Chapter VI: Appendix: 249 (5)

The explanation of this “scandalous haste” is very simple. The reporter of the Commission said: “If you do not vote this liberal law now, you can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again.”

The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be able to say, as I pointed out in my last: “You see the law is voted and nothing is changed.” If this law had been passed two years ago, it would have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty years.[14]

Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the “urgency” and give the law a second reading. All in vain.

No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and explanations demanded. _Règlements d’organization and Conseil d’Etat_, it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August 19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one comma, has been changed by the Senate!

To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state officials. This, in spite of Article 2, “the Republic recognizes and subventions no worship.”

Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, “The Republic assures liberty of conscience,” the Minister of Public Worship, speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries would never be permitted to send their children to any but government schools.

There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had “Separation” in their programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January 27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of the Concordat thus: “If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, and cause a veritable peril to the Republic.” Now the country has not been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve of a new election, for reasons I have indicated.

(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII.

(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, etc.

This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence.

I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these “associations of worship” will be to fall into the Government’s trap as the Congregations did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason yoke can be broken.

THE INVENTORIES

_12th February, 1906._

Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme.

In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government’s trap by asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, have been robbed of everything and turned adrift.

The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day (1906).

Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the “bloc” of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now resisting.

If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will be composed by bishops, curés, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, and there will not be any transmission of property.

If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the _Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been touched, and they had no part in the Concordat.

When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government to order inventories to be made in the churches.

To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In 1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of “liquidations.”

Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15]

Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but this made no difference.

The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical property then existing had been “irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic Church for public worship and charity.” The Jacobins of to-day apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is “placed at the disposal of the nation,” (“_mise à la disposition de la nation_”). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, etc.--“_sont mises à la disposition des évêques_”--all was “placed at the disposal of the bishops”; and the faithful, moreover, were invited to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are now to be confiscated.

Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law ironically called of “Separation.” Lineal descendants may claim _fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the dead are despoiled as well as the living.

The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and assaulted by _gens d’armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official _crocheteurs_, around with them.

Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Génève_, not one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the elections of May.[16]

Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be considered at an end.[17]

The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that “the Republic assures liberty of conscience.” Yet surely it is a violation of liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist.

Article II declares that “the Republic recognizes, salaries, and subventions no religion.” This too must not be taken literally. For, as I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the charge is repudiated.

Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. Louis!

Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them.

DUC IN ALTUM

_20th August, 1906._

“And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep,” _Duc in altum_. To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenæus in the second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical manœuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in their law of tyranny and spoliation.

The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, 1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to make-believe that these associations were merely “boards of trustees” to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and _conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these _Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the parish to suit themselves.

Even after one association has been legally formed “according to the general rules of worship” (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except incidentally. The Conseil d’Etat, an administrative tribunal composed exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of these associations. The phrase “formed according to the general rules of worship” was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, “according to the general rules of organization of worship.”

The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words _nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A noted Freemason said recently, “Twenty years of secular schools have made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be effaced.”

In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): “The law,” he said, “had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, ‘Vote, vote.’ Here are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will vote this law from a sense of duty.”[18]

This same senator described the true character of the _Associations cultuelles_ when he said, “They are free associations destined to take the place of the ancient Church.”

Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public Worship: “Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use the same church.”

If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La Lanterne_, _L’Action_, _Le Siècle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not.

When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them “to acknowledge the king to be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy.” In 1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving clause, “as far as the law of Christ will allow.” They also consented to have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, “with a view to the elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm.” Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, and “henceforth,” writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of the English Church, “the Church of England will be at the mercy of Parliament.” We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State.

It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d’Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_.

Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil d’Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the Government’s reply.

The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December 11th, 1906.

Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_.

The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace.

He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified with any form of government.

At the time of Leo’s death the _Journal de Genève_ (Protestant) declared that “this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated provocations.” This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given under a mask of _neutralité_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and 1904 which embittered Leo’s last hours, were so many acts of hostility, leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. “Il faut sérier les questions,” said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c’est l’ennemi_; and “clericalism,” it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, they openly proclaim that God is the enemy.

After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the nation.

If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous language, that never, never would the Church refuse the “liberalities” of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, “Ils capitulent!”; August 16th, 1906, “C’est la guerre”; and “La folie suprême,” of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced _integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding _Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at _Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher used seditious language in the pulpit.

No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the very thing they wished, above all, to avoid.

Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to enforce them “integrally,” as they say, even to the confiscation of Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen.

M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, “it was not worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a few candelabras.” He and his employers may find that it is not worth while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for which they have no use.

They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the available cash, which will go the way of the “billions” of the Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20]

Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: “There was but one force adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the Papacy” (_History of Civilization_).

To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. “That they all may be one that the world may believe” (John XVI).

By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate are worthy and equal to the emergency. My “First Impressions” regarding them (p. 5) were correct.

Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the encyclicals “Vehementer” and “Gravissimo” (15th August), one of the grandest pages of the annals of the Church. “Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat”; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like them, might become as “dust which the wind scattereth,” the dust of sects and schisms and national churches. “But I have prayed for thee, Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren.” _Duc in altum._

SEPARATION

_24th November, 1906._

Disguise the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. “Pray do not speak of blood,” he cried. One man was killed during the inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, “Du sang, quelle parole atroce!” (“Blood, what an atrocious word!”).

They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, “Fear not them that kill the body”; and they are determined that there shall be no more martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more _noyades_ as in 1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter.

“We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious beliefs we have destroyed?” Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up “true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma,” whose “consciences and reason are emancipated.”

In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, _menses episcopales_, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them “a nest of vipers” and “poison their budgets”!

M. Lassies summed up M. Briand’s discourse by these unparliamentary words: “Vous avez du toupet, vous----” (“You have brass enough, you----”).

Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a subterfuge (_cousu de blanc_) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their priests may come together “accidentally” and “individually” in the churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: “The Republic guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under _the following restrictions_.” Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new _by-law-established_ churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony of the ancient Church and take its place.

M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts made by M. des Houx of the _Matin_ (alias “Mirambeau”), M. Decker David (a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and property, M. Briand said, “You want to strangle the Catholics right away; we do not wish to do so” (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, one by one.

On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the Catholics, temporarily, at the Government’s good pleasure. There has been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew _brocanteurs_ will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of 1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the by-products, duly discounted, of this “law of liberty” called “Separation.”

But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand’s circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any _subreptice_ associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. Cardinal Lecot’s society for the support of aged priests (their old age pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He harps upon Article 4 (“the associations must be formed according to the general rules of worship”), which he declares “places all the associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See.” Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all subject to the decisions of the Conseil d’Etat, alone competent to judge if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. “formed according to the general rules of worship.” In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics!

Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated (April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. “You wish to turn over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (_la haute discipline_), the government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this discipline.”

In the Senate, too, this same minister declared “that even after one association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if they wish to use the same church.”[21]

If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word “bishop” in Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished by the _non possumus_ of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November 9th) M. Briand admitted that “the law had been made in view of the organization of _Associations cultuelles_.” This I have affirmed since nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in reality, it has just missed.

Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of the Conseil d’Etat, equally valueless.

In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article 13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcassé and the Ambassador at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of 1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand’s dulcet, fair, feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are merely “words, words,” and _verba volant_. Moreover, how long will M. Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact of the advance guard?

More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this ambiguity was deliberate and intentional.

By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung these biting words at the Government: “The law without the associations is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In 1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, chaos, behold your law.” “In 1790,” said the same deputy, “as to-day, the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced logically to extreme measures--death and transportation.”

The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand’s declarations in the Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, _Paradise Lost_): “Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I boast not.” But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who “pleaded devilish counsel first devised by Satan,” and which consisted in “seducing the puny habitants of Paradise to our party” by guile and fraud.

These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely given constitution.

The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22]

The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction of the religious idea, even of natural religion.

Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of public schools.

Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, not of the clergy; to-day, _laïque_ in France means atheist. _L’école laïque_ means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes.

Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, must disappear. It also finds that the State _lycées de filles_ “are not sufficiently laicized,” meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a child of twelve by one of her companions of an _école laïque_ near Allevard, in presence of the whole school. “For thee infinite nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity.” I transcribe from the anti-clerical _Dépêche Dauphinoise_. The spectacle of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese!

This Masonic convent has also decided “that the means of production and exchange must be restituted to the collectivity.” Therefore we know in advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly as possible.

Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic recently observed, “We can do without our churches, but we cannot do without our schools.”

It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so much easier than to ascend.

To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into nurseries of infidelity and immorality.

In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine commission to “teach all nations,” needs the aid of all the arts and sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is essentially, and _jure divino_, _Ecclesia docens_, will never forego her right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit savant, was welcomed by mandarin _literati_, and founded the first Christian mission in China in 1581.

All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never attempted to light a fire.

When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay the proudest city in ruins.

To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be far-reaching. The French atheocracy has “said unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job XXI. 14). Churches, here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, “if the Christian Hercules uplift Antæus, son of the earth, into the air and stifle him there, then--_patuit Deus_.”

LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY

Liberty is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. “Other influences,” writes Lecky, “could produce the manumission of many slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there are,” he says, “few subjects more interesting than the history of that great transition” (_History of Rationalism_, II, 258).

There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine “Thou shalt not” to masters, whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all human laws.

Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against “masters who took from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves” (Wright’s _Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle Ages_). “That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its dealings with kings and nobles,” writes Lecky, “never failed to listen to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection was the foremost of all the objects of its policy” (_History of Rationalism_, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. “No ideal,” writes Lecky, “has exercised a more salutary influence than the mediæval conception of the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our civilization” (_History of Rationalism_, I, 231).

These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity.

After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. “This law alone,” writes Voltaire, “should render his memory precious to all, as his efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians” (_Essai sur les mœurs_).

Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his _History of the Middle Ages_, page 221, that “though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be emancipated.” But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 of the same work, that “the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach themselves as serfs to monasteries.” An old German proverb, too, says: “It is good to live under the crozier.” When the monasteries were suppressed by Henry VIII, we know by Strype’s _Chronicles_, that misery and vagrancy reached terrible proportions.

But while freely admitting that “in the transition from slavery to serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most zealous and the most efficient agent” (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that “St. Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were usurpers or unjust.” “To the scholastics of those days also,” he says, “we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau.” Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, but mere plagiarists.

“As long,” continues Lecky, “as the object was not so much to produce freedom, as to mitigate servitude, the Church was still the champion of the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the pressure of despotism” (II, 235).

We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church did more than “mitigate servitude”; she also produced freedom by the institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, and a defenceless people, _corvéable_, _taillable_, and guillotinable, at mercy. These “unwritten customs with the force of public law” made Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To suppress these _fueros_ of the commons, or unwritten constitutional liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their _fueros_ intact to this day.

In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648).

In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois Etats, until 1789.

Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared to write with impunity: “Il n’y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence.” (“It would be tyranny and violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his subjects, without their leave and consent.”)[23]