CHURCH AND STATE IN FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 3, 17 January 1907, Page 10

CHURCH AND STATE IN FRANCE

SOME PERTINENT HISTORICAL POINTS

In his -' Democracy and Liberty. ' (vol. 1., pT^E3X" Lecky says of the Republican regime^hat has pre—vailed in France since the Second Empire met its death on the field of Sedan : ' Few' French Governments have produced or attracted so .little eminent talent, or have been, for the most part, carried ;-on by men "who, apart from their official positions, are so little ■ known, have so-little -weight in their country, and have hitherto appealed so feebly 'to 'the imagination of the world.' , Weakness or immaturity- -entrusted with high power is apt to play fantastic tricks beiore high -heaven, arid on occasion -to hack at the -personal and national .rights which it is supposed " to guard— just as the youthful George Washington hewed with' unaccustomed hatchet at his father's cherry-tree. Lecky points out' that as early as .1875 the French President ■' assumed a position very little different from that of a cofts-tiitutdoJual monarch.' Successive Governments, headed by stunted politicians of the Little Pendleton order, have steadily pursued- -a - fat-uous policy of ' warnipon the Church and upon some of- natural Rights of Man which were respected even amidst the whirl and storm of the' great Revolution —which- the poet Samuel Rogers likened to the irruption of the Goths. Jules Simon denounced - the Second Em- - pire for its Caesarism. And Caesarfem he defined as 1 democracy without liberty.' The definition' applies aptly "to the present condition of ' things in lodge-ridden France. r . . From the fifteenth century till the outbreak of the .great Revolution in 1789 the Catholic Church was a JState institution in France. The King /was the. defender of its truths, the upholder of its rights and privileges—its eveque dv dehors-, or bishop, so tb M speak, in external or temporal matters. Monastic associations were, of subject to ,the Church. But certain of their temporal rights, functions, and " were made the subject of State legislation; and the vows of professed members not alone bound them in con-soien-e, but also gave rise to an external contract in canon law as between them and their ecclesiastical superiors, of which the civil Jaw ' took strict and active cognisance. - All this was- brought to an end' when" the Revolution swept in all its fierce and headlong, fashionover France. On August 20, 1789, the Revolutionary 4 Assembly voted the declaration which severed the bond between Church and State. On February 15 of the^ following year (1790) an Act was passed -which, ' so far as religious associations were concerned, marked the turning-point between the-, old order of tilings and the new. It. decreed the non-recognition of monastic vows, deprivedv them of any binding force in, law, left' them purely a personal - matter, between the individual' and his private conscience, and abolished the old. legal provisions regarding cloister. The property of ■ " the Church was plundered. , But the First Napoleon, recognising the necessity of religion in the country as apre--ventitive of anarchy, entered into a Concordat by which a portion of the plundered revepues of the Church were : devoted to the upkeep of the clergy and the due main-

tenance of religious worship- This solemn bilateral treaty has now been set aside by the one party, 'to it, .without so" much as consultation. with— or even, notification .of— the other party .. It is an act- of national repudiation of a national debt. After the 'Revolution this or that religious Order as such (Dominicans, t Fraiiciscans, Capuchins, etc.) was no longer regarded as having a separate* corporate exist- ■ ence in Jb'rench law. They were looked upon by the State merely as ordinary French * citizens, • having no legal incapacity ,by reason, of vow, habit, or, rule ; free to live where and>.how they pleased ; to practise such arts, trades, professions, or callings ■as to them- seemed goad ; to receive inheritances, donations, and legacies ; -to be voters, deputies, or senators ; and. subject, in their various relations, to the civil,, commercial, and criminal codes lii'.te every Jacques Bonhomme from the Straits of Dover 1 to the Pyrenees. The, Revolution shuffled off religion:" It even raised its fiery face and its blood-stained hand against ,the Almighty. But amidst all its follies and excesses it left the Catholic religious— the friends of the orphan' and the sick and Hie poor— a degree of personal and collective freedom that is large and generous by comparison with- the grinding disabilities which the Radicals and Socialists have' inflicted upon them. Freedom of association and of teaching was' further secured by the charters of 1815 ami 1830, by the Republican' Constitution -of 1848, by the Act of 1850 oh primary education, by that- of 1875 on superior instruction, and by the vote of the Senate on the conferring of degrees. . " ■ It is a mighty fall' from what wasr- considering all its circumstances— the relatively liberal law of 17 90 to (Jrevys decree of *Mafch 30, 1880, ordering the dissolution of the various Jesuit communities throughout Fiance. Another- decree was published at the same time requiring all ' unauthorised ' religious associations to secure a legal sanction to exist which — it was nevertheless ..rather plainly intimated — they were not likely to" receive. Sixteen, hundred lawyers entered a protest against these decrees,. They declared them a violation .of French law, and maintained that, by virtue of the ''droit public,' -religious congregations had the same right to exist as associations of any other kind, without special authorisation, and that the only duty they owed to the State - was that of due obedience ' to its laws. But the Government, urged on by the " secret societies, had unsheathed the knife and was bent upon reaching the throat of the religious Orders. It was an open and undisguised war upon the Church in France. Orders were therefore given to push the campaign vigorously in every department. ' Four hundred magistrates,' says M. Edmond Rousse, of the,. French Academy, "refused to carry out the unworthy, office forced upon them and handed in their' resignation. Their places were filled by four hundred other functionaries, and before the close of the year— after disgraceful scenes which have not yet been., forgotten— the decrees were carried out.. All the communities of men were 'dissolved and their monasteries left empty. Only a few servants remained to keep watch over the deserted buildings and to open the doors for the requisitions of the police or the gendarmes on their beat.'.. The besieging of convents, the banishment of the Sisters from the hospitals, etc", and - the forcible — oftentimes violent— expulsion " of aged men and women whose lives were devoted to the cause of charity, proved to be ,a highly unpopular measure. But the. surface of French politics moves quickly nowadays. - One of the most' conspicuous features of- the present French Republic is, according to Lecky, ' its astonishing ministerial instability.' Between 1870 and the closing days of 1893 France had no fewer . than thirty-two Ministries. . Since Grevy's anti-monastic ' coup ' of 1880 as many as nearly ' thirty - have had brief and inglorious innings. ' Most of them- have kept up the tradition of war against religion.' But till the advent of M. WaldeckRousseau none of "•' them hazarded a. repetition of Grevy's rough-and-tumble crowbar campaign. againstraen and' women the head and front of whose offending was the faith 'which they possessed and the noble lesson of Christian charity of which/ their lives.were a daily sermon. A more ingenious mode of compassing' the • destruction of ' the religious Orders was devised—by.imposing upon them, and upon them alone, _a crushing burden of taxation. This was the now famous l loi d'accroissemeht.' It failed to effect its purpose. And, as the result, the Associations Law was passed „ by the s Senate. It is merely ' Grevy's old weapon, fur-^ Dished up and covered with -a ; decent show of legality. It is essentially a measure of persecution. And the 'Radical ' declared that the anti-clerical party would ' demand the denunciation of the Concordat, the complete suppression *of the congregations, the

monopoly of education by the' State, and the uncontested domination ol lay ' (by which it means atheistic) ' ideas.' ' ... AH this Jias come to_ pass.. The so-called Separation Law crowned the work. ' Briefly, French atheists and anti-clericals are girdling themselves for a long and final , struggle /with religion. ■> ■ Leroy-Beaulieu, -Barry, Lefebvre, Hurlbert, the Duke jde Broglie; Lecky, and others have, in' sundry volumes, shown the f amazjing extent/ to which: the long State campaign against ''the religious Orders has been accompanied by a fanatical and •aggressive official propaganda of atheism in the public schools ; by a serious and far-reaching persecu- , tion of civil functionaries who dare to exercise or allow their families to exercise the duties .of their religion ; by prevention 1 of "minis tratio~hs to the sick and dying in hospitals, -etc. ; ' and "by the systematic harrying of the bishops and parochial clergy and the cutting down of their meagre incomes— ' the meanest of- all the forms of controversy,' as' Lecky calls it in his 'Democracy ami Liberty' (vol. ii., p. 84). What the end will" be, rid man can with confidence predict. The spirited action of the German priesthood and< episcopate . during , the continuance of ,. the ' Falk legislation furnishes , a, lesson, which, we trust, may not- be lost upon their confreres at the other side of the Rhine. French— as well as German ecclesiastics, have suffered 'suppression' and even imprisonment- to good purpose .before now. In 1812 — according to a recent; , -work by M. Georgehs Picotr-three State prisons in^Franee held four cardinals, four -. bishops, two superiors-general of religious Orders, one' vicar-general, nine' canons, and thirty-eight' "parish" priests and curates. The Radical and anti-clerical programme in France will, in all probability," call for an even wider range of personal sacrifice than this from French bishops, priests, and 1 religious. We , venture the hope, arid ~l)©Uei£?';tha!fcy- there -shall not be wanting to those at honw&thgj^ spirit which makes ' * their countrymen and -. countrywomen such splendid martyrs on the foreign mission-field. The great iheart of France is soundly Catholic. But it is, perhaps, over-timid "or ovei^sluggish, as the result of a long tradition pf political repression. ■ Humanly speaking, it seems to v us that only such ,an example of courage ajnd sacrifice on the ,par<t of hierarchy, cj^rgy; "and religious^ as Germany in similar' circum- " stances presented, will arouse a healthy- public opinion in France -'against religious persecution and turn • at last to good account a movement whielK-is. , directly.; and openly meant for the ruin of .^Catholicism*? and' ultimately for the destruction of all religious faith, in the country. In two succeeding issues we "will deal . with later aspects of the campaign for the suppression of Christianity in France.