Charles Chiniquy

Charles P. Chiniquy (30 July 1809 – 16 January 1899) was a Canadian Catholic priest who became a Presbyterian pastor.

Chiniquy was born in 1809 in the village of Kamouraska, Quebec. He lost his father at an early age and was adopted by his uncle. As a young man, Chiniquy studied to become a Catholic priest at the Petit Seminaire (Little Seminary) in Nicolet, Quebec. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1833. After his ordination, he served his church in Quebec and later emigrated to Illinois. During the 1840s, he led a very successful campaign throughout Quebec against alcohol and drunkenness.

In 1855, he was sued by a prominent Catholic layman named Peter Spink in Kankakee, Illinois. After the fall court term, Spink applied for a change of venue to the court in Urbana. Abraham Lincoln was then hired by Chiniquy to defend him. The spring court action in Urbana was the highest profile libel suit in Lincoln’s career. The case was ended in the fall court session by agreement.

Chiniquy clashed with the Bishop of Chicago, Anthony O'Regan, over the bishop’s treatment of Catholics in Chicago, particularly French Canadians. He declared that O’Regan was secretly backing Spink's suit against him. Chiniquy stated that in 1856 O’Regan threatened him with excommunication if he did not go to a new location where the bishop wanted him. Several months later the New York Times published a pastoral letter from Bishop O’Regan in which O’Regan stated that he had suspended Chiniquy and, since the priest had continued in his normal duties as a priest, the bishop excommunicated him by his letter. Chiniquy vigorously disputed that he had been excommunicated, saying publicly that the bishop was mistaken. Chiniquy left the Roman Catholic Church in 1858. He claimed that the church was pagan, that Roman Catholics worship the Virgin Mary, that its theology spoils the Gospel and that its theology is anti-Christian. He also claimed that the Vatican had planned to take over the United States by importing Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany and France.

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