The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy
her; she thought the door of the little partition between her and me was shut. But my eyes were fixed upon her; my tears were flowing with her tears, and my ardent prayers were going to the feet of Jesus with her prayers. I would not have interrupted her, for any consideration, in this her sublime communion with her merciful Saviour.
But, after a pretty long time, I made a little noise with my hand, and, putting my lips near the opening of the partition which was between us, I said, in a low voice, "Dear sister, are you ready to begin your confession?"
She turned her face a little towards me, and said, with a trembling voice, "Yes, dear Father, I am ready."
But she then stopped again to weep and pray, though I could not hear what she said.
After some time of silent prayer, I said, "My dear sister, if you are ready, please begin your confession."
She then said, "My dear Father, do you remember the prayers which I made to you, the other day? Can you allow me to confess my sins without forcing me to forget the respect I owe to myself, to you, and to God, who hears us? And can you promise that you will not put to me any of those questions which have already done me such irreparable injury? I frankly declare to you that there are sins in me that I cannot reveal to any man, except to Christ, because He is my God, and that He already knows them all. Let me weep and cry at His feet, and do forgive me without adding to my iniquities by forcing me to say things that the tongue of a Christian woman cannot reveal to a man!"
"My dear sister," I answered, "were I free to follow the voice of my own feelings I would be too happy to grant you your request; but I am here only as the minister of our holy Church, and bound to obey her laws. Through her most holy popes and theologians, she tells me that I cannot forgive you your sins, if you do not confess them all just as you have committed them. The Church tells me also that you must give the details which may add to the malice or change the nature of your sins. I am also sorry to tell you that our most holy theologians make it a duty of the confessor to question his penitent on the sins which he has good reason to suspect have been voluntarily or involuntarily omitted."
With a piercing, cry she exclaimed, "Then, O my God, I am lost—for ever lost!"
This cry fell upon me as a thunderbolt; but I was still more terror-stricken when, looking through the aperture, I saw she was fainting; and I heard the noise of her body falling upon the floor, and of her head striking against the sides of the confessional-box.
Quick as lightning, I ran to help her, took her in my arms, and called a couple of men, who were at a little distance, to assist me in laying her on a bench. I washed her face with some cold water and vinegar. She was as pale as death, but her lips were moving, and she was saying something which nobody but I could understand—
"I am lost—lost for ever!"
We took her to her disconsolate family, where, during a month, she lingered between life and death.
Her two first confessors came to visit her: but, having asked every one to go out of the room, she politely but absolutely requested them to go away and never come again. She asked me to visit her everyday, "for," she said, "I have only a few more days to live. Help me to prepare myself for the solemn hour which will open to me the gates of eternity!"
Every day I visited her, and I prayed and I wept with her.
Many times, with tears, I requested her, when alone, to finish her confession; but, with a firmness which then seemed to me mysterious and inexplicable, she politely rebuked me.
One day when, alone with her, I was kneeling by the side of her bed to pray, I was unable to articulate a single word, because of the inexpressible anguish of my soul on her account; she asked me, "Dear Father, why do you weep?"
I answered, "How can you put such a question to your murderer? I weep because I have killed you, dear friend."
This answer seemed to trouble her exceedingly. She was very weak that day. After she had wept and prayed in silence, she said, "Do not weep for me, but weep for so many priests who destroy their penitents in the confessional. I believe in the holiness of the sacrament of penitence, since our holy Church has established it. But there is, somewhere, something exceedingly wrong in the confessional. Twice I have been destroyed, and I know many girls who have also been destroyed by the confessional. This is a secret, but will that secret be kept for ever? I pity the poor priests the day that our fathers will know what becomes of the purity of their daughters in the hands of their confessors. Father would surely kill my two last confessors, if he could know how they have destroyed his poor child."
I could not answer except by weeping.
We remained mute for a long time; then she said, "It is true that I was not prepared for the rebuke you have given me, but you acted conscientiously as a good and honest priest. I know you must be bound by certain laws."
She then pressed my hand with her cold hand and said, "Weep not, dear Father, because that sudden storm has wrecked my too fragile back. This storm was to take me out from the bottomless sea of my iniquities to the shore where Jesus was waiting to receive and pardon me. The night after you brought me, half dead, here to father's house, I had a dream. Oh, no, it was not a dream, it was a reality. My Jesus came to me; He was bleeding. His crown of thorns was on His head, the heavy cross was bruising His shoulders. He said to me, with a voice so sweet that no human tongue can imitate it, "I have seen thy tears, I have heard thy cries, and I know thy love for Me: thy sins are forgiven. Take courage; in a few days thou shalt be with Me!'"
She had hardly finished her last word when she fainted, and I feared lest she should die just then when I was alone with her.
I called the family, who rushed into the room. The doctor was sent for. He found her so weak that he thought proper to allow only one or two persons to remain in the room. He requested us not to speak at all, "For," said he, "the least emotion may kill her instantly; her disease is, in all probability, an aneurism of the aorta, the big vein which brings the blood to the heart; when it breaks she will go as quick as lightning."
It was nearly ten at night when I left the house, to go and take some rest. But it is not necessary to say that I passed a sleepless night. My dear Mary was there, pale, dying from the deadly blow which I had given her in the confessional. She was there, on her bed of death, her heart pierced with the dagger which my Church had put into my hands! And instead of rebuking, cursing me for my savage, merciless fanaticism, she was blessing me! She was dying from a broken heart, and I was not allowed by my Church to give her a single word of consolation and hope, for she had not yet made her confession! I had mercilessly bruised that tender plant, and there was nothing in my hands to heal the wounds I had made!
It was very probable that she would die the next day, and I was forbidden to show her the crown of glory which Jesus has prepared in His kingdom for the repenting sinner!
My desolation was really unspeakable, and I think I would have been suffocated, and have died that night, if the stream of tears which constantly flowed from my eyes had not been as a balm to my distressed heart.
How dark and long the hours of that night seemed to me!
Before the dawn of day I arose, to read my theologians again, and see if I could not find some one who would allow me to forgive the sins of that dear child without forcing her to tell me everything she had done. But they seemed to me more than ever unanimously inexorable, and I put them back on the shelves of my library with a broken heart.
At nine a.m. the next day I was by the bed of our dear sick Mary. I cannot sufficiently tell the joy I felt when the doctor and the whole family said to me, "She is much better; the rest of last night has wrought a marvelous change indeed."
With a really angelic smile she extended her hand towards me, that I might press it in mine; and she said, "I thought, last evening, that the dear Saviour would take me to Him, but He wants me, dear Father, to give you a little more trouble; but be patient, it cannot, be long before the solemn hour of the appeal will ring. Will you please read me the history of the sufferings and death of the beloved Saviour which you read me the other day? It does me so much good to see how He has loved