accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in
a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An
Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and
is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious,
interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most
unseemly, “scandalous haste.” “You are treating it,” said a senator, “as
if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad.” There was only one
deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we
may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently.
Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well
have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few
exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and
the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse
the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of
Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies,
made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the
Senate, to declare that “the question was essentially a political one,”
and that there was “a primordial and dominant interest for the
Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went
before the electoral body.” He further declared “that the Senate had
given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government
would resign.” Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative
assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has
been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793.
If the law were not what Cicero calls “a convention among thieves,” how
did M. Rouvier know “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance”?
Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any
discussion, a senator exclaimed: “You are a deliberative assembly; try
at least to keep up appearances.” MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the
Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history,
to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant.
M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in
order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted
by M. de Lamarzalle.
Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged
edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be
renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are
to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches,
adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the
Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been
consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the
general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. “_Motions préjudicielles_”
and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate.
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_.