Why is it that a human document ten thousand years old has the same effect upon us, as a newspaper story of yesterday? Why is it that we love or hate the men and women who live in the songs of Homer? Why do we grieve, or rejoice with those who live in the pages of Plutarch; and feel deeply moved when David and Jonathan are forced apart; when Joseph is sold by his brethren; when the song of Solomon voices the deathless devotion of the country girl for her mountain lover; and when the fanatical Jeptha is about to slay his innocent, beautiful daughter?
It is because human nature has never changed; what our fathers were, we are: what Absolom and David felt, we feel.
When the brilliant, wayward Jewish boy goes astray and meets his untimely fate, we mourn with his broken father as he wails—"O Absolom my son, O my son Absolom!"
That which women have already been, women continue to be. Helen of Troy was not essentially different from Madame de Pompadour; Cleopatra was a more refined Catherine of Russia; Aspasia was the forerunner of Madame Maintenon: Sappho was another "George Sand;" Lilly Langtry was a modern Phryne; and Pauline Bonaparte had all the charm and voluptousness of Nell Gwynne.
One reason why the Old Testament continues to be a modern book is, that it is so full of human nature. Our first instinct, when we became violently enraged is, to kill. In the Old Testament, they do it. Considered as a mere human document, there is more raw slaughter in the Old Testament than any book you ever read, and the details are given with frightfully fascinating realism.
No cloak is thrown around Jacob and Abraham and Lot. Those citizens are painted with all the warts on. In some of them, indeed, the warts fill most of the canvass. That affair of David and the other man\'s wife: how modern it is! If you will glance over the daily newspaper, you will find that some[Pg 20]where or other in this world of today, another David has seen the loveliness of Uriah\'s wife; and the first thing you know this modern David (in a Derby hat and tailor-made clothes) is running away with Bathsheba in an automobile. As to Solomon and his harem—including the Ethiopian woman—the subject is too delicate for polite treatment in a high class publication. I must leave such matters to Mr. William Randolph Hearst, whose Sunday editions and monthly outputs deal in "sex" novels, Gaby Deslys, Lina Cavalieri, Evelyn Thaw, Mrs. Keppel, and scarlet people generally.
The point I desired to make is that God made men and women to mate with one another, and thus reproduce and perpetuate the human species.
There are no bachelor eagles, no spinster swans, no monks among the lions, no nuns among the deer. When we want to make a bachelor out of a horse, we resort to surgery. Most of us know what Mooley, the cow, does in the Spring time, if she is shut up in the pasture with no other company than other Mooley cows.
Without pursuing this line of illustration farther, it is sufficient to say that all animal nature is under the same law. Of course, there are exceptions to all rules. Some men repel women: some women abhor men. Some men actually marry, believing that they are fit for it and then discover that they are not. A tragic instance of this was Thomas Carlyle: another was Frederick the Great. Our President James Buchanan was wise enough not to marry; and Charles Sumner was so fatuous as to do so.
But the great law of Nature is, Mate and reproduce! It applies to the flowers, to the plants, to the insects, to the fishes of the sea, and to the fowls of the air. I have often wondered why we become so accustomed to the outrageously informal conduct of hens and roosters, pigeons, ducks, turkeys, &c., that we see it and don\'t see it: we know it, and don\'t know it: it happens right under our eyes, and yet we never learn anything from it, or think anything about it.
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Once again, let me say, men and women in their animal natures are just like other animals. They hunger, they thirst, they are hot, they are cold, they are sick, they are well, they love, they hate, they fight, they yearn for mates, and having found mates, they mate. Allowed liberty, this natural tendency[Pg 21] leads to wedlock, and legitimate children. The husband and wife make the Home: the Home is the Gibraltar of organized civilization; and the children are Posterity, in its beginning. Thus marriage, the home, and the children are the conservators of Society.
If a so-called "religion" forces 71,000 American marriageable men and women into hiding places, where they have physical contact with one another but cannot marry, what happens?
You know what happens. Your common sense tells you what happens. Your own natural passions tell you what happens.
Those marriageable men and women—many of them young, handsome, buxom,—are shut off from all the world, by thick walls, barred windows, locked doors. The young buxom men can get to the young buxom women. Either in the day-time or in the night, this physical access can be had, in secret.
The men have been taught that they are gifted with supernatural powers; and that they can forgive each other\'s sins. The women have been taught that these men cannot sin, and that in serving these men they will be serving God. Besides, if they do sin with the priests, the priests can forgive the sins. This being so, what happens, when the lustful young priest slips into the cloistered convent, goes to the nun\'s bed-room and solicits her to yield to him, as Mary yielded to the angel?
(See "Why Priests Should Wed." Page 103.)
The cloistered convent is built like a huge dungeon. The encircling walls about it, are thick and high. No one enters in unto the unmarried women excepting the bachelor priests.
The Law does not enter!
The Italian Pope draws his line around the dungeons of darkness and mystery, and the civil authorities dare not go in.
Everybody knows that young women are caged in those hell-holes. Everybody knows that burly, beefy, red-faced, thick-lipped young priests glide in and out.
Everybody knows what he would do, if he had the pick of a score of buxom girls, in a secret place, he being a bachelor and they being without access to any man but himself.
If you were young and had no wife, you know what would happen, if you were alone in a pretty girl\'s bed-room, and she were educated to yield to you in everything.
Yet, these impudent rascals, the beefy Irish, Italian and German priests, ask you to believe that they never even think[Pg 22] of touching those 56,000 American girls that are caged inside those walls:
Nevertheless, you know it is against Nature for these young men not to want to mate with those women. You know that the cloistered convents would not be built like Bastilles, and the world shut out, if there were not something going on in there which they are afraid for the world to see.
You know that where cloistered convents are built and managed like jails, THEY ARE JAILS!
Yet, those impudent rascals, gliding into the women, and coming out from the women, tell you that although the women are taught to obey the priest in all things, the priest never does say or do what every full-sexed man would do and say, under the same circumstances.
The Turks had their harems, and they knew women—likewise, they knew men. The Turks had walls, and bars, and locked gates, and sentinels outside to watch. But the Turks knew how vain are walls, and barred windows, locked gates and vigilant sentinels. Therefore, the Turks always kept eunuchs in the harem itself, eunuchs whose watchful eyes were ever upon those ladies of the harem. And the eunuchs were powerful men, strong and fierce, but unsexed. They had the strength to guard the women, without the desire to enjoy.
But the Roman Pope builds harems in all Christian lands—harems for his priests to whom he denies marriage.
There are no eunuchs to guard these women. The men who go in unto them are men of like passions as ourselves; and there is no eye to watch, no tongue that will tell, after the priest has gone inside.
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Our common sense condemns this enforced celibacy which pagan popes invented for their own selfish, ambitious purposes. Or rather, the Popes borrowed it from the Turkish Sultans who would not allow their chosen body-guard, the Janissaries, to marry. In course of time, the Janissaries became more powerful than the Sultan, and they had to be exterminated. The Pope\'s Janissaries are now more powerful than the Pope; and the wretchedness of his position is that he can neither massacre them, nor rob them of their women. Of all the exalted slaves the world ever saw, the Pope is perhaps the most conspicuous example.
The Jesuits rule the priesthood; the Jesuits rule the cardi[Pg 23]nals; the Jesuits rule the Pope—and the Jesuits have the pick of the most beautiful women throughout the Christian world.
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On such a system as this—a system which has denied so many millions of men and women the God-given right to live according to Nature, history ought to have much to say. What is the evidence and the verdict of impartial History?
Let us try the case: let us call the witnesses and hear their evidence. If the other side wants to be heard, the court is open. I will give them as much space for the defense as I take for the prosecution. It shall be a perfectly fair investigation. Remember, however, that the unmarried men and the unmarried women have been hiding within the walls of monasteries and convents, ever since Pope Gregory abolished God\'s ordinance of marriage, and declared, virtually, that the Pope\'s will, and not that of God Almighty, should govern priests and nuns. Remember that there has been every effort made at concealment: that the dungeons could not tell their awful secrets; that the light of day was jealously shut out. Remember that the nun who willingly submitted to the priest did not wish to expose their mutual guilt. Remember that the nun who was forced, could seldom escape and give the alarm. Remember that the babes born in the cloistered convents were seldom seen of men, and that they could easily be thrown into the hidden vault, where the quick-lime was ready to eat their bones. Remember that it was to the interest of popery to screen the priests, and that the rulers of States were in deadly fear of the wrath of Popes—wrath which sent death to Henry III. of France, William of Orange, and Henry of Navarre. Remember further, that when Popes kept acknowledged paramours and bastards in the Vatican, the priests had nothing to fear on account of their turning the nunneries into brothels. Those nuns whose vows were not broken, were the ugly ones, the old and the ailing. The monks had such complete power over wives through the Confessional, that many women inside the cloister owed their immunity to the women outside.
There was a time, under popery, when no Italian husband was certain that his wife\'s children were his: hence, for a time paternal affection in Italy almost became extinct. There was a time, under popery, when every Italian wife had an acknowledged lover—her cicisbeo—the priests having paved the way. The husband kept a mistress; the wife, a lover; and the priest[Pg 24] enjoyed both wife and mistress, without bearing the expense of either.
(See Sismondi\'s Hist. des Repub. d\'Ital.)
There was a time, under popery, when it was assumed that every Spanish woman had yielded to a priest. And of course a woman who takes one lover will take another; and thus Spain went to moral perdition, with the priests and the nuns in the lead.
The same thing was true of Portugal, and of all Southern Europe. Of Mexico, Central and South America and Cuba, it would be a waste of words to speak.
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Pope Gregory VII. introduced the unnatural requirement of celibacy—the forbidding of men and women to do what God had equipped them to do, and prompted them, by sexual passions to do—the most powerful passions known to humanity—passions which if not naturally gratified lead to crimes of revolting enormity, to loss of health, to loss of mental balance, to loss of shame, of normal desires, and of reason itself.
(Consult such books as Dr. Sanger\'s "History of Prostitution;" Krafft-Ebing\'s Psychopathia Sexualis, &c.)
Soon after enforced celibacy was introduced, an honest priest, Honorius of Antrim wrote—
"Look at the convents of the nuns, places of debauchery! These abominable women have not chosen the Virgin, but Phryne and Messalina as their models. They prostrate themselves before the idol of Priapus!"
(Priapus was the male organ of generation, and was formerly to be seen throughout Europe, especially at public fountains.)
King Edgar of England wrote—
"What shall I say of the clergy? We find nothing among them but debauchery, excesses, orgies, and unchastity. Their abodes are propitious for solitude, and yet they dwell there not for pious meditation, but in order to lead lives of debauchery."
Pope Benedict VIII. at the Council of Pavia deplored the awful vices of the unmarried clergy.
Nicholas Clemangis says—
"The monasteries are no longer sanctuaries devoted to the divinity, but places of abomination and debauchery—rendez[Pg 25]vous of young libertines. Indeed, to make a girl take the veil is equivalent to forcing her into prostitution."
The monks of the Middle Ages led a life full of orgies, equalling the dissipations of Tiberius at Capri. "The concubines and prostitutes were mistresses of the wealth of the monasteries and convents."
The good Catholic, Anselm of Bisate, wrote—
"The nuns are not more virtuous than the monks. Widows took the veil in order to be free, and not bound to one man."
Instead of being the wife of one man, the nun could be the mistress of several.
(Dr. Angelo Rappaport, p. 36.)
Why was it that Iren?us and Epiphanius poured out such unprintable descriptions of the immorality of those "heretics" who refused to marry and who professed to be virgins? Did these Fathers of the Christian Church grossly slander those celibate heretics? Were the men and the women who indulged in those sexual excesses, while pretending to be chaste, any better or any worse than the human creatures of today?
Was Cyprian libelling his own brethren and sisters when he described how depraved, how licentious, how sodom-like was the conduct of the so-called "virgins" of his time? Cyprian lived in the third century after Christ, and he was speaking of the same phase of Christianity which provoked the immortal passage in Gibbon. Carrying their brazen hypocrisy to unheard of lengths, the monks and the nuns occupied the same beds, and yet unblushingly vowed that they had passed through this fiery furnace without the smell of fire on their garments!
If I were to quote the Latin in which Cyprian exposes these shameless harlots and libertines, the great and good U. S. Government would perhaps again prosecute me for telling the truth on Roman Catholicism.
Popery is the one thing that you must not tell the truth about, unless you are prepared to withstand boycott, abuse, persecution and threats against your property and life!
(The curious are cited to "Elliott on Romanism," Vol. II., p. 408, and to Cyprian to Pompanius, Book II., p. 181.)
So well understood was it that young men and young women needed each other, sexually, that both in the Latin and in the Greek there was a distinctive name given to these "holy virgins." The "soul marriage" of the ancient church was as much like the affinity doings of the present day, as Solomon\'s carryings on were like those of the Sultan of Turkey.[Pg 26]
To the testimony of Cyprian may be added that of Chrysostom, who bewailed the utter licentiousness of the "virgins."
Since Bishop Udalric in the year 606 wrote of the skulls of the six thousand infants found in draining off some fish ponds at the command of Gregory the Great, the slaughter of the babes has gone steadily on. "When Pope Gregory ascertained that the infants thus killed were born from the concealed fornications of and adulteries of the priests, he recalled his decree, extolling the apostolic command. It is better to marry than to burn." (Elliott II., p. 409.)
Yet, when we are told the same story by Father Chiniquy, Dr. Justin Fulton, ex-priest William Hogan, ex-priest Fresenborg, ex-priest Manuel Ferrando, ex-nun Margaret Shepherd, ex-nun Maria Monk, ex-priest Blanco White, ex-priest Seguin, and by such submissive Catholics as Erasmus, Rabelais, Campanella and scores of other unimpeachable witnesses, we are more inclined to listen to the impudent denials of the lecherous priests than to the evidence of those who escape AND TELL!
The denial made by the unmarried priests is at variance with their looks, is at variance with admitted facts, is at variance with what we ourselves know of the overwhelming strength of our carnal desires: yet the impudent denial is so brazen, so persistent, and so threatening, that we either accept it, or enter the plea of nolle contendere.
The accusation against the pretended virgins involves so many apparently good men and chaste women, that we shrink from remembering the difference between publicity and privacy; we forget that the treacherous inclination is not felt in the church and in the crowd, but that it creeps to the secret couch, under cover of night, when there is silence, freedom from interruption and security from detection.
We forget how this passion takes advantage of night, of undress, and of secret contact of the physical man and woman, to heat their normal blood, no matter how sanctified they may really be in their daily visible life.
"Saint" Bernard of the 10th century exhausts his wrath upon the hideous vices of the monks and nuns "behind the partition." "What abominable lust!" cries this stern old anchorite. He exclaims—
"Would that those who cannot rule their sexuality would fear to give their conduct the name of celibacy. It is better to marry than to burn.... Take away from the church[Pg 27] honorable marriage and the undefiled bed, and do you not fill it with concubines, incestuous persons, onanists, male concubines, and with every kind of unclean person?"
(Bernard\'s Sermons V. 29, cited in Elliott, II., 410.)
Take away honorable marriage from the priests, and what do you get in place of the bed undefiled? Read again that tremendous sentence of Saint Bernard, and then ask yourself, Has human nature changed?
A typical illustration of priestly seduction is the following:
"A lady of the name of Maria Catharine Barni, of Santa Croe, declared on her death-bed, that she had been seduced through the confessional, and that she had during twelve years maintained a continual intercourse with priest Pachiani. He had assured her that by means of the supernatural light which he had received from Jesus and the holy virgin, he was perfectly certain that neither of them was guilty of sin, &c." (Secrets of Female Convents, p. 58, cited by Elliott, Vol. II., p. 448.)
Substantially, that is the way every priest seduces every nun who yields to him.
Almost the very formula is mentioned in Dr. Justin D. Fulton\'s book which was submitted to Anthony Comstock, the modern Cato, before it was published. And Dr. Fulton asserts that Pope Pius IX. authorized this concubinage of priests with nuns, by a formal Vatican decree of 1866.
Dr. Fulton says—page 97 of "Why Priests Should Wed"—
"In the year 1866, Pope Pius IX. sanctioned the establishment of one of the most appalling institutions of immorality and wickedness ever countenanced under the form and garb of religion."
Briefly, this institution authorized priests and nuns who had been in service long enough to inspire confidence, to live in sexual relations, like man and wife. Dr. Fulton proceeds at length to describe how the priest selects his nun, how he makes his wishes known to her, how he quotes Scripture to overcome her scruples, how the "love room" is adorned with holy emblems and images, how the priest sprinkles holy water over the bed, how he then kneels and prays for a blessing on the union about to take place, and then——!
As I have said a number of times, Dr. Fulton submitted his manuscript to Anthony Comstock. The chaste Cato of New York, advised the omission of many passages; but the whole of[Pg 28] this hideous chapter describing how Pope Pius IX. authorized the priests to make use of the nuns, sexually, appears in the book with sufficient clearness to lay it in parallel columns with the abominations of Sodom, Gomorrha, the White Slave Traffic, the Decameron, the Heptameron, and Balzac\'s Merry Tales of the Abbeys of Touraine.
Dr. Fulton\'s book was published in 1888. He was never prosecuted for that terrible charge against Pope Pius IX. He was never sued for libelling the priests and nuns. His charges were never officially denied.
Cardinal Gibbons wrote his mendacious book, "The Faith of our Fathers," for the purpose of answering all that had been said against Popery. He mentioned Maria Monk by name, and denounced her true story as false. Yet, although Gibbons published his book sixteen years after Dr. Fulton had hurled his awful charge against Pope Pius IX., the Baltimore priest dared not challenge the statement of Dr. Fulton!
Maria Monk—poor, outraged, persecuted woman, was dead: Dr. Justin D. Fulton, a fearless, powerful man, was alive! Gibbons was brave enough to vilely attack the dead woman: he was too much of a contemptible coward to attack the living man.
The living man was ready with his evidence, and he was a fighter—and the catlike Gibbons knew it.
Says Dr. Fulton—
"At first the female may be a little timid, &c. She may object, &c. But the priest, representing God\'s angel in this office, gently soothes the mind and quiets the fears of his future spouse by saying to her, He who will come upon thee is not man, but is the holy one of God, and this union is pleasing to him;——."
(At this point Antho............