Twelve Years in a Monastery/Chapter VI
CHAPTER VI
No point in the vast and much contested system of the Church of Rome has excited, and still excites, a deeper and a more suspicious interest than the practice of auricular confession. The Inquisition and the commerce in relics[1] and indulgences are still favourite subjects of the historical critic; monasticism, the Index, the dead language, political ambition and intrigue are some of its actual features which attract no small quantity of opprobrium, and even try the patience of many of its own adherents. But the happy hunting-ground of the innumerable tribe of anti-papal lecturers and pamphleteers is the confessional. Unlike monastic life, the air of mystery and secrecy is a necessary evil of the confessional, and it is the characteristic which is most incentive to criticism. A Catholic layman cannot, of course, with delicacy enlarge upon his experience of the confessional, and, in any case, it would be too personal to be instructive or effective. No ex-priest has hitherto given his impressions of the institution; no priest would venture to express an unfavourable opinion upon it, or even any opinion of a circumstantial character, for fear of alarming his co-religionists.
Yet in point of fact there is no reason in the nature of things why even an actual confessor should not write a most ample and detailed account of his experiences. The ‘seal of confession’ is not merely a sacramental obligation, it is a natural obligation which no ex-priest would ever dream of violating. But the obligation has certain limits which are explicitly denned in theological works and are practically observed by priests. The obligation is merely to maintain such secrecy about confessional matters as shall prevent the knowledge of the crime of a definite individual: within those limits the obligation is absolute and admits of no possible excuse in the smallest matter. The priest is not even allowed to use a probability in his own favour in this question: he is forbidden under an obligation of the gravest possible character to say a single word or perform any action whatever from which the declaration of his penitent might possibly be inferred. Hence he cannot, under any conceivable circumstances, act upon the information he has received. If a priest learned from the confession of his servant that she had put poison in the wine he was to take for dinner, Catholic theology directs that he must not even change the bottle, but act precisely as if he had heard nothing. I never heard of a test case, though it is well known that there have been martyrs to the seal of confession. In minor matters, of course, the confessor interprets his obligation generously. One of our friars, the superior of a monastery, interrupted an inferior who was confessing to him, made him stand up and repeat extra sigillum, a certain fault for which he wished to inflict a public penance: it was a breach of the seal, though my colleague was too subtle a casuist to admit it. I remember a priest who was confessor to an acquaintance of mine once saying to me of her: ‘Miss —— seems to be a very well educated person, she speaks quite smoothly on the most delicate points.’ I doubt whether my friend would have cared for me to know so much of her confession.
However, once the danger of identifying the individual concerned is precluded, the confessor is free to make whatever use he pleases of his acquired knowledge. It is added in theological works that it is extremely imprudent to discuss such matters before seculars, but that is only part of the economia of the priest with regard to the laity, not a moral obligation. And amongst themselves priests discuss their interesting experiences very freely; the professor of casuistry is usually a man of wide experience who gives his students the full benefit thereof. In their conferences they are most generous with their experiences. To discuss the relative wickedness of town and country, of large cities, of localities in a city is a common practice of missionaries. Such commentaries, however, are carefully restricted to sacerdotal circles: there is no doubt that any departure from the policy of unqualified secrecy would deeply impair the fidelity of the laity, and tend to withdraw them from that greatest focus of sacerdotal influence, the confessional.
And there is another reason why confessors have not thought it necessary to enter into the controversy to any important extent. The attacks upon the confessional have usually defeated their own object by emphasizing too strongly the accidental rather than the inherent and essential evil of the institution. Dark stories—which may quite possibly be true as exceptional cases—are circulated in connection with it, and the impression is at once urged that such practices are a normal, or at least a large, part of what is hidden under the veil of secrecy. The generalisation is fatal, for the Catholic apologist has little difficulty in pointing out the impossibility of such a state of things; besides, the days are happily gone by when the Catholic priesthood as a body could be accused of systematic and conscious immorality. The main contention of the critic having been thus met and answered, attention is diverted from the real evil of the confessional, which is not sufficiently realised by those who are unfamiliar with it.
The structures which are found in every Catholic church for the purpose of hearing confessions are quite exclusive of such an opinion. The penitent usually remains in sight of the congregation, and, in any case, priest and penitent are not in the same compartment: a wire gauze-work, set into the partition, enables them to talk in whispers, but contact is impossible. These ‘boxes’ or confessionals are open for inspection in any church. In hearing the confessions of nuns the precautions are still more stringent, as a rule; the confessor is enclosed in a kind of bureau, the nun remaining entirely outside.
One circumstance, however, should not be overlooked: it is, that the priest is not bound to hear every confession in the ‘box,’ and that he frequently hears them in less guarded places. Indeed, I have heard the confessions of a whole community of nuns where no such precautions existed: they entered singly and entirely unobserved into the room where I sat to hear them. Their usual confessor was a venerable and harmless old priest, and it was not thought necessary to alter the arrangements for me. During certain hours on Saturday, the priest sits in his box for all comers: outside those hours he will hear confessions in the sacristy or anywhere, and the anti-papal lecturer may find legitimate food for reflection in that section of his practice.
Confessions are also frequently heard at the private houses of the penitents. The Church does not sanction the practice with regard to people who are capable of attending church, but it is frequently necessary to hear the confessions of persons who are confined to bed. The priest is urged, in such cases, to leave doors open and take various precautions to avoid scandal, but those directions are seldom acted upon and would not be appreciated, as a rule, by the penitent herself. Cases are not unknown in which women have feigned or exaggerated illness for that purpose. But such appointments are attended with great danger, and cannot be widespread.
Indeed, I do not believe that there is any unusual amount of immorality in connection with the confessional; rather the reverse, for the legislation of the Church on that point is stringent and effective, and the priest is well aware that the confessional is the worst place in the world for him to indulge improper tendencies. He is involved in a network of regulations, and sooner or later his misconduct is bound to come to the knowledge of his authorities, with very disastrous consequences to himself. In the first place, as I explained in the last chapter, improper suggestion on the part of the confessor is a sin reserved to the bishop. He cannot say Mass until he has received absolution (for it is assumed that he has not lost all sense of obligation[2]), and no brother priest can absolve him from his fault: he must have recourse to the bishop, and it is safe to presume that he will not relapse for a considerable period. In the second place he is deprived of the power of absolving his accomplice—an attempt to do so is a sin reserved to the Pope, and, as every woman knows that such absolution is invalid, the misconduct is once more liable to come to the cognizance of the authorities. The second sin which is reserved to the Pope is a false denunciation of a confessor by a woman, so that one has a guarantee of the genuineness of such denunciations as are actually made.
Thus it is obviously ill-advised for the unfaithful priest to make an evil use of the confessional, for the danger of exposure is sternly prohibitive. A devout Roman Catholic is horrified at the very speculation; an impartial thinker, whose estimate of human nature is neither unduly raised by thoughts of special graces nor depressed by prejudice, will think of priests as men more than usually exposed to temptation and handicapped with an enforced celibacy, but will give them credit, on the whole, for an honest effort to realise that higher integrity which they profess. He will not think them superhuman with the Catholic, nor infrahuman with the ultra-Protestant: he will not believe that any of their habitual practices are inherently immoral, but he will expect the occasional lapses which no large body of men can prevent. And he will be perfectly right.
The danger of the priest is not in the confessional, it is the same as for any voluntary celibate, and need not be enlarged upon; though it must be remembered that, in the light of what has been said about the age of taking the vow, the priest must be regarded practically as an involuntary celibate. The fact that from time immemorial ecclesiastical legislation has returned again and again to the question of priests’ servants is significant enough. The house to house visits of the priests, and the visits he receives, are also principally of ladies, for the priest is idle in the hours that the husband is employed. Priests are, however, as a rule, extremely cautious in this regard.
Whatever may be said of the general integrity of the priest’s life it may be safely admitted that the occasional transgressions of his vow in connection with the confessional have been grossly exaggerated. And one unfortunate feature of the excess is that it has withdrawn attention from the essential hideousness of the ‘tribunal of penance.’ For in point of fact nothing could be more degrading, to priest and penitent alike, than the practice of auricular confession. It is bad enough for adult men and women to have to kneel weekly or monthly at the feet of a priest (usually one whom they know intimately), and detail every unworthy thought and act into which they have been betrayed, but for girls and young women to discuss their inmost thoughts and feelings with a person of the opposite sex, is vicious and lamentable. If they are still of a refined character such a practice is a source of exquisite pain, and often leads either to duplicity or to actual debasement; if they are less refined already the temptation to abuse their condition is overpowering.
When I first began to hear confession I was much impressed with the number of girls who unburdened their minds to me (I was practically a stranger to them) on some long-concealed transgression of an indelicate character. A Catholic girl usually selects a particular confessor (we were six in number at Forest Gate) and presents herself at his box every week, fortnight, or month. The priest learns to recognise her voice, if he does not know her already, and counts her amongst his regular penitents, of which every confessor is proud to possess a certain number. Week after week she comes with her small catalogue of the usual feminine maladies—fibs, tempers, and slanders—at last she is betrayed into some graver fault, or something she imagines, generally after it has taken place, to be serious. If she goes to another confessor her habitual director will know it, for she is bound to say how long it is since her last confession: he will in all probability form his own opinion on the matter—some confessors do not scruple to exact a repetition of the confession to themselves. To him, she is often quite unable to confess it after her long immunity from evil in his esteem; she therefore conceals, and continues her confessions and communions for months, even years, without confessing it. Now each such confession and communion, she has been taught, is as vile a sin as murder or adultery. She goes through life with her soul in her hands and the awful picture of a Catholic hell burning deeper into her; until at last, in an agony of fear, she crouches one day in the corner of the box and falters out the dread secret of her breaking heart. And it must be remembered that the subject of so much pain is often no real sin at all. The most unavoidable feelings and acts are confused with the most pernicious practices, and often regarded as ‘mortal sins.’
But a yet sadder category is the large number of girls who are actually corrupted by the practice of confession. Girls who would never dream of talking to their companions, even to their sisters or mothers, on certain points will talk without the least restraint to the priest. They are taught when young that such is the intention of Christ, that in the confessional every irregular movement (and to their vaguely disciplined moral sense the category embraces the whole of sexual physiology) must be revealed: they are reminded that nothing superfluous must be added, still that the sense of shame in the confessional must be regarded as a grave temptation of the evil one. So they learn to control it, then to lay it aside temporarily, and finally to lose it. They begin to confer with each other on the subject, to compare the impressibility, the inquisitiveness, the knowledge of different confessors, and make plots (they have admitted so much to me) to put embarrassing questions to priests.
For, although they frequently manifest a quick sense of shame and delicacy at the commencing period they are forced to be more circumstantial in their narratives. A girl will often try to fit in her less delicate transgressions between two common and more respectable peccadilloes, and only accuse herself in a general way of having been ‘rude,’ or immodest. No confessor can allow such a general accusation to pass: he is bound to recall her and question her minutely on the subject. The conversation which ensues is much better imagined than described; for by some curious process of reasoning (assisted by the light of faith) the Church of Rome has deduced from certain words of Christ that the confessor must have a detailed knowledge of every serious transgression before he can give absolution.
Finally, there is a still more curious and pitiable category of victims of the sacrament of penance. A missionary priest who travels from parish to parish is often warned that he will get certain women to confession who must be handled very carefully; they are practically monomaniacs of the system, and are found in many parishes in London. Sometimes they have a mania for denouncing priests to the bishop for solicitation, and in the hope of getting evidence they will entangle him in the crudest conversation. Sometimes they are women ‘with a history,’ which, in their morbid love of the secret conversation, they urge, freshly varnished and redecorated, upon every confessor they meet, and make him think that he has secured a Magdalen; frequently they are embryo novelists who deliberately concoct the most shameless stories in order to gratify their craving for that peculiar tête-à-tête which they have grown accustomed to in the confessional.
This, then, is the essential, inalienable evil of the confessional. It may not be so directly productive of gross acts as is frequently supposed, but it has a corrosive, corruptive influence that marks it out as an object of horror to all save those who have been familiar with it from childhood. And yet this system, of so grave a responsibility, has the most slender basis of all the institutions of the Church of Rome. The reasoning by which it is deduced from Scripture is a masterpiece of subtlety—certainly ‘unaided’ reason could not have achieved it. ‘Whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins ye shall retain they are retained,’ is the sole text bearing on the subject: the Catholic method of inferring the obligation of confession from the latter part of the text is interesting, and yet very simple. The apostles have the power of retaining sin: if it were possible to obtain forgiveness in any other way than by absolution from the apostles or their successors the power of retaining sin would be nugatory; therefore there is only one way of obtaining forgiveness—by absolution, after full confession. This argument is strengthened by another powerful one from tradition, from the fact that, in the fourth century, the Church claimed, against the Novatians, the power of absolving from all sins; but what was meant in the fourth century by confession and absolution is not quite clear even to Catholic theologians, and an outsider may be excused for not seeing the force of the argument.
The fact is that, when the Church first began (in the thirteenth century) to talk about the obligation of confession, it had not the same rationalistic spirit to face which it has to-day. It found that a practice had somehow developed amongst the faithful which could be utilised as a most powerful lever, and it proceeded to make the practice obligatory: the newly founded religious orders were administering their spiritual narcotics to humanity, and the law was accepted with docility. Hence, in our own days, when the Church must provide a more rational basis for its tenets and institutions, the search for proofs of the divine institution of the practice is found to be more than usually difficult to the expert interpreters of the Church of Rome.
Apart, however, from its feeble dogmatic defence it is usual for preachers and writers to expatiate upon the moral advantages of the practice; sermons on the subject are conspicuously frequent, for it is well known that many Anglicans are deterred by it from passing over to Rome. One of our most powerful preachers at Forest Gate gave a course of sermons on the confessional for the avowed purpose of ‘converting’ a non-Catholic solicitor who attended our Church, and who was thought to be deterred by the confessional. It is urged that confession gives a certain relief to the soul burdened with the consciousness of sin—which, in the majority of cases, is the reverse of the truth, and in any case does not touch the question of obligatory confession; and especially the confessional is lauded as a great preventive of sin. Whatever may be thought of the intrinsic probability of such an issue (which the preacher exclusively regards) we must candidly admit that, in the estimation of the community at large, Catholics are neither more nor less moral than their fellow-countrymen. To compare Catholic countries against Protestant would be fruitless and unprofitable: there is not a country or city in the civilised world which has not its distinguished advocates for the title of ‘the most immoral.’ London, Christiania, and Berlin, if we must strike an average of opinions, are neither better nor worse than Paris, Rome, or Madrid. But within our own frontiers there is a large section of frequenters of the confessional, and a comparison of their average lives with those of their fellow citizens reflects no special credit upon their institutions as moral prophylactics. Liverpool and Glasgow are much more Catholic than Manchester or London: missionaries admit that they are much more immoral—setting apart the Parisian immorality of West London of which the missionary is blissfully ignorant.
And, indeed, the confessional does not exercise any general restraining influence upon its frequenters. No doubt a priest is often able to exert a good influence over his habitual penitent, but, on the other hand, large numbers of young people are encouraged in vice by the facility of absolution. I have been informed by penitents, on more than one occasion, that they have sinned more readily under the influence of the thought of confession. In certain monastic or quasi-monastic institutions the weekly confession to the chaplain does exercise a certain degree of influence, but even here nature has its revenge. The temptation to conceal and the practice of concealing is so great that the Church commands the introduction of an extraordinary confessor every three months, and commands each monk or nun or cleric to present himself: in discharging that function I have not only met cases of long concealment, as might be expected, but I have known them to deliberately indulge their morbid tendencies in the prospect of my coming. I have heard confessions in very many parts of England and abroad, I have read much casuistic literature which is permeated with confessional experience, and I have conferred on the subject with missionaries who have heard hundreds of thousands of confessions; and I am convinced that the majority of Catholics are unaffected by the confessional. They are bound to confess once every year; if they wish to pass as men of ordinary piety they confess every month or oftener; but in the whirligig of life the confessional is forgotten and has no influence whatever on their morality.
That the institution is a source of great power to the Church at large is easily understood: it creates a vast gulf between clergy and laity, and considerably accentuates the superiority of the former. But to the large number of individual priests the function is, naturally, very distasteful. Apart from the obvious unpleasantness of the task it is much more fatiguing than would be supposed. Three or four hours continuous hearing I have found very exhausting, and a missionary has frequently to spend seven or eight hours per day in the box. Still there are many priests who manifest a positive predilection for the work, and they will sit for hours in their boxes waiting—one could not help comparing them to patient spiders—for the arrival of penitents.
The obligation of confessing commences at the age of seven years and is incumbent upon every member of the Church, clergy and laity alike, even on the pope, who has a simple harmless Franciscan friar serving him in that capacity. The theory is that the obligation of confessing commences when the possibility of contracting grave sin is first developed, and in the eyes of the Church of Rome the average child of seven is capable of meriting eternal damnation by its acts. Needless to say, the confession of the average child of seven or eight is a mere farce: they used to be marched over to us from the schools every three months, after a careful drilling from their teachers, but scarcely one child in ten had the faintest glimmering of an idea of the nature of the operation they were subjected to. Few of them could even be sufficiently instructed to fulfil the material part of the ceremony: they mixed the various parts of the formulæ in the most unintelligible fashion, and generally wished to retreat before they had received the essential object of their coming—absolution.
The method of the ceremony is described in any Roman Catholic prayer book. The penitent first kneels for ten or fifteen minutes in the church and, with the aid of the minute catalogue of sins in his book, recalls his transgressions since his last confession. Entering the box, and usually asking the priest's blessing, he states the occasion of his last confession, so that the confessor may form a correct estimate of his sinfulness. He then states his faults, the number of times he has committed each, and any aggravating circumstances; if the confessor is not satisfied he questions him and elicits further details. Then premising, as a rule, a few words of exhortation or reproof, he imposes a penance and dismisses him with absolution, after an act of sorrow and a promise to amend. It is hardly necessary to add, in these enlightened days, that no money is ever exacted or received for absolution: the stories circulated by certain clerical travellers of lists of prices of absolution seen in Continental churches are entirely devoid of foundation—if any lists existed outside their heated imaginations they were probably lists of prices of chairs or of votive candles. It may be added, too, that an ‘indulgence’ has no reference whatever to future sin, but is a remission of purgatorial punishment due to sin, already forgiven, which the Church of Rome believes herself empowered to give. That indulgences are still practically sold cannot be denied for a moment: not that a written indulgence is now ever handed over for so much hard cash—such bargains have proved too disastrous to the Church—but papal blessings, richly indulgenced crosses and rosaries, &c., are well known rewards of the generous almsgiver.
A curious instance is mentioned in Dr. Tyndall’s ‘Sound’ of a church in which certain acoustic peculiarities enable the listener at a distant point to hear the whispers in the confessional: it is said that a husband had the equivocal pleasure of hearing his own wife’s confession. Such contingencies are foreseen and provided for in theological works: the seal of confession applies not only to the priest, but to every person who comes to a knowledge of confessional matter. Indeed, it happens not infrequently that the penitents waiting outside overhear the words of priest or penitent, especially when one or other is a little deaf. At a church in Manchester one busy Saturday evening the priest interrupted his labours to inquire the object of a scuffle outside his box. As usual there was a quarrel about precedence amongst the mixed crowd that waited their turn at the door. A boy was complaining of being deprived of his legitimate place, and when the priest’s head appeared he appealed to him with the startling intelligence: ‘Please, father, I was next to the woman who stole the silk umbrella!’ And in my young days I remember that, on one occasion when we had been marched to church for confessing, we who were waiting our turn were startled to hear our stolid and venerable confessor audibly exclaim, repeating with horrified accent some statement of his youthful penitent, ‘Eighty-three times!’ We knew little about the seal in those days, and the boy himself did not grudge us the joke we had against him for many a day.
The penance which is inflicted usually consists of a few prayers. Corporal penances are now practically unknown, and even long and frequently repeated prayer is rarely imposed in England; in Ireland a prayer that will last half an hour, and will have to be repeated daily for months, is often imposed on the luckless Celts. I soon found the utter uselessness of imposing heavy penances from the number of people who accused themselves of having neglected their penance; and those who did not curtail it hurried through it with precipitate haste. For it is customary to kneel and say the penance immediately after the confession, and as there are some score of idle witnesses calculating its severity from the time expended on it, and thence inferring the gravity of the debt, brevity is a feature of some importance. Hence I never imposed more than five or six Pater Nosters. On one occasion I imposed the usual ‘Four Hail Marys’ on a quiet, unoffending old priest: he was slightly deaf, and, changing his posture of deep humility, he looked up at me indignantly, exclaiming ‘Forty Hail Marys!’
Short penances were not the only deviation from our theological rules which I allowed myself: I soon abandoned the hateful practice of interrogating on malodorous subjects. At first when I heard a general accusation I merely asked whether the morbidity in question was serious or not (for if it were not serious there was no obligation to interrogate): I was, however, so indignantly repulsed when the lady did happen to be on the safe side that I was compelled to resort to the usual Socratic dialogue. It was not long, however, before I entirely abandoned the practice, and simply allowed my penitents to say what they thought necessary. Theologians will tell me that on that point alone (if there were, no others) I am damned eternally—for I shall certainly never repent of it—but I could not convince myself that such an order ever emanated from the lips of the gentle, woman-loving Christ. However, the Church imposes the obligation under pain of mortal sin, and I do not doubt that some of my perplexed colleagues will see in that sin the reason of the withdrawal of the light of faith from me. In any case the whole institution had become profoundly hateful and repulsive to me, and I eagerly embraced an opportunity to escape from it soon after I had commenced, by a course of study at Louvain University.
- ↑ Though this practice has not yet become extinct (see postea, p. 191).
- ↑ In that case his infidelity might not be revealed until death, when any priest can absolve. A curious case was mentioned (by a priest) in the Daily Telegraph a few years ago. At the death of a Catholic military chaplain a woman presented herself to the army authorities as his wife, and actually produced a certificate to that effect.