The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and Monasteries, Priests and NunsWatson, Thomas E. (Thomas Edward)
Religion
The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and Monasteries, Priests and Nuns
Watson, Thomas E. (Thomas Edward)
Catholic Church -- Controversial literature; Celibacy -- Catholic Church
What will _they do_, inside the cloistered convents?
No scream from within can be heard outside. Those dead walls tell no
tales. The Law dares not scrutinize the interiors where the negro
priests can penetrate; and we have no legal process to wring the dread
Secret out of the nun's cell!
The Pope's Empire has been erected inside our Republic; and those who
represent our State, and our Law, are afraid of the Italian Pope and the
laws of the Italian church!
* * * * * * *
When the Commissioners sent by King Henry VII. visited the monasteries,
the guilt of the inmates was so overwhelmingly evident that hardly any
attempt at denial was made. The Confession of the Prior and Benedictines
of St. Andrew's in Northampton is yet of record, and it is a fair
example. They confessed that they "had lived in idleness, gluttony, and
sensuality, for which the Pit of Hell was ready to swallow them up."
(Burnett, Book III., p. 227.)
Among the false "relics" that were found and which had long been used to
swindle ignorant believers out of their money, were a Wing of the Angel
that had brought to England the Spear which pierced Christ's side; some
of the coals that had roasted the Most Blessed Saint Anthony; numerous
pieces of "the true Cross;" a small bottle filled with Christ's blood; a
Crucifix which would sometimes bow its head, sometimes roll its eyes and
sometimes move its lips.
(All this fraudulent rubbish was seized, taken to London, and publicly
destroyed.)
Bishop Burnett says--
"But for the lewdness of the confessors of the Nunneries, and the great
corruption of that state, _whole houses being found almost all with
child_."
That was in the year 1535, in England! In the year 1910, when the
nunneries were suddenly broken up in Spain, exactly the same state of
affairs was discovered! Some of the nuns came out leading their
children: some were so far advanced in pregnancy that their condition
was evident to all--and as to how many little bones were left in the
underground vaults, God alone knows.
Bishop Burnett continues--
"The dissoluteness of Abbots, and the other monks, and the friars, not
only with whores, but married women, and their unnatural lusts and other
brutal practices, _these are not fit to be spoken of_, much less
enlarged on, in a work of this nature." ...
_The full report was destroyed_ by the fanatical papist Bishop Bonner,
at the beginning of the reign of Bloody Mary. (See "English
Reformation.") But Bishop Burnett saw extracts from it "concerning 144
Houses, that contains abominations in it, equal to any that were in
Sodom!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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