Awful Disclosures by Maria Monk (the rosie project txt) 📖

of Priests, are regularly admitted within the Convents for the same infamous purpose; and that many Infants and Nuns, in proportion to the aggregate amount of the whole body of females, are annually murdered and buried within their precincts. All this turpitude is as assuredly believed by the vast majority of the enlightened Protestants, as well as by multitudes of even the Papists in Montreal and Quebec, as their own existence; and judging from their declarations, they have no more doubt of the fact, than they have of the summer’s sunshine, and the winter’s frost and snow. Of what value, therefore, is the cavil of ignorance respecting improbabilities?

But it is also objected, that the British government would not tolerate such a system of enormous wickedness. To which it is replied, that the inordinate licentiousness of the Roman Priests and Nuns in Canada, is demonstrated to be of long standing by the archives of that Province, as may be seen in Smith’s History of Canada; year 1733, Chapter 5, p. 194.

The author of that work is Secretary of the Province; and his narrative was compiled immediately from the public documents, which are under his official guardianship and control. He thus writes:—“The irregularities and improper conduct of the Nuns of the General Hospital had been the subject of much regret and anxiety. Contrary to every principle of their institution, they frequently accepted of invitations to dinners and suppers, and mixed in society, without considering the vows which restricted them to their Convent. The king of France directed a letter, Maurepas’ letter of April 9, 1733, to be written to the Coadjutor of Quebec, by the minister having the department of the Marine; importing that the king was much displeased with the Nuns—that regularity and order might be restored by reducing the nuns to the number of twelve, according to their original establishment—and that, as the management and superintendence of the community had been granted to the Governor, Prelate, and Intendant, the Coadjutor should take the necessary measures to prevent them from repeating conduct so indecent and improper.”

The entire affair seems to have been this; that the Nuns of Quebec at that period preferred the gallant military officers, and their bewitching festivities, to the coarser and less diversified indulgences of the Jesuits; upon which the latter murmured, and resolved to hinder the soldiers from intruding into their fold, and among the cloistered females, to visit whom they claimed as their own peculiar privilege, inseparably attached to their priestly character and ecclesiastical functions. It is infallibly certain that after a lapse of 100 years, neither the Jesuits nor the Nuns in Canada, are in the smallest particle reformed.

The British government, by the treaty made upon the surrender of that province to them, guarantied to the Papal Ecclesiastics, both male and female, their prior exemptions and special immunities. Many of the officers of the Government in Canada, who have long resided there, are anxious to see the nunneries and their adjuncts totally extirpated; and it may be safely asserted that they know the character given of those institutions by Maria Monk is a graphical picture of their continuous doings.

The British government, for the purpose of retaining their supremacy over the province, have not only connived at those irregularities, but have always enjoined that the public sanction should be given to their puerile shows, and their pageant, pompous processions by the attendance of the civil and military officers upon them, and by desecrating the Lord’s day with martial music, &c. In this particular affair, the executive officers of the Provincial Government are fully apprised of all the substantial facts in the case; for an affidavit of the principal circumstances was presented to Mr. Ogden, the Attorney General of Canada, and to Mr. Grant, another of the King’s counsellors: and afterward Maria Monk did undergo an examination by those gentlemen, in the house of Mr. Grant, at Montreal, in the presence of Mr. Comte, one of the superior order of priests of that city; and of another Priest, believed to be either Phelan or Dufresne, who was concealed behind the sofa.

It is also incontrovertible, that the nominal Papists in Canada, who, in reality, are often infidels, notwithstanding their jocose sneers, and affected contempt, do generally believe every title of Maria Monk’s narrative. This is the style in which they talk of it. They first, according to custom, loudly curse the authors; for to find a Papist infidel who does not break the third commandment, is as difficult as to point out a moral Roman Priest or a chaste Nun. They first swear at the author, and then, with a hearty laugh, add the following illustration:—

“Everybody knows that the Priests are a jolly set of fellows, who live well, and must have license, or they would be contrary to nature. They have the privilege of going into the nunneries, and they would be great fools if they did not use and enjoy it!” Such is the exact language which is adopted among the Canadians; and such are the precise words which have been used by Canadian gentlemen in New York, when criticising Maria Monk’s volume. It affords stronger proof than a direct attestation.

The other class of persons who verily believe the “Awful Disclosures,”

are the religious community in Canada. We think that scarcely a well-informed person can be discovered in Montreal or Quebec, who does not feel assured, that the interior of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery is most faithfully depicted by Maria Monk. Many persons are now inhabitants of New York who formerly resided in Montreal, some of whom have been upon terms of familiar intimacy for years with those Roman Priests, who are specified as the principal actors in the scenes depicted in that book; and they most solemnly declare, that they have no doubt of the truth of Maria Monk’s narrative.

Mr. Samuel B. Smith, who has been not only a Roman Priest, but has had several cages of nuns under his sole management, questioned Maria Monk expressly respecting those affairs, customs and ceremonies, which appertain only to nunneries, because they cannot be practiced by any other females but those who are shut up in those dungeons; and, after having minutely examined her, he plainly averred that it was manifest she could not have known the things which she communicated to him unless she had been a nun; not merely a scholar, or a temporary resident, or even a novice, but a nun, who had taken the veil, in the strictest sense of the appellative. This testimony is of the more value, because the conclusion does not depend upon any conflicting statements, of partial or prejudicial witnesses, but upon a fact which is essential to the system of monachism; that no persons can know all the secrets of nunneries, but the Chaplain, the Abbess, and their accomplices in that “mystery of iniquity.” Mr. Smith’s declaration in one other respect is absolutely decisive. He has declared not only that Maria Monk has been a nun, but also that the descriptions which she gives are most minutely accurate.

Mr. Smith also testifies that the account which Maria Monk gives of the proceedings of the priests, the obscene questions which they ask young females, and their lewd practices with them at auricular confession, are constantly exemplified by the Roman Priests; and he also confirms her statements, by the testimony of his own individual experience, and actual personal acquaintance with the Canadian nunneries, as well as with those in the United States, and especially of that at Monroe, Michigan, which was dissolved by Mr. Fenwick, on account of scandalous impurity, several years ago.

Mrs. –-, a widow lady now in New York, who formerly was a Papist in Montreal, and was recently converted to Christianity, solemnly avers, that the Priest Richards himself, conducted her from the Seminary through the subterraneous passage to the nunnery, and describes the whole exactly in accordance with the statement of Maria Monk.

Mr. Lloyd, who was in business a number of years adjacent to the nunnery, and who is intimately acquainted with those priests, their characters, principles, and habits, avows his unqualified conviction of the truth of the “Awful Disclosures.”

Mr. Hogan, who was eighteen months in the Jesuit Seminary at Montreal, and in constant intercourse and attendance upon Lartigue and his accomplices, unequivocally affirms, that Maria Monk’s complex description of those Priests are most minutely and accurately true.

One hundred other persons probably can be adduced, who, during their residence in Canada, or on their tours to that province, by inquiries ascertained that things in accordance with Maria Monk’s delineations are the undoubted belief of each class of persons, and of every variety of condition, and in all places which they visited in Lower Canada.

Mr. Greenfield, the father of the gentleman who owns the two steamboats on the river St. Lawrence, called the Lady of the Lake, and the Canadian Eagle, who is a citizen of New York, avows his unqualified assent to all Maria Monk’s statements, and most emphatically adds—

“Maria Monk has not disclosed one tenth part of the truth respecting the Roman Priests and Nuns in Canada.”

Fifty other persons from that province, now residing in New York, likewise attest the truth of the “Disclosures.”

At Sorel, Berthier, and Three Rivers, the usual stopping-places for the steamboats on the River St. Lawrence, the Priests, if they have any cause to be at the wharf, may be seen accompanied by one or more children, their “Nephews,” as the Priests facetiously

denominate their offspring; and if any person on the steamboat should be heard expatiating upon the piety, the temperance, the honesty, or the purity of Roman Priests and Nuns, he would be laughed at outright, either as a natural or an ironical jester; while the priest himself would join in the merriment, as being a “capital joke.”

We are assured by the most indisputable authority in Montreal, that the strictly religious people in that city do generally credit Maria Monk’s statements without hesitation; and the decisive impression of her veracity can never be removed. If it were possible at once to reform the nunneries, and to transform them from castles of ignorance, uncleanness, and murder, where all their arts are concealed in impervious secrecy, into abodes of wisdom, chastity, and benevolence to every recess of which all persons, at every hour, might have unrestricted admission—

that would not change the past; it would leave them indelibly branded with the emphatical title applied to the nunnery at Charlestown, “FILTHY, MURDEROUS DENS.”

3. Who are those who deny the truth of the book? Case of Father Conroy. Father Conroy’s deception.

In addition to the objections from improbability, another series of opposition consists of flat, broad denials of the truth of Maria Monk’s “Awful Disclosures.” This mode of vanquishing direct charges is even more invalid than the former futile cavilling. It is also remarkable, when we remember who are the persons that deny the statements made by Maria Monk. Are they the Roman Priests implicated? Not at all. They are too crafty. The only persons who attempt to hint even a suspicion of the truth of the secrets divulged in the “Awful Disclosures,” are editors of Newspapers: some of whom are ever found on the side of infidelity and vice; men always reproaching religion; and directly calumniating, or scornfully ridiculing the best Christians in the land; and profoundly ignorant of Popery and Jesuitism, and the monastic system.

It is true that Priest Conroy of New York, has contradicted in general terms the truth of the statement respecting himself, and his attempt to abduct Maria Monk from the Almshouse. But what does he deny? He is plainly charged, in the “Awful Disclosures,” with a protracted endeavor, by fraud or by force to remove Maria Monk from that institution.

Now that charge involves a flagrant misdemeanor, or