Maria Monk Quotes
I really believed that the priests were acquainted with my thoughts; and often stood in great awe of them. They often told me they had power to strike me dead at any moment.
Monk, Maria. Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. Howe & Bates, 1836, p. 18.
The Roman Catholic Church in America had a very difficult problem with slavery. Catholics were themselves a minoirty, hated and distrusted by many Protestants. In most of the country, the distrusr was based on their large immigrant population, but in the South Catholic theology was hated and the Vatican and Pope were particular targets. The Catholic Clergy generally did not want to take sides in the most contentious issue in America since its inception. The Southern Catholic Clergy did not have that option as in the South, anyone who was not a supporter of slavery was an "enemy of the community and subject to all kinds of violence." Some Southern priests were willing to take the personal risk but did not want to put their followers at risk. In a strange consequence, Catholics--especially Irish Catholics--fought on both sides of the Civil War and often against each other. While it was not an exemplary moral behavior for the Church, there were difficult pressures on Catholic leaders. Further, most of the lowest and most difficult, undesirable jobs were filled by Catholics and most Catholic laymen so and end to slavery as the start of pitting the Catholics against the Blacks. So there was not a groundswell for abolition in most Catholic parishes even in the North.
This is a variation of the famous Lord Acton quote {292904}.
This concept of separation of church and state divided the society into two domains and had the Emperor rule and the church, the other.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
Maria Monk was a Canadian woman whose book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed (1836) claimed to expose systematic sexual abuse of nuns and infanticide of the resulting children by Catholic priests in her convent in Montreal. The book became a best-seller.
