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.