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August 14, 19121 THE;
any way of so insignificant a creature as 1 am,
or as we mortals are. What does He care
whether I love or worship Him or not? "The
radical mistake there lies in the fact that no
soul of any man is insignificant to God. These
souls are His chief,?His peculiar treasure. For
them He created the worlds. With them He
is peopling the Eternities and Infinitudes of
the universe. He is building of them the
luitiest type of created moral and spiritual be
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the chosen sons of Qod, to become like His
Christ and to reign with Him forever and ever.
To belittle, distort or ruin one of these souls,
whether your own or that of another is to rilie
Cod of His glory and treasure,?is the sin most
monstrous of all skis and the source of all the
sins and miseries of all the age of human agony.
For each of these supremely precious souls the
Christ of God was incarnate, lived, suffered and
died in anguish and shame on the Cross, to
show the infinitude of the divine Love.
Know, then, that the great and loving God
does care for the attitude towards Himself of
every one of His intelligent, free moral creatures
i Know that His supreme longing is that
of an infinite love for the return of liis due
meed of loving from every soul He has made.
That measure of love shall be shown by hearty,
joyful service, by exulting obedience to His
every requirement, and ever increasing rapiditv
of transform ~e
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Christ. This love is the secret of all. It is better
than sacrifice. It only can fully satisfy the
great heart of our God, for Love Loves Love.
The supreme love loves love supremely. Love
is the greatest thing in the universe. God is
love.
A CRUCIAL TEST OF ROME'S WEAKNESS.
(Part IV.)
B7 JUAN OBTS GONZALEZ.
The greatest weakness in the Reman Catholic
Church is her utter failure in building up
strong Christian character in her followers.
1 can state honestly and truly that she is
almost powerless in infiuencing the average Roman
Catholic. 1 do not mean at all that there
are not Catholics, particularly among inars
and nuns who are not strong in their beliefs
and even ready to die at any time for their
church. What I mean is that the Roman
Catholic religion does not succeed in moulding
them as a whole and where she does succeed
they are neither happy nor strong.
We can divide Catholics into two general
groups?laymen and clergymen, and among
the latter include priests and friars and nuns.
1 have been a friar for years, confessor of
Piiests and visitor of convents of friars and
nuns.
1 have become acquainted both as a visitor
and as a confessor with thousands of individual
caees and with more than one hundred seminaries
throughout Spain, France, Italy, Mexico,
etc. I can say honestly and with perfect truth
accuracy that neither in convents nor in
seminaries nor anywhere in Catholic institutions
have I found a set of Christian men so
honest, pure and strong as I have found in my
?^n seminary at Richmond, Va., where I have
already been three years.
Kven in priests, nuns and friars who succeed
in leading an entirely pure, honest and
Christian life there is not that strong Christian
individuality which I have so often found
among Protestants. I do not know how to account
for the facts but it is true. It may be
that the blind obedience paid to the Catholic.
' ''urch is responsible for that fact. It may be
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
that the duty of confessing their sins to a
priest is the cause of that weakness. 1 am inclined
to this view because nothing destroys
so fundamentally our religious individuality
as to submit ourselves in our innermost religious
experiences to a mere man and nothing
develops and strengthens more our individual
religious character than to bring all our religious
trials and experiences face to face with
our conscience together with prayerful reading
of the Word and silent trust in prayer before
God.
1 do not know whether 1 have found the real
explanation. At any rate, the fact remains the
same, explained or not explained, and that
Christian courage, with which every sound
Protestant is ready to confront all men and all
institutions, no matter how great may be the
former nor how powerful the latter, does not
exist among Catholics.
A Catholic never feels strong until he feels
back of him his Church.
Moreover, the best Catholics (i mean the best
among priests, nuns and friars) always labor
under uncertainty and perplexity in regard
to their salvation and the forgiveness of their
suis. 'ihey are taught that a perfect contrition
urnigs forgiveness for sin but that is a rare
gut and surely never granted to any one who
is not willing and ready to confess all his sins
to a priest, therefore they are always under
tne impression that only a perfect and fully
uetailed confession is the beat and snrAnt wnv
to obtain forgiveness.
'mat practice winch many times gives peace,
guidance and comfort to the laymen and to the
uidilferent Catholic keeps in constant uncertainty
the most worthy Catholics because they
always doubt whether they have made their
confession as they ought to and whether they
have fulfilled their penance with the accuracy
and perfection they ought to.
1 can say of myself that even when 1 was
thirty-live years old 1 was still repeating the
confession of sins committed when 1 was eight
or ten years old, because 1 was not sure whether
1 had confessed them with perfect correctness
or whether 1 had forgotten some detail.
And my case was not an isolated one. 1
found as visitor of convents and as confessor
of priests, nuns and friars that hundreds of
them were under the same uncertainty and perplexity.
Besides that Catholics are taught that
no one without special and personal revelation
from God can be assured of his salvation, on
the contrary every one who cherishes the idea
that he is truly saved is already lost without
any hope of salvation unless he repents and believes
that he does not know whether he is
saved or not, whether he has been forgiven for
his sins or not. I repeat once more that I do
not misrepresent either Roman Catholic people
or Roman Catholic doctrine.
1 give the kernel of the system; that disposition
of soul and conscience always create some
anxiety, some painful perplexity, constant
distressing uncertainty.
To know and feel that you are a child of
God, to look to God really and truly aa a loving
Father because you know that in Christ
and through Christ you are not only forgiven
but adopted as son and in the blessed way of
heavenly sanctification are never experienced
by Catholics, yea more, if experienced they
must be rejected as delusions of the devil and
as infernal heresies. Among thousands of
priests, nuns and friars, with whom I have
been acquainted I have seen only three who
were as far as I knew both quite perfect and
t truly happy. Protestants ought not to judge
that friars, nuns and priests are happy be'
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cause they see them with pleasant faces. They
are taught to appear such but a great many
times they endure distressing doubts and vexing
perplexities.
r'in ally if those priests and friars are confessors
they have another source of unhappiness,
constant weariness and alluring temptation
to sin. Protestants are accustomed to
look at the confessors as a class who enjoy
the office.
That is not true of the most worthy of them;
on the contrary they go to the confessional box
as the most trying and painful duty and they
will do everything on earth to be free from
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The indifferent and less trustworthy priest
may go to the confessional box. pleasantly and
may even abuse his office but the ones who
know well how solemn is that office and how
difficult it is to demean themselves correctly
and perfectly dread the confessional as the
most awful trial both of his learning and his
honesty. I will touch briefly on some of the
reasons for this.
The priest must pass a correct judgment on
every penitent. He is compelled to know each
individual case fully and perfectly and to give
his sentence accordingly. If he fails either to
know all the facts or if he fails to give a sentence
not entirely in accord with the Roman
Catholic code of ethics, then he, hrst is responsible
before Qod and becomes himself a sinner.
Now to pass a quick judgment on hundreds
of very complicated cases is not an easy task
except for the unworthy and ignorant priest,
who does not know his duty and does not do it.
1 have left the confessional more than once
with the most perplexing disposition of soul
and mind and have seen hundreds of the best
priests in the same painful situation. Besides
that the confessor needs to help the penitent
to state his case both fully and plainly and that
is the most perplexing task you can imagine
particularly dealing with girls and ladies. The
confessor very often guesses that a girl or a
lady is reticent about some matters he needs
more light on in order to state the case fully
and plainly and then he must ask questions,
but how to do it without causing harm is a
problem that he many times does not know how
to solve. If he does not ask, then he and she
are guilty of a wrong confession and both commit
a mortal sin. If he asks imprudently he
may defile a pure conscience, he may acquaint
the penitent with some form of immorality she
was before unaware of. v
Brethren you may smile at these things but I
can tell you that they cost me very often bitter
tears and the most harassing anxieties and
I know that thousands among the friars and
priests suffer as I did.
Finally that horrible confessional box is
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alluring temptation to sin. A confessor has
to hear the most vivid descriptions of all kinds
of immorality that can be committed by men
and women. He must examine them and ponder
them and at the same time remain single
in purpose and chaste in body and soul. Can
you imagine a more trying and awful situation!
God knows how great my pity is for
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all these things and pass by so many more, not
with the purpose of exposing them, on the
contrary I wish to convince my Protestant
brethren how worthy they are to be pitied and
to be led out of this darkness into the blessed
light of the Gospel.
I am now preparing a novel: "The Diary of
a Monk," only to arouse the compassion of
Protestants in regard to friars, nuns and confessors.