“He believes as an idiot believes. He believes as a corpse believes.” These are the words of a Roman Catholic priest talking about a child. He was a priest who grew disillusioned with his church over many things, including this repeated phrase, “Be a corpse, be a corpse.” Hello, church, and welcome back to our discussion of the booklets and books from our resource desk. In today’s video I am examining this booklet called Be a Corpse and Other Roman Catholic Teachings Exposed. In it, Charles Chiniquy wondered why he was told repeatedly as a Roman Catholic to blindly obey his superiors, to not question authority, to just obey and be a corpse. Here is a Roman Catholic priest who has written kind of an exposé on his former church. In this video we will look at when Chiniquy used the word idiot, and then we will examine the actual quotations from the Roman Catholic books that call for turning off all of your objections to the church, and even quotations that allow for Roman Catholics to tell lies or to steal. Then we will go into the time that he tells of being a monk living in a monastery, and of how silly and even evil things could be in that monastery, and how it was sometimes worse the higher ranking the Roman Catholic officials got. There is a whole chapter of scandal after scandal listed out.
As a Corpse Believes
This author, Charles Chiniquy, was a Roman Catholic priest in the mid-1800s, just completely devoted to God. He loved the Lord, but he was so bothered by some of the teachings that it eventually led him to Christianity, and one of those teachings was the topic of this booklet, be a corpse. These booklets are excerpts from the larger book called Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. It was in chapter 8 that he tells the story of when he was a boy and took his first communion, being told that it was the body of Christ while knowing that it was only a piece of bread. What he said of himself, and of everybody who has to turn their intellect off, was this: “The poor child thinks he believes, and he sincerely tries to do so. He believes in it as much as it is possible to believe in a most monstrous and ridiculous story, opposed to the simplest notions of truth and common sense. He believes as Roman Catholics believe. He believes as an idiot believes. He believes as a corpse believes.” Now, he is not calling people idiots. He is just saying that this was a mindless belief. That is the first quote from this book where he used that phrase, but in chapter 13 he went on for a long chapter about the Catholic education of school children, how indoctrinating it is, how subtle the teaching often is, and how much the schools influence true Christians away from Christianity and toward Romanism. It was in that very education that he was raised, so he knew exactly what he was saying. “His superiors,” meaning the priests and all the way up to the Pope, “must see for him, hear for him, and think for him. The Roman Catholic is constantly told in his school that the most unpardonable and damnable crime is to make use of his own intelligence and follow his own private judgment in the research of truth. He is constantly reminded that man’s own private judgment is his greatest enemy. Hence all his intellectual and conscientious efforts must be brought to fight down, silence, kill his private judgment. It is by the judgment of his superiors, the priest, the bishop, the pope, that he must be guided in everything.” That is a quotation from the author himself. Now, according to Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Society: “As for holy obedience, this virtue must be perfect in every point, in execution, in will, and in intellect; doing what is enjoined with all celerity, spiritual joy, and perseverance; persuading ourselves that everything is just; suppressing every repugnant thought and judgment of one’s own in a certain obedience. And let everyone persuade himself that he who lives under obedience should be moved and directed under divine providence by his superior, just as if he were a corpse, which allows itself to be moved and led in every direction.” This one is from Pope Gregory XVI, who said in 1832, “If the Holy Church so requires, let us sacrifice our own opinions, our knowledge, our intelligence, the splendid dreams of our imagination, and the most sublime attainments of the human understanding.” So much of that chapter is the author calling parents to beware of the teaching of the Catholic schools. It is like a warning, page after page, of how far-reaching the dogma is. It is not just about spiritual things; it extends to many areas of life where they are expected to consult the priests or risk being excommunicated. So it is not the dictates of Scripture and conscience that guide one’s life; it is the dictates of the church. They are encouraged to go not to the Lord but to the priest, who is called the representative of the Lord, and instead he takes the Lord’s place.
Lying and Stealing
The author, Charles Chiniquy, does not want you to take his word for it, but again has quote after quote directly from his superiors and the ancient church fathers that led to the conclusions he wrote about. In chapter 13 he says, “I know that Roman Catholics will bravely and squarely deny what I now say,” but he says it anyway. In a crime, if someone is called to the witness stand, he may swear that he knows nothing of the crime about which he is questioned, though he knows it well, mentally meaning that he knows nothing of it in such a manner as to answer. Here is another quote: he may swear that he knows nothing when he knows that the person who committed the crime committed it without malice. He also quotes, “It is right to advise anyone to commit a robbery or a fornication in order to avoid a murder.” On theft he quotes, “If anyone steals small sums at different times, either from the same or from different persons, not having the intention of stealing large sums nor of causing a great damage, his sin is not mortal, particularly if the thief is poor and if he has the intention to give back what he has stolen.” And even killing in the name of heresy: “Heretics who, after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular powers to be exterminated.” Chiniquy says that this is what comes from unbridled loyalty to the institution instead of loyalty to God.
Life in the Monastery
The final chapter of the booklet is a really long chapter. This is chapter 42 from the book, and it details many of the scandals he encountered as a priest through his years. First he tells of his years as a monk in a monastery. It was not that it was full of scandals there; it was mostly, in his words, silliness. He said, “With all the fervor of my soul, I prayed to God and the Virgin Mary, day and night, that week, that I might attain that supreme state of perfection when I would have no will, no judgment of my own. The days of that first week passed very quickly, spent in prayer, reading, meditation of the Scriptures, studies of ecclesiastical history, and ascetical books, from half past five in the morning till half past nine at night. The meals were taken at the regular hours of seven, twelve, and six, during which, with rare exceptions, silence was kept and pious books were read. The quality of the food was good, but at first, before they got a female cook to preside over the kitchen, everything was so unclean that I had to shut my eyes at meals not to see what I was eating. I should have complained, had not my lips been sealed by that strange monastic vow of perfection, that every religious man is a corpse. What does a corpse care about the cleanliness or uncleanness of what is put into his mouth? The third day, having drunk at breakfast a glass of milk which was literally mixed with the dung of a cow, my stomach rebelled, a circumstance which I regretted exceedingly, attributing it to my want of monastic perfection. I envied the high state of holiness of the other fathers, who had so perfectly attained to the sublime perfection of submission that they could drink that impure milk just as if it had been clean.” He tells of another time when he was at dinner and felt hands on his feet dragging him downward, and it scared him so much he felt like it was the devil dragging him to hell. After all the other priests got over laughing at him, they explained that it was one of the other monks displaying his humility by kissing the feet of everyone there. These public displays happened at the most absurd times, the most unexpected times. Once, at dusk, when they could barely see what was going on, a whole single-file line of monks was coming through a doorway, and they began tripping one after another on something, and about five or six of them piled up on top of each other. What they had tripped over was a monk who was bowing in front of the doorway, hoping to show his humility by having all of the other monks step over him. Instead of seeing him and stepping over him, they tripped over him, causing such a silly scene. These were things that happened daily, and after happening daily, it was like they grated on Chiniquy after a while. Later in the book, he quotes a friend in the monastery who says their best actions are mechanical. Their acts of humility are to crawl under the table and kiss the feet of each other, or make a cross on the dirty floor with the tongue, or lie down in the dust to let the rest of the monks or the nuns pass over them. When Chiniquy left the monastery, he had so many close friends, and he knew that they were noble and kind and sincere. But he said of them, “Oh, if I could have, at the price of my life, given them the light and liberty which my merciful God has given me! But they were in the dark, and there was no power in me to change their darkness into light.” It was that mentality of “be a corpse, be a corpse” that eventually led Chiniquy away from the Church of Rome and to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, apart from any creed of the church. It was just by grace through faith. That is the story we will talk about in another video, when we review the booklet called A Famous Catholic Priest Converts to Christianity. Until then, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. God bless you. Hey, thank you for watching this video. We started this channel because we want to help bring the Bible home. So if you enjoyed this video, if it was a help to you, would you mind clicking the like button and subscribing to our channel? That way you will never miss another video. We look forward to seeing you in the next one. God bless you.
