Right here the reader may ask if these nuns are willing to submit to the embraces of these priests?

I will allow this girl to answer this question in her own language, and her answer is this: 

“I answer that in fifteen out of twenty cases—­No!  But she is there helpless; the priest has seen her somewhere in the garb of a nun and has taken a fancy to her, and whether she be willing or not, he compels her to allow him to satisfy his hellish passion!”

This girl continues by exclaiming:  “Oh God!  Great God!  When I think of this system—­this system born of the devil and nurtured by hell—­and realize that under the cloak of religion it is stealing away our liberty, entering into our homes, ruining our womanhood and girlhood, and painting childish purity with the brush of immorality, and defiling everything with which it comes in contact, I then become a mad woman, and I become as a venomous serpent, wanting revenge for what has been done to me, and it seems as if I cannot remain quiet, but, closing my eyes and ears to everything, as I have no redress, I am compelled to warn thousands who may come after me, of their fate, should they take up convent life, which is a hell upon earth and a blotch as black as the shadows of hell to any land.”

The same lady who related the above, and a great deal more which I cannot tell in this chapter, gave an account of the sufferings of another nun, who was in the same convent with her, and I now learn that the same story that I will now relate has been told to others.

Reader, you must bear in mind that convents have many tortures outside of the torturing conscience on account of having the virtue of their inmates destroyed.  The teachings of Catholicism lead people to practice self-infliction upon their person in order to appease a living God, as they seem to worship a living God the same as the pagans would worship a God of stone, or a ferocious God in the form of some carnivorous beast, and in order to atone for their sins, these inmates of the nunneries are taught that they must bear self-infliction; in fact, Catholicism teaches her followers that in order that any of them shall receive absolute pardon, that they must resort to heathenish practices.

As stated above, the same lady whom we speak of in the first part of this chapter, relates her experience with a sister nun, who endured self-torture, believing that it was an outward demonstration of godliness.  Her story follows: 

“I call to mind a case of cruelty under the guise of devotion that happened in our convent.  A consecrated penitent, Sister Madeline, had been for some time a victim of consumption.  She was a beautiful girl, and her exquisitely sweet voice could be heard in church every Sunday, taking part in the high mass.  Poor Sister Madeline!  How many humiliations she received!  How often she was censured for leaving her work unfinished when she was not able to do it, and how I have pitied her as she tried to eat the bread and dripping we had for supper.  Failing in the attempt, I would notice the tears gather in her eyes.  Oh, how often I longed to be able to obtain some little delicacy for her! but dared not ask for it.  Her gentle, patient, suffering face will never fade from my memory.