POPISH CONVENTS IN AMERICA.
By Editor
AFTER relating how the convents were suppressed in Italy, Dowling in his "History of Romanism" makes the following appeal to Americans. We wish it might be read by everyone who thinks that the encroachments of Romanism are but the harmless advances of a branch of the Christian church:— "Is it not enough to make the very blood of an American father or brother boil with indignation to think that hundreds of daughters and sisters of America are, at this moment, immured in these gloomy prison houses, many of them, doubtless, pining and longing for their liberty, and yet that there is no one out of the Romish Church that has the legal right of access to them, however nearly related, and no law which establishes the right even of inspection and inquiry as to the treatment of these helpless females? Does anyone doubt that many of such young persons, probably induced to enter these institutions at a time of life when their judgment is feeble and their imagination strong, are compelled to remain against their will? That few of them would remain if permitted to exercise free volition, is a certainty founded on all we know of human nature. It is useless to argue about it. The situation of these women is utterly unnatural, and must be intolerably irksome until the enfeebled mind loses its power to struggle against misery. "Moreover, a number of nuns have, from time to time, escaped. Alas! that this word should, in this country, be the only one applicable to the departure of a woman from a house where she has been kept without legal authority. The story told by these is invariably the same. They all have become disgusted with convent life; they all have been eagerly desirous of departure; they all have been carefully watched by their keepers; and they all declare that many, unable to escape, are pining miserably in their cloisters. "Supposing that the real purpose of these houses is religious—admitting all that the priests would have us believe of their own superhuman purity—yet it is horrible that women should be kept in these places after they have found their mistake in going into them. What ground can the priests have for retaining them when no longer nuns at heart? Is it not apparent that if all was right in these places, the priests would expel every woman whom they found apostate in soul? Is it reasonable to suppose that they would detain by force, as a bride of the Deity, a young woman whose heart was utterly unfaithful to her vows? "It is plain enough that the priests have other than religious views and maxims in relation to convents. Much also has been revealed of the abominations practiced in these places. It has been proclaimed to the world, upon the authority of Catholics themselves, that houses of religion where young women are under the control of Catholic priests, are liable to be perverted into places of shocking licentiousness and most unmitigated despotism over the hearts, minds, and persons of the nuns. In Catholic countries, again and again, ecclesiastical authorities, as we have shown, have searched into these matters, and proclaimed the horrible wickedness of the nunneries; and in our own country, now and then, a wretched woman has contrived to make known to the American people the fact that foreign ecclesiastics are repeating in the convents the conduct charged upon them in Europe. "It is not at all necessary to adduce individual instances, however easy the task, in order to confirm suspicion of the wrong done to American women in convents. No body of men would be likely to have unrestrained power over women without abusing it; and of all men, the Catholic priests, from the nature of their relation to society, are the least likely to be blameless under these circumstances. When opportunity is continual, restraint unfelt, secrecy secured, exposure fully guarded against it needs no record to inform us of the consequence. "These women are not under the protection of the law. The law has no knowledge of them; they have no access to it except at the will of those who keep the keys of their prisons. The law provides that a wife shall have protection against her husband. She may at any time go before a magistrate and make complaint against him, and the magistrate will do her justice, even though he should send the husband to prison. The father has not uncontrolled authority over the daughter. The law shields her against harshness. Were it known that a husband kept his wife locked up, or a father his daughter, an officer of the law would soon inquire into the cause. The woman would have leave to speak, and to speak to those able and ready to redress her wrongs. The State itself is not at liberty to keep a female in prison without permitting inspection by the grand jury, that great vigilance committee, which always watches over personal liberty and right. "But what a husband may not do, what a father may not do, what the State may not do, is freely accorded to foreign priests that we know not of, except that in the land whence they came men's hearts are sick and their souls weary because of them. The priests may keep the nuns locked up, nobody interferes; they may offer them the grossest insults, inflict upon them the utmost outrage,761and the poor victims cannot make complaint. No grand jury enters these portals, which, once closed upon the nuns, shut them in from all the devices of society for the protection of person. When a nun is removed, nobody knows it; when she dies, nobody necessarily knows it—there are no coroners' inquests in nunneries. Are such places as these suitable abodes for the daughters and sisters of American freemen? "American convents, awed into at least an appearance of decency by the Protestant sentiment of the country, may throw a more impenetrable veil of concealment over their dark proceedings; but human nature is the same everywhere; their character is the same; no less than Italian convents are they all dark prison houses to those who enter them, of slavery, misery, corruption, and despair. Strange that they should ever exist in these free and enlightened United States! Stranger still that they should sometimes grow and flourish through the patronage and support of Protestant Americans! But, strangest of all, that American politicians should sell themselves to Rome, and buy Catholic votes with subsidies drawn from the pockets of Protestant taxpayers to these un-American, popish institutions!"