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This site is
rather interesting.
“Awful Disclosures”
— But No Longer
Unbelievable
Maria Monk Reconsidered
In the light of modern revelations, 19th Century tales of immorality
and crimes in Roman Catholic convents appear far less
fantastic
;)
In 1836, a controversial book
exploded upon the scene like an artillery shell, written by a woman who had
supposedly fled the revered Hotel Dieu nunnery in Montreal, Canada. It bore
the title, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of
a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed! The book immediately touched off
an acrimonious firestorm of wild polemics with its sensational allegations.
And no wonder — for the author, “Maria Monk”, claimed that in the many
years that she had been enclosed there in the cloister of the “Black Nuns,” as
the sable-clad Sisters of Charity were called, she had
witnessed or been subjected to a number of horrific crimes and
abuses.
The nun’s story
Priests, Monk claimed, under the
pretext that such godly men could not sin, regularly used nuns for sex in a
private room reserved for “holy retreats.” On the very day she took her solemn
vows, she said that she herself had been forced to have intercourse with three
priests, and once again with the first for good measure. More on that
later.
Monk said she had personally witnessed an offspring from such a union being
immediately baptized after birth, nonchalantly suffocated, and tossed into a
pit of lime in the basement (where there were presumably others), with acid
later added to dissolve the tiny corpse. A ledger she found in the Superior’s
office listed many more.
At the mere whim of a superior,
disobedient or recalcitrant nuns were severely disciplined with punishments
that ranged from petty annoyances up to Inquisition-like torture. In dark
cells in the cellar near the pit, several sisters were imprisoned for unknown
sins apparently for life. Nuns would disappear in the night for no known
reason never to be spoken of again; Monk firmly believed some had been
murdered. Suicides were also not unrumored.
All of this took place in a forbidding atmosphere of medieval despotism,
where the only thing expected of a nun was silent, unquestioning obedience.
Superstition ruled supreme — hair and nail clippings of an elderly nun thought
to be holy were prized as relics, for instance. Bizarre penances, such as
drinking the Superior’s foot-bath, were often imposed and strange rituals were
frequent. Nuns, for example, would be placed in their coffins upon taking
their vows to show they had died to the world, and then propped sitting up in
church after they died to show they now lived in Heaven.
Meanwhile in this hell on Earth, the sisters were expected to constantly
spy on each other and inform the Mother Superior of any defects, disobedience,
or independence in themselves or others. Yet lying to outsiders was encouraged
insofar as it would further the faith — especially if it brought in wealthy
new recruits.
The aftermath
According to her own account, having become pregnant, she escaped, and told
her story to a Protestant minister at a hospital for the poor in New York. He
persuaded her to tell her story to the world.
At any time, such outrageous charges would have sparked an outcry; in the
jostling pandemonium of pre-Civil War America, they touched off an immediate
conflagration of bombastic claims and counter-claims. For this was the era of
the “Know Nothings,” stridently anti-immigrant and
anti-Catholic nativists. Even before the Potato Famine brought starving hordes
of Irish over, these men feared the influx of Roman Catholics as a sneaky
invasion of papists determined to subvert the liberties of free, white
Protestants and take over the country. Catholic apologists instantly saw that
Monk was a tool being used by Protestant nativist agitators and fought back
vigorously in kind.
It was quickly realized that proof of Monk’s story hinged on the existance
of certain secret entrances and passages built into the nunnery. She had
described these in detail, showing how a priest could gain entrance to the
cloister unobserved at any time, day or night, with secret signals so he did
not have to mention his name or even speak a word. Like the much later
controversy surrounding the McMartin Preschool, a Col. William Leete Stone
found no signs of such secret passages in the Hotel Dieu during a brief
inspection and after interviewing her, was convinced she had never even been
there. This finding, along with the story that she was a actually a
prostitute, had been in an asylum, and died in prison as a pickpocket, was
loudly trumpeted throughout the press, and Catholic propagandists triumphantly
labelled her an imposter and hoaxer to this day.
But was she? She was not the only former nun to break silence at that time;
shortly before Monk, a woman named Rebecca Reed came out with similarly horrid
tales that led a mob to burn her former convent in South Carolina. Famous
ex-priest Charles
Chiniquy, himself a French Canadian, spoke out about many clerical abuses
in Montreal several decades later. Maria Monk herself countered the claims of
Stone in the back of her book with statements of nearby residents attesting to
unexplained building supplies for interior alterations at the Hotel Dieu that
happened shortly after she first spoke out in the newspapers.
In the Preface she implored,
Permit me to go through the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal, with
some impartial ladies and gentlemen, that they may compare my account with
the interior parts of the building, into which no persons but the Roman
Bishop and Priests are ever admitted: and if they do not find my description
true, then discard me as an imposter. Bring me before a court of justice —
there I am willing to meet [her detractors] and their wicked companions,
with the Superior, and any of the nuns, and a thousand
men.
This, needless to say, never happened and Maria Monk is nowadays remembered
only with derision. Despite the fame, or rather notoriety, her life ended
tragically. She lost credibility by running off again, falsely claiming she
had been abducted by a gang of priests. She may have been married briefly, but
in any case had another child, was arrested for pickpocketing, and died in
poverty in an almshouse in 1839 (although some sources say
1849).
Her testimony
But for someone out to boldly defame the Catholic Church, she went about it
in an odd manner. The tone of the book is anything but lurid or
sensationalistic; she knew the gravity of what she was claiming, and related
her story quite calmly and rationally throughout. It is certainly not
titillating. While using florid Victorian language about her feelings
concerning the “debased characters” of the priests who had access to the
convent and its inhabitants, Monk showed curious circumspection in discussing
the actual abuse.
This, for instance, is all she had to say about what happened after she
took her vows:
Nothing important occurred till late
in the afternoon, when, as I was sitting in the community-room, Father
Dufresne called me out, saying, he wished to speak to me. I feared what was
his intention; but I dared not disobey. In a private apartment, he treated
me in a brutal manner; and, from two other priests, I afterwards received
similar usage that evening. Father Dufresne afterwards appeared again; and I
was compelled to remain in company with him until morning.
I am assured that the conduct of priests in our Convent had never
been exposed, and it is not imagined by the people of the United States.
This induces me to say what I do, notwithstanding the strong reasons I have
to let it remain unknown. Still I cannot force myself to speak on such
subjects except in the most brief manner.
And indeed, she was true to her word. Far more space in her book was
devoted to the daily life of the nuns. More space is even allotted to the
antics of “mad Jane Ray M’Coy”, who helped her survive, than all the
discussion of the wicked doings of the priests and her superiors.
In an age so famously reticent to speak of sex this was natural perhaps;
surely quite different from the explicitly detailed confessions gloried in
today. For many survivors of such cult-like abuse, however, often the only way
it can be talked about is in such an unemotional, matter-of-fact manner as
Monk. It is too painful otherwise.
The wrath of God’s wives
It is indeed strange that many people who are willing to ascribe any degree
of wickedness to male clergy have a strong denial about female religious.
Among victims and survivors that I have talked to those who had been molested
by nuns seemed to bear a special burden, perhaps because of this. Yet, as
every veteran of parochial schools has at least one story about mean or crazy
sisters, a certain recognition of it exists in popular culture. There is even
a documentary film about abuse by nuns in Catholic schools, Women in Black.
Undeniably, the best reason to reconsider Maria Monk’s claims is based on
modern revelations of victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse. It may be
significant that Canada has unfortuntely been one of the major epicenters of
these scandals. Since the late 1980s, there has been one grim exposure after
another of abuse and neglect of children in Church-run institutions on a
massive, institutional scale, beginning with the Mount Cashel
Orphanage run by the Christian Brothers in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
and extending through one institution after another across the entire
country.
Thousands of children over decades at Mt. Cashel and in similar facilities
were subjected to foul food, severely beaten with belts and fists on a regular
basis, and occasionally sodomized. A film, The Boys of St.
Vincent’s, effectively dramatized the situation, but was banned in
Canada after its first showing.
Then there are the so-called “Duplessis orphans”, some
3,000 children who were condemned to be treated as retarded simply for the
higher rates the government would pay for their care. Indian children were
treated even worse, if that’s possible, in Church-run residential schools. Two
nuns, for instance, members of the Sisters of Charity, have been charged with
assault at a residential school in Ontario. However, this abuse occured not
just in Catholic schools, but also those run by Anglicans, Presbyterians, and
the United Church of Canada as well. The recompense due to the Native
population from this legacy of abuse may soon lead to the bankruptcy of the
entire Anglican Church of Canada.
All of these innocents were victimized by an unholy bargain between the
Church and the Canadian state, where the Church took charge of orphans and the
underprivileged with the blessing of government grants and virtually no
oversight — a situation already begun in Maria Monk’s day. (To which I say,
thank God for the Masonic Founders of the US and the separation of church and
state!)
The Sisters of Charity also figure in scandals in Ireland
and in Australia. In Ireland, a Sr. Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy not only
molested a 10-year-old girl, but also held her down to allow “a smelly
vagabond” rape the child. Such cases are not common, but they do exist.
In Australia, war orphans sent from England were subjected to such abuses
by the nuns as being burnt with a red-hot poker during an exorcism, locked in
underground cells, scalded in boiling water, and so on in some of the worst
atrocities ever said to be described there. “Madness, ruthless and sadistic
madness, on the part of at least some of the nuns, and a depthless depravity
on the part of some of the men who inhabited the place, are the defining
characteristics of some of those who ran the orphanage,” Professor Bruce
Grundy, the author of a report for the government, exclaimed. “There was no
limit to the sexual deviance that could be engaged in with those unlucky
enough to find themselves singled out as ‘the chosen ones’.”
He began his investigation, by the way, after police failed to find
evidence that stillborn babies and children who died from disease were buried
in unmarked graves. One can only wonder how these stories get started.
But, knowing the depravity that human nature is capable of, can anyone
today claim in good conscience that Maria Monk‘s story could not be
true? I doubt it.
The first victim
It is time, I believe, for her name to be rehabilitated and her courage
recognized and honored. Whether crazy or an imposter, Maria Monk was the first
voice to speak out for North American victims of clergy sexual abuse, and paid
the price for it. She was roundly reviled for her efforts. Even if she became
a madwoman, pickpocket and a prostitute with several illegitimate children, it
does not indicate her story is not true but more likely the opposite, for many
victims of abuse come to unfortunate ends, especially if scorned and
disbelieved. Certainly her verbal maltreatment by the mouthpieces of the
Church after she spoke out is similar if even more severe than what many later
survivors have faced.
With such factual horrors having been proven by government commissions and
courts of law, the claims of rampant abuse and crime by Maria Monk do not
sound so wildly extravagant anymore. Even the charges of infanticide which
moderns find most revolting might look entirely different to those women who
lived in medieval gloom before the invention of contraception.
After all, the Roman Catholic Church opposes such measures as abortion
partially because it believes the soul of the infant, if unbaptized, will not
be allowed into Heaven due to Original Sin. At least, the nuns might say in
their deluded self-justification, their babies, being brought to term and
baptized, were guaranteed an eternity of happiness, unlike today’s aborted
fetuses forever doomed to Limbo, whatever that means. Their sins, they would
claim, were thereby the lesser.
In any case, Maria Monk never claimed all nunneries were corrupt,
but only spoke of what she said she knew. But hers was not the only one so
debased, and conditions have not necessarily changed for the better. Nearly a
decade ago I listened in pity and horror along with several hundred other
people at a conference as an elderly
woman softly told her story. She had, at her quite advanced years,
recently quit Regina Laudis, a wealthy abbey, related somehow to the
Benedictines and Sisters of Mercy, based on an island off the East Coast.
Among other things, she claimed that the order stole land, duped recruits and
supporters, and led by several shady confessors, advocated Eucharistic
meditations for the sisters that were overtly autoerotic fantasies. Her
complaints to the ecclesiastical authorities brought no relief but only harsh
discipline for herself, and so she was forced to leave in protest.
Whether either her tale or that of Maria Monk is true or not, how can any
of us on the outside ever know for sure? The lives of those women behind the
cloister’s forbidding walls remain as insulated from the world today as if
they were in a Dark Age harem.
Empty convents
Ironically, Maria Monk’s ultimate revenge lays not so much in reform but in
extinction. It is not generally realized that many more nuns than priests have
quit since the Second Vatican Council. Roman Catholic orders of female
religious are withering away as their members grow old and are no longer
replaced. Figures
show that in the US there are only half as many in 1994 as there were
in 1965, and the average age of a nun is now over 65.
The reason for this mass exodus may not be that the modern outside world is
so glamorous. Perhaps it’s because the cloister is not that mysterious but
cozy refuge portrayed in those old Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman movies any
more than the priesthood is.
In reality, a convent is more like a prison, the uncomplaining inmates of
which the Church has ruthlessly and thanklessly exploited throughout two
millennia. Only those women who have actually been there can say if any of
these disturbing tales are true, if a nun’s life is indeed worth such
sacrifice. It should be noted that once Vatican II threw open the doors, many
of these inmates have spoken, silently but eloquently, with their feet.
And so the cloisters’ silence deepens. The halls do not echo much anymore
with the nuns’ whispered secrets or their footsteps hurrying on unknowable
errands, but the mystery remains.
Links
Awful Disclosures — the entire text in .gif and
.pdf format
Imposters — from the 1910 Catholic
Encyclopedia
The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk — claims it was all
nativist fraud and gives details
Nightmare
in Canada — about the Canadian clergy abuse scandals
Other stories mentioned above about clergy abuse in Australia, Ireland, and Canada.
Not so Innocent: When Women Become Killers — A report
by African Rights about female participation in the Rwanda massacres,
including several nuns.
The Boys of St. Vincent’s — a review
VOICES — clergy abuse in Australia
Wounded Boys
– Courageous Men — a photo-gallery of Canadian
survivors
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President, the Pope and the Pastor
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