Chapter VII: The War on the Religious Orders (1)

The twentieth century dawned with black and lowering skies, presage of storms to come. Even while the hymns of thanksgiving were echoing among the vaulted roofs of cathedral and chapel, the powers of darkness were assembling in high places to formulate plans of destruction. The word had gone forth that Catholicity must die, the oath had been taken in the secret lodges, the generals of the campaign were chosen, and work began in earnest.

The war with the Church was on. It had its skirmishes ever since 1879. Any president or minister who dared to favor the cause of Catholicity must fall. "They must temporize, resign, or die." MacMahon was forced to resign; Carnot was assassinated; Casimir Perier resigned; Felix Faure, for having steadfastly opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, died almost immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soiree, and the Dreyfus case was made out against the Catholics. President Loubet was elected on February 18, 1899. In taking up the reins of government he was made to understand unmistakably that he must follow out the directions of a party whose slogan was: "Death to the Church!"

One fact which shows that the spirit of the Government, which followed upon the accession of Loubet, was born for persecution, was the case of the Assumptionist Fathers. The latter were accused of interfering in the elections of 1898. A case was made out against them "for violation of the Penal Code interdicting gatherings of more than twenty persons." The real accusation brought against them, however, was to the effect that they had favored the _wrong_ candidates, that is, candidates not agreeable to the dominant powers. The prosecutor, Bulot, in his arraignment, cited the names of thirty-one deputies who, he declared, owed their election to the influence of the Assumptionists. The Assumptionists were condemned, and their congregation dissolved as illicit.

_ANTI-CHRISTIAN GOVERNMENT._

The complexion of the new Government which ruled from 1899 to 1902 may be seen from the following extract taken from the revelations of Madame Sorgues, sub-editor, a few years ago--of Jaures' Socialist organ, _La Petite Republique_:

In fighting the battles of Dreyfus, Jaures and his friends
brought about a singular meeting of the two most
irreconcilable camps.... The first service rendered was to
restore the tottering Socialist press.... All the advanced
(i. e. anti-clerical) dailies have passed into the hands of
the great barons of finance; they are their journals now, not
the journals of the workers.... They cast their eyes on
Waldeck-Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panama people....
The agent of the Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of
introducing into the Cabinet, Millerand, the Socialist
leader, with the consent of his party. Socialism by becoming
ministerial would be domesticated and rendered inoffensive
against capital.

The Cabinet was thus in the hands of men little disposed to show fairness towards anything Catholic. In the Chamber of Deputies of that term there were four hundred Freemasons out of five hundred members; in the Cabinet out of eleven ministers, ten were Freemasons. This was the illustrious band which was to make laws for the guidance of thirty-seven million Catholics.

At the head of this ministry stood Waldeck-Rousseau, President of the Council. Waldeck-Rousseau personified the policy which obtained during the two first years of the century, that is, the policy of duplicity and deception. It was necessary, in the beginning of the campaign, to entice the Catholics into a trap, after which their annihilation must follow as a matter of course. In the art of deception Waldeck-Rousseau was an adept.

_ASSOCIATIONS LAW._

The instrument by which the deception was exercised was the infamous Associations Law of 1901. The Congregations had ever been the _bete-noir_ of the anti-clericals. They represented Religion in its perfection. In 1892, when the Fallieres-Constans bill against the religious congregations was broached, and M. Carnot, its spokesman, had presented it before the Chamber, the _Temps_ remarked: "Its purpose was to resolve the difficult problem of according the right of association to everyone, with such reserves, however, that the Catholics might not benefit by it, and that the Congregations might by it be destroyed." In the bill of Waldeck-Rousseau-Trouillot, prepared in June, 1900, such embarrassments were simply set aside. It was determined "to take the bull by the horns." The new project was, therefore, twofold; the first part assured a large liberty to associations _non-suspected_; the second part gave the Government a means of suppressing all religious orders. It read as follows: "No religious congregation can be formed without an authorization given by a law which shall determine the conditions of its workings. It cannot found any new establishment except in virtue of a decree emanating from the Council of State.--The dissolution of a congregation, or the closing of an establishment can be pronounced by a decree rendered by the Council of the ministers."

The project which bore the names of Trouillot and Waldeck-Rousseau began by declaring all religious congregations "illicit," under the pretext that the members of these associations live in community, that they make the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and that Article 1118 of the Civil Code declares that "only such things as enter into commerce can be made the object of a convention," and that poverty, chastity and obedience are things which do not enter into commerce.

M. Emile Faguet in his _L'Anticlericalism_ (Paris, 1905) scourges this method of persecution:

This argumentation was seething with sophisms. In the first
place it transposes into the Penal Code a disposition of the
Civil Code and it makes a crime of that which is only a
judiciary incapacity: the party who makes a contract upon
something which does not enter into commerce cannot
judicially exact the execution of that contract if his
co-contractor should refuse. That is all that is meant by
Article 1118, and there is no penalty against a man who makes
a contract not conformable to Article 1118 of the Civil Code.
Indeed, if such were the case, marriage would be illicit, for
it is a convention of obedience, fidelity and protection
between two persons, and obedience, fidelity and protection
are not matters of trade; hence marriage would be contrary to
Article 1118.

But, it will be said, we must count as illicit every
convention which is contrary to good morals. Without doubt;
but it is difficult to conceive how living in common, and
taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are
opposed to good morals.

Finally this position of the question betrays a voluntary
confusion of the terms "convention" and "vow." A vow is not a
contract, it is a resolution which one takes and in which one
persists. Thus in no way does Article 1118 affect the
question of associations and congregations.

It is strange indeed that these sapient legislators, after
declaring religious associations illicit or criminal,
contradict themselves by inviting these same "criminal"
associations to seek authorization; which amounts to saying
that the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry wished to sanction some
things which it considered as essentially wrong. Thus the new
law stultifies itself almost in its opening sentences, while
it makes it quite plain that the subversive intentions of its
author were to affect all religious congregations without
exception.

Waldeck-Rousseau belonged to the same school as Jules Ferry; he believed in maintaining _provisorily_ the Concordat, but he made it plain that he intended to laicise all the public service, and especially that of teaching, in which the congregations held so large a part. In a speech at Toulouse, October 28, 1900, after arguing that the development of the monastic possessions ought to be arrested, he declared:

Two classes of youth, less separated by their social
condition than by the education they receive, are growing up
without any mutual acquaintance, until the day comes when
they shall meet and find themselves so unlike that they will
not be able to understand one another. Little by little two
different societies are being prepared--one of them, becoming
more and more democratic as it is borne on by the great
current of the Revolution, and the other, more and more
imbued with doctrines which one would not have believed able
to survive the great movement of the eighteenth century.

In this sentence was contained his plea for compelling the teachers of the second class of youth, the congregations, to seek authorization, while at the same time he made it evident that none should be authorized whose methods should not be in accordance with the principles of the French Revolution.

Another element in the deceptive policy of Waldeck-Rousseau was the endeavor to bolster his proscriptive laws upon the assertion that they were intended to protect the secular clergy from the encroachments of the regulars. Hence the phrase: "The Church against the chapel." He ignored the fact that the secular clergy had no need of such protection inasmuch as the harmony between them and the religious orders was never called into question except by these anti-clericals who hated both religious and seculars.

Still further the same Waldeck-Rousseau took pains to falsify himself on more than one public occasion. Thus he assured M. Cochin and Mgr. Gayraud that the law of July, 1901, would permit members of religious congregations to teach in establishments belonging to persons not members of the congregation, although he knew at the time that decrees were being formulated to prevent such practice.

When the iniquitous law was yet before the Chamber the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII., in a letter to the superior generals of the orders and religious institutes, complained bitterly of its purpose:

We have endeavored by every means to ward off from you a
persecution so unworthy, and at the same time to save your
country from evils as great as they are unmerited. That is
why on many occasions we have pleaded your cause with all our
power in the name of religion, of justice, of civilization.
But we have hoped in vain that our remonstrances would be
heard. Behold, indeed, in these days, in a nation singularly
fecund in religious vocations, and which we have always
surrounded with our most particular care, the public powers
have approved and promulgated laws of exception, apropos of
which we have, a few months ago, raised our voice in the hope
of preventing them.

The Livre Jaune, published in 1903, and containing diplomatic documents, prints the words of Cardinal Rampolla in the name of the Holy Father:

The Holy Father, obedient to the duties imposed on him by his
sacred ministry, has ordered the subscribed Secretary of
State to protest, as he does protest in his august name,
against the above law, as being an unjust law of reprisals
and of exception, which excludes honest and worthy citizens
from the benefits of the common right, which equally wounds
the rights of the Church, which is in opposition to natural
right, and which is at the same time replete with deplorable
consequences. It would be superfluous to point out how such a
law, on the one side, restrains the liberty of the Church
guaranteed by a solemn contract, and prevents the Church from
fulfilling her divine mission by depriving her of precious
co-operators, while on the other hand, it increases
bitterness of spirit at a moment when the need of
pacification is most vital and pressing, and it takes away
from the State the most zealous apostles of civilization and
charity, the most efficacious propagators of the French name,
the French tongue and French prestige abroad.

The effects of this law which has been well characterized as anti-social, inhuman, anti-religious, and anti-French, began to be felt at once. Many religious orders, such as the Jesuits, the Assumptionists, the Benedictines, Carmelites, etc., foreseeing that legal authorization would be denied them, abandoned their country, their colleges and their convents; many others still hoped. The Government into whose hands they had fallen had invited them to seek authorization, and there was no reason, apparently, to suppose that this invitation was only a mockery. Still others, which had formerly been authorized, imagined that they might still continue in the enjoyment of such recognition. Both the latter classes were, however, deceived. According to the new law a congregation "might not found a new establishment except in virtue of a decree issued by the Council of State." It was thus difficult to see how the law could effect the establishments already founded. The promulgators of the bill, however, intended to confine themselves within no limits, and hence their purpose was very soon made plain. By a circular of December 15, 1901, the law was formally extended to include all establishments, both old and new, going back as far as those recognized in 1825. Later still, January 23, 1902, the Council of State decided that: "in the case of the opening of a school by one or more congregationists, that school should be considered as a new establishment opened by the congregation, whoever might be proprietor or tenant." A few days later, February 8, Waldeck-Rousseau sent notice of the same to the prefects. By these various circulars the law was thus aimed at all new schools founded by the congregations, at all new schools not founded by the congregations, but directed by religious, and at all old schools founded by the congregations.

It is a notable fact that these iniquitous extensions of an evil law were perpetrated in spite of the clearest assurances of the Government that the two latter classes of schools should not be touched. Even as late as February 4, 1902, the Government responded to a request of the Holy Father for an explanation of its intentions, by a note from M. Delcasse, which reads as follows:

Paris, February 4, 1902.

The Council of Ministers have decided that the law of July,
1901, should not have a retroactive effect, and did not apply
to educational establishments opened in virtue of the law of
1886. The conclusions of the Council of State enumerated in
your despatch of January 29, do not touch them. This was a
point with which the Nuncio was very much preoccupied. Mgr.
Lorenzelli appears to be fully satisfied with the decision of
the Council, of which I immediately made him
cognizant.--Delcasse.

The actions of the Government were thus in direct contradiction with its assurances. Its protestations of fairness and leniency were falsified by its circulars and decrees. Its intentions were aimed at extermination complete and irrevocable.

The ending of Waldeck-Rousseau's career was pathetic and tragical. In 1904 he arose one day "from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized congregations. The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he arose for the second time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread of his discourse, and before he had ended many benches were vacated; the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, was almost empty." (Brodhead.--_Religious Persecution in France._)

His death came two years later. It was rumored that he attempted to commit suicide. Whether he received the last sacraments or not is not known. He had left instructions, however, that he was to be buried from his parish church of St. Clothilde.

_THE COMBES MINISTRY._

The seventh legislature was dissolved at the beginning of April, 1902, and preparations were at once begun for the election of its successor. The point at issue in the approaching elections was the vindication or the condemnation of the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry, which had now been in office for three years. The result was entirely satisfactory to the parties whose life had been lived in open hostility to the Church. The Ministerialists, that is to say, the supporters of the administration of Waldeck-Rousseau, won 69 seats in the Chamber, as against 131 by the several elements of the opposition. The new legislature counted among its members ninety-six Radicals, eighty-three Republicans of the Left, 135 Radical-Socialists, forty-one Unified Socialists, fourteen Independent Socialists. Here were 369 men out of 500, every one of whom was pledged to exert every effort, by fair means or foul, to overthrow the life and power of the Church in France. As soon as the result of the election had become known Waldeck-Rousseau, as if satisfied with his work of destruction, resigned the ministry and retired to private life.

Before abandoning the active field of political life, Waldeck-Rousseau was careful to point out the man he desired to take his place and carry into execution the laws he had devised. This man was Emile Combes, the most violent of politicians. To this man, M. Loubet, who could not bear him--but who passed his life in doing what he disapproved of, and in condemning in his speeches the very political acts which he signed with his name,--to this man M. Loubet hastened to confide the Presidency of the Council, and the direction of the Government. M. Combes! It is a name of ill omen, which echoes like the sound of a funeral bell among the cloisters in the empty convents, and by the firesides of Christian homes. The aged mutter the name and grow pale as if they had said an unholy thing. The little ones shrink to their mothers' side as the horror of that name strikes upon their innocent ears, for it brings back the memory of dear sisters who have vanished, engulfed as it were in the cavernous jaws of the anti-Christ. It is a name at which many lips hesitate when they utter the prayer! "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us." Yet, they will hesitate only for the moment, for in those very communities which he has robbed and persecuted a prayer will ever go up to God for his conversion. It is the way in which the true Christian takes revenge upon those who wrong him.

Emile Combes is a native of Roquecourbe, in the south of France, where he was born on September 6, 1835. His parents were good, honest people, filled with that simple piety which characterizes the true French peasant. He had an uncle, the Abbe Gaubert, cure of Bion to whose generous interest the future politician owed his first advances in life. Through the influence of this good man the young Combes entered, in 1846, the _petit seminaire_ of Castres, the scholars of which were supposed to have the first promptings of ecclesiastical vocation. During his college days the young man certainly gave every evidence of profound faith and devotion. The lessons of his pious mother made him, as he says himself, believe to the very depths of his soul. In his twentieth year he entered the Grand Seminary at Albi. While in this institution he received minor orders, thereby proclaiming to the world his intention of preparing for the priesthood. For two years his purpose remained unchanged. He even fortified himself therein by deep and special studies in scholastic theology, and has left as memorials of his better life two treatises in that matter: _A Study of the Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas_, and _The Controversy between St. Bernard and Abelard_, copies of which are still extant in the library of the Sorbonne at Paris.

Whether the vocation of Emile Combes was real or not, he certainly abandoned it in the midst of his ecclesiastical studies. He quitted the Seminary and became a professor in the College of the Assumption at Nimes, an institution established by the Abbe d'Alzon, founder of the religious order of the Assumptionists. Here he remained for three years, until 1860. He taught then in another Catholic college at Pons.

Hitherto there had been no certain indications of a weakening in his faith. But in 1864, as he was attending the medical school at Paris, he met with Renan. The acquaintanceship developed the seeds of that atheism which has since become his ruling quality.

To one who reads French history it ought not to be surprising that a Catholic seminary should have sheltered the youth of a man like Combes. Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits, whom he betrayed; Renan was once a student in St. Sulpice; Gambetta, the leader of anti-clericalism in the stormy 80's, studied in his boyhood in a _petit seminaire_. That they proved false to their early teaching is not remarkable when one considers the disaffection of an apostle who was privileged to enjoy an intimacy with the Savior of the world.

It was during his vacations in 1865 that Combes was initiated into the Freemasons. It marked the first step in that path which he was soon to follow with persistent energy. In 1868 he received his degree as doctor of medicine, a profession which he practised at Pons. In 1874 he was elected Mayor of that town. His real political life began in 1885 when he was elected senator. Re-elected in 1894, he accepted the ministry of Public Instruction, Fine Arts and Worship in the Bourgeois Cabinet, wherein he showed himself one of the most obstinate promoters of lay education as opposed to that of the clergy. It was at this time that he inaugurated, in his relations with the Vatican relative to the Concordat, the policy which, ten years later, led to the separation of Church and State.

As President of the Democratic Left in the Senate he lent his efforts to the policy of Waldeck-Rousseau from 1899 to 1902. He was elected President of the Senatorial Commission on the Law of Associations; he contributed largely to its adoption, and notably to the vote on Article 14, when he declared in the tribune his conviction of the moral incompatibility of the profession of teaching with the doctrine and life of the monastic orders. On June 7, 1902, upon the recommendation of Rousseau, he succeeded to the Presidency of the Council thereby becoming Premier in the Government.

His first words upon taking up this office signalized his determination of carrying on to its ultimate issue the war just inaugurated against the Catholic Church. "What can the new Cabinet do," he asked, "what can any cabinet do but continue the policy of that which precedes us, a policy which is resumed by saying that it has been nothing more than an incessant war of the Republican party against two dangers which republican unity alone can overcome; Caesarian reaction, and theocratic pretensions. That is the policy which we are determined to pursue and which we invite you to pursue with us until we have completely disarmed the enemy."

An _order of the day_ was passed voting confidence in the Government, and thus adopting as the policy of the Chambers, the war plan enunciated by the President of the Council. This was the work of the four groups of the Left, all radical and anti-religious to the depths of their hearts. The _bloc_, as they called this cohesion of the different parties of the ministerial majority, was thus constituted, and adopted as its plan of action the war against Catholicity.

The new Premier set to work at once to put into execution the law of July 1, 1901. Beginning with schools recently opened, that is, posterity to the late law, he closed at one stroke on July 15, 1902, as many as 2500. The congregationist teachers were allowed only eight days before abandoning their establishments and retiring to their mother houses. It was an illegal act in itself; it not only aggravated unduly the rigor of the law, but it was also irregular in form, since Article 13 of the law declared that a measure of this nature could not be taken except "by a decree emanating from the Council of the ministers," and not by a simple circular as in the present case.

Cardinal Richard, upon learning of this execution, wrote immediately to M. Loubet a letter to which many other bishops hastened to give their adhesion; M. Jules Roche published a letter to the President of the Council (Combes) in which he proved that the law had been violated; a petition was presented to M. Loubet by a delegation of the Christian mothers from the district of Saint-Roch. To these protests the Government answered by a presidential decree of Aug. 2, 1902--this time in legal form--whereby it declared the closing of 324 other establishments.

The war went on. In Brittany many scenes of open conflict took place as the troubled peasantry strove to prevent the sudden spoliation of those institutions which they held dearest on earth. They had reason indeed to rebel, as the persecutors aimed not only at the extinction of their beloved teaching orders, but also at the destruction of that cherished Breton tongue which they had inherited from their fathers. The show of violence here and there manifested brought its inevitable consequences from a power only too anxious to find pretexts for persecution. The powers of many mayors were revoked, many ecclesiastics were deprived of their livings and correctional measures were pronounced against all who dared to take part in the various manifestations. Then came other decrees in August, laicising _en masse_ the greater part of the public schools as yet directed by the congregations.

When the matter was brought into the Chamber (Oct. 13, 1902,) protests went up eloquently from a number of indignant deputies. Conspicuous among these were such bright names as Messrs. Aynard, Baudry d'Asson, Denys Cochin, George Berry, de Ramel, Charles Benoist and the Count de Mun. The answer of the latter to the policy of Combes is worth recording:

Majorities may cover your actions and sanction your
decisions, but nothing can efface the evil you have done. The
country--for I speak not of Brittany alone--can never forget
those scenes of odious violence executed by your orders,
wherein we have witnessed commissaries of police, followed by
armed marauders, storming the doors of private houses, not
merely the doors of a religious dwelling, but the doors of my
own house, to drive out into the streets humble ladies who
consecrate their lives, their labors and their devotion to
the instruction of the children of the people. Nothing--and
understand it well--nothing can make us forget that; nothing
above all can make us forget that you have condemned the
soldiers of France to assist at such scenes, and to march
with tears in their eyes, in the midst of a distracted and
desperate crowd, the pathway of your persecutors. That shall
never be forgotten! That shall never be pardoned.

While these things were going on the bishops of France framed a collective letter petitioning the Chambers to accede to the application for authorization made by the congregations. This letter when published contained the signatures of seventy-four bishops; only seven, for different reasons had deferred signing, though fully in sympathy with the movement. This letter, moderate and respectful, as it was, and merely asking in the way of petition for favors that might easily be granted, was treated by the Council of State as a hostile manifesto and was declared "abusive" and as such it rendered its authors culpable before the law. The Archbishop of Besancon, together with the Bishops of Orleans and of Seez, were considered as the promoters of the document, and as such were deprived of their salaries.

When the war against all new establishments was well under way, the "Bloc" then took up the question of congregations unauthorized but applying in due legal form for the favor of authorization. This the orders had been instructed and encouraged to do. Their treatment displayed at once the insincerity and hatred of the Government. A "Commission on Congregations" was formed, composed of thirty-three members, of whom twenty-one were Freemasons. The Commission instructed the anti-clerical Rabier to draw up a bill. The discussions of the Chamber upon this bill, resulted in the dissolution of fifty-three orders of men. On March 18, 1903, twenty-five teaching congregations were suppressed, comprising 11,763 religious divided into 1690 communities. A few days later twenty-eight preaching orders received the same sentence. Among these were the Capuchins, the Redemptorists, the Dominicans, the Passionists, the Salesians, the Franciscans, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Benedictines, the Fathers of the Oratory, the Barnabites, the Carmelites and many others. On March 26, the Carthusians, considered as a commercial order, were condemned by a vote of 322 against 222. It was at this time that the anti-clerical Rouanet uttered that saying so significant of the whole Governmental policy: "We need not concern ourselves with either legality or right." The proscriptions were hardly pronounced than measures were at once taken for the liquidation of the property belonging to the dissolved congregations. We need not linger to relate the pathetic scenes accompanying the consequent expulsion of these fifty-three orders of men, nor the wave of indignation it produced throughout France and the civilized world.

After the congregations of men the war was carried on against similar orders of women. It was to no purpose that Messrs. Plichon and Grousseau demonstrated in the Chamber the confusion manifested in the articles of the bill which designated as teaching orders the congregations devoted to the hospitals, and those whose lives were purely contemplative; it was in vain that they showed forth the success of the incriminated orders that they brought forth the declarations of the majority of the municipal councils pronouncing for the maintenance of these orders. Even M. Leygues who had voted for the law of July 1, 1901, as Minister of Public Instruction at the time, declared that the new bill by rejecting the demands of the Sisters _en bloc_ was contrary to that law. In spite of all protests the project was voted and carried by a majority of 285 to 269. Thus eighty-one congregations of women were at a single blow dissolved.

On August 9, 1903, M. Combes speaking at Marseilles before a congress of teachers declared:

I have refused 12,600 petitions for authorization. This
figure suppressed 9,934 teaching establishments, 1,856
hospital corps, and 822 establishments of a mixed nature, i.
e. hospitaller and teaching. Out of the 9,934 teaching
establishments there are 1,770 situated in communes still
wanting, I am sorry to say, in public schools.

The _Temps_ of December 4, 1903, declared that 10,049 schools had been closed within a period of eighteen months, and that there remained only 1,300 yet to be suppressed.

To these 10,049 schools must be added 165 colleges and 1,347 schools conducted by the twenty-five orders of men suppressed on the 18th of March preceding, as also the 517 establishments directed by the eighty-one congregations of women proscribed on June 24, thus representing a total of 12,000 congregationists schools stricken in the space of eighteen months, with about 50,000 religious thrown out upon the streets, and more than 1,000,000 children deprived of their beloved instructors.

Charles Bota in his _Grand Faute des Catholiques de France_ thus reflects upon these sinister events:

One can well imagine what went on in the mother-houses, the
communities and the schools which the decrees of suppression
invaded, bringing ravage and desolation! What sad and
heart-rending scenes! The odious perquisitions of procureurs
and police commissaries goaded on by superior orders, or
even perhaps--it looked that way sometimes--by the quality of
the victims; the painful, insidious interrogatories wherein
the simplicity and timidity of souls habituated to peace was
violated; the alarm of the aged religious, of the sick and
the infirm as they begged to know what it all meant; the
returning religious hunted from their houses coming back to
the mother-house to cast themselves weeping into the arms of
their superiors, while the latter pointed out how the house
was too small to receive them and too poor to afford them
food; the uncertainty as to the morrow, the privations, the
anguish, the moral tortures, the desperation of all; one
should have seen such scenes near at hand to comprehend all
that they meant. 'Ah!' cried M. Emile Olivier, 'all the
cruelty, the tears, the consternation contained in those few
words written by an official scribe upon the desk of a
minister--On such a day, such a congregation of women will be
dispersed.' They merited no regard, no commiseration those
poor women so good to others, so delicate, so pure, that
Taine could call them the pride of France.

The efforts of the enemy had thus far touched only unauthorized congregations. There were still many orders which lived in the possession of full authorization and which according to the existing laws had nothing to fear from the hatred of the anti-clericals. In this, however, they were very much deceived. A new bill directed at all religious teaching orders, of whatever kind or description, was introduced in the Chamber on February 29, 1904. Its first article, declaring the suppression, asserted "teaching of every order and of every nature is interdicted in France to the congregations." It was adopted by a majority of eighty-seven votes on March 14. The second article stated that from the date of the promulgation of the law the teaching congregations could not receive new members, and that their novitiates must be dissolved. This article also--with the exception in favor of congregations destined for foreign schools--was adopted. It was decided, moreover, in article fourth, that novitiates for foreign missions could not maintain any of the dissolved congregations. The law was carried before the Senate, towards the end of June. It became a law of the land, with the official signature of M. Loubet, on July 8, 1904.

The triumph of anti-Christianism was thus complete, and the death sentence had been pronounced against the very existence of the monastic life in France.

It might be of interest to introduce here some appreciations of the Premier who had done so much harm to France and who was soon to begin the first scenes in the last act of our sorrowful drama. M. Emile Faguet, though not a Catholic, nor inspired by any definite admiration for Catholic principles, thus characterizes M. Combes in his _l'Anticlericalism_:

M. Combes, considered unanimously as the protege and
choice--no one knows with what secret designs of M.
Waldeck-Rousseau; ... M. Combes taken up--no one knows by
what weakness--by M. Loubet, who felt for him the very
contrary of sympathy; M. Combes, a minister who was incapable
according to the opinion and avowal of everyone, nevertheless
maintained himself in office as long, and even longer than
Waldeck-Rousseau, in spite of mistake after mistake, in spite
of co-laborers as incapable as himself, despite the
procrastination systematically employed as an instrument of
his rule, only because he was a determined anti-clerical,
headstrong and brutal, whom nothing could arrest in the
pursuit of his design and precisely because, as he had said
himself, 'he had accepted his office for that alone' and
because he was absolutely incapable of seeing anything else
in the government of France and in all modern history.

_L'Echo_, (Lyons), with admirable brevity thus summarizes the salient points in the character of the Premier and his policy:

M. Combes is a sectary, a renegade seminarist given over to
Freemasonry. His policy is the vigorous application of the
anti-liberal law, the refusal of all authorizations asked by
the Congregations, and the abrogation of the Falloux law.

M. F. Veuillot, writing in the _Univers_, pays his respects to the minister in no measured terms. He says M. Combes is "devoid of talent, virtue, honor--a brute unable to conceive a generous thought, to realize a great work, to produce anything useful, to show any effort of a patient and beneficial kind. The brute, however, has formidable fists, and he strikes out blindly before him. The man is without a breath of intelligence, a single sentiment of delicacy. He is but a commonplace mediocrity personified, rancid with hatred and puffed up with pride. As he cannot leave anything to make him famous, he will be notorious to posterity for his brutality alone."

Finally, the Abbe Felix Klein, in the North American Review for February, 1904, remarks:

M. Combes and his friends, who imagine that they are the
leaders of all progress, are committing again the errors of
the Middle Ages. That which Philip II. did in Spain, in his
making use of the Inquisition; that which Louis XIV. did in
France, in revoking the Edict of Nantes and in driving out
the Protestants; that which England did, in her treatment of
the Pilgrim Fathers, the anti-clericals in France are doing
today in their hatred of the religions orders. They are
placing these orders beyond the law; they are preventing
members of these orders from living as they see fit to live,
and from earning their daily bread; they are practically
forcing these members to leave France, all solely because of
their ideas and innermost convictions. It is the old crime of
heresy reversed. Since 1789, the French state has professed
no longer to recognize religious vows, either to protect or
to attack them; and in this it does well. But how illogical
it is, then, to deprive certain individuals of their civil
rights, merely because they take vows which it does not
recognize! How does it concern the state if young men and
women take the vow of chastity before God, and lead a life in
common, devoting themselves to doing good in the manner they
deem best? Is it not monstrous that, in the beginning of the
twentieth century, the government of a great country should
arrogate to itself the right of interfering in a matter of
this kind, even that it should bring such subjects into the
scope of its deliberations? Whether this vow be good or bad
it is a question for one's own conscience. Let those who
think it bad endeavor to turn others from it by means of
persuasion; but to try to prevent it by brute force is the
most retrograde course in the world.

The measure of true civilization is indicated by the degree
of respect in which one person holds the rights of another;
every man and woman, so long as not encroaching on the rights
of others, is inviolably entitled to act, and, a fortiori, to
think, to believe, to pray, as he or she wishes. The French
Government, by preventing certain categories of citizens from
acting together, solely because their ideas are not its
ideas, has gone backward several centuries on a capital
point, and has resurrected one of the most shameful practices
of the past, the misdemeanor of opinion.

_THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE._

The congregations dissolved and dispersed, nothing now remained but the final act in that great tragedy which had been progressing for more than one hundred years. The proposal was in order to lay the axe at the roots of religious life, and by one fell stroke to extinguish the very existence of the Catholic Church in France. Years have passed since this last work was begun; the Church has not been extinguished; she is even rising to a greater, a more glorious life; the promise of Christ is showing its realization in the midst of a people who, but yesterday, were ready to sing the requiem over her ruins.

The project of separating Church and State was no new notion in France; it was a very old article in the republican programme. Away back in the days of the Convention, in 1795, it had already been proclaimed and put into force. Again in 1830 and in 1848 it was put forward by a faction of the republican party. Under the Empire, especially during the discussions as to the French occupation of the City of Rome, it was made a part of the democratic platform. In a session of the Corps Legislatif on December 3, 1867, Jules Simon made a very bitter speech in favor of such separation. The following year Henri Brisson advocated much the same object when denouncing the payment of salary to the clergy.

It was, however, during the period of the Third Republic that the project began to receive attention in a practical sense, and formed the ideal towards which policies of Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Paul Bert and their like aspired. All efforts in this direction had proved abortive, not that the project was at all displeasing to the anti-clerical governments, but rather because the people were not "prepared;" and most of all it was necessary first so to weaken the Church in her functional life, that when the separation should come, it must mean her annihilation.

It is pitiful to note the pretexts alleged by Reveillard in his work on the "Separation," as the causes which called for the final rupture. Speaking of Gambetta's acts of hostility in 1869 and later, he says: "It was the time of the great clerical demonstrations, of pilgrimages less religious than political, to Paray-le-Monial, to Lourdes, to Sainte-Anne d'Aunay, to the chant of canticles with the refrain: 'Oh, save Rome and France in the name of the Sacred Heart!'" He calls up also "the triumph of Marie Alacoque and of Pere Lamerliere" and the "law approving as a national public benefit the erection of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the heights of Montmartre." These demonstrations of national Catholic spirit were as so many thorns in the sides of rabid anti-clericalism, and would suffice in themselves to evoke the sentence of extermination against the Church that could call them forth. These same complaints are uttered with no less bitterness by Paul Sabbatier in his work on the "Disestablishment of the Church in France." In fact the unanimity with which all anti-clerical writers harp upon these manifestations of popular fervor make it plain that it was not a desire for political betterment which inspired the foes of the Church in these oppressive measures, but a desire carefully nurtured to strike at her very vitality and life.

It would be useless here to rehearse all the various attempts which were made in the Legislative Chambers up to 1902 to introduce the final question in regard to the Separation. On each occasion the discussion was voted down, always with the understanding that the time was not yet ripe for the act. Affairs had at length, after the Law of 1901, arrived at such a pass that the anti-clerical government could afford to set in motion the wheels of its final policy. Various happenings at the time served as pretexts for hurrying on its action. Some of these were of special importance, and deserve to be recorded for the part they played therein. In 1902 the Government assumed a hostile attitude on the subject of the nomination of bishops, when it demanded the exclusion from the Bull of canonical investiture of the term until then in use: "Nobis nominavit." The Government demanded the suppression of the word _Nobis_, thus changing the meaning of the phrase. It thus made it appear that the nomination of a bishop depended upon the Government alone, and that Rome had no other part in it than merely to register such nomination as made by the civil power. This question of words thus became a question of principle. The affair of the _Nobis nominavit_ was finally arranged at the beginning of 1904. The _Osservatore Romano_, of January 23, announced the solution officially, adding: "After a lengthy exchange of ideas, the French government has accepted a solution which the Holy See had proposed of its own initiative, and which, without in any way wounding the privilege of nomination conceded to the Government in virtue of the Concordat, conserves intact and assures for the future the expression of the canonical and dogmatic doctrine."

This attempt of the Government to stir up a conflict with the Holy See was further accentuated by the suppression of the salaries of eleven bishops; and by the reduction, without any reasonable motive, of the budget of worship in 1904.

Two other cases which, provoked by the Government, served as a pretext for urgent separation were the affairs of the Bishops of Laval and Dijon. I prefer to use in its relation the words of M. Faguet as found in his work "_l'Anticlericalism_." "Two bishops, M. Gay, bishop of Laval, and M. Le Nordez, bishop of Dijon, were agreeable to the French Government and suspected, either for their private conduct, or for their administration, by the Curia. M. Le Nordez was advised by Rome to resign his functions. The Roman letter was turned over by the bishop to the French Government, which protested to the Vatican, claiming that, according to the Concordat, the nominations of French bishops ought to be made by the French Government, and only the canonical institution of them was reserved to the Holy See, that their revocations ought to follow the same law as their nominations, and hence, that the Holy See had not the right to depose a French bishop. Exactly the same procedure was followed with regard to M. Gay, and exactly the same protests were made by the French Government in his case. At the same time the French Government commanded M. Gay and M. Le Nordez not to quit their posts. The Roman Under-Secretary of State answered that the deposition of a bishop was one thing, and the notice given to a bishop that he must resign temporally his functions in order to go before the Roman Curia to justify himself, was another; that such notifications belonged of right to the Holy See to which the bishops by it canonically instituted were responsible."

"The French Government was headstrong, rushed blindly into the affair, recalled its ambassador, and gave his passports to the Nuncio. War was declared."

"The two bishops, who were obliged to choose between their obedience to the French Government and their loyalty to the Holy See, decided for the latter. They set out furtively for Rome, submitted to the Curia, and resigned their French Sees."

"M. Combes saw in all this motives sufficient, not only to break all relations with the Holy See, but still more to denounce the Concordat and to pronounce for the separation of Church and State, at the same time formally casting--as he had done a score of times--all responsibility for these grave measures upon the Pontifical Government."

The anti-clericals were determined to abuse the patience of the Holy See until it should finally be driven into an action upon which the French Government might seize as a final pretext for a rupture. Already Pope Leo XIII. had pointed out such intentions during his lifetime. In a Letter to the Clergy and Catholics of France, February 16, 1902, he thus wrote: "For them, separation signifies the negation of the very existence of the Church. They make, however, a reservation which might be formulated thus: 'As soon as the Church, utilizing the resources which the common law allows to even the least of Frenchmen, will be able, by redoubling her native activities, to make her labors fruitful, the State will and must intervene to put the French Catholics outside the common law itself.' In a word, the ideal of these men is nothing less than a return to paganism; the State will recognize the Church only when it wishes to persecute her."

This great Pope had, by the end of his life, exhausted every means of condescension and delicacy towards the French Government; but his efforts were doomed to failure before the hatred and bad faith of his enemies, and he began at length to feel that the time had come when he should enter a firm and dignified protest.

Pope Pius X. upon his accession was called upon to behold the accelerated progress of official persecution; he began to recognize the utter uselessness of even the most legitimate claims, and he hastened to express his sorrow and indignation for the continuous violation of human rights. On March 19, 1904, on the occasion of his name-day, he addressed the Sacred College upon the subject: "We are profoundly saddened," he said, "by the measures already adopted, and by others on the way to adoption in the legislative houses against the religious congregations which form in this country, by their admirable works of Christian charity and education, a glory not less for the Church than for the fatherland. They intend to go farther still, when they prevent and defend a project having for its end the interdiction of all teaching to the members of religious institutes even authorized, the suppression of approved institutes and the liquidation of their property. We deplore and strongly censure such harshness so essentially contrary to liberty as it is understood, so essentially opposed to the fundamental laws of the land, to the inherent rights of the Catholic Church, and to the rules of civilization itself, which forbid the persecution of peaceful citizens. To this end we cannot dispense Ourselves from expressing Our sorrow over the measures adopted of deferring to the Council of State, as abusive, the respectful letters addressed to the first magistrate of the Republic by many well deserving pastors, among whom are three members of the Sacred College, the August Senate of the Apostolic See, as if it could be a crime to address the chief of the State to call his attention to subjects intimately connected with the most imperious duties of conscience, and with the common weal."

The solicitude of the Holy Father, however, only served to increase the venom of his foes. Toward the end of April, 1904, M. Loubet, President of the French Republic, visited Rome, and contrary to the spirit of the Concordat and the rules regulating the relations of the Holy See and the French Government, went immediately to the Quirinal to pay his respects to the Italian king. The Holy See considered this visit of M. Loubet "as a very grave offense against its dignity and rights. At the same time, while uttering in the face of the French Government an energetic and formal protest against the offense thus suffered, it sent in analogous terms by means of its foreign representatives, an account of its action to the governments of all the other States with which the Holy See held direct relations." The Pontifical note declared that "a head of a Catholic nation inflicts a grave offense against the Sovereign Pontiff in coming to give homage at Rome, not to the Pontifical See but to him who contrary to all right usurps his civil sovereignty." The "note" goes on to remark that the offense is all the greater coming from the "first magistrate of the French Republic, presiding over a nation which is bound by the most intimate traditional relations with the Roman pontificate, enjoys in virtue of a bilateral contract with the Holy See certain signal privileges and a large representation in the Sacred College, and possesses by a singular favor the protectorate of Catholic interests in the Orient." It goes on, moreover, to state that this visit of M. Loubet was "sought intentionally by the Italian Government for the purpose of enfeebling the rights of the Holy See," and it concludes by declaring that "the Sovereign Pontiff makes these most formal and explicit protests to the end that so afflicting an action, (as that of M. Loubet) might not constitute a precedent."

On the receipt of this protest the French Government gave the Holy See to understand that it rejected the note in its form and in its substance. The anti-clerical journals went even farther than this, publishing not only the Pope's answer to French Government, but also the note which had been sent to the other Catholic Powers. The intention of such publication being to stir up the rancor of all who were moved by hostility to the Holy See.

In answer, moreover, to the Pontifical note, the French ministry demanded that the Holy See give an explanation of its words, and that within the space of twenty-four hours; then, rushing headlong upon a solution, as if impatient to hurry on the imminent rupture, it recalled the French ambassador to the Holy See (May 21, 1904). This action was approved by the Chamber six days after; it refused, however, by a vote of 366 to 144 to pronounce for the immediate denunciation of the Concordat; but that event was now well on the way, and nothing was needed but to devise the ways and means.

The year 1905 opened with many muttered evidences of the coming storm. The prime minister, M. Combes, though not defeated in the January elections, beheld his majority so far reduced because of his rabid inconsistencies, that although re-elected to his former post he felt it incumbent to resign immediately. He was succeeded by a creature pledged to continue his oppressive policy, M. Maurice Rouvier. It may be said, however, that the spirit of Combes has dominated the French Chambers ever since. The new cabinet was destined to put the final touches to the anti-clerical campaign of dissolution.

Various motions having from time to time been introduced before the Chamber of Deputies tending towards the separation of Church and State, the Government finally, decided to place all of them for examination into the hands of a Commission of thirty-three, which was nominated on June 11, 1903. Out of the deliberations of this body resulted the first scheme, or project, of the proposed legislation in regard to Separation of Church and State. The question was formally introduced to the Chamber of Deputies in the session of March 21, 1905, and was discussed during forty-eight sessions until July 3 of that year. Its reporter, or sponsor, was M. Briand.