Fifty years in the Church of Rome

TWO days after my arrival at Kamouraska, I received a letter
from the surrounding priests, at the head of whom was
the Grand Vicar Mailloux, expressing the hope that I would not
try to form any temperance society in my new parish, as I had
done in Beauport; for the good reasons, they said, that drunkenness
was not prevailing in that part of Canada, as it was in the
city of Quebec. I answered them politely, that, so long as I
should be at the head of this new parish, I would try, as I had
ever done, to mind my own business, and I hoped that my
neighboring friends would do the same. Not long after, I saw
that the curates felt ashamed of their vain attempt to intimidate
me.

She next Sabbath, the crowd was greater than at the first.
Having heard that the merchants were to start the next day,
with their schooners, to buy their winter provisions of rum, I
said, in a very solemn way, before my sermon:

"My friends, I know that, to-morrow, the merchants leave
for Quebec, to purchase their rum. Let me advise them, as their
best friend, not to buy any; and as the ambassador of Christ, I
forbid them to bring a single drop of those poisonous drinks
here. It will surely be their ruin, if they pay no attention
to this friendly advice; for they will not sell a single
drop of it, after next Sabbath. That day, I will show to the intelligent

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people of this parish, that rum, and all the other drugs
sold here, under the name of brandy, wine and beer, are nothing
else than disgusting, deadly and cursed poisons."

I then preached on the words of our Saviour: "Be always
ready; for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son
of Man cometh." Though the people seemed much pleased and
impressed by that second sermon, they felt exceedingly irritated
at my few warning words to the merchants. When the service
was over, they all rallied around the merchants to tell them not
to mind what they had heard.

"If our young curate," said they, "thinks he will lead us by
the nose, as he has done with the drunkards of Beauport, he will
soon see his mistake. Instead of one hundred tons, as you
brought last fall, bring us two hundred, this year; we will drink
them to his health. We have a good crop, and we want to
spend a jolly winter."

It is probable that the church of Kamouraska had never seen
within its walls such a crowd as on the second Sabbath of October,
1842. It was literally crammed. Curiosity had attracted
the people, who, not less eager to hear my first grand sermon
against rum, than to see the failure they expected, and wished,
of my first efforts to form a temperance society. Long before
the public service, at the door of the church, as well as during
the whole preceding week, the people had pledged themselves
never to give up their strong drink, and never to join the temperance
society.

But what are the resolutions of man against God? Is He
not their master?

The half of that first sermon on temperance was not heard,
when that whole multitude had forgotten their public promises.
The hearts were not only touched — they were melted and
changed by God, who wanted to show, once more, that His
works of mercy were above all the works of His hands.

From the very first day of my arrival in Kamouraska, I had
made a serious and exact inquiry about the untold miseries brought
upon the people by intoxicating drinks.

I had found that, during the last twenty years, twelve men

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had been drowned, and eight had been frozen to death, who had
left twenty widows and sixty orphans in the most distressing
poverty. Sixty farmers had lost their lands, and had been
obliged to emigrate to other places, where they were suffering
all the pangs of poverty from the drunkenness of their parents;
several other families had their properties mortgaged for their
whole value, to the rum merchants, and were expected, every
day, to be turned out from their inheritances, to pay their rum
bills. Seven mothers had died in delirium tremens, one had hung
herself, another drowned herself when drunk. One hundred
thousand dollars had been paid to the rum merchants during the
last fifteen years. Two hundred thousand more were due to
the storekeeper; three-fourths of which were for strong drink.
Four men had been murdered, among whom was their landlord,
Achilles Tache, from their drunken habits!

When I had recapitulated all these facts, which were public
and undeniable, and depicted the desolation of the ruined families,
composed of their own brothers, sisters, and dear children;
when I brought before their minds, the tears of the widows, the
cries of the starving and naked children, the shame of the families,
the red hands of the murderers, and the mangled bodies of
their victims; the eternal cries of the lost from drunkenness, the
broken-hearted fathers and mothers, whose children had been
destroyed by strong drink; when I proved to them that there
was not a single one in their midst who had not suffered, either
in his own person, or in that of his father or mother, brothers.
sisters or children. Yes, when I had given them the simple and
awful story of the crimes committed in their midst; the ruin and
deaths, the misery of thousands of precious souls for whom
Christ died in vain, the church was filled with such sobs and
cries that I often could not be heard. Many times my voice
was drowned by the indescribable confusion and lamentation of
that whole multitude. Unable to contain myself, several times
I stopped and mingled my sobs and cries with those of my
people.

When the sermon, which lasted two hours, was finished, I
asked all those who were determined to help me in stopping the

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ravages of intoxicating drinks, in drying the tears which they
caused to flow, and saving the precious souls they were destroying,
to come forward and take the public pledge of temperance,
by kissing a crucifix which I held in my hand. Thirteen hundred
and ten came.

Not fifty of the people had refused to enroll themselves
under the blessed and glorious banners of temperance! and these
few recalcitrants came forward, with a very few exceptions, the
next time I spoke on the subject.

The very same day, the wives of the merchants sent despatches
to their husbands in Quebec, to tell them what had been
done, and not a single barrel of intoxicating drinks was brought
by them. The generous example of the admirable people of
Kamouraska spoke with an irresistible eloquence to the other
parishes of that district, and before long, the blessed banners of
temperance floated over all the populations of St. Pascal, St.
Andrew, Isle Verte, Cacouna, Riviere du Loup, Rimouski,
Matane, St. Anne, St. Roch, Madawaska, St. Benoit, St. Luce,
etc., on the south side of the St. Lawrence, and the Eboulements,
La Malbaye, and the other parishes on the north side of the
river; and the people kept their pledge with such fidelity that
the trade in rum was literally killed in that part of Canada, as it
had been in Beauport and its vicinity.

The blessed fruits of this reform were soon felt and seen
everywhere, in the public prosperity and the spread of education.
Kamouraska, which was owing $200,000, to the merchants in
1842, had not only paid its interest, but had reduced its debt to
only $120,000, when I left it to go to Montreal, in 1846.

God only knows my joy at these admirable manifestations of
his mercies toward my country. However, the joys of man are
never without their mixture of sadness.

In the good providence of God, being invited by all the
curates to establish temperance societies among their people, I
had the sad opportunity, as no priest ever had in Canada, to
know the secret and public scandals of each parish. When I
went to the Eboulements, on the north side of the river, invited
by the Rev. Noel Toussignant I learned from the very lips of

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that young priest, and the ex-priest, Tetreau, the history of the
most shameful scandals.

In 1830, a young priest of Quebec, called Derome, had fallen
in love with one of his young female penitents of Vercheres,
where he had preached a few days, and he had persuaded her to
follow him to the parsonage of Quebec. The better to conceal
their iniquity from the public, he persuaded his victim to dress
herself as a young man, and throw her dress into the river, to
make her parents and the whole parish believe that she was
drowned. I had seen her many times at the parsonage of
Quebec, under the name of Joseph, and had much admired her
refined manners, though more than once I was very much
inclined to think that the smart Joseph was no one else than a
lost girl. But the respect I had for the curate of Quebec (who
was the coadjutor of the bishop) and his young vicars, caused
me to reject those suspicions as unfounded. However, many,
even among the first citizens of the city, had the same suspicions,
and they pressed me to go to the coadjutor and warn him; but I
refused, and told those gentlemen to do that delicate work themselves,
and they did it.

The position of that high dignitary and his vicar was not
then a very agreeable one. Their bark had evidently drifted
into dangerous waters. To keep Joseph among themselves was
impossible, after the friendly advice from such high quarters,
and to dismiss him was not less dangerous. He knew to well
how the curate of Quebec, with his vicars, were keeping their
vows of celibacy, to dismiss him without danger to themselves;
a single word from his lips would destroy them. Happily, for
them, Mr. Clement, then curate of the Eboulements, was in
search of such a servant, and took him to his parsonage, after
persuading the bishop-coadjutor to give Joseph a large sum of
money to seal his lips.

Things went on pretty smoothly between Joseph and the
priest for several years, till some suspicions arose in the minds of
the sharp-sighted people of the parish, who told the curate that
it would be safer and more honorable for him to get rid of his
servant. In order to put an end to those suspicions, and to

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retain him in the parsonage, the curate persuaded him to marry
the daughter of a poor neighbor.

The three bans were published, and the two girls were duly
married by the curate, who continued his criminal intimacies, in
the hope that no one would trouble him any more on that subject.
But not long after he was removed to La Petite Riviere,
and in 1838, the Rev. M. Tetreau was appointed curate of the
Eboulements. This new priest, knowing nothing of the abominations
which his predecessor had practiced, continued to employ
Joseph. One day, when Joseph was working at the gate of the
parsonage, in the presence of several people, a stranger came and
asked him if Mr. Tetreau was at home.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Curate is at home," answered Joseph; "but
as you seem a stranger to the place, would you allow me to ask
you from what parish you come?"

"I am not ashamed of my parish," answered the stranger.
"I come from Vercheres."

At the word "Vercheres," Joseph turned so pale that the
stranger was puzzled. He looked carefully at him, and exclaimed:

"Oh! my God! What do I see here? Genevieve! Genevieve!
over whom we have mourned so long as drowned! Here
you are, disguised as a man!"

"Dear uncle" (it was her uncle); "for God's sake, not a
word more here!"

But it was too late; the people who were there had heard
the uncle and the niece. Their long and secret suspicions were
well-founded. One of their former priests had kept a girl, under
the disguise of a man, in his house; and to blind his people
more thoroughly, he had married that girl to another, in order
to have them both in the house when he pleased, without awakening
any suspicion!

The news went, almost as quickly as lightning, from one end
to the other of the parish, and spread all over the country, on
both sides of the St. Lawrence. I had heard of that horror, but
I could not believe it. However, I had to believe it, when, on
the spot, I heard from the lips of the ex-curate, M. Tetreau, and

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the new curate, M. Noel de Toussignant, and from the lips of
my landlord, the Honorable Laterriere, the following details,
which had come to light only a short time before.

The justice of the peace had investigated the matter, in the
name of public morality. Joseph was brought before the magistrates,
who decided that a physician should be charged to make,
not a post mortem but an ante-mortem inquest. The Honorable
Laterriere, who made the inquest, declared that Joseph
was a girl, and the bonds of marriage were legally dissolved.

At the same time, the curate M. Tetreau, had sent a dispatch
to the Right Rev. Bishop-coadjutor of Quebec, informing him
that the young man whom he had kept in his house, several
years, was legally proved a girl; a fact which, I need hardly
state, was well known by the bishop and his vicars! They immediately
sent a trustworthy man with £500, to induce the girl
to leave the country without delay, lest she were prosecuted and
sent to the penitentiary. She accepted the offer, and crossed
the lines to the United States with her $2,000, where she was
soon married, and where she still lives.

I wished that this story had never been told me, or at least,
that I might be allowed to doubt some of its circumstances; but
there was no help. I was forced to acknowledge that in my
Church of Rome, there was such corruption from head to foot,
which could scarcely be surpassed in Sodom. I remember what
the Rev. Mr. Perras had told me of the tears and desolation of
Bishop Plessis, when he had discovered that all the priests of
Canada, with the exception of three, were atheists.

I would not be honest, did I not confess that the personal
knowledge of that fact, which I learned in all its scandalous details
from the very lips of unimpeachable witnesses, saddened
me, and for a time, shook my faith in my religion, to its foundation.
I felt secretly ashamed to belong to a body of men so
completely lost to every sense of honesty, as the priests and
bishops of Canada. I had heard of many scandals before. The
infamies of the grand vicar Manceau and Quiblier of Montreal,
Cadieux at Three Rivers, and Viau at Riviere Ouelle. The

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public acts of depravity of the priests Lelievre, Tabeau, Pouliot
Belisle, Brunet, Quevillon, Huot, Lajuste, Rabby, Crevier,
Bellecourt, Valle, Mignault, Noel, Pinet, Duguez, Davely and
many others, were known to me, as well as by the whole clergy.
But the abominations of which Joseph was the victim seemed
to overstep the conceivable limits of infamy. For the first time,
I sincerely regretted that I was a priest. The priesthood of
Rome seemed then, to me, the very fulfillment of the prophecy
of Revelation, about the great prostitute, who makes the nations
drunk with the wines of her prostitutions.

Auricular confession, which I knew to be the first, if not the
only cause, of these abominations, appeared to me, what it really
is, a school of perdition for the priest and his female penitents.
The priest's oath of celibacy, was to my eyes, in those hours of
distress, but a shameful mask to conceal a corruption which was
unknown in the most depraved days of old paganism. New and
bright lights came, then, before my mind which, had I followed
them, would have guided me to the truth of the gospel. But I
was blind! The Good Master had not yet touched my eyes
with his divine and life-giving hand. I had no idea that
there could be any other church than the Church of Rome,
in which I could be saved. I was, however, often saying to
myself: "How can I hope to conquer on a battlefield where so
many, as strong and even much stronger than I am, have perished?"

I felt no longer at peace. My soul was filled with trouble
and anxiety. I not only distrusted myself, but I lost confidence
in the rest of the priests and bishops. In fact, I could not see
any one in whom I could trust. Though my beautiful and dear
parish of Kamouraska was, more than ever, overwhelming me
with tokens of its affection, gratitude and respect, it had lost its
attraction for me. To whatever side I turned my eyes, I saw
nothing but the most seducing examples of perversion. It seemed
as if I were surrounded by numberless snares, from which it was
impossible to escape. I wished to depart from this deceitful and
lost world.

When my soul was as drowned under the waves of a bitter

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sea, the Rev. Mr. Guignes, Superior of the Monastery of the
Fathers of Oblates of Mary Immaculate, at Longueuil, near Montreal,
came to pass a few days with me, for the benefit of his
health.

I spoke to him of that shameful scandal, and did not conceal
from him that my courage failed me, when I looked at the torrent
of iniquity which was sweeping everything, under our eyes,
with an irresistible force.

"We are here alone, in the presence of God," I said to him.
"I confess that I feel an unspeakable horror at the moral ruin
which I see everywhere in our church. My priesthood, of
which I was so proud till lately, seems to me, to-day, the most
ignominious yoke, when I see it dragged in the mud of the most
infamous vices, not only by the immense majority of the priests,
but even by our bishops. How can I hope to save myself, when
I see so many stronger than I am, perishing all around me?"

The Reverend Superior, with the kindness of a father and
the gravity of an apostle, answered me:

"I understand your fears perfectly. They are legitimate
and too well-founded. Like you, I am a priest; and like you, if
not more than you, I know the numberless and formidable dangers
which surround the priest. It is because I know them too
well, that I have not dared to be a secular priest, a single day. I
knew the humiliating and disgraceful history of Joseph and the
coadjutor bishop of Quebec. Nay! I know many things still
more horrible and unspeakable which I have learned when
preaching and hearing confessions in France and in Canada. My
fear is that, to-day, there are not many more undefiled souls
among the priests, than in Sodom, in the days of Lot. The fact
is, that it is morally impossible for a secular priest to keep his
vows of celibacy, except by a miracle of the grace of God. Our
holy church would be a modern Sodom, long ago, had not our
merciful God granted her the grace that many of our priests have
always enrolled themselves among the armies of the regular
priests, in the different religious orders which are, to the church,
what the ark was to Noah and his children, in the days of the
deluge. Only the priests whom God calls, in His mercy, to become

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members of any of those orders, are safe. For they are
under the paternal care and surveillance of superiors whose zeal
and charity are like a shield to protect them. Their holy and
strict laws are like strong walls and high towers which the enemy
cannot storm."

He then spoke to me, with an irresistible eloquence, of the
peace of soul which a regular priest enjoys within the walls of
his monastery. He represented, in the most attractive colors,
the spiritual and constant joys of the heart which one feels when
living, day and night, under the eyes of a superior to whom he
has vowed a perfect submission. He added: "Your providential
work is finished in the diocese of Quebec. The temperance
societies are established almost everywhere. We are in need of
your long experience and your profound studies on that subject,
in the diocese of Montreal. It is true that the good Bishop de
Nancy has done what he could to support that holy cause, but,
though he is working with the utmost zeal, he has not studied
that subject enough to make a lasting impression on the people.
Come with us. We are more than thirty priests, oblates of Mary
Immaculate, who will be too happy to second your efforts in that
noble work, which is too much for one man alone. Moreover,
you cannot do justice to your great parish of Kamouraska and
to the temperance cause together. You must give up one, to
consecrate yourself to the other. Take courage, my young
friend! Offer to God the sacrifice of your dear Kamouraska, as
you made the sacrifice of your beautiful Beauport, some years
ago, for the good of Canada and in the interest of the Church,
which calls you to its help."

It seemed to me that I could oppose no reasonable argument
to these considerations. I fell on my knees, and made the sacrifice
of my beautiful and precious Kamouraska. The last Sabbath
of September, 1846, in the midst of tears and desolation
which no words can depict, I gave my farewell address to the so
dear and intelligent people of Kamouraska, to go to Longueuil
and become a novice of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

University of Virginia Library

Chaper XL.