CHURCH AND STATE IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12524, 17 March 1904, Page 5

CHURCH AND STATE IN FRANCE.

By Telegraph AssociationC.Y;iyright. ' . Paris, March 15. The Chamber of Deputies, by 318 votes to 31, adopted the clause in the Eeligious Associations Bill, forbidding religious congregations to practise teaching of any kind.

, Early in February a Bill for suppressing congregational teaching was adopted by the committee to which it had been referred. It provides that "no congregation of men Oi women shad henceforth ba authorised to give any sort of teaching. Within five years of the passing of the Act all congregations authorised solely lor instruction shall bo suppressed, as well as those which, although authorised for other objects, did no other work in January, 1903. Teaching congregations must receive no new members after the passing of the Act, and are required under penalties to publish correct lists of present members, who must all bo of full age. All schools depending on congregations thus prohibited must bo closed within five years. Persons continuing to form part of an establishment closed by tho present law, and their abettors, shall bo liable to a fine of 14s to £200, and six days' to a year's imprisonment. The Arohbishops of Paris and Reims addressed to the President a letter of protest against the Bill, in which they see. the intention to make.Catholic education impossible. An irreligious education, they say, cannot but be a danger to the State. , Again, it is proposed to turn adrift the members of those orders whoso authorisation was contemplated in the Waldeck'Rousseau law of 1901. "We leai (they say) that, drawn out of he* path by those who have undertaken to guide her, France may betray he, providential vocation, and, no longer having any purpose to serve, may end like so many other nations whose decline and fall are related by history." The Archbishop of Lyons addressed a similar letter to M. Loubet, and many other prelates associated themselves with the protest. ■