ssion as
contrary to good morals and the welfare of society; for, though the
advocates of auricular confession have succeeded to a certain extent in
blinding the public, and in concealing the abominations of the system under
a lying mantle of holiness and religion, it is nothing else than a school
of immorality.

I say more than that. After twenty-five years of hearing the confessions of
the common people and of the highest classes of society, of the laymen and
the priests, of the grand vicars and bishops and the nuns, I
conscientiously say before the world that the immorality of the
confessional is of a more dangerous and degrading nature than that which we
attribute to the social evil of our great cities. The injury caused to the
intelligence and to the soul in the confessional, as a general rule, is of
a more dangerous nature and more irremediable, because it is neither
suspected nor understood by its victims.

The unfortunate woman who lives an immoral life knows her profound misery;
she often blushes and weeps over her degradation; she hears from every side
voices which call her out of those ways of perdition. Almost at every hour
of day and night the cry of her conscience warns her against the desolation
and suffering of an eternity passed far away from the regions of holiness,
light, and life. All those things are often so many means of grace, in the
hands of our merciful God, to awaken the mind and to save the guilty soul.
But in the confessional the poison is administered under the name of a pure
and refreshing water; the deadly wound is inflicted by a sword so well
oiled that the blow is not felt; the vilest and most impure notions and
thoughts, in the form of questions and answers, are presented and accepted
as the bread of life! All the notions of modesty, purity, and womanly
self-respect and delicacy, are set aside and forgotten to propitiate the
god of Rome. In the confessional the woman is told, and she believes, that
there is no sin for her in hearing things which would make the vilest
blush--no sin to say things which would make the most desperate villain of
the streets of London to stagger--no sin to converse with her confessor on
matters so filthy that if attempted in civil life would for ever exclude
the perpetrator from the society of the virtuous.

Yes, the soul and the intelligence defiled and destroyed in the
confessional are often hopelessly defiled and destroyed. They are sinking
into a compl