The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1907. THE FRENCH PERSECUTION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 28 March 1907, Page 21

The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1907. THE FRENCH PERSECUTION

fIV. FROM BUONAPARTE TO COMBES N our last issue we treated of the FrancoPapal Concordat of 1801 and of the cirv cumstances out of which it arose. We told j.- -the story of tine ' atheism by establishment ' ; _ that was ushered in by the French Revaluation ;- of the red Reign of Terror ; of the ' ' confiscation of the property which was held ■by the- Church by as sound and sacred a title as that which' is held by any religious denomination in New ZeaLand-- to-day ; of Napoleon's despair ,of ever ruling -a people- -bereft' of- religion ; and of his conse-quent-Concordat or solemn agreement with the Church, in the of its visible Head on earth. This was a bilateral 1 -treaty- or- contract in which, in return for- cer-. tain considerations which have ever been faithfully observed vby- the- Church, ' France pledged its national honor tci accord ■ Catholics ■ 'full liberty of worship ', and to contribute to the support of the clergy and tbe'maintenance oi • public i worship an annual budget amounting to only •v little- more- than one per cent, of the values appropriated by. the State during the storm and strife of the -Great, Revolution. These payments and stipends were not, ./however, dependent on the Concordat. Twelve years- [before* that-treatyx was signed, this partial act of justice and 'restitution had been solemnly, pledged _by the Constituent -Assembly. The Concordat merely embodied the pledgeTtOf 'the, revolutionary Parliament in a formal treaty-i-between'two sovereign Powers. Freedom of association and of teaching was secured by the Act of 1790, by the Charters of 1815 and 1830, by the republican Constitution of 1848, by the Primary Education^', Act of 1850, by that of 1875 ■on superior instruction, and by the vote of the Senate on the conferring of 'degrees.. For^ a time after the fall of the Empire at Sedan in 1870 and the suppression of the

Communards, in 1871, the. Church in France enjoyed comparative jpeaoe. During Marshal MacMah,on_'s l term as President of the Republic (1873-1879) the passing " tranquttity was not broken. Then the revolutionaries rose to power. ~ Their watchword was given by Gambetta : ' Clericalism— that's, the enemy ! '-i-a cr-y which another Minister of the Third. Republic (Briand) now voices in —the- -new and, more outspoken catch-word :'We must make an end. of Christianity !-' It was- a mighty fall from what was-r^considering all its circumstances—the relatively liberal Association Law of 1790 to G-revy's decree of March 30, 1880, ordering the dissolution of the various Jesuit communities throughout France.' Another decree was published at the same time requiring all ' unauthorised ' .religious Associations to secure . a legal sanction to exist, which stanction— it was nevertheless rather plainly intimated— they were not likely to receive. Sixteen 'hundred' •" lawyers entered a solemn protest against these decrees. They declared them a ' violation of • French law z - and . pointed out that, toy virtue of the ( *droit public ', religious congregations had the same right to exist as associations of any other Kind, without special authorisation, and that} tine only dutyi " which they owe)d) rt>o the" State was due obedience to its laws. But the Government, .urged on by the Freemasons, the Radicals, and the Socialists,' had unsheathed the knife and was . bent upon reaching the throat of ' the religious Orders. It was an open and undisguised war upon the Churoh in France. Orders were given to push the campaign, of expulsion in every Department throughout France. Monasteries were' closed— after four hundred magistrates ha-d refused' ;o perform the function ,of evictors ; con- ■ vents were besieged and taken by storm ; nuns were " driven at the pcAint, of the bayonet from the hospitals —many of them old and tottering and infirm— amid dis^ graceful scenes of official ruffianism, which were generally received with striking exhibitions of popular indigna--tion. ' The Grevy campaign proved to 'be a highly unpopular measure. A swiftly moving procession of flajbibiyMinistries followed — twenty-three in twenty years. Most of them displayed a disposition to use_fang and 1 , claw against religion. But until the advent of M. WaldeckRousseau none of them hazarded a repetition of Grevy's rough-and-tumble crowbar campaign against men .and . women the head and front of whose t offending was : the faith which they professed and the noble lessons -of Christian charity of which their lives were a daily sermon. A more ingenious ( miode of - compassing the destruction of the religious Orders was then v devised. The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry imposed upon them— and. upon them alone of all associations in the land — a special - and / crushing burden of taxation. This new Jiorm of - confiscation is known in the history of legislative failures as the ' loi d'accroissement '—the Increment Act. It soon went .the way of many another - well-laid scheme of mice and men. The ' loi d'accroissement ' was followed in 1901 by the Associations Law. This was, in its general pur-'-port, Grevy's old weapon of 1880, but furbished up and sheathed- in - a decent showing of legality. At the time . the Bill was before Parliament the J Temps ', one of the decenter of the Paris anti-Oatholic organs, said :—: — 'The leaders" of the. Extreme Left- make -no pre-> tenoe of denying that <it is against the Catholic - religion itself that they are making an attack. TheyprO;claim aloud "that the .suppression of the Congregations, 1 which, they so passionately long for, will be, to theirthinking, -not only the' first blow of the "pick: in the structured the Concordat, but the first step 'in work of the radical extinction of the- religious , spirit,, or (as it is called') in the de-christianising of France '.■ This is, in fact, merely a mild paraphrase of the actual demands put forth, editorially at the time in the* columns of the ' Radical '. We are now witnessing the ■ development of the Freemason-Radical-Socialist policy of i 1901. The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry was, in the matter

of tactics, wiser in its generation than the G-revy Administration. When they made up their minds to gar- - ro;te and plunder the religious Orders, they represented them as possessing wealth beyond- the dreams of avarice— a milliard of francs (£40,000,000) in houses and lands. This was offered as" a bribe— in the shape of oM-age pensions— to the proletariat.. Such an appeal has not "been known to fail since the days of Henry VIII. and Thomas Cromwell. It was a short-cut to/ the heart pi the worker who had ■•shuffled off religion, and to^ the atheism and ariticleriealism of the Paris boulevards. But (as the London ' Spectator '- pointed out at the time) even if the fabled milliard of the reli- - gious Congregations were a tangible asset down to the last centime, it would not by any means, in vdrew of their work, be a vast sum. A Rothschild, a Jay Gould, a Carnegie hold separately and singly more than did all the 160,000 members of the French Congregations*' collectively. Honest figures are not party-men. But the Waldeck-Rousseau figures were (as the" ' Journal „ des Debats ' said) ' meii'Songerement exageres pour les besoms de la cause ' — exaggerated in a lying way to meet the exigencies of a- political purpose. We knew that then ; we know it "better now. We know that > at the time when the story of the fabled milliard was set afloat, that the total real estate held by the religious Orders (or Associations ior Congregations as they are also called) was officially valued for revenue purposes at a capital sum which, at the French . current rate of interest of the time (2.8 per cent), would give each religious an income of about £3 per annum, or less thjan 2d a day. What a munificent revenue .in return for such magnificent services to the State and to society ! We know, too, that the v convents, monasteries, colleges, and other property" of the suppressed Congregations have thus far failed to realise sufficient to meet the expenses of the horde of ' grafters ' who are acting as liquidators. The fable of the milliard, however, .probably achieved its immediate purpose. There was not so much trouble' on the squares and boulevards as when. Grevy stormed the convents and stole the monastic pots and pans. But the ' milliard ' is like the rainbow or the bird in the story that flitted from tree , unto tree. The ' grafter* ' has his innings, and the French worker is still waiting for his old-age pension. If it •is to come out of the. Associations' ' (milliard ', he will still foe waiting at the crack o' 'doom. By the Law of Associations, the schools conducted by religious Orders were forced out of existence. In 1897-98, French religious of both sexes were giving, a Christian education to 1,983,562 children »in infant and v primary schools, and to 67,463 in secondary schools. And these schools, says the. American ' Church Review ' (Protestant), at the time of the Bill, were ' able to give free education and to hold their own against their rivals, and' generally to beat them in discipline and examinations and to carry off the scholarships '. These dangerous rivals -to the godless or atheistic public schools were closed. The same fate befell most of the institutions of charity in which ' heaven's great army of charity ' (as that great Protestant, Leibnitz, called some- of our religious Orders) maintained- some 110,000 aged and infirm poor, 6(1,000 orphans, 12,000 penitent women, and 68,000 lunatics, blind, and deaf and dumb. The 1 devoted men and women who carried on ' this noble work ' for sweete , Sanct Charitie ' were like malefactors or outlaws from the rods that sheltered them and their charges, and left to penury in their own land or to exile among strangers. Side by side with theseoperations of the new atheistic chivalry, a great and searching system of espionage was" organised under Minissterial auspices to ' break ' or penalise every officer in the army or navy who practised his religion, or aided a Catholic charity, or permitted any member- of his

family to do so, or whose relatives or friends were known or suspected ,to be well-disposed towards the Ancient Faith. This grand organisation of spying -was wjorked through the Freemason fraternity. Its v ' documemted ' exposure in the Chamber of Deputies and in the "Parisian secular press was, perhaps, thexrowning sensa-' tion of the political life of- -the pasOew years.- _ Before the -storm of public shame and execration, the 'gcidbraided Chief of the Spies, Genera] Andre (Minister of - War) had~ to leave his pedestal, and the. Combes Administration to give up the" reins of power.- Tfcere ■ was a change of masters, but not of methods. Espi-' onage is still as active a weapon of proscription and persecution as it was when Combes was dressed in a little brief authority. • - For the rest, under the Combes .regime nearly §11 . the religious " Orders were suppressed, disbanded, - arad " .plundered, in spite of the official pledge that the" new law was meant only for the religio,us Associations that were 'political' or ' plotter's against the State.' No explicit charge, no evidence, no judicial formality - preceded" ibh(is great act of. (spoliation .aimd expulsion. The applications made (on the faith of ' official pledges) • by the Orders for ' authorisation '' in terms of' the ' law, .were not dealt with separately and on their - merits. ' Twenty-five teaching Congregations' ', ' . says Mr. Wilfrid Ward in the ' Nineteenth Century » foe January, ' were refused authorisation en' 'bloc at one sitting c(f the Lower Chamber, twenty-eight at another. The rest followed quickly. M. Combes " had practically made one head for * .the whole monastic organism 1 , and he proceeded to cut it off .The manner of abrogating the Concordat deserves an article all to itself.