The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

416 THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS.Vices, indeed, we have to deplore among certainclasses of our people, which are often superinducedby their migratory habits, and irregular mode oflife. But they are commonly sins of frailty, andthese are not the persons that are accustomed toapproach the Confessional. If they did, their liveawould be very different from what they are.The best of us, alas ! are not what we ought tobe, considering the graces we receive. But if youseek for canting hypocrites, or colossal defaulters,or perpetrators of well-laid schemes of forgery, or ofsystematic licentiousness, or of premeditated violence,you will seek for such in vain among those who frequent the Confessional.But we are told that Confession is an intolerableyoke, and that it makes its votaries the slaves of thepriests.Before answering this objection, let me call yourattention to the inconsistency of our adversaries, whoblow hot and cold in the same breath. At the sametime they denounce Confession as being too hard aremedy for sin, and condemn it as being a smoothroad to heaven. You have only, say they, to paya little toll at the Confessional gate, to pass thebiggest load of sin. And then they call it an intolerable yoke. In one sentence they style it a bedof roses ;and in the next a bed of thorns.In the last objection it was charged that the votariesof Confession had no moral constraint at all.Nowit is said that their conscience is bound in chains of