Why I Will Never Go Back To The Church Of Rome

To The Rev. Bishop Bourget, Of Montreal.

“On my arrival from the maritime provinces, I learned that our priests and your press organs have published that I have cried, during my last illness, to make my peace with your Church.

Charles Chiniquy

I do not want to tell you that THIS IS AN UNMITIGATED FALSEHOOD; YOU KNOW IT BETTER THAN ANY MAN. ‘No, my Lord, by the mercy of God I will never submit myself again to the ignominious yoke of the Pope. And allow me to give you and your priests and your press SOME OF MY REASONS.’

“(1.) Your dogma of the Apostolic Succession from Peter to Pius IX., is an imposture. You cannot find a single word in the holy gospel to show us that Peter has passed a single hour in Rome. You know very well, also, that the superiority or preeminence you give to Peter over the other apostles is another imposture. Every time our Saviour was asked by His twelve apostles who would he the First, the Leader, the Pope, He always answered that there would not be such a First Leader or Pope in His Church. More than that. He positively answered the mother of Zebedee’s children that He had not received from His Father the power to establish one of His apostles over the others. ‘To sit on my right hand or on my left is not mine to give,’ (Matt. 20:23.) We have an irrefutable and infallible proof that our Saviour never put Peter at the head of the apostles as the First, the Leader, or the Pope, as you call your Supreme Pontiff, in the dispute which occurred among the apostles a little before His death. ‘And there was also a strife among them which of them should be counted greatest.’ (Luke 22:24.) Such a dispute would never have occurred if Jesus Christ had established Peter the greatest or the First of them. They would surely have known it, and Jesus Christ would have answered, ‘Have you so soon forgotten that Peter is the greatest among you; that he is the first among you from the day in which I appointed him the fundamental stone of my church?’

“But, far from answering thus, the Son of God rebukes His apostles, and tells them positively.”The Kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them… But it shall not be so among you.’ (Luke 22:23-25.) Not only that modernly forged primacy of Peter has never been acknowledged by any of the apostles, but it has been openly and positively denied by St. Paul. ‘For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me towards the Gentiles.’ (Galatians 2:8.) And when James, Cephas and John, who seemed to be the pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right-hand of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.’ Here Peter is named only after James, a thing which never could have been done by St. Paul, if he had known anything of the marvelous superiority and primacy of Peter over the rest of the apostles. But please read the following words of Paul: “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to blame.’ (Galatians 2:11.) Is it not evident that Paul had not the least idea of any kind of superiority of Peter over him when he withstood him to the face; and still more when he wrote these lines? Is it not clear that the Holy Ghost has inspired Paul to give us the history of his so stern withstanding to the face of Peter that we might not be seduced by the grand imposture of the supremacy of Peter, which is the corner stone of your apostate Church?

“(2.) I will never be a Roman Catholic, for the Roman Catholic Church is idolatrous. You worship God? Yes! but the God whom you worship is made with a wafer — it is a wafer god that is on your altar! Every hour of your priestly life you are guilty of the crime which Aaron committed when he caused the Israelites to worship a golden calf. The only difference between you and Aaron is that his god was made of gold, and yours is made of some dough baked by your nuns or your servant girls, between two well- polished and heated irons. You have a Christ on your altars! Yes — and you are very devoted and truly pious towards that Christ — or rather those Christs; you praise their powers and their mercies; you sing beautiful songs in their honor; but the Christs whom you worship are Spoken of by Our Saviour in the twenty-fourth of Matthew.”There will be false Christs, …and they shall show great signs and wonders: insomuch that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect… Wherefore if they shall say unto you, ‘Behold He (Christ) is in the secret chambers, believe it not.’ Now, how do you not see that terrible prophesy is accomplished by you every time you prostrate yourselves before those Christs made of little cakes and put in the secret chambers of your church. Do you not believe in those Christs of the secret chambers, when the Son of God tells you, ‘Believe it not?’ Do you not go there to adore your wafer-god when the true Christ says, ‘Go not there?’ In vain you tell us that Christ gave you the power to make your god with the engraved wafer. We answer you that Christ Himself had not the power to make God and make Himself with an engraved wafer; for His Father had forbidden such an absurd and idolatrous act, when on Mount Sinai, in the midst of thunders and lightnings, He said, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth — thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.’ Now, you well know that Christ came to accomplish and not to break His Father’s commandments. He could not give you the permission or the power to break them by ordering you, as you pretend He did, to make an engraved wafer, change it into your god, and bow yourself down before it; for this is idolatry — rank shameful idolatry! I am ready to meet you or any of your priests in any public or private discussion to show you, with the help of God, that when Christ told you to eat His body and drink His blood, He was speaking with the same figure as when He said He would eat the Passover. ‘Though Christ said, I will eat the Passover,’ He was not able to eat the Passover, for the simple reason that the passage of the exterminating angel over Egypt could not be eaten… But the lamb which was eaten in remembrance of the Passover would be eaten, and that lamb was called the ‘Passover.’ By the same figure of speech the body and blood of Christ would not be’ eaten… . . But the bread which represented that body would be eaten; and the bread then had to be called the ‘Body,’ by the same reason and by the same rule of language that the lamb was called the ‘Passover,’ though It was not the Passover — just in the same way and by the same rule of language that when we look at the marble statue of Monseigneur Bourget, we say, “This is Monseigneur Bourget,’ though it is not Monseigneur Bourget at all.

“(3.) I will never be a Roman Catholic, because every Roman Catholic bishop and priest is forced to perjure himself every time he explains a text of the Holy Scriptures. Yes! though it is a very big and hard word, it is the truth. From the day that you have sworn, when you were ordained a priest, to interpret the Holy Scriptures only according to the unanimous consent of the holy fathers, you have seldom preached on a text of the Scriptures without being guilty of perjury. For, after having studied the holy fathers with some attention, I am ready to prove to you that the holy fathers have been unanimous in only one thing, which was to differ on almost every text of the Scriptures on which they have written. For instance, you cannot say that the books of the Maccabees are inspired without perjuring yourself with all your priests. For the greatest part of the holy fathers tell you that these books are not inspired. You cannot, without perjuring yourself, say, when Christ said to Peter,”Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,’ it signified that Peter was meant by this rock, and that he is the cornerstone of the Church; for you know very well (and if you do not know it, I can show it to you) that St. Augustine and many other holy fathers positively say that Christ meant Himself when he said, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church.’

“(4.) I cannot be any more a Roman Catholic, for I know that AURICULAR CONFESSION IS A DIABOLICAL INSTITUTION.

“(5.) I will never be a Roman Catholic, for I have seen with my eyes the inside of the walls of your church, and they are filled with all the abominations of the world. Your celibacy is of diabolical institution. Your purgatory, with the poor souls that burn in it, and are saved by paying you so many dollars, is of diabolical institution. Your waters of La Sallette and Notre Dame De Lourdes, which are sold in your palace, are of diabolical institution. Your forbidding to eat meat on certain days is of diabolical institution. Your defense of reading the Holy Scriptures is of diabolical institution. Your infallible Pope and immaculate Mother of God are of diabolical institution.

“(6.) WITH THE HELP OF GOD, I will never think of making my peace with the Church of Rome, for her priests, bishops and popes have shed the blood of millions of martyrs, from John Huss to our dear brother Hackett. ’On your Pope’s hands I see the blood of the 75,000 Protestants slaughtered the night of St. Bartholomew, and the blood of half a million of Christians slaughtered in the mountains of Piedmont.

“(7.) I will never be a Roman Catholic, for YOUR CHURCH is the implacable enemy of all the laws of God, and of all the rights, liberties and privileges of men. YOUR CHURCH has degraded and brought into the dust and the mud all the nations she has ruled. I might give you many other reasons why I would never be a Roman Catholic, but I hope these are sufficient to show to my dear countrymen, whom you so cruelly keep in the most ignominious ignorance and slavery, that, HAVING ONCE ACCEPTED CHRIST FOR MY ONLY SAVIOUR AND HIS HOLY WORD FOR MY ONLY GUIDE, I CANNOT BOW DOWN ANY MORE BEFORE YOUR IDOLS AND WAFER-GODS.

C. Chiniquy