THE FRENCH PERSECUTION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 12, 21 March 1907, Page 21

THE FRENCH PERSECUTION

till. THE CONCORDAT T seems to be a .well-'establisbed practice among the worse class of dark-lantern associations to throw a Mokanna veil of fair professions around their nefarious" schemes. In ■his ' Psydhologie de rAnarchis'te-Socialiste ', for instance (published in Paris in 1896), M. Hamon surrounds with an apologetic aureole of high patriotism the oath-bound assassins who in Berlin or Barcelona tear innocent people to pieces with dynamite and picrine bombs.' -The motto that inspires them (says M. Hamon) is ' Love of liberty, love of justice, love of others '. This is sinuply — beaten out thin I—thei1 — thei triple mot d'ordre. •' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', under jvhich the Terrorists of . the - Gireat Revolution carried out a campaign of wholesale plunder and proscription, set up 44,000 guillotines,' slaughtered some two million persons, signed the deathwarrant of religion (which was fated not to die), and , on the great altar of Notre Dame set up a frail Asp<asia for public worship instead of the Most High God. Apart from) the guilt of blood (a resort of persecution whiohi the temper of our time happily forbids) scarcely lesser crimes are being perpetrated in the name cf * Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ' by the •' bloc ', or 1 machine ' which controls to-day the destinies of France. Their anti-Christian legislation (says the ' Pall Mall Gazette ') ' has only one precedent in the history of France— the forcible suppression of religion at the French, Revolution. Some of us ', adds that British secular journal, ' who are very .far from being Catholics will ask ourselves whether the old revolutionaries were not spiritually better off than their political descend-

ants.' Politically, at least, -they counted for vastly more.. They, were strong, if sanguinary and rapacious, at home; they were feared, if not respected, by the nations round, about. The puny successors who strut in* their political buskins Accept meekly diplomatic horsewhippings at Fashoda and - undiplomatic kicks upon the Rhine. In the face of the Radical-Socialist menace from below, they have, since- 1879, "been steadily alienating the sympathies! of- the one party that of all others mafces for law and order. In their keenness to 'make an end of • Christianity ' and 'hunt Ohr|st' out of France, they have neglected the normal business of the country ; they have suppressed free speech and' free meeting ; they have brought the country to low water (it holds, by the way, -the world's record for the magnitude of its - national debt) ; and- they have rent- the heart cf the nation by internal disorders, which over large areas' (as in Brittany) amount" almost to a state of civil war. ■

At home (as we have seen) there is- no serious attempt to disguise their object — to make -France, 'not a non-Christian, but- , an anti-Christian, nation \ This purpose (says the ' Saturday Review ') they have proclaimed in the market-place. For foreign countries — where such- avowals are not popular — the,.' bloc ' has the fair profession' and the c smile and smile „of the stage villain. They merely want to suppress a certain clerical exuberance ; to keep the priest to his breviary ; " to disestablish the" Church, and give her her freedom — only that and nothing more. The Church was wrong and unreasonable to object, and such mischief as was caused was the work of injudicious leaders ■ (the Pope and his advisers, to wit) and -of ; unpatriotic and easily-gulled agitators who were at their' -beck stnd call. So said (in effect) the ' Woe. 1 press ; so -repeated . their foreign echoes. And the ' bloc ' looked on (to use Kipling's phrase) ' with a smile round both its ears '. It was a repetition- of the newspaper, side of the history of the Kulturkampf in Germany and of the- ' annexations- ' in Italy. It is the old, old story : •N o grievance, Sir ; ncme whatever ''—the immemorial plea that will 'be raised till the crack o' doom whenever a political disability is to .be inflicted upon unwilling subjects, or .when a political Wrong calls inconveniently for redress.- It has taken a, deal of preliminary clear-* ing)— of journalistic pick-and-shovel work — to get down .to -this rock, to the story of Establishment .and Dis-

establishment in France. We have dealt with the "aims of the French Radical-Socialists. We shall , now see the- position which they are assailing, and later , on the manner of their assault upon ' rid.cc chretienne ' (Chris-

tianity) in the country that, perhaps for its sins, is punished with, their sway.

Says a writer before ,us :— •'■In the' coursje of its fourteen humdred • years of ministry", the Catholic Church in France had duly become the possessor and the titular of much property, consisting not only of its edifices for public worship, but of residences of bishops and priests, of monasteries and" other religious houses, of hospitals,- schools, and asylums, with lands and revenues for their support arid maintenance. These were not, for the most . part, the gift of the State originally, nor created from the public treasury, but came from the donations and bequests and offerings of the faithful '. From the fifteenth century till the outbreak of the Great Revolution in 1789, Catholicism was the ■established Church*— and -in a sense a sort of State, insti^ tution— in Prance. The King was the lay defender of its truths, the .upholder of its rights and privilegesits ' eveque dv dehors \ or bishop (so to speak) in external or temporal matters. On August 26, 1789, the Revolutionary Assembly voted the Declaration which. . severed the olden bond between Church and State. All edifices devoted to religion and religious charity, and all church property whatsoever, were" seized a*nd confiscated—or (to use the euphemism of the period) 'placed at the, disposal of the nation.; later, heads fell fast

all' over France ; many of the bishops and clergy were banished or slain ; religion was proscribed ; and, under the title of 'Goddess of Reason', a depraved female" was. (as already stated) set up and worshipped on the high ' altar of the great Cathedral of Notre Dame. ' We have their property ', said Mirabeau/ ' but they, have preserved their honor ' — a saying by which the roueorator of the Revolution admitted the iniquity and il-~ - legality, of the plunder of the patrimony of the Church of the poor. The bulk -of the nation felt more strongly on the subject than did the easy-going- and by no means scrupulous Mirabeau. While enchained by- the moving spectacle before them, they viewed with a feeling of wholesome horror the irreligious excesses of the volcanic forces that had been brought into play by the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Napoleon was named First Consul on December 15, 17©9. A statesman's head of the first order * topped off ' his somewhat podgy form. 'He realised ', says a historian, ' that it is impossible to rule over a people destitute of religion, and that to restore"~order and peace to the State it was absolutely necessary tci re-establish the Catholic Church '. At his request, negotiations were opened up between him and Pope Pius VII. These resulted in the historic bilateral treaty known as the Concordat, which was solemnly signed and sealed by both— by Napoleon on behalf of France, and by Pius • VII. on behalf of the Church— on July 15, 1801.

The Concordat consists of seventeen articles. Th Pope, on his part, allowed the rulers of France certain privileges in connection with the nomination of bishops and pastors, the determining of the boundaries of new parishes, etc. He, moreover, guaranteed that neither he nor his successors would in any way disturb persons in possession of ecclesiastical property which had been sold and transferred by the State during the red frenzy of" the Revolution. The Church surrendered her legal and moral right to such property. The State, on; its part, 'guaranteed ' the free exercise •• of the Catholic religion, and recognised "the Pope as its Supreme Pontiff and Head. It, moreover, agreed to restore to the Church the ecclesiastical property that had not been irrevocably alienated to other parties during the ' Sturm and Drang- of the revolutionary period. In English money, the Church property confiscated by the Constituent Assembly .amounted to £80,000,000, yielding an annual revenue of some £3,000,000. By way of compensation or indemnity for the plunder of ecclesiastical property, the State guaranteed an annual payment for the support of public worship, amounting to about one per cent, of the values that had been confiscated. Here are some further particulars regarding the allocation of the indemnity which was guaranteed by the Concordat :— 1 Under the .Consulate .of Napcieon the total amount of restitution made (although he desired to gfive more) was the paltry sum of £480,000 a year. By his Concordat of 1801 ten archbishops and fifty bishops were established ; the former were paid £600 a year, the latter £400. The priests, according to dignity of parish, received from £60 tci £48 annually.' •' * This solemn treaty or Concordat,' says a wellinformed speaker reported in the Boston ' S.H. Review,' 'terminated an immense property lawsuit, as M. Etienne Lamy has said. It regulated t^e relations .of Church and State in France, and helped in no small measure to bring about the desired fleace and security. Its terms have been observed with scrupulous loyalty by the Holy See at all times.' * Says a well-informed' writer in the Dublin ' Freeman's Journal ' :—: — 'Up to a few weeks ago, under the present Government of the Republic, with a much augmented population, there were proportionately fewer State-aided priests, each of whom (irrespective of lodging)- was paid on an average £36 annually. Few of the bishops received more than £300 to £400 a year, and the Car-dinal-Archbishop of Paris himself— the highest Church dignitary in France— had the ridiculous income of £640

per annum— less than the income of a successful solicitor or the salary of some 7 of our Dublin municipal officials.' Up to the passing .of the so-called ' Separation ' Law, Catholics," Protestants, and Jews enjoyed State allowances. The- total amount accorded for the support of -Catholic worship (including the stipends of 17 archbishops, 67 bishops, and- over 42,000 ' ecclesiastical officials,' was about £1,600,000. By way of comparison with this meagre indemi&ty-budget, we -may state that the revenue of the Anglican Church in Ireland in 1868 (the year before Disestablishment) was £616,840, for a denomination with only 1573 clergy and 600,703 ad-he-rents : that (according to' ' Hazell's Annual ' x for 1907) the Presbyterian Church in' Ireland, with only 569 ministers and 106,342 communicants, has an income of £292,265 ; that the' United Free Church of Scotland, 'with 1.733 ministers and 504,853 communicants, has an income of £1,108,413 ; and that the prelates of the Established Church in England draw State salaries ranging from £2000 to £15,000. per annum. We must reserve to another issue the sorcM story of_ the arbitrary manner in which the French Government repudiated a national debt, and arbitrarily broke a bilateral treaty without consulting, or -even notifying, -the other party tci the contract.