Fifty years in the Church of Rome

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apaleífo̱

apaleífo̱

Puritan Board Freshman
Does anyone know how reliable Charles Chiniquy's Fifty Years in the Church of Rome is? Some of the statements that Chiniquy quotes from Catholic prelates struck me as particularly shocking and I was just wondering whether they were actually true or not. This one, I think, would strike a chord in any red-blooded Protestant:

How sad will their awakening be, when, with our out-numbering votes, we will turn them, for ever, from every position of honor, power and profit! What will those hypocritical and godless sons and daughters of the fanatical Pilgrim Fathers say, when not a single judge, not a single teacher, not a single policeman will be elected if he be not a devoted . . . Roman Catholic? What will those so-called giants think of their matchless shrewdness and ability, when not a single Senator or member of Congress will be chosen, if he be not submitted to our holy father the Pope? What a sad figure those Protestant Yankees will cut when we will not only elect the President, but fill and command the armies, man the navies, and hold the keys of the public treasury?
Click to expand...

So how much is Da Vinci Code-esque fantasy and how much is actual history? I just found out about this book this morning.
 
I read this book a few years ago (I don't own a copy) and had the same problem with it as you.
He doesn't write like a historian at all - one dead giveaway is the endless conversations he recounts, all purporting to be remembered verbatim.
On the other hand that doesn't prove it's all made up, necessarily, let alone that the overall drift is false.
At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I would say he writes like an over-excitable Frenchman so passionately committed to exposing the evils of Romanism that he feels it justifiable to sharpen up his memoirs for rhetorical effect!
That's just an impression. When I read the book I never doubted his sincerity or the general truth, but that was because I already knew what Rome is capable of. I'm afraid the only way to be sure of the accuracy of every detail would be to check it all out against historians , or documents you knew were reliable.
Every historian is grinding some axe or other, of course!
 
Like a lot of Chick's anti-RC publications I have found them to be fabrications at best and just anti-Catholic propaganda and even deceitfulness at worst.
 
Chiniquy's account is in Richard Bennett's fine "Far From Rome, Near to God, the Testimonies of 50 Converted Priests." I'd been out of the RCC for years when I first read it; a fierce Arminian gave me Chiniquy's story originally and admittedly, I gave it little credence. The other stories in "Far From Rome..." are very compelling, including Mr. Bennett's own.

I wonder if anyone else here has the book, "Night Journey from Rome to the New Jerusalem" by Clark Butterfield... I would love to have multiple copies of that book to give away. Once I had a dozen, but I have only one left.

Margaret
 
In my Canadian church History course this summer @ Haddington House Trust Dr Whytock spent an entire lecture on the book & author. Chiniquy was a member of the PCC.

A very contoversial conversion & a very contoversial book. BTW Dr Whytock had a 1st edition & we compared the intro & dedication to that of later editions. The first was dedicated to (among others) the Freemasons!

Interesting, but very unreliable. Chinquy was under disipline several times by his bishop for many irregularities, including relations with women while a priest!
 
I would not worry about the pope of the papacy gaining a hold on the American Politic

You said: "This one, I think, would strike a chord in any red-blooded Protestant:"

50 years ago before the election of John Kennedy and also Vatican II there would be some measurable truth to some of his thinking when he said:

"What will those hypocritical and godless sons and daughters of the fanatical Pilgrim Fathers say, when not a single judge, not a single teacher, not a single policeman will be elected if he be not a devoted . . . Roman Catholic? What will those so-called giants think of their matchless shrewdness and ability, when not a single Senator or member of Congress will be chosen, if he be not submitted to our holy father the Pope?"

Today it would be more of a fabrication anti-Catholic propaganda. I am an ex Roman catholic and now a Reformed Protestant. I left the Roman catholic church in 2006 was an Episcopalian for a while but after serious study of Protestantism and the Protestant reformation I became a Presbyterian and Reformed Protestant in 2007. I can also say what led me out of Rome was the papacy under the current pope. However the truth is that a majority of Roman Catholics, even many who stay, rather than officially becoming a Protestant as I did are in reality more Protestant in their thinking and theology and the papacy has very little influence on American Roman Catholics today. I would not worry about the pope of the papacy gaining a hold on the American Politic and American democracy. For you information there are 15 million former Roman Catholics in the United States alone who like me are now practicing Protestants. There are many books and articles on the protestantization of the American Roman Catholic. the following quote is from
Catholicism as a Protestantism By John A. Miles, Jr. He says:

"Among the ways in which the American Catholic church has protestantized itself in recent years, the most important has been its transformation into an intentional community. For Catholics now, as earlier for Protestants, religion is a matter of opinion, not of birth; and one may change religion as easily and frequently as one changes one's mind. However-and this is the key point-intentional, Protestant religious communities have long had ways of recognizing and removing those who do not share the grounding intention of the community, whatever it may be. The Catholic Church, for the moment anyway, does not."

Catholicism as a Protestantism
By John A. Miles, Jr.
 
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I will say up front that while I have known of this book, I've yet to inspect a copy.
Fifty years in the Church of Rome, by Charles Chiniquy, was originally published in 1886. Several editions were printed internationally in the next few years, and it has been reprinted at least two dozen times and in many different languages. That might give some weight for the veracity of the contents.

Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy was born in 1809 and he died in 1899.

Chick Publications published an abridged version of his book in 1985.
Their publication of that work shouldn't disparage the contents by association. The book was written long before this guy Chick (whoever he is) was even born.

c: One way to check out the validity of his claims would be to do the tough work of consulting reviews written after the book was originally published. A lot of material is available on Google Books now, and you can used their advanced search to search for occurrences of his name between dates such as 1885-1890. Contemporaneous interaction can then be assessed. Roman Catholic periodicals of the day would be expected to react, but you could also consult a lot of other journals and newspapers for balance and counterviews.

[edit: Just read Kevin's post--interesting background info]
 
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