The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1910. THE IMPENDING STRUGGLE IN FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 17 March 1910, Page 421

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1910. THE IMPENDING STRUGGLE IN FRANCE

JNOTHER; chapter is -being added to the long and painful annals of religious persecution in ■ France. For some years past an atheist Government, with a huge Parliamentary majority, ; has been carrying on a war ,of extermination , against any and every 'form of i religious faith. Their one aim and purpose is, as expressed :by the present Minister for Labor, ‘ to extinguish the lights of heaven ’ —in other words, to extirpate every vestige of religion in the country. To this end the Catholics of . France have been subjected to spoliation, confiscation, robbery, , and repression of every kind; and now, by.way of climax, it is proposed to rob them of the. last remnant of their liberties—liberty of education. ; . > . “■■■•' ■ ; _ * - . . The coming conflict will centre round the so-called ‘neutral’ schools. By Jules Ferry’s law of 1882 the. State schools were required to be absolutely and strictly neutral in all matters where religion was concerned. . Influenced, howeveras they could not fail to be—by the open and increasingly aggressive attacks made; on religion by .their political masters, the teachers in the State schools have come to show themselves less and less respectful of the neutrality which, according to the letter ,of the law, they were bound to observe.. The practices of , religion were misrepresented and ridiculed,. doubts . were insidiously insinuated, and in some cases even common morality and the duty -of patriotism were decried. After appealing in vain to x the education authorities for protection against this system " for the corruption of the faith of their, children, parents had recourse to the law courts, with the result that, in the case of a grossly offending teacher, Morizot by name—whose shocking teachings were referred to at length in .. these % columns judges declared that such an appeal was within the competence of aggrieved parents. In addition to the individual action of the teachers, a further breach -of the principle of neutrality has been committed by the introduction, under the x authority of. the Government, of a new set of, specially prepared, text-books on 1 civic morality,’ the teachings of which" are' in. flat and open contradiction to the very • idea of revealed religion. The books were, of course, condemned by the Bishops and the. condemnation was followed by certain action on the part of

parents and of children, who refused to make use of the condemned books. In order to perpetuate and stereotype the existing gross violations of neutrality, and at the same time to deprive parents of the last shred of protection and redress, the Minister of Public Instruction has drafted two significant and far-reaching Bills. The first Bill imposes a penalty on the parent, if he ventures to ; forbid his child to accept the books placed in;, his hands by a teacher; and by the second Bill the responsibility of the State is substituted for that of the teacher, who is to be removed from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and placed under the university tribunals for nearly all offences committed in the exercise of his duty as a teacher. . On the first publication of the text of these two measures the Bishops, in a Joint Pastoral, strenuously protested, declaring that the two Bills meant nothing less than the expropriation of the family and the confiscation of its children by the State. And at a comparatively recent date the Bishops issued another Joint Pastoral, in which the inalienable rights of, parents were set forth according to the doctrine of the Church, and in which the use of a number of class-books —the names of which were specifiedwhich contained lying statements regarding the teaching, practices, and history of the Church, was forbidden to Catholic children. The Pastoral has been denounced by the atheists as an ‘ attack ’ on the Republican schools, but there can be no doubt that this courageous and timely pronouncement has served to clear the air and has made evident to all interested the seriousness of the issues which are at stake. » That the Bishops were amply justified in denouncing the new class-books as • full of pernicious errors ’ and subversive of all religion a very few extracts will suffice to show. Even in the ordinary school-books, which do not deal specially with moral teachingsuch as grammars and reading books—every mention of God or of religion has been carefully and deliberately cut out. A writer in the Catholic World gives the -following cases in point. In a grammar by Larive and Fleury, in general use in the schools for many years, the following changes and substitutions! have been made since 19020 n page 7, God is great’ has been changed into ‘Paris is great.’ Page 9: ‘ Man excites himself, God leads him,’ is now ‘ The lightning flashes, the thunder roars.’ Page 99: In the place of God is,’ we find, ‘ I think, therefore I am.’ Even ancient history is wiped out. In a list of proper names Adam and Eve have given place to ‘Robert’ and ‘Julie.’ Finally, one finds on page 130, in the old editions: ‘lf you transgress the Commandments of God, .you will never fulfill the purpose for which you were put into the world.’ In the new editions: ‘lf you transgress ’ the laws of Nature, as to hygiene, you cannot do so with impunity.’ The classbooks on ‘ Morality ’ go much further. One of these textbooks, for example, contains such propositions as. the 1 following; The Church has always supported ignorance and slavery. The Church has destroyed science. Christian morality is a morality which oppresses. The rights of man are superior to his duties. The civilisation of paganism was more elevated than that of Christianity. Freemasonry is a philanthropic institution. The Church has always been, and still is, the enemy of all progress and civilisation.’ A further specimen of the kind of ‘neutrality’ practised under the present regime is furnished by the following passage: —‘ Since it is not possible to know what comes after death, men have tried to guess it, and an infinity of superstitious opinions have been broached on the subject. Some have said that after death everything is over others have believed that after death men return to God, a being eternal, infinite, good, just. They believe that God judges men and rewards or punishes them, and therefore they affirm that men should honor God and pray to Him, and in this way certain ceremonies "have been devised for the purpose of rendering honor to God. Thus men have come to form a variety of religions. Religions are many— number depends on the manner in which everybody imagines his God. “ All these religions speak of God and of what is to happen after death. Therefore they speak of what nobody knows anything. Hence we have the right to select for ourselves among- all these religions the one that pleases us best. ■ If none of them pleases us, we have the right to remain without- any of them.’ These

Manuals reek with misrepresentations, lies, blasphemy, and irreligion of this sort. : _ v* . > > , ; ~ * ' '' , , The Doumergue Bills have not yet been actually before the French Parliament, but in the last week in January, during the general discussion of the Budget for Public Instruction, . advantage , was taken of the . opportunity to ventilate the whole question of the lay schools in - the.Chamber After a full-dress debate extending t over ten parliamentary days, and marked by several powerful addresses on the Christian and Catholic side, the Government, by their huge mechanical majority, succeeded in carrying the following resolution :—‘ The Chamber, confident that the Government will defend the lay school and its teachers against all adversaries, and determined before separating to: discuss the Bills for the, defence of the lay school, and rejecting all additions, passes to the order of the day.’ The first part of this resolution, expressive of confidence in the Government, was passed by 395 votes against 95; the second by 421 votes against 147 and the. resolution as a whole was carried by 385 votes against 137. In the meantime Cardinal Lufon, Archbishop of Rheims, is being prosecuted for the publication of the Joint Pastoral by the State School Teachers’: Leaguea body which has always worked hand and glove with the atheistic Government authorities, and which professes to regard the Pastoral, as an ‘attack’ and a ‘libel.’ To sum up: The Chamber lias expressed confidence in the Government, and proclaimed its determ’nation to give effect to the Doumergue Bills ‘for the defence of the lay school,’ thus throwing their sanction over the blasphemous and immoral ■ textbooks; the Bishops are being prosecuted for so much as , daring .to criticise . the. administration of these schools; and, in addition, the Minister for Public Instruction has threatened to bring down a thirdBill, in accordance with which, to quote; his own words as used in the debate, ‘they would take the offensive and carry the war into the enemy’s camp by insisting on obtaining power to inspect the ecoles lihres [(free schools), over the curriculum of which Rome presided.’ ..v * Such is the position which the Catholic Church in France is called upon to face. To all appearance she is facing it in the only spirit in which it can be faced the spirit of *No surrender.’ ‘ There will be no truce,’ said Cardinal LU9OII, in the battle for the schools.’ Your obligation to teach,’ said M. Piou, a Catholic deputy,, in the debate above referred to, ‘has become the imposition of free-thought. We will not have it; what ; we desire is peace through liberty or war to the end.’ The, next, general election in France takes place in May. If French Catholics can only agree to sink their petty political differences of opinion, to work together for their' civil and religious liberties, and to vote only for such candidates as are prepared to defend these liberties before the nation, M. Briand may come back a sadder and, a , wiser man. Like a far greater man, Bismarck, he will probably find that he has under-rated the resisting power of a Church which, after more'than' 1800 years of life, still carries upon her brow the symbol of everlasting youth, and still bears within her an unconquerable strength whose sources are Divine.