Customer Reviews

Awful Disclosures by Maria Monk of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think these excepts from a review by Kevin Baker says it all.

"Maria" and her book burst upon the American scene in 1836. At the time, the nation was enduring a wave of nativist, "Know-Nothing" feeling. Just two years earlier, a mob of disgruntled Boston workingmen had marched on a convent of Ursuline nuns in nearby Charlestown and burned it to the ground.

Worse was yet to come-thanks in good part to Miss Monk. Awful Disclosures purported to be the memoir of how, as a young girl growing up in Montreal, she converted to Catholicism, joined a local nunnery-and found herself in a convent that sounds more like a road company of Marat/Sade than anything ever sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church.

For any of you tempted to carnal sin ..... Awful Disclosures will prove disappointing.

More disturbing are Maria's "revelations" about how nuns from wealthy families would be secretly murdered or imprisoned if they tried to leave the convent-or how all nuns were forced to have sex with Catholic priests. The progeny of these liaisons were supposedly baptized-then murdered and buried within the convent walls. Nuns who refused to accede to these practices were also murdered. In one particularly repulsive scene, a defiant young nun is placed under a bed and crushed to death by a swarm of priests and nuns who leap on it, laughing and mocking her, at the behest of a bishop. To avoid a similar fate-and to save her unborn child-Maria fled to New York and (if the phrase is not too redundant) straight into the arms of Know-Nothings and journalists.

Awful Disclosures became an instant bestseller. This is not too surprising, since it was ghost-written by some professional hack. Just how many of its calumnies were invented by Maria is unclear, but they conveniently echoed the most widespread anti-Catholic slanders.

For lending her name and person to this propaganda, Maria was lionized for a time by a group of Protestant clerics, and sent out on a series of speaking tours. Then the inevitable shoe fell. Maria's mother revealed that she had never been a nun at all, but the runaway inmate of a Catholic asylum for delinquent girls. The father of her child had not been a priest at all, but the boyfriend who helped her escape. Her clerical champions-and her publishers-quietly fell away, leaving her nearly as penniless as when she had first arrived in New York. "When she gave birth to a second fatherless child, she did not bother to name him after a priest," William V. Shannon wrote pointedly in his excellent history, The American Irish.

Maria seems to have become a prostitute, and died in prison after being arrested for pickpocketing. Her lies lived after her, as lies will. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, successive waves of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant violence wracked the nation. A series of wild riots near Philadelphia, in 1844, left 13 dead; while three Catholic churches and many Catholic homes were burned to the ground. Priests, nuns, and thousands of lay Catholics were forced to flee for their lives. A similar orgy of violence was narrowly avoided in New York the same year, when Bishop "Dagger John" Hughes summoned armed volunteers to defend the Old St. Patrick's Church, and warned the city's Know-Nothing mayor that he would turn New York into "a second Moscow" if any Catholics or their houses of worship were attacked. Bishop Hughes was referring to Czar Alexander I's decision to burn down Moscow rather than let it fall into the hands of Napoleon, and the force of his threat was enough to keep New York at peace for a change.

Yet through the mid-1850's, nativist mobs committed more murders and burned more churches and homes, in cities from Baltimore to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Know-Nothing politicians won sweeping electoral victories, once taking over almost the whole Massachusetts legislature, and threatening America's whole legacy of immigration. Throughout these depredations, the bible of the Know-Nothings remained Awful Disclosures-no matter how thoroughly Maria Monk was discredited. Shannon records that the book "went through twenty printings, sold 300,000 copies, and down to the Civil War served as the 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' of the Know-Nothing movement. The book was again in circulation on a small scale in the presidential campaign of 1960."

John Kennedy was running for president in 1960, and he was thought to have put the whole issue of anti-Catholicism to rest once and for all that year. Yet here it is back with us, forty years later-along with Awful Disclosures.

In an age when every outrageous conspiracy theory and nugget of internet gossip are passed off as the historical record, the truth is more important than ever. It is doubtful that Maria Monk .... will be able to do much damage to individual Catholics or the Catholic Church in the foreseeable future (or that new readers of Awful Disclosures will be outraged about anything so much as the fact that the disclosures aren't awfully erotic.)

Its instructive to note, though, that just this past April the American Jewish Committee was forced to run a large ad in The New York Times, protesting that an even more notorious fraud, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was being re-published by a pair of extremist publishers, and distributed through ... mainstream booksellers. Yet what are we to expect when even a major, respected publishing house is willing to make a few bucks by passing off old ethnic and religious slurs as mere sexual highjinks? Once the whole tissue of truth is torn, once reality becomes a weak and tattered thing, there is no keeping down the most monstrous of lies. This is why history matters. This is why truth matters.

Being a classic in nineteenth-century expose novels, i have to give it five stars. As a history it should receive negative five stars. I think most realize that now. Regarding seeing Maria Monk as a heroic whistle blower, as the earlier review does, lets not ignore Maria Monk's own mother's whistleblowing which claimed that a Protestant minister approached her and offered to pay her to likewise claim that Maria was raped by a Catholic priest, when in reality the minister himself was the father of the baby. Or maybe the whistleblowing lawyer named Stone who inspected the Hotel Dieu, expecting to find evidence for what he read in Maria's narrative, but instead found a happy community. This lawyer then inspected Maria herself and found that the book reflected more of troubled nature of Maria than of Catholicism. He was himself a Protestant and felt his investigation at first a religious mission to free Americans from the evils of Catholicism. He soon changed his mind to a mission of freeing his "fellow countryment" from "the bondage of prejudice, superindiced by the most flagrant imposture." (See Roads to Rome p. 160, by Jenny Franchot for more info)

This expose novel is invaluable in looking at nineteenth-century America and why it was that so many Americans actually believed in what they read. Although it was at first surprising to see reviews today that still believe works like this to be actual history, despite the massive amounts of historical evidence against it, I am no longer surprised. It goes to show that today, as in nineteenth-century America, there are those who still need to believe in such things. Happily, the number of those with such psychological (such as inner spiritual or religious deficiencies and insecurities) needs are much less than almost two hundred years ago, or at least I hope.

I purchased this book for a report for my lit. class. It was definitely an interesting read, and opened a window into the prejudices that were held in the early 19th century. This book was informative and well organized.

The world is a pretty messed up place primarily because most otherwise good people, are content to remain ignorant. If "good" people were wise enough to keep up with those who secretly do "evil", the world would be a much better place for us all. On far too many occassions the good people of the world, have been given clear warning of hidden wrongdoing in their midst by courageous whistleblowers. Yet they fail to heed these critical warnings usually declaring them to be "too crazy" to believe, "conspiracy theories", or some other such example of denial or lack of critical thought. The fundamental struggle of good vs evil affects all men. While most of us strive to get through our daily lives, evil men secretly pursue designs both great and small, against us. Needless to say, it's quite dangerous to disregard any warning of unknown wrongdoing by genuine whistleblowers, no matter how incredible. The consequences afterall, could be quite devastating! If people had taken to heart the revelations about secret Catholic sexual abuse of cloistered nuns, revealed by victim and whistleblower Maria Monk over a hundred years ago, perhaps the thousands of innocent victims, who've been molested by Catholic priests in recent years, could've been spared their traumatic ordeals.

Most people were shocked by today's revelations of widespread sexual abuse of parishioners by Catholic priests. Today's revelations expose factual incidents of sexual abuse, by priests much like Maria Monk did in her day. In hindsight, how relevent and believable the testimony of Maria Monk looks today! The current sexual scandals rocking the Catholic Church bear bitter witness to the veracity of Maria Monk over her rabid detractors of the period. In the face of staggering evidence of sexual abuse and massive financial penalties, the church's guilt cannot be so easily brushed aside as was done when Maria Monk first broke her story. We can only guess at the number of victims who've suffered similar abuse in silence, in the more than a century, since Maria Monk's futile attempt to alert an unsuspecting public. As the Catholic Church fights to minimize the effects of today's scandals, and its victims fight for justice, the tremendous damage done to the church's image, and thousands of innocent lives, is far from over!

Genuine whistleblowers are often participants or victims of the crimes they expose. Insider status or connections, allows them to play a vital role in making us aware of hidden criminal activity. Sometimes the most trusted institutions, groups, and or individuals, may be at fault. When properly investigated, such revelations often uncover harmful activities we would otherwise have no knowledge of. So great is the potential for large-scale harm from hidden criminal activity, whistleblower accounts should never be dismissed without serious investigations. Media propaganda, and the vehement denials of those so accused, should never be accepted in lieu of truly independent investigations. Only the facts and actual evidence of the case, can prove the whistleblower wrong.

The great irony here, is that while most people believe in the influence of evil in the world, they remain ignorant of just how real evil works in real life. For all practical purposes, evil in the world is embodied and made manifest, through the conspiracies of evil men! Since such plots often call for dedicated malfactors to establish themselves in the most trusted institutions or groups, while concealing their true agenda. There's no institution or group above the everpresent threat of being corrupted, and turned to the service of evil! When the courageous whistleblower comes forward to warn us of great conspiracies or other hidden wrongdoing, watch how quickly the mainstream media (a blatantly corrupt institution) labels them "nutcases", "conpiracy theorists," while ruthlessly dismissing them out of hand! Realistically we should expect those exposed by the whistleblower or independent investigator, to lie and attempt to turn us away from their urgent message, by attacking the messenger. Don't be at all surprised if those so exposed, vehemently deny any and all wrongdoing! Afterall why should they confess, when its so easy to deceive the unsuspecting public time and time again? The greatest boon to the conspiracies of evil men is the perrenial gullibility of the public! No matter how great the danger, people are always looking to take the easy way out. We'll readily fall for the most shrill denials and lies, rather than confront the often brutal truths, brought to light by courageous whistleblowers like Maria Monk.