Summary Of Awful Disclosures Of The Hotel By Maria Monk

In the 1800s, anti-Catholic sentiments were ablaze throughout North America. Protestants were against Catholics due to the fact that Catholics were “outsiders.” Catholics had deviated from Protestantism, causing unrest between the two groups. During this time, literature was a prominent way of denouncing Catholicism. The most famous, and yet horribly untrue, piece of anti-Catholic literature is Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Monastery in Montreal. In this essay, I will argue that Maria Monk’s book was a scam designed to discredit a religion. I will first explain the book itself. Next, I will show a connection between Maria Monk’s mental state, living situation, and novel. Finally, I will analyze the critical thinking concepts

Awful Disclosures was fuel for a pre-existing, anti-Catholic fire. Anti-Catholics now had an extremely popular first-hand account that would work towards the discreditation of Catholicism. The book’s contents were gruesome and heavily detailed, which did not make the distinction between truth and lie easy to identify. Monk claimed that the convent would force the nuns to be intimate with priests, then baptize and kill any babies born from these relations. It was also written that the monastery had a number of terrible additions, such as prisons for nuns who acted out, underground tunnels, secret entrances, and the like. Towards the end of the book, Maria states that she found herself pregnant and took an opportunity to flee after seven years in the monastery, ending up in New York. There she supposedly gave birth and told her story, was urged to publish it, and Awful Disclosures came to

When it comes to Awful Disclosures, the motivation was the discreditation of Catholicism. When Stone pronounced the book a hoax, Protestants would not believe it. They completely disregarded hard evidence that Monk’s book was a lie, because they so badly wanted Catholicism to be evil and unholy. This ties into the backfire effect, a critical thinking concept that causes a person to cling tighter to their belief even when presented with conflicting evidence. While Awful Disclosures was popular, the backfire effect was present everywhere. Many people clung to the idea that Catholicism was awful, despite having heaps of conflicting, hard