Germany,August, 1905.
WHILEFreemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa.
In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See.
I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre,conferred upon him by the papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, and the highest military dignitaries of the empire.
At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press organs of their own.
What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is that they represent all classes of society—princes, peasants, artisans, nobles, and bourgeois—whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly the latter.
At the Congress, Prince d’Arenberg renewed the usual protestations against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg rejoiced that, “in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped itmight soon extend its salutary influence.”
These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation inflicted on France when M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany.
Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M.Jaurès the French would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rôle of a paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics.
Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall.
The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear.
19th August, 1905.
INthe past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers.
The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations called “liquidation.”
They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has kindly put up more than four millions and ahalf of public money, thus far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of millions from theCaisses d’Epargneand the exodus of capital, will lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795.
To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats for agedcongréganistsruthlessly thrown into the streets.
This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the order, and should have received compensation from theliquidateur. But the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10]
What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc.
The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimitedpoil à gratter, fur to scratch, for years to come—nay, as long as the Republic lasts.
A few days after it was voted, 200 “venerables” of the Grand Orient offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared “that the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission.”
Commenting thereon, theTempssarcastically wrote: “If the clerical spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like squirrels in a cage for the past five years?”
The gist of the law is in the articles that regard “Associations cultuelles,” which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy and unity. M. Ribotsought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the bishop in each diocese. The wordsbishopanddioceseare most carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to be made to “associations formed in conformity with the rules of general organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure” (Art. 4). The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered the law supportable.
What are “the rules of general organization”? The seventy-six Organic Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to be “rules of general organization of Catholic worship.” Some of these are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d’Etat, composed exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a criterion, being thestatu quo ante?
By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, Carrère, etc.
A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may arise in associations, regularly formed and invested.
Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d’Etat are suspended everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of theguillotine sèche, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of “the grand ancestors of 1793,” whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d’Etat means Conseil du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizingAssociations cultuelles, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up another Abbé Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary.
Moreover, theseAssociations cultuellescan be dissolved for so many reasons (five), at a moment’s notice, by a decree of Conseil d’Etat, that it does not seem worth while to form them.
The paltry reserve fund theAssociations cultuellesare allowed to have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the Government’s strong-box, and can only be used “for building, repairing, embellishing church edifices.”
Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated,ipso facto, as they cannot exist on thin air.
I do not enter into the details regarding pensionsof aged priests, as it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice.
1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attachedfondationsnot directly regarding public worship, which are, in other words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising generation and the poor.
2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated.
3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches.
The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century.
4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any subventions for religious worship—though the State inscribes on its own budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of the rich, notwithstanding Art. II.
5. A whole class of citizens are placedhors la loi, in that they are deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted anarchists.
6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to violence.
7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (objets mobiliers classés). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is “Separation.”
Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have never been consulted.
M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five years, the country had sighed after “Separation,” though he well knows that no onethought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, in the same session, that the question did not exist (n’était pas posée) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised by the Pope’s violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X’s action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges used as acasus belli. Moreover, we must remember that the current Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, addedex parteby Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in Messidor l’an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately “placed at the disposal of the Bishops,” and the stipulated indemnities were forthcoming.
It was not till Germinal l’an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles were promulgated, together with the Convention.
Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by the Jacobins.
A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of theConcordat, Art. 1134 of the Code Civil: “Conventions legally formed are a law to those who make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who make them, and for causes which the law recognizes.”
Thereupon the reporter replied: “There was a Convention between Pius VII and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (un ensemble) with the Seventy-six Organic Articles.” And as no Government has ever been able to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the Government’sex-partedenunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 declares that “a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does not keep his engagements.”
In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing,ex parte, the Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and Napoleon.
It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the “Grand Livre” of France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801.
Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, theMajoratsof theancien régime, M. Rouvier, Président de Conseil, indignantly rejected the motion, saying, “Il ne faut jamais que la signature de la France soit protestée.” But when it is a question of mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They arehors la loi. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to highwaymen from time immemorial—for them, the unarmed are alwayshors la loi.
M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. “No law,” he said, “can be just and stable which does not express the wishes of the people.” All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked automatically at every turn towards the end.
It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of national history.[11]
TheGazette de Francecalculates the number of electors represented by these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in July:—
“On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called majority.“We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel in a public speech, July, 1905.“A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 inhabitants, has five deputies.”
“On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called majority.
“We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel in a public speech, July, 1905.
“A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 inhabitants, has five deputies.”
It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Eacharrondissementhaving a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given district, notably anti-clerical, into a great manyarrondissements, in order to secure an increased number of deputies,blocards; and vice versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of “clericalism.” We must also remember that at least one-third of the electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority.
This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only “transitory.” It is, I repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as far as public worship is concerned.
On June 3rd I wrote, “What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, ‘You see the law is voted, and nothing is changed.’” At the final session after the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, said, “Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed.” Yet all this, alas! arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795.
“No one,” echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like M. Rousseau, “can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest Government.”
“Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau’s Associations Bill,” rejoined a deputy of the Right.
This Law of Separation bears the same imprint asthat of 1901; both emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language in which the most important articles are couched, and their interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. Thejus et normain all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d’Etat. In other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme court of first and last appeal.
The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and ways will be swept away.
The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be considered already voted in the Senate.
Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and though nations may, supinely, say “Am I my brother’s keeper?” they pay the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe in flames, as in 1792.
12th October, 1905.
THEstories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her Foreign Minister, M. Delcassé, kept in office by the King of England while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12]
This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about theingérenceof even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops!
It is also interesting to recall that the Bill ofalleged Separation was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the University of Jena, Prussia, that: “We congratulate M. Combes in his struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the radical separation of Church and State.” Allemane, a French Socialist deputy, exclaimed: “This is not enough. We want the abolition of the Church.” Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: “We are equally opposed to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State.”
I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will be done shortly by the Senate.[13]
Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the “Federation of International Free-Thought” actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be afree deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or rejecting what is done in the lower House.
The LondonSaturday Reviewis almost the only organ in the English language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the religious persecution in France.
“The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in the English Press,” writes theSaturday Review, London (July 8th, 1905), “is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a feeling ofunrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than those which agitate France at the present time.”
Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, theSaturday Reviewcontinues: “La Lanterne(the organ of the ‘bloc’) intimates that ‘it only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion into the minds of the people.’ ... To a thinking foreigner, the spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself ‘eldest daughter of the Church,’ renouncing her great position as protector of the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly with the Church.”
This is an allusion to the Emperor William’s having himself invested by the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcassé and the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, the Minister ofPublic Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known as the Mount St. Michel, a mediæval monastery and church. It is not stated whether—like Balthazar—he sent for the vessels of the temple.
The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly 27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out of their homes and cast into the street,vi et armis, the regular army being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for 2200 francs.
Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government’s trap and asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called “liquidation,” but the Government has been obliged to put up over 4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the “liquidators.” So ends the myth of the “billions of the Congregations,” held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his Socialist henchmen.
The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years’ military service now. A brochure, calledCrosse en l’air(meaning military revolt), has reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the Government.
The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I wrote inSlav and Moslemten years ago, page 170: “Henceforth commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, ‘where only the ledger lives,’ in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the market.”
Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt’s good offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences and Jew bankers, guns will continue to “go off by themselves.” TheseDelcassé revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of France’s inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to say steadily decreasing.
Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule since twenty years.
No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold and legion.
In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: “I can assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at any given moment.”
The passage is quoted in an article in theNineteenth Century(1876), “A History of the ‘Internationale.’” The “Internationale,” by the way, is fast superseding the “Marseillaise.” The verse of blasphemy against Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: “Our balls are for our generals.” A short time ago there were prolonged riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent out against the strikers!
To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the strikers marched past singing the “Internationale,” and the Minister of War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaireagent de changeat the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair.
Shakespeare wrote: “Motley is the only wear.” In France, everything seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two “free-thought” funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red “is the only wear,” thoughit is not easy to understand why “free-thought” should necessarily blush—for itself. At the “Free-Thought” convention held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote.
February 3rd, 1906.
ONAugust 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at “midnight, the hour of crime.” It may truly be ranked in that category to which Cicero referred when he said, “There are laws which are merely conventions among thieves.” “The vote of the Senate is a foregone conclusion,” I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. “The French Government,” I wrote (June 30th, 1900), “is on the verse of apostasy. Is this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their rulers! ‘I gave them a king in my wrath,’ was once written of the Jews. Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?” To-day thisapostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that “with a Parliament and Ministry like this any legislation is possible.”
The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation 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 ForeignAffairs, 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 soimportant 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 theaccomplishedfact, 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 thisReview, 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 ministersand 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 forthe 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 indemnityConcordataireis, 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.
12th February, 1906.
YEARby 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 wouldrather 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.
IfAssociations cultuellesare formed, a consummation most devoutly to be deprecated by everyfriend of Catholic France, evidently they will be composed by bishops, curés, and their presentconseils de fabrique, and there will not be any transmission of property.
If there were noanimus 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 theBudget 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 theBudget 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 authorizationswere 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 churchesbuilt 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, ifAssociations cultuellesare 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 claimfondationsmade 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 bygens d’armesand 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 officialcrocheteurs, 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 theJournal 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, seeingthat 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.
20th August, 1906.
“ANDthe 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 thatpotentiorem principalitatemor 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 regardAssociations 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” toadminister 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 havefabriquesandconseils de fabriques, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted theseAssociations 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 theJournal Officielhas officially registered four or five schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are in insignificant hamlets, itis 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 wordsnobis nominavitin 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 ofAssociations 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 ofAssociations cultuellesevery 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 theAssociations cultuelleswhen 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 likeLa 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 consummatedby 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 ofnobis nominavitand 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 unlimitedliberum veto.
Even legally speaking, theseAssociations cultuellescould not function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were neither owners,usufruitiers, nor simple tenants of the Church property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil d’Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the Government’s reply.
The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater portion of the present patrimony ofthe Church, some two million pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be confiscated ifAssociations cultuellesare 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 theJournal 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 ofneutralité, 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 wasLe clericalism c’est l’ennemi; and “clericalism,” it seems now, means simplyGod. 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 theAssociations cultuelles, we find it in the unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their moremoderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot furnish theLanternewith 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 ofLa 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 themenses episcopales, etc., which the law had assigned to theAssociations cultuelles, cannot console these sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforcedintegrally, forgetting that the numerous articles regardingAssociations cultuellesare 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 thepolice des cultesalso fall to the ground,as they were aimed atAssociations cultuelles, who were to be held responsible if a preacher used seditious language in the pulpit.
NoAssociations cultuelleswill 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 thevanishing 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.