The French Premier's Defence

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 37, 11 September 1902, Page 2

The French Premier's Defence

In connection with the cable just referred to we notice that the Dunedin Evening Star publishes what it calls ' the text ot the defence made by M. Combes of his measures against Catholic schools. The statement published by our contemporary is as follows : — ' We want respect for the law, and nothing but the law, and a certain course of education must have obliterated the moral sense of some people to make them maintain that associations can be above the law. For what is the summons addressed by us to the religious Orders? It is nothing more nor less than that effect should be given to an article of the law of July 1, 1901, which provides that there can be no religious communities or establishments without a previous application for authorisation addressed to the Chamber for communities or to the Council of State for establishments. Subsequently to the law of 190 1 about 130 establishments were formed which had refused to apply for authorisation. We have closed them because such was our duty. Before the passing of that law other establishments were opened which have not asked for authorisation, yet since 1825 there had been a law requiring authorisation. In order to leave no doubt in men's minds M. Waldeck-Rousseau warned the religious Orders that the establishments thus opened ought to regularise their situation. The law, indeed, is positive on this point, and the measures taken respecting them are strictly legal. You will see, moreover, that the majority of the establishments have understood this, and I do not think it rash to say that very few of them will resist the notification just made to them.'

Those who read carefully our leading article of a fortnigh ago on this subject will see at once how absolutely inaccurate and misleading this statement is. The Catholic position may be briefly summed as follows.— (i) During the debates on Article 13 of the Law on Association M. Waldeck-Rousseau the then Premier distinctly intimated that religious establishments and institutions which, though staffed with religious were founded, owned, and maintained by lay proprietors, would not come within the terms of the At tide. Nearly the whole of the 130 establishments referred to by M. Combes were of this sort, and had been opened on the strength of this intimation and of a further intimation from the Inspectors of the Academy that they were dispensed from asking for authorisation. (2J With regard to the establishments founded before the passing of the Law, they were opened by congregations duly authorised under the Law then regulating primary education. When Article 13, to which M. Combes now appeals in justification of his action, was under discussion, M. Waldeck-Rousseau declared that it had ' absolutely nothing to do ' with the Law of 1886 on primary schools, which would remain untouched by the new Law, and with which the establishments in question had fully complied. (3) As a matter of fact, to 'make assurance double sure,' many of the houses referred to, as, e.g., those of the Sisters of Charity and others, did ask for authorisation, and yet, on one pretext or another, they are being closed. All this goes to show that M. Combes's real motive is not, as he would have us believe, solicitude for the enforcement of the Law, but a fixed desire to root out religious education. As the Journal des Debats tersely put it : ' One recognises in all this not a desire to affirm the supremacy of the Law, but a persistent and perverted ingenuity against religious work.'