IN answering the question why priests should wed, there are reasons and there are reasons.

A few of them shall be given, not in malice, not in innuendo, not from love of nastiness and obscenity, but because Americans owe it to themselves to read what shall be written, and, if they choose and will, to read between the lines as well. Naturally, one recoils from such work as this. There is nothing in it but a record of shame and sorrow It is uncovering the sewer of our American life, and showing what is being dumped into it of badness from beyond the sea. It opens the dark passages of European life, and reveals the priesthood to the eyes of all, not alone as they have long been seen in Rome, in Italy, Spain, France, and elsewhere, but as they are living in our midst, as they have had power to live in the Old World, and be the pestilence of Christianity, the plague-spot of morality, and the outrageous exception to much they might be and ought to have been. Paul described them as men "who love themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, without natural affection, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth."' Because of these characteristics of the Roman-Catholic priesthood, perilous times have come to these last days.

America is the land of homes. What blesses them, helps everybody. What curses them, injures everybody. It is because the homes of millions are invaded and imperilled by the conduct of priests, that attention should be called to some of the many reasons why priests should wed. Because Roman Catholic priests, the minions of a foreign oath-bound despotism, are doing their utmost, not to build up the Republic in the faith-of our fathers, but to sap the foundations they laid, and despoil the people of their legitimate hopes, storm-signals should be raised, and warnings must be sounded out from pulpit, press-room, and platform, as never before.

A million of women, and more than a million of girls, are asked questions by over two hundred thousand priests, which, if taken upon the lips of any so-called Christian minister in the presence of wife and daughter, would debar him his pulpit, place on his reputation an ineffaceable stain, and, if persisted in, would lead to banishment if not to summary punishment. Why should priests in America be permitted to say and do what other religious teachers could not be tolerated in doing? Is there any reason why there should be one standard for Romanists, and another for Christians, Jews, or infidels? Have Romish priests a right to invade virtue, trample on justice, degrade womanhood, and despoil her of all that makes life valuable? Many are fond of reckoning Roman Catholics as a part of the Christian world. Let such demand that the priest marry, and get out of the home as a marplot, and enter it only as a religious teacher. Could they do go, it would revolutionize society, give the husband his place as the head of the household, and bar the path to almost universal licentiousness. The theory that a woman may obey the priest, and, without sin, be to him all he desires, and that she can never be called to account to God for any action she may have performed to please him, compels millions to go wrong.

In 1845 prostitution among Romanists in Albany,, N. Y., was charged by William Hogan, once a priest in Albany, and chaplain of the Legislature. He said,' "The Roman Catholics of Albany had, during about two years previous to my arrival among them, three Irish priests alternately with them, occasionally preaching, but always hearing confessions. . . . As soon as I got settled in Albany, I had, of course, to attend to the duty of auricular confession, and, in less than two months, found that those three priests, during the time they were there, were the fathers of between sixty and one hundred children, besides having debauched many who had left the place previous to their confinement. Many of these children were by married women, who were among the most zealous supporters of these vagabond priests, and whose brothers and relatives were ready to wade knee-deep in blood for the holy, immaculate, infallible Church of Rome."

The following statement compels us to ask if priests believe?

"There is a circumstance connected with this, says Mr. Hogan, "that renders the conduct of these priests almost frightfully atrocious. There are in many of the Roman-Catholic churches, things-as Michelet properly calls them, 'sentry-boxes-called confessionals. These are generally situated in the body of the church, and priests hear confessions in them; though the priest and lady-penitent are only separated by a sliding-board, which can be moved in any direction the confessor pleases, leaving him an d the penitent ear to ear, breath to breath, eye to eye, lip to lip, if he pleases. There were none of them in the Romish, church in Albany, and those priests had to hear confessions in the sacristy of the church. This is a small room back of the altar, in which the eucharist, containing, according to the Romish belief, real body and blood of Christ, is kept while mass is not celebrating in the chapel. This room is always fastened by a lock and key of the beat workmanship, and the key kept by the priest day and night. In the sacristy containing the wafer, which the priests blasphemously adore, the lecherous priests committed habitually those acts of immorality and crime. "I If this was so in Albany in 1845, why may it not be so there and elsewhere at this hour? Do Americans think at all of that state of society which exists in this country where priests rule 7 Popery has not to be in the ascendant in this country, that priests may rule. Who interferes with their damnable acts I Romanists on the jury refuse to convict a priest. Women uphold him in wrong-doing. No matter what he does, he goes back to his altar and to his adulteries and debaucheries, and Americans say it is none of their business. But it is their business. Sin palliated and condoned, lowers the standard of morality, and injures society. The loose ideas of marriage and wedlock come largely from the influence exerted by priests. If a priest can take a man's wife to his room, or to a hotel, and enjoy her society, a husband can do the same. It is pitiable; it is terrible; and there must be an appeal and a remedy.

One sabbath afternoon, in Music Hall, a converted nun handed in this request: "Pray for my poor, benighted relations who are yet in the bonds of iniquity and the gall of bitterness. My poor little niece, who is now in Boston, out of work, was put into a convent when three years of age, and has been since then the mother of two children before she was nineteen years of age, one living and one dead. She was living with a priest when these children were born; is now turned out upon the world, without work, without a home, and can neither read nor write." This is but a specimen of hundreds of letters which reveal the extent of this iniquity, about which the American people know so little and care less. The priest is in the way.

In M. Michelet's "Auricular Confession and Direction, " we find this:

"The family is in question; that home where we would all fain repose, after so many useless efforts, so many illusions destroyed. We return home very wearied,-do we find repose there? We must not dissimulate. We must frankly confess to ourselves the real state of things. There exists in the bosom of society, in the family circle, a serious dissension, nay, the most serious of all dissensions."

"We may talk with our mothers, our wives, or our daughters, on all those matters, about which we talk with our acquaintances, on business, on the news of the day, but not at all on matters nearest the heart, -on religion, on God, on the soul."

"Take the instant when you would find yourself united with your family in one common feeling, in the repose of the evening, round the family-table. There in your home, at your own hearth, venture to utter a word on these matters. Your mother sadly shakes her head; your wife contradicts you; your daughter, although silent, disapproves. They are on one side of the table, you on the other alone."

"It would seem as if in the midst of them, opposite you, sataninvisible enemy to contradict what you say."

"The invisible enemy here spoken of is the priest."

Is that true I If it is true, ought it to remain true;

God's word says, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." "Wherefore [said Christ] they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Romanism sets aside all these commands. The priest comes between the man and his wife, between parents and their children. The relation is in defiance of God's word and the welfare of the home, and should be opposed and abrogated.

As confessor, the priest possesses the secret of a woman's soul: "he knows every half-formed hope, every dim desire, every thwarted feeling. The priest, as spiritual director, animates that woman with his own ideas, moves her with his own will, fashions her according to his own fancy. And this priest is doomed to celibacy. He is a man, but is bound to pluck from his heart the feelings of a man. If he is without fault, he makes desperate use of his power over those confiding in him. If he is sincerely devout, he has to struggle with his passions, and there is a perilous chance of his being defeated in that struggle. And even should he come off victorious, still the mischief done is incalculable and irreparable. The woman's virtue has been preserved by an accident, by a power extraneous to herself. She was wax in her spiritual director's hands; she has ceased to be a person, and is become a thing. The priest is the cause of all this, and is a plague. "

There is something diabolical in the institution of celibacy. The history of its origin is a story of brutality seldom matched. Imagine the ministry of today compelled to separate from their wives, see them rated as bad; also from their children, and behold them rated as bastards. Can anything be more in,. famous, more cruel, more unnatural!

The battle against marriage in the priesthood culminated in 1073, during the reign of Pope Greg. cry VII, known as Hildebrand. His character has been outlined by innumerable pens. His austere virtue, simple piety, vast knowledge, and ability to rule men; his well-known intrepidity, which seemed to delight in confronting the most powerful; a stern singleness of purpose, and yet a subtle policy which bordered on craft,--gave him the support and confidence of those who were ruled by We imperious will.

was the absolute independency of the clergy and of the Pope; of the great prelates throughout Latin Christianity, down to the lowest functionary, whose person was to become sacred. The clergy were to become a separate and inviolable caste. It is a sad story. Who can depict the bitterness and the sorrow of heart, when husbands and fathers were compelled by a cruel edict to separate from wives and children, in opposition to the teachings of Scripture and the promptings of human nature? The act was cruelty personified. No wonder that some of the wives committed suicide, others died in their beds from grief or by their own hands, and others fought for their rights against fearful odds. With many of the clergy, it was a matter of deliberate conviction that they ought to marry, founded not only on the authority of the Apostle Paul, on the usage of the primitive Church justified by the law of Eastern Christendom, and asserted to rest on a conscientious assurance of the evils resulting from enforced celibacy. They believed that marriage was God's own appointment for man's true happiness, the propagation of the race; and the propensity to obey that law is so strong, that, without compliance, health is impaired, morality is weakened, and the voice of religion disobeyed. It is a well-established fact that health, the foundation of happiness, is beat insured by the marriage relation. There is a mysterious magnetic bond which binds husband and wife together, unknown to those in celibacy-like the needle to the pole it rules,--and is explained by saying, it is the law of God.

"Celibacy leaves men and women liable in daily intercourse to be enticed, drawn magnetically by natural impulses into the vortex of animal passions, which, unrestrained, become sin of a corroding and deadly nature, proving clearly it is not good for man to be alone, and that to obey God's law is the sure path to true happiness as surely as sunshine produces health and growth."'

"What a life, what a condition, is that of our priests? Love is forbidden them,-marriage especially: women are given up to them. They may not have one of their own, and yet live familiarly with all, nay, in confidential, intimate privity of their hidden actions, of all their thoughts. An innocent girl first hears the priest under her mother's wing: he then calls her to him, speaks alone with her, and in the first to talk of sin to her before she can have known it. When instructed, she marries; when married, he still confesses and governs her. He has preceded the husband in her affections, and will always maintain himself in them. What she would not venture to confide to her mother, or confess to her husband, he, a priest, must know it, asks it, hears it, and yet shall not be her lover. How could he, indeed I Is he not tonsured? He hears whispered in his ear, by a young woman, her faults, her passions, desires, weaknesses, receives her sighs without feeling agitated, and he is five and twenty!

"To confess a woman! Imagine what it is. At the end of a church a species of closet, or sentry-box, is erected against the wall, where the priest awaits, in the evening after vespers, his young penitent, whom he loves, and who knows it: love cannot be concealed from the beloved person. You will stop me there, -his character of priest, his education, his vows....I reply that there is no vow which holds good; that every village cure just come from the seminary, 'healthy, robust, and vigorous, doubtless loves one of his parishioners. It cannot be otherwise: and, if you contest this, I will say more still; and that is, he loves them all, -those, at least, of his own age: but he prefers one, who appears to him, if not more beautiful than the others, more modest and wiser, and whom he would marry; he would make her a virtuous, pious wife, if it were not for the Pope. He sees her daily, and meets her at church or elsewhere, and, sitting opposite her in the winter evenings, he imbibes, imprudent man! the poison of her eyes.

"Now I ask you, when he hears that one coming the next day, and approaching the confessional, and when he recognizes her footsteps, and can say, It is she, what is passing in the mind of the poor confessor? Honesty, duty, mere resolutions, are here of little use without peculiarly heavenly grace. I will suppose him a saint; unable to fly, he apparently groans, sighs, recommends himself to God; but, if he is only a man, he shudders, desires, and already, unwillingly, without knowing it, perhaps, he hopes. She arrives, kneels down at his knees before him whose heart leaps and palpitates. You are young, sir, or you have been so: between ourselves, what do you think of such a situation for your daughter or your wife, and such a man I Alone most of the time, and having these walls, these vaulted roofs, as sole witnesses, they talk--of what? alas I Of all that is not innocent. They talk, or rather murmur, in low voice; and their lips approach each other, and their breaths mingle. This lasts for an hour or more, and is often renewed.

"Do you think I invent? This scene takes place such as I describe it; is renewed daily by thousands of young priests, with as many young girls whom they love, because they are men; whom they confess in this manner, because they are priests; and whom they do not marry, because the Pope is opposed to it. . . .

"The priest has the spiritual care of her he loves; her soul is in his hands. He is connected with her by the most sacred ties; his interest in her he disguises to himself under the cloak of spiritual anxiety. He can always quiet the voice of conscience by an equivoque, --the mystic language of religion; and what guilt is shrouded under this equivoque, the history of priestcraft may show. Perler l'amour, c'est faire l'amour. To speak love is to make love, especially when this man is a priest, that is to say, a mediator between the woman and God, and who says, 'God hears you through me: through me he will reply.' This man whom she has seen at the altar, and there invested with all the sacred robes and sacred associations of his office; whom she has visited in the confessional, and there laid bare her soul to him; whose visits she has received in her boudoir, and there submitted to his direction; this man, whom she worships, --is supposed to be an idea, a priest; no one supposing him to be a man, with a man's passions!'

Llorente (§ 111, ch, 88, art. 2, ed. 1817) relates that, when he was secretary to the Inquisition, a Capuchin was brought before that tribunal who directed a community of beguines, and had seduced nearly all of them by persuading them that, by yielding to his solicitations, they were not leaving the road to perfection. He told each of them, in the confessional, that he had received from God a singular favor. "Our Lord," he said, "has deigned to show himself to me in the sacrament, and has said to me, 'Almost all the souls that thou dost direct here are pleasing to me, but especially such a one [the Capuchin named her to whom he spoke]. She is already so perfect that she has conquered every passion except carnal desire, which torments her very much. Therefore, wishing virtue to have its reward, and that she should serve me tranquilly, I charge thee to give her a dispensation, but only to be made use of by thee. She need speak of it to no confessor; that would be useless, as with such a dispensation she cannot sin.'"

"Out of seventeen beguines, of which the community was composed, the intrepid Capuchin gave the dispensation to thirteen, who were discreet for some length of time; but at last one of them fell ill, expected to die, and discovered every thing, declaring that she had never been able to believe in the dispensation, but that she had profited by it."

"I remember," said Llorente, "having said to him, 'But, Father, is it not astonishing that this singular virtue should have belonged exactly to the thirteen young and handsome ones, and not at all to the other four who were ugly and old?' He coolly replied. 'The Holy Spirit inspires where it listeth."

The same author, in the same chapter, while reproaching Protestants with having exaggerated the corruptions of confessors, avows that "in the sixteenth century the Inquisition had imposed on women the obligation of denouncing guilty confessors; but the denunciations were so numerous that the penitents were declared dispensed from denouncement."

It was William Hogan who said, "The title of Christian land should not be given to this nor to any country which permits the cowl to shelter adulteries of this sort.. Are the sons of freemen," he asks, "required to countenance, nay, asked to build impassable walls around, a licentious, lecherous, profligate horde of foreign monks and priests, who choose to come among us and erect little fortifications, which they call. nunneries, for their protection, and for the gratification of their passions? Shall they own, by law and by charter, places where to bury, hidden from the public eye, the victims of their lust, and the murdered offspring of their concupiscence? Beware, Americans I There are bounds beyond which sinners cannot go. Bear in mind the fact that the same God who can limit the sphere of an individual's crimes, can also limit those of a nation. You have flourished. Take heed lest you begin to decay before you come to full maturity. Already can I see the hectic flush of moral consumption upon the fair face of America; already can I see a demon bird of ill omen, plunging its poisoned beak into the very vitals of your national existence, stopping here, and stopping there, only to dip his wings in the life-stream of your national existence, with the sole view of giving its speed more momentum, until it encompasses the whole length and breadth of your country."

The decay of nations is brought about by infidelity to the God of nations; and how can this country prosper if it aids Popery with its idolatries? It cannot be. A nation, to prosper, must be rectus in curia, right at least before God. The warning is needed. Will it be heeded?

Chapter 3