The Association Law.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 49, 5 December 1901, Page 27

The Association Law.

All over France (writes a Paris correspondent) the monkjs and nuns who have decided not to comply with the requirements of the Law of Association have left their convents and chapels without resistance, almost without protest. In t>pitts of the advice kindly tendered them by a number of journalists anxious Io« scenes, they have wisely refrained from repeating the experiments of 1880, and from compelling recourse to armed force. In Rue de Sevres not a Jesuit was left, Rue Francois ler not an Assumptionist, Rue de la Pompe not a Carmelite friar, to answer the numerous callers who vainly rang the entrance door bell. The Government of their country imposed upon them conditions which they considered they should not submit themselves to ; their fellowcountrymen, as a rule, did not seem to care whether they stayed or went. Legal steps have already been taken by the Government for the disposal of the property of the Orders that are not demanding- author isatiorij The Civil Tribunal of the Seine, at the request of the Minister of Justice, has appointed an official liquidator of the estates of the Jesuits and of the Assumptionists situate in France. This gentleman, who is well known in legal and commercial circles in Paris, is M. Adolphe Lasmer, the official liquidator of the Tribunal of the Seine. In accordance with the interpretation of the law contained in the Reglement d' Administration Publique, the dissolved congregations are, for the purpose of the liquidation, considered as bankrupts, and any sale or disposal of property which they might have effected within the six months immediately preceding the 3rd of October is null and void. A number of congregations, however, who foresaw that the days of persecution could not be very distant, had taken care to dispose of their property to laymen. The famous Jesuit Convent of the Rue de Sevres is the property of a land-ownmg company, of which tho Jesuits were only the lessees, the lease becoming void in case of disolution or bankruptcy of the lessees. It is said that, since the Ferry decrees of 1880, the .Jesuits have owned no real property in France, either as a, corporation or in the name of individual Jesuits.