It is possible for a priest in the great religio-politico institution designated the Roman Catholic Church to utter words of truth. He may have an unscriptural motive in his statement, or he may intend an application foreign to that conveyed by his words, but the statement as made may be factual. A good example is the following:
"Behold!" said Christ, "I am with you all dayS even to the consummation of the world." With these words echoing in their ears, the Apostles went out into the countries of the then known world, preaching the gospel fearlessly to every creature. They quailed not before the lions in the Roman arena, nor before the pitch and tar with which they were to be burned alive to illumine the gladiatorial contests of the Romans. Why? Because they realized that they were speaking not in their own names, but in the name of Jesus Christ. Because they realized that they were His divinely appointed ambassadors, clothed by the Master with plenipotentiary power to speak and teach in His name. That is why St. Paul was able to say with truth: "Let a man so regard us as ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries of God." (1 Cor. 4:1).
The paragraph as quoted is absolutely correct, but the application to a modern priestcraft is not correct. We endorse the statement just as it stands, because it is proven to be true by both the word of the Lord and history. But the Romish priests are not the successors of the apostles and any attempted application of the statement to them is delusive and deceptive.
The second great power of the priestly office is that of pardoning. When the priest raises aloft his right hand and pronounces the words of pardon over the sinner in the tribunal of confession, the shackles are torn from the soul of the penitent. The priest pardons as effectively as if the words fell from the lips of Christ. It is a power which transcends that of kings and emperors. The power of kings is over the bodies of men. But they stand impotent before the kingdom of the soul. The hand of the priest reaches up beyond the horizon of the sky, and with golden keys unlocks the treasury of God's mercy and forgiveness and applies them to the souls of men.
The priest preserves inviolate the secrecy of the confessional even at the cost of life itself. Under no circumstances does he ever reveal the slightest imperfection breathed into his ear in confession.
The theory of Rome is that the secret confessional is a court of justice, over which the priest presides as jurist, jury, attorney and executioner. To this court the penitent comes, discloses his acts and receives his sentence, or pronouncement of innocence.
Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux, in his Exposition, page 33, said: "We believe that Jesus Christ has been pleased that those who have submitted themselves to the government of the Church by baptism, and who have since violated the laws of the Gospel, should come and submit themselves to the judgment of the same Church, in the tribunal of penance, where she exercises the power which is given her, of remitting and retaining sins (Matt. 18:18; John 20:23)....This penitential court of justice being so necessary a curb to licentiousness--so plentiful a source of wise admonition--so sensible a consolation of souls afflicted by their sins, when their absolution is not only declared in general terms, but when they are in reality absolved by the authority of Jesus Christ, after a particular examination and knowledge of the case."
This Catholic authority states that there is a tribunal of penance, that it constitutes a court of justice, that here violators submit to the judgment of the church, and absolution is granted by the authority of Christ, and such absolution is given only after examination of the case. Thus, each parish priest is judge and jury, and from his decision no appeal can be made. He is a local priest but the supreme court.
To sustain our statement we quote from Grounds of Catholic Doctrine, page 22: "Christ has made the pastors of His Church His judges in the court of conscience, with commission and authority to bind or loose, to forgive or to retain sins, according to the merits of the cause and the disposition of the penitents. Now, as no judge can pass sentence without having a full knowledge of the cause, which cannot be had in this kind of causes which regards men's consciences, but by their own confession, it clearly follows, that He who has made the pastors of the Church the judges of men's consciences, has also laid an obligation upon the faithful to lay open the state of their consciences to them, if they hope to have their sins remitted."
The confession booth is thus a secret court in which a man probes the conscience of another and passes sentence upon the victim of error. Such a thing is unknown to the Holy Scriptures. But what passages are twisted and wrested to uphold auricular confession?
One is James 5:16, about which Grounds of Catholic Doctrine has this to say: "'Confess therefore your sins one to another,' that is to the priests or elders of the church, whom the apostles ordered to be called for (verse 14)." An examination of the passage does not prove what Rome would like for it to prove. It is against auricular confession to a priest. In the first place, the elders are not priests in an official sense. After James gave instruction to call the elders in under certain circumstances, he does not say to confess your sins unto them, but rather, "Confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another." When one disciple of the Lord confesses his sin to another, it is one of God's priests confessing his error to another of God's priests, but the confession is mutual, just as the prayers are to be.
Another passage cited by Rome is Acts 19:18: "Many also of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices." Instead of this being a secret confession whispered in privacy in a secluded booth, it was an open acknowledgment of practices which had previously been indulged, but which were now discovered to be in contravention of divine precepts. That this is true, is further suggested by the next verse which says, "And a number of those who practiced magical arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all." Every text which Rome adduces for her confessional will be found under close scrutiny to apply to public confession and not to private or secret confession to a human tribunal.
The statement, "The priest pardons as effectively as if the words fell from the lips of Christ" borders upon blasphemy. It is a pretentious, proud and arrogant assertion, but it is without any authority from God. Nowhere do the holy apostles ever hint at such a tribunal as that about which Rome prates. When the incestuous member at Corinth was determined to be guilty, the whole congregation when assembled, acted upon his case; when he repented the whole congregation was instructed to forgive and comfort him. But their forgiveness was for the reproach brought upon the congregation, and consisted of a remission of their own censure as evidenced in the act of formal exclusion from fellowship. Fornication is a sin against God and can only be forgiven by God. But, if auricular confession was the means of obtaining pardon, why did Paul not advise this both to the congregation and the penitent? If the apostles had such power, why did they not once refer to it? John declares, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). He does not say, "If any man sin, we have a judicial tribunal in which one may confess and receive absolution."
The hand of a priest can reach no higher than that of any humble supplicant. He has no golden key that is not afforded unto all alike. Every child of God is invited to "have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which He opened for us through the curtain of His flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10:19-22). The golden key belongs to every immersed believer, for every such person is "a priest of God." Any special priest who claims exclusive right to unlock the treasury of God is a usurper and a pretentious despoiler of God's citizenry.
The sacrifice which every Catholic priest stands ready to make to preserve this trust inviolate is illustrated by the following historical incident. In 1899 Father Dumoulin, a French priest, was charged with the crime of murder. The sexton had murdered and robbed a wealthy woman. To throw suspicion from himself he dipped the smoking revolver in the woman's blood and placed it in Father Dumoulin's room. Then to seal the lips of the priest, he went to confession to Father Dumoulin, accusing himself of the murder.
Circumstantial evidence pointed to the priest. Knowing how secure he was behind that sacramental seal, knowing that the priest could not open those lips to reveal the guilty person even to save his own life, the sexton gave testimony convicting the priest. He was given a life sentence worse than death--life imprisonment at hard labor on Devil's Island under the tropical sun, whither France sends her worst criminals. Suffering the loss of his good name, the ostracism of his friends and a public ignominy that was more painful than death itself, Father Dumoulin, like the good priest that he was, remained faithful to his trust.
For twenly-five years he toiled under the burning rays of the tropical sun among the outcasts of mankind, guarding ever the secret in his bosom. In those twenty-five years he saw his mother die of a broken heart, carrying to her grave the blight of her son's imprisonment. Twenty-five years of grinding convict toil had left him with grey hairs, a face deep lined, a body broken and bent, on the edge of the grave.
In a wretched hovel in a slum district in Paris a man lying on a bare cot is calling hysterically for a priest before he dies. As the priest enters, he shouts aloud: "I am guilty of the murder for which Father Dumoulin was condemned. I sealed his lips with confession and threw the guilt on him." Unwilling to face his God with that foul crime upon his soul, he seeks forgiveness through the very agency of confession whose inviolable secrecy he perverted to convict an innocent priest.
CLEARED AFTER 25 YEARS
What a tardy retribution that could not undo those twenty-five years of mental torture, that could not recall the dead from their graves, nor reveal to them his innocence. And yet that is precisely what every priest in Christendom would willingly undergo rather than reveal the tiniest venial sin breathed into his ear in confession. Such is the absolute, impenetrable and inviolable secrecy with which a priest guards the contents of every confession.
This purely prejudicial material has not one thing to do with the issue. The title of the booklet by Dr. O'Brien is "The Priesthood: A Divine Institution." Does the fact that a priest refuses to reveal secrets breathed into his ear prove that the priesthood of Roman Catholicism is divinely ordained? Does it prove that auricular confession is an institution of heaven? Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the condemned Communistic traitors, went to their death without revealing a single secret concerning their conspirators. Would this prove that Communism is a divine institution?
Can that be a divine institution which prompts men to lie and even do so under a solemn judicial oath? Yet "the seal of confession" does just that. This is proven by an excerpt from the work of Rev. Peter Dens, D.D., on "The Nature of Confession and Obligation of the Seal," as translated by the monk of La Trappe, E. Zosinius. At a meeting of the Roman Catholic prelates in Ireland, held on September 14, 1808, it was agreed that Dens' "Complete Body of Theology" was the best book extant on the subject. Let us note these quotations from it.
"What is the seal of sacramental
confession?"
Answer: "It is the obligation or duty
of concealing those things which are learned from sacramental
confession."
"Can a case be given in which it is lawful to
break the sacramental seal?"
Answer: "It cannot, though life be
forfeited, or a commonwealth be destroyed."
"What answer, then, ought a confessor to give
when questioned concerning a truth which he knows from
sacramental confession only?"
Answer: "He ought to answer, that he
does not know it, and, if it be necessary, to confirm the same
with an oath."
To deliberately falsify, and then to ask God to witness the lie as truth is certainly taking His name in vain. Yet we are asked to believe that such a system is heroic, courageous and commendatory. But the whole truth is that "the seal" can be broken. Liguori, the famed Catholic historian, quoted so frequently by Alexander Campbell in his debate with Right Rev. John B. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati, declares that "the seal" must not be broken lest the confession be rendered odious, but he also says that the confessor may secure licence of the penitent, and that such licence may be granted in writing or orally. Since the Roman Catholic is taught to regard the priest as God in the confessional, it is evident that to refuse to submit to a demand for such licence would be to fight against God, in his superstitious mind.
The writer mentions "the sacrifice which every Catholic priest stands ready to make to preserve the trust inviolate." Such a sacrifice does not prove that the trust itself is worthy. It may demonstrate the belief of the priest in his trust, and even show the consistency with which he views it, but that still does not establish the righteousness of the trust. The fact that a man is willing to die for a thing, does not prove the thing itself is true, although it may demonstrate that he believes it to be so. Men, like Horatius, might die as willingly for pagan gods, as Christians would for the true and living God.
"Then outspake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?"No account of suffering upon the part of a priest can establish the scripturality of auricular confession. It is a miserable imposture spawned during the darkest days of the world and religion, when the sun of intellect hid her face because of the pollutions of a profligate priesthood. It became a dogma and an obligatory practice of the Roman Church at the Lateran Council, in 1215 A. D., under Pope Innocent III. Not one trace of it, as a dogma, can be found prior to that year.
St. John Chrysostom, from whose celebrated works, Rome loves to quote, said in his homily on Psalm 50: "We do not request you to go confess your sins to any of your fellow-men, but only God."
In his Homily V, De incomprehensibili De natura, Vol. 1, he says: "Therefore I beseech you, always confess your sins to God! I, in no way, ask you to confess them to me. To God alone should you expose the wounds of your soul and from Him alone expect the cure. Go to Him, then, and you shall not be cast off, but healed. For, before you utter a single word, God knows your prayer."
It is questionable whether the priest undergoes any more mental torture than that which is suffered by a refined and modest woman who must be subjected to questioning and prodding relative to her innermost thoughts, and who is forced to disclose to a bachelor, the most intimate feelings she may not even mention to her own husband. The confessional box is a throne of priestly control where a man sits who has his finger on the pulsing heart and throbbing conscience of every member of a domestic circle, and who claims the very authority of God in releasing or retaining sins.