CHURCH AND STATE.

Waikato Times, Volume LVII, Issue 8080, 17 December 1906, Page 3

CHURCH AND STATE.

THE POPE'S INSTRUCTIONS. > PARIS, December 1 I. There is son e prospect of the Government willingly accepting the notification of two laymen in each parish instead of that of the clergy, thus legalising services and avoiding repression, which is viewed with repugnance. Cardinal Merry del Yal's letter, conveying the Pope's instruction to the clergy regarding the Law of 1881, contained the following para- * graph:—"Abstain from all formalities for the present." The Vatican declares the French clergy are ordered to refrain from the declaration prescribed by the law of 1881, not owing to the declaration but to other regulations em-'-iiodied in M. Briand's circular. POORLY ATTENDED SERVICES. -*• PARIS, December 11. Masses in the Paris Churches and elsewhere were scantily attended. The police collected evidence of infringements of the law. THE LAYMEN'S NOTIFICATION PARIS, December 15. The Archbishop of Paris authorises the statement that parishioners making the notification if they are honestly intending to prevent trouble and without encroaching on pastoral authority, they are not guilty of disobedience to the Pope, whose prohibition was addressed to the clergy alone. EPISCOPAL PALACES - VACATED. 4 PARIS, December 10. M. Briand has introduced a Bill into the Chamber of Deputies, giving communes departments, and the State immediate ownership of churches, vicarages and seminaries, and arranging for the organisation of services, and suppressing the stipends of'priests officiating without conforming to the law. Fifteen archopiscopal and episcubal palaces and eighteen large seminaries were vacated on Friday.