This is an excellent look at the religious system of the Catholic Church from the inside.

Charles Chiniquy was born at Kamouraska, Quebec, Canada, to Roman Catholic parents. He studied at the college of Nicolet in Canada; after graduation he entered the priesthood (at an early age) and continued therein until he was an old man. At the age of 49 he left the Roman church, taking his congregation with him, and became a Presbyterian minister. His encounters with the inner workings of the Roman church are enlightening and could come only from someone who was embedded in such a system for so many years. He later published a number of books and tracts on temperance and about his life and experiences in the Catholic Church, some of which became very popular and were translated into several languages.

In this book he covers such subjects as:

• The Bible and the priests of Rome
• Preparation for the First Communion - initiation to idolatry
• Intellectual education in the Roman Catholic Colleges
• Moral and religious instruction in the Roman Catholic Colleges
• Protestant children in the convents and nunneries of Rome
• Rome and education: why the church of Rome hates the common schools of the United States and wants to destroy them
• Theology of the church of Rome: its anti-Christian character
• The vow of celibacy
• The impurities of the theology of Rome
• The priest of Rome and the holy fathers
• How the author swore to give up the word of God to follow the word of men
• The Roman Catholic priesthood, or ancient and modern idolatry
• Nine consequences of the dogma of transubstantiation