“I have sworn never to interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of the holy fathers. But the holy fathers have never been unanimous in anything except in differing from one another on almost every subject.” Those are the words of a former Roman Catholic priest, and after searching the holy fathers for years, he eventually just decided to go with the apostles themselves for his doctrine. That is what this book is all about. Hello, church, and welcome back to our series of book reviews from our resource desk. In today’s video, I examine our booklet called The Scriptures Enlighten a Catholic Priest on Mary and the Holy Fathers. In it, Charles Chiniquy finds himself arguing with his superiors over key doctrines, and while they are appealing to tradition, he appeals to the Scriptures. We are going to look at some of the ways he was taught as a child to love Mary but fear Jesus. We will look at a conversation that he had with a really respected priest who was beating himself when he was praying. Then we will look at a time when, as a priest, he preached a great sermon on the Virgin Mary, but immediately after the sermon went home that night, read the Bible, and just started to doubt his own sermon. And we will look at some of the conversations with the bishops and other church leaders when he could not find agreement in the church fathers.
Love Mary, Fear Jesus
This author, Charles Chiniquy, was a Roman Catholic priest in the mid-1800s, and he was absolutely devoted to the Lord. He loved the Lord, but he was so bothered by so many of the teachings of his church that it eventually led him to Christianity. These booklets are just excerpts from his larger book called Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. In chapter 7, which we have pulled into this booklet, he tells of when he was a boy, when the priest would teach the children that Mary was the nice one and Jesus was the mean one. Mary was merciful, and Jesus was that God of justice. This was done with a line of questioning to the kids. “Now, my child, tell us who punished you most severely, your father or your mother?” “My father,” I said, without hesitation. “Still true, my child. The superior goodness of a kind mother is perceived even in the act of correction. Her blows are lighter than those of the father. Further, when you had deserved to be chastised, did not someone sometimes come between you and your father’s rod, taking it from him and pacifying him?” “Yes,” I said. “Mother did that very often and saved me from severe punishment more than once.” And so on the questioning goes, until the children are convinced that Mary is the real Saviour. She is the merciful one who spares you from judgment. To which Chiniquy says, “By means of that impious doctrine, Rome deceives the intellects, seduces the hearts, and destroys the souls of the young for ever. Under the pretext of honoring the Virgin Mary, she insults her by outraging and misrepresenting her adorable Son.”
The Priest Who Whipped Himself
Well, he revisits that topic in chapter 22, when he tells of being sent to a new parish where a Reverend Mr. Bédard was. He was a short man, about sixty-five years old, with a stocky chest and such a kind nature, and yet he was so deluded by his theology that he was harming himself. I mean, he would pray Psalm 51, this psalm of repentance, and during the prayers he would whip his back with a leather strip with metal balls attached. “Though I am old, I am still a great sinner. I have an implacable and indomitable enemy in my depraved heart, which I cannot subdue except by punishing my flesh. If I do not do these penances for my numberless transgressions, who will do them for me? If I do not pay the debts I owe to the justice of God, who will pay them for me?” “But,” Chiniquy says, “I answered, ‘Has not our Saviour Jesus Christ paid our debts on Calvary? Has he not saved and redeemed us all by his death on the cross? Why, then, should you or I pay again to the justice of God that which has been so perfectly and absolutely paid by our Saviour?'” “Ah, my dear friend,” quickly replied Mr. Bédard, “that doctrine you hold is Protestant, which has been condemned by the holy Council of Trent. Christ has paid our debts, certainly, but not in such an absolute way that there is nothing more to be paid by us.” Though Mr. Chiniquy was a fellow Roman Catholic priest, he starts quoting Ephesians chapter 2 to Mr. Bédard, about the grace of God and that we cannot add anything to the finished work of Christ. He said, “Now, my dear and venerable Mr. Bédard, allow me respectfully to ask, how is it possible that your salvation is only by grace if you have to purchase it every day by tearing your flesh and lashing your body in such a fearful manner? Is it not a strange favor, a very singular grace, which reddens your skin with your blood and bruises your flesh every night?” “My dear little brother,” answered Mr. Bédard, “I have heard that you spend too much time in reading the Bible in preference to every other of the holy books, and that you have a fatal tendency to interpret the Holy Scriptures too much according to your own mind, and in a sense which is rather more Protestant than Catholic. Though your reading too much of the Holy Scriptures has brought some clouds into your mind, yet when you were with the bishop, I heard from him that you always ended by yielding to the sense given by our holy church. We are sure that our dear young Chiniquy will never be a traitor to our holy church.” Chiniquy says, “Though these two priests professed to have a most profound love and respect for the Holy Scriptures, they gave very little time to their study, and both several times rebuked me for passing too many hours in their perusal, and repeatedly warned me against the habit of constantly appealing to the Scriptures against certain practices and teachings of our theologians. As good Roman Catholic priests, they had no right to go to the Holy Scriptures alone to know what the Lord saith. The traditions of the church were the foundations of science and light. Both of them often distressed me with the facility with which they buried out of view, under the dark clouds of their traditions, the clearest texts of the Holy Scriptures, which I used to quote in defense of my positions in our conversations and debates. They both, with an equal zeal, and unfortunately with too much success, persuaded me that it was right for the church to ask me to swear that I would never interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of the holy fathers. But when I showed them that the holy fathers had contradicted each other on every subject, and that church historians had very different views from ours on many subjects, they never answered my questions except by silencing me with the text, ‘If he does not hear the church, let him be a heathen or a publican,’ and by giving me long lectures on the danger of pride and self-confidence.”
The Sermon He Doubted
Well, it was later, in 1850, when Chiniquy had given a rousing sermon on the Virgin Mary, one which he believed fully. He even had a bishop in the congregation that day, and the bishop complimented him on the sermon and noticed the response of the people, how very favorable it was. But that very night, in reading the Bible, Chiniquy read how Jesus was not dismissive of his mother, but he did not venerate her like Chiniquy himself did. In fact, in Matthew 12 she is treated like everyone else, when Jesus said, “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” You see, he had often told his people, when he was a Catholic priest, that Jesus is always guaranteed to listen to his mother, but then he realized from reading the Scripture that no, he did not. When he read the words of Matthew and Mark and Luke, he felt like God was telling him, “How dare you preach that Jesus always granted the petitions of Mary, when we tell you the contrary by the order of God himself?” Even stronger was when he read what Jesus said to Mary in John chapter 2: “Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” Chiniquy took that to mean that Jesus was essentially saying, “It is not your will that matters, Mary, but my will that matters.” Chiniquy was distressed all night after this realization, all the way until dawn, when he came down to breakfast with the bishop. The bishop notices him and asks, “Are you sick? It looks like you have cried all night long.” Chiniquy says, “I have,” and they went to a private area to discuss it. Chiniquy confided in him that he believed that Jesus was the only one, that he was the eternal Saviour, and he asked the final question that the bishop still could not answer. Chiniquy said, “Now, my lord, if Jesus is still my best friend, my most powerful, merciful, loving friend, why should I not go directly to him? Why should we for a moment go to anyone who is infinitely inferior in power, love, and mercy for our salvation?” At that, the bishop stammered some excuse, like “Read the holy fathers,” and then he left.
The Holy Fathers Disagree
This shook Chiniquy’s faith to its foundation, and he consumed the holy fathers voraciously, all of their writings that he could find, and he realized that none of the holy fathers from the first six centuries ever advocated the worship of Mary. Chapter 46 of the book is a chapter entirely devoted to the discrepancies between the holy church fathers, and after so much study, Chiniquy said, “I will not remain a good Catholic on account of the unanimity of the holy fathers. My faith will not be founded upon the fallible, obscure, and wavering words of Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Augustine, or Jerome, but on the infallible Word of Jesus, the Son of God, and his inspired writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, and Paul. It is Jesus, not Origen, who will now guide me, for the second was a sinner like myself, and the first is for ever my Saviour and my God. I know enough of the holy fathers to assure your lordship that the oath we take, to accept the Word of God according to their unanimous consent, is a miserable blunder, if not a blasphemous perjury. It is evident that Pius IV, who imposed the obligation of that oath upon us all, never read a single volume of the holy fathers. He would not have been guilty of such an incredible blunder if he had known that the holy fathers are unanimous in only one thing, which is to differ from each other on almost everything.”
The Price of a Soul
The chapter ends in a distressing way, where Chiniquy tells a story of when he and a group of priests went to a village where a poor farmer had been told that his wife was burning in the flames of purgatory unless he paid five dollars for a funeral Mass to be sung to get her out. The farmer pleaded for mercy with this priest, and Chiniquy saw this happening and said nothing. It cut deeply to his heart; he felt like such a coward for not speaking up. The other priest that he was witnessing then said, “I see two pigs in your backyard. Give me one of those, and we will do the Mass.” The poor man said, “But sir, a neighbor gave me those so that my kids and I would not starve through the winter. Please, I beg you.” But the priest was completely dismissive. He would have nothing to do with that. Chiniquy saw all that go down, and he left, and he was just sick with himself for saying nothing, and he wept that night in misery. Well, the next day he purposed to give the man five dollars of his own money to pay for the Mass. At dinner that night, the other priest had a roasted pig placed on the table, and Chiniquy sprang up and threw his chair back so hard that it nearly fell over, and he threw his plate forward in disgust. He said, “I would rather starve to death than eat of that execrable dish. I see in it the tears of the poor man,” because he realized this was the very pig that the poor man had paid for that Mass with. He said, “I see the blood of his starving children. It is the price of a soul. No, no, gentlemen, do not touch it. You know, Mr. Curate, how thirty thousand priests and monks were slaughtered in France in the bloody days of 1792. It was for such iniquities as this that God Almighty visited the church in France. The same future awaits us here in Canada, the very day that the people will awaken from their slumber and see that, instead of being ministers of Christ, we are vile traitors of souls under the mask of religion.” When he said that, it sure made for an awkward night. He lost all thirteen of those friends that day. But that was just one of the many examples of what apparently had become commonplace in the dogma of Rome, and slowly he was coming to the light. You have got to read the entire book to get all the details from this firsthand account. It is quite an interesting end to an incredible story, and if you have not read the entire booklet, I encourage you to do so. In another booklet, we are going to look at how Chiniquy comes to Christ and leads his entire congregation to be saved too. If you have not seen that video, go check that out. In our next video, we will look at some of the excerpts of what it looked like for him to be the Apostle of Temperance of Canada. We will examine that in our discussion of the booklet Temperance in another video. But until then, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. God bless you. Well, thank you for watching this video. This whole channel is dedicated to videos kind of like this, and so if that is not for you, that is fine. But if you did enjoy it, and you would like more of this kind of content, would you help us out by clicking the like button and subscribing to our channel? We look forward to seeing you in the next video.
