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THE INEVITABLE CRIMES OF CELIBACY:

——THE——

VICES OF CONVENTS
AND MONASTERIES,
PRIESTS AND NUNS

By

THOS. E. WATSON

Author of "The Story of France," "Napoleon," "Life and
Times of Andrew Jackson," "Life and Times of Thomas
Jefferson," "The Roman Catholic Hierarchy," Etc.

Thomson, Ga.:
1916.

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Press of
THE JEFFERSONIAN PUB. CO.
Thomson, Ga.

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The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices
of Convents andMonasteries,
Priests and Nuns.

CHAPTER I.

When any species of wrong-doing can wear the disguise of righteousness,the blindest among us can see how dangerous that kind of crime maybecome—how hard to prove, punish and put down.

There are immense Arabian plains where nomad robbers have practisedtheir profession, from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not tothe contrary; yet those plains and the nomad bands that pitch theirtents beneath the Oriental sun remain very much as they were in the daysof Abraham.

But where robbery has disguised itself as Law, and one class has aimedthe law-making machine at the others, saying "Stand and deliver!"whole regions have become deserts, and great peoples have been blottedout.

In fact, the highwayman, the cattle-lifter and the pickpocket have neverin the least affected the destinies of nations. The pirate and thebuccaneer have never been able to destroy the commerce of the seas,beggar provinces, and change noble harbors into neglected pools.

It is when the robbers intrench themselves in Parliaments, Reichstagsand Congresses, and the robbery takes the form of "Law," that spoliationbecomes destructive. Bank laws and money-contraction laws beat down morevictims than armies. Protective Tariff "laws," infinitely more ruinousthan all the Lafittes and Captain Kidds, drive the American flag fromthe seas, while on land they make a thousand Rockefellers, Carnegies,Morgans, Guggenheims, McCormicks and Armours, at the same time that theyare casting millions of the despoiled out of house and home.

There are realms where religious mendicancy keeps to the primitive formsof the beggar's bowl and pouch. It is the free-will offering.

In these countries of voluntary tributes, religious feeling has branched[Pg 4]into the fewest channels, has lost the least of its original force, andmaintains today its most impregnable position. But where the priestlycaste was able to intrench its mendicancy in Law, and arrogantly say tothe laity, "Pay me one-tenth of all thou hast!" religion was first towell-nigh lose its beauty and its strength, and like, the Rhine, almostdisappear into the intricate morasses of subdivisions.

Ten thousand virulent disputes about tithes ushered in the diabolisms ofthe French Revolution; and many of my readers will remember how CharlesDickens, when a Parliamentary reporter, dropped his pencil in tears,unable to go on, as Daniel O'Connell described one of the tragedies of atithe-riot in Ireland.

When Religion went forth as Christ sent it forth, it dem