The Gift – The Testimony of Former Roman Catholic Priest Charles Chiniquy

I was born and baptized a Roman Catholic in 1809, and I was ordained priest in the year 1833, in Canada. I am now in my seventy-fourth year, and it is nearly fifty years since I received the dignity of the priesthood in the Church of Rome.

For twenty-five years I was a priest of that Church, and I tell you frankly that I loved the Church of Rome, and she loved me. I would have shed every drop of my blood for my Church and would have given a thousand times my life to extend her power and dignity over the continent of America, and over the whole world. My great ambition was to convert the Protestants, and bring them into my Church, because I was told, and I preached, that outside the Church of Rome there was no salvation, and I was sorry to think that those multitudes of Protestants were to be lost.

A few years after I was born we lived in a place where there were no schools. My mother became my first teacher, and the first book in which she taught me to read was the Bible. When I was eight or nine years old I read the Divine Book with an incredible pleasure, and my heart was much taken up with the beauty of the Word of God. My mother selected the chapters she wished me to read, and the attention I gave to it was such that, many times, I refused to go and play with the little boys outside in order to enjoy the pleasure of reading the Holy Book. Some of the chapters I loved more than others, and these I learned by heart.

But after my mother died, the Bible disappeared from the house, probably through the priest who had tried to obtain possession of it before. Now this Bible is the root of everything in this story. That is the light which was put into my soul when young, and, thanks be to God, that light has never been extinguished. It has remained there: it is to that dear Bible, by the mercy of God, that I owe today the unspeakable joy which I feel at being among the redeemed, among those who have received the light, and are drinking at the pure fountain of truth.

But perhaps you are inclined to say, “Do not the Roman Catholic priests allow their people to read the Bible?” Yes, I thank God that it is so. It is a fact that today, almost all over the world, the Church of Rome grants permission to read the Bible, and you will find the Bible in the homes of some Roman Catholics.

But when we have confessed this we must tell the whole truth. When the priest puts the Bible in the hands of his people, or when a priest receives the Bible from his church, there is a condition. The condition is that though the priest or people may read the Bible, they must never, under any circumstances, interpret a single word according to their conscience, their intelligence, or in their own mind. When I was ordained a priest I swore that I would interpret the Scriptures only according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers.

Friends, go to Roman Catholics today, and ask them if they have permission to read the Bible. They will tell you, “Yes, I can read it.” But ask, “Have you permission to interpret it?” They will tell you, “No.” The priest says positively to the people, and the Church says positively to the priest, that they cannot interpret a single word of the Bible according to their own intelligence and their own conscience, and that it is a grievous sin to take upon themselves the interpretation of a single word. The priest says in effect to the people, “If you try to interpret the Bible with your own intelligence you are lost. It is a most dangerous book. You may read it, but it is better not to read it, because you cannot understand it.”

What is the result of such teaching? The result is, that though both the priests and the people have the Bible in their hands, they do not read it. Would you read a book if you were persuaded that you cannot understand a single word by yourself? Would you be such fools as to waste your time reading a book which you were persuaded you could not understand a single line of? Then, my friends, this is the truth about the Church of Rome. They have a great number of Bibles. You will find Bibles on the tables of the priests and of Catholic laymen, but among ten thousand priests there are not two who read the Bible from the beginning to the end and pay any attention to it. They read a few pages here and there; that is all.

In the Church of Rome the Bible is a sealed book, but it was not so with me. I found it precious to my heart when I was a little boy, and when I became a priest of Rome I read it to make me a strong man, and to make me able to argue for the Church.

My great object was to confound the Protestant ministers of America. I got a copy of the “Holy Fathers,” and I studied it day and night with the Holy Scriptures, in order to prepare myself for the great battle I wanted to fight against the Protestants. I made this study in order to strengthen my faith in the Roman Catholic Church.

But, blessed be God! every time I read the Bible there was a mysterious voice(1) saying to me, “Do you not see that in the Church of Rome you do not follow the teachings of the Word of God, but only the traditions of men?” In the silent hours of the night, when I heard that voice, I wept and cried, but it was repeated with the strength of thunder. I wanted to live and die in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and I prayed to God to silence the voice, but I heard it yet still louder. When I was reading His Word He was trying(2) to break my fetters, but I would not have any fetters broken. He came to me with His saving light, but I would not have it.

I have no bad feeling against Roman Catholic priests. Some of you may think I have. You are mistaken. Sometimes I weep for them because I know that the poor men – just as I did – are fighting against the Lord, and that they are miserable as I was miserable then. If I relate to you one of the struggles of which I speak, you will understand what it is to be a Roman Catholic priest, and you will pray for them.

We know our faith, how the scriptures came to us all, the history, how much scripture we study and hear daily, the divine office, etc.. You can’t give an account to those who refuse it (well you can, then shake the dust off your feet). The fathers of the church are there waiting, Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek are there, the Holy Spirit is there.

Pray for each other and exercise patience. The evil one is about dia bolign, tearing apart, that is not of God.

For all of us:

We have brothers and sisters who are getting raped, maimed, killed, run out of their homes and businesses; Churches bombed, missionaries killed and others who don’t see missionaries but twice a year in some villages.
Here we are getting attacked from the state.

All this time sniping would be better spent in prayer for our faith, to do God’s will, not our own, pray for our brothers and sisters being persecuted, for the conversion of atheists, muslims, etc., and that we resist pride, removing the planks from our eyes.

Note: Be sure to remind me of us when I go off in a few minutes... it’s a struggle I fight daily. LOL

Hey, if you don’t have wolves, you’re not sheep. God bless.

We could always start studying OT together?

Or simply start asking questions vs. jumping all over each other and assuming.

True. Can't remember ever seeing a Bible in the pew rack of any protestant church I've been in.

In my Evangelical church, you'll find them four to a row. I don't use them, though, since they're NIV and I prefer my trusty KJV with its beautiful language.

Bless your day.

Have you ever heard of a missal? Mine is chock-full of Scripture. I have that missal in my hand during Mass. If I were to leave it at home, I could listen to the readings, of which there are several at every Mass.

Have you ever read the Bible? It's 100% scripture, and your missal readings only cover 27.5% of it.

No, the procession has a BIBLE. Not a missalette. Also, In the front of every Catholic church, there has always been a bible for anyone to peruse at any time. But no, Catholics are NOT handed out bibles as they enter the church. Saying that is a far cry from saying that bibles aren’t found there. If you’re debating in a thread about how the Catholic church supposedly wants to keep people ignorant, and so therefore purposely denies people access to the bible, it’s entirely your fault if people read your false claim that there is are no bibles, and don’t immediately understand you to mean that there aren’t hundreds of bibles.

The plain, simple matter is that unlike in some Protestant churches, the readings are universal, and known far in advance, and therefore it is cheaper to publish 150 sets of readings than the entire bible. In the old days, this was a very significant matter. Since anyone can read the single, treasured, huge bible any time they want, it makes me wonder what the whole point is. Chiniquy’s was that Catholics weren’t supposed to read their bibles. Since that is ridiculously, absurdly, delusionally false, what’s yours?

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