Charles Chiniquy

CHARLES CHINIQUY

Charles Chiniquy was a Roman Catholic priest who later was saved and wrote FIFTY YEARS IN THE CHURCH OF ROME. Even though his testimony is genuine and was brought on as a result of frequent Bible reading in his youth, some Roman Catholic writers have tried to villify him.

BASIC R.C. BELIEF From RADIO REPLIES, Frs. Rumble and Carty. “Father Chiniquy was a French Catholic who was ordained a priest in 1843. On September 28, 1851, he was suspended from priestly duties for immoral conduct. He left for the United States, and persuaded a bishop there to give him another chance. But that Bishiop had to expel him in 1856. He appealed to another Bishop, but was not accepted. He finally persuaded the Bishop of Chicago to re-instate him, but was again expelled. Then, having made himself impossible with every Catholic Bishop, he went to a hotel and, after a night of agony and distress over his abandonment by the Catholic Church, he says he saw the light from Heaven fall upon him and he saw clearly that the Roman Church was wrong, and that salvation lay with the Protestants.

“In 1862 the Protestant Synod of Chicago expelled him for misappropriation nof funds. The American Presbyterians accepted and then expelled him for embezzelment. After that, he became a Orange Lodge lecturer against Rioman Catholicism.

“At the time of his death, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Montreal most charitably offered him forgivenmess and reconciliation.” (It is not stated in RADIO REPLIES whether he accepted this forgiveness.)

CHRISTIAN COPMMENT I have visited the Presbyterian Church in St. Anne, Illinois, the church that Chiniquy founded when he left the Catholic Church. I saw a plaque commemorating Chiniquy’s pastoring that church from 1858, when he left the Church of Rome, until 1888, a period of 30 years (during which time RADIO REPLIES says he was with several Protestant groups and was dismissed, in disgrace, from all of them.

Just befopre he died, Chiniquy made this notarized statement, “I commit my soul into the hands of Almighty God, my Creator, by the mediation of Jesus Christ alone, my Divine Redeemer, whose merits are infinite. I cannot return to the bondage of Rome.”

In a reply to Dr. Charles Hodge published in THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES (10/31/53), Chiniquy wrote, “After twenty-five years of experience and study as a priest of Rome, I do not know a single truth which that apostate church has kept intact and unmixed with the most diabolical and damnable error.”