is accused), is not to be adduced as a fair
criterion of French morality. Let us stay at home and judge of Catholic
morals by the examples furnished under our eyes.

The influence of the confessional has been fairly tested in this country
since the foundation of our Republic. Are practical Catholics enfeebled in
conscience? Is their conscience chained and starved? Has the absolution
they received whetted their appetites for more sin? Are they monsters of
immorality? I think that an enlightened Protestant public will pronounce a
contrary verdict.

I feel that I can say, with truth, that Catholics who frequent the
confessional are generally virtuous in their private lives, just and
honorable in their dealings with others, and that they cultivate charity
and good-will toward their fellow-citizens.

It will not do to reply that it is the system, not the individual, that is
attacked. How can we judge of a system unless by its practical working in
the individual? "By their fruits ye shall know them," says our Redeemer.

Vices, indeed, we have to deplore among certain classes of our people,
which are often superinduced by their migratory habits and irregular mode
of life. But they are commonly sins of frailty, and these are not the
persons that are accustomed to approach the confessional. If they did
their lives would be very different from what they are.

The best of us, alas! are not what we ought to be, considering the graces
we receive. But if you seek for canting hypocrites, or colossal
defaulters, or perpetrators of well-laid schemes of forgery, or of
systematic licentiousness, or of premeditated violence, you will seek for
such in vain among those who frequent the confessional.

There is another objection which it is difficult to kill. It dies hard
and, like Banquo's ghost, it will not down. If you drive it from the city,
it will fly to the town. If you expel it from the town, it will take
refuge in the village. If you eject it from the village, it will hide
itself like some noxious animal, in some desert place until it makes its
rounds again.

I allude to the charge that a price has to be paid for remitting sins.
"You have only (say these slanderers) to pay a certain toll at the
confessional gate, and you can pass the biggest load of sin."

It is hard to treat these objections seriously. I have been hearing
confessions for fifty years, and of all who have come to me, not one has
had the sense of duty to offer m