RELIGIOUS IN BELGIUM

New Zealand Tablet, 29 August 1912, Page 53

RELIGIOUS IN BELGIUM

For months previous to the general elections'in Belgium the Socialist and Radical press organs at regular, intervals set afloat the most rabulous accounts ot the supposed deluge of religious Orders in Belgium, the twenty million francs that tire Belgian people would have to sacrifice to the monks and nuns it the Catholic Government remained in power, and the eight or nine thousand ‘ monasteries ’ supposed to cumber the Belgian soil (writes the German correspondent of the Philadelphia Catholic Standard and Times). From Belgium these cloister legends-‘cloister legends’ are always good copy in the eyes of the anti-clerical editor found their into other lands and created the impression that the Flemings and the Walloons were monk and nun-ridden with a vengeance. Here- are the , plain facts of the case, as communicated by M. Jacquart, director of the Belgian Statistical Bureau to a staff correspondent of the Koelnische Volkszeitung :—• ” '

In 1900 there were in Belgium ,2474 religious communities, with a total of 39,000 inmates of both sexes. To appreciate these figures at their true value it must be borne in mind that in Belgium every house in which at least three members of a religious Order or congregation live together is Rooked by the statistical bureau as a religious community.’ Thus all schools, academies, hospitals, prisons, homes for working girls, orphan asylums, etc., in which three or more nuns,are employed are, in the official sense, religious communities or convents.

Since the census' of 1900 a great number of French religious, both men and women, but especially the latter, took refuge from persecution in hospitable Belgium. The French religious number about ten thousand, about nine thousand of whom are nuns, whose chief occupation is secondary and higher education, only a comparatively small number being-employed in the service of the sick and the poor. If we add to these French religious the 150 Dutch and. German missionary priests in half a dozen mission houses and a few exiles from Portugal, the roster of the foreigners is complete. As this ‘ invading army ’ is recruited almost exclusively from foreign lands, whence their financial supplies are also derived, Belgium has much to gain and nothing to lose by the ‘ invasion,’ even from a material point of view. In 1911 Belgium harbored, all told, something more than 56,000 religious of both sexes, 43,000 of whom were of Belgian nationality the number of monasteries and convents —in the sense explained above—amounted to 3500, or one religious community for more than two thousand souls.

The unexampled prosperity of Belgium, which is admitted by all except the very blindest of bigots, proves conclusively that religious communities, however great their number may be, are not, as such, a menace to the material welfare of any nation. On the contrary, they have always been, and still are, a main factor in the progress of the world, spiritual and intellectual, as well as material. . The flourishing convent schools of Belgium are an eyesore to the so-called Liberal journalists. Especially at the close of the scholastic year their ‘ conscience ’ urges them to warn parents not to patronise instituthat are nothing but hotbeds of superstition and intellectual slavery.’ In the same breath that they declare the religious schools to be below contempt they extol the secular schools of Brussels and the other large cities to the skies, schools to which, if they cared to tell the truth, they would have to apply the epithet of hotbeds of Socialism.’ In the Maison du Peuple of the headquarters of Belgian Socialism, there is a special department, called ‘.Syndicat du Personnel Enseignant, for the school teachers of the capital. A very large percentage of the official teachers of both sexes are , enrolled in the ‘ Syndicat.’ It has been demonstrated time and again that the Belgian religious schools, both primary and higher, are not only the equals of the secular . schools in the teaching of the secular branches, but in most cases their superiors.