War of Extermination

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5, 1 February 1906, Page 2

War of Extermination

There is no mistaking the spirit that animates the French Freemasons in their war upon religion in France. Time and again they have declared, with frank brutality, that it is a war of extermination, and that the abrogation of the Concordat is merely a means towards an end. Here is a further and recent statement of the Masonic programme from the columns of 'La Lanterne r : ' The war betwen the Republic and the Roman theocracy can only end by annihilation. One or the other of the combatants must disappear. Yes, we intend to destroy utterly by law the last vestiges of the priuloges accorded to the Church, just as we also intend by propaganda and by political and social influence to fight against the Church so long as she survives. It is absurd to hope, we shall not say for a reconciliation, but even for a truce. Whether the clericals accept the present law, or defy it, we shall go on hghting them mercilessly. There can be no doubt that if the Church refuses to submit to the decrees of the legislature, she will facilitate what we have undertaken to do in the decisive struggle that will enable us to get rid of her altogether. 1 There is no mistaking the substance and temper of this frank avowal of policy. But, for their comfort, b rench Catholics can remember that the Church, even as\ stripped to the bone in lodge-ridden France, possesses a power of internal resistance for which her enemies will be probably quite unprepared when the real test of strength has to come. Nations have fallen away, and may fall again. 1 Hut it seems to us that the star of hope of the Church in France is rising over the troubled waters of persecution. As to the Church herself, however she may be harassed in this land or that, she can never know decay. Some years ago (it was early in 1899) the Rev. H. K. Carroll, a prominent American Methodist clergyman, writing in the ' Christian Advocate,' said of Ihe Church of Rome that she 'is evidently not to be crushed by any forces yet discovered. Kings,' said he, ' who have measured arms with it have in the end gone to Canossa, and but recently a man whose name was a synonym of strength in Europe went to his grave after a memorable conflict with the powers of Rome, in which he was not successful. . . The Church emerged from what was pronounced to be a duel to the death, without the scars of wounds.' And so may she emerge from the ' duel to the death ' that is at present being fought in France. * The man l whose name was a synonym of strength in Europe ' was, of course, the Man of Blood and Iron, the late Prince Bismarck. During his great struggle with the Church, the situation in Germany was neatly hit off by a cartoon in a Dublin newspaper — we think it was ' Zozimus.' On one side of the picture was represented a tall building. A stout cable was twisted around it, and the burly figure of Bismarck was pulling away at it with might and main. Satan steps up and queries :—: — ' What are you doing, Bizzy ? ' ' Oh, just pulling down this old Papist Church.' ' And when do you expect to have it down ? ' ' In about a year,' said the Iron Chancellor. 'In about a year ? Very good. If you ,do, I'll exchange places with you. For I've been pulling away at it for over eighteen hundred years, and blest if I've loosened a stone in it yet. Worst of it is, the older the plaguy thing grows, the stronger it gets. 1 The story bears repetition at the present juncture.