Eugene Francis O'Beirne

Eugene Francis O'Beirne (c. 1809 – after 1864) was an Irish adventurer and schoolmaster in colonial Canada and Australia. Quotes A Succinct and Accurate Account of the system of Discipline, Education, and Theology, adopted and pursued in the Popish College of Maynooth (1840) Hereford: W. H. Vale; London: Simpkin and Marshall; Dublin: Carson The Maynooth Theologians, by inculcating that modesty must be laid aside by females at confession, as rendering them unworthy of absolution, endeavour to overcome the strongest barrier of female virtue—female modesty. When that Heaven-stationed centinel [sic] but slumbers on his post, or ceases to unfurl his crimson banner on her cheek, it requires but small pains to scale the walls and take the Citadel. I would ask any man to image himself in the situation of a Popish Confessor with a beautiful and lovely woman kneeling by his chair; interrogating her on the different headings of the Maynooth class-books—on her "thoughts," "cogitationibus" on her "illicitos motus on her "desideria," and on other still more disgusting headings, and honestly say what would likely be the effect on his mind. To sit unmoved in such a situation would be more than human. Can it by possibility tend to the advancement either of piety, or virtue, to compel young girls to throw open to the gaze of unmarried Confessors, their innermost thoughts, emotions, and passions—thoughts, emotions, and passions which they would conceal even from their husbands, if married, and from their mothers, if not—emotions and passions which form part of their nature, and were given them for wise purposes by Him who understood his own great designs. It is impossible for females to come into the close intercourse of the Confessional with men who have been schooled in such abominations without deriving a moral pollution from the contact, The questions which confessors are directed by the Maynooth class-books to put to their female penitents, are in themselves most indelicate and offensive: under any circumstances, the proposal of them, even by one of their own sex, would wound the sensitiveness of female modesty. What then must such interrogatories be from a coarse vulgar Irish priest? Is there no danger in exposing young and innocent females to such a prurient system of interrogatories? Is there no danger in exposing the priests themselves, who are but men—men who neither dine on ambrosia or quaff nectar—mere men—carnal men, with the passions incidental to humanity? Is there, I again ask, no danger in exposing them to such trying temptations? "Perish the theology that inverts the sacred Scriptures, and with infernal passions fills the heart of man." p. 76 The great work of corrupting the heart by teaching a knowledge of sin as yet unthought of, commences almost from childhood. Females are inured from infancy to an examination gradually suited to their age and circumstances; young girls are prepared for the inquisitorial investigation which awaits them as wives, and have thoughts suggested to their innocent minds which perhaps they otherwise would have never known. p. 84 The Maynooth system of education, by making the students acquainted and familiar with all kinds of vice, awfully increases the depravity of the unhappy young men themselves; who become so hardened in iniquity as to be in after life, the corrupters of the young and comparatively innocent; by insinuating the poison of their own filthy imaginations, into the hearts of the inexperienced, and thus effect their destruction under the pretence of promoting their salvation. What in the grossest heathenism can come near the extracts I have just made from the Maynooth class-books. It is almost impossible to write on the subject of those abominable class-books, whose very atrocity is the greatest barrier to their exposure, without offending delicacy. p. 120 External links Q141566954 Category:1800s births Category:1860s deaths Category:Non-fiction authors from Ireland