More Spying

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10, 9 March 1905, Page 18

More Spying

But the system of 'organised espionage is not confined to the army and navy of France. 'It is not in the French, army alone,' says Uie ' Aye Maria,' ' that the destable spying; system has been carried to am excess that has disgusted every class of Frenchmen save those immediately concerned in the unsavory work. Moinlsignor Lacroiv, Bishop of Tarentaise, has published a scathing denunciation of similar malodorous methods that obtain in other ministerial departments, and notably in that of Public Worship. In every pariah of the country, it appears, there are Government spies, the refuse of social life, -whose business it is to pry ianto the affairs of their pastor, the curate, the Sisters or Brothers, the trustees— all, in fact, who have anything to do uilh tine Church. If the pastor entertains a brother priest or two at dinner, if the trustees buy new vestments, if the Sunday serm,on denounces the perennial race of Pharisees, immediately the Mayor, the F|ub-prefect, the prefect himself, the deputy, the senator, the Minister— everybody must be informed about it. The trifling matter is heralded as a crying abuse : the Government must intervene at once, and the Republic will be endangered if the guilty parties are not forthwith sevqrely piini&hed. Such petty persecution as this is, of course, intolerable. It is no wonder that many French priests await with comparative complacency the dissolution of the Condord'at, in virtue of whose tortured provisions the like methods are possible.'