Secrets of the Convent and Confessional Author:Julia McNair Wright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER SECOND. STRANGE CONCORD. Setting an Orphanage in a Good Light—Collecting Money—The Nans' Arguments—A Mathematical Demonstration of the Burden of Hu... more »manism and the Burden of the Poor—The Mother of the Convent and the Father of the People—Secret Springs—A Christian's Vicw ol Romanism — The Publisher Convinced — Certain Romieh Tenets—A Lost Sister. " And through covctousucss shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you." The Abbess Catherine rejoiced in the thought that in no religious house in America were the Romish rites and ceremonies conducted with such exactness and magnificence as in The House of the Holy Family. In this convent was no cloistered Sister who had not been able to lay on the altar a handsome dowry. In the whole establishment could be found nothing cheap or gaudy; the pictures and the statuary were treasures of art, musical instruments were perfect in tone, and no inharmonious voice was permitted to jar the ear of the luxurious Abbess, by taking part in the service of song. Scarcely had day " flaunted its banners among the setting stars," when the household of Catherine Illumi- nata trooped to their Chapel for matins. Protestants usually explain this indefinitely as "music;" it is "the morning part of the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary." The " Office of the Blessed Virgin" is daily sung in Matins, Vespers and Complin, the Ave Maria, introducing each portion. The Abbess boasted that there was no hour in thetwenty-four when worship in the form of music, reading or prayers was not going on in her house. She arranged this by the distribution of penances, condemning enough Sisters to night prayers for misdemeanors, in such order that, one after another, the penitents should uphold the holiness of the house through the watches of th...« less