The Priest, The Woman and The Confessional | Page 9

to you, and to
God, who hears us? And can you promise that you will not put to me
any of those questions which have already done me such irreparable
injury? I frankly declare to you that there are sins in me that I cannot
reveal to any man, except to Christ, because He is my God, and that He
already knows them all. Let me weep and cry at His feet, and do
forgive me without adding to my iniquities by forcing me to say things
that the tongue of a Christian woman cannot reveal to a man!"

"My dear sister," I answered, "were I free to follow the voice of my
own feelings I would be too happy to grant you your request; but I am
here only as the minister of our holy Church, and bound to obey her
laws. Through her most holy popes and theologians, she tells me that I
cannot forgive you your sins, if you do not confess them all just as you
have committed them. The Church tells me also that you must give the
details which may add to the malice or change the nature of your sins. I
am also sorry to tell you that our most holy theologians make it a duty
of the confessor to question his penitent on the sins which he has good
reason to suspect have been voluntarily or involuntarily omitted."
With a piercing, cry she exclaimed, "Then, O my God, I am lost--for
ever lost!"
This cry fell upon me as a thunderbolt; but I was still more
terror-stricken when, looking through the aperture, I saw she was
fainting; and I heard the noise of her body falling upon the floor, and of
her head striking against the sides of the confessional-box.
Quick as lightning, I ran to help her, took her in my arms, and called a
couple of men, who were at a little distance, to assist me in laying her
on a bench. I washed her face with some cold water and vinegar. She
was as pale as death, but her lips were moving, and she was saying
something which nobody but I could understand,--
"I am lost--lost for ever!"
We took her to her disconsolate family, where, during a month, she
lingered between life and death.
Her two first confessors came to visit her: but, having asked every one
to go out of the room, she politely but absolutely requested them to go
away and never come again. She asked me to visit her everyday, "for,"
she said, "I have only a few more days to live. Help me to prepare
myself for the solemn hour which will open to me the gates of
eternity!"
Every day I visited her, and I prayed and I wept with her.

Many times, with tears, I requested her, when alone, to finish her
confession; but, with a firmness which then seemed to me mysterious
and inexplicable, she politely rebuked me.
One day when, alone with her, I was kneeling by the side of her bed to
pray, I was unable to articulate a single word, because of the
inexpressible anguish of my soul on her account; she asked me, "Dear
Father, why do you weep?"
I answered, "How can you put such a question to your murderer? I
weep because I have killed you, dear friend."
This answer seemed to trouble her exceedingly. She was very weak that
day. After she had wept and prayed in silence, she said, "Do not weep
for me, but weep for so many priests who destroy their penitents in the
confessional. I believe in the holiness of the sacrament of penitence,
since our holy Church has established it. But there is, somewhere,
something exceedingly wrong in the confessional. Twice I have been
destroyed, and I know many girls who have also been destroyed by the
confessional. This is a secret, but will that secret be kept for ever? I pity
the poor priests the day that our fathers will know what becomes of the
purity of their daughters in the hands of their confessors. Father would
surely kill my two last confessors, if he could know how they have
destroyed his poor child."
I could not answer except by weeping.
We remained mute for a long time; then she said, "It is true that I was
not prepared for the rebuke you have given me, but you acted
conscientiously as a good and honest priest. I know you must be bound
by certain laws."
She then pressed my hand with her cold hand and said, "Weep not, dear
Father, because that sudden storm has wrecked my too fragile back.
This storm was to take me out from the bottomless sea of my iniquities
to the shore where Jesus was