The construction he puts upon the gift of a chalice is not less misleading. "The best proof," he says in the letter written to Bishop Bourget on April 18, 1857, "that you know very well that I was not interdicted by your rash and unjust sentence is that you gave me that chalice as a token of your esteem and of my honesty" (p. 529). It proved nothing of the sort.

Chiniquy had professed, whether sincerely or not, that he was truly sorry for the offences which had led to his suspension, and though Bishop Bourget did not feel justified in giving him further employment, Bishop Vandevelde, who was sadly in want of priests, was inclined to give him another chance. Accordingly the suspension was taken off him and, as he was about to start an entirely new mission, nothing was more natural than that Bishop Bourget should give him a chalice -- not, indeed, for himself, but for the mission about to be started and in need of sacred vessels.

So far these contemporary letters convict Chiniquy of untruthfulness, and this may dispose us to doubt whether it is true that, when suspending him on September 28th, Bishop Bourget refused to tell him either the nature of the crime imputed to him or the name of the accuser. Be it recollected that in Bishop Bourget's Letter to the Canadians of Bourbonnais (Doc. C) he says that he suspended Chiniquy "for reasons stated in a letter which he must have kept and which he may publish if he likes."

Chiniquy's reply to this challenge in his letter to the papers of April 18, 1857, was by bringing forward his story of the girl coming to his confessional, and one would like to know what the Bishop's comment on it may have been. We can have it, for the Bishop, who naturally could not engage in a newspaper controversy with a suspended priest, thought it well that his clergy should know the true facts now that Chiniquy was endeavouring to misrepresent them.

Accordingly he drew up the paper we have called Doc. D, and of which we have before us a certified copy taken from the archives of the diocese of Montreal. It is entitled Explanations of certain Facts misrepresented by Chiniquy in his Letter of April 18, 1857, and is dated May 6, 1857. It begins with the words, "These explanations are confided to the wise discretion of the priests, so that each may make such use of them as he thinks desirable." There will then be no impropriety in our quoting from them at this distance of time. The following passage bears on the point now before us:

"M. Chiniquy pretends that we did not tell him for what crime we withdrew his faculties. This is false, for we told it to him with all possible distinctness (en toutes lettres) in our letter of September 29th [? 27], 1851, which nevertheless he cites as if it were to his advantage.

"He pretends that we refused him all means of justifying himself. To this we reply that our invariable practice has been not to proceed canonically against any one whatever except when the accusers were resolved to sustain their accusations under oath and in the presence of the person they accuse. If M. Chiniquy desires to appeal to the Archbishop of Quebec, or to the Pope, he will find us perfectly prepared to satisfy him on this point.

"As to the incident of the poor girl whom he brings on the scene, it is so disadvantageous to him that he would have done better for his own credit to be silent about it. However much it costs us we will explain about this incident, as it is the sole argument on which he relies to create the impression that the bishops are tyrants who oppress and condemn their priests without a shadow of justice. Some time after the culpability of M. Chiniquy had been clearly demonstrated to us a certain girl came to depose against him, who said she would feel an intense repugnance to be confronted with him. This testimony therefore could not, in conformity with our ordinary method of proceeding, enter into the evidence against him. So we contented ourselves with telling this gentleman that, over and beyond all that had been deposed against him, a certain girl had quite recently complained of him.

"Now see what M. Chiniquy does. He confines himself to this fact alone, sends for the girl and gets her to retract. To all this bit of scheming (man�ge) we replied by pointing out the contradiction between M. Chiniquy's words and his actions, saying to him: 'You pretended that you did not know this girl when I refused to name her to you. How, then, was it so easy for you to find her and make her retract?' And to this he had nothing to reply at that time. Hence what he says now (in 1857) about this girl, namely, that it was she who wished to tempt him; that it was in vengeance that she had accused him, and that he had been able to discover her by means of a certain individual whom he had remarked exchanging a few words with her, is a story which any sensible man will see is made up after the event. Moreover, this girl afterwards confirmed her first deposition, under oath, and it was certainly not from us that she received one hundred dollars for that if indeed it is true at all that she was paid."

We can judge now what were the real motives that caused M. Chiniquy to abandon Canada for Illinois, and whether he has stated them truthfully. Probably our readers will consider that he has not, and that, on the principle "false in one thing false in all," he has created a presumption against the truth of any future allegations he may make, those only excepted which are confirmed by independent witnesses. Keeping this presumption in mind, we must pass on to consider his life in Illinois.

He arrived at Chicago towards the end of October, 1851, and was at once sent on by Bishop Vandevelde to a district some sixty miles south of Chicago. This was the district of Bourbonnais, and there he proceeded to build a church and found a mission at St. Anne, a place some ten miles south of the town of Bourbonnais, where one had been founded already and was under the charge of a M. Courjeault.

Later, he tells us, and doubtless correctly, he founded two other missions further south still, one at l'Erable, one at St. Marie's in the county of the Iroquois. But St. Anne's was his centre of action and place of residence throughout. There he built his first church and gathered round him his chief congregation of Canadian settlers. The first four or five years of his life in those parts were marked by various quarrels with neighbouring priests, all of whom he sets down as despicable blackguards.

But this period we must pass over with just a mention of the charge brought against him by some of his neighbours of burning down the church at Bourbonnais on June 5, 1853, with the motive of collecting money from Canada for the rebuilding fund, which he afterwards misappropriated. M. Mailloux, in his letter of March 28, 1858 (Doc. A), to Bishop Smith, then administrator of Chicago, states that "this charge was made before witnesses in the presence of Bishop O'Regan," and that "Chiniquy never exonerated himself from it." And Bishop Bourget refers to it in his letter to Chiniquy himself of November 21, 1853 (Doc. E): "I will tell you now that the report which is current here [in Montreal] is that money sent you from Montreal for your churches does not reach its destination, but is kept back by you for your own use. If this were the case Montreal would cease to aid you in that way."

But let us come at once to the year 1856. By that time Bishop Vandevelde had vacated the diocese. The dampness of the Chicago climate aggravated his rheumatism and rendered him incapable of doing his work properly, so he asked to be released altogether from episcopal administration, or else to be translated to some see further south. This, and not any such reason as Chiniquy assigns, was the reason why he went to Natchez, to which see he was translated in the autumn of 1853. Bishop O'Regan, the conflicting accounts of whose character and personality we have already given, succeeded Bishop Vandevelde in the autumn of 1854. If Chiniquy is to be believed, as on a point of this sort probably he is, a state of tension between him and his new bishop promptly arose. But however that may be, he appears by the summer of 1856 to have become most anxious to get back to Canada. For from Bishop Bourget's Letter to the Canadian Catholics of Bourbonnais (Doc. C) we learn that on August 9, 1856, Chiniquy wrote to him a letter in which he begs to be allowed to return to Canada, and suggests a useful work there which he and he only could carry through.

"If" (he says in this letter) "you place an insurmountable barrier in the way of my return to Canada, ask God to give me the strength to drink the chalice of humiliations and sacrifices down to the dregs. For, I will not conceal it from you, one of my most ardent desires is to see Canada again.... The principal citizens of Montreal have expressed the desire to see me again, and their surprise at my long absence. There are sad secrets in the life of priests and bishops into which it would be deplorable if the world were to penetrate."

Which last sentence appears to mean that, in face of the demand for his return by the principal citizens of Montreal, it would be better to let him return than risk the possibility of the reason for his exclusion getting out, and giving scandal. But what was the work he desired to undertake in Canada?

"The sore which under the name of emigration is devouring our people is not sufficiently understood in Canada; or else firmer and more energetic steps would be taken to restrain it.... Of all the Canadian clergy I am unquestionably the one who has had the best opportunities of knowing what this sore of emigration is. No one that I can think of has been able in Canada or the United States to sound its depths as I have done. It is not in an easy chair, in one of the fair presbyteries of Canada, that I have studied the causes and disastrous consequences of emigration.... Further, Monsignor, with all this information I have a great desire to go and cast myself at your knees and beseech you to let me say a word to the people in the towns and villages of Canada on this emigration, its causes, its consequences, and its remedies. This word, the fruit of prolonged studies and solid reflections, would not lack, you may be sure, that force and eloquence which springs from profound convictions and a sincere desire to hold back a whole race of brothers who are rushing rapidly to their ruin. For five years now I have been eating the bread of exile... but believe me, Monsignor, I have facts and arguments, the exposition of which would resound with irresistible force on both banks of the St. Lawrence... and which, with God's grace, might result in a great good, by stopping this great evil. And my discourses on this vital question would be the more appreciated, and would have the more effect, because the mendacious press of Canada has accused me of favouring the emigration of my fellow-countrymen."

This appeal, written in August, 1856, may well surprise us, when we bethink ourselves of the same man's letter of August, 1851, published by himself in all the Canadian papers, inviting the Canadians to come en masse to the district in which he hoped himself to settle, and describing it in such glowing terms that it came to be called "Chiniquy's paradise." But our surprise increases when we learn that four months later, in December, 1856, this same writer reverted to his former contention, and in another public letter to the Canadian press took credit to himself for the invitation to emigrate to Illinois which, when he gave it five years previously, had been maliciously condemned by the Canadian clergy, but which he declared had now been entirely justified by the event. This was in a public letter to a M. Moreau, a Montreal lawyer, the following extract from which is given by Mgr. Bourget in his Letter to the Canadians of Bourbonnais.

"When I left Longeuil in 1851, having for my only provision the breviary under my arm, to run after the emigrants who were losing themselves in the corners of the United States, I was treated everywhere as a deceiver and a visionary, bishops and priests in Canada denounced me as a liar... the papers pledged to the Canadian clergy spread false news about the fine and noble parish of Bourbonnais. And yet, in spite of this fearful combination of hypocrisy, calumny, and falsehood directed against me, I have succeeded in four years in creating all by myself a foundation so fine and solid, with the aid of my poor brethren from Canada, that M. Desaulniers was filled with admiration when he saw it with his own eyes" (Doc. C).

It is impossible, after comparing these varying epistles, not to feel that Chiniquy's method was to say, not what he thought to be true, but rather what he thought would best serve his interests at the moment. Still, it is also impossible not to feel that something serious must have happened between August and December, 1856, to make such a change of tone seem to him expedient. Was it that in August he had grounds for thinking that a storm was gathering around him which he might, perhaps, escape if he could have an honourable pretext for at once leaving Illinois, but that by December the storm had broken, and he deemed his only course was to brave it by taking up an attitude of injured innocence and of revolt? What comes next may help us to solve this problem.

On August 19th, ten days after his letter to Mgr. Bourget, Chiniquy was suspended by Bishop O'Regan (Doc. A). What was the cause? From his pages it is impossible to get any definite information.

In one place the bishop is made to say that he suspended him for his stubbornness and want of submission when he ordered him to leave St. Anne and go to Cahokia, on the banks of the Mississippi (p. 441). In another he tells us he asked the Bishop "to make a public inquest about him, and have his accusers confront him" (p. 439), which does not tally with the notion of an offence so palpable as a refusal to go where sent, and points to some offence of a secret kind, such as one against morality. In a third place (p. 449) he suggests that the suspension was inflicted because he would not give up to the Bishop the property in his church at St. Anne -� again not the kind of offence to establish which required confronting with accusers, and public inquests, since all that was necessary, if Chiniquy wished to justify himself, was for him to say, "I am quite ready to do all necessary to effect the required transfer of the property."

Bishop O'Regan himself is much clearer (Doc. E). In a letter to Bishop Prince, then coadjutor of Montreal, he says, under date of November 20, 1856: "The question of the property in the church had nothing to do with the removal of M. Chiniquy from St. Anne's, or with his disobedience, his schism, and his subsequent excommunication.... I had in my hands all through the legal titles to all the church property which no one could dispute.... I came to this last conclusion (namely, to remove him from St. Anne's to Cahokia) for reasons of urgent necessity which I told him at the time and which he is free to make public [words which distinctly point to some offence against morality]... his obstinate disobedience [namely, in refusing to go to Cahokia], and the excessive violence of his language and behavior obliged me to suspend him; his subsequent schism brought on his excommunication."

And this agrees with what M. Mailloux wrote to Bishop Smith, in the letter of March 28, 1858, already quoted from (Doc. A): �-

"I have lived here [at Bourbonnais] since one year. In Canada I knew Mr. Chiniquy very well. I know what his conduct was morally, but the moment is not favourable to mention it.... (1) Before interdicting Mr. Chiniquy, Bishop O'Regan had received grave testimonials regarding the moral conduct of Mr. Chiniquy. I am fully acquainted with the facts and persons concerned. (2) The Sunday following the interdiction issued against Mr. Chiniquy, on August 19, 1856, by the bishop's order, it was published in the churches at Bourbonnais and l'Erable that he had suspended Mr. Chiniquy from his functions. (3) Mr. Chiniquy having violated that interdiction. Bishop O'Regan had him publicly excommunicated on September 3rd following. Mr. Chiniquy had in Canada, and still has here, the reputation of being a man of most notorious immorality. The many women he has seduced, or tried to seduce, are ready to testify thereunto. Those who in this country [Bourbonnais] have lived in Mr. Chiniquy's intimacy loudly proclaim that he has lost his faith long ago, and that he is an infamous hypocrite."

Chiniquy, as we have seen, resisted the excommunication as he had resisted the suspension, and continued to minister at St. Anne's, capturing the support of his congregation by representing the bishop as having brought against him an accusation which he knew was false and had not attempted to sustain, the bishop's underlying motive being hatred for the French Canadians, whom he wished to drive out of his diocese. It was a great scandal, and Bishop O'Regan was anxious to end it. Accordingly he wrote to Bishop Bourget, on October 19, 1856, asking for help (Doc. E).

"Mr. Chiniquy [he says] has thoroughly corrupted the unhappy people under his care. This has been the work of some years. It was begun long before I came to this diocese, and I know not how it will terminate. The mischief can only be remedied by a few worthy, pious, and intelligent Canadian priests. If I had one such he could do much, as there is a Canadian settlement not yet corrupted a few miles from St. Anne's, where such a priest being located would soon take away most of his followers. This would be a holy mission for some pious, educated, and devoted priest. He would protect religion and some hundreds from the wicked man who now deceives them."

The result was that Bishop Bourget sent M. Brassard, Chiniquy's old friend and patron, and M. Desaulniers, one of his former classmates, with whom, by his own acknowledgement, "he had been united" ever since "in the bonds of the sincerest friendship." The choice shows that their desire in coming was to convert Chiniquy himself as well as his misguided people. They arrived at St. Anne's on November 24, 1856, and by the next day had succeeded so far as to get him to sign the following form of retraction [addressed to the bishop] (p. 515):

"As my actions and writings in opposition to your orders have for the last two months given scandal, and caused many to believe that sooner than obey you I would consent to be separated from the Catholic Church, I hasten to express to you the regret I feel for such acts and writings. And in order to show the world, and you, my Bishop, my firm desire to live and die a Catholic, I hasten to write to your lordship to say that I submit to your sentence, and promise never more to exercise the sacred ministry in your diocese, without your permission. In consequence, I beg your lordship to take off the censures you have pronounced against me, and against those who have communicated with me in things divine.

"I am your most devoted son in Jesus Christ,

"Charles Chiniquy"

This retraction cannot be called satisfactory, for it is equivocal in its language, and breathes no real sentiments of penitence. But it was taken in Chiniquy's name to Bishop O'Regan the next day by M. Desaulniers; M. Brassard remaining with his friend, to await the result. The bishop said to M. Desaulniers, "I would prefer that [Chiniquy] should go away without any retraction rather than give that one, and I shall, as soon as he abandons St. Anne's and gives security that he will not return, have no objection to remove his censures without any retraction" (Doc. E - O'Regan to Desaulniers, December 15, 1856, in which the bishop refers to his words on November 25th).

Chiniquy's conduct, when he learnt that the bishop would not make peace with him on his own terms, thoroughly justified the latter's action. Had the unhappy man been really penitent he would have obeyed orders and left the neighbourhood. As it was he persisted in his schism, declaring that he had only signed the retractation as an act of grace and on the condition that he was to be left at St. Anne's, at least as an assistant priest to his friend M. Brassard -- a quite inadmissible condition, of which there is no trace in the text of the retraction. And he even had the impudence and irreverence to say that in acknowledging that his action had given scandal he had acknowledged no more than our Lord had acknowledged when He said "You shall all be scandalized in Me this night" (see Doc. D, which refers to this plea and comments on it). Thus there was nothing more to be done with the unhappy man save to bear with him, and strive to undeceive his congregation, for which purpose M. Desaulniers, at the bishop's request, took up his abode at Bourbonnais; whilst M. Brassard, whose methods of dealing with Chiniquy the bishop found compromising, was invited to return to Canada.

M. Desaulniers found his work hard, but achieved some success in reclaiming the schismatics, for Bishop Bourget told Bishop Baillargeon, the administrator of Quebec, on February 4, 1857, that "Chiniquy's followers are apparently diminishing, and are likely to cease altogether if only a few more priests can be sent to them" (Doc. E); and on January 1, 1857, a number of them wrote to Bishop Bourget a consoling letter, in which they expressed their regret for having been misled, and their readiness to submit in every way to Bishop O'Regan.

This letter was sent by Bishop Bourget to the Canadian papers, and it was in reply to it that the bishop wrote his Letter to the Canadians of Bourbonnais, dated March 7, 1857. This reply was taken to Bourbonnais by Grand Vicar Mailloux, of the diocese of Quebec, and M. Campeaux, of the diocese of Montreal, who left for Bourbonnais on March 20, 1857, to assist in the conversion of the schismatics. As it was read from the altar in the church of Bourbonnais, and was published in all the Canadian papers, it must have been found very disconcerting by Chiniquy, who sought to discount its effects by a letter addressed to Bishop Bourget, which he sent to the Canadian papers. It is the letter of April 18, 1857, to which also we have had occasion to refer (vide supra, p. 28), as containing the first mention of the affair with the girl at Montreal in 1851.

This letter is given by Chiniquy (p. 526 of his Fifty Years) only in part, for, as has been noted, Bishop Bourget, in his Explanation of certain Facts misrepresented by Chiniquy in his Letter of April 18, 1857 (see above, p. 33), quotes as contained in it the words in which Chiniquy assimilates the kind of scandal caused by himself with that caused by our Lord Jesus Christ.