“Mr. Chiniquy, I am your superior. I do not want to argue with you. You are my 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 submit yourselves to my authority, and promise to do anything I will bid you. Take away from your act of submission those words, ‘the Word of God,’ ‘the gospel of Christ,’ and ‘the Bible,’ or I will punish you as a rebel.” These are the words of the Roman Catholic bishop who was questioning Charles Chiniquy and his beliefs. Chiniquy, as a Roman Catholic priest, had submitted a letter that showed he was only interested in obeying the Bible, and for that he was threatened with excommunication from his church. Hello, church, and welcome back to our discussion of the booklets and books from our resource desk. In today’s video, I am examining a book called A Famous Catholic Priest Converts to Christianity. In this book, Charles Chiniquy is flatly told, “You will submit to my authority.” But after years of finding conflicts between his authorities, he simply said, “I am going to follow the bishops of the church only as far as they follow the Scriptures.” We are going to look at where his faith turned after that, how he had to go back to his parish and tell them of this great change that had washed over him, and finally, we will look at the story of how his entire congregation turned to Christ.
The Letter in the Fire
The author, Charles Chiniquy, was a Roman Catholic priest in the mid-1800s, completely devoted to his God. He loved the Lord, but over years of serving, he was just so bothered by some of the teachings of his church that it eventually led him to Christianity. The main teaching that bothered him the most was their rejection of the Scriptures and the gospel, and the higher importance that they placed on the authority of the bishops, or the structure of the church, or the traditions that were passed down to them. These books are excerpts from the larger book called Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, and it is later in the book, in chapters 65 and 66, that he tells the story of when he was called into Bishop Smith’s presence. Two weeks earlier, Bishop Smith had accepted a letter of submission that Chiniquy and his congregation had signed, and in that letter they flatly said that they would submit to the bishop as long as the bishop submitted to the Bible. In the heat of the moment, the bishop said, “Yes, okay,” and signed off on it. But then he calls Chiniquy back to his room and asks, “Chiniquy, do you have the letter?” “Yes, I have the letter.” He takes the letter and asks if this is the only copy and if this was the original, and Chiniquy told him yes, that is the only copy we have. As soon as he verified that was the only piece of paper, he rushed over to the fire, threw it in, and burned it. He just flatly told Chiniquy, “We no longer accept your terms of submission. You have to rewrite the letter, and you have to take out the words ‘the Word of God,’ ‘the gospel of Christ,’ and ‘the Bible.’ If you remove those words, then I will accept your letter.” Chiniquy flatly refused his bishop. He said, “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 for ever blessed!'”
Bought with a Price
You see, it had been a long time coming. He had seen this day coming for a long time, but now he was no longer a Roman Catholic priest. He goes back to his hotel room, and because of that he is mortified. I mean, he is grieved over this. You can read in his own words that all his life he believed that there was no salvation apart from the Church of Rome, and now he has been separated from the church, and he is thinking, “Where do I turn?” For an hour he calls out to God, and then for another hour he opens up the Scriptures, and he is brought to the verse, “Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.” That is 1 Corinthians 7:23. A flood of realization comes over him: “I don’t belong to the bishops. I don’t belong to the pope. Jesus has bought me with his blood. I belong to Jesus.” I love what he said. He says, “In that instant, all the things which as a Roman Catholic priest I believed to save, all the mummeries by which the poor Roman Catholics are so cruelly deceived, the chaplets, indulgences, scapulars, auricular confession, invocation of the Virgin, holy water, masses, purgatory, etc., given as means of salvation, vanished from my mind, as a huge tower, when struck at the foundation, crumbles to the ground. Jesus alone remained in my mind as the Saviour of my soul.” He is there, bleary-eyed from weeping with joy, almost in a kind of daze, and he realizes that he is finally and fully saved. He has placed his faith in Jesus Christ alone.
A Congregation Turns to Christ
For some time he had been studying the Scriptures for himself and even leading his Roman Catholic congregation in the Scriptures, and they had been on this kind of journey with him. Now he is no longer a Roman Catholic. So now what? He has got this big congregation, and the story goes on to tell how he went home, preached a two-hour sermon, and told the congregation about everything that had happened, how he had been removed as a priest, but how he had accepted Jesus Christ. Then in that sermon he calls on the congregation to receive the same free gift of salvation that he had received. He said, “Without a single exception, that multitude arose. More than a thousand of my countrymen had for ever broken their fetters. They had crossed the Red Sea and exchanged the servitude of Egypt for the blessings of the Promised Land.” That is how chapter 65 ends. It is incredible. The very next chapter is about how they are trying to navigate this whole new thing, calling themselves Catholic Christians or Christian Catholics. Within a few weeks, 405 of the 500 families had become Christian, and after a few months there were only fifteen families that remained Catholic and refused to convert. So there is this entire congregation devoting themselves now to reading the Scriptures and furthering the arts in Jesus’ name, and replacing the idol worship that was in their previous building. I mean, they are tearing down statues. They are teaching people the truth. They are rejecting the false teachings of purgatory and other doctrines. It says, “The doctrines of auricular confession, prayers in an unknown language, the Mass, holy water, indulgences, were calmly examined, discussed, and thrown overboard one after another. In a very short time, the good done in those public discussions was incalculable. Our dear converts not only learned the great truths of Christianity, but they learned how to defend and preach them to their relations, friends, and neighbors. Many would come from long distances to see for themselves that strange religious movement which was making so much noise all over the country.”
“Here We No Longer Bend the Knee”
Of course, all of this is to the dismay of the bishops. When they came to visit, the crier cried, “My dear French Canadian countrymen, here is your holy bishop. Kneel down, and he will give you his benediction.” Nobody moved. The crier was thinking they did not hear him, so he repeats it again even louder this time, and still nobody moves. Someone from the crowd shouts out, “Do you not know, sir, that here we no longer bend the knee before any man? It is only before God we kneel.” The whole crowd shouts “Amen” in agreement, and the bishop is all flustered over that. He even threatened to excommunicate Chiniquy, but Chiniquy responded, “Well, you seem to have forgotten. You can’t excommunicate someone who has left the church.” Without letting it devolve into sneers and jeers, they respectfully heard the bishop out. Chiniquy tells of only one kind of tense time in the whole speech. He was trusting the Lord the whole time, but not without anxiety. The bishop says, and I quote, “My dear French Canadian friends, I ask you, in the name of Jesus Christ, your Saviour and mine, in the name of your desolate mothers, fathers, and friends, who are weeping along the banks of your beautiful St. Lawrence River, I ask you, in the name of your beloved Canada, answer me: now that you refuse to obey the holy Church of Rome, who will guide you in the ways of salvation?” At that, the crowd went completely silent, and here is Pastor Chiniquy, a little bit concerned about what the people might say. The bishop asked them again, and again there is silence, until an old farmer raises his Bible over his head and says, “The Bible is all we want to guide us in the ways of God. We do not want anything but the pure Word of God to teach us what we have to be to be saved. As for you, sir, you had better go away and never come here any more.” Again, five thousand people shouted “Amen,” and they were shouting, “The Bible! The holy Bible! The Word of God is our only guide in the ways of eternal life!” That must have been an incredible scene.
The Bishop’s Defeat
Now, Chiniquy closes the chapter with this bizarre story of how the bishop then grasped Chiniquy by the arm and dug his fingers into his forearm in just this rage. The crowd sees their beloved pastor grabbed by the arm and presumes that he was trying to hurt Chiniquy, and from that they nearly rioted. I mean, the platform is ten feet tall, and they start charging the platform, until Chiniquy and another man were able to calm them down. Once Chiniquy had the crowd under control again, he reassured them that the bishop had not changed anything, and he assured them that if anything, it was a victory for God that day. So right there in this crowd of five thousand people, they part and make a way for the bishop and his entourage of priests to file through the crowd, get into their carriage, and ride away in shame and defeat. It said that the bishop, and I quote, “left us to wander every day nearer the regions of lunacy. That bishop, whose beginning had been so brilliant, after his shameful defeat at St. Anne on the 3rd of August, 1858, was soon to end his broken career in the lunatic asylum at St. Louis, where he is still confined today.” It is quite an interesting end to an incredible story. If you have not read the booklet, I encourage you to do so. There are a lot more details in here that we could not cover, and so I encourage you to check that out. In another video, we will look at the steps that brought him to this place of conversion. Here is a priest who loves his church, but he does not arrive at Christianity overnight. What made Chiniquy believe in God was the Bible, and this process he went through of believing the Bible over his mentors. We discuss that in another booklet called The Scriptures Enlighten a Catholic Priest on Mary and the Holy Fathers. But until then, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. God bless you. Thank you so much for going through this video with us. There are things in there that will just help us bring the Bible home to everyday life, and I hope it was a blessing to you. If it has been a help to you, would you mind clicking the like button and subscribing to our channel? That would really help us get the word out to more people. We will see you in the next video.
