daughters to our good
nuns and their boys to our colleges, where they, sooner or later,
become our most devoted Catholics. So you see that the few
dollars I spend every year for that holy cause are the best investments
ever made. They do more to catch the Protestants of Quebec
than the baits of the fishermen do to secure the cod fishes of
the Newfoundland banks."

In ending this last sentence, Mr. Parent filled his room with
laughter.

I thanked him for these interesting details. But I told him:
"Though I cannot but admire your perfect skill and shrewdness
in breaking the barriers which prevent Protestants from understanding
the divine institution of auricular confession, will you
allow me to ask you if you do not fear to be guilty of an imposture
and a gross imposition in the way you make them believe
that the money you hand them has come to you through auricular
confession?"

"I have not the least fear of that," promptly answered the
old priest, "for the good reason that, if you had paid attention
to what I have told you, you must acknowledge that I have not
said positively that the money was coming from auricular confession.
If those Protestants have been deceived, it is only due

to their own want of a more perfect attention to what I said. I
know that there were things that I kept in my mind which
would have made them understand the matter in a very different
way if I had said them. But Liguori and all our theologians,
among the most approved of our holy Church, tell us that these
reservations of the mind (`mentis reservationes') are allowed
when they are for the good of souls and the glory of God."

"Yes," answered I, "I know that such is the doctrine of
Liguori, and it is approved by the popes. I must confess, however,
that this seems to me entirely opposed to what we read in the sublime
gospel. The simple and sublime `Yea, yea,' and `Nay, nay,'
of our Saviour seems to me in contradiction with the art of deceiving,
even when not saying absolute and direct falsehoods; and if
I submit myself to those doctrines, it is always with a secret protest
in my inmost soul."

In an angry manner, Mr. Parent replied: "Now, my dear
young friend, I understand the truth of what the Rev. Messrs.
Perras and Bedard told me lately about you. Though these
remarkable priests are full of esteem for you, they see a dark
cloud on your horizon; they say that you spend too much time
in reading the Bible, and not enough in studying the doctrines
and holy traditions of the Church. You are too much inclined
also to interpret the Word of God according to your own
fallible intelligence, instead of going to the Church alone for
that interpretation. This is the dangerous rock on which Luther
and Calvin were wrecked. Take my advice. Do not try to
be wiser than the Church. Obey her voice when she speaks to
you through her holy theologians. This is your only safeguard.
The bishop would suspend you at once were he aware of your
want of faith in the Church."

These last words were said with such emphasis that they
seemed more like a sentence of condemnation from the lips of
an irritated judge than anything else. I felt that I had again
seriously compromised myself in his mind; and the only way of
preventing him from denouncing me to the bishop as a heretic
and a Protestant was to make an apology, and withdraw from
the dangerous ground on which I had again so imprudently put

myself. He accepted my explanation, but I saw that he bitterly
regretted having trusted me with his secret. I withdrew from
his presence, much humiliated by my want of prudence and
wisdom. However, though I could not approve of all the
modus operandi of the superior of Quebec, I could not but
admire, then, the glorious results of his efforts in converting
Protestants; and I took the resolution of devoting myself more
than ever to show them their errors and make them good
Catholics. In this I was too successful; for during my twenty-five
years of priesthood I have persuaded ninety-three Protestants
to give up their gospel light and truth, in order to
follow the dark and lying traditions of Rome. I cannot enter
into the details of their conversions, or rather perversions;
suffice it to say, that I soon found that my only chance of success
in that proselytizing work was among the Ritualists. I saw at
first that Calvin and Knox had dug a really impassable abyss
between the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and the Church
of Rome. If these Ritualists remain Protestants, and do not
make the very short step which separates them from Rome, it
is a most astonishing fact, when they are logical men. Some
people are surprised that so many eminent and learned men, in
Great Britain and America, give up their Protestantism to submit
to the Church of Rome; but my wonder is that there are so
few among them who fall into that bottomless abyss of idolatry
and folly, when they are their whole life on the very brink of
the chasm. Put millions of men on the very brink of the Falls
of Niagara, force them to cross to and fro in small canoes
between both shores, and you will see that, every day, some of
them will be dragged, in spite of themselves, into the yawning
abyss. Nay, you will see that, sooner or later, those millions of
people will be in danger of being dragged in a whole body, by
the irresistible force of the dashing waters, into the fathomless
gulf. Through a sublime effort the English people, helped by
the mighty and merciful hand of God, have come out from the
abyss of folly, impurity, ignorance, slavery and idolatry called
the Church of Rome. But many, alas! in the present day,
instead of marching up to the high regions of unsullied Gospel
truth and light—instead of going up to the high mountains
where true Christian simplicity and liberty have forever planted
their glorious banners—have been induced to walk only a few
steps out of the pestiferous regions of Popery. They have
remained so near the pestilential atmosphere of the stagnant
waters of death which flow from Rome, that the atmosphere
they breathe is still filled with the deadly emanations of that
modern Sodom. Who, without shedding tears of sorrow, can
look at those misguided ministers of the Gospel who believe
and teach in the Episcopal Church that they have the power to
make their God with a wafer, and who bow down before that
wafer god and adore him! Who can refrain from indignation
at the sight of so many Episcopal ministers who consent to have
their ears, minds and souls polluted at the confessional by the
stories of their penitents, whom in their turn they destroy by
their infamous and unmentionable questions? When I was
lecturing in England, in 1860, the late Archbishop of Canterbury,
then Bishop of London, invited me to his table, in
company with Rev. Mr. Thomas, now Bishop of Coulbourne,
Australia, and put to me the following questions, in the presence
of his numerous and noble guests:

"Father Chiniquy, when you left the Church of Rome,
why did you not join the Episcopalian rather than the Presbyterian
Church?"

I answered: "Is it the desire of your lordship that I should
speak my mind on that delicate subject?"

"Yes, yes," said the noble lord bishop.

"Then, my lord, I must tell you that my only reason is that
I find in your Church several doctrines which I have to condemn
in the Church of Rome."

"How is that?" replied his lordship.

"Please," I answered, "let me have one of your Common
Prayer Books."

Taking the book, I read slowly the article on the visitation
of the sick: "Then shall the sick person be moved to make a
special confession of his sins, if he feels his conscience troubled
with any weighty matters. After which confession the priest

shall absolve him, after this sort: `Our Lord Jesus Christ, who
hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners who repent
and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee all thine
offenses, and by His authority, committed to me, I absolve thee
of all thy sins, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. Amen.' " I then added: "Now, my lord, where is the
difference between the errors of Rome and your Church on
this subject?"

"The difference is very great," he answered. "The Church
of Rome is constantly pressing the sinners to come to her priests
all their lifetime, where we subject the sinner to this humiliation
only once in his life, when he is near his last hour."

"But, my lord, let me tell you that it seems to me the
Church of Rome is much more logical and consistent in this
than the Episcopal Church. Both churches believe and teach
that they have received from Christ the power to forgive the
sins of those who confess to their priests, and you think yourself
wiser because you invite the sinner to confess and receive
his pardon only when he is tied to a bed of suffering, at the last
hour before his death. But will your lordship be kind enough
to tell me when I am in danger of death. If I am constantly in
danger of death, must you not, with the Church of Rome,
induce me constantly to confess to your priests, and get
my pardon and make my peace with God? Has our Saviour
said anywhere that it was only for the dying, at the last
extremity of life, that He gave the power to forgive my
sins? Has He not warned me many times to be always ready;
to have always our peace made with God, and not to wait till
the last day, to the last hour?"

The noble bishop did not think fit to give me any other
answer than these very words: "We all agree that this doctrine
ought never to have been put in our Common Prayer Book.
But you know that we are at work to revise that book, and
we hope that this clause, with several others, will be taken
away."

"Then," I answered, in a jocose way, "my lord, when this
obnoxious clause has been removed from your Common Prayer

Book, it will be time for me to have the honor of belonging to
your great and noble Church."

When the Church of England went out of the Church of
Rome, she did as Rachel, the wife of Jacob, who left the house
of her father, Laban, and took his gods with her. So the
Episcopal Church of England, unfortunately, when she left
Rome, concealed in the folds of her mantle some of the false
gods of Rome; she kept to her bosom some vipers engendered
in the marshes of the modern Sodom. These vipers, if not
soon destroyed, will kill her. They are already eating up her
vitals. They are covering her with most ugly and mortal
wounds. They are rapidly taking away her life.

May the Holy Ghost rebaptize and purify that noble Church
of England, that she may be worthy to march at the head of the
armies of the Lord to the conquest of the world, under the banners
of the great Captain of our Salvation.