Re: Teen scared, awaiting transfer to state prison
Michael Yardley
this makes me shudder. The Catholic religion does not bind us to confess our
sins indiscriminately to everybody; it allows them to remain hidden from all
other men save one, to whom she bids us reveal the innermost recesses of our
heart and show ourselves as we are. There is only this one man in the world
whom she orders us to undeceive, and she binds him to an inviolable secrecy,
which makes this knowledge to him as if it were not. Can we imagine anything
more charitable and pleasant? And yet the corruption of man is such that he
finds even this law harsh; and it is one of the main reasons which has
caused a great part of Europe to rebel against the Church.
How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man, which feels it disagreeable
to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some measure it were right
to do to all men! For is it right that we should deceive men?
There are different degrees in this aversion to truth; but all may perhaps
be said to have it in some degree, because it is inseparable from self-love.
It is this false delicacy which makes those who are under the necessity of
reproving others choose so many windings and middle courses to avoid
offence. They must lessen our faults, appear to excuse them, intersperse
praises and evidence of love and esteem. Despite all this, the medicine does
not cease to be bitter to self-love. It takes as little as it can, always
with disgust, and often with a secret spite against those