A Sincere Priest Finds Contradictions in the Teachings of the Holy Fathers

The most desolate work of a sincere Catholic priest is the study of the Holy Fathers. He does not make a step in the labyrinth of their discussions and controversies without seeing the dreams of his theological studies and religious views disappear as the thick morning mist, when the sun rises above the horizon. Bound as he is, by a solemn oath, to interpret the Holy Scriptures only according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers, the first thing which puzzles and distresses him is their absolute want of unanimity on the greater part of the subjects which they discuss. The fact is, that more than two-thirds of what one Father has written is to prove that what some other Holy Father has written is wrong and heretical.

The student of the Fathers not only detects that they do not agree with one another, but finds that many of them do not even agree with themselves. Very often they confess that they were mistaken when they said this or that; that they have lately changed their minds; that they now hold for saving truth what they formerly condemned as a damning error!

What becomes of the solemn oath of every priest in presence of this undeniable fact? How can he make an act of faith when he feels that its foundation is nothing but falsehood?

No words can give an idea of the mental tortures I felt when I saw positively that I could not, any longer, preach on the eternity of the suffering of the damned, nor believe in the real presence of the body, soul, and divinity of Christ in the sacrament of communion; nor in the supremacy of the sovereign Pontiff of Rome, nor in any of the other dogmas of my church, without perjuring myself! For there was not one of those dogmas which had not been flatly and directly denied by some Holy Fathers.

It is true, that in my Roman Catholic theological books I had long extracts of Holy Fathers, very clearly supporting and confirming my faith in those dogmas. For instance, I had the apostolic liturgies of St. Peter, St. Mark, and St. James, to prove that the sacrifice of the mass, purgatory, prayers for the dead, transubstantiation, were believed and taught from the very days of the apostles. But what was my dismay when I discovered that those liturgies were nothing else than vile and audacious forgeries presented to the world, by my Popes and my church, as gospel truths. I could not find words to express my sense of shame and consternation, when I became sure that the same church which had invented those apostolical liturgies, had accepted and circulated the false decretals of Isidore, and forged innumerable additions and interpolations to the writings of the Holy Fathers, in order to make them say the very contrary of what they intended.

How many times, when alone, studying the history of the shameless fabrications, I said to myself: “Does the man whose treasury is filled with pure gold, forge false coins, or spurious pieces of money? No! How, then, is it possible that my church possess the pure truth, when she has been at work during so many centuries, to forge such egregious lies, under the names of liturgies and decretals, about the holy mass, purgatory, the supremacy of the Pope, ect. If those dogmas could have been proved by the gospel and the true writings of the Fathers, where was the necessity of forging lying documents? Would the Popes and councils have treasuries with spurious bank bills, if they had had exhaustless mines of pure gold in hand? What right has my church to be called holy and infallible, when she is publicly guilty of such impostures.”

From my infancy I had been taught, with all the Roman Catholics, that Mary is the mother of God, and many times, every day, when praying to her, I used to say, “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for me.” But what was my distress when I read in the “Treatise on Faith and Creed,” by Augustine, Chapter iv. 9, these very words: “When the Lord said, ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come’ (John ii. 4), He rather admonishes us to understand that, in respect of His being God, there was no mother for Him.”

This was so completely demolishing the teachings of my church, and telling me that it was blasphemy to call Mary mother of God, that I felt as if struck with a thunderbolt.         Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Capter 46

Abraham Lincoln knew the real enemies of liberty

"You see that your friends, the Jesuits, have not yet killed me. But they would have surely done it, when I passed through their most devoted city, Baltimore, had I not defeated their plans, by passing incognito, a few hours before they expected me. We have the proof that the company which had been selected and organized to murder me, was lead by a rabid Roman Catholic, called Byrne; it was almost entirely composed of Roman Catholics; more than that, there were two disguised priests among them, to lead and encourage them. I am sorry to have so little time to see you; but I will not let you go before telling you that, a few days ago, I saw Mr. Morse, the learned inventor of electric telegraphy; he told me that, when he was in Rome, not long ago, he found out the proofs of a most formidable conspiracy against this country and all its institutions. It is evident that it is to the intrigues and emissaries of the pope, that we owe, in great part, the horrible civil war which is threatening to cover the country with blood and ruins." 

"







If I were fighting against a Protestant South, as a nation, there would be no danger of assassination. The nations who read the Bible, fight bravely on the battlefields, but they do not assassinate their enemies. The Pope and the Jesuits, with their infernal Inquisition, are the only organized power in the world which have recourse to the dagger of the assassin to murder those whom they cannot convince with their arguments, or conquer with the sword. "Unfortunately, I feel more and more, everyday, that it is not against the Americans of the South, alone, I am fighting, it is more against the Pope of Rome, his perfidious Jesuits and their blind and blood-thirsty slaves, than against the real American Protestants, that we have to defend ourselves. Here is the real danger of our position. So long as they will hope to conquer the North, they will spare me; but the day we will rout their armies (and the day will surely come, with the help of God), take their cities, and force them to submit; then, it is my impression that the Jesuits, who are the principal rulers of the South, will do what they have almost in variably done in the past. The dagger or the pistol of one of their adepts, will do what the strong hands of the warriors could not achieve. This civil war seems to be nothing but a political affair to those who do not see, as I do, the secret springs of that terrible drama. But it is more a religious than a civil war. It is Rome who wants to rule and degrade the North, as she has ruled and degraded the South, from the very day of its discovery. There are only very few of the Southern leaders who are not more or less under the influence of the Jesuits, through their wives, family relations and their friends. Several members of the family of Jeff Davis belong to the Church of Rome. Even the Protestant ministers are under the influence of the Jesuits without suspecting it. To keep her ascendancy in the North, as she does in the South, Rome is doing here what she has done in Mexico, and in all the South American Republics; she is paralyzing, by a civil war, the arms of the soldiers of Liberty. She divides our nation, in order to weaken, subdue and rule it."

"But there is a thing which is very certain; it is, that if the American people could learn what I know of the fierce hatred of the generality of the priests of Rome against our institutions, our schools, our most sacred rights, and our so dearly bought liberties, they would drive them away, tomorrow, from among us, or they would shoot them as traitors. But I keep those sad secrets in my heart; you are the only one to whom I reveal them, for I know that you learned them before me. The history of these last thousand years tells us that wherever the Church of Rome is not a dagger to pierce the bosom of a free nation, she is a stone to her neck, and a ball to her feet, to paralyze her and prevent her advance in the ways of civilization, science, intelligence, happiness and liberty."




"This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We. owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and the North, on the question of slavery; neither Jeff Davis nor anyone of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promises of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal, if they would attack us. I pity the priests, the bishops and the monks of Rome in the United States, when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the bloodshed in this war; the later the more terrible will the retribution be. I conceal what I know, on that subject, from the knowledge of the nation; for if the people knew the whole truth, this war would turn into a religious war, and it would, at once, take a tenfold more savage and bloody character. It would become merciless as all religious wars are. It would become a war of extermination on both sides. The Protestants of both the North and the South would surely unite to exterminate the priests and the Jesuits, if they could hear what Professor Morse has said to me of the plots made in the very city of Rome to destroy this Republic, and if they could learn how the priests, the nuns, and the monks, who daily land on our shores, under the pretext of preaching their religion, instructing the people in their schools, taking care of the sick in the hospitals, are nothing else but the emissaries of the Pope, of Napoleon, and the other despots of Europe, to undermine our institutions, alienate the hearts of our people from our constitution, and our laws, destroy our schools, and prepare a reign of anarchy here as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico, in Spain, and wherever there are any people who want to be free, etc."   




"Two cankers are biting the very entrails of the United States, today: the Romish and the Mormon priests. Both are quietly at work to form a people of the most abject, ignorant and fanatical slaves, who will recognize no other authority but their supreme pontiffs. Both are aiming at the destruction of our schools, to raise themselves upon our ruins. Both shelter themselves under our grand and holy principles of liberty of conscience, to destroy that very liberty of conscience, and bind the world before their heavy and ignominious yoke. The Mormon and the Jesuit priests are equally the uncompromising enemies of our constitution and our laws; but the more dangerous of the two is the Jesuit —the Romish priest, for he knows better how to conceal his hatred under the mask of friendship and public good; he is better trained to commit the most cruel and diabolical deeds for the glory of God.  "               Abraham Lincoln, Fifty Years In The Church Of Rome pp. 691-704

Charles Chiniquy: The LORD's Faithful Witness to the Harlotry of Rome

By Tom Stewart
A testimony of the love of God "to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by [Christ Jesus]" (Hebrews 7:25), and a faithful warning to the Church of Jesus Christ concerning the treacheries of the Harlot Church of Rome, is the life of Charles Chiniquy. As a French Canadian youth, Chiniquy was given the gift of his love for the Word of God by his unconventionally Roman Catholic parents, even though Scripture in the common tongue had been expressly forbidden by the Council of Trent. Without his knowledge, the seeds of Protestantism had been effectively sown in him, as desired by the blessed translating efforts of both John Wycliffe and William Tyndale. "But he that received Seed into the good ground is he that heareth the Word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty" (Matthew 13:23). 

Why all the commotion about Protestants historically encouraging the reading of the Word of God, when both Catholics and Protestants may freely read-- but generally ignore-- the Scriptures today? "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10:17). Because the Word of God does not benefit anyone unless it is believed. "For unto us was the Gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the Word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it" (Hebrews 4:2). Worse, too many are oblivious to their false sense of security in a Deceptive Faith that has not the works of Love. "For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by Love" (Galatians 5:6). [Please read our article, "Is Faith the Only Condition for Eternal Salvation? Or, The Biblical Doctrine of Justification by Faith " -- http://Whatsaiththescripture.com/Fellowship/Is.Faith.the.Only.Conditio.html --, for an important clarification of this often misinterpreted concept.] 

Chiniquy aspired to the priesthood of Rome, but his joy of being ordained a priest of Rome became "as if a thunderbolt had fallen upon me when I pronounced the awful oath which is required from every priest: 'I will never interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers' " (excerpt from Chiniquy' s "Fifty Years in the Church of Rome"). How unlike Rome's oath is the Scripture, "20 But ye have an Unction [Greek, chrisma] from the Holy One, and ye know all things. But the Anointing [Greek, chrisma, or unction] which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same A nointing teacheth you of all things, and is Truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him" (1John 2:20,27)! 

As a proponent of total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, he was vehemently opposed by his drunken fellow priests. "For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre" (Titus 1:7). He was horrified at the liberties taken by the priests of Rome, especially with their female confessors, who were required to confess their most intimate faults to the ears of a man, in the name of Auricular Confession. "For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret" (Ephesians 5:12). He led an effort to bring Catholicism to the United States by bringing in a large colony of French Canadian Catholics to the state of Illinois. Attacked by jealous priests, Chiniquy was compelled to require the services of Abraham Lincoln, who ably defeated the Jesuits in open court battle; however, as Chiniquy warned, the Jesuits would not forgive or forget their wound. Chiniquy later demonstrated that Lincoln's assassination in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth was carefully orchestrated by a conspiracy of Jesuit-Catholic accomplices. "Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices (2Corinthians 2:11). 

Suffice it to say that Chiniquy's breaking into the full freedom and liberty of the Gospel was aided by the whale vomiting its unwanted meal. Rome ultimately ex communicated Chiniquy, but not before he gave his resignation. The bishop "answered angrily: 'Mr. Chiniquy, I am your superior, I do not want to argue with you. You are inferior: your business is to obey me. Give me at once an act of submission, in which you will simply say that you and your people will subm it yourselves to my authority, and promise to do anything I will bid you.' I calmly answered: 'What you ask me is not an act of submission, it is an act of adoration. I do absolutely refuse to give it.' 'If it be so, sir,' he answered, 'you can no longer be a Roman Catholic priest.' I raised my hands to heaven, and cried with a loud voice: 'May God Almighty be forever blessed'" (excerpt from Chiniquy's "Fifty Years in the Church of Rome"). "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy" (Romans 9:16). 

Chiniquy returned to his room to contemplate the enormity of his situation. Taking his New Testament, he glanced providentially at these words, "Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men" (1Corinthians 7:23). Gospel Salvation now became very plain to this former priest. "Strange to say! Those words came to my mind, more as a light than an articulated sound. They suddenly but most beautifully and powerfully gave me, as much as a man can know it, the knowledge of the great mystery of a perfect salvation through Christ alone. They at once brought a great and delightful calm to my soul. I said to myself: 'Jesus has bought me, then I am His; for when I have bought a thing it is mine, absolutely mine! Jesus has bought me! I, then, belong to Him! He alone has a right over me. I do not belong to the bishops, to the popes, not even to the church, as I have be en told till now. I belong to Jesus and to Him alone! His Word must be my guide, and my light by day and by night. Jesus has bought me,' I said again to myself; 'then He has saved me! and if so, I am saved, perfectly saved, for ever saved! for Jesus cannot save me by half. Jesus is my God; the works of God are perfect. My salvation must, then, be a perfect salvation. But how has He saved me? What price has He paid for my poor guilty soul?' The answer came as quickly as lightning: 'He bought you with His blood shed on the cross! He saved you by dying on Calvary!'" (Chiniquy's emancipating thoughts from his "Fifty Years in the Church of Rome").        

Dedication:

TO THE BISHOPS, PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE OF ROME this book is also dedicated. In the name of your immortal souls, I ask you, Roman Catholics, to read this book. By the mercy of God, you will fine, in its pages, how you are cruelly deceived by your vain and lying traditions. You will see that is not through your ceremonies, masses, confessions, purgatory, indulgences, fastings, ect., you are saved. You have nothing to do but to believe, repent, and love. Salvation is a gift! Eternal life is a gift! Forgiveness of sin is a gift! Christ is a gift!

Fifty Years In The Church Of Rome p. 2, 3 & 6