HOW NEUTRALITY WORKS IN FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 13 April 1911, Page 671

HOW NEUTRALITY WORKS IN FRANCE

' THE WAR AGAINST RELIGION The religious struggle which has been going on in France for thirty years, has not yet ended (writes _ M. Eugene Tavernier, of the staff of the Univers in America). Indeed, it promises to grow fiercer, with time. In my last communication to America I wrote about the groups of school teachers who had entered suit against several bishops. Your readers will, perhaps, remember that the occasion of this legal battle was a letter drawn up by all the bishops, condemning the irreligious propaganda which was being kept up in the schools. The School_ Associations retorted by bringing the matter to court, with the result that Cardinal Lucon was fined five hundred Hanes with costs. This decision had already been given at Reims, and the Court of Appeals at Paris, to which it was carried, reaffirmed the sentence. As a matter of fact, the judges are appointed by the Government, and are unyielding in their defence.of the lay school, which also depends on the Government, and is permeated with freethinking ideas. To help to an understanding of the importance which the school system has in this contest, it will suffice to recall the number of teachers, male and female, who make up the scholastic body. I take these figures and many others, from an article by as important a personage as the In-structor-General, M. Compayre, which was published a few days ago. There arc at present in the schools, 112,000 teachers for the primary schools alone. Their annual salaries run up to one hundred and twenty million francs. For school buildings and equipment, hundreds of millions have already been expended. Against this formidable organisation, _ which draws upon all the resources of the State, Catholics have to fight, while at the same time they are paying heavily for their own schools. The Work of the Press. Besides this, the lay schools are backed with terrific ardor by the Freethinking press, which is doing its best to destroy the traditional Faith of the country, and to make _ the nation profoundly and passionately” atheistic. The bishops, of course, cannot look on idly at this condition of affairs, and are using all their, power to thwart its purposes. No doubt the fight which they have begun will result in very interesting encounters. About three years ago a part of the episcopate denounced the propaganda

which was actively carried on by a newspaper called La Depeche, which exercises the greatest possible influence in the four departments in the south-west, south, and centre of ranee. , It has on its staff a great umber of politicians, professors, and well-known writers, all of them utterly anti-religious. Every edition of the Depeche furnished the public with two or three articles which were reeking with blasphemy against - God, and packed with all kinds of sophistical arguments against religion. Three years ago the bishops of the -Province of Toulouse launched a collective pastoral letter denouncing the grossness and perfidiousness of these articles-and. forbidding Catholics to read the paper. La Depeche became very angry, expressed itself as such, and uttered all sorts of threats, but did not sue for damages, as it threatened. It decided that it was more prudent and, more practical to modify the character of its articles for the moment. The Fight in the South-East. To-day, it is in the south-east that the fight is hottest.' At Lyons, two journals which have wide circulation viz., Lc Fr ogres and the JRepublicain, are using all their vile influence to carry out their purpose. Like the papers above referred to, their columns are filled with the most blasphemous utterances against the Trinity, creation, the Papacy, the Blessed Virgin, the Church, etc. The effect off all this upon the people is most deplorable. As a consequence the bishops of the Province of Lyons, with the venerable octogenarian, Cardinal Coullie at their head issued a collective letter, in which they not only denounced the scandal, but resorted to active measures to put an end to it; forbidding the faithful to read.either of the journals concerned, under pain of grievous sin and the refusal of the Sacraments. This letter was read in all the churches of the Province of Lyons., Other papers, the Tribune liCpublicaine y and La Loire are put in the same category as those mentioned above. Will they act as the Depeche did, and do nothing but show their wrath. Perhaps not. One of them makes the announcement that it purposes to sue the bishops. When it does we can be pretty surethat it will not act alone, and we shall soon see the bishops taken to court and condemned as they have been elsevhero in France, with a possible increase in the fines and costs. lor their courage, the bishops will have to pav heavily. _ Probably also the matter will be discussed in the Legislature, for the Freethinkers are evidently eager to have a special law against the bishops and priests to prevent them from doing elsewhere what they have done at Lyons. The Future. x! 5? brief, the future threatens to be a period of trouble* the Catholics are girding themselves for the fray; they are rather proud of their Bishops, and have made up their minds to stand by them resolutely, for they see that their enemies are intent upon leaving them no liberty which it is possible to deprive them of. The fight is now so hot that resistance may become an absolute duty for all Catholics. _ Many Catholics who jvere only nominally such, and would not believe that all religion was threatened are now opening their eyes to the importance of the contest, and perhaps will very soon make up their minds to, take part in it. The struggle will be violent, but at the same time it will be salutary.