When we asked each other the question, “What is the difference between the religion of heathen Rome and that of the Rome of to-day?” more than one student would answer: “The only difference is in the name. The idolatrous temples are the same: the idols have not left their places. To-day, as formerly, the same incense burns in their honor? Nations are still prostrated at their feet to give them the same homage and to ask of them the same favors; but instead of calling this statue Jupiter, we call it Peter; and instead of calling that one Minerva or Venus, it is called St. Mary. It is the old idolatry coming to us under Christian names.”
I earnestly desired to be an honest and sincere Roman Catholic. These impressions and thoughts distracted me greatly, inasmuch as I could find nothing in reason to diminish their force. Unfortunately, many of the books placed in our hands by our superiors to confirm our faith, form our moral character, and sustain our piety and our confidence in the dogmas of the Church of Rome, had a frightful resemblance to the histories I had read of the gods and goddesses. The miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary often appeared to be only a reproduction of the tricks and deceits by which the priests of Jupiter, Venus, Minerva, etc., used to obtain their ends and grant the requests of their worshippers. Some of those miracles of the Virgin Mary equalled, if they did not surpass, in absurdity and immorality, what mythology taught us among the most hideous accounts of the heathen gods and goddesses.
I could cite hundreds of such miracles which shocked my faith and caused me to blush in secret at the conclusion to which I was forced to come, in comparing the worship of ancient and modern Rome. I will only quote three of these modern miracles, which are found in one of the books the best approved by the Pope, entitled “The Glories of Mary.”
First miracle. “The great favors bestowed by the Holy Virgin upon a nun named Beatrix, of the Convent of Frontebraldo, show how merciful she is to sinners. The fact is related by Cesanus, and by Father Rho. This unfortunate nun, having been possessed by a criminal passion for a young man, determined to leave her convent and elope with him. She was the doorkeeper of the convent, and having placed the keys of the monastery at the feet of a statue of the Holy Virgin, she boldly went out, then led a life of prostitution during fifteen years in a far off place.