Auricular Confession: "The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional" Chiniquy

[Peter]

Charles Chiniquy was in the Roman Catholic Church for 50 years and served as a priest for 25 years. Author:
"The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional" by Charles Chiniquy
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/priest.htm

Auricular confession is a 13th century dogma from the Council of Trent made canonically binding in the Roman Catholic Church in the year 1215.

Husbands, if your wife or particularly daughter attends confession it behooves you to inquire of them as to what kind of questions their priest may be pressing them with. Far from being a benign listener, the church policy a hundred years ago, and as in a latter post 50 years ago, was to ask particularly seemly and detailed questions of wives, young girls and young boys, but not men. Though they claimed that this is because women are more reluctant to confess than men, on further investigation, I believe you will be able to conclude for yourself the real reasons for it.
Auricular confession is also used as a tool to pry into your family's personal affairs.

Questions that may be asked are stunning: http://brotherpete.com/index.php?topic=425.msg1716#msg1716

Before you consider the below to be obsolete, because it is late 19th century, here is another priest's account from 1949.
http://brotherpete.com/index.php?topic=425.msg1717#msg1717
The below text is simply a more complete, and certainly heart wrenching, version.

"The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional" by Charles Chiniquy
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/priest.htm

Exerpt:<The second part of her prayer was more embarrassing; for the theologians are very positive in ordering the confessors to question their penitents, particularly those of the female sex, in many circumstances.

I encouraged her in the best way I could, to persevere in her good resolutions, by invoking the blessed Virgin Mary and St. Philomene, who was, then, the Sainte a la mode, just as Marie Alacoque is to-day, among the blind slaves of Rome. I told her that I would pray and think over the subject of her second request; and I asked her to come back in a week for my answer.

The very same day, I went to my own confessor, the Rev. Mr. Baillargeon, then curate of Quebec, and afterwards Archbishop of Canada. I told him the singular and unusual request she had made, that I should never put to her any of those questions suggested by the theologians, to insure the integrity of the confession. I did not conceal from him that I was much inclined to grant her that favor; for I repeated what I had already several times told him, that I was supremely disgusted with the infamous and polluting questions which the theologians forced us to put to our female penitents. I told him frankly that several old and young priests had already come to confess to me; and that, with the exception of two, they had told me that they could not put those questions and hear the answers they elicited, without falling into the most damnable sins.<Men generally confess their sins with so much sincerity that there is seldom any need for questioning them, except when they are very ignorant. But St. Liguori, as well as our personal observation, tells us that the greatest part of girls and women, through a false and criminal shame, very seldom confess the sins they commit against purity. It requires the utmost charity in the confessors to prevent those unfortunate slaves of their secret passions from making sacrilegious confessions and communions. With the greatest prudence and zeal he must question them on those matters, beginning with the smallest sins, and going, little by little, as much as possible by imperceptible degrees, to the most criminal actions. As it seems evident that the penitent referred to in your questions of yesterday, is unwilling to make a full and detailed confession of all her iniquities, you cannot promise to absolve her without assuring yourself by wise and prudent questions, that she has confessed everything.

"You must not be discouraged when, through the confessional or any other way, you learn the fall of priests into the common frailties of human nature with their penitents. Our Saviour knew very well that the occasions and the temptations we have to encounter, in the confessions of girls and women, are so numerous, and sometimes so irresistible, that many would fall. But He has given them the Holy Virgin Mary, who constantly asks and obtains their pardon; He has given them the sacrament of penance, where they can receive their pardon as often as they ask for it. The vow of perfect chastity is a great honor and privilege; but we cannot conceal from ourselves that it puts on our shoulders a burden which many cannot carry forever. St. Liguori says that we must not rebuke the penitent priest who falls only once a month; and some other trustworthy theologians are still more charitable."

[Peter]

(continuation)

During several minutes she raised her hands and her eyes to heaven, and wept and prayed. It was evident that she had not the least idea that I was observing her; she thought the door of the little partition between her and me was shut. But my eyes were fixed upon her; my tears were flowing with her tears, and my ardent prayers were going to the feet of Jesus with her prayers. I would not have interrupted her for any consideration, in this, her sublime communion with her merciful Saviour.

But after a pretty long time, I made a little noise with my hand, and putting my lips near the opening of the partition which was between us, I said in a low voice, "Dear sister, are you ready to begin your confession?"

She turned her face a little towards me, and said with trembling voice, "Yes, dear father, I am ready."

But she then stopped again to weep and pray, though I could not hear what she said.

After some time of silent prayer, I said, "My dear sister, if you are ready, please begin your confession." She then said, "My dear father, do you remember the prayers which I made to you, the other day? Can you allow me to confess my sins without forcing me to forget the respect that I owe to myself, to you, and to God, who hears us? And can you promise that you will not put to me any of those questions which have already done me such irreparable injury? I frankly declare to you that there are sins in me that I cannot reveal to anyone, except to Christ, because He is my God, and that He already knows them all. Let me weep and cry at His feet: can you not forgive me without adding to my iniquities by forcing me to say things that the tongue of a Christian woman cannot reveal to a man?"

"My dear sister," I answered, were I free to follow the voice of my own feelings I would be only too happy to grant your request; but I am here only as the minister of our holy Church, and bound to obey her laws. Through her most holy Popes and theologians she tells me that I cannot forgive your sins if you do not confess them all, just as you have committed them. The Church tells me also that you must give the details which may add to the malice or change the nature of your sins. I am also sorry to tell you that our most holy theologians make it a duty of the confessor to question the penitent on the sins which he has good reason to suspect have been voluntarily or involuntarily omitted."

[Peter]

(if you don't know Latin (and I pray that you don't) please scroll to the bottom - Forum/Peter)
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/priest.htm#c12
Regarding those questions:


CHAPTER XII.

A Chapter for the Consideration of Legislators, Husbands, and Fathers.

DENS wants the confessors to interrogate on the following matters:

1 "Peccant uxores, quae susceptum viri semen ejiciunt, vel ejicere conantur." (Dens, tom. vii., p. 147.)

2. "Peccant conjuges mortaliter, Si, copula ancesta, cohibeant seminationem."

3. "Si vir jam seminaverit, dubium. fit an femina lethaliter peccat, Si se retrahat a seminando ; aut peccat lethaliter vir non expectando seminationem. uxoris." (P. 153.)

4. "Peccant conjuges inter se circa actum conjugalein. Debet servari modus, sive situs ; imo ut non servetur debitum vas, sed copula habeatur in vase praepostero, aliquoque non naturali. Si fiat accedendo a postero, a latere, stando, sedendo, vel Si vir sit succumbus." (P. 166.)

5. "Impotentia est incapacitas perficiendi, copulum carnalem perfectam cum. seminatione viri in vase debito seu, de se, aptam generationi. Vel, ut Si mulier sit nimis arcta respectu unius viri, non respectu alterius. " (Vol. vii., p. 273.)

6. " Notatur quod pollutio in mulieribus possit perfici, ita ut semen earum nou effluat extra membrum. genitale.

"Indicium. istius allegat Billuart, Si scilicet mulier sensiat serninis resolutionem. cum magno voluptatis sensu, qua completa, passio satiatur." (Vol. iv., p. 168.)

7. "Uxor se accusans, in confessione, quod negaverit debitum, interrogetur an ex pleno rigore juris sui id petiverit." (Vol. vii., p. 168.)

8. "Confessor poenitentem, qui confitetur se pecasse cum Sacerdote, vel sollicitatam. ab eo ad turpia, potest interrogare utrum ille sacerdos sit ejus confessarius, an in confessione sollitaverit." (Vol. vi., p. 294.)



1. "Quaerat an sit semper mortale, Si vir immitat pudenda in os uxoris?

"Verius affirmo quia, in hoc actu ob calorem Cris, adest proximum periculum pollutionis, et videtur nova species luxuriae contra naturam, dicta irruminatio. "

2. "Eodem modo, Sanchez damnat virum de mortali, qui, in actu copulae, immiteret dignitum in vas praeposterum nxoris; quia, ut ait, in hoc actu adest affectus ad Sodomiam. " (Liguori, tom. vi.) p. 935.)

The celebrated Burchard, Bishop of Worms, has made a book of the questions which had to be put by the confessors to their penitents of both sexes. During several centuries it was the standard book of the priests of Rome. Though that work to-day is very scarce, Dens, Liguori, Debreyne, &-c., &c., have ransacked its polluting pages, and given them to study to the modern confessors, in order to question their penitents. I will select only a few questions of the Roman Catholic Bishop to the young men.

1. "Fecisti solus tecum fornicationem ut quidam facere solent; ita dico ut ipse tuum membrum. virile in manum taum acciperes, et sic duceres praeputium tuum, et manu propria commoveres, ut sic, per illam delectationem semen projiceres ? "

2. "Fornicationem fecisti cum masculo intra coxes ; ita dicto ut tuum virile membrum intra coxas alterius mitteres, et sic agitando semen funderes ?"

3. "Fecisti fornicationem, ut quidem facere Solent, ut tuum virile membrum in lignum perforatum, aut in aliquod hujus modi mitteres, et, sic, per illam commotionem et delectationem semen projiceres? "

4. "Fecisti fornicationem contra naturam, id est, cum masculis vel animalibus coire, id est cum equo, cum vacca, vel asina, vel aliquo, animali? (Vol. i., p. 136.)



1. "Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres Solent, quoddam molimem, aut machinamentum in modum virilis membri ad mensbram Woe voluptatis, et illud lodo verendorurn tuorum aut alterius cum aliquibus ligaturis, ut fornacationem facereres cum aliis mulieribus, vel alia eodem instrumento, sive alio tecum?"

2. "Fecisti quod quaedem mulieres facere Solent ut jam supra dicto molimine, vel alio aliquo machinamento, tu ipsa. in te solam faceres fornicationem?

3. "Fecisti quod quaseam mulieres facere Solent, quando libidinem se vexantem exinguere volunt, quae se conjungunt quasi coire debeant ut possint, et conjungunt invicem puerperia sua, et sic, fricando pruritum illarum extinguere, desiderant? "

4. "Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres facere solent, ut succumberes aliquo jumento et illiud jumentum ad coitum quolicumque, posses ingenio, ut sic coiret tecum ? "



"Ad cognoscendum an usque ad pollutionem se tetigerent, quando tempore et quo fine se teti gerint an tune quosdam motus in corpore experti fuerint, et per quantum temporis spatium; an cessantibus tactibus, nihil insolitum et turpe accideret; an nou longe majorem in compore voluptatem perceperint in fine tactuum quam in eorum principio; an tum in fine quando magnam delectationem carnalem sensuerunt, omnes motus corporis cessaverint; an non madefacti fuerint? " &c., &c.



"Quae sese tetegisse fatentur, an non aliquem puritum extinguere entaverint, et utrum pruritus ille cessaverit cam magnum senserint voluptatem; an tune, ipsimet tactus cessaverint ? " &c., &c.

The Right Rev. Kenrick, late Bishop of Boston, United States, in his book for the teaching of confessors on what matters they must question their penitents, has the following, which I select among thousands as impure and damnable to the soul and body:

"Uxor quae, in usu matrimonii, se vertit, ut lion recipiat Semen, vel statim post illud acceptum surgit 'it expellatur, lethalitur peccat; sed opus non est ut din. resupina jaceat, quum matrix, brevi, semen attrahat, et mox, arctissime claudatur. (Vol. iii., p. 317.)

"Pollae patienti licet se vertere, et conari ut nou recipiat semen, quod injuria ei iminittitur; sed, exceptum, non licet expellere, quia jam possessionein pacificam habet et baud absque injuria natura, ejiceretur." (Tom. iii., p. 317.)

" Conjuges senes plerumque coeunt absque culpa, licet contingat semen extra vas effundi; id enim per accidens fit ex imfirmitate naturae. Quod Si veres adeo sint fractae 'Lit nullo sit seminandi intra vas spes, jam nequeunt jure conjugii uti." (Tom. iii., p. 317.) priest.htm
_____________________

Husbands and fathers, I am loathe to post the following link, but the spiritual well being of your wives and particularly daughters, and young sons, is at stake:

http://www.iconbusters.com/iconbusters/htm/sex_crimes/lechery/current-lechery2.htm

This site details the English translations of the absolutely reprobate questions Priests are to ask in confession that Chiniquy detailed in the Latin above. You only need to read even a little part of a single question to be defiled by the Roman church.
I strongly advise that you not proceed further as you may be haunted by the disturbing images just as Chiniquy describes of the young girls.

GET YOUR WIVES, DAUGHTERS AND SONS OUT OF THE BONDAGE OF THE ROMAN CHURCH NOW!!!:

No decent person should EVER be exposed to, let alone repeat this, whether Christian or atheist, which is likely why the Roman church has been able to escape exposure for so many centuries, without having to answer to this 13th century dogma. But if nobody ever speaks of it, how could it ever be exposed?

Priests likely know that if they asked the same questions of men, that they do of women, a man would walk out - or perhaps even punch their lights out. There is little question that if men learned of the questions asked of their wives, daughters and sons, some priests would rightfully be subjected to being tarred and feathered, and paraded around the village square in an ox cart.

Any copy and pasting into this forum, of the English versions of these questions asked at auricular confession, will be removed at the first moment they are spotted.

[Peter]

Articles:

http://www.cuttingedge.org/articles/RC123.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2402764/The-Auricular-Confession
http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=auricular

Excerpt from "I was a Priest"
http://www.cuttingedge.org/NEWS/IWasaPriest.htm

(a) CONFESSION OF A CHILD

That child might only be seven years old. He has been told that he must tell all his sins to the priest. If he does not, he will commit a sacrilege and should he die, he cannot go to heaven. He is naturally very confused as to what really constitutes a sin. He believes that many of his actions are serious sins. Some children think that some of the necessities of the body are grave sins to be confessed. However, a child is naturally shy and reluctant to tell what he has done or thought. The result is that he omits to declare certain things that are really not sinful but he thinks they are. His conscience will reproach him for having hidden a sin in confession and he will experience uneasiness of conscience and will probably end in believing that he cannot make peace with his God. Confession has ruined this child's soul. He has been misled and one more Roman Catholic starts a life of mental torture and misconception of the mercy of Christ. Romanism with its system of confession cannot very well be identified with the kindness of the Lord who said: "SUFFER [ALLOW] THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME."

(b) CONFESSION OF A YOUNG GIRL

We now have a shy Roman Catholic young girl, : passing through the stage of childhood to puberty, who is about to enter the confessional. She is naturally embarrassed and her state of mind is just what a sordid confessor wishes explore. The priest will now hear from a young woman the most secret thoughts and desires of her soul. Her mind and soul are crucified on the altar of Romanism and of its curious and sinful priests.

If the young girl is reluctant to speak, the confessor will ask the following questions:

1. "Was it with a man? Was he married? Was he related to you? Was he a priest?

2. Did you give full consent of your will to these thoughts, desires, etc? Was it a complete action? Was it against some laws of nature? How often did you consent to these thoughts, desires, actions, etc. ?"

Many other embarrassing questions are asked according to the sins accused. Many of these questions are left to the discretion and indiscretion of the confessor. Some questions asked are sometimes stupid and criminal. We know a rather young pastor of a Manitoba Cathedral, who "hailed from the East" as a specialist in the confessions of young women, who asked his young female penitents if they wore "panties" or some other variety of feminine underclothing. These shameful details of a confession are mentioned here to illustrate what is meant by the tortures of confession. Roman Catholics know very well that what we disclose is the crude truth.

We are fully acquainted with the practice of certain abnormal priests in the confessional. We have investigated some cases where the confessor learns of the weaknesses of a prospective victim in the confessional.

She becomes an easy prey to his passions and vice.

The practice of soliciting women penitents to sin in the confessional is, in fact, so common, that the Roman theologians have inserted in their theology manuals a long thesis which regulates the conduct to be followed by priests and penitents who have sinned in this manner. This is called in Latin "De solicitatione in confessionali."

The confessional, far from being a place of forgiveness of sins, is very often the scene of the most disgusting sex crimes.

(c) CONFESSION OF A MARRIED WOMAN

A married woman enters the confessional. She will tell a strange man secrets which she probably would not dare to reveal to her own husband. She is even bound to reveal certain secrets of her husband. This especially happens when a sin is committed with the consent of both husband and wife. In the Roman Church, birth control of all variety is a sin and must be confessed with all its circumstances. The husband might be of Protestant Faith and his Roman Catholic wife will have to disclose to the priest the most intimate relations of their marital life. The priest will know more about the wife than the husband. There are no more family secrets because Rome has required that hearts and souls should be fully explored by priests. In this manner, Romanism controls the whole intimate lives of married couples.

A married woman, who has any amount of natural discretion and honesty, will enter the confessional with apprehension and often despair. She fears that terrible and infallible questionnaire. It is impossible to describe the mental inconvenience she now experiences by the spectre of compulsory confession. One married woman who had not much to confess anyway, told us one day that this obligation of telling everything to the priest was "diabolical" and we could not admit to her at that time that she was absolutely right.

The questionnaire in the case of a married woman goes somewhat like this:

"How often do you perform your conjugal duties?

Do you refuse to perform them sometimes? Why ?

How many times ?

Are your marital actions complete?

Could conception take place?

Do you use contraceptives?

How many times?

Any thoughts, desires, actions for other men but your husband, etc., etc. ?"

Poor Roman Catholic women! We know so well that your kind souls are tortured to death by this terrible Roman obligation of telling, not only your sins, but also the most intimate secrets of your married life. You are free, of course, to practice the prescriptions of your Church. As an ex-priest, we will never even suggest that you be unfaithful to your convictions, but as an ex-priest we can also tell you that these mental tortures imposed upon your souls are not a prescription of the Saviour of mankind to obtain forgiveness of your sins, but are pure inventions of men to keep your minds and hearts under the control of a system, the torturous Roman religious organization.

Your secrets that you have confided to us in confession will be forever kept and never divulged, you may have no fear of that. Ex-priests who have had the courage to shake the shackles of Rome are naturally too honest to divulge secrets confided to them. But we must admit, that as a priest we had no power to forgive your sins.

No priest has such power. Christ is the ONLY Mediator between God and men. He alone can give grace and salvation. This is not my opinion only but it is the teaching of Christ Himself. "I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE; NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER BUT BY ME." (John 14:6).

If my dear Roman Catholic friends open their Gospel according to St. Luke, Chapter 5, Verse 21, they will read this:

"WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS, BUT GOD ALONE."

How strange that St. Luke did not say that the Roman Catholic priests can forgive sins through the mental tortures of auricular confession.

(pages 59-67)

[Peter]

If the confessional has changed in the last 50 years I don't imagine it's because the questions that are recommended to be asked of young girls and women/wives, in the writings of Saint Liguori, Dens, Burchard, Debreyne, and Kenrick, have been repudiated by the Roman Catholic Church over the last 50 years.
Perhaps today, whether or not to ask certain questions is left up to the discretion of the individual priest, but that was certainly not the case a hundred years ago as they were compelled to ask them.

The following is an excerpt from "50 Years in the Church of Rome", by Charles Chiniquy, who was in the Roman Catholic Church for 50 years, and became a widely renowned and greatly respected Roman Catholic priest for 25 years. He was highly regarded and recognized as the head of the Canadian temperance movement, that he also carried into the U.S. Midwest.
http://www.biblebelievers.com/chiniquy/cc50_ch34.html

On auricular confession:

"For I do not exaggerate when I say, that for many noble-hearted, welleducated, high-minded women, to be forced to unveil their hearts before the eyes of a man, to open to him all the most secret recesses of their souls, all the most sacred mysteries of their single or married life, to allow him to put to them questions which the most depraved woman would never consent to hear from her vilest seducer, is often more horrible and intolerable than to be tied on burning coals.

More than once I have seen women fainting in the confessional-box, who told me afterwards that the necessity of speaking to an unmarried man on certain things, on which the most common laws of decency ought to have for ever sealed their lips, had almost killed them! Not hundreds, but thousands of times, I have heard from the lips of dying girls, as well as married women, the awful words: "I am for ever lost! All my past confessions and communions have been so many sacrileges! I have never dared to answer correctly the questions of my confessors! Shame has sealed my lips an damned my soul!"

How many times I remained as one petrified, by the side of a corpse, when these last words having hardly escaped the lips of one of my female penitents, who had been snatched out of my reach by the merciless hand of death, before I could give her pardon through the deceitful sacramental absolution? I then believed, as the dead sinner herself had believed, that she should not be forgiven except by that absolution.

For there are not only thousands, but millions of Roman Catholic girls and women, whose keen sense of modest and womanly dignity, are above all the sophisms and diabolical machinations of their priests. They can never be persuaded to answer "Yes" to certain questions of their confessors. They would prefer to be thrown into the flames, and burnt to ashes with the Brahmin widows, rather than allow the eyes of a man to pry into the sacred sanctuary of their souls. Though sometimes guilty before God, and under the impression that their sins will never be forgiven if not confessed, the laws of decency are stronger in their hearts than the laws of their perfidious Church. No consideration not even the fear of eternal damnation, can persuade them to declare to a sinful man, sins which God alone has the right to know, for He alone can blot them out with the blood of His Son, shed on the cross."

To continue hit the link and scroll down 5 paragraphs:
http://www.biblebelievers.com/chiniquy/cc50_ch54.html

[PATRIOT]

Goodness, Pete, amazing the research you do!!

Here is a disturbing video regarding confession:

CONFESSION TO A CATHOLIC PRIEST by random311
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H66gaF_KhLo

Mack has another worthwhile channel:   
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMackQuigleyReport

God bless you!!

Helga

[Peter]

CONFESSION TO A CATHOLIC PRIEST by random311
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H66gaF_KhLo

Good video! Thanks. I'm afraid there will be too few folks willing to admit to what a priests asked them, even among those folks that have overcome the Roman Church, if the fellow in the video, Chiniquy and a few select individuals on the internet are any indication. It likely varies by priest in this day and age, but that was anything but the case in Chiniquy's case a hundred years ago.