Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/129

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THE CONFESSIONAL
123

the inquisitiveness, the knowledge of different confessors, and make plots (they have admitted so much to me) to put embarrassing questions to priests.

For, although they frequently manifest a quick sense of shame and delicacy at the commencing period they are forced to be more circumstantial in their narratives. A girl will often try to fit in her less delicate transgressions between two common and more respectable peccadilloes, and only accuse herself in a general way of having been ‘rude,’ or immodest. No confessor can allow such a general accusation to pass: he is bound to recall her and question her minutely on the subject. The conversation which ensues is much better imagined than described; for by some curious process of reasoning (assisted by the light of faith) the Church of Rome has deduced from certain words of Christ that the confessor must have a detailed knowledge of every serious transgression before he can give absolution.

Finally, there is a still more curious and pitiable category of victims of the sacrament of penance. A missionary priest who travels from parish to parish is often warned that he will get certain women to confession who must be handled very carefully; they are practically monomaniacs of the system, and are found in many parishes in London. Sometimes they have a mania for denouncing priests to the bishop for solicitation, and in the hope of getting evidence they will entangle him in the crudest conversation.